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Why the sun is a poor dumping ground for nuclear waste (2010)
A physicist explains why the sun is a poor dumping ground for nuclear waste.
Most cited
Posts that commenters keep linking to, ranked by how many different people have cited them in Hacker News comments. 689 posts.
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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…
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Laser-generated surface structures create extremely water-repellent metals
Scientists at the Institute of Optics have used lasers to transform metals into extremely water repellent, or super-hydrophobic, materials without the need for temporary coatings.
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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…
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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
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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…
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All Rational Approximations of Pi Are Useless
Investigation to find a better rational approximation for pi. Can we get out more digits than we put in? Chance to win a prize if you can do bette
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Brain Uses Quantum Effects, New Study Finds [video]
Science News, Physics, Science, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
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MIT team invents efficient shockwave-based process for desalination of water
MIT researchers have invented an efficient shockwave-based process for desalination of water.
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Science is a strong-link problem
OR: How to eat fewer asparagus beetles
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Plunge in lithium-ion battery costs
The cost of lithium-ion batteries for phones, laptops, and cars has plunged over the years, and an MIT study shows just how dramatic that drop has been. The change is akin to that of solar and wind energy, and further declines may yet be possible, the researchers say.
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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.
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N-Wheeled Cars
Douglas Self,
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Researchers shrink camera to the size of a salt grain
Researchers at Princeton University and the University of Washington have developed an ultracompact camera the size of a coarse grain of salt. The new system can produce crisp, full-color images on par with a conventional compound camera lens 500,000 times larger in volume.
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Diluting blood plasma rejuvenates tissue, reverses aging in mice
New study suggests that plasma exchange could be the key to unlocking the body’s regenerative capacities
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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
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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…