Review of Session One

crowd at TEDxCERN auditorium

“Being smarter at using people’s attention.”

What a start to TEDxCERN!

Let’s take stock at the end of Session One. Between Hiranya Peiris’ account of the biggest “Whodunnit” detective story in the Universe, to Marc Abrahams’ tales of the most improbable research around, there has been plenty to think about so far.

A packed audience in both the Globe and Auditorium, and hundreds of viewers in CERN’s partner institutions around the world, as well as countless spectators online were treated to the tale of how citizen scientists discovered a new planet, a unique performance of “Caffeine” by Maria Ferrante, and gripping accounts of massive underwater earthquakes, to name but three.

There was also the premiere of the TED-Ed/CERN animation on Dark Matter. Don’t worry if you missed out, as it will released online later today. Watch this space!

 

“I, for one, welcome our new robot collaborators”

“The crowd does not make mistakes,” said Chris Lintott, who uses crowd-sourced information to run citizen science projects. The TEDxCERN crowd is not just made of the live audiences at CERN, however. Those of you out there on the Web can take part in TEDxCERN, too. Indeed, Chris will be fielding your questions on human-robot interactions in science in a live, interactive question-and-answer session with University of Liverpool physicist Tara Shears at 16:00 (Swiss time). You can subit a question via Twitter or Facebook.

 

“Pushing back the boundaries of knowledge into territories previously marked ‘Here be dragons!’ “

Session Two is set to multiply dimensions still further, featuring DNA, anti-matter, bedroom science and a very special surprise guest!

Don’t forget, you can follow all the action online. There’s the streaming webcast for the talks, plus up-to the-minute commentary, pictures and impressions on Twitter (follow @TEDxCERN and tweet using the hashtag #TEDxCERN) and Facebook.

Then catch up again right here at 17:45 (Swiss time) for another break-time review.