Bridging The Gaps: A Portal For Curious Minds

An in-depth conversation with Professor Wendy Freedman on the topic of space exploration with ground based telescopes. We discuss the history of space exploration using ground based telescopes, and try to imagine the future that what is next. Professor Wendy Freedman gives a detailed description of the features of the Giant Magellan Telescope, a ground based extremely large telescope under construction. We discuss the challenges involved in constructing the GMT and talk about the research opportunities that this extremely large telescope, once completed, will present. Professor Wendy Freedman is one of the world’s most influential astronomers. Freedman is a professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Chicago. She was also the chair of the board of directors of the Giant Magellan Telescope project from its inception in 2003 to July 2015. More than a decade ago, Wendy Freedman led a team of 30 astronomers who carried out the Hubble Key Project to measure the expansion rate of the universe. Her

Evaluating the quality of teaching and learning in our schools, and assessing the effectiveness of our school systems and primary education frameworks is an important research area that focuses on questions such as “what works and what does not work in our schools”. An important aspect of this research is to evaluate the impact of factors such as class size, homework, use of digital technologies, duration of academic year, teaching very bright and weak learners in same cohorts on the quality of teaching and learning in our schools. Such research also focuses on measuring the effect-size of these and other factors on the performance of our education systems. Professor John Hattie has spent fifteen years synthesizing over 60,000 studies, involving about a quarter of a billion students. This meta-analysis – analysis of analyses – focuses on the questions that what works and what does not work in our schools and what matters in teaching. This is perhaps the biggest ever evidence-based research project in educat

One of the most existing developments of the last two decades in the field of astronomy is the discovery of exoplanets: planets that orbit around the stars other then our sun. The idea of finding planets outside our solar system is not new; philosophers and scientists have imagined exoplanets for centuries. Giordano Bruno, an Italian philosopher, mathematician, poet, and astrologer theorised exoplanets in sixteenth century. However for centuries there was no mechanism available to detect exoplanets. The first two confirmed exoplanets were discovered in 1992. Since then the detection of new exoplanets continues. By September 2015 the number of confirmed exoplanets has reached 1892. In this podcast I discuss, in detail, with Professor Sara Seager, the fascinating research in the field of exoplanets. Professor Sara Seager is an astrophysicists and planetary scientist at MIT. Her science research focuses on theory, computation, and data analysis of exoplanets. Her research has introduced many new ideas to the

As NASA's New Horizons spacecraft approaches Pluto, Dr Mark Showalter describes in detail the nature of the mission and what to expect in terms of scientific findings. Dr Showalter discusses in detail the features of the spacecraft and the challenges involved as it approaches Pluto.

Multiple intelligences, future minds, and characteristics and expectations of 21st century learners with Dr Howard Gardner.

What is consciousness? In this podcast David Chalmers starts addressing this question by saying that “being conscious is when there is something it is like to be that being”. This argument was initially presented by an American philosopher Thomas Nagel in an influential paper “what is it like to be a bat”. This paper was first published in the Philosophical Review in 1974. David Chalmers is an Australian philosopher and a cognitive scientist specializing in the area of philosophy of mind. He is professor of philosophy and a director of the Centre for Consciousness at the Australian National University. He is also professor of philosophy at New York University. In 2013, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. In this podcast Chalmers discusses the nature of human consciousness, its place in nature, artificial intelligence, and the concept of singularity. In his paper “Consciousness and its Place in Nature” Chalmers describes some aspects of consciousness as easy problems and then

A conversation with Dr Jill Tarter on the past, present and future for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

A Conversation with Professor Carol Dweck

What exactly is a memory? How much do we know about the processes that a human brain executes to store and retrieve a memory? An individual memory may contain different elements such as explicit information, one or many contexts, relevant emotions; does the brain pre-process all individual elements of a memory and then stores this processed memory as one single entity? Or, are different elements of an individual memory stored at different locations in the form of a connected structure or network, and are post-processed at the time of retrieval? In this case what are the chances that during this post processing of different elements of a memory, the retrieved memory gets contaminated resulting in a false memory that reshapes the past? How do non-conscious memories affect and shape our behavior? Daniel Schacter is a cognitive psychologist and is professor of psychology at Harvard University. His research explores the relation between conscious and unconscious forms of memory, the nature of memory distortions, h

Is philosophy dead? Well over the past few years a number of scientists and researchers have said that we don’t need philosophy, philosophy should not be taught, it is waste of time and some have suggested that philosophy is dead. This is obviously a question that should be discussed at Bridging the Gaps. Tim Maudlin, professor of philosophy at New York University, says that the scientists, particularly physicists, who suggest that philosophy is dead, simply don’t know what is done now-a-days in philosophy of physics. An important point that Maudlin makes is that if there are philosophers who intend to write about physics and have no expertise in physics, perhaps this is not a good idea. In his view one of the main reasons that negative remarks are being made about philosophy is that philosophers are writing about topics without having expertise in these areas. Maudlin says that if you want to know about the nature of matter, and nature of space and time, and if you want to understand large-scale structure o

How much do we think about thinking? How aware usually are we of our awareness, and about what is happening around us? Jonathan Schooler, professor of psychology at the University of California (Santa Barbara), whose research focuses on consciousness, memory, meta-awareness, mind-wandering, and mindfulness, describes meta awareness as our ability to take explicit note of the current contents of consciousness. He notes that when we are not focusing on what is happening around us, we generate imaginative thoughts that are unrelated to external circumstances. It is common to experience such imaginative thoughts and experience moments when our minds have wandered away from the situation at hand. Schooler suggests that mind wandering is indicative of different kinds of attentional fluctuations. In this podcast Schooler describes mind-wandering as a phenomenon when a person’s attention is less directed towards external environment and it shifts more towards an internal train of thought. But is mind-wandering an at