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New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 4,457 posts.
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People
This text circulated on the internet in September 2003. I first became aware of it when a journalist contacted a my colleague Sian Miller on 16th September, trying to track down the original source. It's been passed on many times, and in the way of most internet memes has mutated along the way. It struck me as…
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Color wheels are wrong? How color vision actually works
Artists say all colors are a mixture of red, yellow, and blue. But physics and TV screens and printers disagree. How does color really work?
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Can you see the flag on the Moon with a telescope?
The answer is basically "not a chance". No Earthbound telescope can see the flag on the Moon. Why not? For openers, the Earth's atmosphere is never steady enough to allow resolution below about one arc second for most locations. Beyond that, the telescope required to "see" the flag would need to be absolutely huge!…
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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.…
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James Burke’s Connections: A BBC History of Innovation
Science historian James Burke’s entire iconic Connections series, tracing the origin of innovation, is now available for free online.
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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…
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Chance of Dying From Backscatter Radiation Same as Chance of Terrorism
Link to: http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/11/16/5477568-are-airport-x-ray-scanners-harmful
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Evaluating Extraordinary Claims
To demonstrate the problem, I did a simulation where I generated 480 random numbers per subject, representing the 480 time slices in the experiment. I repeated this generation of random numbers 20 times. I compared the send and no-send intervals of random numbers using a T-test; none of the 20 trials found a…
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The China Study: Fact or Fallacy?
Disclaimer: This blog post covers only a fraction of what’s sketchy with “The China Study.” In the years since I wrote it, I’ve added a number of additional articles expandi…
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Project GREAT: General Relativity Einstein/Essen Anniversary Test
In September 2005 the kids and I took several very accurate cesium atomic clocks from home and parked 5400 feet up Mt Rainier (the volcano near Seattle) for a full two days. The goal was to see if the clocks actually gained time, even if billionths of a second, as predicted by Einstein's general theory of relativity…
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Arguments from Global Warming Skeptics and what the science really says
Examines the science and arguments of global warming skepticism. Common objections like 'global warming is caused by the sun', 'temperature has changed naturally in the past' or 'other planets are warming too' are examined to see what the science really says.
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How the pantheon has lasted 2000 years without steel in its concrete
This famous building stands in the business district of Rome--much as it was built some 18 centuries ago. Amazingly, it has withstood the ravages of both the elements and war permitting a firsthand view of a unique product constructed by Roman hands. Now, it is exposed to acid rain and fumes from passing automobiles…
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2010 Physics Nobel Prize (Graphene)
The Nobel Prize in Physics 2010 was awarded jointly to Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov "for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene"
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Potentially Habitable Planet Discovered
Complexity scientist and VC Samuel Arbesman
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If you put your hand in the Large Hadron Collider...
Several physicists weigh in on what would happen if you were to place your hand in the proton stream of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. There’s not a definit
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Vaccines don't cause autism
The debate is essentially over and the final word is in: vaccines do not cause autism. The results of a rigorous study conducted over several years were just an