Leaving our Legacy in the Cosmos | Stamatis Krimigis | TEDxNTUA

Video Description

Gazing up at the night sky, we can’t help but wonder whether we are alone in the cosmos. Certainly, our existence is infinitesimally small compared to the vastness of the Universe. But how can we leave our mark to this world? How can we preserve the memory of humanity? In this TED Talk, Dr. Krimigis narrates the journey of the two Voyagers, the only human-made spacecrafts that have ventured beyond the limits of our solar system, now traveling through interstellar space. Alongside them, they carry the Golden Record, a phonograph record that encapsulates the memory of humanity, or at the very least the portion of it that we have chosen to share. Stamatios Krimigis, Vice-President of the Academy of Athens, is a distinguished physicist renowned for his work on NASA space missions, including Voyagers 1 & 2. Holding a Ph.D. from the University of Iowa, he has been associated with Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory since 1968. Honored with numerous awards, including recognition from the US Senate in 2018, an asteroid was named 8323 Krimigis in his honor. His extensive research, comprising over 640 papers, spans solar, heliospheric, planetary, and interstellar studies. Author of two Greek books, he served as President of the Scientific Committee for the World Congress of Space Sciences (COSPAR Athens2022), hosting 2,700 scientists globally. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx