Quantum to Cosmos Festival - 2009

The Internet promises the realization of two of humanity's noblest dreams: universal access to all human knowledge and the capacity to form and coordinate groups at virtually no cost. As great as this sounds, it's bad news for certain kinds of top-heavy organizations and the kinds of companies that…

Are we ready to come face to face with our innermost genetic secrets? Will this knowledge help us make wise choices? Can we trust ourselves and others with safeguarding this most potent knowledge? Be part of the live studio audience for this special edition of TVO's Agenda with Steve Paikin.

The search for the origins of species has entailed a series of great adventures over the past 200 years. This talk will chronicle the exploits of a group of explorers who walked where no one had walked, saw what no one had seen, and thought what no one else had thought. Their achievements sparked a…

With studies suggesting the vocabularies of young people today are shrinking and some university professors claiming the essay is hardly worth assigning anymore due to shortened attention spans, some wonder whether technology has done more harm to our kids than good. Our panel of experts will debate…

In our lifetime we have seen a broad transformation in the way we interact with technology in our daily lives. And further developments in technology promise a continued impact. Are we comfortable living in a world that never shuts off? How has this technology affected us, our thinking, our…

Computer science has served to isolate programs and programmers from knowledge of the mechanisms used to manipulate information, however this fiction is increasingly hard to maintain as devices scale down in size and systems scale up in complexity. This talk will explore the consequences of exposing…

Commitment to space travel has ebbed and flowed. Physicist Stephen Hawking believes the way to ensure human survival is to continue space exploration. Critics of space travel argue that Planet Earth is in dire need of our attention and resources right now. Is there a trade-off between going to space…

Over the last decade our picture of the universe has changed almost as much as it had in the preceding century. As a result, our picture of the future, both of the universe, and life within it, has dramatically altered as well. This talk will begin by reviewing the recent revolutionary developments…

You've heard the physicists speculate on parallel universes, space travel, and time travel. Now come and hear a physicist interview the real experts in these subjects: a bestselling science fiction writer and pioneer of virtual reality discuss what you get when you look at science through fiction.

What do we really know about the universe? What mysteries are today's top cosmologists investigating? Join a discussion with leading cosmologists to hear fresh perspectives on some of the deepest questions in modern science: What is the mysterious dark matter that fills intergalactic space? Was…

This panel will explore some of the deepest questions facing those who would harness the power of quantum mechanics in new quantum technologies: What are the newest and most interesting discoveries researchers have made about quantum information? What progress has been made in recent years towards…

Based on the success of the Ansari X PRIZE (which stimulated the creation of billion-dollar private spaceflight industry) and more recently the launch of the $30M Google Lunar X PRIZE and the $10M Progressive Automotive X PRIZE, this talk explains how to incentivize breakthroughs. Traditional…