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Topics /
Science & Space
The most popular blog posts about science & space on Hacker News. 82 posts.
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“American Scientist” Understands Nothing about the Traveling Salesman Problem
I like to think there are some solid foundations to my life. I will be able to do the Monday New York Times crossword and I will not be able to do the Thursday version. My dental hygienist will not be satisfied with the amount of flossing I do. I will get my favorite spaghetti meal served on my birthday.
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What Math Do You Need for Physics?
Chad Orzel has a very sensible piece at Forbes, headlined What Math Do You Need For Physics? It Depends, which addresses the question of what math a physicist like him (experimental AMO physics) re…
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What is the roundest country?
We can define roundness in many ways. For example, as you may know, the circle is the shape that given a fixed perimeter maximizes the area. This definition has many problems. One of the problems is that countries generally have chaotic perimeters (also known as borders), so they tend to be much longer than they seem…
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Will Coke Dissolve a Nail? (2003)
An experiment to see if Coke really dissolves a nail after four days like the email says
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The Moon Illusion, an Unsolved Mystery
physics, history of science, pseudoscience, hoaxes, writing, education, skepticisism, humor, quotes, illusions, 3d stereo photography.
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Why Are Medical Ultrasound Systems So Inexpensive?
Hackernews linked to a Medium post on ultrasound devices today, entitled " Why are Ultrasound Machines So Expensive? " which, being my cor...
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The Busy Beaver Game
This month, a bunch of ‘logic hackers’ have been seeking to determine the precise boundary between the knowable and the unknowable. The challenge has been around for a long time. But on…
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On Two Views of Computation in Computer Science
Abstract: Machine and language models of computation differ so greatly in the computational complexity properties of their representation that they form two distinct classes that cannot be directly…
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The Importance of Acoustics in Food Storage
Deep in the archives of San Francisco-based Aquarius Records, buried between several days’ worth of “laptop glitchery” and “brutal industro-crunch,” lies this gem: Insect Noise in Stored Foodstuffs , (INRA, 2000, CD, 19:98).
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Putin’s nuclear torpedo and Project Pluto
There was some wanking among the US foreign policy wonkosphere about the nuclear torpedo “accidentally” mentioned in a Russian news video. The device described in the leak is a megat…
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Confronting the Credibility Gap for Crewed Exploration of Mars
Confronting the Credibility Gap for Crewed Exploration of Mars (Notes from talk on September 22, 2016, at the Mars Society Conference. ...
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Most Radioactive Spot in New York: A Street Corner in Queens
Many are going to ask, "What's so weird about this one corner?" and I'm here to answer. The end of Irving Avenue, where it meets Moffat Str...
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A Rocket to Nowhere (2005)
The Space Shuttle Discovery is up in orbit, safely docked to the International Space Station, and for the next five days, astronauts will be busy figuring out whether it's safe for them to come home. In the meantime, the rest of the Shuttle fleet is grounded (confined to base, not allowed to play with its spacecraft…
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Schizophrenia: No Smoking Gun
[Note: despite how some people are spinning this, tobacco is still really really bad and you should not smoke it] I. Schizophrenics smoke. A lot. Depending on the study, about 60-80% of schizophren…
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The Relativistic Rocket
Thanks to Alan R. Wilson for correcting a two-word typo involving GPS satellites. Thanks to Aron Yoffe for suggesting the newtonian comparison. Thanks to Tom Fuchs for suggesting the analogy to the stone thrown upwards. Fuel numbers added by Don Koks, 2004. Updated by Phil Gibbs, 1998. Thanks to Bill Woods for…
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Beware The Man Of One Study
Aquinas famously said: beware the man of one book. I would add: beware the man of one study. For example, take medical research. Suppose a certain drug is weakly effective against a certain disease…
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