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Meet Dr. Mary-Claire KingPlay -
Meet Pioneer in Science, Dr. Nora VolkowPlay -
Does Time Flow?Play -
How Accurate is the Weather Forecast?View Now -
Today’s Forecast: Rust Storms and Diamond RainView Now -
Brian Greene on The Colbert ReportView Now -
The Dark Side of LightView Now -
Understanding Fukushima: Meltdown & Clean UpView Now -
Cell-Size Robot SurgeonsPlay
Dr. Mary-Claire King’s responsibility as a “citizen of the world” has led her to ground-breaking discoveries in genetics. She discovered the genetic link between humans and chimpanzees, pioneered DNA sequencing for human rights investigations, and identified a heritable “breast cancer gene” that...
In honor of International Women’s Day this Saturday #IWD2014, we’re recognizing female pioneers in science. Today, meet Dr. Nora Volkow, whose research on drugs and the brain helped us understand addiction as a disease. Nora Volkow is the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. She’s...
We all experience time as “flowing” forward toward the future, but is that how time actually behaves? Brian explains how physics looks at time.
This video is part of a new education platform, World Science U, that is dedicated to using digital innovation to make the wondrous ideas of science...
Weather forecasting is the classic inexact science, relying on the complex mutual interactions of wind, currents, precipitation, tides, humidity and temperature variations, and a million other variables across a planet that’s rotating on its axis, revolving around its heat source, and tilted with...
From pounding winter storms to relentless droughts to ever more ferocious hurricanes, it’s easy to curse our planet’s increasingly deadly weather. But for a little perspective, check out conditions beyond our own atmosphere to some of the wildest weather in the universe. Bring an umbrella.
World Science Festival co-founder Brian Greene appeared last night on The Colbert Report and revealed our latest digital initiative, World Science U, a new online platform for learning science. World Science U uses animations, interactive demonstrations, problem solving sessions and guided...
Thomas Edison flipped the switch on the first electric bulb back in 1879. Today, much of the world is bathed in artificial light, allowing society to work, play and navigate the world, deep indoors and long after the sun has set. But there are long-term dangers to all this exposure to...
The Fukushima Daiichi power station was operating three of its six reactors when the earthquake struck, and the plant initiated an automatic shutdown. Roughly forty-five minutes after the earthquake, the first tsunami waves hit. This is the third post in an exclusive 4-part series on the Fukushima...
Pills the size of molecules to seek and destroy tumors. Miniscule robots performing surgery inside patients with a precision never before achieved. Nanobots, a billionth of a meter across, fixing mutations in DNA, or repairing neurons in your brain. Join leading researchers explaining how they’re...
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The Moth and WSF seriesView Now -
Beyond Cosmic MolassesPlay -
There and Back Again: A Packet’s Tale. How Does the...Play -
Higgs Boson Discovery Wins Nobel Prize for PhysicsPlay -
MAVEN Satellite Takes Off for MarsPlay -
Alec Baldwin Asks What’s Your Favorite Film ScorePlay -
Music vs. Sound Effects and SilencePlay -
A Woman of GeniusPlay -
Science Gets Graphic at New York Comic ConView Now -
Is Time Real?Play
The Moth and WSF team up to bring you poignant, hilarious and unpredictable stories of science.
Watch an overview of the math behind the Nobel Prize-winning Higgs Boson discovery with Brian Greene.
The video lets you ride shotgun with a packet of data—one of trillions involved in the trillions of Internet interactions that happen every second. Look deep beneath the surface of the most basic Internet transaction, and follow the packet as it flows from your fingertips, through circuits,...
Peter Higgs and Francois Englert win Nobel Prize in Physics. Want to know what makes the Higgs Boson Nobel Prize-worthy? Brian Greene explains. Also, watch as he explains some math behind it.
NASA’s MAVEN mission is scheduled to launch on Monday, November 18. In this WSF video, NASA scientist Michelle Thaller talks about what MAVEN could reveal about Mars’ lost atmosphere and teach us about the life cycle of planets.
For more on exploring Mars and investigating signs of life on...
Alec Baldwin asks filmmakers Joel & Ethan Coen, neuroscientist Aniruddh D. Patel, and film composer Carter Burwell, “What is one of your favorite musical score moments in a movie?” Watch this excerpt from Art of the Score: The Mind, Music, and Moving Images.
The combination of music, sound effects and silence can create heightened emotional reactions. Alec Baldwin leads a conversation with the Coen Brothers, composer Carter Burwell and neuroscientist, Ani Patel that investigates these effects using a memorable scene from “Barton Fink.” Learn more about...
Marie Curie was a woman whose profound achievements changed science forever. Her remarkable story was among those featured in the WSF program Beautiful Minds: The Enigma of Genius. The program began with a theatrical piece exploring genius, and this chosen excerpt highlights Curie, the first woman...
This year at NYCC, we brought together a group of authors and scientists for a conversation about how the art, science and storytelling of comic books and graphic novels can be a launch pad into worlds of scientific exploration and discovery.
Brian Greene introduces "When Science Gets Graphic" at New York Comic Con.
Jonathan Coulton offers up an astonishing one hundred bucks for the purchase of a quantum computer.
Comic book author Jim Ottaviani says while science is all about repeatability, precision and accuracy, storytelling about science isn't served well by devotion to including every detail.
Charles Soule explains the inspiration for his imaginative mathematical graphic novel "Strange Attractors."
The "When Science Gets Graphic" audience smiles at Jonathan Coulton's comment about the hazards of scientific inaccuracies in his song writing. And how willing people are to point them out.
"When Science Gets Graphic" audience member asks how we get diverse scientific disciplines like biology more involved in comic books.
Author of "Professor Astro Cat's Frontiers in Space" Dominic Walliman sees a parade of cosplay characters at New York Comic Con.
The flow of time is central to human experience. The past drifts away and the future relentlessly approaches. But does time really flow? Or, as Einstein suggested, might the distinction between past, present and future be an illusion?
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The Big Ideas Series: The Heart of Something...Play -
The Moth and WSF seriesView Now
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Spotlight: Do Not Touch the FrogPlay -
The Big, the Small and the ComplexView Now -
Cool Jobs: Ecological AdventurerPlay -
Cool Jobs: High-Flying EngineerPlay -
To Remember Better, Build a Mansion in Your MindPlay -
Cool Jobs: The NeuroscientistPlay -
Cool Jobs: The Alien HunterPlay
Normally, when you think about math, the word “creativity” doesn’t readily come to mind. Playing his best devil’s advocate, Robert Krulwich challenges the panel to explain the “beauty” of a formula or the “elegance” of a proof. Is math a kind of art? Can a great mathematical idea be compared to a...
The Moth and WSF team up to bring you poignant, hilarious and unpredictable stories of science.
Strip away the trimmings of a traditional science presentation, add cocktails, and you have WSF Spotlight. Here, ecologist and National Geographic photographer Mark Moffett recounts his unexpectedly hilarious expedition to a remote valley in Colombia to document an elusive and highly poisonous...
The Big, the Small, and the Complex is a series exploring the latest developments in astrophysics, nanoscience and neuroscience—fields recognized by The Kavli Prize. This series is made possible with help from The Kavli Foundation, the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, and the Royal...
Ecologist and explorer Mark Moffett has trekked across the globe to find his stories and capture them on film. Just like the creatures he photographs, Mark can be found crawling in the dirt or clinging to the tops of trees to get that perfect shot. Joined by a scaly friend, he shares his...
Cool Jobs: Meet the people with the coolest jobs in the world. Nate Ball has always had an appetite for excitement. Growing up, he learned how to build everything from hovercrafts to potato guns to tesla coils. It’s no wonder he went on to become an award-winning mechanical engineer. Here he...
Joshua Foer, author of Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything, walks us through the process of constructing “memory palaces”—an age-old memorization technique currently exploited by the world’s leading memory champs and mental athletes. Psychologist and memory...
Cool Jobs: Meet the people with the coolest jobs in the world. Watch as neuroscientist André Fenton describes the life of a modern brain scientist, leads a group of students through interactive games, and scans a person’s brain live while explaining what we can learn from its electrical waves.
See...
Cool Jobs: Meet the people with the coolest jobs in the world. Jill Tarter, director of the SETI Institute, explains how she searches for intelligent life on other planets, what exactly her 42 radio telescopes pick up, and why she needs your eyes and ears to perpetuate her search.
See more Cool...
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Quantum Mechanics Educator ResourcesView Now -
Meet Wendy SuzukiPlay -
The Scientist’s Apprentice program gives students the...View Now -
Baba Brinkman’s Rap Video on Artificial Selection...View Now -
Meet Pioneer in Science, Dr. Nora VolkowPlay
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Icarus at the Edge of Time Educator ResourcesView Now -
2012 Cool Jobs Opening AnimationPlay
Quantum mechanics is one of the most amazing and surprising discoveries, ever. While nobody expected it, the microscopic world of atoms and molecules behave in vastly different ways from the objects around us. During the 2013 World Science Festival, the event Spooky Action: The Drama of Quantum...
Wendy Suzuki is a neuroscientist who studies a special area of the brain called the hippocampus. It’s small compared to other brain regions, but it plays a pivotal role in memory and spatial navigation. Suzuki specifically studies how exercise has been shown to promote brain growth in this area....
Youth joined food scientist, Julie Goddard, from the University of Massachusetts, to see what’s cooking in a food lab and just how much science you need to know in this yummy apprentice program.
Taught by after school program, Engineering for Kids, apprentices designed, built, and tested their own balsawood bridges and other types of bridges to study structural loads.
Budding food scientists at work.
What one apprentice learned about life underwater.
Students worked with Roboticist Edwin Olson to program and drive a robot through obstacles and mazes.
A young scientist's first encounter with a real brain.
A student eagerly awaits his turn to ask a question.
Upon completion of the workshop, each apprentice received a “Scientist's Apprentice Certificate."
Students also received a World Science Festival backpack.
How do you turn Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection into a story, especially a story that relates to rap?
In honor of International Women’s Day this Saturday #IWD2014, we’re recognizing female pioneers in science. Today, meet Dr. Nora Volkow, whose research on drugs and the brain helped us understand addiction as a disease. Nora Volkow is the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. She’s...
Download this comprehensive guide to teaching black holes in the classroom. How does gravity work across space? How do black holes form? What is time dilation? Includes stunning images of black holes, a glossary, and classroom activities.
Carmela & Yonathai, high school students at The NOW Academy, Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools in Los Angeles worked to create this intro for the World Science Festival Cool Jobs event. They together developed the script, characters, and produced all the drawings for this fresh animated short....
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Don’t Feed The Machines: Take a Tour of a Robot...View Now -
Baba Brinkman’s Rap Video on Artificial Selection...View Now
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How Many Stars Are There in the Sky?Play -
Cool Jobs: Friendly Neighborhood ZoologistPlay -
Quick: Multiply by 11Play -
Cool Jobs: A Mind for NeurosciencePlay -
The Best Tickers are AtomsPlay -
Cool Jobs HighlightsPlay
Festo's autonomous bionic bird soared above the World Science Festival's tech fest, Innovation Square, on June 2, 2012.
Another amazing Festo creation is the AquaJelly, an autonomous robotic jellyfish with eight mechanical tentacles to propel itself underwater just like the real deal.
A robotic snake that can slither up poles (and people) slithered through the crowds at Innovation Square
Come see why Dennis Hong's humanoid was named Time magazine's 2011 Best Invention of the Year.
SmartBird, a massive, autonomous flying contraption straight out of a sci-fi fever dream, buzzed the square every hour.
Mechanical engineer Maurizio Porfiri's robotic fish are convincing enough to swim with real schools of fish.
How do you turn Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection into a story, especially a story that relates to rap?
Travel back in time as Galileo Galilei (played by Mike Francis) relates the story of when he first turned his telescope to the sky in order to count the stars—and finds the task more daunting than he expected.
Jarod Miller is no stranger to animals. As a zoologist, he has traveled the world and met countless members of the animal kingdom. But that’s not enough for him, he wants children to meet them too. With the help of an assistant, Jarod is joined on stage by three of his furry friends, giving the...
The Mathemagician reveals the surprisingly easy trick behind instantly multiplying any two-digit number by 11. It’s really as simple as 2 + 2.
What do aerobic exercise and memory have in common? According to neuroscientist Wendy Suzuki, more than you think. Her passion for the human brain, memory, and a workout routine called intenSati led her to get people out of their seats and work out for better brain health.
See more Cool Jobs here
When you need a clock of utmost accuracy, you need an atomic clock. Nobel Prize winner William Phillips explains how scientists use atomic clocks to get the most accurate bang for their buck.
Cool Jobs is an annual jaw-dropping program that occurs both during the week of the Festival and year-round. Cool Jobs brings children face-to-face with world-renowned scientists and their amazing jobs. It inspires young audiences to learn about science, be excited by science and maybe even grow up...
The lovely Escher String Quartet enhanced the World Science Festival program Hidden Dimensions with a rendition of Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge (“Great Fugue”). Appropriately, this fugue is distinctively four-dimensional in its arrangement, instead of consisting primarily of melody and harmony. Listen...
From pounding winter storms to relentless droughts to ever more ferocious hurricanes, it’s easy to curse our planet’s increasingly deadly weather. But for a little perspective, check out conditions beyond our own atmosphere to some of the wildest weather in the universe. Bring an umbrella.
![Where Are They Now: Checking In on Earth’s 25 Active Missions [Infographic]](/images/made/general-images/active_space_missions_blog_thumb_319_179_c1.jpg)
By Michael Bullerdick and Julie Rossman
From twin satellites photographing the sun in 360° to rovers on Mars to a '70s-era probe passing out of the heliosphere and into interstellar space, mankind has more than two dozen currently active spacecraft outside simple Earth orbit. We created this...
Is prosopagnosia, commonly called face blindness, a communicable disease? Can you get it from a genetic mutation or just from environmental considerations? Is it a consequence of the natural process of aging—or of the progression of Alzheimer’s? Neurologist Oliver Sacks, who himself is face...
Not long ago, the idea of a computer beating a human at chess was the stuff of science fiction. But some of the most creative programmers of the 1980s and 90s were determined to make it a reality. And they did. In two matches that riveted the world, Deep Blue, the IBM supercomputer, took on the...
Animals utilize their sense of smell to explore their surroundings. But what about plants? When you smell a flower, is it smelling you back? Is it trying to figure out if your nose would make a good pollinator? Chemical ecologist Consuelo De Moraes shows us a parasitic vine that uses smell to find...
