Physicist Freeman Dyson suggests that we start looking for life on the moons of Jupiter and out past Neptune, in the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud. He talks about what such life would be like -- and how we might find it.
Is there life beyond Earth? Join NASA's director of planetary science James Green for a survey of the places in our solar system that are most likely to harbor alien life.
SpaceX's Starship launch vehicle has the potential to explore the solar system in a bold, new -- and supersized -- way. Planetary scientist Jennifer Heldmann talks about how reusable, large-scale spacecraft like Starship could help humanity achieve its next galactic leaps and usher in a new era of space exploration, from investigating the solar ...
Could there be intelligent life on other planets? This question has piqued imagination and curiosity for decades. Explore the answer with the Drake Equation -- a mathematical formula that calculates the possibility of undiscovered life. [Directed by Jeremiah Dickey, narrated by Jill Tarter].
In tough economic times, our exploratory science programs -- from space probes to the LHC -- are first to suffer budget cuts. Brian Cox explains how curiosity-driven science pays for itself, powering innovation and a profound appreciation of our existence.
Out of billions of galaxies and billions of stars how do we find Earth-like habitable worlds? What is essential to support life as we know it? Ariel Anbar provides a checklist for finding life on other planets. [Directed by Jeremiah Dickey, narrated by Ariel Anbar].
Cave diver Jill Heinerth explores the hidden underground waterways coursing through our planet. Working with biologists, climatologists and archaeologists, Heinerth unravels the mysteries of the life-forms that inhabit some of the earth's most remote places and helps researchers unlock the history of climate change. In this short talk, take a di...
Memory foam, air purifiers, scratch-resistant lenses: these are just a few of the everyday items originally developed for space missions. Aerospace engineer Eric Hinterman invites us to dream big and imagine what technological advancements could come next, explaining why establishing a human presence on Mars is a big step for life on Earth -- an...
Science fiction writer Monica Byrne imagines rich worlds populated with characters who defy our racial, social and gender stereotypes. In this performance, Byrne appears as a hologram named Pilar, transmitting a story of love and loss back to us from a near future when humans have colonized the universe. "It's always funny what you think the fut...
While we like to imagine little green men, it's far more likely that life on other planets will be microbial. Planetary scientist Nathalie Cabrol takes us inside the search for microbes on Mars, a hunt which counterintuitively leads us to the remote lakes of the Andes mountains. This extreme environment — with its thin atmosphere and scorched la...
What's on Elon Musk's mind? In conversation with head of TED Chris Anderson, Musk details how the radical new innovations he's working on -- Tesla's intelligent humanoid robot Optimus, SpaceX's otherworldly Starship and Neuralink's brain-machine interfaces, among others -- could help maximize the lifespan of humanity and create a world where goo...
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 should look and why.