1201
Gears
Interactive article explaining how mechanical gears work.
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 2,038 posts.
1202
1203
Diffing Coronaviruses
Comparing the genome sequences of the Wuhan coronavirus and a bat coronavirus using `diff` and NCBI BLAST reveals an 89% similarity.
1204
Nuclear power is the only green solution (2004)
We have no time to experiment with visionary energy sources, writes James Lovelock – civilisation is in imminent danger. Published in The Independent , 24 May 2004.
1205
Sanitation conquered disease long before vaccines or antibiotics
Of all the technologies against infectious disease, which mattered most? A data-driven approach
1206
Entropy in the Universe
If you click on this picture, you’ll see a zoomable image of the Milky Way with 84 million stars: But stars contribute only a tiny fraction of the total entropy in the observable Universe. If…
1207
Projective Geometric Algebra Done Right
[This is part one of a two-part series. The second part can be found here: Symmetries in Projective Geometric Algebra .]
1208
1209
A global reforestation project is how we fix climate change
An In-Depth Overview of Key Technical Factors
1210
What is music? A unified theory of music and dreaming
For the purposes of this article, when I talk about "dreams" and "dreaming", without any further qualification, I am referring to the dreams that occur during sleep.
1211
Why I Keep a Research Blog
Before I started taking writing seriously, I had a loose grasp of many mathematical and technical concepts; and I was not sure how to tackle open-ended problems. Maintaining this research blog has clarified my thoughts and improved how I approach research problems. The goal of this post is to explain why I have found…
1212
Images Created from Prime Numbers
Inspired by James McKee’s Trinity Hall prime, physics researcher Gilles Esposito-Farese (of the self-descriptive pangram) has worked out that this 2,258-digit prime number: 53084469288402965415857953902888840109250315594591772197851275320 59910735745658243457138160802170063601085186072703319516241231606…
1213
1214
How Bees Argue
The book Honeybee Democracy, published in 2010, has been sitting on my shelf for many years.
1215
Six works of Computer Science-Fiction (2015)
Computer Science-Fiction 1 is not actually fiction. Instead, these are books of computer science and/or programming that when you read them you can’t quite believe that what they claim is reality. Indeed, very often works of Computer Science-Fiction push the limits of your understanding of just what constitutes the…
1216
Why introductory chemistry is boring: a long-term historical perspective
Looking for flashcards for chemistry? Try 21st Night ! It allows you to create and share flashcards with anything on them: images, videos, equations, you name it . Plus, there’s a built-in to-do list!
1217
Why We Sleep: Responses to questions from readers
Introduction The aim of the book, Why We Sleep, is to provide the general public access to a broad collection of sleep research. Below, I address thoughtful questions that have been raised regardin…
1218
Reconstruction of a Train Wreck: How Priming Research Went off the Rails
This blog post focusses on Chapter 4 about Implicit Priming in Kahneman's book "Thinking" Fast and Slow." A review of the book and other chapters can be found here: https://replicationindex.com/2020/12/30/a-meta-scientific-perspective-on-thinking-fast-and-slow/ Daniel Kahneman's response to this blog…
1219
Superdeterminism: The path we didn’t take
Science News, Physics, Science, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
1220
1221
If the universe is 13.8B years old, how can we see 46B light years away? (2018)
Distances in the expanding Universe don’t work like you’d expect. Unless, that is, you learn to think like a cosmologist.
1222
Getting a scientific prize for open-source software
Note An important acknowledgement for a different view of doing science: open, collaborative, and more than a proof of concept. A few days ago, Loïc Estève, Alexandre Gramfort, Olivier Grisel,...
1223
How Radar Works
Radar is one of the most versitile sensors we have to determine what is happening in an environment. Some common applications include air traffic control, weather prediction, automated driver assist, astronomy and terrain mapping. Given that these applications have wildy varying requirements on resolution, range and…
1224
Jacob Collier’s four magical chords
Jacob Collier is the internet’s favorite musical virtuoso. Here’s his mostly acapella arrangement of a Christmas carol called “In The Bleak Midwinter.” The most remarkable p…
1225
What is energy, actually? (2011)
That’s an easy go: energy is the amount of (on) my electricity bill, or maybe of (on) my natural gas bill. If I am very concentrated, I might add that it is also the money I spend at the gasoline pump, and if I am even more concentrated I will suggest that it might have something to do with the filling up of my…
1226
Domes are overrated
Part of my series on common misconceptions in space journalism. It is an unwritten rule of space journalism that any article about Moon or Mars bases needs to have a conceptual drawing of habitatio…
1227
Why does F = ma?
By Michael Nielsen, November 23, 2019
1228
1229
The impact of direct air carbon capture on climate change
By Michael Nielsen, November 21, 2019
1230
Music Generates Feelings That Are Only Weakly Bound to the Music
Here I use the word "bound" in the same sense as "bind" in the "binding problem".