One of those Thinkers is Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal and current CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX.

Jon Favreau – director of the Iron Man movies – wrote the entry on Musk, having used him as a model for the billionaire Tony Stark character.  David Clair and I made a new video about him:

Here’s the new video on Time’s site.

For a more in-depth piece, check out our previous piece about SpaceX and private enterprise in space:

Space: The Private Frontier

Last year was the big year – 200th birthday and the 150th anniversary of the publication of “The Origin of Species.”  This video essay was my first project for Time Magazine’s website.  Produced by Craig Duff and edited by Jim Fields:

Video:  Lincoln and Darwin: Birthdays and Evolution

Link: They Might Be Giants of Science

Time Magazine has released its list of the 50 Best Inventions of 2009.  It’s worth checking out – tons of interesting stuff.

Topping the list is NASA’s Ares Rocket. Yay!  And the Herschel Space Observatory is also on it, which happens to be the subject of our latest video for Time.com.

Herschel is a European Space Agency mission but, like so many space ventures today, it’s an international collaboration.  NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory developed two of the three instruments with which it will study the far-infrared and submillimeter wavelengths – analyzing some of the coldest objects in space, hoping to shed light on star formation.  And, cooled by liquid helium to just a fraction above absolute zero, Herschel’s instruments are themselves some of the coldest objects in space – at least for the next three years, til the helium runs out.

We visited JPL and CalTech to speak to Paul Goldsmith, the NASA Herschel Mission scientist.

For more information about Herschel:

Jet Propulsion Laboratory Herschel Mission Home Page

Herschel at CalTech

ESA Science & Technology: Herschel

Herschel Science Centre

Herschel on Wikipedia

Find out more about the Insect Discovery Lab and how you can bring it to your Bay Area classroom.

I went down to Los Angeles to meet Rob on the set of the show.  Well, actually, it was a location shoot for, I believe, the 7th episode of the first season (yeah, I said, “first”!).

In Rob’s book, an experiment at the Large Hadron Collider causes everyone in the world to experience a bit of their own future.  In the television series, we do not yet know what causes the flashforward but since Sawyer is a fan of science as well as science fiction, we took the opportunity to talk about a story that has captivated the press for the past couple years – that the LHC will create micro-black holes that will swallow up the Earth.

See the video – and many more – at Time.com.