During the industrial era the cost of artificial light fell off a cliff — and the road to illumination was paved with ingenuity and slaughter.
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The challenges of setting out in a new direction can be overwhelming — but we can learn to navigate the inflection moments.
A great many cosmic puzzles still remain unsolved. By embracing a broad and varied approach, particle physics heads toward a bright future.
An excerpt from “Memory,” a primer on human memory, its workings, feats, and flaws, by two leading psychological researchers.
Explore data on electric car sales and stocks worldwide.
Autocrats like Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin fear democracy, yet go to great lengths to present themselves as democratic leaders.
Marketing expert Jonah Berger explains how simple tweaks to your word use can have a huge impact on team communication.
Lasers, mirrors, and computational advances can all work together to push ground-based astronomy past the limits of our atmosphere.
Ethan Mollick, associate professor at the Wharton School, explains why we have to crack the machine-buddy problem.
Even if you aren’t in the path of totality, you can still use the solar eclipse to measure how long it takes the Moon to orbit Earth.
For human-centered leadership to achieve a “tipping point,” people, productivity, and profits must be aligned.
Joseph Campbell argued that nearly every myth can be boiled down to a hero’s journey. Was he right?
Big Think talks to Konrad Feldman — founder of advertising tech innovator Quantcast.
There are only a precious few minutes of totality during even the best solar eclipses. Don’t waste yours making these avoidable mistakes.
“Chicago May” was a classic swindler who conned her way around the world in the early twentieth century. She was also a sign of hard times.
If you guessed “staying up all night to play video games,” you’d be right.
Perrikaryal uses an EEG to translate her brain activity into beating bosses in “Elden Ring” and beyond.
A rift in thinking about who should control powerful new technologies sent the brothers on diverging paths. For one, the story ended with a mission to bring science to the public.
His career helped define humanity’s place in the world by bringing us “a little closer” to our ape relatives.
Ditch the old brain vs. heart assumptions, and instead think about a heart-led brain.
There are a wide variety of theoretical studies that call our Standard Model of cosmology into question. Here’s what they really mean.
A growing body of research suggests that optimism plays a significant role in promoting both physical and mental well-being.
A college education currently provides roughly a 10% rate of return, beating the long-term performance of equities.
In logic, ‘reductio ad absurdum’ shows how flawed arguments fall apart. Our absurd Universe, however, often defies our intuitive reasoning.
As the world warms, trees in forests such as those in Minnesota will no longer be adapted to their local climates. That’s where assisted migration comes in.
A small Ohio town tried to escape America’s addiction to rectangular grids. It didn’t last long.
NASA’s only flagship X-ray telescope ever, Chandra, still works and has no planned successor. So why does the President want to kill it?
The truth may be out there — but it’s not in these close encounters of the third kind.
The Reitoff principle gives us permission to “write off” a day and intentionally step away from achieving anything.
Physicists just can’t leave an incomplete theory alone; they try to repair it. When nature is kind, it can lead to a major breakthrough.