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Science & Space

The most popular blog posts about science & space on Hacker News. 74 posts.

2015
34

How did Einstein Think?

John D. Norton Department of History and Philosophy of Science and Center for Philosophy of Science University of Pittsburgh http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton This page at http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/Goodies Prepared to accompany cityLIVE! "everything einstein" November 15, 2007, 6:30 pm The New Hazlett Theater…

37

The Mysterious Aging of Astronauts

When I took Physics courses in college, I learned about how astronauts should age a tiny bit slower than us. Of course, they would be exposed to a lot more radiation so they might develop more cancers. But all in all, I would have been excited about the prospect of living in space. Then the … Continue reading The…

38

Homemade Memristor (2011)

Modified curve tracer is applying AC voltage. Horizontal axis represents voltage and the vertical axis represents current. In both cases, the curve always passes through zero voltage and current. This requirement must be met in order to be classified as a memristor.

50

Where to hate daylight saving time and where to love it

Update: a newer version of this little project helps you make your complaints about daylight saving time—whether they’re for or against it—with clearer messages about whether keeping DST, abolishing it, or making it permanent would be best for your daylight preferences. Give it a whirl over at Observable.

55

GitWikXiv: Toward a successor to the academic paper

[Other posts in this series: 2,3,4.] I had the chance to have dinner tonight with Paul Ginsparg of arXiv fame, and he graciously gave me some feedback on a very speculative idea that I’ve been kicking around: augmenting — or even replacing — the current academic article model with collaborative d

57

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…

59

CRISPR Gene Editing

CRISPR is a recently discovered genomic tool that could potentially revolutionize genetic modification and editing, including gene silencing, editing, activating, and other crucial functions. It has made a big splash in the synthetic biology community, and mentions of CRISPR have started cropping up elsewhere in the…