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How Neuralink’s chief competitor is tapping into the brain without surgery

https://bigthink.com/the-future/synchron-bci/

Published: December 21, 2024 16:00

“Hello, world!” read one inconspicuous tweet posted on the Twitter account of Tom Oxley, founder and CEO of Synchron, a startup that develops brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), in December 2021. The tweet wasn’t written by Oxley but one of Synchron’s…

Everyday Philosophy: Bad at probability? That might be a blessing.

https://bigthink.com/thinking/everyday-philosophy-bad-at-probability-that-might-be-a-blessing/

Published: December 20, 2024 17:21

Very few of my friends understand the basic probabilities of life. They just see things in black and white, and almost always from hunches. Can you tell me why a lot of humans are so bad at probability, and why it’s important to be better? – Pratyush,…

Why does it feel like the world is falling apart?

https://bigthink.com/series/explain-it-like-im-smart/brian-klaas/

Published: December 20, 2024 14:00

As modern humans we experience a different world and experience than anyone who has ever come before us. This is because we’ve inverted the dynamics of how our lives unfold. We live on a planet defined by local stability, but global instability. The…

Ask Ethan: Do gravitons need to exist?

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/gravitons-exist/

Published: December 20, 2024 07:00

If you examine the Universe extremely closely, by probing the fundamental entities with it on the smallest possible scales, you’ll discover that reality is fundamentally quantum in nature. Matter itself is made up of indivisible, uncuttable quantum…

A surprising share of the global elite went to Harvard

https://bigthink.com/the-present/global-elite-went-to-harvard/

Published: December 19, 2024 15:43

A duo of economists recently surveyed where 6,141 members of the world’s global elite went to college. The results show that a select few academic institutions graduate the most powerful and influential people. Ricardo J. Salas Diaz is a lecturer at…

10 lessons I learned in 2024

https://bigthink.com/business/10-lessons-i-learned-in-2024/

Published: December 19, 2024 14:00

Coming into the holidays, I wanted to take a beat and reflect back on the last several months. So I wrote down 10 lessons I learned this year. Perhaps some of these will resonate with you, too. The year was a big one, both personally—and professionally. We…

Gold, frankincense, and myrrh: one gift was made in a neutron star

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/gold-baby-jesus-neutron-star/

Published: December 19, 2024 07:00

On a frosty winter’s night more than 2,000 years ago, a young expectant mother found herself in a wooden manger as she prepared to give birth. Shortly after the delivery, three wise men from the east arrived, bearing gifts for the newborn: gold,…

How we discovered we’re all made of “star stuff”

https://bigthink.com/the-past/how-we-discovered-were-all-made-of-star-stuff/

Published: December 18, 2024 17:58

Each one of us — in a very physical and physiological way — is 13.8 billion years old. This is the age of the Universe. It took our cosmos this long to forge the elements and build up the cumulative complexity that makes us what we are. It took the…

How to disrupt misinformation with the “ladder of misinference”

https://bigthink.com/the-learning-curve/the-ladder-of-misinference/

Published: December 18, 2024 15:30

It likely wasn’t long after the first utterances of our ancestors that misinformation was born. It may have been an honest misunderstanding. It may have been a dubious actor trying to get one up on his fellow tribe members. Whatever the case, half-truths…

The “Demon Method”: How necromancy once solved everyone’s problems

https://bigthink.com/the-past/the-demon-method-how-necromancy-once-solved-everyones-problems/

Published: December 18, 2024 14:42

I use the internet a lot. I used it to research this article, to get this job, and to check my social media on company time. I use GPS to check the traffic, and I use Google to ask things I’m too old to ask: What’s the best way to cook rice? How do you…

The 16 stories that shaped physics and astronomy in 2024

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/16-stories-physics-astronomy-2024/

Published: December 18, 2024 07:00

In a year where science stories seemed to be dominated by rocket launches, hype surrounding artificial intelligence and quantum computing, and how political meddling threatens the enterprise of science itself, it might seem like basic science is…

Mapped: The strange link between obesity and corruption

https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/obesity-and-corruption/

Published: December 17, 2024 18:05

Country-level corruption is a tough KPI to quantify. So how do organizations like Transparency International and the World Bank do it? Not by comparing the fiscal, economic, and financial data of each country — they’d only end up comparing (rotten) apples…

Why we ghost

https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/why-we-ghost/

Published: December 17, 2024 18:00

It’s like he died—except if somebody dies, they’re not going to show up at your doorstep one day.” That’s how Lynn describes what it felt like when her ex—let’s call him Aidan—abruptly cut off all contact last year. The two had been dating for seven years,…

The art of outlasting: What we can learn from timeproof Japanese businesses

https://bigthink.com/the-long-game/the-art-of-outlasting-what-we-can-learn-from-timeproof-japanese-businesses/

Published: December 17, 2024 14:00

Picture yourself on a train hurtling toward Nara Prefecture, hours away from the neon-lit frenzy of Tokyo. The urban sprawl gives way to quieter vistas, the journey itself a pilgrimage of sorts. By the time you arrive in Ikaruga, at Hōryū-ji — widely…

Waves in an Impossible Sea: the 2024 science book of the year

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/waves-in-an-impossible-sea-science-book-year/

Published: December 17, 2024 07:00

It’s rare that a book comes along that changes the way experts in their field think about the fundamentals, while simultaneously being accessible and informative to those without expert knowledge themselves. That’s why, as 2024 winds down, it’s a…

3 philosophy classics that are better than self-help books

https://bigthink.com/thinking/3-philosophy-classics-that-are-better-than-self-help-books/

Published: December 16, 2024 17:40

There are two ways to write a bestseller. The first is to imagine something truly original. You need to invent a world or coin a new idea — an idea that changes the reader. The second way is to rewrite and refresh something. You put Shakespeare in an…

5 ways women are redefining leadership

https://bigthink.com/business/5-ways-women-are-redefining-leadership/

Published: December 16, 2024 14:00

Many challenges in the world today are the result of failed leadership. A leadership style that thrives on hierarchy and rewards competition; a leadership that is built around the egos of those who lead and not around their capacity to lead positive…

The most important lesson from JWST’s “baby Milky Way”

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/jwst-baby-milky-way/

Published: December 16, 2024 07:00

How did our Universe become the way it is today? A portion of the dwarf galaxy Wolf–Lundmark–Melotte (WLM) captured by the James Webb Space Telescope’s Near-Infrared Camera. This region showcases some of the stars located within WLM, some ~3 million…

Has the US reached “peak obesity”?

https://bigthink.com/health/obesity-rate-falling/

Published: December 15, 2024 16:00

This article is an installment of Future Explored, Freethink’s weekly guide to world-changing technology. You can get stories like this one straight to your inbox every Saturday morning by subscribing above. It’s 2028, and for the first time in living…

Silicon Valley’s obsession with AI looks a lot like religion

https://bigthink.com/the-present/ai-religion/

Published: December 14, 2024 18:00

While I was studying toward ordination as secular humanist clergy two decades ago, I had the fortune of meeting the late rabbi Sherwin Wine, a brilliant philosopher whom TIME magazine profiled as “the atheist rabbi” in 1967. He became my favorite teacher…

Should we turn the electricity grid over to AI?

https://bigthink.com/the-future/electricity-grid-ai/

Published: December 14, 2024 16:00

California, August 2048. Much of the state has been baking in a severe heat wave going on for two weeks, with temperatures consistently reaching 100°F. The air is dry; the ground is parched; the flora is kindling. In this tinderbox, suddenly there’s a…