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Mechanical Watch
Interactive article explaining how a mechanical watch works.
Topics /
Science & Space
The most popular blog posts about science & space on Hacker News. 399 posts.
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Sound
Interactive article explaining how sound works.
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GPS
Interactive article explaining how GPS works.
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Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier
The Wirecutter’s review of the IKEA air purifier is a mishmash of scientific errors, shoddy testing, and self-contradictory logic.
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I should have loved biology
In biology class, biology wasn't presented as a quest for the secrets of life. The textbooks wrung out the questing.
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Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online
The Online Information Environment report discusses how to limit the harm of scientific misinformation online
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We're going to need a lot of solar panels
The team at Terraform Industries is now 11 people working towards a near term future where atmospheric CO2, much of it centuries of unpriced industrial waste, becomes the preferred default source o…
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Astronomers reveal first image of the black hole at the heart of our galaxy
The first images of the supermassive black hole at the heart of Sgr A reveal that this black hole is very different from the one at the heart of M87.
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Large Hadron Collider discovers three new exotic particles
The collaboration has observed a new kind of “pentaquark” and the first-ever pair of “tetraquarks”
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Soybean oil affects hypothalamus, causes genetic changes in mice: study (2020)
Soybean oil is linked to metabolic and neurological changes in mice in new research.
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AlphaFold reveals the structure of the protein universe
Today, in partnership with EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), we’re now releasing predicted structures for nearly all catalogued proteins known to science, which will expand the AlphaFold DB by over 200x - from nearly 1 million structures to over 200 million structures - with the potential to…
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A new heat engine with no moving parts is as efficient as a steam turbine
Engineers at MIT and NREL have developed a heat engine with no moving parts that is as efficient as a steam turbine.
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Facebook proven to negatively impact mental health
New study first to establish causal link between use of the platform and reported worsening in anxiety and depression among college students
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5-min breathing workout lowers blood pressure as much as exercise, drugs (2021)
Strength training for your breathing muscles? Daily High-Resistance Inspiratory Muscle Strength Training lowers blood pressure and improves vascular health as
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Lab Leak 2.0?
“If a $1000 PhD side project could kill millions of people, we must end viral [gain-of-function research], or it may end us.”
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FAA approves unleaded fuel for piston fleet
The FAA delivered September 1 the long-sought approval of an unleaded fuel now cleared to power every spark-ignition engine on any airframe in the general aviation fleet.
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Reversing hearing loss with regenerative therapy
The MIT spinout Frequency Therapeutics uses a new kind of druggable regenerative therapy that targets progenitor cells to create hair cells of the inner ear and reverse hearing loss.
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What if regular exercise is the best cognitive exercise?
File this under highly speculative. I’m sure there is better research on this topic than this writing This past week, for no obvious reason,...
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Engine cooling – why rocket engines don’t melt
Rocket engines use a multitude of cooling concepts to keep them from melting themselves. Learn more about engine cooling in this article.
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It’s raining PFAS: rainwater is unsafe to drink even in Antarctica and Tibet
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are man-made hazardous chemicals that are spread globally in the atmosphere and as a result they can be found in the rainwater and snow in even the most remote locations on Earth. During the last 20 years, guideline values for PFAS in drinking water, surface waters and soils…
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100 Gbps achieved from space to Earth
MIT Lincoln Laboratory, in partnership with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, built and designed a communications payload, TBIRD, which is demonstrating space-to-ground laser communications at unprecedented data rates.
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Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored
Aristocratic tutoring I: Explaining the decline of genius
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Lead exposure in last century shrunk IQ scores of half of Americans: study
DURHAM, N.C. -- In 1923, lead was first added to gasoline to help keep car engines healthy. However, automotive health came at the great expense of our own well-being.
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Stellarium 1.0
The Stellarium team did it. Stellarium 1.0 is here!
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The human genome is, at long last, complete
Results of automated DNA sequencing, displayed on the screen of a tablet computer. (Turtle Rock Scientific/Science Photo Library)
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Nearly 1k mysterious strands revealed in Milky Way’s center
More than 35 years ago, a Northwestern astrophysicist discovered mysterious, giant filaments in the center of the Milky Way. Now, he uncovered 10 times more than previously known.
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New CRISPR-based map ties every human gene to its function
A new CRISPR-based map ties every human gene to its function using a tool called Perturb-seq. The work was led by Jonathan Weissman and colleagues at MIT and the Whitehead Institute, and is free for other scientists to use.