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Plastic Pollution
How much plastic ends up in the ocean? Where does it come from?
Most cited
Posts that commenters keep linking to, ranked by how many different people have cited them in Hacker News comments. 689 posts.
62
How is efficacy vs. severe disease strong if 60% of hospitalized are vaccinated?
A surge involving the rapidly-transmitting Delta variant in heavily vaccinated countries has led to much hand-wringing that the vaccines are not effective against Delta, or vaccine effectivenss wanes after 4-6 months. This has fueled anti-vaccine sentiment suggesting the vaccines are not working, and causing much…
63
Per capita CO₂ emissions Over Time
An interactive visualization from Our World in Data.
64
Are You Living In a Computer Simulation? (2003)
The original paper that introduced the simulation argument
65
Economics of Nuclear Power
Nuclear power is cost competitive with other forms of electricity generation, except where there is direct access to low-cost fossil fuels. In assessing the economics of nuclear power, decommissioning and waste disposal costs are fully taken into account.
66
U.S. could feed 800 million people with grain that livestock eat, Cornell ecologist advises animal scientists
From one ecologist's perspective, the American system of farming grain-fed livestock consumes resources far out of proportion to the yield, accelerates soil erosion, affects world food supply and will be changing in the future.
67
Medical researcher discovers integration, gets 75 citations
(Note: this post is `just for fun;’ no premeds, doctors, researchers, or nobel laureates were meant to be offended in the writing of this post.) The bane of many American physics grad student…
68
COVID-19 Pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on the world. Explore global data and research to understand its impact, spread, and global response.
69
SSRIs: Much More Than You Wanted To Know
The claim that “SSRIs don’t work” or “SSRIs are mostly just placebo” is most commonly associated with Irving Kirsch, a man with the awesome job title of “Associa…
70
Working Hours
How much time do people across the world spend working? How have working hours changed over time, and what do these changes matter for people’s lives? Explore data and research on working hours.
71
BU-808: How to Prolong Lithium-based Batteries
Manufacturers take a conservative approach and specify the life of Li-ion in most consumer products as being between 300 and 500 discharge/charge cycles.…
72
Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest
Fossil fuels are the dirtiest and most dangerous energy sources, while nuclear and modern renewable energy sources are vastly safer and cleaner.
73
The Fermi Paradox
The Fermi Paradox: There should be 100,000 intelligent alien civilizations in our galaxy — so why haven't we found any of them?
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Ten Signs a Claimed Mathematical Breakthrough is Wrong
Yesterday several people asked my opinion of a preprint claiming to solve the Graph Isomorphism problem in deterministic polynomial time. I responded: If I read all such papers, then I wouldn’t hav…
75
Why I Am Not An Integrated Information Theorist (or, The Unconscious Expander)
Happy birthday to me! Recently, lots of people have been asking me what I think about IIT—no, not the Indian Institutes of Technology, but Integrated Information Theory, a widely-discussed &#…
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Plans For New Reactors Worldwide
Nuclear power capacity worldwide is increasing steadily. Most reactors under construction are in the Asian region. Significant further capacity is being created by plant uprating.
77
Beware The Man Of One Study
Aquinas famously said: beware the man of one book. I would add: beware the man of one study. For example, take medical research. Suppose a certain drug is weakly effective against a certain disease…
78
Electricity Mix
Explore data on where our electricity comes from and how this is changing.
79
The Wolfram Physics Project
How does our universe work? Scientist Stephen Wolfram opens up his ongoing Wolfram Physics Project to a global effort. His team will livestream work in progress, post working materials, release software tools and hold educational programs.
80
Galactic-Scale Energy (2011)
[ An updated treatment of this material appears in Chapter 1 of the Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet (free) textbook , and also appears as part of an article in Nature Physics in 2022.]
81
What happens when a basebal goes at nearly the speed of light (what-if.XKCD)
What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90% the speed of light?
82
On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem
We’re sharing an AI-generated solution to the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem, including a writeup and a formal proof in Lean.
83
D-Wave: Truth finally starts to emerge
Wrap-Up (June 5): This will be my final update on this post (really!!), since the discussion seems to have reached a point where not much progress is being made, and since I’d like to oblige …
84
Feynman's wobbling plate: how to recover from burnout
So I got this new attitude. Now that I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything, I've got this nice position at the university teaching classes which I rather enjoy, and just like I read the Arabian Nights for pleasure, I'm going to play with physics, whenever I want to, without worrying about any importance…
85
The Relativity of Wrong (1989)
I received a letter from a reader the other day. It was handwritten in crabbed penmanship so that it was very difficult to read. Nevertheless, I tried to make it out just in case it might prove to be important.
86
Laser Pointer
If every person on Earth aimed a laser pointer at the Moon at the same time, would it change color?
87
Mortality Risk of COVID-19
Explore data on the mortality risk of COVID-19 across the world.
88
PHYS771 Quantum Computing Since Democritus
University of Waterloo, Fall 2006 Tuesdays and Thursdays, 1:00-2:30pm BFG Building, 2nd floor seminar room (BFG2125)
89
War and Peace
How common are armed conflict and peace between and within countries? How is this changing over time? Explore research and data on war and peace.
90
Algorithm recovers speech from a potato-chip bag filmed through glass (2014)
Algorithm recovers speech from the vibrations of a potato-chip bag filmed through soundproof glass.