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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.

  • Will people in a couple of generations be unable to distinguish between real and virtual reality? What would it even mean to be able to experience false realities that feel true? Welcome to the world of holographic pink flamingos!
    Modern Fears For Modern Times
    Marcelo Gleiser
    What happens when you ask a lot of really smart people what worries them? You get lots of very good reasons to worry about the future of our civilization and planet. Commentator Marcelo Gleiser is your guide to this fascinating exercise in intellectual anxiety.
  • This artist's impression shows the surroundings of the supermassive black hole at the heart of the active galaxy NGC 3783 in the southern constellation of Centaurus.
    Do Black Holes Exist?
    Marcelo Gleiser
    Stephen Hawking wants to do away with black holes (as we know them) so he can save the two pillars of modern physics: general relativity and quantum mechanics. At stake is our understanding of the nature of space and time, and how matter affects, and is affected by, both.
  • An illustration of what the Philae lander will look like at work on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
    When Science Beats Fiction
    Marcelo Gleiser
    The European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft is on track to rendezvous with a far-away comet and land a probe, a first. It will be a major turning point in our history and one that promises to address key questions such as the origin of water and life on Earth.
  • The Problem With A Clockwork Universe
    Marcelo Gleiser
    Is life (the universe and everything) just a series of predictable events, a chain of physics problems stringing all the way back to the Big Bang? Commentator Marcelo Gleiser takes on determinism.
  • A Tribute To Failure
    Marcelo Gleiser
    Success is what we all strive for in life. But the truth is that behind every success sits a pile of failures. And that's just the way it should be, says commentator Marcelo Gleiser.
  • We think that life came from non-life, from the increasing complexity of chemical reactions between biomolecules present on the primordial Earth. But what about the universe? How did it come to be if there was nothing before?
    Why We Need A Science Capable Of Explaining Itself
    Marcelo Gleiser
    What was there before the universe began? It's not a question we can really answer with the science we have at hand, says commentator and physicist Marcelo Gleiser.
  • Probing The Unknowable Mysteries Of The Brain
    Marcelo Gleiser
    Is the brain a sort of quantum computer? What is consciousness? Marcelo Gleiser's brain is buzzing with big questions after participating in a conference that asked if quantum physics plays a role in how we think.
  • Part of the <a href="http://www.eso.org/sci/facilities/alma.html">ALMA array</a> on the Chajnantor plateau of Chile points skyward to the Milky Way, our own galaxy. The <a href="http://www.eso.org/public/images/alma-jfs-2010-10/">center of our galaxy</a> is visible as a yellowish bulge crossed by dark lanes, which are themselves huge clouds of interstellar dust.
    Why We (Should) All Love The Stars
    Marcelo Gleiser
    Life on Earth is connected to the stars in ways we couldn't imagine a thousand years ago. Physicist Marcelo Gleiser says the journey to understanding our relationship with the cosmos has transformed how we see ourselves and all that surrounds us.
  • The hunt for dark matter started with astronomer Fritz Zwicky's observations of the Coma galaxy cluster in the 1930s. This recent image of the Coma cluster combines optical and X-ray observations from <a href="http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2013/coma/">the Chandra mission</a>.
    A Darker Universe
    Marcelo Gleiser
    The hunt for dark matter started in the 1930s and shows no signs of ending any time soon. But physicist Marcelo Gleiser says our inability to pin down this key component to reality only makes it more alluring.
  • If <em>Gravity</em> carries a clear message, it is that the universe is hostile to life.
    Space Is Not Our Friend
    Marcelo Gleiser
    The fragility of life in space gets a closeup in Gravity, the hit movie featuring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. Commentator Marcelo Gleiser says that, despite its anxious narrative pace, Gravity is, at its heart, a celebration of life and the importance of our own very small Earth.
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