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Science & Space

The most popular blog posts about science & space on Hacker News. 422 posts.

2025
277

An engineering history of the Manhattan Project

The Manhattan Project, the US program to build an atomic bomb during WWII, is one of the most famous and widely known major government projects: a survey in 1999 ranked the dropping of the atomic bomb as the top news story of the 20th century. Virtually everyone knows that the project built the bombs that were dropped…

281

Erdős Problem #1026

Problem 1026 on the Erdős problem web site recently got solved through an interesting combination of existing literature, online collaboration, and AI tools. The purpose of this blog post is to try…

289

Physicists Magnetize a Material with Light

MIT physicists created a long-lasting magnetic state in a material, using only light. The results provide a new way to control and switch antiferromagnetic materials, which are of interest for their potential to advance information processing and memory chip technology.

295

Pierogi in Space

In a first for space cuisine, ESA project astronaut Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski will bring pierogi, the traditional Polish dumplings, to the International Space Station during the upcoming Axiom Mission 4.

296

Beautiful Abelian Sandpiles

I can't remember where I first saw them, but ever since, I have been unable to forget them: abelian sandpiles. I'm far from the only one . They're remarkably simple, yet produce lovely symmetric patterns. I loved them so much that I adorned the title banner of this blog with an animation of an abelian sandpile. But…

298

The Shape of a Mars Mission

“From a mathematics and trajectory standpoint and with a certain kind of technology, there’s not too many different ways to go to Mars. It’s been pretty well figured out. You can adjust the decimal places here and there, but basically if you're talking about chemical rockets, there's a certain way you're going to go…