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Everything is logarithms
Some connections between things, which I have not seen elsewhere. Maybe they mean something?
Topics /
Science & Space
The most popular blog posts about science & space on Hacker News. 356 posts.
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Insects don't swarm at LED lights
Remember when you used to encounter swarms of insects around outdoor electric lights? Their well known attraction to outdoor lights is used by entomologists and moth lovers to conduct insect surveys. All you need is a light and a white sheet to see who’s flying at night.
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ArXiv receives multiyear commitments to support it as an independent nonprofit
arXiv is pleased to announce that three leading philanthropic organizations have provided multimillion-dollar support for arXiv. These new multiyear…
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The unreasonable effectiveness of the Fourier transform
New : You can now watch a recording of my talk on my YouTube channel ! Or you can just click "play" below, I suppose.
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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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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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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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ArXiv's Next Chapter
On July 1, 2026, arXiv will spin out from Cornell University, its home for the past 25 years, to become an independent nonprofit organization. With this next…
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L'Affaire Siloxane
How antiperspirant fumes nearly got NASA to evacuate the space station
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The Strongest El Niño Ever
With all the July runs in, dynamical models give a ~90% chance of a record-setting event
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The paper computer
Now that we have actually good AI, I have this vision of a form of computing that doesn’t involve me using a computer so much. Imagine you had the day’s emails to go through. It would be nice if the ones that required a simple decision could be dispatched with a few pen-strokes: I could write down a date that would…
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An old patent inspired the new "Y-zipper", a three-sided fastener
A new system developed at MIT CSAIL helps users design three-sided fasteners called “Y-zippers,” then 3D prints them. The devices can be attached or embedded to camping equipment, medical gear, robots, and art installations, seamlessly switching each item between soft and rigid.
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Some Unusual Trees
One of my favorite pastimes is exploring old bookstores.
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The bee that everyone wants to save
My neighbour has 50 hives, the road has 30 more. That's 4 million honeybees, and not one of them is the bee that actually needs saving.
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Simple circuits can create complex behaviors
How simple circuits can create complex behaviors
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I found ultra-pure quantum crystals in an abandoned mine in the Atacama desert
A Two Part Post on the Immense Promise and Ecological Tragedy of Natural Herbertsmithite Crystals
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I'm scared about biological computing
I’ve been in the AI space since ChatGPT first dropped. I’ve toyed around with a lot of Language Models, built random side projects, built a couple from scratch and I’ve spent hours looking at the math behind it all.
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Aluminum foil (2021)
It’s typically 10 μm thick and 400 mm wide, giving it an aspect ratio of 40000 in that dimension, and rolls are commonly some ten meters in length, for an aspect ratio of 1 000 000; heavy-duty versions can reach 30 μm or more. Despite their thinness, foils of 25 μm or more are impermeable to oxygen, water, and light…
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MIT class project turns into an FDA-cleared treatment for tremors
Encora Therapeutics, which developed a wrist-based device that reduces essential tremor, started as a project in MIT’s famous product-design class, 2.009 (Product Engineering Processes).
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So you want to build a tunnel
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] It seems like homemade tunnels are kind of having a moment. Just about everywhere I look, it feels like someone is carving new spaces from the ground and documenting the process online. Colin Furze might be the quintessential ex
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Atlas: A World Model for Spatial Intelligence
Introducing Atlas, our new omni world model for spatial intelligence.
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Meta announces nuclear energy projects
Our landmark agreements with Vistra, TerraPower, and Oklo will expand the operation of three nuclear power plants, boost the development of nuclear technology, and foster job growth in American communities.
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Giant trees have no trouble pumping water to top branches: new research
The world’s tallest tropical trees have no trouble pumping water to their topmost branches, new research reveals. Conventional scientific theory suggests that as trees grow, it becomes harder to transport water from roots to leaves
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Mystery of 60-Second Fluctuations in Power Grids Solved
Why do our grids show a brief spike in electricity demand every minute? A team led by Dirk Witthaut from Forschungszentrum Jülich has now demonstrated that this is due to regular power checks carried out by large-scale battery storage systems. These findings could help to make our electricity supply more robust, as…