All Articles

People with synesthesia “inhabit a strange no-man’s-land between reality and fantasy. They taste colors, see sounds, hear shapes, or touch emotions in myriad combinations.” We recognize this condition in infants, as well as artists, who seek to defamiliarize perceptions of reality.   

On January 19-21, the University of Michigan’s Erb Institute and the Union of Concerned Scientists hosted a major summit of more than 100 social scientists, scientists, professionals, and political leaders […]

It is a horrible irony when many of the world’s farmers, supplying food to local and global markets, are themselves on the verge of starvation, says Gates. We need another green revolution.

Figures like Bill Clinton and Arianna Huffington have spoken publicly about the deteriorating effects of sleep loss in our personal, political and work lives. When will we learn to rest well?

An invisibility cloak? That sounds like science fiction. Until now. Scientists at the University of Texas at Austin unveiled the results from an experiment in which they were able to […]

Watch an extended version of our interview with Lynda Weinman, co-founder of Lynda.com: What’s the Big Idea? Lynda Weinman quite literally wrote the book on web design. She was 28 […]

The chance that Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominee fell since last week after Newt Gingrich beat him by 12 points in Saturday’s South Carolina primary. After the primary, […]

Our university system is bloated, inefficient, too expensive, and increasingly out-of-sync with a digital society and global economy. Dr. Lawrence Summers, former Secretary of the Treasury and President of Harvard, is […]

Julian Assange: Establishment outsider. Nobel Peace Prize nominee. Talk show host? Apparently so. The Australian founder of controversial website WikiLeaks will be at the helm of “The World Tomorrow,” a series […]

Philanthropy is a tricky business. To begin with, there’s the question of which group, among the millions of needy and suffering people in the world, to help. Even more complicated is […]

Chefs Make Change, a loose coalition of superstar chefs, is leveraging the power of micro-donations to raise a million dollars for charities, many of them focused on how, what, and whether people eat. 

Researchers have ‘cloaked’ a three-dimensional object, making it completely invisible for the first time. The research on microwave light could carry over into the visible spectrum.

At the New York Times’ “Schools for Tomorrow” conference, Larry Summers expressed his disappointment with our education system. The former Harvard President argued that, “The world is changing very rapidly… […]

A California-based insurance giant has released an app that will allow its nine million clients to access their medical records on Android OS. The iOS version is coming in a few months.

What’s the Big Idea? The solution to global poverty, according to Jeffrey SachsDirector of The Earth Institute and professor at Columbia University, is a mix of government and the private and […]

Archeologist and entrepreneur Larry Coben describes how he was able to spend very little money, enhance preservation and create an enormous community benefit in a Bolivian village.  

Researchers have found that using automated Twitter accounts, or Twitter bots, can bridge social gaps by creating more connections between users than a human community left alone.

After all the media  drama and the newspaper headlines and the cable news show hoopla over Newt Gingrich’s massive win in the South Carolina GOP primary last week has finally […]

Today’s high-end computer chips typically hold 16 processors, or cores, but MIT engineer and entrepreneur Anant Agarwal has created one with for 100. He is aiming for a 1,000 core chip.

Scientists at a British university have created the world’s first soap sensitive to magnetic fields. The product could could calm concerns over the use of soaps in oil-spill clean ups.

Wait until you see what happens when the debate over copyright is extended beyond music, film, video games and books and into the realm of physical objects like sneakers and toys.

It has been clear for some time that the presidential election would be about economics. The killing of Osama bin Laden, the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, and the fall […]

In about five billion years, scientists estimate, the Earth will be engulfed and burned up in the expanding radius of the Sun as it evolves into its slightly cooler but much larger phase.

It’s unusual for a website to charge for its services, admits Lynda Weinman, but the fee “allows us to have a sustainable business model where we can pay contributors.” Her approach represents a compromise between the open ideals of the web and the financial needs of the people who fill its pages.

In the last four months, three large spacecraft have fallen to Earth, including a Russian probe loaded with toxic fuel. As low-Earth atmosphere gets more crowded, who is looking out for us?

There are a lot of cool posts on BIG THINK today. Austin Allen’s on stuff the great literary critic Harold Bloom declared dead is a kind of an ironic appreciation.  The […]

Barack Obama looked like he enjoys being the president of the United States last night. There was a lot that could have been improved upon in his third State of […]

Future missions to space should concentrate on eliminating threats to Earth, expanding civilization beyond our planet and harvesting extraterrestrial energy resources. 

A rise in temperature of a few degrees could benefit colder regions by lengthening farming seasons, introducing new crops and changing immigration patters. It’s a big ‘could’.

The largest solar storm since 2005 has engulfed the Earth, surrounding it in solar radiation capable of disrupting satellite communication. This time, however, the Earth seems to have lucked out.