What’s the Big Idea? Does Kepler-22b really exist? Is there life on this planet? Could we inhabit it? How would we get there? These are a few of the many […]
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The announcement this week that two groups of scientists have narrowed the search for the elusive Higgs Boson made headlines around the world. Next year, physicists actually hope to find […]
The world’s largest array of radio telescopes may soon be awarded to South Africa. Besides revolutionizing our knowledge of the cosmos, the project could spark a scientific renaissance.
Last week, The Wall Street Journal published my opinion editorial, “The ‘God Particle’ and the Origins of the Universe – The search for a unifying theory is nowhere near over.” Subscribers […]
The world’s most expensive and complex ground-based telescope Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) offers unique views of deep space, including images of two galaxies colliding.
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The world’s most expensive and complex ground-based telescope Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) has just offered its unique views of deep space, including images of two galaxies colliding, here:
A couple of months ago, physicists at CERN, Switzerland, claimed they had found a fatal flaw in Einstein’s theory of relativity. Their findings immediately lit up the Internet with activity, […]
Scientists say our galaxy would have burned out long ago if it depended exclusively on its own resources to generate new stars. So what keeps the lights on across the universe?
In each generation, our most brilliant thinkers lay the foundations on which lesser lights will build a new, bloated bureaucracy of the mind. Can experimental philosopher Jonathon Keats help us break the cycle?
It was a dark and stormy night. By starting A Wrinkle in Time with the most famous “bad” opening in literary history—the same Edward Bulwer-Lytton line later adopted by Snoopy—Madeleine […]
Its been about a month since the earth-shaking news came out that perhaps Einstein was wrong, i.e., the discovery that 15,000 neutrinos seemed to outrace a light beam, contradicting Einstein’s […]
One of the major changes that’s come with the new site is that here, every post has to have an accompanying image. I’m not complaining – I had always meant […]
If we could talk to the animals, we might gain insight into what it means to communicate with an extraterrestrial species.
The MLS All-Star game tonight pits league All-Stars against Manchester United. Game time is 830pm EST on ESPN with Thierry Henry and David Beckham suiting up for the MLS side. […]
For almost 2000 years, Western Art has groped about in the darkness, laboring under the Ptolemaic misconception that Earth (and humankind) is at the center of all things. Until now.
Harvard University product Mike Fucito scored two clinical goals last night for the Seattle Sounders in their 4-1 victory over CONCACAF Champions League opponent Comunicaciones of Gautamela. Fucito was a […]
While some inventions will remain forever confined to the pages of science fiction novels, much of what we’ve dreamed up in books – warp drive, star gates, portals through space and time – will one day make the leap in to living rooms everywhere.
Astronomers have been actively searching for extraterrestrial civilizations for the past 50 years, but so far have come up empty. Now a top Russian astronomer predicts the “eerie silence” will be broken by 2031.
Carl Sagan describes the so-called “Drake Equation,” named after Frank Drake of Cornell, in the program Cosmos, episode 12 “The Encyclopaedia Galactica.” The Drake Equation is used to calculate the […]
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Einstein released many theories during his scientific career, but it was the publishing of his two theories of relativity that literally shook the foundations of physics. The theories proposed by […]
Looking forward to the end of the world requires a divorce not only from reality, but from the awe that our infinitesimal place within it inspires.
So the Big Think’s AGE OF ENGAGEMENT is advertising a showing of Carl Sagan’s hugely influential film CONTACT. The film will be shown, appropriately enough, as an excellent example of how […]
Major scientific endeavors like space exploration require decades of planning and funding sources that can weather economic downturns. Will the results of the Google Lunar X Prize competition stand that assumption on its head?
BY JASON SILVA “We are enraptured prose-beings raised to the highest power”. – Walter Benjamin, On Hashish Timothy Leary and Buckminster Fuller called themselves “performing philosophers”, using the power of […]
N.A.S.A.’s Kepler Space Telescope detected 1,235 alien planet candidates in its first four months of operation. Alien solar systems with multiple planets appear to be common in our galaxy.
A cutting-edge experiment hunting for antimatter galaxies and signs of dark matter that was very nearly cancelled is finally poised to voyage into orbit aboard the next-to-last space shuttle mission.
A theory that disputed the existence of dark matter—that mysterious energy causing the universe to expand at an increasing rate—has been disproved by evidence from the Hubble telescope.
A group of astrophysicists believe they have discovered the first potentially habitable exoplanet, named Gliese 581d. And there could be billions more just like it.
Last Friday, donors for the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute received a letter from CEO, Tom Pierson stating that the Allen Telescope Array was being placed into a state […]
The Earth has a long shelf life, but it is, alas, temporary. Before the Sun explodes in 5 billion years, there are a number of extraterrestrial threats to our planet, from rogue black holes to magnetars.