Science-Videos

The study of extrasolar planets has recently entered its heyday with the launch of NASA's Kepler mission. Kepler has found that planetary systems are very common in our galaxy. Along the way, we've been surprised by the diversity of planetary systems, many of which bear little resemblance to our own solar system. Josh Carter presents these most alien of alien worlds, including planets orbiting two suns and a planetary system with two very different planets very close to one another.

Series from Channel 4 featuring Sir Martin Rees.

There is a fundamental chasm in our understanding of ourselves, the universe, and everything. To solve this, Sir Martin takes us on a mind-boggling journey through multiple universes to post-biological life. On the way we learn of the disturbing possibility that we could be the product of someone elses experiment.

Why should you bother to wake up tomorrow knowing that we're all going to die billions and billions of years from now when the universe turns to absolute zero, when the stars blink out, when we have nothing but neutron stars and black holes? Dr. Kaku says that billions of years from now we may be able to move to a different universe.

Slow Motion video of bullet impacts made by Werner Mehl from Kurzzeit. These are by far the best slow motion bullet impacts available anywhere. Watch for the hollow point rounds in the ballistics gel.

Join leading researchers Dr. Eric Horvitz of Microsoft Research and Dr. Peter Norvig of Google for an intriguing discussion about the past, present, and future of artificial intelligence, moderated by KQED's Tim Olson.

Questions of Fundamental Physics to be answered this century:

Why are there three forces of nature due to local symmetry?

Why is alpha = 1/137.036999708...?

Why are there families of quarks and leptons?

Why is space three dimensional and are there hidden dimensions?

The Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto has created a beautiful, undeniably scary time-lapse map of the 2053 nuclear explosions which have taken place between 1945 and 1998, beginning with the Manhattan Project's "Trinity" test near Los Alamos and concluding with Pakistan's nuclear tests in May of 1998. This leaves out North Korea's two alleged nuclear tests in this past decade (the legitimacy of both of which is not 100% clear).

The physicist sees two major trends in the world today: the first is toward a multicultural, scientific, tolerant society; the other, as evidenced by terrorism, is fundamentalist and monocultural. Whichever one wins out will determine the fate of mankind.

The study of extrasolar planets has recently entered its heyday with the launch of NASA's Kepler mission. Kepler has found that planetary systems are very common in our galaxy. Along the way, we've been surprised by the diversity of planetary systems, many of which bear little resemblance to our own solar system. Josh Carter presents these most alien of alien worlds, including planets orbiting two suns and a planetary system with two very different planets very close to one another.

The full lecture title is "Cancers - Their Genomes, Microenvironments, and Susceptibility to Bacteria-based Therapies" by Bert Vogelstein. The Johns Hopkins Center for Biotechnology Education and the Department of Biology in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences hosted the American Society for Microbiology's Conference for Undergraduate Educators (ASMCUE) on the Homewood campus. Bert Vogelstein gave the closing plenary lecture, "Cancers - Their Genomes, Microenvironments, and Susceptibility to Bacteria-based Therapies". He teaches at John Hopkins University.

ASMCUE, now in its 18th year, is a professional development conference for approximately 300 educators. Each year, its steering committee organizes a program that offers access to premier scientists in diverse specialties and to educators leading biology education reform efforts. For more information on the conference, go to http://www.asmcue.org/page02d.shtml

Dr. Kaku addresses the question of the possibility of utopia, the perfect society that people have tried to create throughout history. These dreams have not been realized because we have scarcity. However, now we have nanotechnology, and with nanotechnology, perhaps, says Dr. Michio Kaku, maybe in 100 years, we'll have something called the replicator, which will create enormous abundance.

Robbert Dijkgraaf's focus is on string theory, quantum gravity, and the interface between mathematics and particle physics, bringing them together in an accessible way, looking at sciences, the arts and other matters.

DNA stores and replicates information. Special sequences of different nucleic acids (adenine, cytosine, guanine, thymine) encode life's blueprints. These nucleic acids can be divided into a classical part (massive core) and a quantum part (electron shell and single protons). The laws of quantum mechanics map the classical information (A,C,G,T) onto the configuration of electrons and position of single protons. Although DNA replication requires perfect copies of the classical information, the core that constitutes this information does not directly interact with the copying machine. Instead, only the quantum degrees of freedom are measured. Thus successful copying requires a correct translation of classical to quantum to classical information. It has been shown that the electronic system is well shielded from thermal noise. This leads to entanglement inside the DNA helix. It is an open question if this entanglement influences the genetic information processing. In this talk I will discuss possible consequences of entanglement for the information flow and the similarities and differences between classical computing, quantum computing and DNA information processing.

In this four-part series, string theory pioneer Michio Kaku goes on an extraordinary exploration.

Playlist:http://tinyurl.com/82vks44

Breathtaking video of birds flocking - (same principle can be used to scale culture). Scientists are still puzzled by how this activity is coordinated. Are quantum effects involved?

http://tinyurl.com/3q5v7z5

Ramesh Raskar presents femto-photography, a new type of imaging so fast it visualizes the world one trillion frames per second, so detailed it shows light itself in motion. This technology may someday be used to build cameras that can look "around" corners or see inside the body without X-rays.

Tammet has been "studied repeatedly" by researchers in Britain and the United States, and has been the subject of several peer-reviewed scientific papers.Professor Allan Snyder at the Australian National University has said of Tammet: "Savants can't usually tell us how they do what they do. It just comes to them. Daniel can describe what he sees in his head. That's why he's exciting. He could be the 'Rosetta Stone'

to science." In his mind, he says, each positive integer up to 10,000 has its own unique shape, colour, texture and feel. He has described his visual image of 289 as particularly ugly, 333 as particularly attractive, and pi as beautiful. The number 6 apparently has no distinct image yet what he describes as an almost small nothingness, opposite to the number 9 which he calls large and towering. Tammet has described 25 as energetic and the "kind of number you would invite to a party". In his memoir, Tammet states experiencing a synaesthetic and emotional response for words and numbers, but not letters in algebraic contexts.

Tammet holds the European record for reciting pi from memory to 22,514 digits in five hours and nine minutes on 14 March 2004. Tammet has reportedly learned 10 languages, including Romanian, Gaelic, Welsh, and Icelandic which he learned in a week for a TV documentary.

Big Ideas presents Seth Lloyd of the Massachusetts Institute for Technology on Quantum Life, how organisms have evolved to make use of quantum effects.