Ice mountains, frozen nitrogen flats and surprisingly familiar features show what the outermost worlds looks like. “We’ve learned that the view of four inner rocky planets and four outer gas giants […]
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How the biggest NASA mission of the decade will solve some of the Universe’s greatest mysteries. “Now the world has gone to bed,Darkness won’t engulf my head,I can see by […]
Have we learnt nothing from the racist, ineffective laws that form the basis of America’s longest war: the War on Drugs?
Looks like the inner planets formed *after* the gas giants moved to their current position, and Jupiter ejected a fifth giant, too! “The stars look the same from night to […]
There are three kinds of BS, explains Stewart, and all three made appearances last night.
In his dissent in Obergefell v. Hodges, the ruling that made same-sex marriage a constitutional right throughout the United States, Justice Clarence Thomas rejected the majority’s rationale that gays and […]
Four billion years ago, the Universe was a different place. What would we have seen? “In such moments, offering up his heart at the hour when the flowers of night […]
If Flannery O’Connor somehow birthed the love child of Sid Vicious, she might end up sounding like novelist Nell Zink. Equal parts Southern Gothic’s grotesquely twisted charm and punk and alternative music’s insiderish anti-establishmentism, Zink’s second novel Mislaid will disorient you until you let it delight you. Zink’s mix — which I’ll call Southern Gothic Punk — might be an acquired taste, but a taste well worth experiencing if only to break out of the contemporary rut of MFA-programed, sound-alike fiction that’s become the bubblegum pop of today’s literature.
The discovery of the brain’s “GPS,” which netted three scientists the Nobel Prize for Medicine, will allow researchers to study the process by which dementia steals control of the body from the afflicted.
Compared to a human lifetime, the Universe is ancient.But even a single year holds important changes. “We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we […]
We’ve only ever seen 2nd-generation stars and later. Until, just maybe, now. “For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.” […]
“riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay,” begins James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, opening a torrent of words that has drowned many readers in confusion […]
Mama, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Deny Evolution If adults want to deny evolution, sure. That’s fine. Whatever. But those adults better not make their kids follow in […]
Inspired by the real-life story behind the recent film Unbroken, the John Templeton Foundation has released a video teaching the importance of forgiveness.
“Daddy, why do all the players have dark skin?” When my eldest daughter posed this question one football Saturday six years ago, she had no concept of race in mind […]
PURPOSE: Set Goals, with John Amaechi In this lesson from Big Think+, NBA basketball player John Amaechi shares with you the plan he created as a child to help him […]
The World was supposed to be finished years ago. But the financial crisis of 2008 slowed construction. Work now has resumed on the artificial archipelago off Dubai. However, changing plans […]
How we discovered what the Universe was made of when it first formed. Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/PSU/K. Getman et al.; IRL NASA/JPL-Caltech/CfA/J. Wang et al. “The nitrogen in our DNA, […]
Edinburgh is the “grey metropolis in the North.” It has been for centuries, and thanks to Unesco, the capital of Scotland will keep its dour exterior for the foreseeable future. […]
Not a chance. What we’ve found may be a mystery, but it’s definitely not our Universe’s missing mass. “Time takes it all whether you want it to or not, time […]
With a planetary nebula, over 80,000 stars and a distance of only 10,000 light-years, it’s one of the most rewarding globulars of all! Image credit: R. Columbari, via http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?t=31833. “I […]
Supermoons are both super and common, but they’re only a tiny slice of our nearest neighbor’s magnificent journey. Image credit: ESA / NASA and the International Space Station. “O, swear […]
Perhaps the most spectacular example of rebirth in our galaxy, this cavernous nebula is giving rise to the next generation of stars! Image credit: ESO, via http://www.eso.org/public/images/eso0925a/. “For in the […]
And is there a limit to how small they can possibly be? “They had discovered one could grow as hungry for light as for food.”-Stephen King When you turn your gaze […]
There’s a supermassive black hole at the center of almost all of them, but who came first? “One has to be an optimist; one has to hope that somewhere there’ll be […]
Summer is coming, and with it, the most famous nebula in the night sky. “The self-same atoms which, chaotically dispersed, made the nebula, now, jammed and temporarily caught in peculiar positions, […]
Learning faster is becoming more and more important, and we simply learn faster in cities than we could on our own.
If you had never heard of global warming before, how would you figure out whether it’s happening? “There is no question that climate change is happening; the only arguable point […]
One of the most profound experiences I’ve had in the past decade in New York City was witnessing former Mayor Rudy Giuliani accept the first annual Children’s Foundation Hero Award […]
A few months ago I posted a piece on the alarming resurgence in the use of lie detectors in the UK and the US. A new documentary looks at the use […]