Hard Science

Using a laboratory model, scientists get a nice Jovian surprise.

The Earth is not flat. Here’s how you can prove it.

A new study from NASA and the SETI Institute comes up with an exciting number of potentially life-supporting planets.

A meteorite that smashed into a frozen lake in Michigan may explain the origins of life on Earth, finds study.

Water may be far more abundant on the lunar surface than previously thought.

Think you can solve it? One mathematician has already offered about $1,000 and a bottle of champagne to whoever cracks it first.

But most city dwellers weren’t seeing the science — they were seeing something out of Blade Runner.

Want some crazy space phenomena? You don’t have to leave the neighborhood for it.

New research explains why the Moon’s crust is magnetized by debunking one long-standing theory.

The solar system has some strange stuff in it. Learning how it ended up that way can tell us where we’re going.

Sir Roger Penrose claims our Universe has been through multiple Big Bangs, with more coming — a claim that is not widely accepted within the cosmology community.

The future of cities on the Moon, Mars and orbital habitats.

The study identified superhabitable planets outside of our solar system.

This week, Big Think is partnering with Freethink to bring you amazing stories of the people and technologies that are shaping our future.

A supernova exploded near Earth about 2.5 million years ago, possibly causing an extinction event.

Roger Penrose used mathematics to show black holes actually exist. Andrea Ghez and Reinhard Genzel helped uncover what lies at the center of our galaxy.

Grandfathers, take heart. You’ll survive the paradox that’s been gunning for you since the 1930s.

Physicists create quantum entanglement, making two distant objects behave as one.

Researchers detect a large lake and several ponds deep under the ice of the Martian South Pole.

Techshot’s 3D BioFabrication Facility successfully printed human heart tissue aboard the International Space Station.

This space expansionist ideology marked the beginning of what Arendt called “earth alienation.”

How Nobel Prize winner physicist Lev Landau ranked the best physics minds of his generation.

Controversial physics theory says reality around us behaves like a computer neural network.

New experiments find weird quantum activity in supercold gas.

The images and our best computer models don’t agree.

Astronomers spot an object heading into Earth orbit.

From cryonics to time travel, here are some of the (highly speculative) methods that might someday be used to bring people back to life.

Turns out chitin is quite useful when you need a wrench.

Construction is nearly complete for a camera that will take 3,200-megapixel panoramas of the southern night sky.

Scientists have detected within the Venusian atmosphere a chemical known to be a byproduct of life.