The Big Picture • 2016 • episode "S1E8" Curiosity Retreats: 2016 Lectures

Category: Physics

Award-winning physicist Sean Carroll is known for his keen observations on the relationship between humanity and the laws of nature, and finding where human purpose and meaning fit into a scientific world view.

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Curiosity Retreats: 2016 Lectures • 2016 • 8 episodes •

The Future Of The Brain

What would the world be like if we could expand our senses beyond our current capacities? Neuroscientist David Eagleman is working on the cutting edge of technology that will change what it means to be human.

2016 • Brain

Our Virtual Reality

As the ability to blur the physical and digital worlds becomes a global phenomenon, Nonny de la Pena is harnessing that transformative ability to tell stories like never before. Learn how she uses the immersive power of VR to help people connect to important issues they might otherwise ignore.

2016 • Technology

To Pluto and Beyond

New Horizons took its famed look at Pluto and is now racing toward its next destination… and Alan Stern will take us all on the journey of exploration with it!

2016 • Astronomy

Our Mathematical Universe

Renowned cosmologist Max Tegmark will take us on a journey through some of the greatest mysteries of our existence, and through the physics, astronomy and mathematics that are the foundation of his work.

2016 • Math

The Human Journey a Genetic Odyssey

Geneticist Spencer Wells presents a broad view of the DNA Testing industry from its beginnings to its broader acceptance by the general public. Now an individual can, for the first time in history, read his own genetic blueprints.

2016 • Health

The Humane Economy

Wayne Pacelle, President of the Humane Society of the United States, draws a practical roadmap for how we can use the marketplace to promote the welfare of all living creatures, and how industries, innovators and consumers are coming together in this powerful social movement.

2016 • Economics

Lessons from the Presidents

Through her unique understanding of some of our greatest presidents, Doris Kearns Goodwin, writer and presidential biographer, provides leadership lessons we all can learn from in our never-ending pursuit to live our fullest and most successful lives.

2016 • Lifehack

The Big Picture

Award-winning physicist Sean Carroll is known for his keen observations on the relationship between humanity and the laws of nature, and finding where human purpose and meaning fit into a scientific world view.

2016 • Physics

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That Shrinking Feeling

Hannah is going the other way by asking whether everything could, in fact, be smaller. But going smaller turns out not to be much safer... First, we shrink the Earth to half its size - it starts well with lower gravity enabling us to do incredible acrobatics, but things gradually turn nasty as everyone gets altitude sickness - even at sea level. Then we visit Professor Daniel Lathrop's incredible laboratory, where he has built a model Earth that allows us to investigate the other effects of shrinking the planet to half size. The results aren't good - with a weaker magnetic field we would lose our atmosphere and eventually become a barren, lifeless rock like Mars. In our next thought experiment, we shrink people to find out what life is like if you are just 5mm tall. We find out why small creatures have superpowers that seem to defy the laws of physics, meet Jyoti Amge, the world's smallest woman, and with the help of Dr Diana Van Heemst and thousands of baseball players reveal why short people have longer lives. Lastly, the Sun gets as small as a sun can be. We visit the fusion reactor at the Joint European Torus to find out why stars have to be a minimum size or fusion won't happen. And if our Sun were that small? Plants would turn from green to black, and Earth would probably resemble a giant, frozen eyeball. Which all goes to show that size really does matter.

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