Latest Articles

Latest Articles

The newest essays, interviews, and features from Big Think.

How confident are scientists that world won't end on December 21? Here's a Neil deGrasse Tyson tweet from several weeks ago: Tyson is not alone. NASA scientists are also so […]
US officials continue to maintain as they have publicly for some time that in Yemen the US is only targeting the top 10-15 leaders of AQAP, whom it believes are […]
Close to one-fifth of the world has no access to a power grid, and for many others, access is spotty and inconsistent. A New York startup now offers an affordable, lightweight solution.
Scientists have succeeded in shaping a solar cell into a fiber that's flexible enough to be woven into a fabric that can be used to power an electronic device.
It's that time of the year again when techno pundits are once again breathlessly telling us all about the technology and innovation trends that will be big in 2013. That's […]
Smug confidence in human reason, and the belief that once fully educated and informed people will then make the objectively ‘right’ decision about risk, only widens the gap and increases the danger.
Like X-rays, terahertz frequencies see through items, but most machines that use them are large and costly. Two engineers have found a way to shrink the technology onto a chip.
So you really have to hand it to The Atlantic.  It’s the magazine that’s “thinking outside the box” (I actually hate that phrase; anyone who uses it can be found […]
The iTube is a device that attaches to a smartphone and uses its camera and an accompanying app to perform a lab-quality food allergen test.
By substituting a common plant dye for the metals used to extract lithium, researchers say many of the environmental hazards associated with production and disposal can be avoided.
Imagine walking into a 1,300-year-old Buddhist cave carved from a cliff overlooking a stretch of the ancient Silk Road in Dunhuang, China. You point your flashlight and frescoes showing musicians […]
As machines become more productive, the people who own them may be keeping a larger share of the profits.
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Google's Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen argue why the future will empower the good, not the evil.
In a recent post, Victor Cha, the former director for Asian Affairs at the National Security Council, warned of the dangers of viewing North Korea's supreme leader Kim Jong-un in caricature. Kim […]
NASA's Cassini has taken the first-ever high-resolution shot of a river and its tributaries on a planetary body that's not Earth.
Now that Pope Benedict XVI has joined the Twitterverse, we will see how the pontiff wields the power of 140 characters. Early signs are only moderately encouraging. Before he started […]
It’s hard to know what leads lemmings to race willfully to their own demise.  But I’ve come to believe that the suicidal tendencies embedded in American tax and fiscal policy […]
In our increasingly overloaded lives today we need shortcuts, or rules of thumb, to guide our decision-making. 
Improvisation, creates "a set of experiences that allow you to fine-tune and hone all of the necessary skills needed to think on your feet and simply react and adapt."
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The cornerstone of improvisation around the world is a great two-word phrase called "yes, and." "Yes" means that you accept everything that's brought to you, regardless of who brought it […]