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PERIMETER INSTITUTE RECORDED SEMINAR ARCHIVE

PIRSA:C04001 - Perimeter Institute Public Lecture SeriesPODCAST Subscribe to podcast

Perimeter Institute brings great thinkers from around the world to Canada to share their ideas on a wide variety of interesting and topical subjects. These lectures and debates are aimed at non-specialists. No mathematical or scientific knowledge is necessary or assumed. Each event is explicitly tailored for the general public and everyone is welcome to attend.

Organizer(s): John Matlock  

Collection URL: http://pirsa.org/C04001

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The Drug Trial: You Be the Judge
Speaker(s): Miriam Shuchman
Abstract: How do you advise a scientist who says she has information that could be vital to the event health but she’s been told to keep it a secret? In this talk Dr. Shuchman will discuss the dramatic act of blowing the whistle in science. Drawing on the extensive information in her best-selling book includ... read more
Date: 07/12/2005 - 7:00 pm

Are You Conscious?
Speaker(s): Jay Ingram
Abstract: The scientific approach to consciousness is a relatively new pursuit, but it has already revealed some startling facts about the cavalcade of feelings, images and thoughts that stream through our heads every waking moment. Jay Ingram will present some of the most surprising of these in a talk based ... read more
Date: 04/01/2006 - 7:00 pm

Mission to Mars: Still Roving on the Red Planet
Speaker(s): John Grant
Abstract: An expected 90 day robotic odyssey on Mars has stretched into a two year scientific marathon. Dr. Grant, a geologist with the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies, helped pick the landing sites and works on day-to-day operations of the Spirit and Opportunity Rovers. You’ll see the latest photos, ... read more
Date: 01/02/2006 - 7:00 pm

Programming the Universe
Speaker(s): Seth Lloyd
Abstract: The universe computes: every atom, electron, and elementary particle registers bits of information, and every time two particles collide those bits are flipped and processed. By ‘hacking’ the computational power of the universe, we can build quantum computers which store and process information at... read more
Date: 19/04/2006 - 7:00 pm

The Search for Miss Leavitt
Speaker(s): George Johnson
Abstract: Inside Harvard College Observatory in 1904, a young woman named Henrietta Swan Leavitt sat hunched over a stack of glass photographic plates, patiently counting stars. The images had been taken by a telescope high in the Peruvian Andes, and Miss Leavitt was given the tedious chore of measuring the b... read more
Date: 03/05/2006 - 7:00 pm

A Night with Nobel - The Origin of Mass and the Feebleness of Gravity
Speaker(s): Frank Wilczek
Abstract: Einstein's famous equation E=mc2 asserts that energy and mass are different aspects of the same reality. It is usually associated with the idea that small amounts of mass can be converted into large amounts of energy. For fundamental physics, however, the more important idea is just the opposite. Re... read more
Date: 06/06/2006 - 7:00 pm

The Quantum and the Cosmos
Speaker(s): Edward Kolb
Abstract: Long before the emergence of planets, stars, or galaxies, the universe consisted of an exploding quantum soup of “elementary” particles. Encoded in this formless, shapeless soup were seeds of cosmic structure, which over billions of years grew into the beautiful and complex universe we observe tod... read more
Date: 07/06/2006 - 7:00 pm

Faster than the Speed of Light - Could the laws of physics change?
Speaker(s): Joao Magueijo
Abstract: The laws of physics are usually meant to be set in stone; variability is not usually part of physics. Yet contradicting Einstein's tenet of the constancy of the speed of light raises nothing less than that possibility. I will discuss some of the more dramatic implications of a varying speed of light... read more
Date: 23/06/2006 - 7:00 pm

Impossible Crystals
Speaker(s): Paul Steinhardt
Abstract: This is a story of how the impossible became possible. How, for centuries, scientists were absolutely sure that solids (as well as decorative patterns like tiling and quilts) could only have certain symmetries - such as square, hexagonal and triangular - and that most symmetries, including five-fold... read more
Date: 06/09/2006 - 7:00 am

A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines: Limits of Truth and Mind
Speaker(s): Janna Levin
Abstract: From Levin’s recent book comes a strange if true story of coded secrets, psychotic delusions, mathematics, and war. This story of greatness and weakness, of genius and delusion, circulates around the parallel lives of Kurt Gödel, the greatest logician of many centuries, and Alan Turing, the extrao... read more
Date: 04/10/2006 - 7:00 pm

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