Marcelo Gleiser
Marcelo Gleiser is a contributor to the NPR blog 13.7: Cosmos & Culture. He is the Appleton Professor of Natural Philosophy and a professor of physics and astronomy at Dartmouth College.
Gleiser is the author of the books The Prophet and the Astronomer (Norton & Company, 2003); The Dancing Universe: From Creation Myths to the Big Bang (Dartmouth, 2005); A Tear at the Edge of Creation (Free Press, 2010); and The Island of Knowledge (Basic Books, 2014). He is a frequent presence in TV documentaries and writes often for magazines, blogs and newspapers on various aspects of science and culture.
He has authored over 100 refereed articles, is a Fellow and General Councilor of the American Physical Society and a recipient of the Presidential Faculty Fellows Award from the White House and the National Science Foundation.
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Commentator Marcelo Gleiser says that while he enjoys sci-fi speculation like most people, he also thinks there is a chance, in viewing recent films, to learn something about ourselves and our planet.
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There is no reason to expect that we can get to the ultimate nature of reality, says physicist Marcelo Gleiser. We must learn to live with the mystery, with the fact that we cannot know everything.
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The crash of Virgin Galactic's spacecraft has renewed criticism of commercial space exploration. Commentator Marcelo Gleiser says disasters and loss of life are the cost of pushing humanity's limits.
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Can scientists have too much faith, insisting that an idea is right despite contrary evidence? Commentator Marcelo Gleiser says yes, which could pay off in the end — or be a colossal waste of time.
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If we are able to create intelligent machines, how can we guarantee they will keep us alive and well, as opposed to wiping us out? Nick Bostrom explores the question in Superintelligence.
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This short video tells the story of humanity, from beginning to end. Commentator Marcelo Gleiser says it invites us to reflect on who we are, where we came from and how we will chart our future.
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There is no end to how much we can know of reality. But we can never know everything, says commentator Marcelo Gleiser.
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Don't get fooled into believing you know what reality is, says commentator Marcelo Gleiser. It's a trick the brain plays on us, an illusion spun together out of our many bodily senses.
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It's been four decades since the idea of supersymmetry was proposed as a better way to explain the universe. The problem is, says commentator Marcelo Gleiser, that we haven't been able to prove it.
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Evidence of ultra-fast cosmic expansion forces us to confront the possibility that the multiverse exists. But how will we ever know? It's a problem that could leave us tangled up in knots.