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Science & Space
The most popular blog posts about science & space on Hacker News. 208 posts.
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Pi and the Golden Ratio
Two of my favorite numbers are pi: $latex \pi = 3.14159… $ and the golden ratio: $latex \displaystyle{ \Phi = \frac{\sqrt{5} + 1}{2} } = 1.6180339… $ They’re related: $latex \pi =…
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What are the complex numbers, really?
Where did complex numbers come from? You might think that people invented \(i\) just so that they had a solution to the quadratic equat...
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Analysis of Soviet smoke detector plutonium
Technical nuclear forensics-themed discussion of the age, activity, and grade of plutonium found in a KI-1 Soviet smoke detector.
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Bilingual speakers experience time differently, study finds
Language has such a powerful effect, it can influence the way in which we experience time, according to a new study.
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Analog Computers
Analog computers, predominant in high-performance computing until the 1970s, were forgotten when digital computers took over. We need to change that.
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Richard Feynman and the Connection Machine (1989)
For Richard, a crazy idea was an opportunity to either prove it wrong or prove it right.
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The Neural Net Tank Urban Legend
AI folklore tells a story about a neural network trained to detect tanks which instead learned to detect time of day; investigating, this probably never happened.
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Oldest recorded solar eclipse helps date the Egyptian pharaohs
Researchers have pinpointed the date of what could be the oldest solar eclipse yet recorded. The event, which occurred on 30 October 1207 BC, is mentioned in the Bible and could have consequences for the chronology of the ancient world.
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Toxic fluorinated compounds found in drinking water of 33 states
A Harvard Chan School study has found that drinking-water samples near industrial sites, military fire-training areas, and wastewater-treatment plants have the highest levels of fluorinated compounds, which have been linked with cancer, hormone disruption, high cholesterol, and obesity.
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A Comparison of Differential Equation Solver Suites
Many times a scientist is choosing a programming language or a software for a specific purpose. For the field of scientific computing, the methods for solving differential equations are one of the important areas. What I would like to do is take the time to compare and contrast between the most popular offerings. This…
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The ABC conjecture has still not been proved
Five years ago, Cathy O’Neil laid out a perfectly cogent case for why the (at that point recent) claims by Shinichi Mochizuki should not (yet) be regarded as constituting a proof of the ABC conjecture. I have nothing further to add on the sociological aspects of mathematics discussed in that post, but I just wanted to…
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New silicon structure opens the gate to quantum computers
In a major step toward making a quantum computer using everyday materials, a team led by researchers at Princeton has constructed a key piece of silicon hardware capable of controlling quantum behavior between two electrons with extremely high precision.
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Influenza A (H1N1) – How many bits does it take to kill a human? (2009)
I read a fantastic article in Nature magazine (vol 459, pp931-939 (18 June 2009)) that summarizes not only the current state of novel H1N1 (aka Swine Flu) understanding, but also a compares H1N1 against other flu strains. In particular, it discusses in-depth how the pathogenic components — i.e., the stuff that kills…
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Engineers Create Stable Plasma Ring in Open Air
Engineers used the flow of water over a crystal plate to generate a stable ring of plasma without a vacuum chamber or electromagnetic fields to contain it.
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ESO (European Southern Observatory) Announcing Unprecedented Discovery
Media Advisory: Press Conference at ESO HQ Announcing Unprecedented Discovery
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Photovoltaic growth: reality versus projections of the IEA
This is a guest blog by Auke Hoekstra, senior adviser electric mobility at the Eindhoven University of Technology and developer of agent-based models for electric vehicles and renewable energy adop…
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