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Topics /
Science & Space
The most popular blog posts about science & space on Hacker News. 182 posts.
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Quantum winter is coming
Science News, Physics, Science, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
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False memory implantation in adults is easy
false memory implantation in adults is easy (bonus: here's one way to do it)
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A requiem for amateur chemistry
Bidding farewell to classic experiments.
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Consciousness is not computation
Spend enough time in the tech world and you will sooner or later find that itis a common article of faith that comput...
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Test scores are not irrelevant
Some claims that test scores don’t predict college success don’t add up.
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Demystifying Fourier analysis
I've started learning about spectrum analysis a long time ago at university, but failed to gain a true insight in how it works under the hood. For me, it was just some magical math formulas I had to memorize and know about. I knew the theory but it didn't really click .
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The claimed effect size is about a zillion times higher than is plausible
Some years ago, you blogged about a research article by Hasan and colleagues (2013) .
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Is the Kalman filter just a low-pass filter?
Exploring the relationship between Kalman filtering and optimal frequency domain filtering.
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Why does science news suck so much?
Science News, Physics, Science, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
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Using grape harvest dates to estimate summer temperature over 650 years
It’s hot these days, it’s unusually hot, even dangerously hot, in a lot of places a lot of the time. While America has been hit hard this summer, it seems that Europe has been hit even …
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Biomanufactured materials are coming
And they hint at a future with vastly better products
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How Intelligent Are Cats? (2004)
Cat owners often claim that cats are too intelligent to do the sort of tricks that dogs do willingly. Others believe cats are unintelligent because it's harder to train them to do tricks. In this article (on 2 pages) I aim to explain some of these differences and explore feline intelligence and the limitations on…
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We’ve got a science opportunity overload: Launching the Wolfram Institute
The Wolfram Institute will pursue opportunities in scientific research based on a new multicomputational paradigm found during a project to develop a fundamental theory of physics.
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Hydroponics: Growing an appreciation for plants
I once heard a saying – “Don’t feel pity on plants because they can’t move. Feel pity on us, because we have to”. I really didn’t have an appreciation for what this meant until the COVID pandemic hit, which restricted my movement for a couple of years, and I decided to spend some of my new-found time at home learning…
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Did the W-boson just “break the standard model”?
Science News, Physics, Science, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
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Empirical Notes on Kissing
Before my first kiss, I scoured The Internet (Google Scholar + tracing blog posts back to their underlying studies - this was some time ago so I don’t still have the sources) for every valuable scrap of information available on the topic while trying to stray away from anything opinion-based. This is the result.
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What I learned trying to classify abortion access across the rich world
Rich countries are not monolithic. However, outside the US and a few microstates, they vary in a limited range.
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An open letter on E.O. Wilson's legacy
Response to Scientific American's "The Complicated Legacy..."
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Deep learning on electronic medical records is doomed to fail
A few years ago, I worked on a project to investigate the potential of machine learning to transform healthcare through modeling electronic medical records. I walked away deeply disillusioned with the whole field and I really don’t think that the field needs machine learning right now. What it does need is plenty of…
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Capsaicin is a psychoactive substance
Capsaicin, the active substance in chili peppers, acts on vanilloid receptors (TRPV1) and alters adrenaline and endorphine levels.
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Perl Saved the Human Genome Project (1996)
The human genome project was inaugurated at the beginning of the decade as an ambitious international effort to determine the complete DNA sequence of human beings and several experimental animals. The justification for this undertaking is both scientific and medical. By understanding the genetic makeup of an organism…
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We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know
Science News, Physics, Science, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
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How long would society last during a total grid collapse?
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] In February 2021, a winter storm that swept through Texas caused one of the most severe power crises in American history. The cold weather created shockingly high electricity demands as people tried to keep their homes warm. But
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What is a black start of the power grid?
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] November 1965 saw one of the most widespread power outages in North American history. On the freezing cold evening of the 9th, the grid was operating at maximum capacity as people tried to stay warm when a misconfigured relay tr
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Monsanto’s ghostwriting to influence science and media
While most ghostwriting scandals in science involve physicians, the agrichemical company ran a unique and sophisticated campaign to promote GMO technology and attack critics.
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Geometry from Another Universe
You start on an enclosed lawn, surrounded by four walls with a doorway in one of them. If you go in and explore, you might begin to feel trapped. You'll find you can visit five different rooms in the house, or go back outside to the lawn, but there's no way to go anywhere else. It's not because there are walls…