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.
Browse videos featuring experts across a wide range of disciplines, from personal health to business leadership to neuroscience.
Big Think’s contributors offer expert analysis of the big ideas behind the news.
Big Think’s Edge learning platform for career mentorship and professional development provides engaging and actionable courses delivered by the people who are shaping our future.
Hot stuff from Earth's interior
The Virginia Earthquake has had most of our attention this week, but volcanoes continue to be noisy around the world (although no more so than usual). You can get yourself caught up with a lot of the activity in this week's Global Volcanism Program Weekly Volcanic Activity Report . Some of the ...
Well, we've been wondering when we might see more signs of magma rising underneath El Hierro in the Canary Island and now we seem to have got some. Over the last month, the island/volcano has experienced thousands of earthquakes that have waxed and waned in number, but seem to be increasing over ...
Brief post, but we just felt that M5.9 earthquake that occurred in Virginia (see top left) here in Ohio. My third floor office was swaying pretty good, but my wife at home in the village (less than a mile away and on a ground floor) didn't feel a thing. I lived for 10 years in California, Oregon ...
I wanted to get this news out quick because it is for today only. The Ocean Observatories Initiative Regional Scaled Nodes group is sending ROV ROPOS to Axial seamount today to set up some monitoring equipment and they are providing a direct link to the ROV - along with a video stream! So, you can ...
It is a busy Friday, so it seems that today would be a great day for a new Mystery Volcano Photo. If we think back to the last MVP, #39, you'd remember the image of El Teide (top left) in the Canaries that Philip Mulholland landed on the first shot. Maybe it was a little too easy for its own good ...
Now that my rage over losing the post yesterday afternoon has subsided, it's time for me to try to recreate it (but that lost post was most definitely the best post ever written). Things are quite busy right now as classes start in a little over a week here at Denison, so I'm up to my neck in ...
There was some news over the weekend about steaming hills on the Pacific coast of California near Santa Barbara. Now, that might seem very surprising to many as there aren't any active volcanoes on the coast of California, especially near the Los Angeles basin - however, not all steam coming from ...
It seems that the volcanoes of Indonesia are restless this August - and this weekend was no exception. Two volcanoes made the news as unrest reached levels high enough for Indonesia officials to call for evacuations. The first was at Papandayan, a composite volcano on Java that last erupted in 2002 ...
We heard earlier today that Dr. Boris Behncke thought that Etna was heading for its 10th paroxysm via his Twitter account - and I posted about it here in Eruptions. A few hours later, sure enough we could all watch the eruption live on webcams from anywhere in the world - and discuss it with other ...
I'm back in Ohio and will be for the foreseeable future ... less than 3 weeks until classes start again here at Denison. Lots of things to get organized for me over the next few weeks. Today, I thought I'd just quickly post on the latest Global Volcanism Program Weekly Volcanic Activity Report ...
Well, this week at the SERC Teaching Mineralogy, Petrology and Geochemistry Workshop has been busier than I thought (and yes, there was a Red Sox game mixed in), so not a lot of time to blog, but a few brief updates to share: Hawai`i: Lots going on with the ongoing activity at Kilauea that is ...
I wanted to make a quick post on the some new volcano news as I'll likely be a little sporadic with my posts next week. I have my last trip of the summer to lovely Minneapolis for a SERC workshop called "Teaching Mineralogy, Petrology and Geochemistry in the 21st Century", so I'll be busy for a lot ...
If we heard anything this winter from Eruptions readers in California like Diane, it was that it was snowy in the mountains. Very snowy. We're talking 50-100% more than usual sorts of snow levels. This, it turns out, was more than just rumor as the trip I took to Lassen Volcanic National Park was ...
Between 1 and 2 PM (Hawaiian time) on August 3, the floor to the Pu`u O`o crater collapsed in spectacular fashion - and luckily for us, many Eruptions readers were watching the webcams at the time and saw the event unfold. We even have a great time-lapse video of the event thanks to Eruptions ...
Last night on Twitter, some of us geology-types (including Brian Romans, Yorrike, Volcanojw, Ron Schott, Cian Dawson) had a discussion about "big picture" geology projects. We're talking about the equivalent of the Large Hadron Collider or Hubble Space Telescope, but in the realm of geology. Now ...