Type and topic

Essays & writing about Mathematics & science

Every link here is both Essays & writing and about mathematics & science.

Hall of Fame: 21
Candidates: 39
Median span: 6.2 yrs
First seen: 2007

Strongest Hall records

21 items

Who Can Name the Bigger Number?

www.scottaaronson.com 28 submissions · 28 people · 17.9 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2015-02 Resurfaced 2020-01-21

223max pts

DNA seen through the eyes of a coder (2017)

ds9a.nl 21 submissions · 19 people · 13.4 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2018-01 Resurfaced 2018-01-25

326max pts

An earthquake could destroy a sizable portion of the coastal Northwest (2015)

www.newyorker.com 19 submissions · 11 people · 9.8 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2020-01 Resurfaced 2025-04-23

612max pts

Cargo Cult Science (1974)

calteches.library.caltech.edu 11 submissions · 11 people · 7.3 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2023-03 Resurfaced 2023-03-06

174max pts

No, pi is wrong: The Tau Manifesto

tauday.com 15 submissions · 15 people · 12.6 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2021-05 Resurfaced 2021-05-09

186max pts

What I learned as a hired consultant to autodidact physicists (2016)

aeon.co 12 submissions · 12 people · 8.1 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2022-04 Resurfaced 2022-04-04

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The Time Everyone “Corrected” the World’s Smartest Woman (2015)

priceonomics.com 6 submissions · 6 people · 7.5 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2021-05 Resurfaced 2024-02-25

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The Mathematical Hacker

www.evanmiller.org 7 submissions · 5 people · 10.0 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2019-06 Resurfaced 2022-12-23

293max pts

No, really, pi is wrong: The Tau Manifesto (Tau Day, 2010)

tauday.com 7 submissions · 7 people · 14.0 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2020-06 Resurfaced 2016-06-28

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How to Destroy the Earth (2006)

qntm.org 9 submissions · 9 people · 13.1 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2021-02 Resurfaced 2021-02-20

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I should have loved biology

jsomers.net 6 submissions · 6 people · 4.7 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2025-07 Resurfaced 2024-04-21

1048max pts

Scientists rename human genes to stop MS Excel from misreading them as dates

www.theverge.com 5 submissions · 5 people · 3.6 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2024-03 Resurfaced 2024-03-26

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There’s no such thing as a tree (phylogenetically)

eukaryotewritesblog.com 6 submissions · 6 people · 4.2 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2025-06 Resurfaced 2025-06-30

304max pts

The control group is out of control (2014)

slatestarcodex.com 6 submissions · 6 people · 11.2 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2023-09 Resurfaced 2022-01-22

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Chernobyl’s Hot Mess, “the Elephant’s Foot,” Is Still Lethal (2013)

nautil.us 9 submissions · 9 people · 5.7 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2016-12 Resurfaced 2019-09-08

149max pts

Invisible Electrostatic Wall at 3M plant (1996)

amasci.com 5 submissions · 5 people · 13.2 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2025-01 Resurfaced 2025-01-21

403max pts

Feynman on Fermat's Last Theorem

www.lbatalha.com 6 submissions · 4 people · 6.2 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2019-02 Resurfaced 2019-02-11

220max pts

The Shortest Papers Ever Published (2016)

paperpile.com 5 submissions · 5 people · 6.6 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2023-10 Resurfaced 2023-10-20

382max pts

Cells are fast and crowded places (2011)

www.righto.com 6 submissions · 5 people · 5.0 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2022-06 Resurfaced 2020-10-05

294max pts

The Sound So Loud That It Circled the Earth Four Times

nautil.us 5 submissions · 3 people · 6.2 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2020-11 Resurfaced 2020-11-30

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Harvard cracks DNA storage, crams 700 terabytes of data into a single gram

www.extremetech.com 5 submissions · 5 people · 3.2 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2015-10 Resurfaced 2015-02-04

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Recently resurfaced

latest 20+ point return

There’s no such thing as a tree (phylogenetically)

eukaryotewritesblog.com 6 submissions · 6 people · 4.2 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2025-06 Resurfaced 2025-06-30

304max pts

An earthquake could destroy a sizable portion of the coastal Northwest (2015)

www.newyorker.com 19 submissions · 11 people · 9.8 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2020-01 Resurfaced 2025-04-23

612max pts

Invisible Electrostatic Wall at 3M plant (1996)

amasci.com 5 submissions · 5 people · 13.2 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2025-01 Resurfaced 2025-01-21

403max pts

I should have loved biology

jsomers.net 6 submissions · 6 people · 4.7 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2025-07 Resurfaced 2024-04-21

1048max pts

Scientists rename human genes to stop MS Excel from misreading them as dates

www.theverge.com 5 submissions · 5 people · 3.6 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2024-03 Resurfaced 2024-03-26

621max pts

Candidates

Browse 39 candidates

Why Most Published Research Findings Are False (2005)

journals.plos.org 12 submissions · 12 people · 8.9 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2024-09-24

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

231max pts

Dunning-Kruger and other memes (2015)

danluu.com 9 submissions · 9 people · 11.1 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2017-11-10

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

243max pts

The Relativity of Wrong (1989)

hermiene.net 6 submissions · 6 people · 14.3 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2025-08-26

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

124max pts

Long Before Trees Overtook the Land, Earth Was Covered by Giant Mushrooms (2013)

www.smithsonianmag.com 4 submissions · 4 people · 4.4 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2023-04-26

Needs:5 submissions

333max pts

The Big Alien Theory

thebigalientheory.com 4 submissions · 4 people · 5.2 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2021-06-01

Needs:5 submissions

147max pts

The Two Cultures of Mathematics (2000) [pdf]

www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk 6 submissions · 5 people · 15.0 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2021-04-26

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

145max pts

1/0 = 0

www.hillelwayne.com 4 submissions · 4 people · 6.3 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2024-12-01

Needs:5 submissions3 active years

650max pts

The Axiom of Choice is Wrong (2007)

cornellmath.wordpress.com 4 submissions · 4 people · 7.7 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2017-02-05

Needs:5 submissions

110max pts

He dropped out to become a poet – now he’s won a Fields Medal

www.quantamagazine.org 3 submissions · 3 people · 2.8 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2025-05-07

Needs:5 submissions

355max pts

Paleontologists are trying to understand why the fossil record is mostly males

www.atlasobscura.com 3 submissions · 3 people · 2.6 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2022-04-15

Needs:5 submissions

119max pts

Mystery Math Whiz and Novelist Advance Permutation Problem

www.quantamagazine.org 4 submissions · 4 people · 7.5 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2023-06-05

Needs:5 submissions

343max pts

Dinosaur Food: 100M year old foods we still eat today

borischerny.com 4 submissions · 3 people · 4.1 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2026-02-19

Needs:5 submissions

137max pts

The Legendary Study That Embarrassed Wine Experts (2014)

www.realclearscience.com 5 submissions · 2 people · 8.9 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2021-02-14

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart3 submitters

121max pts

Inside the proton, the ‘most complicated thing you could possibly imagine’

www.quantamagazine.org 3 submissions · 3 people · 3.2 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2024-02-14

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart5 submissions

612max pts

A Simple Algorithm That Ants Use to Build Bridges

www.quantamagazine.org 5 submissions · 5 people · 6.5 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2024-08-24

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

289max pts

What Bikini Atoll Looks Like Today (2017)

medium.com 3 submissions · 3 people · 7.3 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2025-03-11

Needs:5 submissions

182max pts

The Mystery of 355/113 (2010)

davidbau.com 3 submissions · 3 people · 10.2 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2022-10-20

Needs:5 submissions3 active years

198max pts

“The moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason”

jasmcole.com 3 submissions · 3 people · 7.0 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2024-09-16

Needs:5 submissions

710max pts

There's more to mathematics than rigour and proofs (2007)

terrytao.wordpress.com 6 submissions · 6 people · 4.4 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2024-06-19

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

195max pts

Color wheels are wrong? How color vision actually works

blog.asmartbear.com 6 submissions · 6 people · 4.1 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2012-06-27

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

225max pts

Science Is Getting Less Bang for Its Buck

www.theatlantic.com 3 submissions · 3 people · 5.6 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2020-12-31

Needs:5 submissions

138max pts

Gravity Is Not Like the Other Forces

www.quantamagazine.org 3 submissions · 3 people · 2.9 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2023-04-27

Needs:5 submissions3 active years

324max pts

Feynman’s Breakthrough: Disregard Others

stepsandleaps.wordpress.com 3 submissions · 3 people · 5.0 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2022-10-27

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart5 submissions

375max pts

What if I were 1% charged? (2013)

gravityandlevity.wordpress.com 3 submissions · 3 people · 6.4 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2021-09-09

Needs:5 submissions3 active years

255max pts

Sunset Geometry (2016)

www.shapeoperator.com 5 submissions · 4 people · 5.9 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2025-03-15

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

153max pts

What Gives Gold that Mellow Glow? (2006)

www.fourmilab.ch 4 submissions · 4 people · 6.6 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2013-12-09

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart5 submissions

119max pts

Things I Won't Work With: Dioxygen Difluoride (2010)

www.science.org 3 submissions · 3 people · 3.2 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2025-03-31

Needs:5 submissions

271max pts

Gears

ciechanow.ski 3 submissions · 3 people · 3.2 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2023-04-30

Needs:5 submissions

2760max pts

Torus-Earth

www.aleph.se 3 submissions · 3 people · 8.4 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2022-07-14

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart5 submissions

266max pts

In Mysterious Pattern, Math and Nature Converge

www.quantamagazine.org 3 submissions · 3 people · 8.3 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2026-01-23

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart5 submissions

152max pts

How Game Theory Solved a Religious Mystery

mindyourdecisions.com 3 submissions · 3 people · 6.7 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2010-06-02

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart5 submissions

104max pts

Mathematicians discover a perfect way to multiply (2019)

www.quantamagazine.org 4 submissions · 4 people · 2.9 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2022-03-08

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart5 submissions

266max pts

A world without mosquitoes (2010)

www.nature.com 3 submissions · 3 people · 5.6 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2014-09-29

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart5 submissions

92max pts

Emily Riehl is rewriting the foundations of higher category theory

www.quantamagazine.org 3 submissions · 3 people · 5.1 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2025-10-22

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart5 submissions

235max pts

How Big Data Carried Graph Theory into New Dimensions

www.quantamagazine.org 4 submissions · 4 people · 2.2 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2023-11-02

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart5 submissions

150max pts

Feynman's wobbling plate: how to recover from burnout

www.physics.ohio-state.edu 3 submissions · 3 people · 4.7 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2015-11-18

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart5 submissions

204max pts

Quantum gas goes below absolute zero

www.nature.com 3 submissions · 3 people · 4.0 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2014-07-27

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart5 submissions

175max pts

The unplanned impact of mathematics (2011)

www.nature.com 3 submissions · 3 people · 4.4 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2024-12-06

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart5 submissions3 active years

104max pts

Children of a Thailand tribe who see with clarity beneath the waves (2016)

www.bbc.com 3 submissions · 3 people · 3.5 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2019-08-29

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart5 submissions3 active years

175max pts