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Instead of worshipping Yahweh, the devotees were perhaps dedicated to Mars and Jupiter.

Before anesthetics, some patients would die of the pain on the operating table.

For millennia, diamonds were the hardest known material, but they only rank at #7 on the current list. Can you guess which material is #1?

It is time to give the Russian cosmologist the credit he deserves.

From wearable electronics to microscopic sensors to telemedicine, new advances like graphene and supercapacitors are bringing "impossible" electronics to life.

This medieval-themed meme highlights a shady yet all too common rhetorical move people make in arguments.

If your Universe contains any matter at all, a constant Hubble parameter is absolutely impossible. Our observable Universe is an enormous place, with some two trillion galaxies strewn across the […]

If you thought that diamonds were the hardest things of all, this will have you thinking again. Carbon is one of the most fascinating elements in all of nature, with chemical […]

The legacy of Felix Dzerzhinsky, who led Soviet secret police in the "Red Terror," still confounds Russia.

The photos were taken the same day as Russian cosmonauts investigated a mysterious hole discovered in one of the craft.

Images revealing the power of Hurricane Florence enthrall us and terrify us at the same time.

American ingenuity is often foreign-born. With 51% of tech unicorns (valuation over a billion dollars) having an immigrant founder, we take a look at the Top 20 tech influencers with strong immigrant ties. 

Fashion designer Tina Gorjanc has introduced a line of leather handbags and jackets made from late designer Alexander McQueen’s lab-grown skin.

"I also strongly believe that science is no longer a vocation where an individual sits in a darkened lab with his instruments, tinkering away at some big question.  Science is collaborative, and will become more so."

This just in from Ukraine: President Yanukovych has sacked the country’s armed forces chief, has agreed a ‘truce’ with the three main opposition leaders, and wants to start ‘negotiations’ to […]

Scheduled to launch early this year are three PhoneSat "nanosatellites" -- nicknamed Alexander, Graham, and Bell -- built using off-the-shelf components, including Samsung Nexus smartphones.

What is this thing called love?  I took my own stab at understanding the neurobiological circuits underlying love and sex with my own book, DIRTY MINDS: HOW OUR BRAINS INFLUENCE […]

If you remember, I’ve decided to “celebrate” the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War by remembering failures of Southern and Confederate statesmanship.  My first post affirmed the […]

"Today's conservatives have conjured a mythic Reagan who never compromised with America's enemies and never shrank from a fight. But the real Reagan did both those things, often," says Peter Beinart.

As Secretary of State under President Reagan, Chief of Staff for Nixon and Ford and a four star general, Haig was a war hero and once wrongly assumed control of the Presidency.

Inaugural poetess and Professor of African-American Studies at Yale Elizabeth Alexander is sitting down with Big Think today. She helped ring in the Obama presidency with her poem, “Praise Song […]

Seneca thought the use of ice was a "true fever of the most malignant kind."

In 2020, scientists took more than a kilo of moon rock and soil back to Earth for testing.

The most important events in history have nothing to do with politics or wars.

Like many of us, the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius hated waking up early, but his stoic philosophy always helped him get out of bed.

We confidently state that the Universe is known to be 13.8 billion years old, with an uncertainty of just 1%. Here's how we know.

We know the Universe is expanding, but scientists don't agree on the rate. This is a legitimate problem.

Is history decided by discernible laws or does it unfold based on random, unpredictable occurrences?

From Aristotle's lazy cosmology to Immanuel Kant's "scientific" racism, great minds are not immune to very bad ideas.

All nations have founding myths, but none are quite like Russia's.