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Einstein’s Lost Hypothesis (2013)
- qubex 6y agoExcessively abundant on narrative and long-winded. TL;DR: It is possible that a weak nuclear force effect may be responsible for what was initially interpreted as “cold fusion” and that Einstein might’ve guessed at the mechanism by which this effect arises shortly before his death whilst corresponding with an engineer who had noticed anomalous results in an unrelated experiment.
- holstvoogd 6y agoCoo, thanks for the tl;dr :)
- Koshkin 6y agoI think the right attitude towards the manner in which this kind of popular science articles are written today is to see them as (potentially good) stories with some positive content thrown in. (It hasn’t always been like that, and some people still remember what Scientific American and National Geographic were like back in the day.)
- garyrob 6y agoI used to love Scientific American and subscribed for decades. I had to finally give up maybe 10 years ago; they had become dumbed down and human-story focused to the point that there was no reason to subscribe.
- The_rationalist 6y agoWhere do you find scientific content today? I go directly to the source (arxiv) but this is sad, I would benefit a lot from TLDR that take the gist of papers.
- garyrob 6y agoHonestly, I regularly go to Reddit's r/science and look at the top-rated stuff. If the linked article isn't detailed enough, I go to the original papers it refers to!
- bsaul 6y agoSome people actually enjoy stories about humans as much as description of scientific theories. The two aren’t incompatible and for those like me, this article was very enjoyable.
- ssivark 6y agoFair, but the former kind seems to have taken over almost all of contemporary "longform" writings, and that imbalance is exhausting when you're going in with the goal of understanding the ideas.
- 8bitsrule 6y agoAs a student of Einstein's long history with the quantum questions, (and of his generosity) I really enjoyed the human nuances in this article. Often, the history is at least as interesting as the results. Another seldom-raised but interesting topic is electron-capture. (An electrically neutral atom absorbs one of its own inner electrons, changing a proton to a neutron; first observed by Luis Alvarez in the 1930s.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_capture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_capture
- mellosouls 6y agoSince when was Nautil.us paid, I've now only got two free articles this month? I don't even know I want this one yet, I've just clicked! The new owners (a "group of fans") said it would still be free for online users (assuming it was before) in this very forum: I’m one of the new co-owners. All of us are longtime subscribers. This is about love for the magazine and its mission first and last. We’re not going to change Nautilus. We just want to get it into the hands of many more people. So not so much then, or am I misremembering and it was limited before? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21404342 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21404342 I'm not suggesting they don't have the right to charge, I was just under the impression it had been unlimited before and they said they'd keep it the same, but I may be wrong on how it was previously.
- DennisP 6y agoThe Cookie Remover browser plugin helps with that sort of thing. In the meantime, here's an archive link: http://archive.is/onX5z http://archive.is/onX5z
- brandmeyer 6y ago> “But if this played out in the most optimal way, and this replaced all forms of energy generation, you’re talking about $6 trillion or more per year of market,” Unfortunately, this is exactly the same kind of language that perpetual motion machine hucksters use.
- the8472 6y agoSo do popular science articles that extrapolate potentially huge future applications even when it's, for example, a materials science experiment demonstrating some semiconductor properties in a diamond anvil cell + laser heating.