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Science & Space
The most popular blog posts about science & space on Hacker News. 4,454 posts.
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Study: Low Carb Diet May Prevent, Reverse Age-Related Effects Within the Brain
The news in brief: 1) Brain changes associated with aging become visible much earlier than would be expected, in the late 40's. 2) This is hypothesized to result from neurons’ loss of energy; if so, researchers may have found a way to prevent or reverse these effects. 3) This can be done with diet, by
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MIT engineers fly first-ever plane with no moving parts (2018)
MIT engineers have flown the first silent, fuel-free “ion plane.” The light aircraft is the first plane to fly with no propellers, turbine blades, or other moving parts.
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FDA grants Breakthrough Therapy designation to MDMA for treatment of PTSD
The non-profit Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) today announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Breakthrough Therapy Designation to MDMA for the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). MAPS and the FDA have also reached agreement under the Special…
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Autoresearch on an old research idea
Yogesh Kumar's personal website
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No evidence that testosterone reduces cognitive empathy
In the largest study of its kind, results challenge the notion of autism as reflecting an “extreme male brain.”
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Yale physicists find signs of a time crystal
Time crystals — a form of matter that “ticks” when exposed to an electromagnetic pulse — may help to build better atomic clocks, gyroscopes, and quantum tech.
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Breakdown of faults by car brand: Tesla has replaced Dacia at the bottom
Minimised clearances, active hoods, new materials, new drive technologies – surely modern cars have reached their pinnacle?
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IAC confirms existence of a Super-earth in the habitable zone of a Sun-like Star
The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and the Universidad de La Laguna (ULL) has confirmed the discovery of a super-Earth orbiting in the habitable zone of HD 20794, a nearby Sun-like star. This discovery, the result of over two decades of observations, opens a window to future studies of Earth-like planetary…
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Human blood cells can be directly reprogrammed into neural stem cells
Scientists from the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and the stem cell institute HI-STEM* in Heidelberg have succeeded for the first time in directly reprogramming human blood cells into a previously unknown type of neural stem cell. These induced stem cells are similar to those that occur during the early…
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Vitamin D, part 2: Shannon's story
How much Vitamin D should I take? This is still the looming question, and it’s time to address it. First, though, imagine that someone in a public forum online asked me, “How much metoprolol (a…
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Reasoning models don't always say what they think
Research from Anthropic on the faithfulness of AI models' chain-of-thought reasoning.
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Myths in cycling: wider tires are slower
When we started to publish Bicycle Quarterly 15 years ago, it seemed that most of the technical aspects of bicycles were well-known. And yet, as we tested many different bikes, we started to question many of the things we had accepted as 'facts.' To celebrate…
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Why time seems to pass faster as we age
1/ I’ve been mega-obsessed with this feeling. A year as a 36-year-old seems so much shorter as compared to when I was a kid or even as a teen. It seems cosmically unfair – we have fewer years to live, and each year flies by faster. 2/ But, why is that happening? My tentative conclusion is that… Read More
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The hidden engineering of runways
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] September 2025 was an unusually bad month for runway overruns in the US. On the night of September 24th, an Embraer 145 with 53 people on board landed long at the Roanoke-Blacksburg Regional Airport in Virginia, overshooting the
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The world is awful. The world is much better. The world can be much better
It is wrong to think these three statements contradict each other. We need to see that they are all true to see that a better world is possible.
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Students break acceleration world record for electric vehicles
Self-built electric vehicle sets new best time
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IBM casts doubt on Google's claims of quantum supremacy
We argue that an ideal simulation of the same task can be performed on a classical system in 2.5 days and with far greater fidelity.
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The United Kingdom generates less electricity per person than in the 1970s
Globally, electricity generation per person has grown by more than 50% this century.
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Homeschooled with MIT courses at 5, accepted to MIT at 15
After acquiring his entire elementary and secondary education from OpenCourseWare and <i>MITx,</i> Ahaan Rungta joined the MIT Class of 2019 at age 15.
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Einstein's relativity rules chemical bonds in heavy elements, new research shows
Researchers have shown the first direct experimental evidence that the textbook triple bond structure breaks down in heavy elements, where relativity makes the rules.
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HARC
We’re excited to announce YC Research’s newest project: the Human Advancement Research Community (HARC). This came out of a conversation that started between Alan Kay and me more than a year ago about how to invent future computing technologies; I’m delighted to finally be officially working with him and his group. He…
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The Los Angeles Aqueduct Is Wild
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] On the northern edge of Los Angeles, fresh water spills down two stark concrete chutes perched on the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, a place simply called The Cascades. It’s a deceptively simple-looking finish line: the