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When a bullet from the muzzle of a high powered rifle hits the flesh of a human target, the skin is instantly eviscerated by the speed of the bullet’s hot […]
Homosexual activity has been documented in many animal species but labeling animals as gay carries social baggage that scientists want to keep out of their research.
A Chinese oil tanker that has run aground on the Great Barrier Reef is leaking oil and threatening to break up entirely, causing a greater spillage.
Leader of the left on the Supreme Court, Justice Stevens is expected to retire during Obama’s first term; Bloomberg looks at three potential nominees to fill his vacancy.
Bob Herbert of the New York Times writes that Martin Luther King’s reasoning for contesting the War in Vietnam is valid in Afghanistan, but, like before, few are listening.
Scientists have blocked cell activity in the brain’s moral reasoning region inducing people to use purely consequential reasoning rather than consider moral principles.
New EPA standards will regulate greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks through 2016 requiring a base efficiency of 34 miles per gallon in six years’ time.
The recent earthquake in Chile was the fifth largest ever recorded and the U.S. Geological Survey is investigating damaged buildings there to better understand our own California.
Long denied by the government, former engineers and spies of Area 51 speak out publicly about working at the secret source of UFO folklore.
But not fast enough. It’s huge news that the latest employment report (pdf) shows that the country has finally started to add jobs. It’s the first substantial increase in the […]
We’re delighted to start our blog, Hybrid Reality, on Big Think. The blog is part of a multi-year research project examining human/technology co-evolution. We explore the implications of our complex […]
Two new books — one by a Roman Catholic journalist, the other by an atheist novelist — offer modern responses to the difficult concept that Jesus was both mortal and divine.
Researchers have developed two new broadband acoustic systems that could represent a major improvement in how fish and other marine life are counted and classified.
David Lewis-Williams doesn’t think direct arguments against religion will have much effect on men unless they are gradually illuminated by science.
At last, a new Ian McEwan novel: Solar. The author’s website recites a list of reviews; there are so many. Tucked among them is a nod to a blog post […]
Scientists think toads may be able to predict earthquakes by sensing “pre-seismic perturbations in the ionosphere.”
“If ever there was a scientific theory that is fundamentally historical, that purports to explain change over time, it is evolution through natural selection,” writes Donald Worster.
The moral and legal debate over the use of military drone aircraft raises questions about how adequately the current laws of war have been adapted to the age of terrorism.
Gary Bass looks at how Israel lost its alliance with France in 1967, and what that precedent might indicate for the country’s relations with the Obama Administration.
I spoke with one of Atlanta’s former mayors last week about the new advocacy organization she had just joined. Shirley Franklin, the first black woman to run the city, seems […]
If you’ve spent time with an environmentalist in the past few years, you’ve probably had a conversation that went something like this: You: I’ve switched to organic peanut butter! After […]
Not that you spend too much time wondering what life would be like if you were a light bulb…but, in case you’re curious, your body’s existence is equivalent to a […]
Well before the Kinsey reports, turn-of-the-century Stanford University hygiene professor Dr. Clelia Duel Mosher did a scientific survey of the sexual habits of her era’s women.
A look at the factors behind the brutal civil war that has been taking place in the Congo over the past decade — and the epidemic of mass rape that has swept that country with it.
Recent evidence indicates that bats have sensitivity to the geomagnetic field, and use it to navigate. When they are traveling miles from home at night they seem to guide their flight, at least in part, by using the magnetic field around them.
New research has found that the ancestors of modern Scottish people left rock engravings that contain a written language from the Iron Age.
Dominique Browning’s book, excerpted in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, will tell her story. Her story is more than just this, but it begins with this: she was the extremely […]
There you are, minding your own business on the outskirts of Sydney, thinking about seafood, sex, getting ahead, whatever, when whoomf, the aliens’ ship has caught you. And now you’re […]
After a series of snubs, Europe is suddenly getting a bunch of positive attention from the US. What happened? Maybe Washington is impressed that, after a prolonged struggle to deal […]
Like Jerry Lewis, comic books seem to be an American institution best appreciated and understood by the French. Jean-Paul Gabilliet’s Of Comics and Men: A Cultural History of American Comic […]