Breakthrough Prize Panel Discussion

How does the human brain work?

What have we learned about how the brain works in the last few decades?  How much do we know about how we think, feel, remember, sense, imagine, and act?  What can the neurology of simple organisms tell us about our own brains?  What are the main challenges to our understanding? Are there breakthroughs on the horizon?  Can neuroscience ever crack big philosophical mysteries like consciousness and free will?

Speakers: Past and current Breakthrough Prize winners including Alim-Louis Benabid

What are the origins of life?

Thanks to evolutionary theory, genetics, and molecular biology, we are learning more and more about the workings of life.  But what have we learned about how it started?  Did it begin on Earth, or was it seeded from space?  Must it be based on carbon and water?  Could it exist elsewhere in the solar system?  And how common is it likely to be in the Universe?

Speakers: Past and current Breakthrough Prize winners including Jennifer Doudna, Gary Ruvkun, and Robert Weinberg

Why is the Universe comprehensible?

Our brains were built for survival in the Savannah.  Yet we have grasped quantum uncertainty, 4d space-time, and the most abstract mathematics. Why is the Universe comprehensible?  Why should its laws conform to our ideas of simplicity or beauty?  Are there limits to human understanding  - and, if so, are we nearing them?  Does quantum mechanics really bring knowledge/consciousness to the center stage?

Speakers: Past and current Breakthrough Prize winners including Nima Arkani-Hamed, Andrei Linde, Saul Perlmutter and Richard Taylor