Nathan Wolfe: What's left to explore?

http://www.ted.com We've been to the moon, we've mapped the continents, we've even been to the deepest point in the ocean -- twice. What's left for the next generation to explore? Biologist and explorer Nathan Wolfe suggests this answer: Almost everything. And we can start, he says, with the world of the unseeably small.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate change, Philippe Starck on design, Jill Bolte Taylor on observing her own stroke, Nicholas Negroponte on One Laptop per Child, Jane Goodall on chimpanzees, Bill Gates on malaria and mosquitoes, Pattie Maes on the "Sixth Sense" wearable tech, and "Lost" producer JJ Abrams on the allure of mystery. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages are now available on TED.com, at http://www.ted.com/translate

If you have questions or comments about this or other TED videos, please go to http://support.ted.com

• Category

  Science & Technology

[sl2mmer]

i'm gonna explore my nose with my finger

[Rhubarbs]

They didn't cut the talk because of the subject, they cut it because it was bad and entirely partisan - and TED maintains that talkers must not specifically promote a single party. The talker threatened to make a fuss about being censored even before it was cut, and you've bought in to it.

[Rauland Jerliu]

hmm, space is cooler though

[whitechiliHD]

I would stick it up my anus first if i were u

[whitechiliHD]

I'm gonna explore my anus with my stick

[Evan Hardin]

Put it in your butt first.

[Azoicum]

98% junk DNA

[GameFrosts]

Lucky girl.

[Aston-J Dehsinotsa]

Wow

[Tom Sayer]

And the hollow earth? We didnt talk anything about that.... fucking cover up

[xxDickBonesxx]

If it was the result of interbreeding then it would already be part of what we consider the human genome... and that means it wouldn't be unknown. He would have simply just annotated it in the same color as all the other human DNA.

While it is of course possible that some of the unknown DNA belongs to new domains of life the majority is probably just more viruses, plasmids, transposons and bacterial sequences not yet in the databases.