In a podcast from this March, Director of the Hayden Planetarium Neil deGrasse Tyson discusses his new book, Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier.With his trademark humor and sharp insights, Dr. Tyson offers an eye-opening perspective on the importance of space exploration for America’s economy, security, and morale in the 21st century.

From Darwin’s finches to the Dodo, island birds have inspired groundbreaking scientific theories. The genomic revolution and increased access to islands are now enabling a new age of island exploration by researchers.

Theoretical physicist Dr. S. James Gates, Jr. uses mathematics to understand string theory and superstring theory, candidates for a single, unified theory of the universe. In this talk from a recent SciCafe, Dr. Gates describes the basics of string theory and talks about the discovery of computer codes—like those used in web browsers—embedded in the equations of superstring theory.

The SciCafe took place at the Museum on January 4, 2012.

Podcast: Download | RSS | iTunes (49 mins, 59 MB)

In recent years, a radically new vision of the universe has emerged: only 4 percent of it consists of every planet, star, and galaxy. The rest—96 percent—is completely unknown. How did astronomers reach this cosmos-shattering conclusion, and what are they doing to find dark matter and an even more bizarre substance called dark energy?