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Could an Amazonian Highway Open a Pandora’s Box of Pathogens?

Brazil has plans to repave a neglected 550-mile road in the South American rainforest to help connect the region and boost economic growth. But some scientists are concerned the project — which would likely increase access between humans, livestock, and wildlife — might be a biosecurity risk.

Undark · EN

After Cancer, a Complex Aftermath for Survivors

Around 70 percent of people with cancer today will live for more than five years after their diagnosis. They’re likely to find that life after cancer is complicated — marked by health risks and chronic illnesses — and that their primary care doctors may be ill-equipped to help them navigate it.

Undark · EN

Book Review: The Bizarre Frontiers of Product Testing

From rampaging bears to zero-G toilets and chicken cannons, Alex Davies, in “Kobuk the Destroyer,” chronicles the surprising and often bizarre world of test engineering, and the ingenious lengths to which product testers will go to make the world a safer place.

Undark · EN

Body Snatchers and the Murky Process of Whole-Body Donation

Opinion | Each year, more than 20,000 people in the U.S. donate their bodies to science after death. But the programs that handle whole-body donations lack oversight, with inconsistencies in standards of consent, transparency, and accountability. The result is reminiscent of the body-snatching practices of years past.

Undark · EN

Was dark matter first discovered by Fritz Zwicky or Vera Rubin?

It’s hard to believe, but the idea that the Universe was dominated not by normal matter but rather by dark matter — a novel form of non-interacting matter that’s completely distinct from protons, neutrons, and electrons — goes all the way back to 1933: nearly a full century ago. For decades, the overwhelming majority of the leading astronomers and physicists dismissed the idea as being ill-motivated and lacking sufficient evidence backing it, and it gained very little traction on both the theoretical and observational fronts throughout the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. It was only with the n

Big Think · EN

Stop trying to find yourself

Philosopher Joe Folley is skeptical that there’s a core self down there to find. In this Big Think Conversation with Jonny Thomson, he makes the case for a self that gets built rather than excavated — and argues that the attention it takes to build one has been quietly thinned down into something you spend, trade, and optimize. Then: why nearly everyone reads the wrong Camus book, and why Camus himself seems to have thought his most famous philosophy was only half finished. Joe Folley holds an undergraduate degree and a master’s in philosophy from Cambridge and is the creator of the YouTube ch

Big Think · EN

The 3 great origin mysteries: The universe, life, and consciousness

Physicist and cosmologist Paul Davies, author of The Demon in the Machine, argues that the deepest mystery of life’s origin is how chemistry came to write its own code. Davies traces the question from Aristotle and Schrödinger’s “aperiodic crystal” to Maxwell’s demon, Michael Levin’s two-headed flatworms, and the possibility of a shadow biosphere hiding on Earth. This video The 3 great origin mysteries: The universe, life, and consciousness is featured on Big Think .

Big Think · EN

Ask Ethan: What should you do when a respected theory is false?

At every point in our quest to understand the world and universe — the one around us and the one within us — we can only start based on what we know and can imagine at present. We are biased by what we know and what we’re ignorant of, and we’re also influenced by the range of experiences that we’re aware of. Nobody has access to the full suite of evidence that all of humanity has ever collected, and even that full suite of evidence doesn’t shed light on all that exists and is possible within our Universe. Our knowledge is limited, and our theories that we’ve devised to explain, predict, and mo

Big Think · EN

Why smart people stay stuck in research mode

I recently had coffee with a university colleague who told me she was in the middle of planning a workshop. She had bought a couple of books about hosting workshops, had created a spreadsheet projecting attendance under different scenarios, and was now comparing ticketing platforms. But she still hadn’t invited a single person. We talked about how none of that research was necessarily a waste of time. When you love learning, figuring out the best approach can be enjoyable in itself. But every answer can produce another question, and before you know it, preparation has become the project. Worse

Big Think · EN

What Vera Rubin Observatory’s first new dwarf planet means

Back in 2006, the International Astronomical Union controversially demoted Pluto . This composite image of Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, was based on photographs taken by the New Horizons mission as it flew by the Plutonian planetary system back in 2015. Charon’s appearance is vastly different from Pluto’s, but both bodies are shown with the correct relative size and albedo. The surface features on Pluto show evidence of recent changes, indicating that the next time we visit Pluto to image it at this level of precision, it may exhibit a remarkably different appearance. Credit : NASA, APL

Big Think · EN

What makes something real?

What is the color red? What counts as a mountain versus a hill? What is a president, and what powers does a president have? According to Lisa Feldman Barrett, PhD, a University Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University, the answers have something important in common: They depend, at least in part, on people collectively assigning meaning to physical signals in the world. “What you do, what you don’t do, what you say, what you don’t say — your daily actions help to constitute reality, help to manifest reality,” Barrett says. A different way to think about reality It’s par

Big Think · EN

Inside the quiet reinvention of corporate learning

Psychologist Pauline Boss coined the term “ambiguous loss” to describe a grief with no clear boundaries, like that experienced by families whose loved ones were missing in action and who could neither grieve nor move on. Since ChatGPT arrived in late 2022, I’ve seen a version of it every day in my work with people across companies. Nothing has been taken from us, and yet something has disappeared. Expertise works like territory. Being the person who can do a particular thing marks out our place, and who we are at work depends on holding on to it. So when AI produces the same output we do, it c

Big Think · EN

Fish pay attention to one influential neighbour in virtual reality

Observing interactions between real and virtual rummy-nose tetra fish shows that, within a group, each individual takes cues from only one influential neighbour

New Scientist · EN

The scientific truth about collagen supplements

Your body uses collagen to give your skin strength and elasticity, so supplements of this protein seem to make sense to reduce wrinkles. But columnist Alice Klein finds it isn’t this simple

New Scientist · EN

The best new popular-science books of November 2026

From a “modern bestiary” by Richard Dawkins to a book co-authored by Robert Macfarlane and an Ecuadorian cloud forest, there are plenty of exciting new popular-science books out this month, says Liz Else

New Scientist · EN

Curiosity may be what drives our brains to become so complex

We often think that our ability to be curious stems from our complex, human brain – but what if curiosity shapes that complexity?

New Scientist · EN

COP31: Will this year’s climate summit be the most underwhelming ever?

Despite coming after a year of dangerous weather and signs that global warming is accelerating, COP31 is unlikely to deliver dramatic progress on climate action

New Scientist · EN

We are finally pinning down what makes dyslexic brains different

Humans never evolved to read and write, and around 10 per cent of us are dyslexic. Now, we are uncovering the pathways underlying the condition, opening up new ways to support people who struggle to read

New Scientist · EN

Zapping part of the brain makes you think harder – at a cost

Stimulating a part of the brain linked to mental effort boosts performance in demanding tasks, but also leads to greater mental fatigue afterwards

New Scientist · EN

Dinosaur red blood cells recovered from 115-million-year-old fossil

A bit of leg bone from an Aratasaurus dinosaur fossil collected in Brazil has preserved abundant 3D red blood cells in stunning detail

New Scientist · EN

Astronomers may have been wrong about what ended the 'Cosmic Dark Age'

How did the universe transition from an impenetrable fog of hydrogen into the bright and starlit cosmos we see today? Astronomers think they're onto the answer.

Live Science · EN

How do summers differ between Earth's hemispheres?

Each of Earth's hemispheres experiences summer, but how do they differ?

Live Science · EN

Webb and Hubble discover new details in one of our galaxy's spookiest objects

The Cat's Head Nebula shows its ghostly insides and sinister red eye in rival views from the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes.

Live Science · EN

Blue whales have gone missing off the Galápagos. Scientists think El Niño could be why.

Blue whale sightings have fallen off dramatically near the Galápagos. El Niño may be to blame.

Live Science · EN