Lifeboat Foundation

The Opening Interview: The Reality Beyond Spacetime — with Donald Hoffman — 5.15pm GMT, 12.15pm ET

Donald Hoffman famously argues that we know nothing about the truth of the world. His book, The Case Against Reality, claims the process of survival of the fittest does not require a true picture of reality.

But the question remains, on what basis can Hoffman claim his own theory is true? Furthermore, Hoffman claims spacetime is not fundamental. So, what does he think lies beneath spacetime, and what can we know about it?

Today’s retirement and pension plans were not designed for the current reality of people living longer, healthier lives. How will retirement be redesigned?

When we are shown two options, our eyes tend to flick from one to the other and back again several times as we deliberate on the pros and cons of each.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University in the US have found that the speed with which our eyes dart between options gives away our true preference and predicts the ultimate decision we will make.

This quick eye movement – called a saccade – is what allows you to read; your focus travels abruptly from word to word, fixating briefly on some words before moving on to construct meaning from a block of text.

A true embodiment of French Gothic expression in architecture, Chartres Cathedral sits some 50 miles southwest of Paris, in the commune of Chartres. The cathedral was built to be higher and bigger than other cathedrals of the era.

One of the cathedral’s most famous features is its intricate labyrinth located in the nave. Little is known about the cathedral builders, therefore little is known about the motives behind one of the most enigmatic labyrinth depictions in the world.

Construction of the Chartres Cathedral unfolded rather faster than was the case with other cathedrals at the time. For instance, the Notre Dame in Paris took almost two centuries to accomplish, starting from 1160. On the Chartres site, activities reportedly began in 1,194 and finished in 1221.

Most viewed blog of mine on Big Think in 2022 with about 175,000 views:

Was there an intelligent, technologically advanced species long before humans existed? Could there have been a dinosaur civilization?

When you stop and think about bubbles, you realize that they’re everywhere: in the dishwasher, on the top of your beer, on the crests of waves, in the saliva between your teeth, and, of course, in bubble gun toys.

That means the physics of bubbles are important in all kinds of scenarios. With that in mind, researchers from the Université Paris-Saclay in France have made an intriguing discovery about the film surrounding bubbles.

This film can, in some cases, be up to 8°C (14.4°F) cooler than the environment around it, the researchers say. The findings build on previous investigations into how changes in temperature can trigger the thinning and evaporation of a liquid film.

Facebook has reached a settlement of$725 million in a lawsuit over the Cambridge Analytica data leak.

Octopuses are problem-solvers, mischief-makers and notorious escape artists. They also appear to have a rich inner life – so what is it like to be an octopus?

Kepler-1658b’s orbit is getting a little shorter — and therefore a little closer to the blazing surface of its star — every year.

Finding doomed planets is slow, painstaking work. It took thirteen years of close observation — first with Kepler and some of the most powerful telescopes here on Earth, and then with NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which launched in 2018 — to notice the slow shrinking of Kepler-1658b’s orbit. Recognizing the signs of deadly orbital decay in other exoplanets is going to take a similar amount of time and a similar volume of data, but Vissapragada and his colleagues say they’re getting there.

“We should begin to see hints of orbital decay for these planets within the next decade,” he and his colleagues write in their recent paper.

Continue reading “Astronomers find a star pulling its giant exoplanet into a death spiral” »