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How to grow crystals at home with fertilizer
Growing crystals is easy. It's both a fun family activity and a cool science experiment. You can even dye your crystals with food coloring.
Topics /
Science & Space
The most popular blog posts about science & space on Hacker News. 2,038 posts.
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Diffing Coronaviruses
Comparing the genome sequences of the Wuhan coronavirus and a bat coronavirus using `diff` and NCBI BLAST reveals an 89% similarity.
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Strange Attractors (2018)
Interactive Mathematical Applets and Animations
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5-HTTLPR: A Pointed Review
In 1996, some researchers discovered that depressed people often had an unusual version of the serotonin transporter gene 5-HTTLPR. The study became a psychiatric sensation, getting thousands of ci…
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Can you drill into a supervolcano to relieve pressure? (2016)
As recently as February 2016 an article in a prestigious science journal (Nature) raises the question if a nuclear blast will have a...
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SF author Greg Egan reviews Avatar
Avatar Review by Greg Egan
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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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Heritability of human life span is ~50% when heritability is redefined
ratios will be ratios
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Plutonium is Forever
I have been doing business in Japan for 20 years, consulting for big and small companies, speaking at conferences, writing for Japanese publications, and helping both American and Japanese companies do business with each other. For years I flew to Tokyo once a month, generally in my role as giver of bad news, which I
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Cylinders in Spheres
What is the largest volume cylinder it is possible to carve from a solid sphere? Also, so you know about the napkin ring problem?
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My Meeting with David Bohm
June 29, 2023. Some scientists seek to clarify reality, others to mystify it. Physicist David Bohm seemed driven by both impulses. He is renowned for promoting a sensible (according to experts like Einstein, John Bell and philosopher Tim Maudlin) interpretation of quantum mechanics. But Bohm also a
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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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Unusual Locomotives
The Douglas Self Site, steam locomotive, Shay, Climax, Mallet, Garratt, Turbomotive, Reid-Ramsey
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A successful example of "adversarial collaboration"
We synthesized the vast, contradictory scholarly literature on gender bias in academic science from 2000 to 2020. . . . Claims and counterclaims regarding the presence or absence of sexism span a range of evaluation contexts. Our approach relied on a combination of meta-analysis and analytic dissection. We evaluated…
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Bifurcation: The secret giant islands formed when rivers split
As I’m sure you’re aware, rivers usually combine together to make larger and larger rivers until they reach the sea.However, there are some exceptions: rivers do sometimes split up and flow in separate directions. These splits are called “bifurcations” (bi” meaning “two”, and “furcations” being the forks). They happen…
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Alpha Compositing
Interactive article explaining alpha compositing concepts.
1609
Elizabeth Cotton’s Fingerstyle Ragtime
Dust-to-digital posted this lovely performance of “Washington Blues” by Elizabeth Cotten. It reminded me that she is the greatest and that I should write more about her. If you are a gu…
1610
Color of the Night Sky (2019)
What color is the night sky? Contrary to prevailing views, the moonless night sky is rarely, if ever, black or blue. It is actually much more colorful. In this article, I'll describe some of the colors and the physical reasons for those colors.
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The Dome: A simple violation of determinism in Newtonian mechanics (2005)
John D. Norton Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh PA 15260. Homepage: www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton This page is available at www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/goodies
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Learning Is Slower Than You Think
What AI-optimized schools misunderstand about learning
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Why I decided not to enter the $100k global warming time-series challenge
Interesting applied project for your students , or as a warning for decisions under uncertainty / statistical significance. Real money on the line so the length of time and number of entries required to get a winner may be an interesting dataset after this is all done.
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Urban trees reveal income inequality
Wealthy cities seem to have it all. Expansive, well-manicured parks. Fine dining. Renowned orchestras and theaters. More trees. Wait, trees? I’m afraid
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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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Remembering Murray Gell-Mann
Stephen Wolfram shares his memories of Murray Gell-Mann, leader in particle physics and Nobel Prize winner. Observations from years together in Caltech’s physics department and a selection of Gell-Mann’s contributions to physics.
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A modern Fortran scientific programming ecosystem
Historically, large general-purpose libraries have formed the core of the Fortran scientific ecosystem (e.g., SLATEC , or the various PACKS ). Unfortunately, as I have mentioned here before, these libraries were written in FORTRAN 77 (or earlier) and remained unmodified for decades. The amazing algorithms continued…
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DARPA’s 23 Challenge Questions
DARPA challenges The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has issued 23 mathematical challenges. DARPA says the solution of any one of these challenges would have the effect of “…
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Why fusion will never happen (2012)
I like fusion, really. I’ve talked to some of luminaries that work in the field, they’re great people. I love the technology and the physics behind it. But fusion as a power source is n…