211
Autonomous excavator constructs a six-metre-high dry-stone wall
ETH Zurich researchers taught an autonomous excavator to construct dry stone walls itself using boulders weighing several tonnes and demolition debris.
Topics /
Science & Space
The most popular blog posts about science & space on Hacker News. 4,453 posts.
212
New colors without shooting lasers into your eyes
Can optical illusions take you outside the human color gamut?
213
ESO Telescopes Observe First Light from Gravitational Wave Source
ESO’s fleet of telescopes in Chile have detected the first visible counterpart to a gravitational wave source. These historic observations suggest that this unique object is the result of the merger of two neutron stars. The cataclysmic aftermaths of this kind of merger — long-predicted events called kilonovae …
214
Electric vehicle battery prices are falling faster than expected
We harness every resource, insight, relationship, and competitive advantage to drive superior results for our clients.
215
216
A 26,000-year astronomical monument hidden in plain sight (2019)
The western flank of the Hoover Dam holds a celestial map that marks the time of the dam’s creation based on the 25,772-year axial precession of the earth.
217
What if regular exercise is the best cognitive exercise?
File this under highly speculative. I’m sure there is better research on this topic than this writing This past week, for no obvious reason,...
218
New pill can deliver insulin
An MIT-led research team has developed a drug capsule that could be used to deliver oral doses of insulin, potentially replacing the injections that patients with type 2 diabetes have to give themselves every day.
219
Jump in cancer diagnoses at 65 implies patients wait for Medicare: study
Analyzing a national cancer database, researchers find a bump in diagnoses at 65, suggesting that many wait for Medicare to kick in before they seek care.
220
221
222
Engine cooling – why rocket engines don’t melt
Rocket engines use a multitude of cooling concepts to keep them from melting themselves. Learn more about engine cooling in this article.
223
Akin's Laws of Spacecraft Design (2003)
1. Engineering is done with numbers. Analysis without numbers is only an opinion.
224
225
A new Google model is nearly perfect on automated handwriting recognition
A mysterious new model currently in testing on Google’s AI Studio is nearly perfect on automated handwriting recognition but it is also showing signs of spontaneous, abstract, symbolic reasoning.
226
An intuitive guide to Maxwell's equations (2020)
An Intuitive and Visual Guide to Maxwell's Equations
227
A cryptography engineer's perspective on quantum computing timelines
The risk that cryptographically-relevant quantum computers materialize within the next few years is now high enough to be dispositive, unfortunately.
228
Reverse Engineering the Source Code of the BioNTech/Pfizer SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine
Translations: ελληνικά / عربى / 中文 (Weixin video, Youtube video) / 粵文 / bahasa Indonesia / český / Català / český / Deutsch / Español / 2فارسی / فارسی / Français / עִברִית / Hrvatski / Italiano / Magyar / Nederlands / 日本語 / 日本語 2 / नेपाली / Polskie / русский / Português / Română / Slovensky / Slovenščina / Srpski /…
229
Chemistry Nobel: Computational protein design and protein structure prediction
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2024 was divided, one half awarded to David Baker "for computational protein design", the other half jointly to Demis Hassabis and John Jumper "for protein structure prediction"
230
How many bathrooms have Neanderthals in the tile?
A Reddit poster finds an ancient jaw in his parents' new travertine. It may be more common than most people imagine.
231
Breaking max efficiency of solar cells by activating 2 electrons with 1 photon
Researchers at MIT and Princeton have found a way to increase the output of silicon solar cells by allowing a single photon to release two electrons in the silicon.
232
Free Textbooks from Springer, Categorised
Springer was very generous with free access to their material for some months, but this period has unfortunately passed. You can no longer access the following books for free, but you can still support them by purchasing the ones you find useful. 🙏😇
233
How an oil refinery works
Though wind and solar continue to carve out larger and larger shares of world energy supply, the modern world still runs on petroleum, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
234
The Kolmogorov option
Andrey Nikolaevich Kolmogorov was one of the giants of 20th-century mathematics. I’ve always found it amazing that the same man was responsible both for establishing the foundations of …
235
Cold brew coffee in 3 minutes using acoustic cavitation
UNSW Sydney engineers have utilised sound waves to cut the time it takes to make a cold brew coffee from many hours down to mere minutes.
236
237
Please commit more blatant academic fraud
This week, I was thrilled to read about the first well-documented case of explicit academic fraud in the artificial intelligence community. I hope that this is the beginning of a trend, and that other researchers will be inspired by their example and follow up by engaging in even more blatant...
238
239
When AI Builds Itself: Our progress toward recursive self-improvement
Our progress toward recursive self-improvement, and its implications.
240
Successful second round of fusion experiments with Wendelstein 7-X
The experiments conducted from July until November at the Wendelstein 7-X fusion device at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) in Greifswald have achieved higher values for the density and the energy content of the plasma and long discharge times of up to 100 seconds – record results for devices of the…