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Predicting Eclipses: The Three Body Problem
Solar eclipse prediction has driven innovation across the history of science and mathematics, from the Saros cycle to Greek geometry to Newton’s calculus to the three-body problem.
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Neil Johnson: A Physicist Who Models ISIS and the Alt-Right
Neil Johnson on the physics of collective human behavior.
Svitlana Mayboroda: Taming Rogue Waves
Svitlana Mayboroda describes how the landscape function helps solve the mystery of wave localization.
Jay Pasachoff: Eclipse Hunter Reveals the Science That Can Only Be Done in the Dark
Jay Pasachoff explains what scientists can learn during a total solar eclipse.
Andrea Ghez: Black-Hole Hunter Takes Aim at Einstein
In this 2017 interview, the UCLA astrophysicist Andrea Ghez explains how tracking the movement of stars revealed the existence of a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy.
Jessica Flack: How Nature Solves Problems Through Computation
Jessica Flack describes the special challenges of applying collective computation to the understanding of complex biological systems.
Purvesh Khatri: More Data — the Dirtier the Better
Purvesh Khatri learned that by working with ‘messy’ clinical data sets, he could find genes that the human body expresses in response to diverse forms of a disease.
Journey to the Birth of the Solar System
Join David Kaplan on a virtual-reality tour showing how the sun, the Earth and the other planets came to be.
Tim Maudlin: A Defense of the Reality of Time
Tim Maudlin explains how math has led physicists to believe some very strange things about the nature of time.
John Novembre: A Map of Human History, Hidden in DNA
John Novembre explains how he uses genomic data to map human history.