In 1962, President John F. Kennedy told a crowd gathered at Rice University that the US wanted to put a person on the moon before the end of the decade because it was hard — but a challenge wasn’t all America was looking for with its moon mission. In that same speech, Kennedy als … | Continue reading
The Google Search bar doesn’t feel like an artificial intelligence. No one speculates that it might soon become an artificial general intelligence (AGI) — an entity that is competitive across many domains to a human being. But do you know many “generally intelligent” humans who c … | Continue reading
When water freezes, it transitions from a liquid phase to a solid phase, resulting in a drastic change in properties like density and volume. Phase transitions in water are so common most of us probably don’t even think about them, but phase transitions in novel materials or comp … | Continue reading
I recently got into death metal and wondered why so much of society and I were turned off by screaming and growling in singing. Why is that? – Seth, US What I love about this question is the “I recently got into death metal” bit. I don’t know how it came about, but I imagine Seth … | Continue reading
Let our sponsor BetterHelp connect you to a therapist who can support you – all from the comfort of your own home. Visit https://betterhelp.com/bigthink and enjoy a special discount on your first month. Three psychology and sociology experts, Robert Waldinger, Michael Slepian, an … | Continue reading
“Barnum statements” — named after 19th-century showman P.T. Barnum — are the kind of statements with which almost everyone agrees. They’re loved by soothsayers, clairvoyants, and mentalists the world over because they make it seem like you know what someone is like. Horoscopes ar … | Continue reading
In our experience, all physical systems eventually tend toward equilibrium: where entropy is maximized and no further energy can be extracted from it. This seems like an inevitable consequence of the second law of thermodynamics, and is absolute for any closed-and-isolated system … | Continue reading
In 1780, hunched over a table at his home in London, Jeremy Bentham wrote the first lines of the first chapter of one of his most famous works. It read, “Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters: pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out … | Continue reading
“Currently, I’m greatly puzzled by the concept of competition as the driving force in this reality, which it of course is. Is war the logical conclusion of competition or is it just some sort of aberration? Why do some people become more creative when competition is removed from … | Continue reading
Some 500 years ago, there was one scientific phenomenon that was, without controversy, extremely well-understood: the motion of the celestial objects in the sky. The Sun rose in the east and set in the west with a regular, 24 hour period. Its path in the sky rose higher and the d … | Continue reading
Sometimes the best thing in life is a simple rule that promises to solve a complex problem. Bonus points if the problem concerns human behavior, and the rule sports a catchy, easy-to-remember number. Perhaps a few of these sound familiar? The 10,000-hour rule. It takes 10,000 hou … | Continue reading
Eventually, someone is going to make a better product, or build a better brand, than you have. The way to keep people from switching sides? Harboring a loyal customer base. The way to harbor a loyal customer base? Relentless hospitality. Famed restaurateur Guidara credits his suc … | Continue reading
Ever since we first recognized that the Universe was expanding, one question has dominated the minds of those who study it: how will it all end? Today, we recognize that our Universe began from a much smaller, denser, hotter, and more uniform state: a state that we identify with … | Continue reading
Astronomers have a problem. Stars and galaxies dance to an unexpected tune, their motion seemingly governed by six times the matter that can be seen. Scientists believe that the Universe is filled with a form of dark matter that far exceeds the amount of ordinary matter. There’s … | Continue reading
You can’t manage innovation; you can only lead it. Traditional organizations have plenty of managers, but often they lack enough builders and creators who can start things from scratch and pivot as needed. Yet, larger organizations can offer innovators what no startup can provide … | Continue reading
Right now, over in Europe, the world’s most powerful particle accelerator in history — the Large Hadron Collider — is once again colliding particles in record fashion: at the highest energies and with the greatest collision frequencies (what accelerator physicists call luminositi … | Continue reading
A team of scientists has created a hydrogel that breaks down alcohol in the stomach and intestines. When ingested, it prevents alcohol from entering the blood and stops the compound acetaldehyde from accumulating. A toxic byproduct of alcohol degradation, acetaldehyde is linked t … | Continue reading
The word respect has two very different meanings. The first has to do with admiration for someone’s abilities, qualities, or achievements. That kind of admiration has to be earned. But that’s not what “radical respect” is about. The definition of respect I’m using is a regard for … | Continue reading
Given enough time, every star will eventually die. Artist’s illustration (left) of the interior of a massive star in the final stages, pre-supernova, of silicon-burning. (Silicon-burning is where iron, nickel, and cobalt form in the core.) A Chandra image (right) of the Cassiopei … | Continue reading
If the COVID-19 vaccines were the most significant FDA approvals of the 2020s so far, GLP-1 agonists to treat obesity are a strong runner up. Though these drugs have been used to treat type 2 diabetes for nearly two decades, it wasn’t until 2021 that the FDA approved one of them … | Continue reading
Berkeley-based startup Profluent has trained an AI to imagine new, never-before-seen CRISPR proteins — opening the door to gene editors with capabilities beyond what we’ve found in the wild. They’re also making a brand new CRISPR system open source, so any scientist can now start … | Continue reading
Atmospheres — do Earth-like alien planets have them or not? This is the killer question currently facing astronomers. In this context, “Earth-like” means terrestrial (i.e. rocky worlds) planets close enough to Earth’s mass and other conditions that we might imagine them hosting t … | Continue reading
I have had a long and “crazy” life. A lot of what I learned from difficult experiences has and can help others. I have put off writing a book about my life because it might upset my 91-year-old mother. I do have a blog, but I could write more for it. Should I be patient or stop w … | Continue reading
It only took three pieces of evidence, together, to completely revolutionize our picture of the Universe in the early 20th century. We had previously assumed that the Universe was static and unchanging, and that the entirety of existence was contained within the Milky Way. The sp … | Continue reading
To a large extent, the search for Earthlike planets is a search for water. Every living thing we know of requires water in some form, so until we find one that doesn’t, it’s reasonable to make water the focus of our exploration. That’s why a recent paper by Amri Wandel from Hebre … | Continue reading
Each of us will clock roughly 84,365 hours at work in our lifetime. But for 1 in 3 of us, those working hours are not happy ones. Fortunately, many leaders are waking up to the fact that solving the crisis in workplace happiness is not only the right thing to do, but one that lea … | Continue reading
When you think about what science actually is, how do you conceive of it? Do you do what most people do, and default to what you learned in our classes in school, with a layer of cynicism and skepticism layered atop it? That’s understandable, as many of us remember being taught “ … | Continue reading
If the emergence of generative AI has prompted a lot of excitement and anxiety about the future of work, that’s because it’s arrived a moment when we’re already asking huge questions about our working lives. Tools like ChatGPT, DALL-E, and Bing Chat have appeared on the heels of … | Continue reading
Learning and development leaders seeking to build a robust leadership pipeline face a two-fold challenge. Not only must they identify and cultivate employees with leadership potential, but they must also understand what attracts or discourages budding leaders from these roles. Wh … | Continue reading
It’s often said that people fear public speaking more than death, but in fact, people fear a great many things more than public speaking. According to the Chapman Survey of American Fears, corrupt government, economic collapse, nuclear weapons, climate change, and high medical bi … | Continue reading
In all of scientific history, no single theory has been tested more robustly — and still stands without a single failure — than the Standard Model of elementary particles and forces. Successfully describing every known species of quantum particle in existence as well as their pro … | Continue reading
It’s well known that narcissists are attracted to positions of power. A new study finds that when they reach the highest tiers of management in the business world, they also tend to attract each other — at least at first. An estimated 18% of chief executive officers (CEOs) score … | Continue reading
Chip Bergh remembers the first pair of Levi’s jeans he bought before that make-or-break first day of middle school. Owning and wearing those jeans—making a good first impression among classmates—was so important to him that, when he could not find the brand in any local store, he … | Continue reading
Here, in the spring of 2024, Earth’s inhabitants are getting quite a show: the greatest, most widespread, and most vibrant auroral display in more than 20 years. This is caused by an increase in solar activity: greater numbers of sunspots, larger sunspot size, greater numbers of … | Continue reading
Imagine it’s 2050 and the old countries of Europe are gone. In their place are entities based not on history, language, or ethnicity, but on the type of renewable energy they’re best at producing. A centralized power grid redistributes these variously sourced types of energy thro … | Continue reading
“Some scientists refer to the immune system as the seventh sense,” says Dr. Hao Jin, a neuroimmunologist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). It’s a comparison that anyone who’s ever had a common cold can appreciate. Much like our traditional sens … | Continue reading
Is your CEO itching to post on LinkedIn or X? Does the thought fill you with glee or dread? Not long ago, the regular use of social platforms by corporate leaders was rare — or even unthinkable. Now, it has become the norm, with companies seeing it as a fresh, immediate and relat … | Continue reading
What if our minds could live after our bodies have died? What if mortality became obsolete? Steven Kotler, award-winning journalist and executive director of the Flow Research Collective, has studied these seemingly sci-fi ideas, and it turns out that they’re not so fictional, af … | Continue reading
Unlike the most energetic galaxies, our Milky Way is inactive. Gaia’s all-sky view of our Milky Way Galaxy and neighboring galaxies. The maps show the total brightness and color of stars (top), the total density of stars (middle), and the interstellar dust that fills the galaxy ( … | Continue reading
DeepMind, Google’s AI lab, has a history of showing off the capabilities of its AI through games — and walloping human opponents in the process. In 2016, AlphaGo defeated Go world champion Lee Sedol. In 2019, AlphaStar constructed enough additional pylons to beat professional Sta … | Continue reading
Few drugs have achieved the stardom that semaglutide, marketed in the United States as Ozempic or Wegovy, has today. A synthetic, injectable version of an intestinal hormone, it is the flagship of a new category of drugs initially developed for diabetes that rose to fame in the m … | Continue reading
Every January, I head to the American Astronomical Society’s big annual meeting with an ulterior motive in mind. Beyond merely uncovering new scientific findings, gathering information for potential stories, and connecting with friends and colleagues, I also look to meet emerging … | Continue reading
Greek philosopher Plato played a huge role in shaping Western thought, particularly around politics, and even though he died more than 2,300 years ago, his “Republic” is still one of the most studied books at top US colleges. Despite Plato’s wide and lasting influence, though, th … | Continue reading
L ike many of the researchers who study how people find their way from place to place, David Uttal is a poor navigator. “When I was 13 years old, I got lost on a Boy Scout hike, and I was lost for two and a half days,” recalls the Northwestern University cognitive scientist. And … | Continue reading
There are many reasons to attend a scientific conference. You get to see collaborators and friends who are pushing new projects forward. You get to watch lots of cool talks updating you on the latest cool results in your research domain. And then it happens, every now and then, t … | Continue reading
“Is the popular “Shopping Cart Litmus Test” a measure of a person’s worth?” – Greg, US This question made me feel like a bad philosopher. I had to Google the shopping cart litmus test, and when I did so, I discovered it’s all over the philosophy-leaning internet. It’s a modern mo … | Continue reading
Will is driving along, and he sees a police car up ahead. He puts down his coffee, tenses up, and drives exactly at the speed limit. He puts on the most law-abiding face possible. Mia is at work behind a computer when her boss walks in. She shifts tabs, frantically types, and huf … | Continue reading
For more than 50 years, there’s been a mystery about the Universe that the greatest minds in physics and astronomy have been unable to solve: the fact that, when we map out all of the known matter that we can see and apply the known laws of gravity, it doesn’t add up to match the … | Continue reading