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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&…
Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 4,457 posts.
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Quantifying Colour
A visual description of the CIE 1931 colour spaces.
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The Discovery of Statistical Regression
We explore the hotly contested history of the crowning jewel of statistics.
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Mathematics Distillation Challenge – Equational Theories
Mathematical research traditionally involves a small number of professional mathematicians working closely on difficult problems. However, I have long believed that there is a complementary way to …
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The Great Filter – Are We Almost Past It? (1998)
Combining standard stories of biologists, astronomers, physicists, and social scientists would lead us to expect a much smaller filter than we observe. Thus one of these stories must be wrong. To find out who is wrong, and to inform our choices, we should study and reconsider all these areas. For example, we should…
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The short history of global living conditions and why it matters that we know it
Very few think the world is making progress. In this article, we look at the history of global living conditions and show that the world has made immense progress in important aspects.
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The pace of major breakthroughs has declined
One of the prevailing narratives of our time is that we are innovating our way into the future at break-neck speed. It’s just dizzying how quickly the world around us is changing. Technology is this juggernaut that gets ever bigger, ever faster, and all we need to do is hold on for the wild ride into the infinitely…
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Did UCLA Just Cure Baldness?
How Bruin genetic scientists are reawakening hibernating follicles.
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The Great Pacific Garbage Patch Can Be Cleaned for $7.5B
The eradication of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is achievable within a decade, and The Ocean Cleanup aims to make it happen faster and more cost effectively.
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Eight studies reveal a bias in human imagination
Eight studies reveal a (possibly universal) bias in human imagination
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Heavy TV watching associated with smaller brain structures, study finds
Reduced volume was found in areas of the brain connected to memory formation, indicating a potential link between TV watching and higher dementia risk.
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The worst dam idea: evaporating the Mediterranean to power Europe
Lessons from Atlantropa, the megaproject to unite Europe (& erase Africa)
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Patriarch of Pandemics
In the last article we covered some of the historical pandemics that rocked the world - smallpox, typhoid, and the bubonic plague. We ended on a hopeful note - many of the pandemics that plagued the world in the past have faded, and that modern pandemics have been far less fatal than historical o
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Why have I never heard of the Ene-Farm? (2017)
While reading up on architecture in Japan recently, I came across a technology that I hadn’t heard of before: the Ene-Farm. It’s a domestic energy system that is being used in Japan and…
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Bell inequality violation finally done right
A few weeks ago, Hensen et al., of the Delft University of Technology and Barcelona, Spain, put out a paper reporting the first experiment that violates the Bell inequality in a way that closes off…
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Silent speech with ultrasound
We trained a model to predict speech from ultrasound video of the tongue, no speaking required. It reads open text, generalizes across people, and reaches a 15.6% word error rate on open-vocabulary speech.
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Training immune cells to remove ‘trash’ helps resolve lung inflammation
Inflammation is a standard part of our bodies’ immune system response. But sometimes this response becomes hyperactivated in our lungs, causing inflammation to continue unchecked, which can be fatal. Many deaths from COVID-19 have been due to excessive inflammation, which results in acute lung injury.
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A Theory of Sequence Memory in Neocortex
Why neurons have thousands of synapses, a theory of sequence memory in neocortex Hawkins & Ahmad, Front. Neural Circuits 2016 It all began with a fascinating lunchtime conversation with Martin …
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DIY Nitrogen TEA Laser (2020)
Abstract : in the cover image the homebuilt TEA nitrogen laser in use at PhyscsOpenLab. The entire l
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Terry Tao on how to compute non-converging infinite sums (2010)
The Riemann zeta function $latex {\zeta(s)}&fg=000000$ is defined in the region $latex {\hbox{Re}(s)>1}&fg=000000$ by the absolutely convergent series $latex \displaystyle \zeta(s) = \su…
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Climbing the cosmic distance ladder: Terence Tao book announcement
Several years ago, I developed a public lecture on the cosmic distance ladder in astronomy from a historical perspective (and emphasising the role of mathematics in building the ladder). I previous…
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How working memory gets you through the day
Scientists have discovered how brain waves are key to both maintenance and control of information in the mind. A new model for this has been developed by Earl Miller and colleagues at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT.