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Human Evolution
Red dwarfs are the Universe's most common star type. Their flaring now makes potentially Earth-like worlds uninhabitable, but just you wait.
It's time to write the human genome, argues microbiologist Andrew Hessel.
Our Sun only arose after 9.2 billion years of cosmic history: with many stars living and dying first. How many prior generations were there?
3mins
Language is a huge part of human development, even the language we keep to ourselves. Three experts explain how words and beliefs can change our brains and our lives:
Unlikely Collaborators
From here on Earth, looking farther away in space means looking farther back in time. So what are distant Earth-watchers seeing right now?
Big Think spoke with astronomer David Kipping about technosignatures, "extragalactic SETI," and being a popular science communicator in the YouTube age.
In this excerpt from "When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows...," Steven Pinker examines how crying may have evolved as part of a suite of emotional expressions aimed at strengthening social bonds.
Questions about our origins, biologically, chemically, and cosmically, are the most profound ones we can ask. Here are today's best answers.
3mins
Biologist Tyler Volk PhD, psychiatrist Bruce Greyson MD, and palliative care physician BJ Miller MD, reveal how confronting mortality can improve the way we live.
Unlikely Collaborators
In this excerpt from "The Story of CO2," Peter Brennan explains how changes in the Earth's ecosystem led to fire, which in turn led our ancestors to become the "fire apes."
7mins
“The idea of evolution by natural selection is, for me, probably the most beautiful idea in biology.”
In “The Secret History of Denisovans,” Silvana Condemi and François Savatier trace the story of our mysterious hominin ancestor.
19mins
“So many things could have happened in a different way that we wouldn't be here at all, both individually, for sure, and certainly as a species.”
In "The Headache," Tom Zeller Jr. explores one of the human brain's most enduring, and painful, enigmas.
After more than a million years of separation, two branches of humanity reunited around 300,000 years ago, suggests new research.