Astronomer Jill Tarter wants us all to ask the question, “Are we alone?” As director of the SETI Institute (it stands for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), Tarter is dedicated to seeking the answer, as well as to imparting upon one and all the importance of the search. In 2009, Tarter was awarded the prestigious TED Prize and fou...

Can real food be cooked on Mars? Thanks to the work of artist, biologist and space scientist Angelo Vermeulen (watch his TED talk), the answer may one day be yes. When the Universities of Cornell and Hawai’i put out a call for participants for their NASA-funded HI-SEAS Mars simulation, investigating the feasibility of real food on Mars, V...

Enjoy these fascinating reads from across the internet: Scientists have discovered a geologic feature in Antarctica … that is the size of the Grand Canyon. [Atlantic Wire] . At TEDGlobal 2009, economist Paul Romer shared his vision of "charter cities." As the first one is being debated and planned in Honduras, the fourth-poorest count...

As new moon-going efforts ramp up, space explorers must remember to safeguard what humans left there previously -- and also study it before it’s too late. The next several years are shaping up to be busy ones for the moon, with no fewer than 14 landings in the works. That includes the robotic missions soon to be undertaken by five privately fun...

Last Sunday, Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner jumped out of a helium balloon from over 24 miles in the sky, and shattered world records by freefalling from an altitude of 128,100 feet to Earth. With the jump, Baumgartner became the first human to break the sound barrier, reaching an astonishing peak speed of 833 mph and creating a new ans...

Before you can create a new world, you have to imagine new possibilities. The speakers in this session are the visionaries who propose that which couldn't be seen before, and suggest new paths that not only haven't been traveled yet -- but haven't been thought of. Here are the speakers in this session. Click their name to read a recap of thei...

Imagine a squid so big that, when sprawled out, it is the size of a two-story house. Edith Widder has now seen this enormous ocean creature, once the stuff of nautical legend, six times. In today’s talk, Widder shares how we now have filmed proof of the giant squid’s existence, thanks to a mission conducted by herself, Tsunemi Kubodera and St...

Ranging in age from 17 to 25, they are challenging their country’s gender norms by learning engineering and coding, and setting their sights on infinity and beyond. In Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, a dedicated group at the Kyrgyz Space Program is intently focused on building their nation’s first-ever satellite and prepping it for a 2019...

Strange as it may seem, archaeologists often look to the sky to discover sites buried deep beneath the earth. Space archaeology, as it’s called, refers to the use of high-resolution satellite imaging and lasers to map and model everything from hidden Mayan ruins in Central America to specific features on the ancient Silk Road trade route in ...

In today’s thrilling TED-Ed lesson, Bill Nye the Science Guy admits that he has S.O.D., otherwise known as Sundial Obsessive Disorder. But there is a good reason for it -- a sundial helped Nye’s father escape from a prison camp in China during World War II, launching a lifelong obsession that Nye eventually picked up himself. At an event s...

Should we be putting humans on Mars? A panel of space experts brings up the big questions we need to ask before we blast off. Mars! It’s a planet we humans have been eyeing with intent since we first looked upward. Someday, the Red Planet might become a place to house Earth's expanding population ... it could be a lucrative place to mine natura...

TEDx and TED Fellows joined forces to bring Morocco its first hackerspace -- “Sahara Labs,” a place for people of all ages to play with DIY engineering. The brainchild of TEDxTarfaya organizer El Wali El Alaoui Mohamed El Mostapha. He decided to bring this enterprise to his city because of the lack of education opportunities for children and...

TED Talks are available in 94 languages, from Albanian to Vietnamese, thanks to the tireless work of our translators. So far, more than 8,500 volunteers have created the upwards of 33,500 translated talks. To celebrate this accomplishment, every week the TED Blog is bringing you a Q&A with one of our most prolific translators. Today, mee...

Six TED speakers have been recognized in the 2013 class of MacArthur Fellows. Each recipient will heretofore be unofficially known as a "genius" and will very officially receive a no-strings-attached prize of $625,000 to support his or her creative instincts for the benefit of society. We salute all 24 of this year's winners, of course. B...

Xaero. Stratolauncher. Atlas V. Dream Chaser. If you built a spaceship, wouldn't you name it something awesome too? These four spacecraft, and many more, are detailed in a recent report in which NASA examines the evolving landscape of spaceflight. As the authors admit, the space agency's own budgets are shrinking, so companies and individuals ar...

TED2014 Fellow Jorge Mañes Rubio is an artist and perpetual tourist who investigates invisible, forgotten places -- Chinese cities submerged by the Three Gorges Dam Project, a little-known Pacific island paradise destroyed by mining. He creates art that reimagines and revives these sites as attention-worthy destinations. Here, Rubio describes ...

As usual, the TED community has lots of news to share this week. Below, some highlights. A new civic gathering. To cope with political anxiety after the 2016 elections, Eric Liu has started a gathering called Civic Saturday. He explained the event in The Atlantic as “a civic analogue to church: a gathering of friends and strangers in a co...

This week, so much TED-related news hit the transom. Below, some of the highlights. Artist Olafur Eliasson (watch his TED Talk) muses on his latest work -- “Little Sun,” a miniature solar-powered lamp that puts five hours of sunlight in your pocket -- in this awesome video from our friends at The Creators Project. The best part: the video b...

Since Johannes Kepler used Mars to explain the organization of the cosmos back in the 17th century, people have been royally obsessed with the Red Planet. And with the announcement that there’s running water on the planet, it seems we’re not getting over the fascination any time soon. Here, two confessed super-fans, Andy Weir, author of the book...

"When our ancestors looked up at the night sky, they saw tools for navigation. They saw myths, and they saw the heavens," says June Cohen, the host of Session 4 of TED2015. "But technology has given us so many new clues. ... Space exploration has never been as fascinating and relevant as it is today." Here's a recap of the talks in this s...

The past, present and future of food in space -- from astronaut ice cream to "Enchilasagna" on Mars. John Glenn was the first American to eat in space. Aboard Friendship 7 in 1962, he squeezed applesauce and puréed beef with vegetables from metal tubes down a straw and into his mouth through a port in his helmet. The world was captivat...

The speed of change is a constant in our lives. Sometimes it's worth slowing things down, to look at what might be changing without us even considering it. To celebrate the efforts of innovators, change-makers and dreamers who are reimagining the future, TED has partnered with BMW i. In a special session of talks hosted by TED design cura...

Ocean exploration has been the Cousteau family business for three generations. In this fascinating Q&A, aquanaut Fabien Cousteau discusses everything from why we need underwater cities to what it's like to beat your grandfather's world record. In 1963, Jacques Cousteau lived for 30 days in an underwater laboratory positioned on the floor of...

From machine intelligence to post-subsistence economies, Google's Blaise Agüera y Arcas lays out 6 (okay, 7) ways everything is set to change. How will our minds be blown in the next 30 years? Well, that's quite a long time, given the acceleration in history. Still, I'll be brave and make six hypotheses. 1. Machine Intelligence I think that...

When artist and scientist Angelo Vermeulen (watch his TED Talk) first started weaving together biological and technological systems in his artwork, little did he know he’d someday be asked to consider how to create living ecosystems for future space habitation… Do you consider yourself an artist or scientist first? I usually describe mysel...

Chris Hadfield, the Canadian astronaut who’s become a YouTube sensation aboard the International Space Station, has showed us why tears won’t fall in space and the dangers of clipping one’s fingernails in zero gravity. But he has truly outdone himself with his latest video. Scheduled to leave the space station tonight at 7pm – and to touch do...

On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first human to walk on the moon. Moon Day is held every July 20 to commemorate this momentous feat. 43 years later, humanity is still looking to the sky, mesmerized by lunar bodies. However, it is not just Earth’s moon we’re studying anymore. With better satellites and spacecrafts we know more about th...

There are continents to explore right below our feet -- including two giant blobs 100 times as tall as Everest. Here's how seismologist and geophysicist Ed Garnero is studying this unseen and largely uncharted territory. For most people, everything they know about the composition of the Earth is what they were taught in elementary school: that ...

To explore is human. It's as basic as cooking and bathing, and as essential as song and dance. It's not something that needs a lengthy explanation -- whether you're 3 or 103, it's the tingly feeling you get in the bottom of your stomach when you venture into unknown terrain. Across ages and cultures, there have always been explorers -- the pe...

Astrobiologist and geologist Louisa Preston looks for analogues to possible life on Mars in the most extreme environments on Earth. Now she's also considering how humans might someday make a home on the red planet, and is raising funds on Kickstarter in support of AstroGardening – an educational exhibit designed to explore how we might somed...