Our brains can do some pretty weird things to us sometimes. These prove it.
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A new study overturns the conventional thinking about how we focus our visual attention.
In his latest book, Fantasyland, Kurt Andersen covers the first five hundreds years of American magical thinking.
It’s so much more than mass-energy equivalence; it’s the key to unlocking the quantum Universe. For hundreds of years, there was an immutable law of physics that was never challenged: […]
The most make-or-break aspect of job automation? How policy makers handle your transition into a new career.
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Unraveling the psychology behind gun ownership may offer fresh insight into the gun control debate.
Very sure. Here’s how we know. You’ve no doubt heard that the Universe itself has been around for 13.8 billion years since the Big Bang, and that scientists are extremely confident […]
How relatable was Trump’s speech? To evaluate this objectively, you could look at what reading level it was at.
One of astronomy’s most iconic sights in an artifact of faulty optics. Here’s how a new, great design will overcome it. When you look out at the greatest images of the […]
Our brains didn’t evolve to see the world accurately, we only perceive what is useful and apply meaning to it. Neuroscientist Beau Lotto shows us how the sausage of reality is made.
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Most stars obey very similar rules, making them almost entirely predictable. But then, there are the weirdos. Catch this live-blog event to learn more. When we look out at the Universe […]
Quantum interpretations are all the rage. Too bad you don’t even need one. In everyday life, there are certain rules we take for granted: cause-and-effect, for instance. Something occurs, and that […]
Researchers succeed in deleting key genes from ants, significantly modifying their behavior.
But there are resources, tips, and telltale signs to keep you from being duped. “Some people think that the truth can be hidden with a little cover-up and decoration. But as […]
“Global capitalism and local traditions are no longer opposites, they are on the same side,” says Slavoj Zizek. The traditions of anti-capitalist protest are upended by this fact.
Images taken 20 years apart show the rate of evaporation, and they’ll take much more than mere thousands of years to destroy. In 1995, the Hubble Space Telescope snapped one of […]
Effective Date: January 1, 2020 Last Updated: May 13, 2020 The Big Think, Inc. (“Big Think” or “we” or “us”) knows that you care about how your personal information is […]
The speed of light is a universal constant, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that light always travels at that speed, does it? “There was a young lady named Bright,Whose speed was […]
There are plenty of questions we don’t know the answer to. With quantum gravity, they might be solved! This article is written by Sabine Hossenfelder. Sabine is a theoretical physicist specialized […]
How the gravitational Casimir effect might cause our Universe’s accelerated expansion, without any new physics at all. “For although it is certainly true that quantitative measurements are of great importance, it […]
If you want to get from A to B more safely, be a little more choosy at the cab rank.
Did you hear the story about how a 100 petawatt laser will finally ‘break the quantum vacuum’? Get the facts. Empty space, as it turns out, isn’t so empty. The fluctuations […]
It isn’t just for merging neutron stars, anymore. Over the past three years, there’s arguably been no greater scientific discovery than the direct detection of gravitational waves. The two LIGO […]
“We don’t notice one another nearly as much as we think we do,” says Alan Alda. Here’s how the actor inspired a scientific study on empathy.
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Every star dies, but not every would-be star really lives. “The origin and evolution of life are connected in the most intimate way with the origin and evolution of the stars.” […]
The researcher behind some well-known gender studies is accused of making them all up.
Wait, what date is it really? How we gauge our sense of time hasn’t always been so consistent.
We’re talking Ghost in the Shell type of stuff.
“We’re coming to understand the basic building blocks of personality,” Dr. Fisher said.
If the gravity isn’t where the matter is, things get into trouble very, very quickly. The above image, a composite of optical data, X-ray data, and a reconstructed mass map, is […]