The famous framework ranks civilizations by energy use — but ignores a critical factor that can halt their progress.
Sixty years ago, a little-known philosopher challenged how science understands life. His perspective is finding new relevance in the age of artificial intelligence.
Astronomer Lisa Kaltenegger spoke with Big Think about how “the colors of life” could leave detectable traces on distant planets.
NASA’s Caleb Scharf talks with Big Think about life’s long experiment in expansion.
Big Think spoke with astronomer David Kipping about technosignatures, “extragalactic SETI,” and being a popular science communicator in the YouTube age.
A conversation with Annaka Harris on shared perception, experimental science, and why our intuition about consciousness is wrong.
The “Doctor Strange” director says mystery shifts your worldview — “not in a metaphorical sense, but in a deeply experiential one.”
A fresh view of intelligence — spanning living systems from bacteria to human civilization — challenges the idea that it’s merely problem-solving.
A new SETI study shows how far the field of technosignatures has come.
Life might be more common across the Universe than the “Hard Steps Model” suggests.
Astronomer Adam Frank reflects on some responses to his recent appearance on the Lex Fridman Podcast.
The nation-state had a good run, but its usefulness may have come to an end.
The problem for galactic-scale civilizations comes down to two numbers.
“I was stunned. Here in front of me was the original apparatus through which a new vision of the world was slowly and painfully brought to light.”
We need a “theory that explains the evolution of evolution,” argues theoretical physicist Sara Imari Walker.
Astronomer Adam Frank asks: With so many extraordinary claims, why can’t anybody produce the proof?
How did life on Earth begin? Is there life on other worlds? An answer to either question will reflect heavily on the other.
It’s deceptively tricky to distinguish living systems from non-living systems. Physics may be key to solving the problem.
By focusing on the role of human experience, we may uncover new insights on the fundamental structure of reality.
Finding life beyond our Solar System requires understanding its host planet.
In “Life As No One Knows It,” Sara Imari Walker explains why the key distinction between life and other kinds of “things” is how life uses information.
In the 1970s, James Lovelock proposed that the biosphere was not just green scruff quivering on Earth’s surface. Instead, it managed to take over the geospheres.
A perfect map is as useless as it is impossible to create.
Physicists have increasingly begun to view life as information-processing “states of matter” that require special consideration.
The future belongs to complexity.
33 years ago, the theoretical biologist Robert Rosen offered an answer to the question “Is life computable?”
The preservation and celebration of life, and not greed, should be our primary decision-making value.
In 2023, data from the James Webb Space Telescope soured hopes that TRAPPIST-1 c had an atmosphere. That disappointment might have been premature.
NASA’s minivan-sized drone is scheduled to search for signs of life on Titan in 2034.
An interview with Lisa Kaltenegger, the founding director of the Carl Sagan Institute, about the modern quest to answer an age-old question: “Are we alone in the cosmos?”