A TED attendee finds her social soulmate in the Delta Connectivity Space. Photo: Bret Hartman

There are two kinds of people who fly: those who want to talk to the person sitting next to them and those who want a quiet ride. Luckily, Delta has created a sensory experience for both kinds of travelers in their Connectivity Space, outside the theater at TED2014.

For the connectors, we’ll start with a tour through the Social Soul exhibit. You give the guy at the door your Twitter handle and step into the many-mirrored room. As the lights dim, your handle appears on the ceiling above you. Suddenly, the room bursts with images and words pulled directly from your account, reflected and surrounding you from all angles, as a low voice intones some of the words. Colors swirling, your Twitter world comes alive around you, and the experience feels a lot like being dropped into the center of your own brain. There’s a bridge, and the lights dim again, and when the images reappear, they’re no longer yours. Your Social Soulmate is now being revealed to you: the person whose Twitter content Delta believes is the best match. The show culminates with the appearance of your Social Soulmate’s handle above you on the ceiling, and as you step out of the dark room, you feel a particular sense of kinship to this stranger you realize you’re seconds away from Tweeting.

The space is an abstraction of an idea Delta believes in: that they’re about helping people connect and start a conversation. It’s one of the reasons they were the first airline to allow electronic devices in the air. You can listen in on one of these conversations between two TED attendees en route to Vancouver traveling in Delta’s new Innovation Class. Eric Migicovsky, CEO of Pebble Technology, was seated next to TED Fellow James Patten (visit his amazing workspace) for a conversation about technology and mentorship.

Now, for a radically different experience, take a few steps over to Delta’s Privaseat prototype and have a seat in the neat, self-contained chair. It feels a little more like a futuristic pod bed than an airline seat. Your body immediately relaxes as you gaze into the blue screen just ahead. It displays three lines: Privaseat is listening, generating a noise filter, and creating volume control. The white noise filter coddles that other kind of traveler: the one who simply wants to relax and get where they are going, without bags under their eyes.

An attendee test-drives the Privaseat. Photo: Bret Hartman

Everyone fantasizes about what it would be like to lift a building, run faster than a speeding bullet, or temporarily turn on their invisibility. However, not everyone takes the time to consider the scientific ramifications of utilzing such spectacular gifts.

For instance, did you know that being invisible would render you blind? The transparent retina in your eye would be unable to reflect light, therefore providing no information for your brain to interpret as “sight.” More gruesomely, if you could fly above the clouds at any respectable speed, your face would experience extreme heat due to friction. Sure, you could slow down, but then you might get a little chilly at such high altitudes (assuming you could breathe.) You could fly below the clouds, but you’d need to be quite nimble to avoid the millions of bugs that would inevitably obstruct your path! The list goes on….

In the new six-part series “If super powers were real,” Texan educator Joy Lin explores the scientific and logical fallacies inherent to six highly desired superpowers — super speed, super strength, invisibility, body mass, immortality and flight. The dynamic voice performing each lesson is esteemed voice-over actor James Arnold Taylor. Taylor is also the voice behind Fred Flintstone, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Leonardo and countless other extraordinary, animated characters.

A quick introduction to the series:

A look at the conundrum of immortality:

What if we could manipulate body mass:

A deeper look at the downsides of invisibility:

What would really happen with super strength:

And what if you could move at super speed:

This post originally appeared on the TED-Ed Blog. Read more about the program »

Ever wanted to fly like a bird? The 3D video game AERO not only gives you a chance to see what it’s like to flap your wings and take off — it also teaches the principles of physics at the same time. In the game, which was developed with the help of TED-Ed speaker Bill Nye (watch his talk “Sending a sundial to Mars”), the player is an albatross exploring the caves and islands of a beautiful oceanic world. While you play, you get lessons on aerodynamic principles like lift, drag, thrust, and terminal velocity. The game even has a molecular view, so the player can fully understand how flight works.

GameDesk developed a prototype of the game in partnership with Iridescent Learning, the National Academy of Sciences and the Office of Naval Research. Bill Nye stepped in to help with the science, and the makers of the game took six months to make sure that the albatross simulations were spot on. GameDesk also took the game on the road to schools, to make sure it fully resonated with kids.

AERO has taken to Kickstarter to raise money to integrate more challenges and features into the game.

If they raise $100,000 they can have the game out on the iPad next year. If they raise $1 million, they plan to introduce the game on Android and X-Box Kinect as well, and to bring it to schools across the country on iPad minis. As of this morning, the project had 492 backers offering up $7K.