391
Does Gravity Travel at the Speed of Light? (1998)
Updated 2011 by Steve Carlip, and 1998 by Steve Carlip, Matthew Wiener and Geoffrey Landis. Original by Steve Carlip.
Most cited
Posts that commenters keep linking to, ranked by how many different people have cited them in Hacker News comments. 431 posts.
392
Elon Musk and the Hyperloop
For a while now there have been tantalizing hints that Elon Musk is at it again. His usual way of approaching a problem is to look at an industry, find some fatal flaw in it, fix that flaw and then leave everybody else in the dust, wondering why they didn’t do what he did. He’s one of the most interesting people on…
393
The flood that filled the Mediterranean Sea - in one year
"Zanclean Megaflood? What's that, a glam-rock band?"
394
Grading Trudeau on quantum computing
Update (4/19): Inspired by Trudeau’s performance (which they clocked at 35 seconds), Maclean’s magazine asked seven quantum computing researchers—me, Krysta Svore, Aephraim Steinb…
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How “See a Satellite Tonight” Works
See A Satellite Tonight is my most successful side project so far, with 5 million users since launch in 2019. It's been entirely a solo project, and I've used it as a proving ground for a bunch of tech that I wanted to learn. It took dozens of APIs and services to put together the experience I wanted: The front page…
397
The Dangerous Irrelevance of String Theory
Eva Silverstein has a new preprint out, entitled The Dangerous Irrelevance of String Theory. The title is I guess intended to be playful, not referring to its accurate description of the current st…
398
The Blowtorch Theory: A new model for structure formation in the universe
How early, sustained, supermassive black hole jets carved out cosmic voids, shaped filaments, and generated magnetic fields
399
Hyperloop: riding sound’s density peak to exploit the drag equation?
Super short version: if you ride along with a low enough frequency soundwave at the speed of sound, you can trade reduced incoming particle velocity for increased incoming particle density; the dra…
400
Brain Uses Quantum Effects, New Study Finds [video]
Science News, Physics, Science, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
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Science is a strong-link problem
OR: How to eat fewer asparagus beetles
404
Comparing City Street Orientations
This post is adapted from this research paper that you can read/cite for more info. It analyzes and visualizes 100 cities around the world.
405
N-Wheeled Cars
Douglas Self,
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Influenza A (H1N1) – How many bits does it take to kill a human? (2009)
I read a fantastic article in Nature magazine (vol 459, pp931-939 (18 June 2009)) that summarizes not only the current state of novel H1N1 (aka Swine Flu) understanding, but also a compares H1N1 against other flu strains. In particular, it discusses in-depth how the pathogenic components — i.e., the stuff that kills…
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The Paris Pneumatic Clock Network (2018)
Douglas Self, clock, Pneumatic
410
Photovoltaic growth: reality versus projections of the IEA
This is a guest blog by Auke Hoekstra, senior adviser electric mobility at the Eindhoven University of Technology and developer of agent-based models for electric vehicles and renewable energy adop…
411
The Baloney Detection Kit: Carl Sagan’s Rules for Critical Thinking
Necessary cognitive fortification against propaganda, pseudoscience, and general falsehood.
412
Gravitational Lensing to Observe Ancient Earth
I was at SFMOMA with Erika a few weekends ago and we saw an exhibit showing the work of Lebbeus Woods – a futuristic architect and illustrator.
413
The Dipole Drive: A New Concept for Space Propulsion
It’s a fascinating concept but I’d like to see a comparison toDr. Young Bae’s laser thruster concept for solar system travel.
414
The False Promise of Chomskyism
Important Update (March 10): On deeper reflection, I probably don’t need to spend emotional energy refuting people like Chomsky, who believe that Large Language Models are just a laughable fa…
415
When Kitty Litter Caused a Nuclear Catastrophe
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] Late in the night of Valentine’s Day 2014, air monitors at an underground nuclear waste repository outside Carlsbad, New Mexico, detected the release of radioactive elements, including americium and plutonium, into the environme
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Space Emerging from Quantum Mechanics
The other day I was amused to find a quote from Einstein , in 1936, about how hard it would be to quantize gravity: “like an attempt to breathe in empty space.” Eight decades later, I think we can still agree that it’s hard.
419
The inspection paradox is everywhere (2015)
I have updated this article with new data, better code, and friendlier data visualization. You can read the new version here . Th...
420
Book Review: The Body Keeps the Score
I. The Body Keeps The Score is a book about post-traumatic stress disorder. The author, Bessel van der Kolk, helped discover the condition and lobby for its inclusion in the DSM, and the brief fora…