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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 57 posts.
Researchers Create Gold Aluminum, Black Platinum, Blue Silver
For both new and returning visitors, the University’s News Center is a digital hub for the latest news stories showcasing the research, accomplishments, expertise, and perspectives of the Rochester community. In addition, the News Center features University announcements and updates from newsrooms and publications…
Trust Science
Well, of course we all do trust science. We trust Bernoulli's Principle every time we get on a plane; we trust celestial mechanics when we take the kids outside to watch a scheduled lunar eclipse ; we trust subatomic physics when we relax with an iPod; we trust the laws of chemistry every time we strike a match; we…
SF author Greg Egan reviews Avatar
Avatar Review by Greg Egan
Nuclear Reactor Wall Charts
Super Phénix: Creys-Malville Nuclear Power Station, River Rhone (Sur le Rhone) Creys-Malville, Isere, France, Centrale Nucleaire Europeen...
How to destroy the earth
Preamble Destroying the Earth is harder than you may have been led to believe. You've seen the action movies where the bad guy threatens to destroy the Earth. You've heard people on the news claiming that the next nuclear war or cutting down rainforests or persisting in releasing...
World's shortest explanation of Gödel's theorem
From the highly eclectic blog of Mark Dominus
James Randi: This Cruel Farce Has To Stop
James Randi Educational Foundation
At peak, Spain gets 53% of its energy from wind
Ok, not all the time, but last weekend at 5:50am on Sunday morning (8th Nov) Spain set a new record, hitting 53.7% of its energy requirements being supplied by wind energy. As you can see from the graph above, the amount of electricity being supplied by wind, the light green portion of the graph, doesn’t […]
Python in the Scientific World
Yesterday I attended a biweekly meeting of an informal a UC Berkeley group devoted to Python in science (Py4Science), organized by Fernando ...
Why aeroplane wings aren't dimpled like golf balls
Before explaining the purpose of dimples, we first need to understand the aerodynamic properties of a sphere. Let us start by looking at a smooth sphere without any dimples, like a ping-pong ball. If we lived in an ideal world without any friction, the air flowing around a smooth sphere would behave like that shown in…
If You Want to Catch a Liar, Make Him Draw
A man accused of a crime is brought into a police interrogation room and sits down at an empty table. There’s no polygraph equipment in sight, and the typical two-cop questioning team isn’t in the…
Tim Ferris: Beginner's Guide to Lucid Dreaming
From 1994-1995 I had the great pleasure of training with wrestling legend John Smith, 2-time gold medalist and 4-time world champion (domestic freestyle record of 80-0; international freestyle record of 100-5).
The New Science of Causation
It seems like each new day brings another one of those headlines: regular sleep “linked to” life expectancy, playing video games “associated with” surgical prowess, bullies “at risk” of becoming criminals, and “does breastfeeding reduce a baby’s blood pressure?” (the old rhetorical question gambit). Sometimes the…
For a Quick Exit, Just Block the Fire Door
Learn about public engagement activities from the American Physical Society