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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Big Think’s contributors offer expert analysis of the big ideas behind the news.
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Cutting-edge physics in all its remarkable strangeness
My book "Beyond Einstein" takes readers on an exciting excursion into discoveries that have led scientists to the brightest new prospect in theoretical physics today--superstring theory. Simply answer the statement below for a chance to WIN an autographed copy of Beyond Einstein and an autographed ...
Right now our most advanced robots are not quite as smart as we would want them to be. One of the most popular—Honda’s humanoid robot, Asimo—is quite sophisticated but you won’t be seeing one in your home anytime soon. If you want to lease one however, simply make out a check to Honda for $150,000 ...
"Remarkable claims require remarkable proof." -- Carl Sagan The "multiverse" idea—once thought to be so crazy it only belonged on late night television—has now become the dominant theory in all of cosmology. The idea now dominates conversations in science circles and it seems you cannot avoid ...
A press release by BP (British Petroleum) today announced that “the volume of oil and gas being collected by the riser insertion tube tool (RITT) containment system at the end of the leaking riser is estimated to be about 3,000 barrels a day (b/d) of oil and some 14 million standard cubit feet a ...
When I was a child and decided to become a physicist, I never dreamed that I would be traveling all over the world with a TV film crew, or lecturing to audiences in different countries. Back then, I just wanted to learn about physics and the universe. For example, I just finished lecturing in ...
You might have heard me speak about the equation that eluded Einstein for the last 30 years of his life: the one-inch equation that will in a sense summarize everything we know about the physical laws governing the universe we live in. I believe that one day, perhaps the destiny of all intelligent ...
The most widely accepted theory is that the universe will eventually come to an end. It will most likely do so trillions of years from now, when the entire span of the cosmos is empty and just a notch above absolute zero. We sometimes refer to this fate as the "Big Freeze.” Why, you ask? Out of ...
If you are a registered user of Big Think, you have the opportunity to win an autographed copy of one of my books and an 8x10 autographed color photo. The book choices include "Physics of the Impossible," "Parallel Worlds," "Visions," "Hyperspace," and "Beyond Einstein." To be entered into the ...
Let’s say you get in a bad car accident and the front end of your car gets smashed. What do you do? Most likely, you call your insurance company, get some quotes, and take your damaged car into the body shop. The mechanics assess the damage and order you some new headlights, fender, bumper ...
The distances separating the stars are so vast that it would take a very advanced civilization—perhaps thousands or even millions of years more advanced than ours—to bridge those distances. In other words, any extraterrestrial civilization that visited us, hypothetically or in reality, would be ...
I recently wrote an opinion editorial in the Wall Street Journal about the recent eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano. This eruption was a bit different than most volcanic eruptions in that the hot magma continually came into contact with large quantities of glacial ice, causing ...
I would like to thank everyone who has been so enthusiastic about being part of SCI-FI Science: Physics of the Impossible on the Science Channel. We have been floored by the warm reception after we announced that fans can be part of the program. We usually interview the fans at the beginning ...
Back in the 1960s the IBM 1401 was both state of the art and an engineering marvel. It filled up an entire room and weighed thousands of pounds; in today’s money it would cost about $1.5 million. The old 1401 could perform just over 4,000 calculations per second and at the time was virtually ...
As with anything else, there's good news and there's bad news. The bad news is that the earth is continuing to heat up—this past decade was in fact the hottest decade ever recorded in the history of science. Last year, China surpassed the United States as the largest producer of carbon dioxide ...
In my book Visions , I state that nanotechnology was first proposed by Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman in a seminal but witty article entitled "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom." Feynman envisioned the theoretical capability of nanotech in 1959, stating: “I want to build a billion tiny factories ...