From Big Think

  • Gaiasignatures: A new way to search for alien life

    Hunting for life on other planets is hard; it’s like trying to spot an ant on the other end of a football field. The closest potential host, Venus, is 25 million miles away. Beyond our Solar System, exoplanets that have piqued astronomers’ interest are light-years away. To search for life from these sizable distances, scientists look for biosignatures: elements, molecules, or substances that might have been made by life. These include oxygen and methane, among other compounds. But there’s...

  • Rhyme as reason: The cognitive quirk that makes bad advice seem wise

    Many summers ago, when I was young, I got some booze, I got drunk, and I got a hangover. The next morning, I told my dad what happened over breakfast. “We had some wine at the restaurant,” I groaned, “and then a few beers at Mark’s house. It doesn’t seem enough for me to feel this bad.” My dad chuckled the chuckle of the knowing. He then said something I carry with me to this day: “Beer before wine and you’ll feel fine; wine before beer and you’ll feel queer.” Years later, I’m fairly certain my...

  • The better way to measure cosmic time

    There are a number of grand questions we can ask about the Universe that cut right to the very core of what reality actually is, and were some of the biggest head-scratchers for all of human history. Questions like, “What is the Universe?” “How big is it?” and “Was it eternal, or did it spring into existence, and if so, when?” used to be some of the greatest philosophical mysteries, and yet the last 100 years have provided firm, scientific answers. We know what the Universe is, we know that the...

  • Why a James Webb Space Telescope mystery doesn't (necessarily) break cosmology

    On Christmas Day, 2021, an Ariane 5 rocket leaped from its launch pad in French Guiana. Perched on the rocket’s nose was the long-awaited James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The JWST was designed to perform several tasks, but one of the most important was to study the first stars and galaxies to come into existence. The telescope has performed magnificently; however, some troubling observations have been reported. When the JWST took its first look at the sky, it seemed to have found galaxies...

  • The Chiron effect: Are “wounded healers” better healers?

    Bret broke up with his long-term girlfriend. He’s lonely and cries more often than anyone knows. Stuck in a dark place, he picks up the phone and messages Anth. Anth isn’t a close friend, but Bret picked him over his dad, his brother, and his best friend is because Anth went through a brutal divorce last year. He knows what this pain feels like. Ellen has just been told she has breast cancer. The doctor, though young, is friendly and says all the right things, but she still wants to scream in...

  • Does science fiction shape the future?

    Behind most every tech billionaire is a sci-fi novel they read as a teenager. For Bill Gates it was Stranger in a Strange Land, the 1960s epic detailing the culture clashes that arise when a Martian visits Earth. Google’s Sergey Brin has said it was Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, the cyberpunk classic about hackers and computer viruses set in an Orwellian Los Angeles. Jeff Bezos cites Iain M. Banks’ Culture series, which unreel in an utopian society of humanoids and artificial intelligences,...

  • The key problem with the "brain in a vat" thought experiment

    There is a certain kind of story about nature and our place in it that says all we experience, all we feel, is nothing but neural circuity. According to one thought experiment, if I were a smart enough doctor or computer scientist, I could put your brain in a vat, hook it up to a bunch of electrodes that enable some kind of simulation of the world, and you’d never know the difference. Fed the proper electrical stimulus, your brain would conjure up the exact same experiences as if you were...

  • A cosmic coincidence: What eclipses tell us about Earth

    It was a long shot to trust the northern New England weather in early April, especially after a strange winter of warm spells followed by massive snowstorms. But hundreds of thousands of people gambled, or trusted their weather apps, and, as the atmospheric gods would have it, we were all in for a spectacular celestial treat. Clear blue skies, low humidity, great visibility. I drove for about 2.5 hours from Hanover to the north of New Hampshire with my two sons to an iconic mountain outcrop...

  • If photons have mass, could they explain dark matter?

    When it comes to the Universe, there are some things we can be confident are out there based on what we observe. We know that the Universe was hotter, denser, and more uniform in the distant past. We know that the stars and galaxies in the Universe have grown up and evolved as the Universe has aged. We know that gravitation has formed the large-scale structure in the Universe, and that structure has grown more complex over time. And we also know how much normal matter, altogether, is present in...

  • The idea that matter is mostly empty space is mostly wrong

    One thing you can be sure of, as you measure and observe the Universe around you, is this: the physical objects you see, touch, and otherwise interact with all occupy a volume of space. Whether in the form of solid, liquid, gas, or any other phase of matter, it costs energy in order to reduce the volume that any tangible material occupies, as though the very components of matter themselves are capable of resisting the impetus to occupy a smaller amount of three-dimensional space. And yet,...

  • 25 years since Columbine: We're closer to decoding mass-shooter psychology

    At roughly 11:19 a.m. on April 20, 1999, 18-year-old Eric Harris and 17-year-old Dylan Klebold emerged from their vehicles in the parking lots of Columbine High School. Clad in black trench coats, they started strolling toward the school entrance. Klebold lobbed a pipe bomb. Then the duo brandished guns and started shooting. Armed with a TEC-9 semi-automatic pistol, two shotguns, a carbine, as well as dozens of pipe bombs and mounds of ammunition in a bag they were lugging, the two were out to...

  • Want true success? Be more philosophical about "good" and "bad" failure.

    Failing is cool at the moment. This is an era of reframing. A setback isn’t bad; it’s a learning experience. An obstacle shouldn’t bother you; it’s an opportunity to grow. If you’ve read any self-help article written in the last five years, you will often find, at some point, the idea that “failing is necessary for success.” There’s a cottage industry of celebrities and self-help personalities who lionize the great benefits of having to overcome. All will start with a similar refrain: “We live...