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The most popular blog posts about science & space on Hacker News. 374 posts.
New research has revealed that four Dead Sea Scroll manuscript fragments housed at The University of Manchester’s John Rylands Library, which were previously thought to be blank, do in fact contain text. The discovery means that The University of Manchester is the only institution in the UK to possess authenticated…
When COVID-19 burst on to the scene, tests quickly showed that the everyone was susceptible - no pre-existing antibodies were found that bound to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. This led to dire predictions that over 80% of the population might eventually fall ill. Now more than six months in, this has not happened, and it does…
Assuming a widely-believed hypothesis concerning the least prime in an arithmetic progression, we show that two -bit integers can be multiplied in time on a Turing machine with a finite number of tapes; we also show that polynomials of degree less than over a finite field with elements can be multiplied in time …
Observations made with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) have revealed for the first time that a star orbiting the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way moves just as predicted by Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Its orbit is shaped like a rosette and not like an ellipse as predicted by…
Necessary cognitive fortification against propaganda, pseudoscience, and general falsehood.
I frequently read about proposals for new solar power developments where the resulting power is moved great distances to less sunny places, such as northern Europe from the Sahara, the US North Eas…
Unbelievably enough, it all comes back to Pythagoras.
In our previous installment of this podcast, we learned from independent researcher Alexey Guzey that famed sleep researcher Matthew Walker seems to have committed research misconduct in his bestselling book, Why We Sleep. Walker is a University of California professor, Google researcher, and Ted talk star, and his…
The first known interstellar object to pass through Earth’s solar system may be a 900-foot hydrogen iceberg, say researchers.
The past week was a momentous occasion for protein structure prediction, structural biology at large, and in due time, may prove to be so for the whole of life sciences. CASP14, the conference for …
[This is part one of a two-part series. The second part can be found here: Symmetries in Projective Geometric Algebra .]
In our study published in Nature, we demonstrate how artificial intelligence research can drive and accelerate new scientific discoveries. We’ve built a dedicated, interdisciplinary team in hopes of using AI to push basic research forward: bringing together experts from the fields of structural biology, physics, and…
An In-Depth Overview of Key Technical Factors
There have been many metallurgists over the decades who have developed steels used in knives. Who has made the greatest contribution?
Of all the technologies against infectious disease, which mattered most? A data-driven approach
Chronicling the design of the spacecraft and systems depicted in the book, Delta-v, by Daniel Suarez:
Learn how past Earth Overshoot Days are calculated based on the Ecological Footprint and see how the date has changed over the years.
Researchers have identified two brain phenomena that may explain some of the side-effects of ketamine. Their measurements of the brain waves of sheep sedated by the drug may explain the out-of-body experience and state of complete oblivion it can cause.
The camera will explore cosmic mysteries as part of the Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time.
A team of astronomers from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and other institutes has discovered a black hole lying just 1000 light-years from Earth. The black hole is closer to our Solar System than any other found to date and forms part of a triple system that can be seen with the naked eye. The team found…
(On this page in Dutch I post daily bits of realistic but hopeful Corona news. Here is a somehat rough translation of an article on our immune system I posted there, because I think it might also be useful for people that don’t speak Dutch). Wednesday, April 1st COVID-19 can only live thanks to us. Viruses cannot…
New technique efficiently converts human stem cells into insulin-producing cells
Americans have a lower life expectancy than people in other rich countries despite paying much more for healthcare. What factors may explain this?
The Stanford Clinical Virology Laboratory has deployed an in-house diagnostic test for the virus that causes COVID-19. Rapid identification of infected people could help limit the spread of the virus.
