1591
Canaries in coal mines (2018)
Have you ever wondered what our curators' favourite collection items are? Here, assistant curator Lewis takes us through his rather surprising pick.
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 4,455 posts.
1592
1593
How to slow down scientific progress, according to Leo Szilard
“Science would become something like a parlor game. There would be fashions. Those who followed the fashion would get grants”
1594
Caltech to launch space solar power technology demo into orbit
The launch represents the first in-situ test of the technology to harvest solar energy in space and transmit it to Earth.
1595
Cargo Cult Quantum Factoring
Just days after we celebrated my wife’s 40th birthday, she came down with COVID, meaning she’s been isolating and I’ve been spending almost all my time dealing with our kids. But …
1596
Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?
The world has enough lithium, but we need to scale up production this decade.
1597
Scientists have discovered the first virovore – an organism that eats viruses
Husker researchers have found that a single-celled microorganism can eat huge numbers of viruses that share its aquatic habitat. For the first time, the team’s lab experiments have also shown that a virus-only diet, which the team calls “virovory,” is enough to fuel the physiological growth and even population…
1598
Why Not Mars
It's slow, expensive, the engineering is mostly port-a-potty chemistry, and the best-case outcome is that thirty years from now we’ll get to watch someone remotely operate a soil scoop from Mars instead of Pasadena
1599
“Internet in space” will transform the satellite imagery industry
(First, Some Background)
1600
The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant (2005)
An allegory against complacency about aging and death.
1601
Report on an Unidentified Space Station (1982)
By good luck we have been able to make an emergency landing on this uninhabited space station. There have been no casualties. We all count ourselves fortunate to have found safe haven at a moment when the expedition was clearly set on disaster.
1602
Degenerate matter: How reality deals with uncertainty
Casual introduction to the uncertainty principle from quantum mechanics and how it leads to neutron stars and superfluids
1603
First TV Image of Mars: Interplanetary color by numbers (2016)
For the longest time I had seen this framed image entitled “The First TV Image of Mars” in an out of the way place at JPL. I loved taking people there showing them this low res image and how it had been made by coloring numbers that were stapled to a wall. When I got to curate an exhibition about data and art, I had…
1604
Discovering which parts of the brain are engaged when coding
Researchers from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) found that the Multiple Demand and Language brain systems encode specific code properties and uniquely align with machine-learned representations of code.
1605
Time to redefine normal body temperature? (2020)
Is 98.6˚ F still the norm for body temperature? Data collected over almost 160 years show that the normal body temperature has been declining and is now roughly one degree lower....
1606
A seamstress who solved the ancient mystery of the Argonaut
“I armed myself with patience and courage, and only after several months managed to dissolve my doubts and see my research crowned with happy confirmation.”
1607
1608
Holography without Lasers: Hand-drawn Holograms (1999)
I've stumbled across a technique for drawing holograms directly upon a plastic plate by hand. It sounds impossible, but I've been sitting on the livingroom sofa making holographic images of floating polyhedra, words, 3D starfields, opaque objects, etc. No laser, no isolation table, no darkroom, no expensive film…
1609
Eight studies reveal a bias in human imagination
Eight studies reveal a (possibly universal) bias in human imagination
1610
Picture This: The Periodic Table
Philip Ball on the visual ordering of all the elements known to humankind—and how we might order them differently.
1611
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…
1612
People took some potassium and lost some weight
In November 2021, we finished our series A Chemical Hunger, where we argue that the obesity epidemic is the result of environmental contaminants, and that one of those contaminants might be lithium…
1613
Wild mammals are making a comeback in Europe
Hunting and habitat loss drove many large mammals in Europe close to extinction. New data shows us that many of the continent’s mammal populations are flourishing again.
1614
1615
Astronomical Calculations for Hard SF in Common Lisp
Hard SF worldbuilding with the HYG database, Dijkstra's algorithm, and Lisp.
1616
Tandem solar cell achieves 32.5 percent efficiency
The tandem solar cell converts 32.5% of the incident solar radiation into electrical energy. This value is now officially certified and included in the NREL chart.
1617
Special Relativity and Middle-Earth
This post is an unofficial sequel to one of my first blog posts from 2007, which was entitled “Quantum mechanics and Tomb Raider”. One of the oldest and most famous allegories is Plato&…
1618
Pollution cleanup method destroys toxic “forever chemicals”
An insidious category of carcinogenic pollutants known as “forever chemicals” may not be so permanent after all. University of California, Riverside, chemical engineering and environmental scientists recently published new methods to chemically break up these harmful substances found in drinking water into smaller…
1619
Why fusion will never happen (2012)
I like fusion, really. I’ve talked to some of luminaries that work in the field, they’re great people. I love the technology and the physics behind it. But fusion as a power source is n…
1620
Nuclear power is too slow
One common and plausible argument against nuclear power is that it is too slow.