Though the first written number system can be dated back to 2500 years ago in Mesopotamia, a zero-like symbol did not appear until 7th century CE India. Jessica Oreck and Rachael Teel track the evolution of zero from a dot to the symbol...

The enigmatic equation e^{pi i} = -1 is usually explained using Taylor's formula during a calculus class. This video offers a different perspective, which involves thinking about numbers as actions, and about e^x as something which turns...

Fossils can provide clues to the conditions that ancient species lived in, like what their environments felt like, how deep in the water some species lived, or even how long the Sun was out!

We'll soon be capable of building self-replicating robots. This will not only change humanity's future but reshape the galaxy as we know it.

Imagine you have four cubes, whose faces are colored red, blue, yellow, and green. Can you stack these cubes so that each color appears exactly once on each of the four sides of the stack?

* Viewer discretion advised. This video includes discussion of mature topics and may be inappropriate for some audiences. From our fear of women's bodies to our sheepishness around the word "nipple," our ideas about sex need an upgrade,...

There are a lot of nuclear weapons on Earth, so many that we often say it's enough to "destroy the world several times over." But could we? Well, that depends on what you mean. Also...no matter what you mean, probably not. The Earth is...

In this video Paul Andersen explains how the conservation of mass was replaced with the conservation of mass-energy when it was determined that they are equivalent. This famous equation not only show the mass-energy equivalence but can...

Even though we're all probably very experienced poopers, sometimes we need a little help.

At TED2010, mathematics legend Benoit Mandelbrot develops a theme he first discussed at TED in 1984 -- the extreme complexity of roughness, and the way that fractal math can find order within patterns that seem unknowably complicated.

So the Mars Rovers didn't scoop up any alien lifeforms. Scientist Penelope Boston thinks there's a good chance -- a 25 to 50 percent chance, in fact -- that life might exist on Mars, deep inside the planet's caves. She details how we...

The formula for the cross product can feel like a mystery, or some kind of crazy coincidence. But it isn't. There is a fundamental connection between the cross product and determinants.

In elections, your vote may be influenced by design of the ballot itself, especially when you don’t have strong feelings about which candidate to elect.

Some of the oldest galaxies we’ve ever seen are small, faint satellite galaxies orbiting the Milky Way, and they're providing us with a glimpse of how the universe evolved.

You're about to throw a party with a thousand bottles of wine, but you just discovered that one bottle is poisoned! Can you determine exactly which one it is?

There is an epidemic of HIV, and with it an epidemic of bad laws -- laws that effectively criminalize being HIV positive. At the TEDxSummit in Doha, TED Fellow Shereen El-Feki gives a forceful argument that these laws, based in stigma,...

As your country's top spy, you must infiltrate the headquarters of the evil syndicate, find the secret control panel, and deactivate their death ray. But your reconnaissance team is spotty, and you have only limited information about the...

Taking lessons from a historical pattern called "Thucydides's Trap," political scientist Graham Allison shows why a rising China and a dominant United States could be headed towards a violent collision no one wants -- and how we can...

The tiny atoms that make up our world are made up of even tinier protons, neutrons and electrons. Though the number of protons determines an atom's identity, it's the electrons -- specifically, their exact location outside the nucleus --...

Right now, scientists need additional COVID-19 monitoring methods. And our poops might help!

While children are only a small minority of those who test positive for COVID-19, we’re starting to see evidence of a rare, but serious, complication in children that resembles a condition known as Kawasaki disease. Here’s what doctors...

Sometimes, ancient ruins can be a little out of the way, but with some creativity, we can use satellites for those hard to reach areas.

There’s a big difference between the number of satellites that simulations predict, and the number we’ve actually seen with telescopes, but why?

Myriam Sidibe is a warrior in the fight against childhood disease. Her weapon of choice? A bar of soap. For cost-effective prevention against sickness, it’s hard to beat soapy hand-washing, which cuts down risk of pneumonia, diarrhea,...