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Starlink is a big deal
Part of my series countering misconceptions in space journalism. Now available in audio form. Starlink, SpaceX’s plan to serve internet via tens of thousands of satellites, is a staple in the…
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Exponential Economist Meets Finite Physicist (2012)
[ An updated treatment of some of this material appears in Chapter 2 of the Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet (free) textbook, also mirrors a 2022 article in Nature Physics . . ]
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Why airplane windows have round corners (2016)
It's to prevent them from killing you
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An Introduction to CubeSats
An introduction that answers the questions what are cubesats, why they are so popular, what are their main subststems, and how does thier future look?
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Book Review: The Body Keeps the Score
I. The Body Keeps The Score is a book about post-traumatic stress disorder. The author, Bessel van der Kolk, helped discover the condition and lobby for its inclusion in the DSM, and the brief fora…
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My God, It’s Full of Dots
Please click or tap in the gray square below. It will fill with a jolly tableau of colored disks—first big blue ones, then somewhat smaller purple ones, and eventually lots of tiny red dots.
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When zebra mussels colonized Lake Erie, it began to recover
There are many ways we can talk about the deeper roots of the crisis of our time, setting out from many different vantage points; as Charles Fort pointed out, one measures a circle, beginning anywh…
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Why we think giant pterosaurs could fly (2018)
Giant azhdarchid pterosaur in flight. Images like this virtually always trigger discussions about the validity of giant pterosaur flight h...
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Does the LHC collide protons at twice the speed of light?
Science News, Physics, Science, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
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Quantum computers: amazing progress, but probably false supremacy claims
A 2017 cartoon from this post. After the embargo update (Oct 25): Now that I have some answers from the people involved let me make a quick update: 1) I still find the paper unconvincing, specific…
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Homology
Xoilac TV trực tiếp bóng đá HD hàng đầu Việt Nam, đường truyền ổn định, đa dạng link trực tuyến, đa dạng giải đấu, BLV chuyên môn cao và hoàn toàn miễn phí.
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Time Travel (2006)
Last time we talked about free will, superintelligent predictors, and Dr. Evil planning to destroy the earth from his moon base. Today I'd like to talk about a more down-to-earth topic: time travel. The first point I have to make is one that Carl Sagan made: we're all time travelers—at the rate of one second per…
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5-HTTLPR: A Pointed Review
In 1996, some researchers discovered that depressed people often had an unusual version of the serotonin transporter gene 5-HTTLPR. The study became a psychiatric sensation, getting thousands of ci…
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Alpha Compositing
Interactive article explaining alpha compositing concepts.
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Remembering Murray Gell-Mann
Stephen Wolfram shares his memories of Murray Gell-Mann, leader in particle physics and Nobel Prize winner. Observations from years together in Caltech’s physics department and a selection of Gell-Mann’s contributions to physics.
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What Left-Handedness Reveals About How the Brain Works (2014)
From Medieval sword-fighters to Broca’s brains, or why the hand may hold the key to the link between creativity and mental illness.
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Jacob Collier’s four magical chords
Jacob Collier is the internet’s favorite musical virtuoso. Here’s his mostly acapella arrangement of a Christmas carol called “In The Bleak Midwinter.” The most remarkable p…
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Can We Catch the Next ‘Oumuamua?
Awesome plan! But, how frequently are suitable targets expected to inter the inner solar system that would also be able to be reached from Earth’s L2 point?
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Towards a Better Pythagorean Cup
There was an article on Hacker News the other day by David Richeson entitled Make Your Own Pythagorean Cup . A Pythagorean cup is a cup with a built-in siphon. Supposedly invented by Pythagoras, the cup functions just like an ordinary cup as long as it is only filled to a certain level. If anyone gets greedy and tries…
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Cross-Laminated Timber
Cross Laminated Timber (or CLT for short) is a structural building material that can replace concrete and steel in new building construction. I wrote about CLT back in April and mentioned that the Gotham Gal and I are in the process of making two CLT buildings right now. The paper version of the New York […]
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The Single Rotation rule: simple and rich reversible cellular automaton (2013)
See also other posts tagged Single Rotation . In the previous post I have presented the Reversible Cellular Automata simulator , along ...
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Curve fitting A: Linear Least Squares
The graph on the left shows a third example, taken from analytical chemistry: a straight-line calibration data set where X = concentration and Y = instrument reading (Y = a + b X). Click to download that data . The blue dots are the data points. They don't all fall in a perfect straight line because of random noise…
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Under-Investigated Fields
Nominations for fields that are not being researched as much as they should be
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Bumblebees Sleeping in Flowers (2012)
Above you can see photos of Garden bumblebee (Bombus hortorum) male falling asleep on a spike of lavander flower. I took the photograph in the evening, just as sunset was over and the temperature w…
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Double Slit Experiment No Mystery
How can you be in two places at once When you’re not anywhere at all — Firesign Theater [Note: this is NOT original research. I just read the right book] The famous double slit experime…
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Quantum transitions take time – the news is its experimental demonstration
A number of people have asked me to weigh in on this story in Quanta Magazine (based on this paper [ PDF version ] and also reported in t...
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Warning Signs in Experimental Design and Interpretation (2007)
When an experimental study states "The group with treatment X had significantly less disease ( p = 1%)", many people interpret this statement as being equivalent to "there is a 99% chance that if I do treatment X it will prevent disease." This essay explains why these statements are not equivalent. For such an…
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A Ring of Controversy Around a Black Hole Photo
[Note Added: Thanks to some great comments I’ve received, I’m continuing to add clarifying remarks to this post. You’ll find them in green.] It’s been a couple of months si…