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[Music]
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[Applause]
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we are made from very small things and
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we live in a very very big universe and
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the small things are so small and the
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big things are so big that you might
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think we have no hope of ever
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understanding them but I'm going to
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argue that in fact we already understand
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them quite well it's the world in
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between the big and the small the world
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we live in that we don't understand and
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in fact that world is becoming harder
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and harder to understand because we keep
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discovering more complexity and creating
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more complexity and that's something we
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have to face if we want to solve our
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biggest
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challenges but let's start in the
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beginning I want to tell you how we came
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to understand the big that's my
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background I studied physics and
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cosmology and it also has to do with
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where I grew up I grew up in a town
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called IESA in Finland where you get
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about 4 hours of daylight uh during the
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day so when whenever I walked home from
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school it would be dark and I would look
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at the
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stars and it's the stars that really
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tell you how big the universe is stars
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are very big as big or bigger as our sun
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only very very far away and there are so
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many of them even with the naked eye you
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can see 10,000 stars now 10,000 is a big
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number but it's still a comprehensible
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number if each star was a grain of sand
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10,000 would be about three teaspoons of
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sand so that's not so bad but of course
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we don't look at the stars with the
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naked eye anymore we use telescopes and
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already 100 years ago around 1900
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astronomers had good telescopes and they
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could see over a million stars now a
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million stars is a lot but it's still a
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comprehensible number it's about a
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bucket of
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sand and in fact uh those astronomers
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were pretty sure that that was it that
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there were about a million stars in the
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Universe um except for these funny
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smudges they kept seeing in their
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photographs and they called them spiral
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nebula and nobody knew what those were
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and it took a computer to figure out
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what those actually were a human
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computer called Henry at the lit because
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back then a computer was what you called
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a woman doing calculations for
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scientists now lit was paid $10 a week
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to analyze photo phaps of stars and she
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was deaf but she had a very very good
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eye and she spotted a pattern in the
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brightness of stars that gave her a new
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way to actually figure out how far away
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stars were and she died of cancer very
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young but was able to publish her
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finding uh but uh couldn't see it
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applied and it was Edwin Hubble who
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later said that levit should have really
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won the Nobel Prize who used her method
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to look at those spiral nebuli and what
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he found was that they were much much
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much further away millions of times
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further away than any anyone had ever
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thought in fact they were galaxies
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galaxies just like our Milk Way systems
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of hundreds of billions of stars and we
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now know that the visible Universe has
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hundreds of billions of galaxies so it's
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not just a bucket of sand it's not a
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million stars it's 7 * 10 to the power
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of 22 stars now again if each star was a
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grain of sand that would be all the sand
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in all the deserts and beaches and sand
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boxes on Earth times 10,000 10,000 Wells
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of sand so in less than 100 years that's
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how much our understanding of the
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universe has grown from three teaspoons
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to 10,000 Wells of
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sand and actually it's even worse
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because Hubble showed that the universe
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is getting bigger and bigger all those
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galaxies are moving away from each other
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at tremendous speed so you may wonder
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how could we ever figure out what was
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going on and what what what where all
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those stars came from now fortunately
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Einstein came along and and Einstein
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came up with a theory of relativity that
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says that space is really just distances
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between points and those distances
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change depending on what you have
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between those points he came up with
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equations that tell us how space itself
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changes when matter and energy move
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around in it and these equations work
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extremely well so well that all the
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phones uh in your phones use GPS which
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is based on Einstein's equations and
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Einstein's equations predicted an
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expanding unit universe and at first he
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thought uh he'd made a mistake but then
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he found out about Hubble's Discovery
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and we now know that the Universe has
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been expanding for 13.8 billion years
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that means it actually started out very
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very small smaller than an atom and we
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call the moment the expansion started
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the Big Bang now we still don't know
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exactly what happened at the very
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instant of the Big Bang but thanks to
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Einstein we do know how the universe got
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to be so big and we know that little
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ripples tiny little ripples in that
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early Universe grew with the universe
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into seeds that became stars and
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galaxies so we do know where stars came
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from now one of Einstein's equations had
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really big implications not just for big
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things but also for small things and
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that's his most famous equations E
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equals mc^ s what does it mean well e
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means energy m is mass and C squ is
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speed of FL squared light travels very
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very fast so c^ squ is an enormous
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number almost as big as the number of
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all the grains of sand in the world and
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that means that even the tiniest amount
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of matter even an atom has a tremendous
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amount of energy so let's talk about
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atoms and let's talk about small things
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how small are atoms now if you remember
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that tremendous number of stars in the
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universe we have the same number of
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atoms in just three drops of water so
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it's quite amazing that we can
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understand them all and for a long time
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we thought atoms were the smallest thing
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there
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was but in 1898 Mary C
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discovered an element called radium and
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radium was constantly radiating so much
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energy that it couldn't possibly come
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from reactions between atoms and people
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got really excited about radium science
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fiction writer HD Wells thought that it
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could be a source of infinite power for
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a utopian society some people got maybe
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a little bit too excited and too carried
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away and started putting radium in
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products like chocolate and face cream
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and and other things something we now
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know wouldn't wouldn't be a good idea
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now Mary C uh something a bit better she
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was able to use radium uh to treat
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cancer so she pioneered radiation
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therapy but she herself got exposed to
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so much radiation that she eventually
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died of anemia and even her cookbook to
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this day is harmfully
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radioactive but she lived long enough to
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see what was really going on with radium
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and she suspected that there might be
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something going on inside atoms
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something that was converting matter
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into energy like Einstein's equation
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implied and she was right in 1911 Ernst
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rfo took some radium fired some of
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radium's radiation at a gold leaf very
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thin gold leaf and saw something really
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weird the atoms were behaving like there
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was something much smaller inside
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something compared to the size of the
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atom like a grain of sand in the middle
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of a football field and he had
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discovered the nucleus the nucleus of an
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atom is made out of particles called
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protons and neutrons orbited by a cloud
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of electrons and to explain this
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structure of the atom scientists had to
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come up with a new Theory called quantum
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mechanics and quantum mechanics predicts
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that if you split the atom if you split
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the nucleus some matter will be
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converted into energy and that's what
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was going on with radium but ruford
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himself didn't think that atomic energy
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would be of any practical use he
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famously said that anyone who looks for
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a s source of power inside an atom is
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talking absolute
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moonshine so of course there was a very
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stubborn Hungarian who decided that it
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had to be made to
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work and he was called Leo card and he
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was born right here in Budapest as a
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young man he did a lot of work with
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Einstein and they became close friends
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what did they work on quantum mechanics
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thermodynamics theoretical physics and
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they also invented a new type of fridge
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uh oldfashioned fridges used very
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poisonous gases and a family in Berlin
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died of of fumes coming coming from
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those gases and Einstein got really
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upset about it and he was certain that
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there had be had to be a better way to
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build fridges so he asked seart for help
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to to invent a better one so they did um
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it was a genius design obviously um but
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uh too expensive and and too noisy to be
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actually practical but in the end they
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made some money by selling their patents
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to Electrolux but sard kept inventing
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and his next invention was something
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much much
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bigger in 1933 one morning in London he
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was crossing the street at this spot and
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just the moment when the traffic light
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changed in a Flash he had a really
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beautiful and a really terrible idea and
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he called it the Chain Reaction if you
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could split just one atom that would
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release neutrons that would split more
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atoms that release more neutrons that
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would split more atoms and so on and so
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on you could make Atomic power work and
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you could also make a really terrible
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weapon and that's exactly what happened
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in Hiroshima and Nagasaki 12 years later
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now sard himself was horrified he spent
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the rest of his life campaigning against
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nuclear weapons and he switched fields
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from physics to biology and the atomic
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bomb is a terrible thing it shows that
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there is a dark side to our
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understanding of the big in the small
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but actually that same understanding
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triggered an even bigger explosion
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that's still going on on
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today and the trigger for that explosion
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was this this is the first transistor
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it's a device about this big it was
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built by a team led by William shley in
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Bell labs in 1947 and what it is is the
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simplest building block of a digital
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computer it can store a zero or a one
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and like the atomic bomb it's based on
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quantum mechanics in fact on equations
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worked out by another Hungarian uh
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called Eugene wigner who was one of zil
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Art's friends as well and wigner showed
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that there are some materials that can
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be made to sometimes conduct electricity
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and sometimes not so that gives you the
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one and zero and one of those materials
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is silicon and silicon is basically sand
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so we make transistors out of sand and
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we are now very very very very very good
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at it here's a modern transistor it's
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about 20 nanometers in size and to give
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you an idea of how small that is all the
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two billion transistors in an iPhone 6
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can be made from just two grains of sand
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so in 1947 there was just one trans
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transistor today there are 3 * 10 to the
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power of 21 transistors that's thousand
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times all the sand grains in the world
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and in just in 10 years there will be
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more transistors than there are stars in
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the known universe so we really have
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started another big bang now think about
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that for a minute that's a number that
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applies not to atoms but machines that
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we have made what does it mean it means
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we can see things that we could never
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see before the Henry at the lits of
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today don't have to do it all by hand
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computers are storing data and analyzing
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it for us and just like telescopes
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revealed a much much much bigger
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Universe computers are revealing a world
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that is much more complex than we
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thought and that world is around us and
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inside us let me give you an example
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this is a human skin cell so it looks
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pretty complicated but thanks to
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computers we can now read the code that
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runs it we can read its DNA and for a
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long time scientists thought that only
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about 2% of that DNA did anything useful
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and the rest was junk but recently we
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got much better at reading DNA and now
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we know that that 98% is actually the
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control system for the cell so in just a
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few years we found out that the cell is
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actually at least 50 times more complex
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than we thought now to give you an idea
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of what how big a leap that is let's
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think about it in terms of computer
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programs a small iPhone app like like
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Candy Crush is about 50,000 lines of
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code so what 50 times more code give you
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it would give you the control system for
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cern's large hadrin collider the most
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complicated science instrument in the
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world so basically we thought a cell was
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like Candy Crush but it turns out to be
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more like the large hatn collider in
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terms of
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complexity so that means it's much
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harder to fix if something goes wrong so
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it's no wonder that we are really far
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still from curing cancer and maybe
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that's because we've been looking at
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that 2% we thought we understood and to
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fix that we really need to tackle the
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cell's full complexity it's not just
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that we're just using transistors to
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discover complexity we're using them to
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build complexity we're putting them in
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every single device we build and connec
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them all together now look at the
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internet in 1977 and then look at it in
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2007 it's like a chain reaction the more
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complex things we built the more complex
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things they allow us to build and now
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our transport networks our financial
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systems our energy systems are much much
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more complex than ever before and
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there's a problem with that because very
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complex systems can become fragile
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adding a single grain of sand to a sand
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pile can trigger an avalanche and those
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Avalanches are happening faster and
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faster we're all familiar with 2008
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financial crisis but in 2010 competing
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trading algorithms got locked into a
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feedback loop that created a trillion
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dollar stock market crash in 45 seconds
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was called the flash crash of 2:45
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p.m. connections also mean that problems
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spread very very quickly three billion
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people fly every year and that means
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that the next pandemic we're going to
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have is going to be truly Global in a
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very complex system you can also get
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cascading failures one thing failing
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after another this is the electricity
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grid of India and in 2012 just one power
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line being overloaded crashed the entire
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grid and left 600 million people without
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power for 3 days and sometimes
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connections can be very very hard to see
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imagine a forest fire in Russia what
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does it have to do with the Arab Spring
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well forest fires in Russia led to the a
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grain export ban which caused massive
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Financial speculation on food prices
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which caused food riots in North Africa
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and ultimately to people deciding they
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finally had
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enough our most difficult problem s like
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climate change involve both the
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complexity of Nature and the complexity
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we're creating to fix CL climate change
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we need to understand Finance we need to
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understand energy we need need to
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understand soil and biology and the
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atmosphere and and the oceans and
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Quantum Mechanics for carbon and light
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all of those things at the same time so
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we live in a world where most of what we
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think we know is wrong small things
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breaking means that big things break and
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when things break they break very
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quickly everything is connected and we
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can't see those connections and to
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understand anything you have to
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understand
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everything so that's a little bit
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scary but there's no reason to Panic
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it's actually also quite exciting for
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for me looking at all these complexity
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is like looking at those Stars again and
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that's why I did what SAR did and
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switched from physics to biology there
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are amazing New Opportunities if we can
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learn to live with complexity and I
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think we can and actually we now have
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the means to make a lot of things much
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simpler a lot of our systems like
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finance and energy are fragile because
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they have Central nodes like Banks and
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power plants that are connected to
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everything else so what if we took those
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away think about Technologies like solar
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power or Tesla's power wall again both
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powered by transistors maybe we can have
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power systems that are much less
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centralized and much more resilient we
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might be able to do the same thing for
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finance Bitcoin is an example of a
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platform that allows to have trusted
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transactions without a central Authority
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like a bank that verifies them but what
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about the complexity of nature now
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cancer and climate change are so
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difficult problem that they might be too
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much even for an Einstein but what about
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a million Einstein all working together
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where could we find those Einstein well
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the chances are that a lot of those
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Einstein are now playing computer games
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and just all the hours spent on playing
00:15:41
Angry Birds actually would translate
00:15:43
into 12 wikipedias every year and
00:15:45
actually the best way to find the shape
00:15:48
of a biological molecule is already a
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computer game called folded with 15
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million players there are other
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platforms like that like Z universe that
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mean that anyone can now try to find
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cancer mutations or new kinds of
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galaxies in huge sets of data and we
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might even be able to apply that
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approach to politics Iceland recently
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tried to crowdsource the drafting of the
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Constitution via social media now you
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might think that was a terrible idea but
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actually worked out quite well uh so
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there there are ways to make democracy
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more transparent and have more brains
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working on problems that no single
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politician could ever understand it may
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be that we have to give up some ideas
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about systems that we have like the fact
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that we we may not need to be able to
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understand them nature evolves systems
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without understanding them that might my
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company Helix Nano we're trying to build
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molecular machines that make writing
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genetic code easier using machines that
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we've evolved in a test tube and not
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designed so in a way we can tackle
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complexity by accepting it and embracing
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it and maybe ultimately the systems we
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build will merge with the systems of
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nature until we can no longer tell where
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one ends and one
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begins Einstein said that things should
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be as simple as possible but no simpler
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and that's a good rule for us to follow
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both as a species
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and in our lives so let's Embrace
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complexity where we must but find
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Simplicity where we can and this is a
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thought I'd like to leave you with
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there's a name for the time in our lives
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where everything we think we know turns
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out to be wrong where everything is too
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complex everything is too overwhelming
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and we don't know what to do and it's
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called growing up and that's when our
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adventures really begin thank you very
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much
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[Music]
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[Applause]
