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After millennia of expansion, the world has passed ‘peak agricultural land’
The world produces more food than ever, but the amount of land we use is now falling. This means we can feed more people while restoring wild habitat.
Topics /
Science & Space
The most popular blog posts about science & space on Hacker News. 4,454 posts.
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Running Speeds
Recently a shoe store in France ran a promotion called “Rob It to Get It”, which invited customers to try to steal something by grabbing it and running out of the store. But there was a catch — the “security guard” was a professional sprinter, Méba Mickael Zeze. As you would expect, he is fast, but you might not…
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The shadows lurking in the equations
If you've ever graphed equations, chances are you have only ever graphed equations in what I refer to as "Binary mode" - which draws a line where the equation is EXACTLY equal, and leaves white everywhere else.
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Using NASA’s SMAP satellite to detect L-band interference
It was launched to measure moisture. Now it’s ghost-trailing jammers across an electronic battlefield.
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Shor, I’ll do it (2007)
I’ve been talking a lot recently about how quantum algorithms don’t work. But last week JR Minkel, an editor at Scientific American, asked me to write a brief essay about how quantum al…
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How I Became a Knife Steel Metallurgist
Thanks to Jon Broida of Japanese Knife Imports and Anton Kudris for becoming Knife Steel Nerds Patreon supporters! When I was 16 I went with my father to the Las Vegas Custom Knife show. My interest in custom knives up to that point had been pretty limited. My father, Devin, has run a Damascus steel… Continue reading…
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Using an LCD’s poor viewing angle to your advantage
When viewing LCD monitors from an oblique angle, it is not uncommon to witness a dramatic color shift. Occasionally, this can appear as a total color inversion. This is primarily caused by a polarization asymmetry, where light rays passing through the pixel matrix at oblique angles are influenced by the relative…
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The Illustrated AlphaFold
A visual walkthrough of the AlphaFold3 architecture, with more details and diagrams than you were probably looking for.
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Metformin shown to prevent long Covid
A 14-day course of metformin, a common drug used to manage type 2 diabetes, prevents long COVID, according to a new study in The Lancet Infectious Diseases .
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Childhood leukemia: how a deadly cancer became treatable
Before the 1970s, most children affected by leukemia would quickly die from it. Now, most children in rich countries are cured.
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Understanding large language models: A cross-section of the relevant literature
A Cross-Section of the Most Relevant Literature To Get Up to Speed
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What's Earth's dominant species by mass?
You might have heard that all the ants in the world weigh as much combined as all the humans. That isn’t true. We outweigh ants 5 to 1.1 Termites might have us beat, though.2 Either way, it’s not r…
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AlphaProteo generates novel proteins for biology and health research
New AI system designs proteins that successfully bind to target molecules, with potential for advancing drug design, disease understanding and more.
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Scientists discover Kelvin-Helmholtz Instability on the surface of the Sun
Scientists using the NSF Inouye Solar Telescope discovered Kelvin-Helmholtz instability on the Sun, shedding light on solar activity and space weather.
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Excitable cells
A demonstration of how reentry tachyarrhythmias can develop in a system of excitable cells.
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23andMe raises $50M, cuts price to $99, sets goal of 1M genotyped customers
A statement upon 23andMe reaching its first one million customers.
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All models are wrong, but some are completely wrong
At this critical time in the modern history of the human race, mathematical models have been pushed into the foreground. Epidemic forecasting informs policy and even individual decision-making. Sad…
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IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle
Background : “IQ” is a stale test meant to measure mental capacity but in fact mostly measures extreme unintelligence (learning…
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There’s no such thing as a tree phylogenetically (2021)
Dendronization – Evolving into a tree-like morphology. (In the style of “carcinization”.) From ‘dendro’, the ancient Greek root for tree.
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2^74207281-1 is Prime
GIMPS has discovered a new Mersenne prime number: 2^74207281-1 is prime! Discovered: 2016 Jan 07
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Close-Up View of DNA Replication
Almost all life on earth is based on DNA being copied, or replicated, and understanding how this process works could lead to a wide range of discoveries in biology and medicine. Now for the first time scientists have been able to watch individual steps in the replication of a single DNA molecule, with some surprising…
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Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2026 to Henri B. Kagan and Kenso Soai
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2026 was awarded jointly to Henri B. Kagan and Kenso Soai "for the discovery of non-linear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis"
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Scientists create contained ball of turbulence in a tank
Scientists create contained ball of turbulence in a tank that could help answer longstanding questions
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