Topics /
The most popular blog posts about science & space on Hacker News. 422 posts.
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] “The big black stacks of the Illium Works of the Federal Apparatus Corporation spewed acid fumes and soot over the hundreds of men and women who were lined up before the red-brick employment office.” That’s the first line of one
Over the past year, three people with paralysis have received Neuralink implants. This blog post explores how each person is using Telepathy in everyday life.
You may have heard of Christian Bök. You may have read about him on this very blog if you’ve been hanging out here long enough. Perhaps you were even one of the very select few to witness the seminal talk I gave back in 2016 [1] —“ScArt: or, How to Tell When You’ve Finished Fucking”— which climaxed with a glowing…
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] Niagara Falls is one of the most spectacular waterfalls in the world. With a vertical drop of more than 50 meters or 164 feet and a flow rate that often exceeds 2800 cubic meters per second or 100,000 cubic feet per second, it’s
The Wildlife Trusts congratulate the UK Government’s decision to open the door for licenced reintroductions of beavers into the wild and its acknowledgment of the free-living populations in several parts of England.
3 magnesium self-experiments on magnesium ʟ-threonate and magnesium citrate.
It is thought that Euclid wrote Elements in about 300 BC, but Oliver Byrne turned it into one of the true gems of visualization — and made it about 100 times more readable. By seamlessly combining typeset text (Caslon, if you’re interested) with minimalist geometric drawings in primary col
The difference between misinformation and disinformation is the difference between ignorance and malice. Trolling is somewhat different, incorporating an element of provocation and narcissism. But what the hell is this?
ETH Zurich researchers have developed a process that can be used on site to render environmental toxins such as DDT and lindane harmless and convert them into valuable chemicals – a breakthrough for the remediation of contaminated sites and a sustainable circular economy.
Research shows the biological aging process can be slowed by strong social connections and support.
Some questions are timeless, innocent yet penetrating in their simplicity. Why is the sky blue? Why do things fall? How hard must one hit a chicken to cook it? It is this last mystery of the universe that we discuss today.
I was reading the latest issue of the journal Science , and a paper mentioned the compound Cr 2 Gr 2 Te 6 . For a moment, I thought my knowl...
How early, sustained, supermassive black hole jets carved out cosmic voids, shaped filaments, and generated magnetic fields
Combining solar power production with agriculture can significantly boost crop yields, conserve water and generate low-carbon electricity for areas particularly vulnerable to climate change, a new study has shown.
I dig into the research on intrinsic motivation. Super interesting subject. Long but hopefully quite thorough.
President Joe Biden has announced that Ingrid Daubechies , James B. Duke Distinguished Professor Emerita of Mathematics , will receive the National Medal of Science in 2025. She is being honored for her pioneering work on signal processing.
How Bell Labs supported itself between moonshots
Research on the ability of large language models to introspect on their own internal states.
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…
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.
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)
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.
In 1962. There — that answers the clickbaity title right away.
Blue Origin announced a series of upgrades to New Glenn designed to increase payload performance and launch cadence, while enhancing reliability.
One day on my drive home, I saw three towers. One of them had a bunch of blinking white lights, another one had red lights that kind of faded in and out, and the third one, well, it wasn't doing anything. I'm lucky to have a radio engineer for a dad, so Dad: why do some towers blink?
Read the latest articles, insights, and press releases from Mass General Brigham.
On June 30, 2025, Mark Brittenham and Susan Hermiller uploaded a preprint to the arXiv called “Unknotting number is not additive under connected sum” (and an updated version on Septembe…
