OCW
Why Iceland's lava is so hard to control
In December 2023, Icelandic citizens experienced their worst nightmare: a volcanic fissure opened and began spewing lava fountains 100 meters tall. While the molten rock narrowly avoided a small town, Iceland wasn’t willing to leave anyone's fate to chance again and began preparing for future..
TED
What China can teach the world about scaling clean energy
When Yin Yu first visited a major hydropower dam site in China, she expected to see a thriving community. Instead, she found families who'd lost their land and livelihoods to the rising water. It was a powerful lesson in how
TED
My year living with a robot
Imagine a robot moving into your home. How would it change your daily life? Historian Emily Kate Genatowski shares five eye-opening lessons from a year living with her AI-powered robot roommate, from the quirky and chaotic to the surprisingly mundane. Her experiences show that the future of robots i..
TED
The story you're not hearing about AI data centers
The race to build smarter AI is crashing into a physical limitation: the power grid simply can't keep up with the energy demands of data centers. Computer scientist Ayșe Coskun shows how we could turn this problem on its head, transforming AI facilities into virtual batteries that help stabili..
TED
The brilliance of bridges and roads that repair themselves
Your skin heals after a scratch. What if our roads, bridges and cities could self-repair after getting damaged, too? Scientist and engineer Mark Miodownik describes a new class of materials — animate matter — with the potential to sense damage, self-heal and even biodegrade when the job is done...
TED
How to power the world 24/7 — without oil
Deep beneath the Earth sits 50,000 times more energy than all the world's fossil fuel reserves, but accessing it requires using the same controversial technology that oil companies spent trillions to develop: fracking. Cindy Taff left Shell to prove that drilling for geothermal heat instead of ..
TED
