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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Following on Cassini's discoveries, NASA aims to probe Jupiter's Europa for potential life. With every new world we discover, we should look back at our own planet with awe, says Marcelo Gleiser.