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How do you power a rocket engine?
This article discusses different types of rocket engine cycles, from pressure-fed through gas generator, to full-flow staged combustion.
Topics /
Science & Space
The most popular blog posts about science & space on Hacker News. 399 posts.
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How the US Air Force Ditched the Average and Saved Lives
The average is a myth. Understand the pitfalls of the average and how it can conceal useful information. How the US Air Force threw out the average and saved lives. Use distributions to better understand your data.
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Emmanuel Mignot wins Breakthrough Prize for discovering cause of narcolepsy
The Stanford Medicine sleep researcher is honored for discovering the role of orexins in narcolepsy and paving the way to new sleep disorder therapies.
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How to grow green potassium ferrioxalate crystals from iron rust
Potassium ferrioxalate produces striking green crystals that are both beautiful and easy to grow. I'll show you how to grow them at home.
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Quaise Energy is working to create geothermal wells
MIT spinout Quaise Energy is working to create geothermal wells made from the world’s deepest holes in order to repurpose coal and gas plants.
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Visualizing black holes with general relativistic ray tracing
Okay I ended up making this write-up waaaaaay too long, so before I get into any of the jargon, let’s take a look at the finished product:
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Science Is Getting Harder
Evidence that discoveries are getting smaller on average
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40k coin tosses yield ambiguous evidence for dynamical bias
However, no experiment with actual coin-tosses has been done to investigate whether the predicted effect is empirically observed. Diaconis et al noted, correctly, that to estimate the probability with a S.E. of 0.1% would require 250,000 tosses, but this seems unnecessarily precise. Let's work with numbers of tosses…
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Disney's mosquito control program
Mosquitoes are some of the most annoying (and most deadly) pests out there. If you're from a country without mosquitoes- like Iceland- then you might not realise just how annoying mosquitoes can be. Just imagine returning to your hotel with not only tired feet, a sunburn but also itchy mosquito
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First TV Image of Mars: Interplanetary color by numbers (2016)
For the longest time I had seen this framed image entitled “The First TV Image of Mars” in an out of the way place at JPL. I loved taking people there showing them this low res image and how it had been made by coloring numbers that were stapled to a wall. When I got to curate an exhibition about data and art, I had…
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Adversarial Collaboration
[EDITOR'S NOTE: In marking this year's 25th anniversary of Edge , we are presenting original lectures from eminent scientists and other thinkers in the empirical world who are changing the way we think about science and our place in the world.]
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The control group is out of control (2014)
I. Allan Crossman calls parapsychology the control group for science. That is, in let’s say a drug testing experiment, you give some people the drug and they recover. That doesn’t tell …
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Death by hockey sticks
You may be familiar with the term “hockey stick curve,” used describe a trend that has been flat/stable for a very long time, but shoots up at the end of the series in dramatic fashion, resembling the shape of a hockey stick. Hockey can be a violent sport, and it’s easy to get hurt by even one well-aimed swing…
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Why Quantum Mechanics?
In the past few months, I’ve twice injured the same ankle while playing with my kids. This, perhaps combined with covid, led me to several indisputable realizations: I am mortal.Despite my se…
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Analyzing Carbon Dioxide levels while attending IETF-115 in London, UK
is it safe to travel these days?
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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.
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First Light (Oxford University spinout) achieves nuclear fusion
First Light Fusion (First Light), the University of Oxford fusion spin-out, today confirms it has achieved fusion. The UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) has independently validated the result.
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New Covid nasal spray outperforms current antibody treatments in mice
A new protein-based antiviral nasal spray is being advanced to Phase I human clinical trials to treat COVID-19. It works by blocking the spike protein's ability to infect cells.
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Psychedelics and mental illness
The science of psychedelics is everywhere – but we should treat it with serious scepticism
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Qantas ferried an engine on the wing of a 747 (2016)
When Qantas 747 VH-OJU had engine trouble in Johannesburg, VH-OJS came to the rescue ferrying a spare Rolls Royce engine from Sydney to Johannesburg for the stricken plane. We wanted to find out more, so we talked with Qantas about how they go about carrying an extra engine across the ocean. After considering its…
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Vitamin D supplements lower risk of autoimmune disease, researchers say
A new study finds vitamin D supplements with or without omega-3s decreased the risk of autoimmune diseases by 22 percent compared to placebo.
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Blood pressure e-tattoo promises continuous, mobile monitoring
Blood pressure is one of the most important indicators of heart health, but it's tough to frequently and reliably measure outside of a clinical setting.
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Low-cost gel film can pluck drinking water from desert air
More than a third of the world’s population lives in drylands, areas that experience significant water shortages. Scientists and engineers at The
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Does the Past Still Exist?
Science News, Physics, Science, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
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How Julia ODE Solve Compile Time Was Reduced from 30 Seconds to 0.1
Open Source Software for Scientific Machine Learning
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