The Latest from Big Think

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The decay of a Bs (B-sub-s) particle into two muons is one of the "rarest measureable processes in physics."
We live in a country so cool you can take the flag and burn it on stage in Vegas.
When you can’t have something, when it’s not going to work out for you, find a way to not want it. 
If you didn’t work and you were an adult male in 1960 you were a bum and you were seen as a bum by everybody else in the neighborhood.  
What has happened to the founding virtues of the United States over the last half century? The news is fairly grim. 
The combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces last month made it the fifth hottest June on record, tied with 2006. 
The twisting path to becoming less dumb has led to many stops. 
Many of Johannes Vermeer’s most famous paintings seem almost eerily silent: The Milkmaid pouring cool milk into a jar, The Lacemaker deep in concentration, the Girl with a Pearl Earring […]
Drifting in the deep, the hulking, yet streamlined mammoth unleashes a string of sound, a booming, but delicate song. 
Each time it's used, the device communicates with an iPhone app that keeps track and posts the user's progress to a Twitter account named TweetingCiggy.
One of the reasons Joseph Campbell’s work in comparative mythology continues to resonate—some, myself included, would argue grow—is due to his ability to synthesize religious and spiritual traditions from around […]
The Vatican recently announced that following World Youth Day events on broadcast or social media can count towards a length reduction...but only if it's accompanied by "requisite devotion."
This month, Securing America’s Future Energy announced its inaugural “Energy Security Prize” competition for emerging and advanced technologies with the ability to significantly reduce America’s dependence on oil. 
Jack Hidary hopes to model himself after Michael Bloomberg as a pragmatic, nonpartisan politician.
A Belgian business participated in a 10-day experiment in which researchers dispersed the scent of chocolate throughout the store at different times. Not surprisingly, customers lingered longer, and certain genres saw increased sales.
Scotland has its Loch Ness monster and Massachusetts has its Salem witches, but for many years Romania has resisted promoting itself as the home of Bram Stoker's fictional vampire. That's about to change.
Fearing for his marriage, a dentist fired an employee he deemed "irresistible." The Iowa Supreme Court said that's perfectly fine.
Although the agency refuses to confirm it, the CIA is helping to fund a study that will determine how and whether tinkering with the climate could impact national health, not to mention security.
Dubbed the "iKnife," it's connected to a mass spectrometer, which identifies certain chemical signatures that are then compared against an online database.