We live in a time of information abundance, which far too many of us see as information overload. With the sum total of human knowledge, past and present, at our fingertips, we’re faced with a crisis of attention: which ideas should we engage with, and why? Big Think is an evolving roadmap to the best thinking on the planet — the ideas that can help you think flexibly and act decisively in a multivariate world.
A word about Big Ideas and Themes — The architecture of Big Think
Big ideas are lenses for envisioning the future. Every article and video on bigthink.com and on our learning platforms is based on an emerging “big idea” that is significant, widely relevant, and actionable. We’re sifting the noise for the questions and insights that have the power to change all of our lives, for decades to come. For example, reverse-engineering is a big idea in that the concept is increasingly useful across multiple disciplines, from education to nanotechnology.
Themes are the seven broad umbrellas under which we organize the hundreds of big ideas that populate Big Think. They include New World Order, Earth and Beyond, 21st Century Living, Going Mental, Extreme Biology, Power and Influence, and Inventing the Future.
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The development of non-fossil fuel energy to reach grid parity
What's the Latest Development? Researchers from the US Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory examined current water supplies -- fresh and salty groundwater sources as well as seawater -- to determine how much could be reasonably used by farms dedicated to growing algae for ...
What's the Latest Development? As part of their Ventus project, a team of researchers at Arizona State University will reward the person who can provide the most usable information about a power plant's location, carbon dioxide emissions, and other operational features with a trophy, author ...
What's the Latest Development? A team of materials chemists at MIT have found an effective and relatively affordable way to use electrolysis to extract iron from ore, which could lead to cleaner and cheaper methods of steelmaking. The process itself -- which involves passing current through a ...
By Zane Friedkin (guest blogger) It is beginning to look like the 21st century may indeed turn out to be the “endgame of the human race,” as Arundhati Roy predicted in 2009. There is now near-universal consensus among scientists that the threat posed by global warming is severe and that if ...
What's the Latest Development? Researchers at the University of Illinois say they have come up with a new way of making batteries that could change the way electronics and vehicles are powered. The key is in bringing the two battery electrodes -- the anode and the cathode -- closer together at a ...
Let’s say you’re just now tuning in to reports that the world will end on December 21 when the Mayan calendar resets to zero. Maybe you’re one of the 35 million Americans who fear it will really happen. Maybe the prospect of solar storms, rogue planets and devastating floods is a welcome ...
What is the Big Idea? The energy crisis is one of the greatest economic and social problems of our time. How can greenhouse gas emissions be reduced at a time when developing nations are increasing consumption? How can development of alternative fuels be encouraged to ease dependence on oil and ...
Every Wednesday, Dr. Michio Kaku answers reader questions about physics and futuristic science. If you have a question for Dr. Kaku, just post it in the comments section below and check back on Wednesdays to see if he answers it. Today, Dr. Kaku addresses this question: Will solar power replace ...
James Cameron's films may all cover wildly different terrain -- the distant, futuristic planet Pandora in Avatar, an ill-fated Edwardian-era passenger liner in Titanic, and an alien-embattled underwater oil platform in The Abyss -- but each is united by a singular vision. Like all auteurs, Cameron ...
What's the Big Idea? Shall we go hungry or go cold? That is the unfortunate question that some developing countries have had to face as food crops such as wheat and corn have been used to create bio fuels. While some of these 'first generation' bio fuels have been produced with some success ...
What's the Big Idea? "We are children when we talk about the cosmic scale of energies throughout the entire universe," says theoretical physicist Michio Kaku. But with a little (okay, a lot) of human ingenuity, we may one day have the ability to harness the energy of the stars. Watch here: ...
Every Wednesday, Michio Kaku will be answering reader questions about physics and futuristic science. If you have a question for Dr. Kaku, just post it in the comments section below and check back on Wednesdays to see if he answers it. Today, Dr. Kaku addresses a question posed by Anna Warren: ...