If you thought a hot dog eating contest was impressive to complete, imagine if a black hole entered it! They eat up everything around them, including stars! But they’re not just gluttonous blobs of the universe. Like all things in space,...

NASA is really good at going to space, amongst other things, but did you know that part of their mission is to work also for the public good!? It's part of NASA's doctrine that they must release the patents on the stuff they work on,...

Today Hank explores artificial intelligence, including weak AI and strong AI, and the various ways that thinkers have tried to define strong AI including the Turing Test, and John Searle’s response to the Turing Test, the Chinese Room....

Paul Andersen explains how he is using elements of game design to improve his AP Biology class. The entire class revolves around Moodle. Students complete levels to acquire experience points and move up the leader board

The 2007-2008 financial crisis, you might think, was an unpredictable one-time crash. But Didier Sornette and his Financial Crisis Observatory have plotted a set of early warning signs for unstable, growing systems, tracking the moment...

Thanks to science and technology, our dream to go to Mars has almost come true! But are our brains ready for it yet?

To study a system as complex as the entire universe, astrophysicists need to be experts at extracting simple solutions from large data sets. What else could they do with this expertise? In an interdisciplinary talk, TED Fellow and...

* Viewer discretion advised. This video includes discussion of mature topics and may be inappropriate for some audiences. Writer and artist James Bridle uncovers a dark, strange corner of the internet, where unknown people or groups on...

AI can do some pretty amazing things, but if we want it to learn on its own, we're going to have to teach AI how to evolve.

In this video Paul Andersen shows conceptual thinking in a mini-lesson on testing causes.

T
ERMS:
Tests - a planned act that is done to learn
something
Cause - a thing that gives r
ise to an event
Support - t
o give...

Human beings and computers alike share the challenge of how to get as much done as possible in a limited time. Over the last fifty or so years, computer scientists have learned a lot of good strategies for managing time effectively - and...

Remember when astrophysicists thought they'd found signs of life on Venus? A different team re-crunched the numbers, and their results raised some questions about that claim. Also, a bunch of exoplanets are doing a really precise dance...

Paul Tudor Jones II loves capitalism. It's a system that has done him very well over the last few decades. Nonetheless, the hedge fund manager and philanthropist is concerned that a laser focus on profits is, as he puts it, "threatening...

Why is China appointing thousands of judges to environmental courts and training prosecutors to bring cases to them, even if it means suing the government? Eco-lawyer James Thornton takes us inside the country's growing effort to use the...

We don't have to live in a world where 99 percent of rapists get away with it, says TED Fellow Jessica Ladd. With Callisto, a new platform for college students to confidentially report sexual assault, Ladd is helping survivors get the...

In this video Paul Andersen explains that the angular momentum of a system will be conserved as long as there is no net external torque. Both point objects and extended objects are covered along with several examples.

The United States' Constitution is not a very detailed document. It lays out the basic structure of government, and the details are filled in with legislation, and clarified and reinforced by court decisions. One of the most...

Technology architect Fadi Chehade helped set up the infrastructure that makes the internet work -- essential things like the domain name system and IP address standards. Today he's focused on finding ways for society to benefit from...

The human brain is visibly split into a left and right side. This structure has inspired one of the most pervasive ideas about the brain: that the left side controls logic and the right side controls creativity. And yet, this is a myth,...

In this video Paul Andersen shows conceptual thinking in a mini-lesson on Objects and Pieces. TERMS Characteristic - a feature or quality belonging to a thing Object - a material thing that can be seen and touched Piece - a part or...

A mini-lesson on cause and effect.

What do you learn when you sail around the world on your own? When solo sailor Ellen MacArthur circled the globe – carrying everything she needed with her – she came back with new insight into the way the world works, as a place of...

Between 2006 and 2016, the number of drug patents granted in the United States doubled -- but not because there was an explosion in invention or innovation. Drug companies have learned how to game the system, accumulating patents not for...

Nathan Myhrvold and team's latest inventions -- as brilliant as they are bold -- remind us that the world needs wild creativity to tackle big problems like malaria. And just as that idea sinks in, he rolls out a live demo of a new,...