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Topics /
Science & Space
The most popular blog posts about science & space on Hacker News. 4,455 posts.
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Once in a Lifetime
Here is what might possibly be my single favorite song in the world:
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Wallace the 6 inch f/2.8 telescope, building it, and hiking with it
Hiking with Wallace, my 6" f/2.8 corrected dobsonian.
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Lorentz forces and cheating at the Pinewood Derby
The annual Pinewood Derby in my Cub Scout troop was always an exciting time for my friends and me growing up. Just look how happy I am in this amazing digital photo composition that my dad put together using Microsoft PictureIt! 99:
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Let’s Publish Everything
The other day someone pointed me to this article by James Kaufman and Vlad Glǎveanu in a psychology journal which begins:
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To predict the future, the brain uses two clocks
In sports, music and other activities, our movement is calculated in two different parts of the brain
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Computational algebraic geometry for high school students
Can high school students really learn algebraic geometry? And what could it teach us about mathematics education?
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The purge of German science in 1933
“If the dismissal of Jewish scientists means the annihilation of contemporary German science, then we shall do without science for a few years!” — Adolf Hilter
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Surgical masks reduce Covid-19 spread, large-scale Stanford study shows
Researchers found that surgical masks impede the spread of COVID-19 and that just a few, low-cost interventions increase mask-wearing compliance.
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Solar’s Future is Insanely Cheap
This is part 1 of a series where I’ll look at the future costs of clean energy and mobility technologies.
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The Shape of a Mars Mission
“From a mathematics and trajectory standpoint and with a certain kind of technology, there’s not too many different ways to go to Mars. It’s been pretty well figured out. You can adjust the decimal places here and there, but basically if you're talking about chemical rockets, there's a certain way you're going to go…
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The Effect of Noise on Sleep
Using Apple Watch noise and sleep stages to quantify the effect of noise on sleep
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NRC issues first U.S. construction permit for a BWRX-300 small modular reactor
KNOXVILLE, TN (September 29, 2026) – GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GVH) today welcomed the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) issuance of a construction permit to the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) for a BWRX-300 small modular reactor at its Clinch River site in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.The permit is the…
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Eliminating contrails from flying could be cheap
Could we halve aviation's climate impact at a fraction of the cost of sustainable aviation fuels?
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Study: Electroshock therapy more successful for depression than ketamine
Therapeutic technique, portrayed unfavorably in films and TV shows, shows consistently better results with treatment-resistant depression
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Importance of muscle mass, strength and cardiorespiratory fitness for longevity
"If you have the aspiration of kicking ass when you're 85, you can't afford to be average when you're 50." —Peter Attia
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Can computers become conscious?: My reply to Roger Penrose
A few weeks ago, I attended the Seven Pines Symposium on Fundamental Problems in Physics outside Minneapolis, where I had the honor of participating in a panel discussion with Sir Roger Penrose. T…
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Story of Vitamin D Toxicity (2022)
How much Vitamin D should I take? This is still the looming question, and it’s time to address it. First, though, imagine that someone in a public forum online asked me, “How much metoprolol (a…
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The impact of direct air carbon capture on climate change
By Michael Nielsen, November 21, 2019
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What makes for a stable marriage?
Randy Olson reviews a research paper that outlines what makes for a stable marriage in the U.S.
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Nearly half of teenagers globally cannot read with comprehension
The chart shows the share of children at the end of lower-secondary school age — aged 12 to 15 — who meet the minimum proficiency set by UNESCO in reading comprehension. This means they can connect the main ideas across various texts, understand the author’s intentions, and draw reasoned conclusions.
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If the universe is 13.8B years old, how can we see 46B light years away? (2018)
Distances in the expanding Universe don’t work like you’d expect. Unless, that is, you learn to think like a cosmologist.
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More on whether useful quantum computing is “imminent”
These days, the most common question I get goes something like this: A decade ago, you told people that scalable quantum computing wasn’t imminent. Now, though, you claim it plausibly is immi…
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Nicholas Polson has authored 258 academic papers in 2026 so far
Nicholas Polson has, by my count using his SSRN page, already written 258 working papers in 2026 alone. He’s already written (or at least published to SSRN), six papers today, August 26, 2026.
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Imperial mathematician scoops $3M Breakthrough Prize
Professor Sir Martin Hairer is the single winner of the 2021 Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics.
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Healthy but sedentary people show early decline in cellular energy production
Study finds that healthy but sedentary individuals show early decline in cellular energy production.
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Prostate cancer includes two different evotypes
Artificial Intelligence has helped scientists reveal a new form of aggressive prostate cancer, which could revolutionise how the disease is diagnosed and treated in the future.
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Oldest recorded solar eclipse helps date the Egyptian pharaohs
Researchers have pinpointed the date of what could be the oldest solar eclipse yet recorded. The event, which occurred on 30 October 1207 BC, is mentioned in the Bible and could have consequences for the chronology of the ancient world.