Big Think
The singularity: Futurists ponder coming era of technological explosion
Technology has a habit of running away from us. When a breakthrough occurs or a floodgate opens, explosive, exponential growth ...
All animals sleep — and scientists are still struggling to understand why
All animals sleep, even the diminutive roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans. Tinkering scientists have tried to genetically engineer the act out of ...
Viewpoint: ‘Fashionable nonsense’ — The deadly impact of ‘kowtowing to academia’s political zeitgeist’ in biomedicine
In August 2018, The Lancet published a curious paper, reminiscent of America’s long-forgotten Prohibition Era. The research came to a ...
Music and the mind: How can Mozart treat epilepsy?
While the claims of intelligence boosting are dubious, one assertion that sounds just as implausible but is absolutely real is ...
Video: What are the benefits — and potential threats — of the CRISPR gene editing revolution?
The idea of gene editing was once a thing of the future — but today, it soon could be saving ...
Ultramarathoning: The joy (and pain) of pushing the edge of human limits
Ultramarathoners are interested in self-knowledge through physical exertion. Endurance running, from marathons up, is both a physical and a mental ...
Population bomb, in reverse: Too few babies — not too many — is emerging as a major global problem
In Japan, people buy more diapers for the elderly than babies... And the population growth rate in the U.S. is ...
Video: To feed nearly 8 billion people, we need to grow more food on less land. Vertical farming could increase yields by up to 700%
Vertical farming is a form of agriculture that grows plants indoors in floor-to-ceiling, tower-like walls of plant-holding cells. Instead of ...
‘Magic mushroom’ migraine relief? Single dose of psilocybin shows significant impact in reducing intractable headaches
Migraine treatments can be either preventive or abortive, and they range from prescription drugs, to over-the-counter medications like Advil Migraine, ...
Is embryo gene editing a technology we can afford — ethically and morally? Hank Greely address the future in ‘CRISPR People’
The following is an excerpt from Hank Greely’s book CRISPR People. I see no inherent or unmanageable ethical barriers to ...
Evolutionary tradeoffs: Here’s why birthing a child is so difficult
To pass through the birth canal, human infants have to perform a series of twists and turns, a process called ...
Video: Viewpoint — The upside is immense but ‘threats from CRISPR gene editing are too big to ignore’
CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) is a revolutionary technology that gives scientists the ability to alter DNA. On ...
Getting high on hypoxia: Ancient humans went deep into caves in search of euphoria, and depicted the experience in their paintings
As archaeologist Yafit Kedar from Tel-Aviv University in Israel was in France enjoying some cave art deep within the ground, ...
Coronavirus vaccine created with synthetic biology would be ‘more potent’ than flu shot
As companies hurry to test potential vaccines, the National Institute of Health (NIH) is hoping new bio-engineering techniques to help ...
Infographic: What the US public thinks about tinkering with human genetics
The Pew Research Center published a fascinating roundup of studies that revealed the opinions of the U.S. public on a ...
7 things to know about autism, including why it’s unlikely there will ever be a ‘cure’
To help spread awareness — and cut through the falsehoods, half-truths, and misinformation — here are seven things everyone should ...
Life on Earth is carbon-based. But that doesn’t mean other planets have to use the same building block.
All life on Earth, and thus, all life we've ever observed in the universe, shares a few basic characteristics. Its ...
Boltzmann brain: You may be living in your own simulated reality
The paradox of the Boltzmann Brain can really pull the rug from under you if you follow it to all ...
Is there a link between food allergies and autism?
A new study from researchers at the University of Iowa reveals a link between food allergies and autism, though many ...
Persistence and perspiration: How sweating allowed humans to dominate other species
Millions of years ago, digestion consumed most of the calories we ate. These days, our brain takes 20 times more energy than ...
What would happen if we suddenly stopped dreaming?
Rowan Hooper, the managing editor at New Scientist, reports that chronic dream deprivation is damaging our waking hours in numerous ways. … This ...
