| The inaugural 2008 World Science Festival attracted over 120,000 people to the Festival's 44 events at 22 venues located throughout New York City. More than 130 participants, speakers, and performers, including 11 Nobel Laureates, guided a large, diverse audience-students to adults, novices to professionals, the merely curious to science enthusiasts-to experience science as never before, making the esoteric understandable and the familiar fascinating. Through a series of gripping debates, captivating performances and interactive events, the Festival showcased cutting- edge ideas and discoveries, revealed science's pivotal role in addressing critical global issues, and explored how it profoundly shapes modern life. read more |
| Program Excerpt Albert Einstein spent his last thirty years unsuccessfully searching for a 'unified theory' - a single master principle to describe everything in the universe, from tiny subatomic particles to immense clusters of galaxies. In the decades since, generations of researchers have continued working toward Einstein's dream. read more |
| Famed musician Bobby McFerrin treated the audience to several improvised a cappella performances. Here is the first of two songs. read more |
| During the "Notes & Neurons: In Search of a Common Chorus" event, musician Bobby McFerrin treated the audience to several improvised a cappella performances. read more |
| Program Excerpt This multi-media event for curious minds of all ages invited our audience to meet scientists with some of the coolest jobs in the world — from crime scene investigator and space explorer to oceanographer and Disney Imagineer. read more |
| Watch as Snowball leads our panelists in an impromptu dance to his favorite song. read more |
| Program Excerpt In what many call a "golden age of cosmology", astronomers can now observe the universe with unprecedented precision, resulting in spectacular progress in the search for the origin of the universe. Yet, for all the impressive progress, fundamental questions remain. What is the mysterious "dark energy" driving space to rapidly expand? What existed before the big bang? Is there an origin of time? Do we live in a multiverse? read more |
| Program Excerpt Prominent clashes - both historical and contemporary - have led to the widely held conclusion that science and religion are fundamentally incompatible. Yet, many scientists practice a traditional faith, having found a way to accommodate both scientific inquiry and religious teaching in their belief system. Other scientists are bringing science to bear on the phenomenon of religion and spiritual belief - neuroscientists are studying what happens in the brain during religious experiences, while anthropologists are investigating how religion is linked to cooperation and community. This program provided an intimate look at what scientists have to say about their religious beliefs and what might be revealed by scientific studies of spirituality. read more |
| Program Excerpt We stand at a crossroads. Cities must change radically to achieve long-term sustainability. Energy, food and water sources, transportation systems and basic infrastructure, must all adapt to emerging pressures from climate change, dwindling resources and growing urban populations. read more |
| Program Excerpt Blending live performances, personal accounts of the creative process, and state-of-the-art brain imaging, this program illuminated questions about whether creativity is innate or learned, whether the innovative brain has distinct structural or chemical features, and whether we can enhance our ability - and that of our children - to be creative. read more |
| Program Excerpt Proposed a century ago to better explain the mind-bending behavior of the smallest constituents of the universe, quantum theory has implications far beyond the atom. This rich set of laws has applications both practical and extraordinary - from the technology that has revolutionized modern life to the possibility of parallel worlds. read more |
| Program Excerpt How can one person hear a sound that the person right next to them can't? Why are we tracking elephants and what are they saying to each other? What happens when you freeze air? Are you up to the challenge of our Roller Coaster simulation? read more |
| Program Excerpt The World Science Festival took to the streets with a non-stop program of interactive exhibits, experiments, games, and shows that entertained and inspired. read more |
| Bobby McFerrin demonstrates the power of the pentatonic scale, using audience participation, from the June 12, 2009 World Science Festival event "Notes & Neurons: In Search of the Common Chorus." read more |
| Program Excerpt Stories of Experiments Gone Wrong Throwing a uniquely personal and intimate spotlight on their relationship with science, renowned researchers, writers, and artists, including Sam Shepard, Jim Gates, Nathan Englander, Lucy Hawking, and Michael Turner, took to the stage to tell stories about heroic failures, miscalculations and experiments — scientific and otherwise — gone wrong. read more |
| Program Excerpt The advent of direct-to-consumer DNA testing means that anyone with cash and curiosity can now glimpse their molecular makeup. Personal genomics will soon be common currency. Nobel Laureate Paul Nurse, geneticist Francis Collins and other prominent researchers discussed how personal genomics will affect our lives. To what extent do our genes determine our health and who we are? What are the dangers and opportunities of viewing ourselves in molecular terms? If your DNA can hint at your future, will you read your biological biography? read more |
| How do we learn to speak? What is the connection between language and movement? Join a broad and distinguished panel on an exploration of how striking parallels between bird and human brains are providing sharp new insights into how we acquire language and the links between hearing and movement.
This event was moderated by Faith Salie and features author Jonathan Rosen; neurobiologist Erich Jarvis; scientist and noted bird researcher Irene Pepperberg; professor of comparative cognition at Cambridge University, Nicola Clayton; Head of the Laboratory of Animal Behavior at CUNY, Ofer Tchernichovski; and David Rothenberg, professor of philosophy and music at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. |
| Albert Einstein spent his last thirty years unsuccessfully searching for a 'unified theory' - a single master principle to describe everything in the universe, from tiny subatomic particles to immense clusters of galaxies. In the decades since, generations of researchers have continued working toward Einstein's dream. read more |
| In what many call a "golden age of cosmology", astronomers can now observe the universe with unprecedented precision, resulting in spectacular progress in the search for the origin of the universe. Yet, for all the impressive progress, fundamental questions remain. What is the mysterious "dark energy" driving space to rapidly expand? What existed before the big bang? Is there an origin of time? Do we live in a multiverse? read more |
| Prominent clashes - both historical and contemporary - have led to the widely held conclusion that science and religion are fundamentally incompatible. Yet, many scientists practice a traditional faith, having found a way to accommodate both scientific inquiry and religious teaching in their belief system. Other scientists are bringing science to bear on the phenomenon of religion and spiritual belief - neuroscientists are studying what happens in the brain during religious experiences, while anthropologists are investigating how religion is linked to cooperation and community. This program provided an intimate look at what scientists have to say about their religious beliefs and what might be revealed by scientific studies of spirituality. read more |
| Reader's Digest has called "Mathemagician" Arthur Benjamin "America's Best Math Whiz." Returning in an encore presentation, Arthur Benjamin displays feats of mental mathematical gymnastics and shares the secrets behind his skills. A combination of math and magic, this program will captivate the entire family. read more |
| Is our response to music hard-wired or culturally determined? Is the reaction to rhythm and melody universal or influenced by environment? Join host John Schaefer, Jamshed Barucha, scientist Daniel Levitin, Professor Lawrence Parsons and musical artist Bobby McFerrin for live performances and cross cultural demonstrations to illustrate music’s note-worthy interaction with the brain and our emotions. read more |
| Why is there something rather than nothing? And what does ‘nothing’ really mean? More than a philosophical musing, understanding nothing may be the key to unlocking deep mysteries of the universe, from dark energy to why particles have mass. Journalist John Hockenberry hosts Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek, esteemed cosmologist John Barrow, and leading physicists Paul Davies and George Ellis as they explore physics, philosophy and the nothing they share. read more |
| In the second installment of this World Science Festival annual event, selected New York City high school students interview Nobel Laureate and co-chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, Harold Varmus, and preeminent marine biologist, Sylvia Earle. |
| Albert Einstein shattered previous ideas about time, but left many pivotal questions unanswered: Does time have a beginning? An end? Why does it move in only one direction? Is it real, or something our minds impose on reality? Journalist John Hockenberry leads a distinguished panel, including renowned physicist Sir Roger Penrose and prominent philosopher David Albert, as they explore the nature of time. read more |
 | Drawing on a range of disciplines, this provocative program looked at how discoveries in areas like fundamental physics, anthropology, and genomics are influencing our understanding of uniquely human characteristics. As science increasingly tests these boundaries — from the roots of morality and our capacity to contemplate our own existence to the emergence of artificial intelligence — what will it mean to be human? read more |
| Though many animals display cooperative behavior, human cooperation is distinct. In the second installment of this annual World Science Festival event, Alan Alda hosts E.O. Wilson, Sarah Hrdy and other leading evolutionary biologists, anthropologists and humanitarians as they examine the origins and evolution of human cooperative behavior. read more |
| Students from New York City high schools describe their thoughts on science and how it can change the world. Schools represented include Brooklyn Tech, George Westinghouse, and New Explorations in Science, Technology & Math. read more |
| Professor Brian Greene talks to the Mets about the science of baseball. read more |
