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Science and Tech
With new labs, funding models, and institutions, metascience is reinventing the machinery of discovery.
Government-spec’d glory projects produce tech demos. Enduring progress demands a better way forward.
The case that a bipartisan movement structured around progress and reform may be reaching critical mass.
Wavelengths stretch, distances grow, and temperatures cool as the Universe expands with time. How are the various cosmic parameters related?
Leaders in China hope that AI and robotics can finally resolve the flaws of a centralized planned economy. But US technoculture has an edge.
Weird-looking galaxies, with tentacle-like tails or prominent dual streams, appear like jellyfish or bunny ears. But that’s just the start.
For over 10 billion years, the cosmic star-formation rate has been dropping and dropping. Someday, the final star in the Universe will die.
Digital tools are pulling us away from fixed texts and back toward fluid, interactive communication.
We first measured G, the gravitational constant, back in the 18th century. As the least well-known fundamental constant, can it be improved?
Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.
In 2017, a kilonova sent light and gravitational waves across the Universe. Here on Earth, there was a 1.7 second signal arrival delay. Why?
NASA’s Caleb Scharf talks with Big Think about life’s long experiment in expansion.
Dark matter, dark energy, and the Big Bang are all part of a solid scientific foundation. Here's why popular media often claims otherwise.
What if the first search for life beyond Earth actually succeeded?
Planets grow from protostellar material in disks, leading to full-grown planetary systems in time. At last, the final gap has been filled.
We chat with Mark Klarzynski, founder of PEAK:AIO, on how his company became an international player in data storage for the age of AI.
Until the late 20th century, there wasn't a truly universal standard. Under our current definition, everyone agrees on what "one meter" is.
Do aliens speak the same physics that we do, with similar laws, observables, and underlying mathematics. Maybe not, argues Daniel Whiteson.
We've now detected hundreds of gravitational waves with LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA. What if we tried Weber's original method in the modern day?
The great books aren’t just classics — they’re cultural Schelling points that give our minds a place to meet up in the world of ideas.
The first world beyond Earth for human habitability should be the Moon, not Mars. This is why we should terraform our lunar neighbor first.
Fibonacci’s "Liber Abaci" not only revolutionized commerce — it also helped nudge the world towards reasoned, quantitative enquiry.
Times dilate and lengths contract near the speed of light. Bizarre and confusing? Sure. But under relativity, it can't be any other way.
In this excerpt from "The Shortest History of AI," Toby Walsh explores the history of the Logic Theorist, the first AI to prove mathematical theorems.
Stellar streams are faint trails of stars that appear to "stream" out of galaxies. A new one, escaping galaxy M61, may point to many others.
How did Jobs revolutionize tech, not once but continually? Aspiring innovators — and today's Apple — should look to The Bard and seek out singularity.
When dying, Sun-like stars have binary companions, spectacular sights arise from the ionization. JWST spots the Red Spider Nebula in action!
There's some, but not overwhelming, evidence that dark energy is evolving. What would it take for a "Big Crunch" to be our cosmic fate?
Scientists are notoriously resistant to new ideas. Are they falling prey to groupthink? Or are our current theories just that successful?
Maybe — just don't expect a carbon copy.