The Mind of the Universe
a journey along the frontiers of knowledge
‘As a result of a thousand million years of evolution, the universe is becoming conscious of itself,
able to understand something of its past history and its possible future.’ — Julian Huxley
On May 7th the first of ten episodes will air on Dutch public television. Episodes will run weekly on Sunday nights primetime. Shortly after airing each episode will be made available worldwide on YouTube and distributed via social media.
In April we expect to launch the open source tv platform: a website where you can browse through the complete in depth interviews. All videos are subtitled, tagged and annotated (in English) so you can easily find takes on a specific subject. The videos are free to share or download under Creative Commons licence (CC/BY/SA). The open source platform is specifically aimed at a worldwide audience to share, download and use the videos for educational or other purposes.
The Mind of the Universe is an international tv series and open source digital platform about the rapid evolution of our knowledge. It explores the human destiny and the world of tomorrow through the eyes of the greatest thinkers and scientists of our time. Great minds from all continents all over the globe.
The Mind of the Universe is a unique and unprecedented open source project in its scope and intention to provide all its programs, raw footage and research for free to everyone interested in learning and knowledge.
The Mind of the Universe consists of ten episodes, presented by Robbert Dijkgraaf: director and Leon Levy Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. In each episode, a typical human quality takes central stage, in which the scientists and their research are embedded.
· TV: Robbert Dijkgraaf presents 10 tv-episodes starting May 7 2017
· Open source TV: Complete, in-depth video-interviews with 30 renowned scientists. Free to download under Creative Commons License, easy to explore through subtitles and annotations.
EPISODE OVERVIEW:
1. The Creator (May 7)
Mankind is able to create living machines and artificial life. We can change our genes and modify our evolutionary future. Can we create artificial consciousness?
· George Church – geneticist and biotechnologist. Tinkers with our DNA and creates new life, artificial brains, new energy sources and may even be able to revive extinct life forms.
o Wyss Institute at Harvard University; Harvard Medical School; Harvard and MIT (USA)
· Lee Cronin – chemist. Is using robots to play with life’s building blocks, creating life from dead matter. Is working on a chemical internet that enables us to print any molecule.
o School of Chemistry, University of Glasgow (UK)
· Hans Clevers – geneticist. Received the Breakthrough Prize for his work on creating mini-organs and eventually maybe even complete organs from stem cells.
o Hubrecht Institute, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) (Netherlands)
2. The Conqueror (May 14)
Humans started out as hunter-gatherers and conquered nature. Now, it’s about conquering the micro and macro cosmos. We hunt the deepest seas and endless space. What frontiers do we have left?
· Jean Jacques Hublin – evolutionary anthropologist. How did Homo Sapiens conquer the world and what is the future of our species?
o Max Planck Institute, Leipzig (Germany)
· Ron Fouchier – virologist. Doing groundbreaking research into the bird flu virus. His research includes conquering the world of viruses by using them as medicine.
o Department of Viroscience, Erasmus University, Rotterdam (Netherlands)
· Jan Wei Pan – quantum physicist. Conquering space and the quantum world, he launched the world’s first quantum satellite.
o University of Science & Technology, Hefei (China)
3. The Maker (May 21)
We build cities and machines. We manipulate matter and stack molecules, creating entirely new materials and even ecosystems. Can we create anything we can imagine?
· Miguel Nicolelis – neurobiologist. By connecting the brain to an exoskeleton Nicolelis tries to make paralyzed people walk again. He dreams of a network of directly connected brains for problem solving.
o Nicolelis Lab, Sao Paulo (Brazil),Dept of Neurobiology / Duke University Medical Center, Durham (USA)
· Joanna Aizenberg – chemist. Playing with matter creating new smart and highly adaptable materials inspired by nature (
o Core faculty member of the Harvard Wyss Institute, Co Director of the Kavli Institute of bionanoscience & technologie, Harvard (USA)
· Susant Pattnaik – serial Inventor. Making the future through innovations inspired by local challenges impacting the local community.
o Entrepreneur (Bhopal, India)
4. The Explorer (May 28)
From the edges of the cosmos to the smallest unit of time, from the secrets of life to the inner workings of our brain, humans are always exploring and pushing boundaries. Does knowledge have a limit?
· Michel Poulain – demographer. Unraveling the secret of a long and healthy life by studying blue zones, communities with high percentage of super old people.
o Institute for Population studies – University Tallinn (Estonia) / Leuven University (Belgium)
· Sara Seager – planetary researcher. Pioneer in the search for exoplanets, planets outside our solar system that are possibly habitable and/ or containing extraterrestrial life.
o Planetary science and Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge (USA)
· Trond Helge Torsvik – geophysicist. Towards a unified theory of the evolution of the earth and what makes our planet unique.
o Centre of Physics of Geological Processes (PGP), University of Oslo (Norway)
5. The Illusionist (June 4)
Scientists observe the world and use their mind to grasp it. We are emprisoned in this monkey mind. One of the biggest questions in science is: how does our mind work? How do we understand each others emotions? How do we know what is right? Is what we think reality or an illusion?
· Pascale Fung – computer scientist. Building empathetic robots and machines with emotions and humor creating long lasting human-machine relationships.
o Department of electronic and computer engineering | hong kong university of science and technology (Hong Kong / China)
· Charles Spence – experimental psychologist. Reprogramming and enhancing our senses through better understanding of smell, taste, vision, touch, sound.
o Crossmodal Research Laboratory, Department of Experimental Psychology, Fellow of Somerville College, University of Oxford (UK)
· Yoshua Bengio – computer scientist. Creating self learning, intelligent machines through algorithms.
o Department of Computer Science and Operations Research, Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms, Université de Montréal (Canada)
6. The Dreamer (June 11)
Man is the inventor of huge and often impossible dreams and unachievable Utopias. Often the impossible becomes reality thanks to the power of pure human stamina. Can everything we imagine become reality?
· Juan Maldacena – theoretical physicist. Working on the Theory of Everything that will combine gravity and quantum mechanics.
o School of Natural Sciences, Institute of Advanced Studies, Princeton (USA)
· Segenet Kelemu – plant biologist. Manages the largest insects institute in the world. Her dream for Africa is a continent that conquers the world with insects not just as food but also as ecological herbicides and pesticides.
o International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology, Nairobi (Kenya)
· Rick Tumlinson – future maker. On colonizing space and our future work and life on other planets
o Deep Space Industries, NASA Ames Research Center, Silicon Valley (USA)
7. The Seeker (June 18)
The world is chaos and we try to control this chaos through logic, science, language and technology. Man is inquisitive and inventive. Beyond the horizon, beyond known theories and sometimes against better judgement we look for new elements, new ideas and – who knows – maybe even world peace.
· Yuri Oganessian – nuclear physicist. On the hunt for new chemical elements and the search for the island of stability. The newest element 118 is named after him: oganesson.
o Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions, Dubna (Russia)
· Artur Avila – mathematician. Youngest winner of the Fields Medal, the Nobel Prize for math. Avila’s mathematical models in chaos theory can be applied to climate change, population growth, economics and quantum mechanics.
o Instituto Nacional de Matemática Pura e Aplicada (IMPA), Rio de Janeiro (Brasil) / National Institute for Mathematical Sciences and their Interactions (INSMI) at Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) (France)
· Hani Hayajneh – expert in pre Islamic languages and cultures.
Building peace in the Middle East through a better understanding of pre islamic languages and cultures.·
o Faculty of Archaeology and Anthropology at Yarmouk University, Irbid (Jordan)
8. The Player (June 25)
We love playing. Homo Ludens is present in arts, culture, economy and science. Playing leads to new math, new techniques and new materials.
· Marty en Erik Demaine - Father and son, mathematicians and artists. Erik is the youngest professor at MIT and was home schooled by his father. In a playful way they develop mathematical games and folding systems, so called computational origami. Their inventive work has been applied in space travel and medical science.
o Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge (USA)
· Carolina Cruz – computer scientist. As the director of one of the best Virtual Reality labs in the world she creates systems that merge reality with the virtual world. Anything we can imagine will in the end be real.
o Emerging Analytics Center, University of Arkansas, Little Rock (USA)
· John List - economist – A pioneer in experimental economics. He explains and predicts behavioural motives based on real world experiments.
o University of Chicago (USA)
9. The Thinker (July 2)
Our brain allows us to ponder our place in the universe. We try to control chaos and want to understand nature. But we are not the only species with a mind.
· Nicky Clayton – cognition scientist. Are we the only thinking creatures? What exactly is thinking? Clayton explores the origins of thinking.
o Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge, Fellow of Clare College and Fellow of the Royal Society (UK)
· Donald Hoffman – cognitive scientist. Hoffman is convinced that evolution and quantum mechanics show us a different reality than we can imagine. Will we ever be able to find out what is true reality?
o Professor of Cognitive Science, University of California, Irvine (USA)
· Brother Guy Consolmagno – Astronomer and Jesuit. Based on his research people started thinking about mining meteorites. How does the director of the Vatican Observatory combine his research into objects that are older than the earth with his religious beliefs?
o Vatican Observatory (Italy)
10. The Connector (July 9)
Our brains are perfectly geared for communicating and love to do so. Thanks to current technology, we can connect ourselves and our knowledge to a worldwide network. We create a worldwide infosphere. Will this become the mind of the universe?
· Martin Rees - UK's Astronomer Royal reflecting on the future of humanity in the cosmos.
· Jennifer Chayes – mathematical physicist. Reflecting on the math and patterns behind networks
and how these networks and the world of technology will impact our future lives.· Microsoft Research New England and New York (USA)
· George Whitesides – chemist. How the world of science and technology will shape the future of mankind
· Harvard University, Cambridge (USA)