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The plot thickens for a hypothetical “X17” particle
This content is currently in the process of being archived and integrated into the CERN Library collections.
Topics /
Science & Space
The most popular blog posts about science & space on Hacker News. 4,455 posts.
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Illustration Beyond Proof
[This is a guest post by Kate Stange and Edmund Harriss. This blog post was initially written in a different file format and converted using AI. — T.] In January a group of mathematicians, hi…
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What does it mean for light to be stopped or stored?
Physicist: We’ve gotten a handful of questions since this was published and led to articles like this, this, and, this. In a nutshell, some dudes in Germany (Georg Heinze, Christian Hubrich,…
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The Colors of Chemistry
This notebook documents my exploration of color theory and its applications to photochemistry. It also shows off the functionality of several Julia packages: Color.jl for color theory and colorimetry, SIUnits.jl for unitful computations, and Gadfly.jl for graph plotting.
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On Two Views of Computation in Computer Science
Abstract: Machine and language models of computation differ so greatly in the computational complexity properties of their representation that they form two distinct classes that cannot be directly…
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Two centuries of rapid global population growth will come to an end
Global population grew rapidly over the past century, but this period of fast growth is coming to an end.
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Double Slit Experiment No Mystery
How can you be in two places at once When you’re not anywhere at all — Firesign Theater [Note: this is NOT original research. I just read the right book] The famous double slit experime…
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Scientists unveil fire-safe fuel
UC Riverside chemical engineers have designed a fuel that ignites only with the application of electric current. Since it doesn’t react to flames and cannot start accidental fires during storage or transport, it is a “safe” liquid fuel.
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Engineers find a new way to convert carbon dioxide into useful products
MIT chemical engineers devised an efficient way to convert carbon dioxide to carbon monoxide, which can be used to generate useful compounds such as ethanol and other fuels.
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For the first time in four decades, the Rio Grande through Albuquerque is dry
For the first time in ~40 years (? – see below) New Mexico’s Rio Grande has “broken” – is no longer flowing – in what we call “the Albuquerque reach”…
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Maps Of Matter
Status: Rough working notes – me thinking aloud. Speculative, and likely contains errors, misconceptions, and omissions; thoughtful, informed comments are welcome. Intended for a general scientifically curious audience, not requiring much detailed specialist background.
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Spherical Harmonics
3D visualization tool of spherical harmonics. Visualize and compare real, imaginary, and complex components by adjusting the degree l and order m parameters.
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Young blood does not reverse aging in old mice, UC Berkeley study finds
A new study from UC Berkeley argues against the rejuvenating properties of young blood and points to old blood, or molecules within, as driving the aging process.
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Engineers Investigate a Simple, No-Bake Recipe to Make Bricks from Martian Soil
Explorers planning to settle on Mars might be able to turn the planet’s red soil into bricks without needing to use an oven or additional ingredients. Instead, they would just need to apply pressure to compact the soil—the equivalent of a blow from a hammer. These are the findings of a study published in Nature…
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Five Corrections to The New York Times
I am writing to request 5 corrections to the article on ancient DNA that appeared in this week’s The New York Times Magazine.
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Defending against hypothetical moon life during Apollo 11
This is how a completely abstract argument about alien germs was taken seriously and mitigated at great effort and expense during the 1969 Apollo landing.
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Quantum transitions take time – the news is its experimental demonstration
A number of people have asked me to weigh in on this story in Quanta Magazine (based on this paper [ PDF version ] and also reported in t...
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Antibody Drug Conjugates: A frontier in cancer treatment
Learn how antibody-drug conjugates work as a “magic bullet” cancer treatment, combining targeted antibodies with chemotherapy to attack tumor cells more precisely.
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Plastic Pollution
How much plastic ends up in the ocean? Where does it come from?
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Warning Signs in Experimental Design and Interpretation (2007)
When an experimental study states "The group with treatment X had significantly less disease ( p = 1%)", many people interpret this statement as being equivalent to "there is a 99% chance that if I do treatment X it will prevent disease." This essay explains why these statements are not equivalent. For such an…
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Italian music through the lens of complex networks
Last year I was talking with a non-Italian, trying to convey to them how nearly the entirety of contemporary Italian music rests on the shoulders of Gianni Maroccolo — and the parts that don’t, should. In an attempt to find a way out of that conversation, they casually asked “wouldn’t it be cool to map out who…
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The Joy of Condensed Matter
I published a slightly different version of this article in Nautilus on February 24, 2021. Everyone seems to be talking about the problems with physics: Woit’s book Not Even Wrong, SmolinR…
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Clinical trial finds blood-plasma infusions for Alzheimer’s safe, promising
In a small safety trial based on preclinical work by a Stanford researcher, participants receiving blood plasma infusions from young donors showed some evidence of improvement.