271
Dead Stars Don’t Radiate
Three guys claim that any heavy chunk of matter emits Hawking radiation, even if it’s not a black hole: • Michael F. Wondrak, Walter D. van Suijlekom and Heino Falcke, Gravitational pair…
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 422 posts.
272
MIT asks arXiv to withdraw preprint of paper on AI and scientific discovery
Following the posting of the preprint paper “Artificial Intelligence, Scientific Discovery, and Product Innovation” on arXiv in November 2024, concerns were raised about the integrity of the research. MIT conducted an internal, confidential review and concluded that the paper should be withdrawn from public discourse.
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“The Mind in the Wheel” lays out a new foundation for the science of mind
OR: the ideas your mother warned you about
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Fingers wrinkle the same way every time they’re in the water too long
A question from a child inspired a new biomedical engineering paper.
275
It Awaits Your Experiments
You may have heard of Christian Bök. You may have read about him on this very blog if you’ve been hanging out here long enough. Perhaps you were even one of the very select few to witness the seminal talk I gave back in 2016 [1] —“ScArt: or, How to Tell When You’ve Finished Fucking”— which climaxed with a glowing…
276
HealthBench – An evaluation for AI systems and human health
HealthBench is a new evaluation benchmark for AI in healthcare which evaluates models in realistic scenarios. Built with input from 250+ physicians, it aims to provide a shared standard for model performance and safety in health.
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University of Texas-led team solves a big problem for fusion energy
AUSTIN, Texas — Abundant, low-cost, clean energy — the envisioned result if scientists and engineers can successfully produce a reliable method of
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Continuous Thought Machines
Introducing Continuous Thought Machines: a new kind of neural network model that unfolds and uses neural dynamics as a powerful representation for thought.
279
Air Traffic Control
Air traffic control has been in the news lately, on account of my country's declining ability to do it. Well, that's a long-term trend, resulting from decades of under-investment, severe capture by our increasingly incompetent defense-industrial complex, no small degree of management incompetence in the FAA, and…
280
2024 sea level 'report cards' map futures of U.S. coastal communities
Featuring four new localities, the updated report cards show past and projected rates of sea level rise and acceleration for 36 U.S. coastal communities in a new, interactive dashboard.
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Continuous glucose monitors reveal variable glucose responses to the same meals
In this exploratory analysis of 2 highly controlled crossover studies in 30 participants without diabetes, the same meals led to highly variable glucose responses, as measured with continuous glucose monitors.
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ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the LHC
Near-miss collisions between high-energy lead nuclei at the LHC generate intense electromagnetic fields that can knock out protons and transform lead into fleeting quantities of gold nuclei
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Progress toward fusion energy gain as measured against the Lawson criteria
Today we’ve released a pre-publication version of an update to our 2022 paper “Progress toward fusion energy breakeven and gain as measured against the...
285
Using NASA’s SMAP satellite to detect L-band interference
It was launched to measure moisture. Now it’s ghost-trailing jammers across an electronic battlefield.
286
So Much Blood
but how much exactly?
287
When Abandoned Mines Collapse
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] In December of 2024, a huge sinkhole opened up on I-80 near Wharton, New Jersey, creating massive traffic delays as crews worked to figure out what happened and get it fixed. Since then, it happened again in February 2025 and th
288
Is Planet Nine Alone in the Outer System?
Planet 9 might be our Ultima Thule . Hell would certainly be freezing over at 700 AU. Whether this tentative observation is Planet 9 or not, it is still an interesting observation and an example, I think, of proof that AIs will not do all our science for us. (At least not LLMs).
289
New studies offer insight into Lyme disease’s treatment, lingering symptoms
In two new studies led by bacteriologist Brandon L. Jutras, Northwestern scientists have identified an antibiotic that cures Lyme disease at a fraction of the dosage of the current “gold standard” treatment and discovered what may cause a treated infection to mimic chronic illness in patients.
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Unparalleled Misalignments
This is a list of Unparalleled Misalignments, pairs of non-synonymous phrases where the words in one phrase are each synonyms of the words in the other. I've maintained this list since 2018; attributions (when known) can be seen on hover.
291
Old Soviet Venus descent craft nearing Earth reentry
That soon-to-reenter Cosmos 482 is getting increased attention by satellite trackers – and new imagery provides some interesting details.
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The future of solar doesn't track the sun
PV modules are cheap enough today that the simple fixed East-West arrays are cheaper and faster to install than the industry’s darling, the single-axis tracked array. Xavier Dedenbach, Terraform Po…
293
Dopamine signals when a fear can be forgotten
Study shows how a dopamine circuit between two brain regions enables mice to extinguish fear after a peril has passed.
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Reversible computing with mechanical links and pivots
With the concern that “Moore’s Law is dead,” new interest has grown for unconventional forms of computing. This includes:
295
In kids, EEG monitoring of consciousness safely reduces anesthetic use
Using EEG readings of brain waves to monitor unconsciousness, an anesthesiologist can significantly reduce the amount of the anesthesia administered to safely induce and sustain the anesthetized state of children undergoing surgery.
296
How to build Intrinsic Motivation: a review of the science
I dig into the research on intrinsic motivation. Super interesting subject. Long but hopefully quite thorough.
297
New material gives copper superalloy-like strength
Breakthrough material could transform aerospace, defense and industrial applications.
298
AI helps unravel a cause of Alzheimer’s and identify a therapeutic candidate
A new study found that a gene recently recognized as a biomarker for Alzheimer’s disease is actually a cause of it, due to its previously unknown secondary function that triggers a pathway that disrupts how cells in the brain turn genes on and off.
299
Shortest-possible walking tour to 81,998 bars in South Korea
We have solved a traveling salesman problem (TSP) to walk to 81,998 bars in South Korea. The problem was created using the Open Source Routing Machine (OSRM) to build a table of the 3,361,795,003 point-to-point travel times, one for each pair of bar locations. Our computation produced a tour together with a proof that…
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First Successful Lightning Triggering and Guiding Using a Drone
News Highlights: ◆We have achieved the world's first successful lightn...