August 4, 2013

What’s the Big Idea?

One Big Think editor has taken a vacation from idea-hunting (for the moment at least), and nonetheless stumbled upon a big idea, pictured above. Can you name the big idea?

bigthinkeditor

A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people

One Big Think editor has taken a vacation from idea-hunting (for the moment at least), and nonetheless stumbled upon a big idea, pictured above. Can you name this big idea?

A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people

Close-up of an analog weight scale needle pointing to zero grams, with a black background.

Hard Science

You’re made of energy: The strange truth about where mass comes from

“A person’s mass is made not of ‘stuff’ in the way we normally think about it, but rather our mass is made of energy.”

An illustration of Galileo Galilei with a historical text and a lunar sketch alongside.

13.8

Why seeing Galileo’s original experiments left me speechless

“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.”

Global geoid map with colorful variations representing differences in Earth's gravity field. The scale ranges from -100 (low) to 100 (high). Europe's position is central.

Starts With A Bang

Scalar fields: the secret sauce of theoretical physics

Scalars, vectors, and tensors come up all the time in physics. They’re more than mathematical structures. They help describe the Universe.

Collage of geopolitical symbols, featuring a close-up of a man's bald head, China's flag, a globe highlighting Taiwan, and circuit patterns.

The Present

Why the USSR and China fell behind the US in the Chip Cold War

Both nations made missteps, but China still has a chance to make up lost ground.

Person examining a petri dish with tweezers, holding small colored objects, against a dark background.

Health

Are microplastics really destroying our health?

They’re in our brains, hearts, and blood — but what are they doing to us?

Up Next

First Talking Robot to Go to Space

The humanoid robot, named Kirobo, is scheduled to blast into space around sunrise from an island off southern Japan on board a supply ship bound for the International Space Station.