There’s a big reason no one, not even Stephen Hawking, could fill Carl Sagan’s shoes. Everyone has a unique story to tell. For scientists, that story is one that usually only […]
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LISA, the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, will not only be the space-based successor to LIGO, but will predict black hole mergers up to years in advance. Across the Universe, innumerable masses […]
Thanks to NASA’s HiRISE camera, prepare to see Mars in a whole new light. Twelve years ago, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter launched. The descent of Mars Science Laboratory (i.e., the Curiosity […]
If you go all the way back to where neutral atoms first formed, you can see the cosmic microwave background. Buried in the details is the Universe’s first evidence for […]
What do our future missions in physics, astronomy, astrophysics and more hold? If you went back in time just 30 years, the world as we it was a completely different place. […]
The President laid out his ambition, but no money to fund it. It’s a classic Trump move, and a recipe for failure. Last week, President Trump signed Space Policy Directive 1, […]
The line between science and pseudoscience is imperceptible to most. Here’s how you can catch it in yourself. When it comes to science, the first principle is that you must […]
Singer-songwriter Ryan O’Neal composes the songs of the cosmos.
It isn’t the Big Bang or stars like the Sun that gave rise to us. The story is far more… explosive. At the smallest level, the human body is made […]
There have been a lot of public advocates from the “no dark matter” camp, getting lots of popular attention. But the Universe still needs dark matter. Here’s why. If you took […]
If antimatter falls up instead of down, countless sci-fi dreams will become scientific reality. One of the most astonishing facts about science is how universally applicable the laws of nature […]
Find out the multiple ways we classify and ascertain what constitutes intelligence.
It would be disappointing and surprising if Earth were the only template for habitability in the Universe.
Dark matter is one of the most puzzling, unintuitive concepts in all of physics. But we still need it. Our Universe isn’t like us. While we’re made of atoms, and other […]
Earth is old enough to have been home to other industrialized civilizations so far back in the past we have no idea they were there. What we’ll leave behind may offer clues of what we could look for as evidence.
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 […]
If everything goes right, astronomy will take a magnificent leap into the future. But here’s what needs to happen first. Back in 2000, NASA held their decadal survey, choosing what would […]
It’s not simply Hubble’s Law anymore, but the real history is far more complex than the stories you’ve heard. One of the most mind-blowing facts in our existence is that space […]
Big Think speaks with the American who’s spent the most time in space, astronaut Peggy Whitson, looking back on what she learned during life in orbit.
CFC-11 was banned worldwide in 1987 by the Montreal Protocol, but scientists have found increasing levels of the ozone-depleting chemical in the atmosphere since 2013.
If you think you have problems today, be glad you’re not moving at the speed of light. Special relativity, even though it’s over 100 years old, is still one of the […]
How do you get so massive so fast? The answer could be a big problem for our standard picture of cosmology. Out in the extreme distances of the Universe, the […]
Einstein’s explanation is the only one that works. When Newton first proposed the law of universal gravitation, it marked the very first time that we realized the same rule governing how […]
The truth might not be ‘out there’ at all. There may never have been another intelligent, technologically advanced alien species in the entire history of the Universe. When you take into […]
You can watch the Cosmos marathon right now, for free!
When scientists claim that an unexplained phenomenon might be due to aliens, they’re giving up on science. Whenever science discovers a new, unexpected phenomenon, it represents a tremendous opportunity to learn […]
There are many arguments over what makes a theory beautiful, elegant, or compelling. But in the face of data, predictive power is everything. When you look at any phenomenon in […]
International enrollment and applications to American grad schools are plummeting. This is the opposite of what makes America great. Throughout the 20th century and into the 21st, America emerged at the […]
When the past and future are no longer connected, some pretty weird stuff happens.
Before there were gravitational waves, multi-messenger astronomy got its start with the neutrino. Sometimes, the best-designed experiments fail. The effect you’re looking for might not even occur, meaning that a […]