2011
Covid-19 contact tracing study finds children key to spread
Researchers from the Princeton Environmental Institute find the continued spread of novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 is driven by only a small percentage of those who become infected.
Topics /
Science & Space
The most popular blog posts about science & space on Hacker News. 4,455 posts.
2012
Sleight-of-hand magic trick only fools monkeys with opposable thumbs
Illusion involving a hidden thumb confounds capuchin and squirrel monkeys for the same reason as humans – it misdirects the expected outcomes of actions they can carry out.
2013
IBM and NASA build language models to make scientific knowledge more accessible
At IBM Research, we’re inventing what’s next in AI, quantum computing, and hybrid cloud to shape the world ahead.
2014
2015
New adaptive optics shows details of our star's atmosphere
Scientists from the U.S. NSF National Solar Observatory and New Jersey Institute of Technology produced the finest images in the Sun’s corona to date. Using a new 'coronal adaptive optics' system that removes blur caused by Earth's atmosphere, their ground-breaking results were recently published in Nature Astronomy…
2016
2017
How inevitable is the concept of numbers?
Stephen Wolfram considers if numbers are actually required, the use of symbolics and the potential for the growing role of computational irreducibility.
2018
Brain Uses Quantum Effects, New Study Finds [video]
Science News, Physics, Science, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
2019
Research in psychology: are we learning anything?
OR: The mystery of the televised salad
2020
How many billions of transistors in an iPhone processor?
In about 10 years, Apple has multiplied by 19 the number of transistors in its mobile processors. It corresponds roughly to a steady rate of improvement of 34% per year on the number of transistors, or a doubling every 2.5 years. In real dollars, an iPhone has roughly a constant price: the price tag of … Continue…
2021
2022
How is portable AM radio possible?
If AM radio antennas were as long as a quarter wavelength of the carrier signal, you'd need an antenna as long as a football field.
2023
Our Dazzling Night Sky When the Milky Way Collides with Andromeda in 4B Years
This is what our night sky is going to look like in 3.9 billion years: Wow! So what’s going on here? Using data from the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers at
2024
How a Light Saber Works
[ Metanote: This explanation arose out of a lunch-time discussion with a colleague who claimed a light saber could not exist since the light beam it emits could not just stop in mid-air after 75 cm. I thank this colleague for the challenge. ]
2025
LSD microdosing: a randomized, blind self-experiment
Self-experiment with sub-psychedelic doses of LSD; no benefit
2026
UHZ1: NASA telescopes discover record-breaking black hole
This image contains the most distant black hole ever detected in X-rays , a result that may explain how some of the first supermassive black holes in the universe formed. As we report in our press release , this discovery was made using X-rays from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (purple) and infrared data from…
2027
2028
2029
Antiviral chewing gum to reduce influenza and herpes simplex virus transmission
Researchers at Penn Dental Medicine and collaborators have used a clinical-grade antiviral chewing gum to substantially reduce viral loads of two herpes simplex viruses and two influenza A strains in experimental models.
2030
2031
2032
Alien World Chemistry Found Inside Meteorite That Struck New Jersey Home
Fragment of the Hillsborough meteorite, broken on impact, with fusion crust from passing at high speed through the Earth’s atmosphere.
2033
2034
New bacteria, and two potential antibiotics, discovered in soil
To find bioactive molecules with the potential to become new drugs less prone to antibiotic resistance, the researchers sequenced bacterial DNA extracted from soils from Rockefeller’s field center in upstate New York. (Brady lab)
2035
The basics of decoupling capacitors
How to stabilize digital supply voltages - and why most of the online advice on this topic is suspect.
2036
2037
Executing gradient descent on the earth
A common analogy for explaining gradient descent goes like the following: a person is stuck in the mountains during heavy fog, and must navigate their way down. The natural way they will approac......
2038
Atlas observes light scattering off light
Figure 1: ATLAS event display showing the energy deposits of two photons in the electromagnetic calorimeter (green) on opposite sides and no other activity in the detector, which is the clean signature of light-by-light scattering. The Feynman diagram of this process is shown in the lower right corner. (Image: ATLAS…
2039
2040
Ioannis Yannas, who invented artificial skin for treatment of burns, has died
Professor Ioannis V. Yannas, a physical chemist and engineer known for the invention of artificial skin for the treatment of severe burns and an MIT faculty member for nearly 60 years, died at age 90.