Lucianne Walkowicz: Look Up For a Change
Lucianne Walkowicz, a 2011 TEDGlobal Fellow, studies the inscrutable faces of the stars for clues to the inner workings of their hearts. She got her taste for astronomy as an undergrad at Johns Hopkins, testing detectors for the Hubble Space Telescope's new camera (installed in 2002). She also learned to love the dark stellar denizens of our galaxy, the red dwarfs, which became the topic of her PhD dissertation at University of Washington.
In her TEDxPhoenix 11.11.11 TEDxTalk, Lucianne explains the importance of preserving our dark night sky from the perils of light pollution and other lesser-known factors. In Lucianne's eyes, "Our night sky is a natural resource, it's like a park you can visit without ever having to travel there. But like any natural resource, if we don't protect it, if we don't preserve it and treasure it, it will slip away from us and be gone."
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Joan Halifax: Compassion and the True Meaning of Empathy
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Defying Gravity
What happens in our brain when we view an optical illusion? The information gathered by the eye is processed in the brain to create an idea or image that does not match with a physical measurement of the stimulus source.