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There's a new TED-Ed series that tackles questions that we don't know the answer to. In this first episode, TED Curator Chris Anderson asks: How many universes are there? And Why can't we see evidence of alien life? On the latter question, his answers are somewhat pedestrian and even outlandish, but Anderson takes a wide swath at the possibilities and includes some genuine solutions, including the Great Filter and postbiological existence.

ou like to ask Wikipedia tougher questions than today's simple keyword searches allow? A prototype plug-in that can do just that will be demonstrated at the World Wide Web conference in Lyon, France, next month. Called Swipe - loosely short for "searching Wikipedia by example" - the software aims to let users of the online encyclopedia answer complex questions that most search engines would stumble over. For example, trying to figure out "which actresses won academy awards when they were under 30 years old in the last 25 years?" becomes relatively simple when using the program.

What is learning for if it doesn't lead to wisdom? That's a question worth asking in light of an ongoing cosmological street fight being waged (remarkably) in broad media daylight. The rumble tumbled into the public eye with Lawrence Krauss' new book A Universe From Nothing. But before the scathing New York Times review and an acerbic rebuttal in The Atlantic, this physics vs. philosophy smack-down was brewing in academic back alleys for decades. At stake is a critical question living deep inside the heart of modern foundational physics: What are the limits of science?

I am a bit odd. I will rarely if ever answer a question on StackOverflow (SO). If I do its because I didn't have any other easy way of answering the question. This is entirely by design.

Could computers become cleverer than humans and take over the world? Or is that just the stuff of science fiction? Philosophers and scientists at Britain's Cambridge University think the question deserves serious study. A proposed Center for the Study of Existential Risk will bring together experts to consider the ways in which super intelligent technology, including artificial intelligence, could "threaten our own existence," the institution said Sunday. "In the case of artificial intelligence, it seems a reasonable prediction that some time in this or the next century intelligence will escape from the constraints of biology," Cambridge philosophy professor Huw Price said.

Back in August I wrote a post covering a rash of reports on the worrying rise of bad science in TED talks. A couple of months later TED pulled the following TEDx talk after the neuroscientist Bradley Voytek posted a question about it to Quora: "Is Randy Powell saying anything in his 2010 TEDxCharlotte talk or is it just total nonsense?". The top voted response was from Stanford theoretical physicist Jay Wacker and began:

"Businesses invest billions of dollars annually in market research studies developing and testing new ideas by asking consumers questions they simply can't answer. Asking consumers what they want, or why they do what they do, is like asking the political affiliation of a tuna fish sandwich. That's because neuroscience is now telling us that consumers, i.e., humans, make the vast majority of their decisions unconsciously. Steve Jobs didn't believe in market research. When a reporter once asked him how much research he conducted to develop the iPad, he quipped, "None. It isn't the consumers' job to know what they want." And according to some measures, the iPad became the most successful consumer product launch ever and Apple went on to become the most valuable company of all-time."

Can robots work as scientists? At first, this seems like a silly question. Computers are pervasive in science, and if you walk into a large university lab today, there's a good chance you'll find a fully fledged robot working alongside the lab-coat-wearing humans. Robots fill test tubes, make DNA microarrays, participate in archaeological digs, and survey the oceans. There are entire branches of science-climate modeling and genomics, for example-that wouldn't exist without powerful microprocessors. Machines even play an integral part in abstract fields of discovery. In experimental mathematics, humans rely on computers to inspire new lines of thinking and investigate hypotheses. In 1976, mathematicians used computers to prove the four-color theorem, and machines have since been used in several other proofs.

If you're taking a break from work to read this article, I've got one question for you: Are you crazy? I know you think no one will notice, and I know that everyone else does it. Perhaps your boss even approves of your Web surfing; maybe she's one of those new-age managers who believes the studies showing that short breaks improve workers' focus. But those studies shouldn't make you feel good about yourself. The fact that you need regular breaks only highlights how flawed you are as a worker. I don't mean to offend. It's just that I've seen your competition. Let me tell you: You are in peril.

Allison sez, "Michael Geist provides some commentary on yesterday's announcement by Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada and Access Copyright. His conclusion: 'For those that sign the model license, the new AUCC - Access Copyright deal is simply more of the same: AUCC and its institutions pass along copyright costs to students, Access Copyright gets millions in revenues despite ongoing questions about its repertoire (with thousands used to lobby against education copyright reforms and most of the money going to foreign collectives and publishers, not authors), and the potential for digitally-oriented changes within Canadian higher education heading back to the back burner.'"

Today, Dr. Kaku addresses this question: MIT researchers have created a new imaging system that can acquire visual data at a rate of one trillion exposures per second. What can this super camera enable us to see?

AT 7 years old, Gilad Elbaz wrote, "I want to be a rich mathematician and very smart." That, he figured, would help him "discover things like time machines, robots and machines that can answer any question."

AT 7 years old, Gilad Elbaz wrote, "I want to be a rich mathematician and very smart." That, he figured, would help him "discover things like time machines, robots and machines that can answer any question."

Robert Harvey asks: Occasionally I see questions about edge cases on Stack Overflow that are easily answered by the likes of Jon Skeet or Eric Lippert-experts who demonstrate a deep knowledge of a particular language and its many intricacies. Here's an example of this from Lippert's MSDN blog: You might think that in order to use a foreach loop, the collection you are iterating over must implement IEnumerable or IEnumerable. But as it turns out, that is not actually a requirement. What is required is that the type of the collection must have a public method called GetEnumerator, and that must return some type that has a public property getter called Current and a public method MoveNext that returns a bool. If the compiler can determine that all of those requirements are met then the code is generated to use those methods. Only if those requirements are not met do we check to see if the object implements IEnumerable or IEnumerable. This is cool stuff to know. I can understand why Eric knows this; he's on the compiler team, so it's explicitly in his job description to know. But how do mere mortals, those of us on the outside, find out about stuff like this?

It has taken more than a decade, but PayPal - the coaster of the Internet that has had a downhill ride with the wind at its back pretty much since acquisition - is finally under serious threat. It may not be showing up in PayPal's numbers yet. Indeed, by the time you start to see these things on the balance sheet, the damage is irreversible. The question is whether it can still be reversed now. I'm arguing no for three big reasons. The first is the decreasing relevance of eBay. PayPal was never founded to be merely the payment arm of eBay, but eBay was so dominant in ecommerce at the time and the need for digital payments on the platform was so great that that became the bulk of the business.

Inquire is an iPad app that combines the popular Campbell Biology textbook with a knowledge representation and reasoning system that answers questions. The transition to digital textbooks should be more than a superficial change in medium, and Inquire is an example of how AI technology can help ensure the transition to digital textbooks leads to improved learning for students.

Andrew Pole had just started working as a statistician for Target in 2002, when two colleagues from the marketing department stopped by his desk to ask an odd question: "If we wanted to figure out if a customer is pregnant, even if she didn't want us to know, can you do that?

Do you know what is the most common question that I get every day on social media, forums or email? "How to get insights about my Google Analytics data?" People approach me saying that they have a Google Analytics account for years, but they look only at page views or the number of visitors they get.

The winners of the "Badges for Lifelong Learning" competition were announced this past week at DML2012. It's hardly surprising, with it being the focus of the research competition, that much of the conference -- formal sessions and informal conversations -- was devoted to the questions surrounding badges: what are they for? what will they do? what practices will they reward? will badges change what we learn, what we value? how?

A new biologic logic gate based on proteins can perform binary calculations, serving as the first "cellular calculator," researchers say. Various combinations of components can be arranged into circuit elements, leading to specific metabolic processes inside a cell. The setup can answer mathematical questions in a similar fashion to a computer. Bioengineers led by Martin Fussenegger at ETH Zurich built a molecular logic gate using two substances as the transistor elements: the molecule phloretin, which is used to activate nerve fibers and comes from apples, and the widely used antibiotic erythromycin. The substances work as Boolean switches.