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The most popular blog posts about science & space on Hacker News. 374 posts.
What is life? This question keeps many people awake at night and has led to rafts of definitions, some involving features (procreation, metabolism and so forth), some involving chemistry, entropy or energy flux and some are of a more philosophical bent. A BBC article noted there are over 100 definitions of life and it…
Memories of long-ago Sunday nights on the road.
Neurons that fire together, wire together... Ok, but how? One of my little pet projects is a neurology book for psychologists, coaches and the like. What most people in these fields imagine about the brain is somewhere between perplexing, preposterous and potentially poisonous. (Seriously, I could tell you stories...)…
Part of my series on countering misconceptions in space journalism. The SpaceX Starship is a game changer for space exploration. It is intended to be far bigger, cheaper, versatile, and available t…
Science News, Physics, Science, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
Some notes about acquiring power that I wish I'd understood years ago.
A study from MIT neuroscientists reveals how neurons in the brain’s retrosplenial cortex use both visual information and spatial feedback to encode specific landmarks that are useful for navigation.
I heard this morning about the death yesterday of Philip Anderson, at the age of 96. It’s not hard to make the case that Anderson was the most important condensed matter theorist of the twent…
This post is inspired by the recent press release about the Rolls Royce Accel, an experimental electric aircraft being built to attempt the electric speed record. Close friends know I’ve been…
Glass scientists have taken a closer look at the urban legend of glass flow in medieval windows—combining theory and experimental techniques, the results definitely bust the myth and indicate the highest ever direct measurement of glass viscosity at low temperatures.
Making catalysts to convert waste carbon dioxide into useful industrial products has been expensive and complicated – until now. UNSW engineers show it’s as easy as playing with Lego.
A nifty move with nitrogen has brought the world one step closer to creating a range of useful products — from dyes to pharmaceuticals — out of thin air.
In August 2024, we published the next phase of our work in Science. Our research proposes a solution to one of the most difficult challenges in computational quantum chemistry: understanding how molecules transition to and from excited states when stimulated.
Main Menu - click above Man, thermometer, one legged stool & vat of nitro 1870 . Alfred Nobel chose Ardeer, in Ayreshire, as the ...
The new device can continuously sense levels of virtually any protein or molecule in the blood. The researchers say it could be transformative for disease detection, patient monitoring and biomedical research.
A mishap during an experiment led UNSW quantum computing researchers to crack a mystery that had stood since 1961.
When most people think about pi, they associate the mathematical constant with arcs and circles. Mathematicians, however, are accustomed to seeing it in a variety of fields. But two University physicists were still surprised to find it lurking in a quantum mechanics formula for the energy states of the hydrogen atom.
Comparing the genome sequences of the Wuhan coronavirus and a bat coronavirus using `diff` and NCBI BLAST reveals an 89% similarity.
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 “…
If the first nuclear weapons test had been a flop, would the world be better or worse off?
That crows can recognize humans faces (and other physical attributes) has been a staple of our experiences with them for thousands of years. It’s part of what has allowed them to take s…
Researchers at EPFL are assessing Switzerland’s solar power potential. Their results show that photovoltaic panels could be installed on more than half of the country’s 9.6 million rooftops. The resulting power would meet more than 40% of Swiss electricity demand.
The event that would eventually lead to Isaac Newton writing and publishing his magnum opus, the Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (the Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy), too…
If you click on this picture, you’ll see a zoomable image of the Milky Way with 84 million stars: But stars contribute only a tiny fraction of the total entropy in the observable Universe. If…
Many restaurants, theatres and offices are using infrared thermometers to get the country back to work. Multiple companies are advertising these as a way to ‘reassure’ employers and employees. In China, security guards have even been given infra-red spectacles in order to detect people with fever. But where’s the…
