The Latest from Big Think

Text reading "The Latest" in a large, serif font on a light background.
A grid displays 45 colorful classic novel book covers, including titles like “Catch-22,” “Lolita,” “On the Road,” and “Infinite Jest.”.
In our age of screens and shrinking attention spans, let this analog challenge be your progress bar toward literary beauty and joy.
A person lies in bed covered by a blanket, resting their head on a pillow and holding a closed book on their chest.
Classics editor Henry Eliot shares his strategies for getting started, staying motivated, and finding joy in literature’s great books.
Voyager 1
We strongly suspect we aren't alone in the Universe, but so far, we haven't found anyone. What determines when we'll finally make contact?
A colorful map titled “A Literary Map of America,” showing U.S. states with notable authors’ names and works, displayed in front of shelves filled with books.
A map is a text in its own right, and like a Pynchon novel, this one can be read in a multitude of ways.
A page titled “The Philosophy of Time Travel” and a folded paper with a sinister, smiling skull drawing are set against a geometric, tunnel-like background, alluding to the mysterious lessons in physics and mortality found within Donnie Darko.
Most time travel stories involve changing the past to create a better future. "Donnie Darko" subverts that expectation, and a whole lot more.
Book cover of “Disrupters at the Gate” by Jeffrey I. Cole and Harlan J. Lebo, featuring a blue background, white gate illustration, and yellow text highlighting the book’s subtitle.
The greatest threat to a successful company may be a competitor that doesn’t exist (yet).
Two young men are talking closely, one seated and one leaning in. Both wear casual clothing in an indoor setting with blurred background figures.
Richard Kelly's forthcoming novel, "The Philosophy of Time Travel," ties up loose ends and introduces new mysteries to the "Donnie Darko" universe. 
standard model color
Predicted back in the 1960s, 2012's discovery of the Higgs boson completed the Standard Model. But the biggest Higgs puzzle still persists.
Einstein field equations
Although many of Einstein's papers revolutionized physics, there's one Einsteinian advance, generally, that towers over all the rest.
crab pulsar remnant
Millisecond pulsars are the Universe's most accurate natural clocks. A pulse change, thought rare, just occurred twice in the closest one.
A bearded man is surrounded by fantastical creatures and demons attacking him in an intricate, detailed, black-and-white engraving.
Great thinkers have long kept psychosis at a safe distance. But those asking the biggest questions may find it uncomfortably close.
A hand reaches toward figs on a tree; one fig and part of another are pixelated, as if obscured by an unseen agency, while the rest of the image remains clear.
The ability to see your options clearly and act on them has never been more valuable.
Illustration of a person composed of various household items standing beside a desk with writing materials on it.
Tech journalist Joanna Stern spent a year using as many AI products as she could. It changed more than her workflow.
A colorful, abstract scientific illustration with a central glowing sphere, circular patterns, and various lines and circles suggesting quantum connections or uncertainty data points, on a dark background with blue accents.
From a primordial soup of particles, atoms eventually emerged. What happened to make it so, and could things have worked out any other way?
A person in traditional ceremonial attire sits on a decorated throne with gold, red, and floral patterns, wearing a tall yellow hat reminiscent of Tibetan Buddhism.
Tibetan Buddhism identifies three very different ways of wasting your life.
colliding black holes
All matter particles can act as waves, and massless light waves show particle-like behavior. Can gravitational waves also be particle-like?
black hole hawking
The matter that creates black holes won't be what comes out when they evaporate. Will the black hole information paradox ever be solved?
Book cover of “The Opposite of Happiness” by George Loewenstein, featuring a large bubble and a pin about to pop it above the title.
Why do anger, regret, and shame linger? Because evolution optimized our emotions to keep us alive, not to make us happy.
A person in a cleanroom suit stands next to a large cylindrical scientific instrument inside a high-tech laboratory with bright lighting and metallic walls, where one blip of dark matter was recently detected.
In 1982, an experiment showed unprecedented evidence for exotic matter: magnetic monopoles. But without reproducibility, it didn't hold up.
Satellite view of Earth showing Eurasia at night, with illuminated areas highlighting population density and settlements across the continent.
Until recently, nobody had visualized the fungal "Wood Wide Web."