Paul MacCready -- aircraft designer, environmentalist, and lifelong lover of flight -- talks about his long career.

In 2004, legendary spacecraft designer Burt Rutan won the $10M Ansari X-Prize for SpaceShipOne, the first privately funded craft to enter space twice in a two-week period. He's now collaborating with Virgin Galactic to build the first rocketship for space tourism.

In 1998, aircraft designer Paul MacCready looks at a planet on which humans have utterly dominated nature, and talks about what we all can do to preserve nature's balance. His contribution: solar planes, superefficient gliders and the electric car.

George Steinmetz's spectacular photos show Africa from the air, taken from the world's slowest, lightest aircraft. Join Steinmetz to discover the surprising historical, ecological and sociopolitical patterns that emerge when you go low and slow in a flying lawn chair.

For the dawn of a new decade, adventurer Bertrand Piccard offers us a challenge: Find motivation in what seems impossible. He shares his own plans to do what many say can't be done -- to fly around the world, day and night, in a solar-powered aircraft.

Richard Branson bootstrapped his way from record-shop owner to head of the Virgin empire. Now he's focusing his boundless energy on saving our environment.

If you're a frequent flier, you're also a major polluter. What if there was a way to travel the world with less impact on the environment? In this quick, exciting talk, aviation entrepreneur and TED Fellow Cory Combs lays out how electric aircraft could make flying cleaner, quieter and more affordable -- and shares his work on Electric EEL, the ...

Bertrand Piccard circumnavigated the Earth in a hot-air balloon. Now he wants to circle it in an airplane powered only by solar energy.

Keller Rinaudo Cliffton wants everyone on earth to have access to basic health care, no matter how hard it is to reach them. With his start-up Zipline, he has created the world's first drone delivery system to operate at national scale, transporting blood and plasma to remote clinics in East Africa with a fleet of electric autonomous aircraft. F...

In 1943, Allied aircraft rained tens of thousands of leaflets on Nazi Germany below. The leaflets urged readers to renounce Hitler, to fight furiously for the future— and to never give up hope. Their call to action rippled through homes and businesses— and their message even reached concentration camps. They were signed: the White Rose. Iseult G...

Today, artificial intelligence helps doctors diagnose patients, pilots fly commercial aircraft, and city planners predict traffic. These AIs are often self-taught, working off a simple set of instructions to create a unique array of rules and strategies. So how exactly does a machine learn? Briana Brownell digs into the three basic ways machines...

Raymond Wang won the top prize in the 2015 Intel Science and Engineering Fair for his invention that circulates fresh air on planes and reduces transmission of germs between passengers.

By retrofitting existing aircraft with a hybrid-electric system, mechanical engineer Cory Combs is building the biggest plane ever to fly with hybrid propulsion: the Electric EEL.

Anna Mracek Dietrich is one of the creators of the Transition, the "plane you can drive."

Paul MacCready, an aircraft designer and environmentalist, is a pioneer of human-powered flight, alternative energy for transportation, and environmentally responsible design.

Best known f­or his exploration photography, George Steinmetz has a restless curiosity for the unknown: remote deserts, obscure cultures and the ­mysteries of science and technology.

Young inventor Richard Turere invented "lion lights," an elegant way to protect his family's cattle from lion attacks.

Mathias Basner researches the effects of noise on sleep, health, neurobehavioral and cognitive functions and more.

Paul Gilding is an independent writer, activist and adviser on a sustainable economy. Click through to watch the onstage debate that followed this talk.

UPS's Wanis Kabbaj seeks new ways of understanding the growing complexity of our congested cities and globalized world.

Just a few of the intriguing headlines involving members of the TED community this week: Advances in treating spinal cord damage. In Nature, Grégoire Courtine and a team of scientists announced that they had successfully used a wireless brain-spine interface to help monkeys with spinal cord damage paralyzing one leg regain the ability to ...

In 2019, Victor Vescovo could become the first person to have climbed to the highest point of all the world's continents as well as descended to the deepest reaches of all its oceans, including the Challenger Deep.

About this event: I want to gather a group of speakers to talk about the dynamics of the Azores with the rest of the world. We bring together a range of topics related to: Anthropology Oenology Protection of nature (flora and fauna) Music and music therapy Technology UAV aircraft Sustainable Development Adventure Meteorology and climate change

Karen E. Willcox is director of the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin.

About this event: TEDxVilniusSalon events, unlike standard TEDx events, are smaller (up to 100 people), focused on one single topic (different each time) and very interactive. The third TEDxVilniusSalon focused on the topic of smart and flying unmanned aircraft systems - drones and their potential to change the world by its widely usage from film making, packa...

Emily Levesque explores how the most massive stars in the universe evolve and die and how technology is changing the stories we tell about science and the cosmos.

Decades before Twitter and Facebook, the Soviet state was a leader in perceptual manipulation technology. Meet the mighty flying propaganda machine of the 1930s: the Maxim Gorky. One of Russia’s most prestigious cemeteries is set just south of downtown Moscow, adjoining a convent built in the 16th and 17th centuries. It contains the graves of...

Aspiring Olympic skier Janine Shepherd was nearly killed when she was hit by a truck during a training bike ride. Paralysed and immobile for six months, she was given a grim picture for recovery. But not only did she teach herself to walk again— she learned to fly.

With a large-format camera and a knack for talking her way into forbidden zones, Taryn Simon photographs portions of the American infrastructure inaccessible to its inhabitants.

About this event: In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, live speakers come together to spark deep discussions in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Con...