2401
Helion Needs You
Helion has been progressing even faster than I expected and is on pace in 2024 to 1) demonstrate Q > 1 fusion and 2) resolve all questions needed to design a mass-producible fusion generator. ...
Topics /
Science & Space
The most popular blog posts about science & space on Hacker News. 4,455 posts.
2402
2403
Corn Cobs: Fuel of Nightmares
Earlier this year, in the bitter cold of Kansas winter, we began field testing our first scaled pyrolyzer, designed to process 10 tons of biomass per day. The pyrolyzer processed California wheat straw just fine. But now in Kansas, corn stover turned out to be a bit different. The bales not only had leaves and stalks…
2404
2405
Chaos: The real problem with quantum mechanics
Science News, Physics, Science, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
2406
Groundhog: Addressing the Threat That R Poses to Reproducible Research
R, the free and open source program for statistical computing, poses a substantial threat to the reproducibility of published research. This post explains the problem and introduces a solution. The…
2407
2408
Anti-climate action statements get more visibility in news coverage, study finds
Analysis by assistant professor of environment and society and sociology at Brown found that press releases expressing opposition to climate action were twice as likely to receive news coverage as those supporting action.
2409
2410
Plunge in lithium-ion battery costs
The cost of lithium-ion batteries for phones, laptops, and cars has plunged over the years, and an MIT study shows just how dramatic that drop has been. The change is akin to that of solar and wind energy, and further declines may yet be possible, the researchers say.
2411
2412
Sustainable coffee grown in Finland with cellular agriculture
VTT has successfully produced coffee cells in a bioreactor through cellular agriculture. The innovation can help to make the production of coffee more sustainable. The first batches produced by VTT in a laboratory in Finland smell and taste like conventional coffee.
2413
2414
Memory decline after menopause linked to loss of estrogen production in brain
A largely overlooked space between cells in women’s brains may hold the key to understanding memory loss tied to estrogen decline after menopause, reports a new preclinical Northwestern Medicine study.
2415
Simulating and Visualising the Central Limit Theorem
Update: this post was discussed on Hacker News I completed a Computer Science degree at uni, and bundled a lot of maths subjects in as electives: partial differential equations, vector calculus, discrete maths, linear algebra.
2416
The Sad State of Diabetes Technology in 2012
I've been diabetic for almost two decades. It's tiring, let me tell you. Here's ...
2417
The Neural Net Tank Urban Legend
AI folklore tells a story about a neural network trained to detect tanks which instead learned to detect time of day; investigating, this probably never happened.
2418
Britain's largest 'Sea Dragon' discovered in UK's smallest county
Every day is different when you work on a nature reserve, but nothing could have prepared our reserves team at Rutland Water Nature Reserve for the day when they made the palaeontological discovery of a lifetime.
2419
Earthworms after rain (2019)
What’s really happening when we see earthworms on a soggy sidewalk? It's probably not what you think.
2420
Where do those undergraduate divisibility problems come from?
Chris Grossack's math blog and professional website.
2421
Evidence of fraud in an influential field experiment about dishonesty
This post is co-authored with a team of researchers who have chosen to remain anonymous. They uncovered most of the evidence reported in this post. These researchers are not connected in any way to…
2422
Comparing City Street Orientations
This post is adapted from this research paper that you can read/cite for more info. It analyzes and visualizes 100 cities around the world.
2423
2424
First Ever Image of a Multi-Planet System Around a Sun-Like Star (2020)
The European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) has taken the first ever image of a young, Sun-like star accompanied by two giant exoplanets. Images of systems with multiple exoplanets are extremely rare, and — until now — astronomers had never directly observed more than one planet orbiting a…
2425
2426
Erdős Problem #1026
Problem 1026 on the Erdős problem web site recently got solved through an interesting combination of existing literature, online collaboration, and AI tools. The purpose of this blog post is to try…
2427
The first amateur radio station on the moon
The American Radio Relay League (ARRL) is the national association for amateur radio, connecting hams around the U.S. with news, information and resources.
2428
Animal testing is exploitative and largely ineffective
Texts on this and that.
2429
Liu Cixin's Technologies of the Future
Highlight of cool technologies mentioned in "The Dark Forest".
2430
MPPP – The first 'designer drug' disaster (2023)
The origin of the term is credited to Dr Gary L. Henderson, of the University of California at Davis. A designer drug is based on the structure of an existing drug – which may be naturally sourced from a plant (like cocaine or morphine ) or be synthetic (like amphetamine ) - but with a slightly different structure…