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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In science, and in life, there is an artful balance between being cautious and adventurous; to find the balance takes experimentation, tolerance for mistakes, and humility, says Marcelo Gleiser.
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We are still as ignorant about the "passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of consciousness" as John Tyndall and his Victorian colleagues were, says Marcelo Gleiser.
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In this visualization, based on data collected by scientists, we see Earth changing — its plants, surface winds and sea currents responding to the energy coming from the sun, says Marcelo Gleiser.
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The great physicist Enrico Fermi asked this question in the 1950s. There are more than 50 possible "solutions" to Fermi's Paradox: Here, astrophysicist Marcelo Gleiser explores a few.
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We owe our existence to little photosynthetic bacteria — but there is much more to this story, as life can only mutate and adapt when the planet offers the right conditions, says Marcelo Gleiser.
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As history has shown, political and ideological repression passes — but scientific knowledge remains, says astrophysicist Marcelo Gleiser.
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Astronomy is forever changed by the viewing of the collision of neutron stars; we can now watch these processes in many different ways as they run their course, says astrophysicist Marcelo Gleiser.
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Scientists worldwide have watched Brazil's budget cuts in shock. We, too, could see trouble ahead if flat U.S. federal spending without additional corporate funding continues, says Marcelo Gleiser.
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Three scientists won the prize after a 25-year-long search of the cosmos for gravitational waves — the waving of space — the one test missing for Einstein, says astrophysicist Marcelo Gleiser.
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Just as two kids jumping on a trampoline around each other send waves rippling outwards on the fabric, black holes distort space as they orbit around each other, says astrophysicist Marcelo Gleiser.