Marcelo Gleiser
Marcelo Gleiser is a contributor to the NPR blog 13.7: Cosmos & Culture. He is the Appleton Professor of Natural Philosophy and a professor of physics and astronomy at Dartmouth College.
Gleiser is the author of the books The Prophet and the Astronomer (Norton & Company, 2003); The Dancing Universe: From Creation Myths to the Big Bang (Dartmouth, 2005); A Tear at the Edge of Creation (Free Press, 2010); and The Island of Knowledge (Basic Books, 2014). He is a frequent presence in TV documentaries and writes often for magazines, blogs and newspapers on various aspects of science and culture.
He has authored over 100 refereed articles, is a Fellow and General Councilor of the American Physical Society and a recipient of the Presidential Faculty Fellows Award from the White House and the National Science Foundation.
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Does a mind need a body to exist? To be happy? Science fiction has been wrestling with these questions for years and commentator Marcelo Gleiser suggests that we heed Hollywood's latest warning.
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The right person can make all the difference in your life. Marcelo Gleiser has benefitted from more than one mentor in his life. Now he gives his time to others and encourages you to do the same.
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How much can theories tell us about nature? For one thing, they can't tell you the truth. A recent cosmic discovery about the earliest moments of the Big Bang highlights this conundrum.
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Evidence of ultra-fast cosmic expansion forces us to confront the possibility that the multiverse exists. But how will we ever know? It's a problem that could leave us tangled up in knots.
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Scientists last week revealed evidence of gravitational waves from the very beginning of the universe. Commentator Marcelo Gleiser asks: Are we closer to understanding creation itself?
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Is civilization on the brink of collapse? Every age has its seers who falsely claim that all is rotten. But it's also true, as a new study notes, that history is littered with examples of implosion.
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A remarkable new book brings Plato back to teach us how to make our lives matter and why philosophy is here to stay. Commentator Marcelo Gleiser can't recommend it enough.
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The gift of believing in imagination, enjoying it as if it's real, usually falls away in adulthood. But keeping the door open between the imagined and real worlds can show us the way forward.
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As we learn more about the brain, we should ask whether learning too much might, ultimately, compromise our freedom. Simulating reality could be a threat to reality, warns commentator Marcelo Gleiser.
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The whole debate between science and religion is hitched to the wrong tree, says commentator Marcelo Gleiser. Common ground exists: each is a manifestation of humanity's attraction to the mysterious.