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The Entropy of a Markov Chain
A more explicit example
Topics /
Science & Space
The most popular blog posts about science & space on Hacker News. 2,038 posts.
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Timelapse of a supercell near Booker, Texas
Still prints of this storm for purchase can be found on my gallery. Follow me on Instagram as well for storm photos and whatnot -> MikeOlbinski It took four years but I finally got it. A rotating supercell. And not just a rotating supercell, but one with insane structure and amazing movement. I’ve been visiting the...
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Wild Ideas
A wild idea is one that many people think is obviously quite unlikely. I'd say at least a third of these wild ideas are likely true. (Parenthetic links are to more of my writings .)
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Global EV Charging Points with Open Charge Map
Benchmarks & Tips for Big Data, Hadoop, AWS, Google Cloud, PostgreSQL, Spark, Python & More...
1235
The Point of the Banach-Tarski Theorem
One of my favourite Limited Audience Jokes (although technically it's actually a riddle) goes:
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What Are the Odds?
An unusual lottery result made the news recently: on October 1, 2022, the PCSO Grand Lotto in the Philippines, which draws six numbers from $latex {1}&fg=000000$ to $latex {55}&fg=000000$ a…
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Helplessness is not learned (2022)
Română On the sixth day of our science advent, we would like to talk about a debunked concept in neuroscience. The purpose of this prompt and of science debunking, in general, is not to make fun of how scientists in the past got things so wrong and how we’re so much smarter now. The point […]
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Want to build a sequencer? 454.bio opens up their plans
Just as the AGBT hype cycle was firing up (with me contributing multiple sparks), serial entrepreneur Jonathan Rothberg's latest sequencing ...
1239
The Second Law of Thermodynamics (2011)
Web site content explains the modern view of entropy change and the dispersal of energy in a process (at a specific temperature). It has been selected for instructors in general and physical chemistry by Dr. Frank L. Lambert, Professor Emeritus (Chemistry) of Occidental College, Los Angeles.
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A 189 Year Old Limitation on Inductor Size Has Been Broken (2018)
One of the three basic circuit elements just got a lot smaller for the very first time, in what promises to be a trillion-dollar…
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Wi-Wi is wireless time sync at 1 nanosecond
At NAB, I found a demo of Wi-Wi STAMP, a wireless time synchronization protocol that came out of Japan's NICT. Wi-Wi stands for Wireless 2Way interferometry, and it uses the 900 MHz band for picosecond-level time sync, and mm-level distance accuracy, in a tiny box, currently the size of a smartphone. The system is…
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Helmhurts: Placing a WiFi router with the Helmholtz equation
A few posts back I was concerned with optimising the WiFi reception in my flat, and I chose a simple method for calculating the distribution of electromagnetic intensity. I casually mentioned that I really should be doing things more rigorously by solving the Helmholtz equation, but then didn't. Well, spurred on by a…
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I think faster than light travel is possible [video]
Science News, Physics, Science, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
1245
Omicron Update: Nov 27
There is a lot of anxiety.
1246
Image of our satellite-choked night skies
To create this composite image, photographer Brendan Larsen captured almost 600 photographs over a two-hour period and then manually stitched them together. Thi
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Saving Jet Fuel
Benchmarks & Tips for Big Data, Hadoop, AWS, Google Cloud, PostgreSQL, Spark, Python & More...
1249
Will Our Understanding of Math Deteriorate Over Time?
Scientific American writes about rescuing the enormous theorem (classification of finite simple groups) before the proof vanishes. How can...
1250
What is emergence?
Emergence occurs when there is a conceptual discontinuity between two descriptions targeting the same phenomenon. This does not mean that emergence is a purely subjective phenomenon — only th…
1251
Solar storm risk and EMP attacks
A Q&A style dialogue to separate fact from fiction.
1252
The Myth of Japanese Longevity
Bioinformatics, genomics, and Javascript
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Space Tethers: Stringing Up the Solar System
A blog dedicated to helping Science Fiction authors create and discuss worlds where a realistic setting can still serve the fiction.
1255
Trying to improve buffet lines using simulations
I have suspected for years that the classic buffet line system is a deeply flawed method, so I decide to simulate different methods to find out better ways
1256
Folding Paper with a Hydraulic Press
What happens when you ignore the math
1257
A back-projection algorithm to extract 3D volume from shadows
If you'd rather read python than english you can go straight to the code on github: https://github.com/jminardi/volume-from-shadow
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Why is C the symbol for the speed of light? (2004)
"As for c , that is the speed of light in vacuum, and if you ask why c , the answer is that it is the initial letter of celeritas , the Latin word meaning speed." Isaac Asimov in "C for Celeritas (1959)" [1]
1260
Worldwide power grid with glass insulated HVDC cables
Moving electricity around the world has huge financial and environmental benefits. Unfortunately, current power transmission systems are both lossy and expensive to build. This post explores an alternative design for cables to make undersea power transmission substantially cheaper.