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I finally understand methane lifetimes
How to arrive at a number you can trust
Topics /
Science & Space
The most popular blog posts about science & space on Hacker News. 182 posts.
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The flood that filled the Mediterranean Sea - in one year
"Zanclean Megaflood? What's that, a glam-rock band?"
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What it’s like to dissect a cadaver
Alok Singh's Blog
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Why wasn't the steam engine invented earlier? Part II
As I noted in Part I, the general idea of using heat and steam for mechanical work had a long and continuous history back to ancient times. But when we talk of the breakthrough “steam engine” in the eighteenth-century sense, we don’t mean a machine that exploits steam’s expansive, or pushing force. We actually mean a…
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USDA ignoring the science on low-carb diets
Since 2014, the US Dept. of Agriculture has a record of "burying" the science
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I've said it all before but here we go again
Science News, Physics, Science, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
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Nuclear power is too slow
One common and plausible argument against nuclear power is that it is too slow.
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The rise and fall of peer review
Why the greatest scientific experiment in history failed, and why that's a great thing
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A beginner's guide to intermittent fasting (2012)
Considering intermittent fasting or a fasting diet? Learn the benefits of intermittent fasting and the intermittent fasting schedule I use.
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Astronomical Calculations for Hard SF in Common Lisp
Hard SF worldbuilding with the HYG database, Dijkstra's algorithm, and Lisp.
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Problem solving strategies in a graduate real analysis course (2010)
This is going to be a somewhat experimental post. In class, I mentioned that when solving the type of homework problems encountered in a graduate real analysis course, there are really only about a…
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Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts (2020)
Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts said Richard Feynman. Feynman had a Nobel prize in physics. He was a remarquable educator: his lecture notes are still popular. He foresaw nanotechnology and quantum computing. He is credited with identifying the cause of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. There is…
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Study Tips from Richard Feynman
“Study hard what interests you the most.”
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How “See a Satellite Tonight” Works
See A Satellite Tonight is my most successful side project so far, with 5 million users since launch in 2019. It's been entirely a solo project, and I've used it as a proving ground for a bunch of tech that I wanted to learn. It took dozens of APIs and services to put together the experience I wanted: The front page…
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The swimming of a dead fish (2018)
When I was a child, my father would take me trout fishing, and I spent hours marveling from the riverbank at the trouts’ ability to, seemingly effortlessly, h
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How do you power a rocket engine?
This article discusses different types of rocket engine cycles, from pressure-fed through gas generator, to full-flow staged combustion.
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How the US Air Force Ditched the Average and Saved Lives
The average is a myth. Understand the pitfalls of the average and how it can conceal useful information. How the US Air Force threw out the average and saved lives. Use distributions to better understand your data.
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How to grow green potassium ferrioxalate crystals from iron rust
Potassium ferrioxalate produces striking green crystals that are both beautiful and easy to grow. I'll show you how to grow them at home.
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Visualizing black holes with general relativistic ray tracing
Okay I ended up making this write-up waaaaaay too long, so before I get into any of the jargon, let’s take a look at the finished product:
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Science Is Getting Harder
Evidence that discoveries are getting smaller on average
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40k coin tosses yield ambiguous evidence for dynamical bias
However, no experiment with actual coin-tosses has been done to investigate whether the predicted effect is empirically observed. Diaconis et al noted, correctly, that to estimate the probability with a S.E. of 0.1% would require 250,000 tosses, but this seems unnecessarily precise. Let's work with numbers of tosses…
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First TV Image of Mars: Interplanetary color by numbers (2016)
For the longest time I had seen this framed image entitled “The First TV Image of Mars” in an out of the way place at JPL. I loved taking people there showing them this low res image and how it had been made by coloring numbers that were stapled to a wall. When I got to curate an exhibition about data and art, I had…
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The control group is out of control (2014)
I. Allan Crossman calls parapsychology the control group for science. That is, in let’s say a drug testing experiment, you give some people the drug and they recover. That doesn’t tell …
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Death by hockey sticks
You may be familiar with the term “hockey stick curve,” used describe a trend that has been flat/stable for a very long time, but shoots up at the end of the series in dramatic fashion, resembling the shape of a hockey stick. Hockey can be a violent sport, and it’s easy to get hurt by even one well-aimed swing…
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Why Quantum Mechanics?
In the past few months, I’ve twice injured the same ankle while playing with my kids. This, perhaps combined with covid, led me to several indisputable realizations: I am mortal.Despite my se…
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Analyzing Carbon Dioxide levels while attending IETF-115 in London, UK
is it safe to travel these days?
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How is portable AM radio possible?
If AM radio antennas were as long as a quarter wavelength of the carrier signal, you'd need an antenna as long as a football field.
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Psychedelics and mental illness
The science of psychedelics is everywhere – but we should treat it with serious scepticism