Historical analyses reveal that crises almost always yield surprising benefits.
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Can we ever make energy efficient AI?
Why are the rest masses of fundamental particles related like this? When it comes to the nature of matter in the Universe, the Standard Model describes the known elementary particles perfectly […]
After more than two decades of precision measurements, we’ve now reached the “gold standard” for how the pieces don’t fit.
Earth is the Solar System’s only known inhabited planet. Could Venus, if its phosphine signal is real, be our second world with life?
Economic growth is more about quality than quantity.
After 100 million nights of people asking, “What are those twinkly lights?” it is pretty remarkable that we happen to live in one of the first generations that actually knows the answer.
Growing up in the United States, I remember on Halloween my mother used to say, “Honey, this is not just a day for costumes and candy. You must also remember […]
Gods and angels have been replaced with hi-tech extraterrestrials.
Dr. Katie Mack explains what dark energy is and two ways it could one day destroy the universe.
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There’s a whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on beneath the single plate of Mars.
The majority of the matter in our Universe isn’t made of any of the particles in the Standard Model. Could the axion save the day?
We can describe what we see happening, but we don’t understand why. Despite our vast cosmic knowledge, enormous unknowns remain. The quantum fluctuations inherent to space, stretched across the Universe […]
Life arose on Earth early on, eventually giving rise to us: intelligent and technologically advanced. “First contact” still remains elusive.
There are a few possible solutions to the problem of interstellar travel, but they largely remain within the realm of science fiction.
Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb claimed to track down and find alien spherules on the ocean bottom. Here’s the sober truth.
It’s all about salesmanship.
Who doesn’t love a little existential fear every once in a while?
Philosophers and scientists spent millennia arguing about the nature of light. It turned out to be stranger than anyone imagined.
A longstanding mismatch between theory and experiment motivated an exquisite muon measurement. At last, a theoretical solution has arrived.
In 1957, humanity launched our first satellite; today’s number is nearly 10,000, with 500,000+ more planned. Space is no longer pristine.
Even before the Big Bang, energetic radiation was always present. When it comes to the physical Universe, the notion of “nothing” may truly be possible only in theory, not in […]
“The movement is much bigger than Sam Bankman-Fried, or any one person, no matter how wealthy,” philosopher Peter Singer told Big Think.
Bend it. Stretch it. Use it to conduct electricity.
A radical redesign of commercial aircraft, called the flying-V plane, could increase fuel efficiency by 20%, greatly reducing emissions.
We know of stellar mass and supermassive black holes, but intermediate mass ones have long proved elusive. Until now.
It is little more than a fancy excuse for escapist fantasizing.
A study looks at how to use nuclear detonations to prevent asteroids from hitting Earth.
Dark matter has never been directly detected, but the astronomical evidence for its existence is overwhelming. Here’s what to know.
Empty, intergalactic space is just 2.725 K: not even three degrees above absolute zero. But the Boomerang Nebula is even colder.