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The most popular blog posts about science & space on Hacker News. 4,454 posts.
Note: These pages make extensive use of the latest XHTML and CSS Standards . They ought to look great in any standards-compliant modern browser. Unfortunately, they will probably look horrible in older browsers, like Netscape 4.x and IE 4.x. Moreover, many posts use MathML, which is, currently only supported in…
It's now clear I'm on a Black Hole binge (I can stop when I want, by the way). They're endlessly fascinating. My recent interest was in particular focused on simulating visualizations of the Schwarzschild geometry. I was preoccupied by the problem of generating a decent accurate representation of how the curvature of…
I live in Seattle on a fairly wooded property. Every summer since we’ve moved here, we end up with swarms of fruit flies in the kitchen. They congregate around the compost bin and the fruit bowl (where there are always lots of bananas). We aren’t slobbish - I do the dishes and wipe down the counters every night, take…
I used AI in my plasma physics research and it didn’t go the way I expected.
Estimates suggest that around every third child in the world suffers from lead poisoning. What can we do to reduce this?
I was struck the other day by the following: The cooking instructions on my Bob’s tri-colored quinoa package said to combine 2 cups of water with 1 cup of dried quinoa, which would ultimately create 4 cups of cooked quinoa. See image above. My first reaction was to believe …
While conventional and commonplace today, maps have not always had north at the top. And they don't need to.
MIT neuroscientists have found reading computer code does not rely on the regions of the brain involved in language processing. Instead, it activates the “multiple demand network,” which is also recruited for complex cognitive tasks such as solving math problems or crossword puzzles.
A new paper in Psychological Science (.htm) reports a failure to replicate Study 2 of Ariely and Wertenbroch’s influential article entitled, “Procrastination, Deadlines, and Performance: Self-Contr…
Dedicated to the craft of architectural millwork, residential construction, & historic restoration.
New technology has been developed that uses nuclear waste to generate electricity in a nuclear-powered battery. A team of physicists and chemists from the University of Bristol have grown a man-made diamond that, when placed in a radioactive field, is able to generate a small electrical current.
We investigate and campaign against environmental crime and abuse
If you eschew hyperbole and hang in for the long haul, maintaining a discipline of understatement in the midst of a flashy neon world, you may be offered a modicum of credence when you make an extraordinary announcement.
The number of researchers and peer-review publications is growing exponentially. It has been estimated that the number of researchers in the world doubles every 16 years and the number of research outputs is increasing even faster. If you accept that published research papers are an accurate measure of our scientific…
When the central heating takes effect I'll get up and make myself some tea and porridge to which I'll add some nuts and fruit. I'll switch on The World Service to hear the news, and then make a few phone calls about damp-proofing. And I'll probably plant the daffodil bulbs for Spring (it says on the packet they should…
Stanford Medicine researchers and their colleagues invented a new vaccine that protects mice from respiratory viruses, bacteria and allergens — the closest yet to a universal vaccine.
Physicist: Black holes and space are both black, so there’s that. But while black holes tend to be very small, space is bonkers big and filled with just enough stuff to give astronomers thin…
Inspired by James McKee’s Trinity Hall prime, physics researcher Gilles Esposito-Farese (of the self-descriptive pangram) has worked out that this 2,258-digit prime number: 53084469288402965415857953902888840109250315594591772197851275320 59910735745658243457138160802170063601085186072703319516241231606…
How I learned to stop worrying and love the burn.
CERN and Mistral sign a statement of intent to advance AI for science and strengthen Europe’s scientific and technological capabilities
A beginner's guide to longevity research
Stephen Wolfram takes a computational view of time, defining it abstractly, and the implications from computational irreducibility.
Scan Head STM Tips Vibration Isolation Electronics Software Scans Image Gallery Useful Links This project is my attempt to build a low-cost scanning tunneling microscope (STM) capable of atomic res…
Vogtle Unit 3's fuel load process is underway marking a historic milestone toward ommercial operation of the first new nuclear units in the United States in more than three decades
