The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence is again combing space for radio signals broadcast by other intelligent life. To overcome its budget problems, it will share telescopes with the Air Force.
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Welcome to What Not to Think About. On this blog, Big Think’s editors will pick the stories that are making headlines elsewhere but which we encourage you to ignore. Why? […]
A couple days ago I posted a piece, The Climate Change Winds May Be Shifting, about how the evidence linking climate change and extreme weather events is getting stronger, […]
The shuttle program having been terminated and a budget crunch looming, the national space program lacks a clear purpose. One astronomer says NASA should focus on saving the planet.
I don’t think so! In the last one hundred years Germany has made two attempts to own, control and dominate Europe. Each has been repulsed. Can this third attempt succeed? […]
NASA has found a planet outside our solar system which could sustain life. But does it? As research continues, a deluge of new exoplanets may be discovered thanks to miniature satellites.
Many companies extol the value of work-life balance for their employees, but the reality for senior executives? There isn’t any.
A growing number of people are making their own fuel using cooking oil which restaurants, for now, are happy to give away. Is this a sustainable plan or just a crowd of eccentrics?
Today marks my last blog for Artful Choice. It has been an exciting year of writing about decisions small and big and the forces that help shape them and make […]
The yearly U.N. climate conference currently hosted by Durban, South Africa, is seeing yet another disappointing result. As nations leave the Kyoto protocol, there is no new agreement.
Thanks to the serendipitous placing of NASA space satellites, scientists have confirmed that the tsunami which struck Japan in March was doubly powerful because of a rare phenomenon.
So I promised I would do a post based on what we can learn about courage from the philosopher of manliness Harvey Mansfield. But it turns out that there’s a […]
Author Blake Nelson’s new book Dream School comes out today from Figment.com, the company’s first book to be printed on physical paper. Figment.com was launched 1 year ago today, Dec. […]
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 […]
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s grip on power is more tenuous than ever following big losses in last Sunday’s parliamentary election. This is not surprising, since Putin does not actually have much […]
I’m not a big science fiction reader, but I admire how the genre has just enough of a toehold in reality that it feels plausibly weird. It stakes out the […]
CASTLE has been around for a few years now. In fact, it started at the University of Minnesota, moved south to Iowa State University, was shared between Iowa State University […]
$6 million to fund an institution that would be capable to educate an infinite amount of students throughout the world sounds ambitious if not crazy. Nevertheless Shai Reshef, founder and […]
A Swiss government report finds that unauthorized file sharing is not a major problem and people should continue to be allowed to download copyrighted content for personal use.
Not only is China the country moving fastest to deploy the new internet protocol, IPv6, it is converting itself into the leader in developing advanced computing centers.
Mishandling personal data could cost multinationals billions of euros in fines and social media users would have a ‘right to be forgotten’ under proposed new E.U. data protection laws.
Using lots of brains each doing small tasks to together complete major jobs is not new but is enjoying a renaissance. Examples include Mechanical Turk, CrowdForge, and CastingWords.
One of the world’s most wired countries, South Korea, illustrates the downside of high speed internet and real name verification–an epidemic of hacking, data theft and botnets.
The latest episode of Boss had so many parallels to the Herman Cain saga, I thought I was watching a “ripped from the headlines” episode. A political neophyte with a […]
Andrew Karre, the editorial director of Carolrhoda, and two other Lerner Publishing imprints, wrote a blog this afternoon called #yamatters. It is arguably the most coherent distillation I’ve ever read […]
Researchers have found a way to shrink the size of the medical lab to the size of a microchip, using advances from nanotechnology to pave the way for radically new […]
The second dip of the worldwide recession is a bit like that scene in Monty Python’s Holy Grail, where two guards stupidly stare at a horseless knight approaching in the […]
If you were a regular commenter on the old site, you’ve probably noticed a shift in the commenting community since Daylight Atheism came here to Big Think. The old site […]
–Guest post by Andrea Garvue, American University graduate student. In 2004, Rescue Me on the FX Network provided the United States with its first taste of the entertainment industry’s take […]
Roberto Díaz was the principal violist of the Philadelphia Orchestra and the National Symphony orchestra. Watch as he explains why bringing a hundred musicians together in to one synchronized ensemble is not easy – it’s a feat of human expression well-deserving of our attention.