What is Big Think?

We are Big Idea Hunters…

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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What's the Latest Development?

35 years after a mysterious radio signal was received on Earth, bearing characteristics that set it distinctly apart from the background noise of outer space, humanity will offer a reply. And you can contribute to that cosmic reply via Twitter: "All tweets composed between 8 p.m. EDT Friday (June 29) and 3 a.m. EDT Saturday (June 30) tagged with the hashtag #ChasingUFOs will be rolled into a single message, according to the National Geographic Channel..." The Aercibo Observatory will work to encrypt the messages, creating a complex but noticeable pattern that could easily be recognized as separate from random, natural noise.

What's the Big Idea?

In 1977, the Big Ear radio observatory at Ohio State University picked up an intense 72-second radio transmission coming from the direction of the constellation Sagittarius. While the signal was 30 times more powerful than ambient radiation from deep space, astronomers have never detected a repeat transmission from the same spot in the sky. But if aliens did send the signal, they are likely to be an extremely advanced civilization. "Scientists say the signal would have required a 2.2 gigawatt transmitter, vastly more powerful than any existing terrestrial radio station."

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