the universe is... >> stephen: the universe is a wonder, and his book "wonders of the universe" is outow. brian cox's program, the wonders of the universe, begins wednesday on science. check it out. it's as wonderful as the universe. we'll be r

why complex life is uncommon in the universe. here an unnecessary degree of presumes build into the title meaning that if we have 200 billion stars in our solar system, and then you multiply that by the mere infinity number of other solar systems, in the universe how can you even -- how can you feel justified entitled a book "rare earth: why complex life is uncommon in the universe." you have no way of knowing it. >> how much time do you have. i can explain the many reasons why we said that may be the case. we think many of the statements that are present -- estimates that are present about how common intelligence life my be are wildly overestimated and a lot of this is simple an ateam by to us show there are many other factors one was to take into account besides those that are traditionally used an entire astronomical. one you mentioned, the numbers is the one we see the most of. >> do you want to comment on what peter waters just said? >> i would say that the important thing is that we can go out and begin to search for life el

and ways the rest of us can understand not only is he a professor of theoretical physics at the city university of new york he's also the host of the t.v. show so i thought i science physics of the impossible on the science channel as well as the host of two radio programs broadcast on over one hundred forty stations its current work is focused on finishing einstein's project of creating a unified theory to explain how everything works the universe. and he is this the co-founder of something called string field theory which will get into later his latest book is called physics of the future a science will shape human destiny and our daily lives by the year twenty one hundred pleased to welcome from los angeles a man on the cutting edge of science dr michio kaku dr kaku welcome. glad to be on the show thank you very much i'm very very glad to have you with us i understand that when you were eight years old you had an a with an a that's hard to do on this . that's right some people remember the instant that princess diana died i remember the instant when albert einstein guy it was in all the news

on finishing einstein's project of creating a unified theory to explain how everything works in the universe. and he is this the co-founder of something called string field theory which will get into later his latest book is called physics of the future a science will shape human destiny and our daily lives by the year twenty one hundred pleased to welcome from los angeles a man on the cutting edge of science dr michelle cottle welcome. glad to be on the show thank you very much i'm very very glad to have you with us i understand that when you were eight years old you had an a if an a that's hard to do on this. that's right some people remember the instant that princess diana died i remember the instant when albert einstein guy he was in all the newspapers everyone was talking about the fact that he could not finish his greatest work it was to be the theory of everything an equation one inch long which would allow was too cold to read the mind of god one theory which would describe everything from the big bang formation of the stars the galaxy people maybe even love and i said to myself that

i'm getting information from the university. in the radio station right now, so all i have is e-mail and text messages from people, but that's all i'm getting. that's basically what we have. >> are you on campus right now? >> yes, sir. i'm in the radio station on campus right now. >> we're looking at the screen that shows what was e-mailed around campus right now. we'll read it along with you. "person with a gun reported near dietrick." i think that is one of the residence halls there. it says clearly, "stay inside. secure doors. emergency personnel responding. call 911 for help." based on your being there on campus, given what happened so tragically in 2007 with the deaths of 33 people, what has changed since that time in terms of precautions that exist in case a gun was on campus? >> well, everyone is definitely more alert in situations like this. we have very, very good alert systems. our police department is outstanding. and we put a lot of faith in them knowing that they're out there doing whatever they need to do to keep us

bombshell allegations against the university of miami athletic program. says he spent millions on athletes. meals, even prostitutes. >>> good morning. it is thursday, august 18. welcome to "american morning." >> that was quite something. anderson. >> he was giggle. >> that's the first time i have ever seen him completely lose it. it was funny. >> a lot to talk about this morning. we have breaking news. a suicide truck bomber targeting the u.s. military base in afghanistan. it happened in the city of gardez a few hours ago. officials say the truck ripped through the main security gate. killed two afghan guards. nine others were hurt. and the taliban is taking credit for the attack. >> less than two weeks after downgrading america's aaa credit rating standard and poor's is the target of a justice department investigation. that's according to "the new york times." the feds want to know how the credit rating agency somehow missed the mortgage crisis. you will remember s&p along with the other major credit agencies gave those mortgage backed securities very hig

so, at some point, we think we're going to hear from the university officials. they'll have a choice to make sure in the next hour or two if this person is not seen, if there is no indication that this person is still on campus, and there is no confirmation there ever was a gun, then at some point, the virginia tech folks will have to decide whether to lift this lockdown or not. now, these three young people were attending a camp, a summer camp at the university. i'm told the three were from the washington, d.c., area. and they said they saw this person near what's called the new residence hall east. now, the university has a facts and figures little publication here. and this i'm holding up so you can look at it briefly, this is a picture taken at night, a black-and-white picture of what the new residence hall east looks like, and this is where the three young people said they thought they saw this person this morning with what they thought was a gun. so, that's really -- we're all just waiting to find out. everybody here, all the federal officials here are also

taking a dip with some of the most dangerous creatures on earth. captions paid for by nbc-universal television >>> from nbc news world headquarters in new york, this is "nbc nightly news" with lester holt. >>> good evening. after months of bloody stalemates and setbacks in the fight to reclaim their country, libyan rebels tonight have fought their way into tripoli and are waging an all-out assault on the quickly disintegrating regime of moammar gadhafi. as we first reported here last night, the battle for typically had begun. rebel fighters have made steady progress in their offensive on the capital. there are reports they have captured a son of gadhafi. tonight spontaneous celebrations are under way in typically in anticipation that the end is near. u.s. officials tonight have told opposition leaders quite plainly, start planning for the post-gadhafi era. there is late word gadhafi himself is now urgently seeking to negotiate with the opposition. nbc's ief foreign correspondent richard engel has made his way into tripoli and joins us tonight from around a very jubilant crowd. richa

this time around the university did not take any chances. sent out e-mail's, text messages and tweeds. haute families are getting pretty of support from the academic community. >> before they were rested, the students here at uc-berkeley, their professors were monitoring in the news coming out of peron including urging the government to release them. they are not the only ones doing that. so is president obama, mohammad ali and sean penn. that is just to name a few. >> 9:53 a.m.. we are back with more in a couple of minutes. rough fifth the debt >> dr. phyllis coming up next. dr. -- filled is coming up

198 was the universal declaration of human rights. for the first time the concept of genocide was formulated as a legal term. nuremberg as an international war crime tribunal was something new. so all these standards were not established yet, and these institutions, like the international red cross or the vatican, at the time had a very different understanding of guilt and responsibility as we have nowadays. and my book is not about judging, but it's about understanding. thank you very much. [applause] >> if there are any questions, please, raise your hand and wait until i come to you so that we can all hear your question. >> oh. um, hi. there was something in today's paper, i think, about rudolph hess' bones. did you see the article? >> yes. >> it said the thing about how he only went to england to make himself important, not to actually do any good. and i just wondered what you thought about it. >> well, i didn't research about this, but t interesting that you're mentioning it. the president of the international red cross was a swiss

the f.b.i. >>> what university has the distinction of being the top party school in the u.s.? new princeton review service says ohio university, in athens, ohio, tops the list. ohio was number two last year and made the list 12times since 1997. rounding out the top five, the university of georgia. the university of mississippi. the university of iowa. and the university of california, u.c. santa barbara. here is the so-called stone cold sober schools. bringham young, wheeton wesley. u.s. military academy west point. that is a list that mike and i will keep a close eye on when it's time for our kids to apply to school. >> yeah. chico state was once on the list. no way you're going there. >> so serious now. >> good for them. congratulations, i guess. >> maybe not. >> enrollment may be going down. who knows? we'll see. >> the fog is still with us. the clouds. it will clear by noon. at the coast, it will take a while longer. it's thin from emeryville to san francisco. thick enough to cause flight arrival delays. check out the flight tracker anytime. this will repeat. look from the

we want to thank the university of arizona press. it was exciting to see my first book on the shelf that came out. here's how you can contact me with questions and i tossed it back to peter. >> we take questions at the end after steve has a chance to talk. have to do something here. hi am not used to these computers. >> up in the quarter. click on that. the little one. there you go. >> let me introduce stephen strom. steve is a ph.d. astronomer from harvard university and he spent much of his career in new york, massachusetts and various other places back east and moved to to sun in 1998 and has been working for the national observatory. he has a distinguished career in astronomy but he is a renaissance man in a sense. he is combining both sides of his brain and spent the last 20 years as a photographer primarily landscape photography and has used that talent combined with other writers, putz to produce a series of books and photographs with some very interesting text to go with them. he will talk about the formation of the solar syst

let's go straight to the university of miami. david, an incredible story here. poke with the hurricanes football coach who was just hired last september. now he's inherited this mess. what's he saying? >> reporter: well, this should be a great time for al golden, starting a new program here, trying to take this program back to a national championship form. there was a lot of expectations when he arrived here on campus, and now he says in the past couple of days he's been having to deal with things he had never heard about before, and now he says his role in this investigation is to encourage all players to come forward with the truth. he also has the added responsibility of keeping them all focused on doing what they are supposed to do, and that's play football. listen. >> i think, if anything, it's going to bring us closer together. again, 90% of the guys have nothing to do with this as it happened in the past, so for the most part inside here we're moving forward. yesterday i said nobody wants to get to the truth quicker than i do, and the way you do that is yo

it's unfolding right now at the university of miami. sure, the world is no stranger to sports scandals. powerhouse programs like ohio state, and southern cal and auburn are some of the most recent to receive black eyes for various rule violations or other investigations. the latest investigation by one journalists is filled with extraordinary allegations. coaches and players broke ncaa rules for eight years, between 2002 and 2010. former booster, nevin shapiro spilled the goods that he gave gifts to the 72 players and recruits. the gifts are shocking. hundreds and thousands in cash, and prostitutes and cars and paid trips and jewelry. shapiro also says he offered bounties for injuring opposing players. and he says in one case he paid for an abortion for a woman that he claims a miami hurricane player got her pregnant. charles robinson spent 11 months investigating the allegations, and he audited business records to examine the claims. here is what you should know about nevin shapiro. he was convicted for a role in a ponzi scheme. he firs

>> i think we could try to understand the universe and god's ways. tely it's mysterious and particularly the things you pointed out, famines, floods, natural disasters, these things have confounded theologians and saints for years. this is probably something we won't be able to answer the question of why he allows these things to happen. >> stephen: why do you think his approval ratings are so low right now? isn't that kind of the fault of guys like you? aren't you kind of god's pr team and haven't you dropped the ball? not to judge. >> i think frequently when people are thinking about god's performance rating and what they think about god they are thinking of how things are in their lives. >> stephen: right. i'm not happy at all times. everything is not working out perfectly for me right now. >> well, i would say if you are a christian and i know that you are, you look at jesus and things didn't always work out well for me either. >> stephen: but he knew they would eventually. >> and we know they will for us in the afterlife. >> stephen: how do i kno

my name is ray sedgwick in a peek at the university of maryland. and in my naÏve opinion, it seems the biggest problem nasa has this actually pr. he does appreciate the fact that you're preaching to the choir and it runs fine on twitter or the web are also part of the choir. nasa does a lot in terms of outreach, but the aerospace community is very small. it's a very niche market at. and it seems to me that our military advertises. you know, the general public knows that the military does because they see advertising for it. you reach out to the kids in the hope is that they are going to get excited in the information was disseminated. at the kids don't vote. it's the parents that though. maybe there's something that restricts nasa from being able to make commercials, but i think you need to get creative and signed away from that. the biggest problem is really exciting the adult public and letting them know what nasa is doing and what they're doing for their kids than with the technologies they really benefit from. >> well, you're correct. there is t

the university of california at davis is part of the elite ten- campus u.c. system, the jewel in the state's education crown that includes berkeley and ucla, ranked among the top public universities in the world. cutbacks and tuition hikes here have jolted davis chancellor linda katehi, who is trying to preserve her schools' high reputation. she thinks the state legislature's failure to fully fund education reflects a shift in values. >> what is happening with higher education, it is not anymore as high in the public's mind and not as high on their priorities list. and as we deal with the economy that is not going very well, i think the public worries about their well-being, about their healthcare, about their ability to live well after they retire, >> reporter: with undergraduate tuition at u.c. now more than $11,000-- up nearly 10%, on top of an 8% jump last year-- many students are hurting. to lessen the crisis, and to increase revenue, u.c. davis has promoted its summer school program, where the classes are smaller. it has encouraged admission of intertio

his latest book, "the clockwork universe," immerses us in be 17th century london, a dirty and what dangerous place with a few bright men who opened their minds to new ways of thinking about the world. they believed that a world well designed by god would follow simple, elegant rules, and they set out to find them. the work was done by robert hook, ed hand haley, robert boyle and most of all, isaac newton. at the same time, they had competitors. newton was one of the most well known and the hardest to get along with. his feud with look in its -- they both discovered calculus -- lasts decades. newton hated sharing his discoveries, and when he did publish them, he did nothing to make his writing easy to read or to understand. lucky for us, edward dolnick does just the opposite, showing the reader the culture and thought of the period thereby making clear the workings and impact of the new discoveries. at the beginning of this book, the residents of london are afraid the end of the world is just around the corner, especially in 1666. but in the end their world improved. perhaps we can hope the s

, or c.s.u., the largest university system in the country.eclining state support in a poor economy, c.s.u. trustees recently raised tuition 12%, on top of a 10% raise earlier, jumping tuition to about $6,000 a year. nearly half the students in the system receive financial aid, so they effectively don't pay tuition. but for the others, the raises have been serious. robert corrigan has been president of san francisco state for 24 years, and he's never seen it this bad. >> what i think we're seeing is, increasingly, the middle class being priced out of campuses like san francisco state. >> reporter: he says state universities like his were designed to attract a wide, diverse student body-- nearly anyone could attend. >> we can't provide that access any longer, and we can't project that we'll continue to have the quality faculty that we need in order to educate them. >> reporter: and so does the physical plant-- roofs that need replacing are left that way; tiles fall off the ceiling in creative arts classrooms, where the faculty has tried to patc

i don't hear the university of miami saying this stuff is out of left field. minally. they seemed to corroborate it as well. i think yahoo! sports did a terrific, tremendous service to college football which is completely -- i'm no not saying this for hyperbole, is out of control. >> you put your finger on a potential weakness. it's true that he looked at former players and checks. nef slin shapiro is serving 20 years for this giant ponzi scheme and he said that shapiro had an ax to grind, that players abandoned him. he's ticked off. i guess it's perfectly natural for someone to question his credibility. >> it's natural to question someone's credibility. a lot of murder cases depend on witnesses who have unsavory reputations, who have committed crimes. as far as i know i don't think shapiro is getting a reduced sentence for this. as i say, they didn't simply take his word and put it out as a story which is very common today because a lot of stories are based on one rumor or one guy yapping hills mouth off. they checked records. some of what shapiro said did com

this sounds like a great deal for the university and the hotel. the hotel needs to sell rooms, the university needs beds for students. but students say it may just sound like getting a luxurious deal. >>> reporter: for the price of a dorm, san jose state students will get a nice hotel room with maid service, access to the large luxurious pool, meals from the island grill, and if they're old enough, night caps at the bamboo lounge. it's all part of a deal between the university and the airport clarion hotel to ease a student housing crunch on campus. >> we are going to do our very best to replicate what occurs on campus at the hotel. that means our staff will be living at the hotel, offering the same academics, social communities, events that we offer here. >> reporter: what's there not to like? >> sunday afternoons. >> reporter: plenty says this senior. >> previous years there was always vacant rooms. this year short staffed not having enough rooms for people pushing students who have been here out doesn't seem right. >> reporter: there is a bumpe

yes and i will explain why you see there is this rational if not purely scientific outlook on the universe a process can either be very weak or if there is at least one similar occurrence of then it is a regular phenomenon for some time scientists believe that the solar system is something unique but nowadays we find that most stars have planets or furthermore the formation of planets is an inevitable process that occurs when a giant molecular cloud forms into a star about a thousand planets located around different stars have been discovered to this date over five hundred stars are known to have planets a million planets are projected to be discovered within the next ten years with moreover some of the recently discovered planets not only resemble the earth by composition but also seem to have. an oxygen necessarily indicates the presence of life of so planets a regular phenomenon meanwhile the universe consists of about a hundred billion galaxies each of them has roughly one hundred billion stars. these are immense a multitude of almost all stars might have their planets we've already di

i don't know for some time i stuck with the idea that we were alone in the universe that we need and same like the desire to discover extraterrestrial life forms was essentially a desire to answer some of the questions that troubled as all questions related to health technology and survival if we do indeed discover a civilization outside of earth a highly advanced civilization we may gain some technology from this technology it would be fantastic look at how the world has changed over the past forty to fifty years that changes were radical people who remember the first era planes taking off and the first televisions are still alive and on the other hand we have the internet it has only been fifty years now imagine meeting the civilization that is ahead of us by one hundred or two hundred years of discoveries they must have made up unimaginable this is especially relevant considering that technologies can be transmitted to was via signals. that there what sort of signals were there was there but the area of science that searches for extraterrestrial civilizations is divided into three

. >>> so what is the difference betweea college and university? the answer may surprise you. >>> tired of the same old boring breakfast? then i'll show you how to make something delicious and different. >> and much more, next on "teen kids news." >>> mwanzaa: welcome to "teen kids news." i'm mwanzaa. >> and i'm jessica. here's our top story for this week. >> nearly 100,000 people across the country are on an important waiting list. they need an organ transplant. in some cases, their lives depend on it. felipe has the story of katy holland, a pennsylvania teen who made it to the top of that list. >> reporter: just a few years ago, the crowded streets of new york city would have been too much for katy to handle. >> she'd walk, like, one block and be, okay, we'll sit and relax now. so this just wouldn't happen ever. >> reporter: that's because katy was weighed down by a bad heart. >> i was born with half my heart and it was flipped backwards in my chest, so it had half of the capabilities of a normal heart. >> reporter: katy couldn't do many things a

there could be punishment for the university. those being discussed is a thing called a death penalty. it's an extreme measure that would ban the team from further play for a while and that would have a huge immaterial pact on the university. a huge impact on this community. most people think it would likely be too severe and doesn't seem that that would be the way the ncaa would go. it is something being discuss and that organization the ncaa says that it will determine what happens to the university, whether there is to be punishment by some time early next year. >> mark, when we're talking about what's next, there's also a possibility here that the players would face laults, i understand trying to get back some of that cash or gifts? >> reporter: that's something that's been reported for the last couple of days. the bankruptcy trustees overseeing the company that sha spiro ran is defungt. there are claims from investors who say they were bilked. those trustees are indicating they might go after some of the players if again the

the police talked to the university officials, they immediately put the campus in lockdown and just a few moments ago, virginia tech sent another alert out to people on campus keeping the lockdown in effect. they say police are continuing to investigate, is their word, investigate the campus, that there have been no sightings of this person and that they are asking people to stay inside while this more extensive search is going on on campus. so our understanding is that the police from the campus and from surrounding jurisdictions are looking all over the campus, probably beginning to look inside campus buildings to see if they find any trace of either this person or a weapon, and so far, there has been neither. so at some point today, if no trace of either the person or a weapon is found, the university officials are going to have to decide whether to lift this lockdown but of course, they were very quick to act because as you recall, i the 2007 ooting, the much more serious incident at virginia tech, the university was criticized for not responding soon enough, even though the unive

we came from in the universal sense it's best to discover the rest of the universe from space and so i think it's inevitable that will continue trying to do that in fact i think . it's or it just was it just very briefly and maybe ambitions not just for space tourism but to spend more time in space and people actually spending their lives there i mean is that likely. this man unlikely i think and time it's inevitable and fact i congratulate the authorities and russia continue to give space exploration high priority their forward thinking you know you know i don't think you can stop people from wanting to do risky things and just one thing though risky what about for those a spin on this rocket crashed on to earth with more and more space travel just briefly one of the risks of that happening in a densely populated area cities being at risk very briefly in the future i think that it is inevitable in a certain point where one can obviously minimize the risk and so the best thing to do is put launch sites in isolated areas which is where most countries have done so hopefully. serious ri