Science
Space
Whether you love setting New Year’s resolutions or ignore them entirely, there’s still a certain mix of nostalgia and excitement over the ending of one year and the possibilities that lay ahead. We’ve gathered five big ideas that offer some food for thought as you head into 2024, including a new mindset for thinking about careers, a glimpse into the history of the cosmos,...
At the 2023 Aspen Ideas Festival, we dug into some of the most important and fascinating issues of our time, from rebuilding trust in our institutions and the promise and peril of A.I. to the ingredients of a good life and the emerging geopolitical order — plus so much more!
From the first galaxies that grew after the Big Bang, to black holes swallowing their neighbors, to stars and planets being born today in the Cosmic Cliffs, the James Webb Space Telescope has shown us our own cosmic history. See how it works and what has been found. It’s not what NASA expected.
When it comes to biomedical research, Earth’s gravity can be an obstacle, making it harder to program stem cells into viable organs, obscuring the crystalline structure of proteins, and interfering with cellular communication channels. The possibility of using space to advance science is no longer an exercise in imagination as biotech start-ups begin sending experiments in...
For health researchers, space is proving to be a unique laboratory to explore stem cells, pharmaceuticals, 3D bioprinting, food science, and more. TRISH's Dorit Donoviel, an Aspen Ideas: Health 2023 speaker, explains how collaboration and open science can help advance these "out-of-this-world" discoveries for all mankind.
Legendary, award-winning artist David Byrne joins in conversation with astrophysicist Janna Levin, director of sciences at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn. Byrne co-created an immersive science theater project opening in Denver in September. Theater of the Mind uses narrative to explore perception, memory, attention, and our sense of self, and incorporates the work of neuroscien...
Scientists recently made the monumental announcement of the first picture of a black hole at the center of the Milky Way. As surely as the Earth orbits the sun, we orbit that black hole — 26,000 light-years away and 4 million times the mass of the sun, yet less than 20 times the width. It has been a century of black-hole discoveries, including two Nobel prizes for black-ho...
Quick Take is a weekly dose of ideas and insights delivered in short form. Today’s episode features astronomer Jill Tarter. She co-founded SETI, or the “Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute.” Watch her full conversation from the Aspen Ideas Festival https://www.aspenideas.org/sessions/searching-for-aliens-finding-ourselves Follow us on instagram.com/aspenid...
The history of exploration on Mars reads like a good book with twists and turns and unexpected findings. None of these findings, though, have turned up evidence of life. After decades of searching, scientists are hopeful a NASA rover called Perseverance, which touched down on Mars in February, will reveal ancient, long-dead, fossilized life. Sarah Stewart Johnson, planetar...
NASA’s Perseverance rover landed on Mars earlier this year, continuing decades of research and fascination with the Red Planet. What can we learn from the rocks and soil the rover is tasked with collecting — and why should we care? What fuels the need to explore? In this conversation, Perseverance Flight Director Diana Trujillo sits down with Marina Koren, who covers space...
Are we alone? Humans have always wanted to know where we come from, how we fit into the universe. As news unfolds about the Navy’s UFO sightings, and as Congress reviews the data, are we closer to answering the age-old question? Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute founder Jill Tarter says as we look up and look out, we must see ourselves from a cosmic...
Just 33 million miles away, and yet still so far. From Galileo to Carl Sagan, the quest for life on Mars has an extensive history that reflects not only our scientific ambitions but our deepest yearnings to find that we are not alone. In this conversation, planetary environments researcher Sarah Stewart Johnson talks about her own search for life on Mars, from working on N...
Space… the final metaphor for the unknowable. But we are certainly trying to understand what goes on out there, and the more we learn, the more fascinating questions start to pop up. Journey with a galaxy of physicists and cosmologists as they take us to the farthest reaches of space, to the very beginnings of time, and right back here to our own front yard.
The past two years have been the hottest ever recorded on Earth. Hundreds of gigatonnes of ice have been lost in Greenland and Antarctica and levels of trapped greenhouse gas have never been so high, with carbon dioxide readings above 410 parts per million. Those vital signs tell a story of a planet in trouble, threatening sea-level rise with disastrous implications for th...
Why do human beings explore? And, why are the most adventurous explorers drawn to outer space?
Hear from Margot Lee Shetterly and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, two award-winning authors.
Do we owe our existence to a thin disk of matter in the plane of the Milky Way that caused a minor space perturbation that resulted in a major earthquake that in turn killed the dinosaurs? Renowned theoretical physicist and best-selling author Lisa Randall discusses her original research showing the surprising connections between the cosmos and life on Earth.
Even a generation ago, fundamental existential questions may have appeared as forever inaccessible metaphysical questions. How did the universe begin? How will it end? Are we alone? Are there universes? Remarkably, in the past decade or two and in some cases in the past year or so, it has become clear that all of these are accessible at least in principle, to experimentati...
Ever since humans looked up at the night sky, we have searched for clues that connect the celestial and terrestrial. However, it was not until the birth of modern science—seeking explanations with empirical data—that we came to understand our cosmic habitat better. And although we now know much about the universe we inhabit, there are many unsolved conundrums regarding the...