Unmasking greed: The evolution of a complex and innate desire

Over time, economists and philosophers have held different views on greed. There are those who see it as a drive for self-preservation and as a force of economic growth at a societal level. Michael Douglas’s famous monologue in the movie Wall Street (2010) (in which he plays the … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 days ago

Will physics ever prove that gravitons are real?

In 2009, the British journalist Ian Betteridge wrote an article in which he asserted his maxim that any headline ending in a question mark can be answered with a no. The maxim has come to be called Betteridge’s law, but this article will demonstrate that, as with so many other pr … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 days ago

Sam Altman: The superintelligent robots are coming

Superintelligent robots, AGI — and “all the things that come beyond that” — are coming. According to Sam Altman, it’s just a matter of time. In a short essay published this week, Altman shared his vision for OpenAI in 2025, predicting that AI agents will soon join the workforce a … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 days ago

Black hole myth busted: they don’t suck anything in

Black holes are some of the strangest, most wondrous objects in all the Universe. With huge amounts of mass concentrated into an extremely small volume, their interiors inevitably collapse down to singularities, surrounded by event horizons from which nothing — not even light — c … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 days ago

Predicting the “digital superpowers” we could have by 2030

It’s 2025, the year when mainstream computing will start to shift from a race to develop increasingly powerful tools to a race to develop increasingly powerful abilities. The difference between a tool and an ability is subtle yet profound. From the very first hammerstones to the … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 3 days ago

Why the “optimism bias” rules our hopes for the future

What actually is optimism? One approach is to consider it as a psychological trait — an individual personality characteristic that affects an individual’s behaviour, doesn’t change much over time, and is fairly consistent in most situations. All these are true of dispositional op … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 3 days ago

The dangers of keeping epidemiology the “hidden science”

In February 2003, Carlo Urbani encountered a mysterious virus in Vietnam. A physician-epidemiologist well-regarded for his diagnostic skills, Urbani was asked to come to the French Hospital of Hanoi to see a patient named Jonny Chen, an American businessman who had grown seriousl … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 3 days ago

How Byron Katie accidentally discovered joy in the darkest of times

It can be overwhelming to navigate the pains of life, but the iconic self-help author believes you can find yourself by answering just four questions Pain is an inevitable part of life. But perhaps could suffering be optional if we’re empowered with the right tools. “The cause of … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 3 days ago

The quantum reason that ultra-massive stars are forbidden

Here in our Universe, the most limiting factor behind the largest structures we see is time. Shortly after the Big Bang, there were no stars, galaxies, or black holes: objects that require significant amounts of mass to accumulate in one place. The Universe, even though it was bo … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 3 days ago

Why great communicators listen to the music of “The Five Ps”

We adjust and corrupt our voices for a variety of reasons as we move through life. So, if you don’t like your voice, never fear! It’s not your real voice anyway. I don’t say that to sound glib but rather to create a little space in your consciousness to be nicer to yourself as yo … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 4 days ago

Navigate to the “three ports” of ancient philosophy to find the good life

What is a good life? And how can we chart a course towards it in our chaotic world? Many of us long for some kind of guide to help us direct our efforts and navigate our existence. And while the details of our modern challenges may differ from those faced by people in the past, f … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 4 days ago

The dark brilliance of John Graunt: “Father of modern statistics”

The father of modern statistics is widely acknowledged to be John Graunt, who was born in London in 1620. According to John Aubrey, who counted him as “my honoured and worthy friend,” Graunt “was bred-up (as the fashion then was) in the Puritan way.” He went into the family haber … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 4 days ago

25 year update on the “Millennium problems” in physics

Back in the year 2000, physicists gathered with an unusual purpose: to choose the 10 greatest unsolved problems in fundamental physics for the new millennium. At that time, we had: discovered most of the particles of the Standard Model, but not yet the Higgs boson, a strong idea … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 4 days ago

Why 2025 will take us closer to the “Turing horizon”

A decade ago, years before GPT and LLM became household acronyms, agentic AI pioneer Chetan Dube led the creation of the conversational AI platform Amelia. Back then, Amelia’s closest competition was IBM’s Watson. Following the 2024 acquisition of Amelia by SoundHound AI, Dube ma … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 5 days ago

How Boom is resurrecting supersonic flight

This article is an installment of Future Explored, Freethink’s weekly guide to world-changing technology. You can get stories like this one straight to your inbox every Saturday morning by subscribing above. It’s 2029. You just buckled up for a transpacific flight that for the la … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 6 days ago

How far back in time can we see in space?

Everything we see is a glimpse into the past. From atop a high mountain, a distant high mountain several dozens of kilometers, even up to 100 kilometers distant, can be glimpsed on a clear day. At a distance of 100 kilometers, light takes about 33 microseconds to complete a one-w … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 6 days ago

Stephen Hawking’s eternal voice

While Stephen Hawking’s ashes were being interred during a memorial service at Westminster Cathedral in 2018, the European Space Agency (ESA) beamed into space an original piece of music by the Greek composer Vangelis that featured Hawking’s voice. The Cebreros station outside of … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 7 days ago

T-Minus: Counting down the top 10 space stories of 2024

This is T-Minus, where Freethink counts down the biggest developments in space. For the last installment of 2024, Kristin Houser looked back on the 10 greatest space stories of that year. From a first-of-its-kind spacewalk to the recovery of a rocket that could one day take peopl … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 7 days ago

Don’t waste time negating false claims. Instead, try the “bypassing technique”

When families get together over holidays, it’s usually a good opportunity to break out of our echo chambers. It’s one of the few times a year we’re forced to hang out with people who often have very different views. Auntie Olivia has some pretty extreme political views. Your cous … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 8 days ago

The “unethical” myth about having children

What are the risks of not having enough children? In today’s landscape, there are questions about whether or not it’s ethical to bring children into a volatile world, but what are the risks of not having children? Author Christine Emba examines the moral dilemma associated with h … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 8 days ago

Why the golden unlock with nuclear power will be mental

It’s a summer day in August 2017. Behind the quiet sand dunes near Petten, a village in the Netherlands where the North Sea is kept at bay, the only noise comes from a group of seagulls. They’re fighting over the remains of a lunch someone has left behind. Other than that, the pl … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 8 days ago

Ask Ethan: Can a lumpy Universe explain dark energy?

It’s now been more than 25 years since astronomers discovered “most of the Universe” in an incredibly surprising way. In terms of energy, the most dominant species in our Universe isn’t light, it isn’t normal matter, it isn’t neutrinos, and it isn’t even dark matter. Instead, a m … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 8 days ago

Mapped: How Europe’s wealth has shifted since 1900

Prosperity is not a given, and neither is poverty. As these maps show, rich regions can lose their wealth, and poor places can turn affluent. While they don’t explain the ebbs and flows of fortune, these maps do provide a fascinating, granular view of where those fortunes rose an … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 9 days ago

How to embrace “psychological magic” to be more creative

This week in The Long Game, I had the pleasure of speaking with Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman of Ogilvy, author of Alchemy, and one of the most original minds in business and psychology. Rory has a knack for flipping conventional wisdom on its head, and in our conversation, he t … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 9 days ago

The quantum reason that explains why the Sun shines

Earth, as we know it, is only teeming with life because of the influence of our Sun. Its light and heat provides every square meter of Earth — when it’s in direct sunlight — with a constant ~1500 W of power, enough to keep our planet at a comfortable temperature for liquid water … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 9 days ago

Psychology has a consciousness problem

Seeing the striking magenta of bougainvillea. Tasting a rich morning latte. Feeling the sharp pain of a needle prick going into your arm. These subjective experiences are the stuff of the mind. What is “doing the experiencing,” the 3-pound chunk of meat in our head, is a tangible … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 10 days ago

Great minds don’t think alike: The business case for neurodiversity

When Temple Grandin worked for the cattle industry in the 1970s, what set her apart, besides being the only female employee, was her ability to see what the animals saw. “I looked at what the cattle were looking at when they moved through the chutes to get vaccinated. The cattle … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 10 days ago

The one-page calendar that changes how you view the year

Each year, most of us throw out our old calendar and replace it with a new one. Each month, we flip our calendar forward another page, and if we ever need to know which day-of-the-week corresponds to a particular day/month combination, we have to either calculate it ourselves or … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 10 days ago

Scientists find record high-energy cosmic ray electrons, but origin remains elusive

The Earth is under attack — not by humanity or rampaging aliens, but by the Universe itself. Vast cosmic forces break apart hydrogen atoms and fling their components across the cosmos at nearly the speed of light. Some of these interstellar projectiles smash into the Earth’s atmo … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 11 days ago

Is the universe actually a fractal?

If you take a look at the structures that form in the Universe, many of the things we see on large scales appears at smaller scales, too. The dark matter halos that form around the largest bound structures we know of appear identical to the ones that form around Milky Way-sized g … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 11 days ago

Why your sleeping brain replays new rewarding experiences

During this Olympics, I was rooting for Kelleigh Ryan, who is on the women’s foil team. She’s from Ottawa, where I live. Whenever she scored a point, she’d emit a victory scream, probably feeling a rush of pleasure. Watching her on television, I did, too. Getting better at someth … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 12 days ago

How urine led to the foundation of chemistry

Hennig Brand was on to something. Or rather, he thought he was. By the 17th century, alchemists had been trying to make gold for over a thousand years. Though the search had ultimately proved fruitless for his numerous forebears, Brand, a merchant and an alchemist living in Hambu … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 12 days ago

The Rory Sutherland interview: Bees, magic, and the folly of “Laplace’s demon”

Rory Sutherland, as he often does, wants to talk about bees. As Vice Chairman (UK) of advertising agency Ogilvy — and one of the most provocative voices in business and behavioral psychology — Sutherland has spent years making a compelling, counter-intuitive case for inefficiency … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 12 days ago

This weird JWST trick lets us “see” dark matter

Dark matter remains one of nature’s greatest mysteries. Our galaxy is embedded in an enormous, diffuse dark matter halo, indicating that there must be dark matter flowing through the solar system. While dark matter exists in a large, diffuse halo, the normal matter, because it ex … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 12 days ago

Google’s $1 billion bet on Africa’s digital future

This article is an installment of Future Explored, Freethink’s weekly guide to world-changing technology. You can get stories like this one straight to your inbox every Saturday morning by subscribing above. It’s 2030, and more than two-thirds of the population of sub-Saharan Afr … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 13 days ago

How typing transformed Nietzsche’s consciousness

Friedrich Nietzsche has been described as — and accused of — many things, some of them strikingly contradictory. Nazi ideologues selectively appropriated elements of his philosophy, such as extreme individualism and his allegory of the Übermensch, to suit their agenda. And during … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 14 days ago

T-Minus: Kessler Syndrome

This is T-Minus, where Freethink’s Kristin Houser breaks down the biggest developments in space, from new rocket launches to discoveries that advance our understanding of the universe and our place in it. Humanity is reaching new heights in space exploration. Thanks to cheaper ro … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 14 days ago

Inside the battle for FDA approval of MDMA therapy

If not for a busted bike chain, I would never have met Rick Doblin. In 2021, I was heading back to the INSIGHT Psychedelic Research Conference in Berlin trying to catch Johns Hopkins scientist Matthew Johnson’s talk. Fated with a twisted chain, I was late. Moments after staff ush … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 15 days ago

From global to planetary: Is new governance needed in a post-Holocene world?

Human beings have imagined many ways to organize themselves. From hunter-gatherers to global-spanning empires, we have invented political and economic forms and later abandoned those in favor of something new. Now, a quarter into the 21st century, our global project of “civilizat … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 15 days ago

Nature’s “perfect balance” is a mystery scientists are trying to decode

In the last 60 years, ecologists have discovered that specific animals have an outsized impact on the health of their communities. The functioning of these ecosystems are sometimes entirely dependent upon certain individual species or small groups of species than others, says bio … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 15 days ago

Heidegger’s “mood theory” explains why you do anything at all

What made you click on this article? What part of your bubbling unconscious made you open this link today? I suspect there wasn’t much of a conscious decision. You probably didn’t stare into space for five seconds weighing up the pros and cons of clicking versus carrying on your … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 15 days ago

Ask Ethan: Could SETI detect a “twin” of Earth?

Someday, if nature is kind to us, we’ll make the grandest discovery of all: that we aren’t alone in the Universe. While various observatories and space missions might someday soon find life on other worlds, our ultimate ambition is even grander: to find another intelligent, techn … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 15 days ago

Can science solve the poverty problem?

Among the many casualties of the coronavirus pandemic are the poorest of the global poor. Not only are they the ones who are usually hit hardest by the virus, but they’ve also borne the brunt of virus-induced wreckage in the world’s economies. Before the pandemic hit the past fou … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 16 days ago

Hungry or horny? Whale makes record swim halfway across planet

Was he hungry, horny, or just confused? Scientists don’t know why a male humpback whale, unceremoniously labeled HW-MN1300828, showed up in the Zanzibar Channel, off the coast of Tanzania, in August of 2022. What they do know is that he traveled far — farther, in fact, than any o … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 16 days ago

How to build something that lasts

Modern American culture is obsessed with the new — instant gratification, fleeting trends, etc. — while often neglecting the systems that can endure. This fixation on the new has fostered a society where short-termism thrives and chaos reigns. But my own brush with mortality forc … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 16 days ago

Devouring “the Kraken” led to the modern Milky Way

When it comes to any aspect of the Universe, there are two questions we always attempt to answer: “What is it like today?” and “How did it become the way it is?” From atoms to planets to stars to galaxies, we seek to both understand what things are like today and to gain an under … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 16 days ago

 In Carl Sagan’s Death, an amazing life lesson

Twenty-eight years ago as of December 20, the human race lost one of its finest. Carl Sagan passed away. As an astrophysicist, science communicator, husband, and father, Carl Sagan spent much of his adult life inspiring others. Not by spouting flowery falsehoods, but by conveying … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 17 days ago

Science makes everyone feel stupid. That’s okay!

In 2008, University of Virginia microbiologist Martin Schwartz recalled a meeting with an old friend, one who had been a PhD student with him and had left to attend Harvard Law School instead. At one point during their meeting, he asked why she dropped out. “She said it was becau … | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 18 days ago