Check this page every month for some stimulating lectures and conversations from the leading scientific minds. We'll only be posting items that we have actually viewed or listened to ourselves, so we hope you enjoy these as much as we did.
Sam Harris: Science can answer moral questions
Thursday, 09 December 2010 00:00
Questions of good and evil, right and wrong are commonly thought unanswerable by science. But Sam Harris argues that science can -- and should -- be an authority on moral issues, shaping human values and setting out what constitutes a good life.
570-Megapixel Camera Prepares to Hunt for Dark Energy
Thursday, 18 November 2010 15:48
The world’s largest dark energy–hunting device, also one of the biggest, heaviest and highest-resolution cameras in the world, is close to completion.
Construction of the 4-ton Dark Energy Camera is wrapping up next month at Fermilab in Illinois, where it’s being tested on a mock-up telescope mount (above). The Dark Energy Survey hopes to open its $35 million camera for business at its final destination, in the Blanco telescope atop a Chilean mountain, by October 2012.
Laurie Santos: A monkey economy as irrational as ours
Tuesday, 09 November 2010 00:00
Laurie Santos looks for the roots of human irrationality by watching the way our primate relatives make decisions. A clever series of experiments in "monkeynomics" shows that some of the silly choices we make, monkeys make too.
Sebastian Seung is mapping a massively ambitious new model of the brain that focuses on the connections between each neuron. He calls it our "connectome," and it's as individual as our genome -- and understanding it could open a new way to understand our brains and our minds.
Athlete, actor and activist Aimee Mullins talks about her prosthetic legs -- she's got a dozen amazing pairs -- and the superpowers they grant her: speed, beauty, an extra 6 inches of height ... Quite simply, she redefines what the body can be.
