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Why the tooth fairy is important for theoretical physics
5+ day, 15+ hour ago (605+ words) Credit: D. Saadeh et al. , Phys. Rev. Lett. , 2016; Modifications: E. Siegel/public domain An astrophysics column on big questions and our universe. However, as cosmologist Mike Turner made famous in the 1990s, we have a saying in theoretical physics about how we should…...
American innovators are rewriting cement's recipe " and its rulebook
1+ week, 4+ day ago (921+ words) This content is locked. Please login or become a member. How do you clean up one of the world's most essential building materials? Clear Path Action, a conservative clean energy nonprofit, is highlighting Brimstone's effort to make cement with dramatically…...
Why humans need stories, according to neuroscience
1+ week, 5+ day ago (648+ words) This content is locked. Please login or become a member. If you think of something like speech, you're probably not aware of my speech in a syllable-by-syllable, word-by-word manner. So, for example, the word mouse could mean a rodent, or…...
Sean Carroll: The past, present, and future exist simultaneously
1+ week, 6+ day ago (96+ words) Big Think Sean Carroll: The past, present, and future exist simultaneously - Videos Back Latest Videos See all videos Classes Back Featured Classes See all classes This content is locked. Please login or become a member. Time feels like the most…...
We've been guessing about ancestral history " until now
1+ week, 6+ day ago (518+ words) This content is locked. Please login or become a member. David Reich is a geneticist at Harvard whose lab helped pioneer the field of ancient DNA " extracting and sequencing genetic material from human remains thousands of years old. What they…...
The discovery of an atmosphere on a tiny Kuiper belt world
1+ week, 6+ day ago (441+ words) An astrophysics column on big questions and our universe. only rarely found. They're most abundant in permanently shadowed craters, deep beneath a planetary surface, or " in the case of water ice " as part of a temporary configuration on a world…...
The 2-part search for work you actually want to show up for
1+ week, 6+ day ago (714+ words) A behavioral science column for the decisions that matter. In 2013, the renowned educationalist Sir Ken Robinson told Big Think a story about a man who was perhaps the unluckiest farmer in Australia. For generations, the man's family had farmed the…...
The real cost of logging the boreal forest may be buried in the soil
2+ week, 1+ hour ago (542+ words) Former postdoctoral scholars Peter Pellitier (left) and Katerina Georgiou (right) during field surveys near Norra G'llsj'n in Dalarna County, Sweden. (Image credit: Philippe Roberge) From space, the boreal forest appears as a near-continuous pine-green band stretching across the Northern Hemisphere,…...
The power of story to find history's lost voices " starting with Pompeii
3+ week, 3+ day ago (743+ words) A literature column to feed your curiosity. "The bittersweet memory of that day, eighteen years ago, had never left him. It was the second time he had been sold in his short lifetime, reduced to nothing more than a name…...
A brief history of the cosmic distance record
2+ week, 14+ hour ago (322+ words) Credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/Bezanson et al. 2024 and Wold et al. 2025 An astrophysics column on big questions and our universe. In 1675, Newton famously wrote, "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants." But in…...