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NFL players: height and weight over time
An animated look at just how much bigger NFL players have gotten over time.
Topics /
Science & Space
The most popular blog posts about science & space on Hacker News. 4,455 posts.
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The only skin care that works? science video response (2020)
Recently ASAP Science released a video called "The ONLY face cream that works! – according to science". A lot of people asked me to do a response, so here it is on YouTube (keep scrolling for the text…
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Three reasons fungi are not plants
Fungi are more closely related to us than they are to plants. Yet, fungi have been grouped with plants historically, with an impact felt even today.
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MIT engineers create an energy-storing supercapacitor from ancient materials
MIT engineers created a carbon-cement supercapacitor that can store large amounts of energy. Made of just cement, water, and carbon black, the device could form the basis for inexpensive systems that store intermittently renewable energy, such as solar or wind energy.
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Upper stage impacting the moon on 2026 August 5
On 2026 August 5, within a few minutes of 06:35 UTC, an upper stage (section) of a rocket used for a lunar mission will hit the moon. This may be of some (probably minor) scientific interest, and we may learn some things from it. It doesn't present any danger to anyone, though it does highlight a certain carelessness…
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Getting a paper accepted
Page 1 Accepts, the Rest Avoids Rejection
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Gene banks aren’t enough to save the world’s food
Why gene banks aren’t enough to save the world’s food
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Freshwater from salt water using only solar energy
A federally funded research effort to revolutionize water treatment has yielded a direct solar desalination technology that uses energy from sunlight alone to heat salt water for membrane distillation. The technology could provide off-grid water treatment for some of the 1 billion people who lack access to clean water.
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Postmortem: Our first VLEO satellite mission (with imagery and flight data)
On March 14, 2025, Albedo's first satellite, Clarity-1, launched on SpaceX Transporter-13. We took a big swing with our pathfinder. The mission goals:
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New AI Imaging Technique Reconstructs Photos with Realistic Results
Researchers from NVIDIA, led by Guilin Liu, introduced a state-of-the-art deep learning method that can edit images or reconstruct a corrupted image, one that has holes or is missing pixels.
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Cancer Progress: Much More Than You Wanted To Know (2018)
Official statistics say we are winning the War on Cancer. Cancer incidence rates, mortality rates, and five-year-survival rates have generally been moving in the right direction over the past few d…
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The Riemann Hypothesis Says 5040 Is the Last
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…
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Guide to attending a space launch in person
Learn what it's like to attend a launch, which launches you can attend, how much it costs and other launch questions
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World map of the difference between solar and clock time
A better map of the difference between solar and standard time, and some trivia
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10 Years of Pomological Watercolors
A decade ago today I published a blog post calling for the US government to release its paintings of fruits. The Pomological Watercolor Collection, as I had recently come to know, is a beautiful and remarkable corpus of over 7,000 pictures of fruits and other biological specimens, made between the 1880s and 1940s…
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How long would society last during a total grid collapse?
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] In February 2021, a winter storm that swept through Texas caused one of the most severe power crises in American history. The cold weather created shockingly high electricity demands as people tried to keep their homes warm. But
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The contrarian physics podcast subculture
This is the story of how a circle of popular science communicators, who built their brands on championing free inquiry, worked to suppress scientific critique. Of how Eric Weinstein, the man who co…
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How we plan to de-extinct the Dodo bird
Join us in witnessing the legendary dodo's resurrection. Explore scientific breakthroughs, conservation efforts, and the ethical implications.
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Is "colorectal cancer" rising in "young people"?
(Yes, but.)
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Dark Matter: The Situation Has Changed
Science News, Physics, Science, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
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Full ignition for ESA’s reusable rocket engine
Work to develop a reusable engine for European rockets is progressing, with full ignition of an early prototype of Prometheus. These images were taken on 22 June 2023 at ArianeGroup’s test facility in Vernon, France during a 12-second burn.
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The Latest On Intelligence
You may remember The Bell Curve. The book was published in 1994 by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, and it argued that IQ is largely determined by genetics and little by the environment. It...
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“Internet in space” will transform the satellite imagery industry
(First, Some Background)
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Goldene: A single atom layer of gold
For the first time, scientists have managed to create sheets of gold only a single atom layer thick. According to the researchers from LiU this has given the gold new properties that can make it suitable for use in various applications.
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When the "R" goes missing from R&D (2021)
A Cautionary Tale about Too Much Siloing and Not Enough Trust
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California Earthquakes Disrupted HF Propagation on West Coast
The American Radio Relay League (ARRL) is the national association for amateur radio, connecting hams around the U.S. with news, information and resources.
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Saliva based Covid test: results in 45 minutes
Researchers from the BioFrontiers Institute at CU Boulder have developed a saliva-based COVID-19 test capable of returning results in as little as 45 minutes—no