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One side of the Moon always faces us: the near side. The "dark side" of the Moon began as a mere metaphor, but today, science can weigh in.
Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.
Spirals, ellipticals, and irregulars are all more common than ring galaxies. At last, we know how these ultra-rare objects are made.
An introduction to "The Engine of Progress" from Jason Crawford, founder of the Roots of Progress Institute.
Real progress demands rules built for uncertainty — not for the few innovations dominating today’s tech landscape.
Before we can build the future, we have to imagine it.
These expert-recommended books reveal how big ideas can shape — and sometimes redefine — human progress.
To turn technical breakthroughs into real-world change, AI must overcome the friction of politics, policy, and human institutions.
From treating specific diseases to targeting aging itself, Progress Conference 2025 explored the many routes to extending life.
At the foundation of America’s progress movement are immigrants who still believe this country can build.
Barriers to energy abundance — and how to overcome them — were front and center at Progress Conference 2025.
With new labs, funding models, and institutions, metascience is reinventing the machinery of discovery.
Government-spec’d glory projects produce tech demos. Enduring progress demands a better way forward.
The case that a bipartisan movement structured around progress and reform may be reaching critical mass.
Wavelengths stretch, distances grow, and temperatures cool as the Universe expands with time. How are the various cosmic parameters related?
Leaders in China hope that AI and robotics can finally resolve the flaws of a centralized planned economy. But US technoculture has an edge.
Weird-looking galaxies, with tentacle-like tails or prominent dual streams, appear like jellyfish or bunny ears. But that’s just the start.
For over 10 billion years, the cosmic star-formation rate has been dropping and dropping. Someday, the final star in the Universe will die.
Digital tools are pulling us away from fixed texts and back toward fluid, interactive communication.
We first measured G, the gravitational constant, back in the 18th century. As the least well-known fundamental constant, can it be improved?
Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.
In 2017, a kilonova sent light and gravitational waves across the Universe. Here on Earth, there was a 1.7 second signal arrival delay. Why?
NASA’s Caleb Scharf talks with Big Think about life’s long experiment in expansion.
Dark matter, dark energy, and the Big Bang are all part of a solid scientific foundation. Here's why popular media often claims otherwise.
What if the first search for life beyond Earth actually succeeded?
Planets grow from protostellar material in disks, leading to full-grown planetary systems in time. At last, the final gap has been filled.
We chat with Mark Klarzynski, founder of PEAK:AIO, on how his company became an international player in data storage for the age of AI.
Until the late 20th century, there wasn't a truly universal standard. Under our current definition, everyone agrees on what "one meter" is.
Do aliens speak the same physics that we do, with similar laws, observables, and underlying mathematics. Maybe not, argues Daniel Whiteson.
We've now detected hundreds of gravitational waves with LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA. What if we tried Weber's original method in the modern day?