briefs
Topic · across the network

Cosmology

The universe as a whole, reconstructed from very old light.

31
briefs
5
subjects
10:50
average
336 min
in total
Abstraction 407Absurdism 137Acoustics 220Acting 65Adaptation 372Addiction 95Adolescence 202Advertising 77Age of exploration 14Ageing 113Agriculture 100Algorithms 114Ambition 46Anarchism 38Ancient Egypt 17Ancient Greece 38Ancient Rome 30Animals 172Anthropology 23Apartheid 12Architecture 165Archives 32Argentina 10Art Deco 26Artificial intelligence 78Astronomy 81Attention 42Australia 32Automation 73Avant-garde 164Aviation 79Banking 72Banned works 40Bauhaus 12Beer 5Behavioural economics 22Berlin 16Big tech 6Biodiversity 136Biography 86Birds 41Black holes 20Blockchain 12Boxing 14Branding 77Brazil 43Bread 29Britain 131Brutalism 4Bubbles 3Buddhism 28Byzantium 10California 17Canada 18Capitalism 94Cars 468Celebrity 59Censorship 110Cheese 24Chefs 9Chemistry 104Chess 2Childhood 87China 109Chocolate 8Christianity 49Cinematography 343Cities 90Class 485Climate change 107Club culture 100Cocktails 2Coffee 11Cognitive bias 14Collecting 16Colonialism 284Colour 42Comedy 89Community 52Complexity 21Computing 309Consciousness 16Conservatism 14Conspiracy theories 8Cooking 178Corruption 38Cosmology 31Cover versions 64Craft 116Crate digging 42Creativity 8Crime 234Cryptocurrency 8Cryptography 24Cuba 10Cybersecurity 30Dada 12Debt 38Decision-making 28Decolonisation 46Deep time 80Democracy 45Denim 16Deserts 45Detroit 17Dinosaurs 12Directing 168Disasters 59Disease 109DJ culture 89Dreams 32Drones 5Drum machines 96Dystopia 69East Africa 28Ecology 337Economics 36Editing 72Education 92Egypt 12Electric vehicles 59Emotion 22Empire 92Endurance 49Energy 120Engineering 541Entropy 8Epidemics 13Equality 9Espionage 31Ethics 44Evolution 174Existentialism 106Expertise 2Exploration 49Extinction 23Failure 37Family 240Fandom 22Fascism 45Fashion 215Fast fashion 12Fear 34Feminism 122Fermentation 126Film music 81Fishing 12Folklore 71Food history 588Football 16Forests 31Forgery 7France 163Fraud 15Free will 13Freedom 16French literature 15Friendship 24Furniture 36Gambling 14Gender 63Generations 28Genetics 87Geology 96Germany 66Globalisation 74Gothic 32Greece 5Grief 126Habits 6Happiness 2Hardware 709Haute couture 22Headphones 8Hi-fi 12Hinduism 12Hoaxes 1Human history 23Human nature 41Identity 138Illustration 8Impressionism 6Improvisation 249India 89Indonesia 15Industrial design 342Inequality 13Inflation 4Information 34Infrastructure 280Insects 29Intelligence 8Interiors 31Internet culture 88Invention 329Iran 41Islam 40Islands 17Israel 9Italy 52Jamaica 10Japan 114Jewellery 5Journalism 34Judaism 13Justice 42Korea 41Language 70Law 90Leadership 20Learning 6Liberalism 1Libraries 6Literary criticism 26London 12Loneliness 61Los Angeles 62Lost works 9Love 67Luxury 55Machine learning 15Management 10Maps 5Marketing 21Markets 51Mars 6Marxism 26Masculinity 46Materials 138Mathematics 79Meaning 6Medicine 124Memory 82Mental health 70Mesopotamia 4Mexico 38Migration 95Minimalism 68Mining 30Misinformation 9Modernism 63Money 24Monopoly 32Mortality 61Motivation 2Mountains 16Museums 27Mysticism 11Mythology 60Nationalism 40Neuroscience 23New York 36Nigeria 7Nihilism 10Noise 31Nostalgia 33Nuclear 29Nutrition 17Oceans 48Oil 42Open source 45Painting 18Palaeontology 29Parenting 14Paris 18Partition 6Patents 71Patronage 14Perception 44Personal style 27Personality 2Persuasion 8Peru 10Philosophy 77Photography 37Physics 206Plants 26Platforms 89Podcasting 1Poetry 25Poland 17Policing 34Pop Art 16Populism 2Portraiture 6Portugal 18Postmodernism 23Power 91Prehistory 24Preservation 28Printmaking 21Privacy 11Probability 6Productivity 1Programming 54Prohibition 1Propaganda 35Protest 75Pseudoscience 17Psychology 80Publishing 22Punishment 16Quantum mechanics 44Race 145Radio 30Railways 35Rave 17Realism 47Record labels 19Recording 810Relativity 23Religion 154Resilience 15Restaurants 30Restoration 2Retail 94Revolution 58Risk 18Ritual 96Robotics 26Romance 96Russia 58Salt 9Sampling 246Satire 84Scandinavia 28Scientific method 186Screenwriting 26Sculpture 7Secularism 2Self-deception 14Semiconductors 73Sexuality 102Ships 18Silence 24Silicon Valley 17Slavery 35Sleep 2Smartphones 27Sneakers 15Social media 58Socialism 9Software 68Songwriting 180Sound design 332Sound systems 20South Africa 19South East Asia 30Space exploration 84Spain 18Special effects 41Spices 62Spirits 12Sport 82Startups 21Statistics 10Status 9Stoicism 4Storytelling 68Strategy 70Street food 99Streetwear 16Studio craft 508Subcultures 59Sugar 12Supply chains 115Surrealism 53Surveillance 21Sustainability 30Synthesis 232Tailoring 37Taxation 14Tea 24Textiles 97Thailand 11The American Revolution 19The American South 88The Arab world 41The Arctic 19The Balkans 17The Belle Epoque 13The body 29The brain 26The Caribbean 28The civil rights movement 62The Cold War 160The eighties 268The Enlightenment 29The financial crisis 19The First World War 39The food industry 157The French Revolution 9The Gilded Age 9The Great Depression 18The Holocaust 20The Industrial Revolution 93The internet 61The interwar years 135The Middle Ages 35The Moon 4The music business 169The Netherlands 10The nineties 26The Olympics 10The pandemic 13The Reformation 1The Renaissance 16The Russian Revolution 19The Second World War 102The seventies 58The sixties 28The space race 5The United States 19The universe 7The Victorian era 37Therapy 20Tokyo 11Trade 48Tragedy 22Translation 5Trauma 85Travel 5True crime 2Turkey 18Typography 54Uniforms 23Unions 8Urban planning 66Utilitarianism 1Utopia 5Vaccines 10Vegetarianism 15Venture capital 6Video games 291Vietnam 12Vintage 65Vinyl 6Virtual reality 11War 169Watches 4Water 11Weather 29West Africa 29Wilderness 10Wine 3Work 22Workwear 19Worldbuilding 121

music.briefs Music

All 2 in music →
9:24

Interstellar

Hans Zimmer · 2014

A functional, architecturally driven score that treats the cathedral as its primary instrument. It lands where space and gravity meet sound — and fails where melody or motion is expected.

9:33

The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Volume 1

Sun Ra · 1965

The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Volume 1 is a 1965 album of compositions and arrangements by Sun Ra played by Sun Ra and his Solar Arkestra. It was recorded at Studio RLA in New York on April 20, 1965, engineered by Richard L Alderson. The music is heavily percussive but dispenses with a continuous beat, reconstructing itself around interweaving compositional and improvisatory creative principles with programmatic affects. It exemplifies a radical break from previous notions of melody or harmony. The interwoven lines of Ronnie Boykins' bass and Sun Ra's electronic keyboards provide cohesion. Sun Ra directed the session in real time—stopping takes, assigning rhythms, revising horn parts, and reassigning solos based on his understanding of each player's strengths. The album was originally released with a black-and-white sleeve designed by Sun Ra. It belongs to Sun Ra's New York phase, marked by experimentalism, tape delay, spatial sound, free improvisation, expanded instrumentation, and pioneering use of synthesizers and electronic keyboards.

film.briefs Film

All 3 in film →
13:00

A Brief History of Time

Errol Morris · 1991

Errol Morris’s 1991 documentary profiles Stephen Hawking not as a disembodied genius but as a man whose physical constraints and intellectual ambitions coexist in constant dialogue. Shot on studio sets with a score by Philip Glass, it weaves family testimony, scientific reflection, and quiet observation into a portrait where cosmology and biography are inseparable.

13:00

The Last Wave

Peter Weir · 1977

Peter Weir’s 1977 film follows Sydney solicitor David Burton as he defends four Aboriginal men accused of murder — and finds his grip on reality loosening amid inexplicable weather, prophetic dreams and encounters with Dreamtime logic. Shot in Adelaide and Sydney by Russell Boyd, it sustains a mood of ontological unease without resorting to exposition or resolution.

13:00

The Tree of Life

Terrence Malick · 2011

Terrence Malick’s 2011 film interweaves cosmic origins, prehistoric evolution, and a 1950s Texas childhood into a single sensory continuum. Shot by Emmanuel Lubezki and edited from hundreds of hours of footage, it replaces plot with rhythm, dialogue with light, and psychology with presence. Its ambition is ontological: to treat human experience and natural process as variations on the same physical law.

science.briefs Science

All 22 in science →
11:02

Nuclear fusion

Fusion was solved for stars in 1939—not for power plants, and not by engineers.
9:36

Space

Space is not empty. It bends, ripples, expands—and you’re standing inside a four-dimensional object you can’t see.
9:49

Albert Einstein

Einstein didn’t prove relativity — he rebuilt physics from scratch using pens, paper and postulates.
13:00

Cosmic inflation

Alan Guth's 1980 fix for three specific puzzles about the early universe made a precise prediction that satellites later confirmed, and it also implies an eternally inflating multiverse that one of the theory's own inventors now argues against.
11:03

Edwin Hubble

Hubble didn’t prove the universe is expanding — he proved galaxies are islands, and that they flee each other in proportion to distance.
9:50

Georges Lemaître

Lemaître didn’t discover the Big Bang — he built its first mathematical scaffold, and it still holds.

games.briefs Games

All 2 in games →
10:28

Outer Wilds

Mobius Digital · 2019

Outer Wilds is a tightly wound clockwork of time, memory, and celestial mechanics. It gives you nothing but questions—and insists you answer them in order.

11:06

Universe Sandbox

Giant Army · 2008

Universe Sandbox (2008) is a physics simulation tool masquerading as a game. It lets players load real solar system data or invent new stars, planets, and black holes — then adjust mass, density, velocity, and time to watch gravity do its work. There is no score, no story, no failure state — only observation, iteration, and consequence. Its strength is fidelity to astrophysical cause-and-effect; its limit is the absence of any design layer between the user and the equations.

technology.briefs Technology

All 2 in technology →
10:09

James Webb Space Telescope

Infrared astronomy isn’t a compromise — it’s the only way to see the universe’s first light, and Webb delivers it without visible-light trade-offs.