Big Ideas: Science

Natalia Toro explains how complex collision data from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is being digested and examined and how it may set the course for the science of the future. Her lecture was delivered at the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo on September 18, 2011.

Seth Llyod is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His talk, "Programming the Universe", is about the computational power of atoms, electrons, and elementary particles.

University of Ontario Institute of Technology professor Christopher diCarlo (Health Sciences and Criminology) delivers his competition lecture entitled The Relations of Natural Systems.

Physicist Paul Steinhardt discusses the creation of "Impossible crystals": quasi-crystals with five-fold symmetry previously believed impossible.

Marc D. Lewis answers questions following his lecture based on his book Memoirs of an Addicted Brain.

Dr. Marc D. Lewis discusses the story and the science behind his book Memoirs of an Addicted Brain. Lewis is a professor at the Behavioral Science Institute, part of Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Lewis's book documents the years he spent addicted to drugs including morphine and heroin, and links his first-hand drug experiences to his current behavioral science research into the interaction between drugs and brain chemistry.

Lisa Harvey-Smith of CSIRO discusses the mega-telescope known as the Square Kilometre Array. CSIRO, the Australian Commonwealth Science and Industrial Research Organisation, is part of the continent-spanning next-generation radio telescope project which is due to be completed in 2019.

Psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and best-selling author, Dr. Norman Doidge, on his book, The Brain that Changes Itself, an examination of the most important breakthrough in neuroscience: the discovery of neuroplasticity. His lecture was delivered at the University of Toronto on March 29th, 2008.

Shawn Lehman from the Anthropology department at the University of Toronto St. George delivers his competition lecture entitled "Primate Infanticide: Adaptation or Social Pathology?"

"Time and Einstein in the 21st Century: The Coolest Stuff in the Universe" is the title of this exceptionally entertaining lecture. Phillips, who works with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, demonstrates the cooling potential of liquid nitrogen, the laser based technique known as "optical molasses" and shows how magnetic bottles can help science built more accurate atomic clocks.