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The newest essays, interviews, and features from Big Think.
Stephan Faris writes that "it seems unrealistic to base policies on the expectation that asymptomatic HIV-positive youth will permanently abstain from sex."
Are certain elements of music hard-wired into our brains? If there are universals in how we perceive music and respond to it, our musical sense might have some adaptive value.
The cost of Wall Street's most recent innovations can be measured in the trillions of dollars. But they have also damaged the whole notion of financial innovation.
New research indicates that paternal mice that physically interact with their offspring grow new brain cells and form lasting memories of the babies.
Last Thursday, May 6th, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1000 points in a matter of minutes and we still don't know why it happened. Heidi Moore investigates.
"Couples in lasting marriages have at least five small positive interactions (touching, smiling, paying a compliment) for every negative one (sneering, eye rolling, withdrawal)."
A number of new therapies have been developed for the treatment of chronic pain. Most borrow from the field of anesthesiology and share a goal of preventing pain signals from reaching the brain.
Over the weekend BP's latest effort at stanching the Deepwater Horizon oil spill failed. The New York Times asked five experts to weigh in on what might now be done.
Nathaniel Rich writes that Ray Bradbury's best stories are "have a strange familiarity about them. They're like long-forgotten acquaintances—you know you've met them somewhere before."
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The cosmologist describes the cosmos in 60 seconds.
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“You’ve got to get away from the idea cancer is a disease to be cured. … Cancer is in a way nature’s experiment with life.”
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Seeking a “penicillin moment” in cancer research through a radically new approach.
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If humans contacted aliens, the astrobiologist would be the man in charge of sending the first message. So what would he say?
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OK, Paul Davies admits it’s a “crazy idea.” But if we want to improve our search for ET, it’s the kind of idea we might need.
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Good luck finding intelligent life within 1,000 light years. As for super-advanced alien civilizations, they’re probably closer to the center of the galaxy.
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If we want to test the idea that life forms easily in Earthlike conditions, why not search for organisms outside our tree of life—right here on Earth?
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“There’s no lack of real estate” where life might spring up in the universe. So why has our search for ET turned up nothing?
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The theory that life on our planet originated on Mars was originally dismissed as a “crackpot notion.” It’s now considered a distinct possibility.
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A conversation with the Arizona State University cosmologist and astrobiologist.
When veteran journalist Daniel Okrent joined the New York Times as the newspaper’s first public editor in 2003, he entered a newsroom reeling in the wake of the Jayson Blair […]