Amygdala damage impairs moral judgment

Patients with amygdala damage rejected the widely accepted answer to the infamous "trolley problem," saying that it "hurts too much." | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 years ago

Umami: You never say its name, yet you taste it every day

Sweet, bitter, salty, sour. These are the four basic tastes we were taught in grade school. But there is a fifth: umami. And it's everywhere. | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 years ago

Xenon experiment: No dark matter, but the best “null result” in history

Searching for dark matter, the XENON collaboration found absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. Here's why that's an extraordinary feat. | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 years ago

Child mortality fell from 40% to 3.7% in 200 years

In 200 years, the mortality rate for children under the age of five (per 1,000 live births) has dropped from 40% to 3.7%. | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 years ago

Categories of pseudoscience – and how to talk to people who believe in them

Trying to define pseudoscience with one line failed. One author says there are several types of nonsense, and a few ways to address them. | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 years ago

Don’t fall into the personal brand trap

Personal branding is a popular prescription, but the traits that make brands useful to corporations stifle people's growth and development. | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 years ago

Lessons from James Webb’s first deep-field image

Even with only 12.5 hours of exposure time, James Webb's first deep-field image taught us lessons we've never realized before. | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 years ago

Kurt Vonnegut on the 8 “shapes” of stories

Before fame, Kurt Vonnegut wrote a master's thesis on the shapes of stories for the anthropology department at the University of Chicago. | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 years ago

James Webb’s record-breaking first science image explained

With its very first deep-field view of the Universe now released, the James Webb Space Telescope has shown us our cosmos as never before. | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 years ago

Where do James Webb’s unique “spikes” come from?

When we started imaging the Universe with Hubble, every star had four "spikes" coming from it. Here's why Webb will have more. | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 years ago

I am an astrophysicist. I am also a Christian

It might seem like science and faith are at war, but the two have a historical synergy that extends back in time for centuries. | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 years ago

Human wears augmented reality contact lens for the first time

For the first time, an augmented reality contact lens was worn on the eye of a human subject. It has about 30x the pixel density of an iPhone. | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 years ago

When will the Earth come to an end?

From life on Earth to the planet itself, there are four ways our planet will actually experience "the end," no matter how we define it. | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 years ago

You are probably a naive realist

Naive realism is the tendency to assume that our view of the world is objective and accurate rather than subjective and biased. | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 years ago

World’s oldest trees reveal the largest solar storm in history

1859's Carrington event gave us a preview of how catastrophic the Sun could be for humanity. But it could get even worse than we imagined. | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 years ago

Let There Be God: How Yahweh Became “God Almighty”

In the Canaan religion, Yahweh was a lesser god, who was assigned the land of Israel. Here's how he became "God Almighty." | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 years ago

Flamingos stand on just one leg, and physics is the surprising reason why

There’s an enormous evolutionary advantage for flamingos to stand on one leg, but genetics doesn't help. Only physics explains why. | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 years ago

Why a meaningful life is impossible without suffering

Feeling pain helps us to avoid experiences or stimuli that harm us. So, why do so many people pursue things that will bring them pain? | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 years ago

Why the U.S. leads other wealthy nations in deaths of despair

Deaths of despair are skyrocketing in the U.S., while at the same time, they are falling in other wealthy countries. What are we doing wrong? | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 years ago

There are more galaxies in the Universe than even Carl Sagan ever imagined

Forget billions and billions. When it comes to the number of galaxies in the Universe, both theorists' and observers' estimates are too low. | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 years ago

Why Einstein is a “peerless genius” and Hawking is an “ordinary genius”

You've heard of Stephen Hawking. How about Renata Kallosh? Didn't think so. Why are some brilliant people called "geniuses," but not others? | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 years ago

Is your mind just a parasite on your physical body? – Big Think

A new science fiction novel does a masterful job of crafting a narrative from an idea long discussed in philosophy: Is the mind needed? | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 years ago

See the Milky Way's center as we've never seen it before

As viewed by the MeerKAT telescope, this radio view of the Milky Way blows away every other way we've ever seen our home galaxy. | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 years ago

The damage a tiny speck of space debris can do at 15,000mph

Space is not the place to put waste, as it turns pretty much anything into a high-velocity projectile capable of causing incredible damage.  | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 years ago

Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider

A next-generation LHC++ could cost $100 billion. Here's why such a machine could end up being massive waste of money. | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 years ago

World War I created modern medicine and the welfare state

Before World War I, medical experts treated the body as a sum of its parts. Conditions like wound shock called for a change in perspective. | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 years ago

The one NASA mission that could save us from extinction

Most potentially hazardous asteroids remain unidentified. NEO surveyor could change that, but only if it's funded, and soon. | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 years ago

Stoned Ape Theory Linking Evolution to Psychedelic Exposure Revives

A long-ridiculed theory about humankind's early leap of consciousness is revived. | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 years ago

Aging gratefully: Will you be happier in old age?

Why is grandma so relaxed? Is it coping skills? Cognitive decline? A new study asks whether old age brings increased happiness, and why. | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 years ago

Magic mushrooms evolved to scramble insect brains

How psilocybin evolved has more to do with sending insects on terrifying trips than it does making Phish sound good. | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 years ago

Nostalgia: Powerful, Poignant – and a Painkiller

Nostalgia is a happy remembrance of the past, yet it also leaves us feeling sad. Perhaps ironically, it can serve as a painkiller. | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 years ago

Alexa and her friends know you all too well

Alexa knows a lot about you. New research delves into how Amazon uses what it knows to market to you across the internet. | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 years ago

The study of nonhuman intelligence could be missing major insights

There is not just one sort of mind. Different sorts of minds can then be described in terms of what they can and can’t do. | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 years ago

If the Ancient Romans Had Google Maps

OmnesViae is a modern route planner based on the roads of the Roman Empire. This might have been handy 2,000 years ago. | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 years ago

Graphene typically costs $200k per ton. Now scientists can make it from trash

Graphene is insanely useful, but very difficult to produce — until now. | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 years ago

NASA's idea for making food from thin air just became a reality

Here's why you might eat greenhouse gases in the future. | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 years ago

A Map of Lexical Distances Between Europe's Languages

A Finn and a Spaniard walk into a bar... | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 years ago

Elon Musk’s proposed Hyperloop is all smoke and mirrors

The hyperloop would be a great idea for a completely flat planet. With topography and infrastructure, it's a very different story. | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 years ago

Surprise: The clouds of Venus do part

The only way we'd seen Venus's surface was to land on the planet or view it in infrared light. NASA's Parker Solar Probe proved otherwise. | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 years ago

Could “nuclear clocks” drive a technological revolution?

Atomic clocks keep time accurately to within 1 second every 33 billion years. Nuclear clocks could blow them all away. | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 years ago

A Russian mathematician rewrote world history – and it is bonkers

Searching for truth in unorthodox ways can be a valuable exercise. But Anatoly Fomenko's alternate world history is just plain weird. | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 years ago

Derinkuyu: Mysterious underground city in Turkey found in man’s basement

A basement renovation project led to the archaeological discovery of a lifetime: the Derinkuyu Underground City, which housed 20,000 people. | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 years ago

Women are more productive than men, according to new research

It's just one of the workplace gender insights in a new study. | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 years ago

We exist thanks to chirality and the asymmetry of life

Life is possible because of asymmetries, such as an imbalance between matter and antimatter and the "handedness" (chirality) of molecules. | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 years ago

Does Time Exist?

We take for granted that time is real. But what if it's only an illusion, and a relative illusion at that? Does time even exist? | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 years ago

Nanofabricators: A “Star Trek” vision of the future

Nanofabricators could create the Star Trek version of the future. Though they are physically plausible, can they actually be created? | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 years ago

Ring galaxies, the rarest in the Universe, finally explained

Spirals, ellipticals, and irregulars are all more common than ring galaxies. At last, we know how these ultra-rare objects are made. | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 years ago

Njoya the Great put his African kingdom on the map

Njoya the Great not only produced a map of his kingdom but was able to secure some autonomy in an era of European colonialism. | Continue reading


@bigthink.com | 2 years ago