TED Talks Daily
The secret to scientific discoveries? Making mistakes | Phil Plait artwork

The secret to scientific discoveries? Making mistakes | Phil Plait

TED Talks Daily
11:08
Play episode

Show notes

Phil Plait was on the Hubble Space Telescope team that discovered the first exoplanet ever detected -- until they realized they'd made a mistake. What happened next? Follow along as Plait shows how science progresses -- through a robust amount of making and correcting errors. "The price of doing science is admitting when you're wrong, but the payoff is the best there is: knowledge and understanding," he says. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

More from this show

More
  1. The secret to mastering life's biggest transitions | Bruce Feiler

    How do you navigate life's growing number of transitions with meaning, purpose and skill? Writer Bruce Feiler offers a powerful way to handle uncertain, painful and confusing times…

    22:21
  2. How tech will (and won't) replace your doctor | Zack Abbott and Dhruv Khullar

    There's more health advice available than ever before — and no easy way to tell what’s worth your time. From biotech breakthroughs to smarter cancer screening, physician Dhruv Khul…

    29:00
  3. How to make AI companies pay your energy bill | Ari Matusiak

    Climate expert Ari Matusiak spends his days working to rewire America's energy system, and he has an idea: instead of tech companies building new power plants for their AI data cen…

    15:10
  4. How to use tech to outsmart dictators | Leopoldo López

    In seven years as a political prisoner in Venezuela, activist Leopoldo López kept asking one question: Who holds the keys to freedom? Now the leader of an alliance of dissidents an…

    21:42
  5. Campaigns spend millions to influence voters. This works better | Katie Paris

    Katie Paris quit her career in Washington, DC, to figure out how to make politics feel less like strangers shouting at each other and more like friends looking out for each other.…

    13:22
  6. The wiggly wonder of music | Jacob Collier

    Grammy-winning musician Jacob Collier has a name for the feeling that moves through a great piece of music: the wiggle. Watch him break down the idea into its three parts — melody,…

    12:39
Now Playing
The secret to scientific discoveries? Making mistakes | Phil Plait — TED Talks Daily | Podcast | Josplay Music