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Topics /
Science & Space
The most popular blog posts about science & space on Hacker News. 323 posts.
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China lands Chang'e-4 on far side of Moon
It’s a space feat no nation has accomplished until now.
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The cognitive costs of air pollution
Air pollution is a very big deal. Its adverse effects on numerous health outcomes and general mortality are widely documented . However, our understanding of its cognitive costs is more recent and those costs are almost certainly still significantly under-emphasized. For example, cognitive effects are not mentioned in…
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Going Critical
Learn how things spread with playable simulations
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I found two identical packs of Skittles among 468 packs
This article was discussed on Hacker News, and was cited in The Mathematical Gazette. Introduction This is a follow-up to a post from earlier this year discussing the likelihood of encountering two…
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1060-hour image of the Large Magellanic Cloud captured by amateur astronomers
This extraordinary view of the LMC might be the world's longest exposure image in amateur astronomy. 1060 hours were needed to capture this highly-resolved image (204 Megapixels) of the Large Magellanic Cloud.
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Adults learn language to fluency nearly as well as children: study
Scott Chacon is CEO of the online language learning company Chatterbug.
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Quantum Supremacy Using a Programmable Superconducting Processor
Posted by John Martinis, Chief Scientist Quantum Hardware and Sergio Boixo, Chief Scientist Quantum Computing Theory, Google AI Quantum Physicist...
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Earth and Sun
Interactive article about Earth and Sun.
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LightSail 2 Spacecraft Successfully Demonstrates Flight by Light
In the past 4 days, the spacecraft has raised its orbital high point, or apogee, by about 2 kilometers.
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Scott’s Supreme Quantum Supremacy FAQ
You’ve seen the stories—in the Financial Times, Technology Review, CNET, Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, or elsewhere—saying that a group at Google has now achieved quantum computation…
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On whether changes in bedroom CO2 levels affect sleep quality
Self-experiment on whether changes in bedroom CO₂ levels affect sleep quality
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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.
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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.
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Eigenvectors from eigenvalues
Peter Denton, Stephen Parke, Xining Zhang, and I have just uploaded to the arXiv the short unpublished note “Eigenvectors from eigenvalues”. This note gives two proofs of a general eige…
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Proteins That May Restore Damaged Sound-Detecting Cells in the Ear
Proteins instruct when and where sound-detecting cells form in the developing ear ›
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Information is like snacks, money, and drugs to the brain
Can’t stop checking your phone, even when you’re not expecting any important messages? Blame your brain. A new study by researchers at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business has found that information acts on the brain’s dopamine-producing reward system in the same way as money or food. “To the brain, information is…
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Johns Hopkins Launches Center for Psychedelic Research
The center, believed to be the first and largest of its kind, will use psychedelics to study the mind, identify therapies for diseases such as addiction, PTSD, Alzheimer's
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Amazon Braket – Get Started with Quantum Computing
Nearly a decade ago I wrote about the Quantum Compute Cloud on April Fool’s Day. The future has arrived and you now have the opportunity to write quantum algorithms and to run them on actual quantum computers. Here’s what we are announcing today: Amazon Braket – A fully managed service that allows scientists…
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Sci-Hub and Alexandra Basic Information
I decided to make a quick summary of facts about Sci-Hub and myself, because in our times you cannot fully trust articles published in media, Wikipedia pages. Well, they do present facts about Sci-…
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The SpaceX Starship is a big deal
Part of my series on common misconceptions in space journalism. Now available in audio form. SpaceX has been working on some variant of the Big Falcon Rocket for almost a decade, with a publicly an…
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No evidence that testosterone reduces cognitive empathy
In the largest study of its kind, results challenge the notion of autism as reflecting an “extreme male brain.”
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IBM casts doubt on Google's claims of quantum supremacy
We argue that an ideal simulation of the same task can be performed on a classical system in 2.5 days and with far greater fidelity.
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Biomarker for chronic fatigue syndrome identified
Stanford scientists devised a blood-based test that accurately identified people with chronic fatigue syndrome, a new study reports.