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Topics /
Science & Space
The most popular blog posts about science & space on Hacker News. 384 posts.
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Airfoil
Interactive article explaining the physics of an airfoil and what makes airplanes fly
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Why is Chile so long?
Chile is so long, it's curved. How long is it? Why not longer? Why is no other country as thin? How does that make Chileans incomprehensible?
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Willow, Our Quantum Chip
Our new quantum chip demonstrates error correction and performance that paves the way to a useful, large-scale quantum computer.
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Vesuvius Challenge 2023 Grand Prize awarded: we can read the first scroll
The 2000-year-old scroll discusses music, food, and how to enjoy life’s pleasures.
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Jim Simons has died
It is with great sadness that the Simons Foundation announces the death of its co-founder and chair emeritus, James Harris Simons, on May 10, 2024, at the age of 86, in New York City. Jim (as he…
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AlphaFold 3 predicts the structure and interactions of life's molecules
Our new AI model AlphaFold 3 can predict the structure and interactions of all life’s molecules with unprecedented accuracy.
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Webb captures iconic Horsehead Nebula in unprecedented detail
The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has captured the sharpest infrared images to date of one of the most distinctive objects in our skies, the Horsehead Nebula. These observations show a part of the iconic nebula in a whole new light, capturing its complexity with unprecedented spatial resolution.
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School smartphone ban results in better sleep and improved mood: study
Psychologists at the University of York, who tested the impact that smartphones have on children’s behaviour for a new two-part documentary series for Channel 4, found that a ban in school impacted positively on sleep and mood.
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Scientists discover a cause of lupus, possible way to reverse it
Scientists have discovered a molecular defect that promotes the pathologic immune response in lupus and demonstrated that reversing the defect may potentially reverse the disease.
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How I got my laser eye injury
It has been brought to my attention that I have never actually written this story down before, merely told it in person to many students for valuable lessons and also for laughs over cocktails. It is a litany of bad ideas from several people that all came together at once to reach out and zap … Continue reading "How I…
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How French Drains Work
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] In February of 2017, one of the largest spillways in the world, the one at Oroville Dam in northern California, was severely damaged during releases from heavy rain. You might remember this. I made a video about it, and then ano
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The Lunacy of Artemis
Introduction A Note on Apollo I. The Rocket II. The Capsule III. The Orbit IV. Gateway V. The Lander VI. Refueling VII. Conclusion Notes
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Scientists glue two proteins together, driving cancer cells to self-destruct
Stanford researchers hope new technique will flip lymphoma protein's normal action - from preventing cell death to triggering it.
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Webb and Hubble confirm Universe's expansion rate
Webb measurements shed new light on a decade-long mysteryThe rate at which the Universe is expanding, known as the Hubble constant, is one of the fundamental parameters for understanding the evolution and ultimate fate of the cosmos. However, a persistent difference, called the Hubble Tension, is seen between the…
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Did Sandia use a thermonuclear secondary in a product logo?
I happened to look at a slide deck from Sandia National Laboratories from 2007 that someone had posted on Reddit late last night (you know, as one does,...
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Radios, how do they work?
A brief introduction to antennas, superheterodyne receivers, and signal modulation schemes.
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Phased Array Microphone (2023)
A 192-channel phased array microphone, with FPGA data acquisition and beamforming/visualization on the GPU. Phased arrays allow for applications not possible with traditional directional microphones, as the directionality can be changed instantly, after the recording is made, or even be focused at hundreds of…
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An intuitive guide to Maxwell's equations (2020)
An Intuitive and Visual Guide to Maxwell's Equations
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Chemistry Nobel: Computational protein design and protein structure prediction
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2024 was divided, one half awarded to David Baker "for computational protein design", the other half jointly to Demis Hassabis and John Jumper "for protein structure prediction"
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How many bathrooms have Neanderthals in the tile?
A Reddit poster finds an ancient jaw in his parents' new travertine. It may be more common than most people imagine.
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Cold brew coffee in 3 minutes using acoustic cavitation
UNSW Sydney engineers have utilised sound waves to cut the time it takes to make a cold brew coffee from many hours down to mere minutes.
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The Engineering of Landfills
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] This is the Puente Hills Landfill outside of Los Angeles, California. The first truckload of trash was dumped here in 1957, and the trucks just kept coming. For more than five decades, if you threw something away in LA County, t
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Private company landing on the moon today
Home | Intuitive Machines
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Is the world really running out of sand?
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] If you have to know the answer right away, it’s no; or at least, my goal with this video is to convince you that the world is not running out of sand. But if it were that simple, I wouldn’t be here (right?) and you probably woul
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The baffling intelligence of a single cell: The story of E. coli chemotaxis
I want to tell the story of a beautiful phenomenon in biology. In some sense it’s the prototype of much of the activity of life. The phenomenon is the way in which an individual cell of E. coli forages for nutrients. This process, known as “chemotaxis”—the “chemo-” for chemical and the “taxis” from the Greek τάξις…
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How photos were transmitted by wire in the 1930s
I didn’t know what to expect from this 1937 video explanation of how wire photos were transmitted to newspapers, but a double stunt sequence featuring an airpla
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Boom announces successful flight of XB-1 demonstrator aircraft
Today, Boom announced the successful flight of XB-1, the world’s first independently developed supersonic jet, at the Mojave Air & Space Port in Mojave, California. Like Overture, Boom’s supersonic airliner, XB-1 leverages state-of-the-art technologies to enable efficient supersonic flight including carbon fiber…