Topic: News
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Huge Black Hole Discovered
Astronomers at the University of Texas have discovered what may be the most massive black hole yet. The unusual black hole is 17 billion times the size of the Sun and makes up 14 percent of its galaxy's mass. Galaxy NGC 1277 lies 220 million light-years away in the constellation... -
The Economist Talks to Brian Greene about What’s Next for the LHC
Earlier this month, research teams from the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) gathered to present the newest data from the Large Hadron Collider. Before a rapt audience of viewers from around the globe, they made the historic announcement that a particle... -
Lawrence Krauss on the “Miracle of Mass”
In a lively essay published today in The New York Times, theoretical physicist and WSF participant Lawrence Krauss heralds the recent confirmation of the Higgs boson as a triumph of modern science and "proof that the universe of our senses is just the tip of a vast, largely... -
Hot on the Trail of the Legendary Higgs Boson
In case you haven’t heard, on the 4th of July there was a momentous announcement at CERN, the huge physics facility on the border of France and Switzerland. Physicists believe that they have found a new boson, a kind of subatomic particle. However, the news is... -
Proving the God Particle: Big Reveal Slated for July 4th
The Internet is buzzing with news about an upcoming announcement this week, and, incredibly, it has nothing to do with celebrities. On July 4th, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) will make an announcement about its search for the Higgs boson, a subatomic... -
Welcome to the 21st-Century Internet
Today marks a major milestone in Internet history, and you'd be forgiven for not noticing it. That's part of the plan. -
Upside Down at the Met: An Afternoon with the Artist
It took the World Science Festival to get me back into the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Many of us who live in the general vicinity of New York City are subject to strange laws of venerability and familiarity when it comes to Manhattan’s two world-classiest museums. -
Babies are 75 Percent Water: A Report from the Opening-Night Reception of Surface Tension
It's not often that I get to go to an art opening, and it's even less often that I get to go to an opening of a show that mixes art and science. So I was excited to attend the Friday-night opening of Surface Tension, an exhibition created by the Dublin-based Science Gallery, at... -
Can Machines be Programmed to Feel?
Despite the clean logic of his thinking machines, Turing’s life, especially at the end, was very tumultuous. In The Creator, we watch Turing mourn the death of a friend, spiral into a psychological breakdown, and discuss his poison apple fetish. Yet, it wasn’t just that he... -
Science, the Next Generation: An Interview with LeVar Burton
On Wednesday night, an audience of over three thousand was transported to the edge of a black hole during the multimedia piece, Icarus at the Edge of Time, an adaptation of Brian Greene's children's book. What better person to have at the helm than Star Trek and Reading Rainbow... -
Crowdsourced Science, and Other Reasons to Thank the Internet
The Internet has forever changed how we interact with one another. It has placed an endless source of knowledge at our fingertips, changed the way we do business, and even helped topple a few dictators. However, there’s another arena that the internet is starting to turn on... -
Scientists Queue Up Vaccine Against Allergies
Imagine living in a world without allergies. Such a reality would be welcome news to the 65 million Americans who suffer from them. According to a recent article in Forbes, it could happen sooner than you might think. -
Download our Free Interactive Program Guide for the iPad
Peruse the extensive lineup of events and performances happening this week during the 2012 World Science Festival from the convenience of your iPad. See amazing trailers and videos. Find maps, venue locations, and performance times. Watch live webcasts of premiere Festival... -
Spider Webs and Galaxies Inspire a 20-ton Sculpture Overlooking Central Park
In 1945 Buckminster Fuller erected a geodesic dome the size of large hut on the campus of Bennington College in Vermont. Built from aluminum aircraft equipment and vinyl, the structure was said to support its own weight and more. Supposedly, Fuller suspended a number of his... -
Can Quantum Mechanics Explain the Remarkable Precision of Bird Navigation?
Imagine driving across the United States without a map or GPS. How would you do it? How would you know where you are and how far you had to go? As impossible as this feat seems, millions of birds perform it every year. Traversing thousands of miles on annual migrations,... -
Columbia University World Leaders Forum Explores the Higgs
Is 2012 the year we finally pin down the elusive Higgs boson, the missing link in the Standard Model of Physics? As physicists get tantalizingly close to confirming the discovery of the long-sought “God particle,” questions now turn to what happens if we do, or don’t, as... -
Dalai Lama Wins the Templeton Prize
Each year, The John Templeton Foundation, one of our founding benefactors and sponsor of the festival's Big Ideas series, honors a living person who has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life’s spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery, or practical... -
The Next Challenge in the Search for Life: Radiation
Jupiter’s icy moon Europa has long been a tempting fruit for astrobiologists looking for life beyond Earth. Planetary scientist and WSF alum Steven Squyres calls it “the most fascinating place in the solar system.” -
Fermilab Data Hints at Higgs Boson
While the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland gets all the press, the search for the elusive Higgs boson has actually been a race between two particle colliders. -
Brian Greene Speaks at TED2012
Theoretical physicist and World Science Festival co-founder Brian Greene kicked off TED 2012 last week with an 18-minute tour of the multiverse, a hypothetical collection of universes that accounts for everything in existence, past and future. -
What’s One of the Best Stories Ever Told at The Moth?
Last summer, renowned plastic surgeon Kodi Azari joined the World Science Festival for a special performance at The Moth, New York’s beloved monthly open-mic story slam. -
Everything You Need to Know about Public-Key Cryptography
A widely used technique for securing online shopping, banking, email and other transactions has a disturbing flaw, according to a new report issued by a team of European and American mathematicians and cryptographers. -
Higgs Signal Gains Strength
Yesterday, February 7th, Scientific American reported that the latest analyses of the Large Hadron Collider data has raised the signal strength to 4.30 Sigma. Just shy of what is needed to make an official discovery of the elusive Higgs Boson. -
The Giant Weta, Conan O’Brien, and Dr. Bugs
To the relief of insect-fearing people everywhere, the world’s largest insect turns out to be happily vegetarian. -
Eric Lander: Power in Numbers
Earlier this month, friend of the Festival, preeminent geneticist, and all-around great human being, Eric Lander, was featured in the New York Times' “Profiles in Science” series. The piece unravels the fascinating path that took him from an early Ph.D. in pure math at... -
We Want to Hear from You
Congratulations on another trip around the Sun. This past year has been a big one here at worldsciencefestival.com. Maybe you noticed. We completely redesigned our website. We streamed the interactive WSF Live Forum to the entire world, and followed it up with a series during... -
Brian Greene in NY Times: Waiting for the Higgs
This morning, the New York Times published an op-ed piece by WSF co-founder and theoretical physicist Brian Greene. In it, he explains the origins of the now famous Higgs boson, and Peter Higgs, who hypothesized its existence in 1964. -
A Chance Meeting with a Science Bard
Last night, I careened down the the subway stairs at 116th and Broadway only to run into WSF and NPR/Radiolab favorite Robert Krulwich at the bottom. He had in tow a be-spectacled young man with tight blonde curls and an easy smile. -
Science Online NYC this Week
Science Online NYC (SoNYC) is a new monthly series of eclectic panel discussions that focuses on science communication. Organized by Lou Woodley of Nature.com, John Timmer of Ars Technica, and Jeanne Garbarino in association with Rockefeller University, which hosts the event,... -
WSF Reaches New Heights
Neuroscientist Douglas Fields just sent us this great photo of him climbing a mountain range in West Virginia. Notice the WSF swag hanging prominently from his belt. -
Announcing: Cool Jobs 2011 on WSFtv
We are proud to announce the WSFtv debut of the 2011 Cool Jobs event, where the audience was shown a variety of unique career paths by the people who love what they do. The program also proudly introduced Kevin Temmer, a multi-talented teenager who wrote, scored, and animated... -
Live from the World Science Festival
Can’t make it to New York for WSF11? Or, your favorite event sold-out? Fret not. You can watch WSF11 events live from your computer. This year, we're excited to offer free, high-quality streams of select events from this year's lineup. Accompanying the webcasts will be... -
The 2011 World Science Festival
The World Science Festival returns to New York City June 1-5, 2011 with a sweeping array of cutting-edge science programs designed to make the esoteric understandable and the familiar fascinating. -
Brian Greene Appears on the Big Bang Theory
A while back we reported on what World Science Festival co-founder Brian Greene has been up to since the release of his new book, The Hidden Reality. But being someone who prides himself on distilling the impossibly complex nature of the multiverse into a form we can all... -
Can Intelligence Be Programmed?
The recent buzz about a supercomputer named Watson dominating Jeopardy! contestants (not to mention, taking over late-night talk shows) has reignited the conversation about next-generation "thinking machines" and our post-singularity potential. But when we say a machine can... -
Say Hello to WSFtv
The World Science Festival is proud to announce WSFtv, our new interactive video department. We hope you’ll make it your new home for rethinking science. Explore the many people and ideas at the cutting edge of science, art, and innovation. Get a quick shot of inspiration from... -
Brian Greene Hits the Road, Takes Your Questions
Did you know that World Science Festival co-founder, Brian Greene, has a new book out? Did you know that he has a new website? Did you know that he's now on Facebook? Yes, it's true, Brian has been rather busy lately. In fact, he's in the midst of an ambitious tour, talking... -
Your Zodiac Remains Unchanged, Still Not Based in Scientific Fact
Yesterday, I went on Facebook. Not an unusual activity for someone my age. Or for someone my parents’ age, which I still haven’t gotten used to. But that’s not the point of this. Several of my “friends” had statuses mentioning "Ophiuchus", whatever that is. One girl’s panicked... -
Broadcast: The Search for Life
Update: The broadcast went really well. Thanks to everyone for participating. You can check out the replay and transcript with Jill Tarter and Seth Shostak here → Stay tuned for more interactive broadcasts to come. We've got some dingers lined up... Join us tomorrow for a... -
Greetings from the People of Earth
The above video montage was kindly produced by multimedia artist and musician Claire L. Evans (of Universe) to open the WSF 2010 panel "The Search for Life in the Universe," which featured the likes of Jill Tarter, David Charbonneau, and Steven Squyres. Unfortunately,... -
85% of Statistics are False or Misleading
Numbers don’t lie, but they tell a lot of half-truths. We have been raised to think that numbers represent absolute fact, that in a math class there is one and only one correct answer. But less emphasis is put on the fact that in the real world numbers don’t convey any... -
How Science Fiction Made Me Want to Be a Scientist
I got into this stuff because of science fiction. I was a huge nerd in high school. I remember there was a time that between UPN, TNN, and The SciFi Channel you could watch six straight hours of Star Trek on a Friday night. None of those networks exist anymore. I built a...
