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Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft
Airbus is working at full throttle to offer the German Air Force an operational Uncrewed Collaborative Combat Aircraft (UCCA) system by 2029.
Topics /
Science & Space
The most popular blog posts about science & space on Hacker News. 356 posts.
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The Computer at the Bottom of a Canal
Somewhere at the bottom of the Forth and Clyde Canal, buried in the silt, there is a box of custom silicon that was right about almost everything. Back in 1988 a Scottish hi-fi company shipped a processor that checked the type and bounds of every memory access in hardware, garbage-collected its own heap in silicon, […]
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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.
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The first early human eggs from stem cells
A look inside the biology, engineering, and validation behind a major scientific milestone.
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Cannabinoids remove plaque-forming Alzheimer's proteins from brain cells (2016)
Founded by polio vaccine developer Jonas Salk, the Salk Institute is an independent, nonprofit organization. We drive foundational, risk-taking research that addresses society’s most pressing challenges, including cancer, Alzheimer’s, and agricultural resilience.
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Clinical trial of a prion disease drug candidate begins enrolling participants
It’s the first time the potential treatment, a small interfering RNA targeting the prion protein, is being tested in humans.
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Bayesian statistics for confused data scientists
A gentle introduction to Bayesian statistics for data scientists who, like me, are confused by it.
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An idiot’s guide to lead optimisation for proteins
Lead optimisation is the step in drug design where you take a molecule that sort of works and try to make it actually work, and it’s arguably the step where most real-world design campaigns succeed or die. Due to the influence of a couple of my pals , I have recently become interested in using machine learning to do…
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Actinide is first startup to produce high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU)
Actinide becomes the first startup to enrich natural uranium into HALEU, advancing a secure, scalable fuel supply for next-generation nuclear reactors.
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How is music possible
If you take a scene from a horror movie and add funny music, the killer suddenly looks hilarious. Isn’t it strange that that happens?
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Designing more efficient quantum circuits with Claude
Working largely on its own, Claude designed quantum circuits that improve on the best published versions, in some cases by an order of magnitude or more.
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Underwater oxygen loss threatens earth's stability, researchers warn
A new review paper led by scientists at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography warns that the rapid loss of oxygen from the ocean and other aquatic ecosystems is pushing Earth toward an “unsafe space,” with consequences that could be irreversible on human timescales.
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How does Shazam work?
Explore how Shazam and song identification work through interactive visualizations: spectrograms, constellation maps, hash fingerprints, and time-offset matching.
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Electric motor scaling laws and inertia in robot actuators
Engineering contraptions
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A ternary plot of citrus geneology
Interactive ternary chart of citrus ancestry
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The Physics of GPS
An interactive exploration of how GPS works: from the speed of light and trilateration to the cheap clock problem and Einstein's relativity corrections.
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An opinionated take on how to do important research that matters
An opinionated perspective on how to do important research that makes a difference (and sometimes win awards).
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5,300-year-old 'bow drill' rewrites story of ancient Egyptian tools
A new study reveals that Egyptians were using a mechanically sophisticated drilling tool far earlier than previously suggested.
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Penguin 'Toxicologists' Find PFAS Chemicals in Remote Patagonia
Penguins can serve as living monitors of their environment by using small, chemical-detecting leg bands, according to a study from UC Davis and SUNY-Buffalo.
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The Economic Complexity of the Western Roman Empire
I am one of those people who think about the Roman Empire daily – possibly out of my worrying addiction to Crusader Kings III and similar games. I also spent some time working on estimating economic complexity , a neat measure that can be used to explain economic development trajectories. One fateful day, I was…
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The Dunning-Kruger effect may just be a data artefact (2020)
I want the Dunning-Kruger effect to be real. First described in a seminal 1999 paper by David Dunning and Justin Kruger, this effect has been the darling of journalists who want to explain why dumb people don’t know they’re dumb. There’s even video of a fantastic pastiche of Turandot’s famous aria, Nessun dorma…
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How to grow a cacao tree at home (2024)
Growing chocolate at home might sound like a wild idea, right? Chocolate originates from cacao trees, which demand a tropical climate, specific growing conditions, and several years to reach maturity in order to flower and fruit to produce cacao pods. However, our CocoTerra founder, Nate Saal, took on the challenge…
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ER visits for gambling disorders doubled after expanded online gambling market
ER visits for gambling disorders doubled after single-event sports betting was legalized and Ontario's online gambling market expanded.
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Overall, the colorectal cancer story is encouraging
An interactive data journalism piece exploring the rise of young-onset colorectal cancer, with population simulations, risk factors, and prevention information.
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The Unreasonable Redundancy of Nature's Protein Folds
A Ligo research note on redundancy in natural protein fold space and what kind of data still carries signal.
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A jacket that harvests drinking water from the air
The advance in fabric technology comes alongside a new benchmark for atmospheric water harvesting.