The future of economic growth lies in the population centers of developing nations, but will emerging-market cities be healthy enough to drive rapid economic growth?
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Build enough wind farms to replace fossil fuels and we could seriously deplete the energy available in the atmosphere, with consequences as dire as severe climate change.
As the railroads shaped the American West in the 19th century, a new electrical generating and transmission system for the 21st century will leave its lasting mark on the desert.
Barack Obama called for cutting U.S. oil imports by a third before 2025, in a speech aimed at defending his energy agenda from Republicans seeking to limit fuel efficiency standards.
Google is offering to add a social twist to Web searches, in a bold offensive to prevent Facebook and other social-networking companies from gaining an upper hand in Web innovation.
Eight business and social media experts explain how businesses can—and indeed must—use social media to expand their sphere of influence, attracting customers and shaping opinion.
We’re faced with puzzles every day in life. That’s why it’s so important to keep your mind flexible, says NY Times Crossword Editor Will Shortz, recounting a time he had to use his puzzle solving skill in an airport parking garage.
On each day of Shakespeare’s birth month, Big Think will examine a different way that studying Shakespeare enriches the various disciplines—from neuroscience to business to psychology and beyond.
Design Thinking is one of the most fashionable concepts in the innovation world these days. But could it really save industries that are on the fast road to extinction?
Over the years, dozens of portraits have claimed to be the true visage of the bard–including a new contender, the Cobbe portrait. But can we ever know which one is real?
Computer software helps prove that Shakespeare was no different than the writers of today’s crime scene dramas. He collaborated with other writers.
Film became the literature of the 20th century. Likewise, video games will take over in this coming century, especially once they learn to listen to us.
Lewis’ book “Moneyball” is about how people get misvalued and how, in turn, warped value systems encourage warped behavior in people. “Often when people get paid, makes no sense at […]
You are looking at the first color image of Mercury from orbit. It was taken by NASA’s Mercury Messenger spacecraft, which is on a mission to “unravel the history and evolution of the Solar System’s innermost planet.”
The promise of biotechnology is essentially limitless, says Silver, describing biotech “bad boy” Craig Venter’s plan to engineer trees that create liquid fuel instead of sap.
President Obama announced a plan to cut dependence on foreign oil by one-third by 2021. Retired four-star general Wesley Clark explains just how detrimental our addiction to oil is and […]
With koanic brilliance, Robin Sloan recently summarized the difference between last century’s old command-and-control journalism and today’s. It was, of course, a tweet: “The way to cover big news in […]
I paid more taxes on my blogging income than General Electric paid last year. That’s not because I make so much money blogging, but because GE literally paid no taxes […]
How does the oil industry transform America’s landscape? This was partly the topic of Edward Burtynsky’s book “Oil.” Here, he discusses his stunning photograph of the Kern Oil Field in […]
Florida’s Republican governor has a creative way to demoralize and demonize public sector workers: mandatory drug testing for all state employees who answer to the governor and all prospective hires […]
Governor Rick Scott has done the Madness in Madison one better—instead of wasting time paying off political supporters and other intermediaries, Scott has decided to institute “RickyCare” in the state […]
Perhaps it was unintended, but two or three weeks ago, at the height of the protests that was gripping the great cities of Egypt, the Director General of the BBC, […]
Using data from the Large Hadron Collider experiment, a team of scientists has observed new behaviour of an exotic “B meson” particle that should shed light on a new physics.
No single analysis can discern which nuclear power plants in the U.S. are most at risk for a disaster, but the probabilities of an accident damaging a reactor core have been roughly penciled out.
After taking a vow of silence for 17 years and refusing any transportation, save his own feet, for 22, John Francis is speaking out about the lessons of conservation and planetary harmony.
While early searches at the Large Hadron Collider did not turn up long-sought-after particles, there is good reason to believe that supersymmetry will be discovered, says Dr. David Toback.
A new generation of climate models and the visionaries who wield them show that our carbon legacy will last far longer than most of us realize, long enough to interfere with future ice ages.
The innocuous white vapour trails that criss-cross the sky might have contributed to more global warming so far than all aircraft greenhouse gas emissions put together.
An artificial silicon-based “leaf” that collects energy in much the same way as a natural one could provide a day’s worth of power for homes without access to an electricity grid.
N.A.S.A.’s Messenger spacecraft, which entered orbit around Mercury on March 17, sent its first images of the hot planet’s surface, including its previously unseen southern pole, back to Earth.