‘On the Edge‘ short-listed
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Nobel Laureate Eddie Fischer was born in Shanghai in 1920. Since then, China has emerged as an economic superpower. Now it’s becoming a scientific heavyweight too. Tong Qing belongs to the newest generation of Chinese scientists. She decided to study cancer after a family friend became ill with breast cancer. In this film, she tells Fischer about life and research in China today.
Camelia-Lucia Cimpianu is trying to decide between a career as a researcher or a practising doctor. In this film, she seeks advice from Nobel Laureate Ferid Murad who faced the same dilemma as a medical student in the 1960s. Murad chose the bench, and he subsequently discovered that a gas called nitric oxide (NO) acts as a signalling molecule in the cardiovascular system. It turns out that NO plays a role in many diseases — and possibly in the head […]
Elizabeth Blackburn grew up in Hobart on the Australian island of Tasmania. It was a long journey from there to a Nobel prize and the lab she runs at the University of California in San Francisco. Malaria researcher Clare Smith is also a Hobart girl, and she’s trying to decide whether to follow in Blackburn’s footsteps and move overseas after she finishes her PhD. Karina Zillner is from Germany. Like Clare, she’s in the final stages of a PhD. She’s […]
Oliver Smithies is a toolmaker. He shared the Nobel prize for discoveries that led to the development of knockout mice. Diego Bohórquez uses mouse models to understand how our gut regulates appetite. He has wanted to meet Smithies ever since he moved from his native Ecuador to Duke University in the United States. When the two meet in Lindau they have an instant rapport and soon they’re sharing ideas about their research projects and talking about what makes a successful […]
The Nobel laureates and young researchers who met in Lindau this summer came from all over the world, but they had one thing in common: physics. We filmed five debates on issues that matter to the current generation of researchers. Is dark matter real? How can we solve the looming energy crisis? How is physics perceived by the public? Watch the trailer for a taste of the discussions and disagreements that emerged.
The Hubble Space Telescope has shown us distant galaxies and planets orbiting other stars, deepening our knowledge of the Universe. Nobel prizewinner John Mather works on Hubble’s replacement, the James Webb Space Telescope. He believes we are in a golden age of astronomy. But the young researchers he meets are not convinced. There are too many unanswered questions, they say. For example: what’s causing the accelerated expansion of the Universe? Hear how Mather and fellow laureate Brian Schmidt, who first […]
In the next 100 years or so, we will run out of fossil fuels. In this film, Nobel laureates Mario Molina and Robert Laughlin challenge three young physicists to think seriously about the energy endgame and their children’s futures. Molina believes we can solve the looming crisis through international collaboration — as happened after he showed that CFCs were damaging the ozone layer. Laughlin disagrees. He wants engineering solutions, and says nations will go to war unless we find them.
The morning after CERN announces the discovery of the Higgs particle, three young physicists sit down with Nobel prizewinners George Smoot and Martinus Veltman to digest the news. The students see it as another success for the standard model of particle physics. But Veltman, who helped to shape this model, is cynical. Moreover, Veltman contends that there is no such thing as dark matter. See how the shocked students and Smoot respond to Veltman’s scepticism.
The majority of Nobel prizewinners are men, including the two in this film: Harry Kroto and Dudley Herschbach. This gender imbalance worries the young researchers who join them at a German school to debate the state of science education and how science is perceived beyond the classroom. Kroto tells them about a creationist museum in the United States, which brings up the issue of public trust in science. The young researchers wonder what role they can play.
Working out what happened in the moments after the Big Bang is difficult. Scientists can come up with theories, but in the end they are useful only if they can be tested. Nobel prizewinner Robert Laughlin is passionate about experiments. He challenges the students in this film, and laureate David Gross, to come up with ways to test our big ideas about the Universe. The two laureates make a bet. Watch the film to find out more and to decide […]
