Big Ideas Database

Every single atom around us, including those in our own bodies, originated in momentous cosmic events that predate the Earth.

Every time you scroll down on your phone, you are pushing against a net made of thousands of trillions of atoms.

Most of the atoms in your body are 13.7 billion years old, and being you is just the latest page in the story of their life.

If we could perceive the universe as it truly is, everything would appear as nets of buzzing atoms.

Once they found their way to the Earth, your atoms began to cycle through the air, land, and water.

Atoms are arrangements of protons, neutrons, and electrons. Protons and neutrons are comparatively large particles that have mass

Every new generation of scientists pushes against the limits of what we know about the universe, and when they do so it always seems to become more vast.

One of the fastest man-made objects was a space probe called Juno sent to survey the planet Jupiter.

When you hear a song playing on the radio, you hear it because

Everything around us from people to trees and stars to galaxies are made up of molecules, atoms and quarks, which all together scientists call ordinary matter.

When we want to ask questions about the nature of our reality, we can sometimes arrive there by questioning assumptions that seem too trivial to be meaningful.

There is an invisible field that underlies the entire universe, like a net stretching in every direction.

All of the energy around you, from the light bouncing into your eyes to the heat coming out of your toaster, comes from an unbroken chain of events going back to the Big Bang.

On the 2nd of December 1942 in a small lab in the center of Chicago, human beings crossed a threshold as a species as we tapped into a fundamental force of the universe.

The room that you’re in right now is swirling with invisible air currents caused by heat.

What is heat?

In 1929, astronomers discovered something that shattered their previous conceptions about the universe.

Everything around us lies on different points of a spectrum.

This is one of the questions on the frontiers of our knowledge.

There is an invisible field that underlies the entire universe like a net stretching in every direction.

The universe is full of mysteries, but one of the biggest is called ‘dark matter’.

When you take a step, you’re anchored to the Earth by a force. You can jump to overcome it for a moment, but you are always pulled back down.

The world’s most famous equation in science is undoubtedly E=MC², also known as the ‘energy-mass equivalence’.

An incredible fifty percent of the nitrogen atoms in the tissue of any person alive today have originated inside of an industrial machine.

Carbon is one of the most important elements kn the universe. It forms the backbone of all long, complex molecules, and is estimated to make up about 18% of our bodies.

There is twelve times as much helium in the universe as all the other elements (except hydrogen) combined, but it’s one of the rarest elements on Earth.

Twenty-one percent of the air that you’re breathing right now is oxygen. Like most elements it’s the remnant of a supernova explosion, one of the most incredible phenomena in the universe.

This is a vein of iron ore.

When we think of the word ‘universe’, we should probably think of hydrogen.

Hundreds of thousands of years in the future, when even the pyramids have been ground to dust by wind, one human structure on Earth will remain.

Having a shaker full of salt in almost every house on Earth today is a privilege that would have completely blown our ancestors minds.

Throughout most of the universe, chemistry as we know it barely ever happens.

Imagine an acid that burns through almost any container you put it in. Spill some on your leg, and amputation is the only way to save your life.

Throughout history, people have believed some crazy things.

No known form of life can exist without water.

Carbon dioxide has a pretty rough reputation. You probably know that it’s a gas, and that it’s causing climate change.

If given a time machine, every biologist on Earth would race to be sent back to an inconspicuous shallow rock pool, 4.28 billion years ago.

If you are an eccentric billionaire like Bill Gates, you might have one of these in your office.

Carbon atoms have a really special property.

There is a problem at the heart of all science.

String theory is probably one of the wildest theories that has ever come out of science.

We can clearly observe 4 dimensions.

String theory is the leading theory that explains the mystery of the Planck length, the incredibly tiny distance at which the force of gravity interacts with the quantum world.

The double slit experiment is the most famous experiment in quantum mechanics.

Levitation, ultra-powerful servers, and gyroscopes so sensitive that they can directly measure the curvature of spacetime around the Earth

Mass is one of the most important concepts in science, but a full explanation of where it comes from has eluded physicists for decades.

Quantum mechanics is one of the most ambitious and successful theories ever created by science.

Beginning of Earth – 542 million years ago

66 million years ago - Present day

66 million years ago

252-201 million years ago

145-66 million years ago

201-145 million years ago

251 million years ago

252-66 million years ago

298—251 million years ago

323—298 million years ago

358—323 million years ago

419—358 million years ago

485—419 million years ago

538-485 million years ago

541-252 million years ago

If you look very closely at the universe, inside of the protons and neutrons that are within the atom, you’ll notice that the universe is like an ocean and everything around us are like waves on its surface.

Quantum mechanics is one of the most intimidating concepts that I’ve come across, so hold on to your hats for this one.

When Astronaut David Scott walked on the Moon in 1971, he conducted a famous experiment.