Garik Israelian: What's inside a star?

http://www.ted.com Garik Israelian is a spectroscopist, studying the spectrum emitted by a star to figure out what it's made of and how it might behave. It's a rare and accessible look at this discipline, which may be coming close to finding a planet friendly to life.

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. Watch a highlight reel of the Top 10 TEDTalks at http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/top10

Category:

Science & Technology

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• Israelian
• TEDTalks
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• astronomy
• physics
• spectroscopy
• stars
• astrophysics
• space
• planets
• spectrum

[johndela1]

I'm sure the guy fully understands kelvin.  Maybe he was nervous or something.

[Saerain]

And scientists don't want there to be life everywhere?

The notion that water is necessary for life isn't anthropocentric, it's very fundamental physics. Water allows organic compounds to replicate.

The only partially reasonable alternatives are ammonia and hydrogen fluoride, yet the former has much weaker hydrogen bonds than water and the latter is improbable to be found in large quantities, especially since silicates would react with it to form inert compounds.

[crudhousefull]

Incredible guy. Really knows his stuff.

[xSkateOrPlayGuitarx]

infowars . com

PLEASE LOOK THIS UP, OUR EARTH IS DIEING!

[CircusOfBedlam]

he seamed very nervous at first, but he gave a great and informative presentation, and also seams like a nice person :)

[infinitehumanstupid]

Only thing I would like to be skeptical about is giving years in when science discovers something... if there's something I've learnt is that these predictions are usually wrong.

[MrNapst3r]

thumb up you bastards ! this guy is genious

[ZarlanTheGreen]

@Saerain "The notion that water is necessary for life isn't anthropocentric, it's very fundamental physics."

No.

Water is necessary for life _as we know it_.

What is good or optimal for other forms of life, we cannot begin to know.

The more we know, the more we know that we don't know.

However, when looking for life, it's best to start with the types of life for which we have evidence of existence (i.e. the type we find here on earth).

If we don't, we'll blunder about blindly without a clue.

[gyromancy2]

I wish women would procreat with this guy. We need more scientifically-smart people like this on Earth

[o0AndromedaB0o]

good talk but he sounded liek he was going to die lol

nervous much

[mkho]

if youre talking about the guy that wanted to find the source of white noise within radios etc in the 70s. they later found the source to be the supermassive black hole located in the center of our galaxy