For Business
Learning & Development
Develop leaders in your organization with Big Think+ classes
Custom Content
Create premium thought leadership and storytelling with Big Think Creative
Advertising Campaigns
Reach the smartest audience on the Internet with Big Think editorial integrations
Live Events
Bring your people and ideas to life with Big Think Events
Learning & Development
Develop leaders in your organization with Big Think+ classes
Custom Content
Create premium thought leadership and storytelling with Big Think Creative
Advertising Campaigns
Reach the smartest audience on the Internet with Big Think editorial integrations
Live Events
Bring your people and ideas to life with Big Think Events
Search
Physics
Even with leap years and long-term planning, our calendar won't be good forever. Here's why, and how to fix it.
One day, we could fly across the U.S. in half an hour. A state-of-the-art hypersonic flight testing facility at UTSA could help make that dream a reality.
Every December, the Geminid meteor shower reaches its peak. Its 2021 show will be spectacular, but only if you do it right.
No matter how hard we try, we will never reach a final theory that unifies scientific knowledge. The very nature of science doesn't allow it.
Until now, researchers believed davemaoite could never be found on Earth's surface.
Many still cling to the idea that we live in a deterministic Universe, despite the nature of quantum physics. Now, the "least spooky" interpretation no longer works.
Why are the rest masses of fundamental particles related like this? When it comes to the nature of matter in the Universe, the Standard Model describes the known elementary particles perfectly […]
More energy means more potential for discovery, but we’re topped out. If your goal is to discover something completely novel, you have to look in a way that no one else […]
Once merely a theoretical curiosity, they might be the key to understanding so much more. Out of all of the known particles — both fundamental and composite — there are a whole slew of properties […]
Whatever’s lurking out there, it isn’t all, or even mostly, normal matter. When it comes to the Universe, it’s only natural to wonder what, exactly, it is that makes everything up. […]
“Hubble’s Law” is only an approximation, and breaks down when we need it most. From anywhere in the Universe, you can choose to look out at any other galaxy that’s present. […]
Going to smaller and smaller distance scales reveals more fundamental views of nature, which means if we can understand and describe the smallest scales, we can build our way to […]
Only the best physical theories outlast the minds that invented them. Throughout the 20th century, a number of discoveries revolutionized our Universe. The discovery of the interior structure of atoms as […]
Most of us will never run a 4 minute mile. But on a bicycle, almost anyone can do it. As human beings, we often take for granted how our bodies work. […]
50% of stars are in Sun-like ‘singlet’ systems. The planetary nebulae we see just don’t line up. Around 7 billion years from now, our Sun’s life will end. As the Sun […]
Hidden variables aren’t ruled out, but they can’t get rid of quantum weirdness. Ever since the discovery of the bizarre behavior of quantum systems, we’ve been forced to reckon with […]
The dream of zero resistance is closer than you may think. One of the biggest physical problems in modern society is resistance. Not political or social resistance, mind you, but electrical […]
Yes, the Big Bang is real, but what about what came before? If you ask anyone about the origin of some phenomenon that we’ve observed, they’ll usually default to the same […]
With sodium-sensitive eyes, we’d see it every new Moon. With no detectable gases, the Moon appears to be atmosphere-free. The Moon as seen from a view above the majority of Earth’s […]
When you view your right hand in a mirror, it appears as a left hand. Writing is reversed, as is the direction of any spinning object: clockwise becomes counterclockwise and […]
An almost 40-year-old theory finally has ‘smoking gun’ evidence for it. During most of their lives, stars burn stably, changing imperceptibly. The rotten egg nebula, at lower right (and shown in […]
Is the Universe the same everywhere? Or are there truly ‘special places’ around? For practically all of human history, one assumption about our place in the Universe had long gone unchallenged: […]
Has all this happened before, and will all this happen once again? There are only a few questions, when we ask them, that force us to reckon with the fundamental nature […]
If you can’t surpass it in a vacuum, try doing so in a medium instead. In our Universe, there are a few rules that everything must obey. Energy, momentum, and angular […]
Even addition has to play by different rules for black holes. How do you add 28 and 47 together? This simple math question helps us highlight the many different ways that […]
The Big Theoretical Physics Problem At The Center Of The ‘Muon g-2’ Puzzle In early April, 2021, the experimental physics community announced an enormous victory: they had measured the muon’s magnetic […]
Only 3% of physics graduates and 2% of astronomy graduates are Black. That’s got to change. In the late 1990s, about 5% of the approximately 4000 bachelor’s degrees in physics per […]
It’s one of Einstein’s most bizarre predictions. And it’s true. There’s no such thing as absolute time. No matter where you are, how fast you’re moving, or how strong the gravitational […]
Is a proton fundamentally more ‘quarky’ or ‘gluey’ in nature? One question that every curious child winds up asking at some point or other is, “what are things made of?” Every […]
A black woman most have never heard of made GPS possible. Over the span of a single lifetime, the world has changed in ways that would have been virtually unimaginable […]