#science

How researchers debunked ‘race science’: ‘a triumph of scientific self-correction’

submitted by technocrit to science 59 points | 9 comments https://archive.ph/c7q14 An account of how nineteenth-century studies aiming to find a biological basis for human races were dismantled by good scientific practices — although their effects are still felt today. OG Link: www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-03507-z

Lemmy Science · EN

In 2013, Researchers Pulled Recognizable Faces of Bystanders Out of the Eye Reflections in a Portrait

An anonymous peer reviewer worked through a manuscript, looked at one of its figures, and recognized one of the authors. The face was a reflection in another person's eye. Across the study's bystanders, those extracted faces ran 27 to 36 pixels wide and covered roughly 322 pixels apiece, and that accidental recognition became the paper's second experiment. [ Read More ]

Fstoppers · EN

Love in the Time of Dinosaurs

In 1824, studying a set of large fossil bones discovered in a quarry near Oxford two centuries earlier, the English theologian, geologist, and paleontologist William Buckland kept looking at the fragment of the lower jaw. Something didn’t add up. As he examined it more closely, he realized these were not the remains of an elephant, as previously thought, but of an enormous carnivorous reptile with no analogue in the fossil record or in the living world. He christened it Megalosaurus — the first named dinosaur — and set out to compose a complete account of the ancient beast. Because nobody… rea

Brain Pickings · EN

The solar system may have a sixth dwarf planet, hidden against the Milky Way

Zo Ahmed, writing for TechSpot, reports on an icy object beyond Pluto that could become the solar system’s sixth dwarf planet. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory team in Chile announced it this week under the provisional name 2026 ED138. It sits about 46 astronomical units from the Sun. Pluto averages around 40. Nobody has measured […]

Adafruit Blog · EN

Why large dogs age faster than small ones, and other October research highlights

Plus invisible tattoos, medieval skeleton gets an ID, trapping a single antimatter particle, and more.

Ars Technica Science · EN

Fewer overdoses, not increased naloxone use, may help explain decline in U.S. overdose deaths

submitted by Fossy to science 113 points | 40 comments https://www.brown.edu/news/2026-10-21/naloxone-overdose-deaths-trend

Lemmy Science · EN

Hunger may play a role in alcohol addiction, new study finds

submitted by Fossy to science 73 points | 18 comments https://www.brown.edu/news/2026-10-19/hunger-alcohol-addiction

Lemmy Science · EN

Three-Body Orbits [Gallery]

submitted by technocrit to science 68 points | 8 comments https://kottke.org/26/10/three-body-orbits There are no generalized solutions to the three-body problem. Say you have three planets orbiting each other: it’s impossible to calculate how they will move using Newton’s laws of motion and gravity. Unlike the two-body problem, the three-body problem has no general closed-form analytic solution. The differential equations that govern the motions of three gravitating bodies are not integrable and cannot be solved to give explicit formulas for the positions of the bodies as a function of time.

Lemmy Science · EN

3D Printed Einstein-Szilard Refrigerator Cools With Fire

submitted by technocrit to science 59 points | 0 comments https://hackaday.com/2026/10/31/3d-printed-einstein-szilard-refrigerator-cools-with-fire/ They may not deliver the highest efficiency, but absorption refrigerators have earned a persistent place in camper vans and industrial plants thanks to a few distinct advantages: they can operate using waste heat alone as an energy source, and they can be quite reliable due to their lack of moving parts. It can be a bit hard to understand their working principles, though, which is why Ben Krasnow built a transparent Einstein-Szilard refrigerator.

Lemmy Science · EN

An Italian Farmer Found Some Unknown Seeds in His Attic and, With Nothing to Lose, Planted Them. The Result Was Almost Biblical

submitted by 52fighters to science 159 points | 16 comments https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/italian-farmer-found-unknown-seeds-attic-with-nothing-lose-planted-them-result-biblical-180989644/

Lemmy Science · EN

Grad Students Strike at Harvard, University With $68 Billion Endowment

submitted by technocrit to science 117 points | 2 comments https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/grad-students-strike-at-harvard-university-with-68-billion-endowment/ “None of us here, despite attending the wealthiest university in the entire world, make a living wage.”

Lemmy Science · EN

MIT engineers design a safer, more efficient vaccination system for farmed fish

submitted by Orwi to science 54 points | 0 comments https://news.mit.edu/2026/mit-engineers-design-safer-more-efficient-vaccination-system-farmed-fish-1102

Lemmy Science · EN

Healthy diet during pregnancy associated with reduced risk of infant colic, eczema

submitted by lavenie to science 45 points | 0 comments https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/healthy-diet-during-pregnancy-associated-with-reduced-risk-of-infant-colic-eczema/

Lemmy Science · EN

Is It Really Possible for a Nuke to Ignite the Atmosphere?

At exactly 5:30 AM on July 16, 1945, the world’s first atomic bomb, codenamed Trinity, detonated over the desert in New Mexico, unleashing in an instant the power of 18,000 tons of TNT. The atomic age had begun. As night turned to day and a fireball 200 metres across rose into the sky, the scientists of the Manhattan Project who [...] The post Is It Really Possible for a Nuke to Ignite the Atmosphere? appeared first on Today I Found Out .

Today I Found Out · EN

Look, Ma: no Wings! The Strange World of Lifting Body Aircraft

Steve Austin, astronaut. A man barely alive. Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to make the world’s first bionic man. Steve Austin will be that man, better than he was before. Better, stronger, faster. So goes the iconic opening of the classic 1970s television series The Six Million Dollar Man, starring Lee Majors [...] The post Look, Ma: no Wings! The Strange World of Lifting Body Aircraft appeared first on Today I Found Out .

Today I Found Out · EN

The Incredible Soviet Probe Space Heist

Just before we get into today’s topic on America’s attempt to steal a Soviet spacecraft, wanted to shout out the author of this script, Gilles Messier, also made a phenomenal shirt related to this topic. For those interested, you can check it out here. Now let’s get into it. On October 4, 1957 at 7:28 PM Greenwich Mean Time, a [...] The post The Incredible Soviet Probe Space Heist appeared first on Today I Found Out .

Today I Found Out · EN

The Beginning and the End of the Universe

Episode 1: The Begining Embarking on a cosmic journey, Professor Jim Al-Khalili transports us through the corridors of time to confront science's most profound inquiry: the genesis of the universe. Delving into the c... Watch Now

Documentary Heaven · EN

The Insane Science Hidden in These Toys

Mark Rober · EN

Towards LoRA science

Attribution: Nesiacel planned and executed all experiments. Analysis of the experiments was shared between the authors. Thanks to Clement Dumas for his input while we did this research. TLDR; 1)We have developed a framework for reverse engineering LoRAs trained on MLP downprojection. We posit that it's extendable to all LoRAs and welcome further research. 2) We reverse engineered a simple case of backdoored Weird Generalization 3) In this post, we discuss the four experiments that developed this framework 4) The Weird Generalization LoRAs that we studied work by connecting neurons which activa

LessWrong · EN

The Science of Doing Your Best Work | Steven Kotler

Steven Kotler is a bestselling author and the executive director of the Flow Research Collective, where he studies the science of peak performance. Most of us have felt it. Hours disappear, everything else fades away, and the work seems to do itself. But what’s actually happening in those moments, and can you make them happen … The post The Science of Doing Your Best Work | Steven Kotler appeared first on Farnam Street .

Farnam Street · EN

The Big and the Small

I have a surprise for you. The post The Big and the Small appeared first on Wait But Why .

Wait But Why · EN

All My Thoughts After 40 Hours in the Vision Pro

Welcome to the 2030s. The post All My Thoughts After 40 Hours in the Vision Pro appeared first on Wait But Why .

Wait But Why · EN

The latest in space science: We look back at the Big Bang

In this edition of Spacing Out, the team from Short Wave shares the latest developments in space science, including the theory on why the universe is made of matter

NPR Science · EN

This week in science: mysterious X-rays, movement and learning, and memory formation

Emily Kwong and Ari Daniel of NPR's Short Wave talk about mysterious X-ray objects, the link between movement and learning and how a small part of the brain triggers memory formation.

NPR Science · EN