Visit to get our entire library of TED Talks, transcripts, translations, personalized talk recommendations and more. Is there life on Venus? Quantum astrochemist Clara Sousa-Silva makes the case for a new way to seek and […]
Visit to watch more groundbreaking talks from the TED Fellows. Astrophysicist and TED Fellow Sarah Rugheimer searches for aliens — but not the cartoony green kind. She's looking for extraterrestrial microbes by studying how these […]
The ground beneath your feet is home to a massive, mysterious world of microbes — some of which have been in the earth's crust for hundreds of thousands of years. What's it like down there? […]
Humans produce 300 million tons of new plastic each year — yet, despite our best efforts, less than 10 percent of it ends up being recycled. Is there a better way to deal with all […]
Bacteria "talk" to each other, sending chemical information to coordinate attacks. What if we could listen to what they were saying? Nanophysicist Fatima AlZahra'a Alatraktchi invented a tool to spy on bacterial chatter and translate […]
Viruses have a bad reputation — but some of them could one day save your life, says biotech entrepreneur Alexander Belcredi. In this fascinating talk, he introduces us to phages, naturally-occurring viruses that hunt and […]
Spider venom can stop your heart within minutes, cause unimaginable pain — and potentially save your life, says zoologist Michel Dugon. As a tarantula crawls up and down his arm, Dugon explains the medical properties […]
There are about a hundred trillion microbes living inside your gut — protecting you from infection, aiding digestion and regulating your immune system. As our bodies have adapted to life in modern society, we've started […]
Oceanographer Penny Chisholm tells the story of a tiny ocean creature you've probably never heard of: Prochlorococcus, the most abundant photosynthetic species on the planet. A marine microbe that has existed for millions of years, […]
How deep into the Earth can we go and still find life? Marine microbiologist Karen Lloyd introduces us to deep-subsurface microbes: tiny organisms that live buried meters deep in ocean mud and have been on […]
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