Particle physics. To some, the words may produce anxiety. And while, yes, it is complicated -- it is far from incomprehensible. On May 3, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, better known as CERN, held its first TEDx event, an illuminating look at how particle physics intersects with other disciplines. As part of TEDxCERN, physicists...

Wednesday marked the second-ever TEDxCERN, the event organized by the folks at CERN, the famed particle physics research center in Geneva, Switzerland, responsible for bringing us the World Wide Web, the Large Hadron Collider, and confirmation of the existence of the Higgs boson. You know, just a few minor things. TEDxCERN brought togethe...

Featured image: Austrian physicist Lise Meitner, who first developed the theory explaining the process of nuclear fission. Theoretical physicist (and TED Fellow) Shohini Ghose has two great passions: physics, and advocating for gender equity in the sciences. “There are still relatively few women in physics – and the higher up the ladder in ac...

On September 24, TEDxCERN was hosted by physicist Brian Cox (watch his TED Talk: "CERN's supercollider"), and the world was welcomed to watch for free. Below, an appetite-whetter that originally ran on the TEDx Innovations Blog. Cosmic rays. Active galactic nuclei. Nucleosynthesis. For physicist Veronica Bindi, this is everyday vocabula...

I just might have the best job in the world. As a particle physicist and professor at Yale, I am a happy cog on the wheel of humanity, trying to understand the universe. I collaborate with brilliant people, young and old, from all over the globe. But while I love my job, the truth is I am part of a system that is rigged. We have come a long w...

The theme of TED2018 is The Age of Amazement, and these speakers’ books are bursting with wonders of every kind: intellectual, scientific, urban, technological, economic, historical, aquatic, even extraterrestrial. TED2018, our biggest conference of the year, takes place April 10 through 14 in Vancouver. The talks from the conference will be re...

"Science, we generally are told, is a very well-ordered mechanism for understanding the world, for gaining facts, for gaining data," biologist Stuart Firestein says in today's TED talk. "I'd like to tell you that's not the case." Instead, Firestein proposes that science is really about ignorance -- about seeking answers rather than collec...

Allan Adams "became a physicist to understand how the world works at its most fundamental level." Adams, a professor of theoretical physics at MIT, points out that the things we've learned so far are pretty incredible: We know the universe began just 13.8 billion years ago, and have a pretty good idea how it's going to end. We have a recipe ...

It’s just a teeny, tiny question: How did the universe begin? Today, TED-Ed has unveiled a new lesson that answers this in less than four minutes, “The beginning of the universe, for beginners.” This is the first of five animated lessons developed by CERN scientists and brought to life by TED-Ed’s talented animators. The other four animati...

While the TED Blog chills for the next two weeks, take a break to read some of our favorite pieces from around the Internet over the past seven days: A fascinating, at times hilarious, look at business management practices in high-threat terrorist organizations. [Foreign Affairs] A profile of Laura Poitras, the documentary filmmaker who helped...

TEDYouth session two has just finished. You can read about each of the 12 speakers below, and also see summaries of the Session 1 speakers here. Olivier Guyon, Optical Physicist and Astronomer Olivier designs powerful telescopes that search for exoplanets — earth-like planets that exist outside of our solar system. The problem with search f...

Photo: James Duncan Davidson Taylor Wilson is a 17-year old nuclear physicist. No, really. He charms the audience from the get-go, making the case that "you know, as a scientist, the glass is always 100% full, with water and air." But he's really here to make two cases: that nuclear fusion will be the energy of the future, and that kids c...

It's time for TED! Photo: TED / Robert Leslie Astronaut Cady Coleman talks to the audience newly assembled in Long Beach, Palm Springs and all over the world, from her home in zero-gravity on the International Space Station. Watch her talk. Then Gregory Groover Jr., from TED2011's house band, the Berklee City Music All-Stars, p...

Mathematics gets down to work in these talks, breathing life and logic into everyday problems. Prepare for math puzzlers both solved and unsolvable, and even some still waiting for solutions. Ron Eglash: The fractals at the heart of African designs When Ron Eglash first saw an aerial photo of an African village, he couldn’t rest until he...

The 2012 Paralympic Games are underway in London, and several TED speakers are right there on the front lines. During Wednesday night’s dazzling Opening Ceremony, theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking took the stage to expound on the evening’s theme of Enlightenment. “What is it,” he asked, as the performers around him brought Big Bang imager...

There's a particular occupational hazard associated with covering TED conferences: having your mind blown. University of Pennsylvania physicist and applied engineer Aaswath Raman does just that with his rethinking of air-conditioning. Now, as anyone who's ever escaped to the movies on a scorching day can attest, sitting in a room that has be...

Host Bruno Giussani open Session 3 of TEDGlobal 2011: Coded Patterns. Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED Physicist Geoffrey West asks: Are there quantitative, predictive laws of life? Yes -- there are laws for organisms because they are made of networks. Is the same true of cities and corporations? Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED ...

Smart stuff from the comments: TED community member Phillip Farris shared this in response to the TED Talk by nuclear physicist Taylor Wilson: My radical plan for small nuclear fission reactors: "Despite the rampant assumptions regarding nuclear power and its perceived dangers, Wilson’s fission idea addresses many of the problems found in react...

Deborah Rhodes' spectacular collaboration with a nuclear physicist led to a breakthrough in breast cancer detection. Kate Orff introduces us to the new hero of ecology: the oyster. Amber Case is a "cyborg anthropologist" -- she studies the symbiotic relationship between humans and machines. The Ahn Trio: With cello, piano and violin, si...

Antonio Damasio: "If we are interested in gravity ... why should we not be interested in what is happening in the human self?" Damon Horowitz on the Prison University Project: "At that moment ... it is not professor and convict, it is two minds ready to do philosophy." Felisa Wolfe-Simon: "Can a microbe use arsenic in place of ...

Spiral galaxies are a stunning sight. As Don Lincoln explains in one of this week’s TED-Ed lessons, these galaxies were thought to rotate in highly predictable dances, with stars close to the center moving slowly and stars further away rotating quickly because they are pulled by the mass of the stars between them and the center. The stars loc...

Since the first teaser in late 2013, we've been in countdown mode for Interstellar, Christopher Nolan's new outer-space epic that promises to blast us through space and time and wormholes. If you're as excited as we are but can't clear three hours to go see the whole movie, here's the plot we could figure out from obsessively watching trailer...

TED2014 is our 30th-anniversary conference, and the speaker lineup is -- in a word -- thrilling. Speakers will touch on topics ranging from technology, entertainment, design and education to climate change, architecture, music, physics, parenting, typography, fireflies and the Golden Gate Bridge. Randall Munroe of xkcd will talk about his passio...

Haz clic para leer este artículo en español > For the first time ever, the annual TED Conference in Vancouver will feature an entire session of Spanish-language TED Talks, a bit of programming we felt called for celebration: We’ll be making the live session available for free online at live.ted.com on Tuesday, April 25, from 2:15 pm to 4:0...

We are thrilled to announce the new class of Fellows for TED2015. These 21 game-changing thinkers represent 15 countries—including, for the first time in our program, Vietnam, Romania and Tunisia. They work across disciplines, at the forefront of their fields. They include a South African physicist using lasers to target HIV and cancer; a Germ...

TED2014 will bring together more than 70 speakers with fresh thinking on topics as diverse as leadership, genetics and the magic of fireflies. But this is our 30th anniversary conference, and it’s also time to look back at some of the incredible ideas surfaced in the past. At TED2014, we will hold five All-Stars sessions that bring 50+ favorite ...

Someday, solar panels may be light and cheap enough that they could be hung on a clothesline, thanks to a synthetic mineral called perovskite. Physicist Sam Stranks explains the solar-powered science and the challenges that stand in its way. Solar power is key to our energy future. But the solar industry is butting up against one hard problem: ...

Humans, ever-meaning-making creatures, will never cease to wonder: Why are things the way they are? Why do I think the way I do? And what does it all mean? Welcome to Session 7 of TED2014, in which speakers will ask big questions about how we -- and the world -- work. Here are the speakers who appeared in this session. Click below to read...

Margaret Thatcher, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990, passed away today after suffering from a stroke. The longest-serving Prime Minister of the 20th century, Thatcher also holds the distinction of being the only woman to hold the post. She has died at 87-years-old. Below, some TED Talks that examine Thatcher's lega...

All photos: Ryan Lash Starting at 3:30 Eastern: Session 2! Watch the TEDYouth livestream in English >> Ver TEDYouth en español en linea >> Where do we start? With a question: What can you share with the world? Rives and Kelly and the entire audience share answers on the mic: "We can share style and music and fashion." ...