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JWST catches star vaporizing the hottest rocky exoplanets
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/jwst-star-vaporizing-rocky-exoplanet/
Published: February 18, 2025 07:00
For planets, just like in real estate, the most important property they can possess is “location.” If you want to form a rocky planet, that’s no problem if you’re in the inner part of your stellar system: interior to the analogue of the asteroid belt in…
AI agents will outmaneuver salespeople by optimizing persuasion
https://bigthink.com/the-future/ai-agents-will-outmaneuver-salespeople-by-optimizing-every-persuasive-move/
Published: February 17, 2025 17:31
When I was a kid there were four AI agents in my life. Their names were Inky, Blinky, Pinky, and Clyde and they tried their best to hunt me down. This was 1980 and the agents were the four colorful ghosts in the iconic arcade game Pac-Man.Â
By today’s…
The 3 pillars of workplace happiness and how to use them
https://bigthink.com/business/the-3-pillars-of-workplace-happiness-and-how-to-use-them/
Published: February 17, 2025 14:00
Researching the science of happiness at work is not always a happy experience. You might begin full of optimism, but the deeper you get into it, the harder it is to maintain a positive outlook. The main reason is that, no matter which way you look at it, a…
The Bullseye galaxy: a ring galaxy with a resonant twist
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/bullseye-galaxy-ring-twist/
Published: February 17, 2025 07:00
Across the Universe, galaxies come in four major types.
At a level of 36x zoom, Euclid’s first mosaic contains the distant but abundant galaxy cluster Abell 3381, which features a line of bright galaxies similar to Markarian’s chain in the Virgo…
How early human brains expanded over time
https://bigthink.com/the-past/how-early-human-brains-expanded-over-time/
Published: February 15, 2025 18:00
Encephalization — the increase in brain size relative to the body — is a key feature in human evolution, but exactly how this process occurred is still unclear. Looking at studies comparing the cranial capacity of early modern humans to other hominin…
Starts With A Bang podcast #114 – Pluto and Charon
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/starts-with-a-bang-podcast-114-pluto-and-charon/
Published: February 15, 2025 17:10
Out there in the Universe, there are tremendous, uncountable numbers of planetary systems just waiting to be discovered. But stellar systems won’t just consist of planets orbiting a parent star; there will be moons, asteroids, Kuiper belt-like objects, and…
The hallucinatory thoughts of the dying mind
https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/the-hallucinatory-thoughts-of-the-dying-mind/
Published: February 14, 2025 15:35
When William Brahms’s anthology of last words, “Last Words of Notable People,” came out in 2010, he encountered readers who entertained themselves by speculating what their last words might be. Initially, Brahms said, they would propose something witty and…
Ask Ethan: Could there be dark matter aliens out there?
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/dark-matter-aliens/
Published: February 14, 2025 07:00
When it comes to the entirety of the Universe, the “stuff” that we’re made out of — atoms and their constituent particles — plays an important role. Protons, neutrons, and electrons, in both atomic, nuclear, and ionic configurations, make up all of the…
Exploring the wild and disturbing world of “scienceploitation”
https://bigthink.com/thinking/scienceploitation/
Published: February 13, 2025 15:30
We’re incessantly bombarded with information — from media sources, influencers, advertisers, AI assistants, co-workers, and more. Do you ever feel like there is too much to handle? As if the din makes it difficult to settle your mind, determine truth from…
If we want artificial “superintelligence,” it may need to feel pain
https://bigthink.com/mini-philosophy/if-we-want-an-artificial-superintelligence-we-may-need-to-let-it-feel-pain/
Published: February 13, 2025 14:23
Scientists love a good classification system. It’s important to give things labels and it’s fun to step back and look at your beautiful taxonomic tables. Given that Aristotle is considered one of the first scientists, it’ll come as no surprise that he was…
Investing in an impermanent world: Lessons from mujĹŤ
https://bigthink.com/business/investing-in-an-impermanent-world-lessons-from-mujo/
Published: February 13, 2025 14:00
In a recent podcast episode, William Green — author of Richer, Wiser, Happier — shared a revealing story about how Howard Marks, co-founder of Oaktree Capital Management, thinks about investing.
While studying at the University of Pennsylvania, Marks…
How small are the fundamental particles of the Universe?
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/how-small-fundamental-particles/
Published: February 13, 2025 07:00
Imagine that you wanted to know what the matter around you was made of, at a fundamental level. How would you go about figuring out the answer? You might think to approach the problem by taking a piece of that matter and splitting it into small chunks, and…
Want to eliminate workplace friction? Become a “trustee of time”
https://bigthink.com/business/want-to-eliminate-workplace-friction/
Published: February 12, 2025 15:30
At some point, you’ve probably evaluated the success of your day by measuring it against the amount of friction you encountered — those tasks, obstacles, and arguments that make life harder than it needs to be. This appraisal is even found in everyday…
No, we can’t geoengineer our way out of the climate crisis
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/cant-geoengineer-climate-crisis/
Published: February 12, 2025 07:00
All across the world, temperatures and weather conditions vary tremendously, as they always have. But if we look to global conditions, by averaging our data about the entire world together, we find that there have been some rapid, even alarming changes…
Numbers vs narratives: Unraveling the truth behind today’s global migration statistics
https://bigthink.com/the-present/the-truth-behind-global-migration-statistics/
Published: February 11, 2025 15:30
A migrant today is anyone who crosses an international border. Beyond this basic definition, ways of classifying migration vary considerably. Does a day trip count? A month-long visit? Should students, tourists, and business travelers be considered…
Did LIGO just see its most important gravitational wave ever?
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/ligo-most-important-gravitational-wave-ever/
Published: February 11, 2025 07:00
It’s hard to believe, but here in 2025, we’re less than a full decade into the era of gravitational wave astronomy. It was only in September of 2015 that Advanced LIGO, humanity’s first gravitational wave observatory capable of detecting the realistic…
The surprising alliance shaping the fate of America’s 90,000 dams
https://bigthink.com/the-present/hydropower-vs-dam-removal/
Published: February 10, 2025 18:04
This winter, while visiting my parents in California, I came across a YouTube ad that certainly wasn’t running in Utah, where I was living. Against stock footage of outdoor adventures and fresh produce, the narrator promised guilt-free living powered by…
3 ways “anti-micromanagement” can backfire
https://bigthink.com/business/3-ways-anti-micromanagement-can-backfire/
Published: February 10, 2025 14:00
Nobody loves micromanagers, but less discussed (and even less beloved) are the “anti-micromanagers.” Maybe you’ve had one, maybe you’ve been one. To avoid the dreaded title of “micromanager,” a new leader becomes the opposite. But the path to poor…
JWST shows surprising violence in a young star system’s birth
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/jwst-violence-star-system-birth/
Published: February 10, 2025 07:00
Just 450 light-years away, new stars are being born.
This wide-field image only encapsulates a portion of the giant Taurus Molecular Cloud, which extends for nearly 14 degrees across the sky on its longest axis. Just 430-450 light-years away, it may be…
At what distance could a “twin Earth” detect our signals?
https://bigthink.com/13-8/at-what-distance-could-a-twin-earth-detect-our-signals/
Published: February 7, 2025 15:56
Just over 60 years ago, Frank Drake turned a radio telescope at two stars and “listened” for signals of an alien civilization. That experiment marked the beginning of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence or SETI. The stars Drake chose were nearby,…
Ask Ethan: What are the worst cosmic misnomers?
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/worst-cosmic-misnomers/
Published: February 7, 2025 07:00
Out there in the Universe, there are all sorts of fascinating objects, phenomena, and events that have been either predicted, theorized, or directly observed. Some of them are named rather intuitively, as we have no problem with names like star-forming…