title list | over_18 list | post_content stringlengths 0 9.37k ⌀ | C1 list | C2 list | C3 list |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
[
"Creation of new elements? [Two questions]"
] | [
false
] | Say we had discovered a way to manipulate protons, neutrons and electrons and form stable nuclei and electron shells with these particles. If we could do this, could we hand-craft new elements by adding more of the particles onto already existing elements? Also, if we had a method of precise teleportation on an atomic ... | [
"I think your question is too counter-factual to answer scientifically. The stability of nuclei is determined by the relative strengths of electromagnetic, strong, and weak forces. To make unstable elements stable, you'd effectively have to rewrite the laws of subatomic physics. But if you can rewrite physics willy... | [
"The periodic table is complete as far as atomic numbers. Generally speaking, protons determine what element it is. There aren't any missing in between that we don't know of.",
"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/84/Periodic_table.svg",
"Goes from 1 to 118.",
"Adding or removing neutrons creates ... | [
"Yes, provided that the atoms you create are stable. ",
"Every element above 92(Uranium) is unstable",
", so if you were to create one, it probably wouldn't last long. However, scientists belive there is an ",
"island of stability",
" among heavier, undiscovered elements, so maybe you could create stable el... |
[
"I think my Biology professor is not giving enough parameters to solve her pedigree problems. She disagrees. Should I be worried about my teacher's credibility? (example inside)"
] | [
false
] | So I have been having daily arguments in my intro to biology class. We are on a genetics unit, and she has been assigning pedigree scenarios, asking us to create the pedigree, and determine the disorder based on what members of the pedigree have the disorder. Here are the parameters: A man marries a woman ans they have... | [
"Can you tell us what the powerpoint says. She may be including a \"outside persons are homozygous for dominant trait\" or something similar.",
"Otherwise she is wrong. Given parents that are always heterozygous or homozygous recessive, autosomal recessive genotypes are possible in every generation."
] | [
"I don't know if doing your homework is best for you, but I will give some clues. ",
"1.) Your answer is a possible solution given the information; the problem is the teacher knows what the desired answer is.",
"2.) Look at the genders."
] | [
"Yes, colorblindness is also plausible, and more probable. ",
"?= heterozygous carrier OR homozygous normal ",
" I [Xy]---(X^c X^c)\n |\n ----------------------------\n | | | | \n II (X^c x)-... |
[
"I was told when I was young that pulling enough bark off a tree to disconnect the bottom from the top would outright kill it. It's not that simple, right?"
] | [
false
] | What's actually going on when I pull bark off a tree? | [
"Not always reliable though. I work in conservation, and we will occasionally ringbark trees quite severely with a chainsaw - gouging out a ring around 6\" wide and an inchor two deep - to deliberately create standing deadwood in immature woodland, which a wide range of species will colonise.",
"On one occasion, ... | [
"It's called \"",
"girdling",
"\" and it does kill the tree."
] | [
"It's that simple. When you disconnect the bottom from the top, you're cutting off any way for nutrients to get to the top.",
"When I was a kid we had six ",
"Lombardy Poplars",
" in the front yard. Their trunks weren't much bigger around than an adult forearm, but they were probably about 12 feet tall. One y... |
[
"Why are there spots of grass that are abnormally dense?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"It was a leak alright, but not water. Dogs have been walked along that path."
] | [
"If you note the location of a cow patty in a field and come back in a few months, the grass in that area will be similar to the grass in your picture. Some animal feces does indeed have nutrients, maybe not that can be used by the plant directly but that can be broken down by fungi and bacteria and converted into ... | [
"If you note the location of a cow patty in a field and come back in a few months, the grass in that area will be similar to the grass in your picture. Some animal feces does indeed have nutrients, maybe not that can be used by the plant directly but that can be broken down by fungi and bacteria and converted into ... |
[
"What recording device can record 3D surround sound that are not just two-channel stereo?"
] | [
false
] | The 3D surround sound I mentioned is that kind of sound that can be recognized sound changes including directions, distances and movements. It felts like what recorded is same as we hear in the real world. And we could locate sound even when we close our eyes. | [
"You should specify your question. Sound as you hear it through earplugs is just a stereo signal. There is no seperate track of information telling speakers where the sound is supposed to be coming from. Humans can tell left and right by the difference in timing, volume and phase of signals in the left ear compared... | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binaural_recording",
"Two mics are housed inside a dummy head with shaped ears so that the attentuations, echoes, and all the other little nuances are as close to the real human experience as possible.",
"You can also record with a lot of mics and hope to play it back on a similar... | [
"NASA did some research on making sounds appear to come from defined directions in headphones. I listened to a demo once.",
"https://human-factors.arc.nasa.gov/publications/Begault_2000_3d_Sound_Multimedia.pdf"
] |
[
"Is there any reason to think that the total angular momentum of the visible universe is zero (or non-zero)?"
] | [
false
] | Would the opinion change if we consider everything, not only the part of the universe visible to us? | [
"It's a possibility that is being actively investigated, and has been for a couple decades. A net angular momentum would change how the cosmic microwave background looks, and each time astronomers map the background they analyze it for that signature. ",
"So far all measurements are consistent with zero, but t... | [
"You don't need to go away at all really, you just use radio telescopes to look far away.",
"The best maps of the background come from spacecraft like Planck, but that's just to not have the Earth and its atmosphere in the way."
] | [
"But do we have any theoretical reason to believe it should be zero?",
"The temperature-distribution of the CMB is predicted very well (as I understand it) by quantum-fluctuations during inflation, shouldnt the same quantum-fluctuations create some angular momentum in the same way?"
] |
[
"In simple terms, how do we convert food into usable energy?"
] | [
false
] | Looking this up, I either get a very simple explanation ("digestion breaks down food and it enters the bloodstream"), or difficult explanations involving ATP and other stuff I don't understand. Can you tell me in relatively simple terms how food becomes energy? I realize the answer can't be comprehensive without a deta... | [
"OK, this is the mega-simplified version. It is largely analogy, and the analogy can only be taken so far. So....cellular metabolism, the simple version.",
"Can you tell me in relatively simple terms how food becomes energy? ",
"We essentially do a controlled burn. Digestion just breaks the food down into usabl... | [
"Thank you for this. This helps me conceptualize it in a way beyond, \"I guess it's just magic.\" I actually downloaded Biochemistry for Dummies, and I'll be reading this (obviously not the last word in biochemistry, but it's a start)."
] | [
"We all start somewhere! Good luck, and congratulations on getting started. "
] |
[
"I experimented using aspartam as an ant poison/remover. They have been gone for a week now. r/science: What did the aspartam do to the ants? (X-post from r/askreddit)"
] | [
false
] | Our apartment was infested with ants. Hundreds and hundreds of small ants. In every room where they could find food. At work, I read that aspartam may be used as an ant posion. I think it was this article: I went to my local store in Barcelona and found a product called natreen, containing 1.4% aspartam, sacarina and d... | [
"The aspartame and saccharin are artificial sweeteners that contain no food energy. The knee jerk reaction to the dissappeared ants is that they were poisoned to death. They likely starved to death instead and the colony collapsed."
] | [
"To answer this for those unwilling to click the link...\nAspartame has been found my vast numbers of studies to be completely safe in every circumstance except for those with the condition Phenylketonuria. That's why diet sodas with aspartame display a warning that they contain Phenylalanine."
] | [
"The question was already asked."
] |
[
"Does a computer processor get worn out?"
] | [
false
] | As the title suggests.. if I buy two identical computers, let one sit for a couple years and the other perform heavy calculations 24/7.. will the “performing” processor get “worn out”? How? Not taking other components into account (fans, batteries etc, just processor) | [
"CPUs in general fail from what's called electromigration ... The gradual wearing away of atoms from the tiny traces (wires) inside the CPU.",
"Although this is incredibly slight, such traces are also incredibly thin, so eventually one of them will fail. Running a CPU at higher than rated voltages makes this happ... | [
"Engineer at a well known CPU vendor here. In the aging sims we qual the parts for 10 years. So none should fail due to aging effects (electro migration, nbti etc) in the first 10 years. Actual should be way longer for most parts unless run faster or hotter than the datasheet conditions."
] | [
"The timeframe in which this damage happens is quite long. Under normal use (= no extreme overclock/overvolt for thousands of hours on end) the computer will probably be discarded way before the CPU dies of electromigration, either because the rest of the components will have failed first, or because the performanc... |
[
"Could you make diamonds in a nuclear reactor?"
] | [
false
] | As I understand it, the main problem with diamond synthesis isn't so much the pressures required, but the fact that the interconversion from graphite is slow. (and vice-versa, hence you don't see diamonds turning into charcoal overnight at room pressure) Speeding it up without a catalyst requires a higher temperature, ... | [
"Materials engineering grad student here. I do research on Zirconium alloys which are commonly used as structural components in nuclear reactors. One major problem you're going to have is making your pressure cell out of a neutron transparent material. The most common such material would likely be a zirconium al... | [
"Yes, an ",
" nuclear reactor is probably not practical/realistic. For starters, I doubt you'd convince anyone to let you put anything in their core that didn't need to be there. (except perhaps in research reactors) You'd really need about 2 GPa or so (at room temp), but it's possible that you might get small am... | [
"If I understand you correctly, you want to use neutrons breaking the chemical bonds as a form of catalyst to speed up the reaction rate? The first thing to note is that this does not actually change the equilibrium, it can at best speed up the rate at which it is obtained. Is your idea to break up the metastable g... |
[
"When dehydrated, can your body reclaim water from your bladder?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Your bladder doesn't have a way to reclaim liquid. When you're dehydrated your kidneys work to reclaim liquid, but once your urine is in your bladder you'll end up peeing it out. In a survival situation you can create a still with plastic sheeting to get pure liquid water from your otherwise very concentrated (rea... | [
"Nope. ",
"Before I start: \"filtrate\" refers to the liquid that gets pulled from your bloodstream into the first bit of your kidney's filtration system, then travels through the kidneys and becomes urine. It contains all the waste that goes into urine, and anything else that gets excreted in urine, such as cert... | [
"not great for drinking but better than nothing"
] |
[
"What is this called?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Hi wgxunit thank you for submitting to ",
"/r/Askscience",
".",
" Please add flair to your post. ",
"Your post will be removed permanently if flair is not added within one hour. You can flair this post by replying to this message with your flair choice. It must be an exact match to one of the followi... | [
"“Human body”"
] | [
"Thank you for your submission! Unfortunately, your submission has been removed for the following reason(s):",
"/r/AskScience",
"For more information regarding this and similar issues, please see our ",
"guidelines.",
"If you disagree with this decision, please send a ",
"message to the moderators."
] |
[
"Which symmetry is related to the conservation of mass in classical mechanics?"
] | [
false
] | According to Noether theorem every symmetry of a problem leads to a conservation of a quantity: Time evolution symmetry - Energy conservation Spatial translation sym- Momentum conservation Rotation - Angular momentum U(1) gauge - electric charge Even Galilean translation - Center of mass displacement conservation Which... | [
"In classical mechanics, none. The mass of a particle is just some parameter associated to a particle; it is not a dynamic quantity. Since the total mass of a system is just the sum of the individual masses, conservation of mass is a triviality.",
"In relativity, mass conservation is a consequence of both energy ... | [
"No. The converse to Noether's theorem says that conservation laws have an associated symmetry in the Langrangian.",
"Mass is a non example. We don't really say mass is conserved in classical mechanics because it's not a dynamic quantity. The theory simply states that all particles have an associated positive num... | [
"This isn't an argument. You're using the incorrect definition of mass. You are trying to distinguish between \"rest mass\" and \"mass\", but, in fact, there is no distinction. The mass ",
" of a system is given by",
"M",
" = (ΣE)",
" - (Σ",
")",
"The number ",
" is conserved as long as both ΣE and Σ"... |
[
"When did animals evolve wings?"
] | [
false
] | When did animals first begin to take flight? And how did they go about the process? Like when was the first bug like, Imma jump and it’ll work itself out! | [
"This paper",
" in ",
" estimates that the common ancestor of all flying insects lived about 406 million years ago, based on genetics. The ",
"oldest fossil of an insect wing",
" is from 324 million years ago, but the ",
"oldest insect fossil",
" is substantially older, around 400 million years old. Alt... | [
"Yep.",
"And to further answer OPs question, other research suggests that the initial selective pressure on wing evolution in insects was not flight but rather thermoregulation:",
"Kingsolver, Joel G., and M. A. R. Koehl. \"Aerodynamics, thermoregulation, and the evolution of insect wings: differential scaling ... | [
"Flight has evolved 4 times independently over the course of history. In insects, birds, bats, and pterosaurs (pterodactyls, etc.). There are also at least twice as many examples of pre-flight that currently exist, usually in the form of gliding, such as flying squirrels, flying fish, etc. Usually some type of syst... |
[
"Is a Hydrogen/atomic Bomb the absolute limit of explosive force?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"I thought a lot of energy released in antimatter bombs was carried away as neutrinos. Which just pass through everything without any interaction. Antimatter bombs are still more efficient but the difference is not as substantial as you may think."
] | [
"I thought a lot of energy released in antimatter bombs was carried away as neutrinos. Which just pass through everything without any interaction. Antimatter bombs are still more efficient but the difference is not as substantial as you may think."
] | [
"If you're scope of explosive power is not limited to man made explosions, the biggest explosion we see on Earth are volcanic eruptions on the order of hundreds if megatons of TNT. Supernovas are pretty much the biggest explosions that we've witnessed and they blow whole stars apart."
] |
[
"Using a comparison to a situation on Earth, how likely is a spaceship to hit a piece of space junk (clarification inside)?"
] | [
false
] | By this I mean (for example), "if a spaceship was a car on Earth randomly driving across an area the size of Illinois, that car would have a 1/10,000th chance of hitting a piece of debris". My apologies for the poor clarification. I can never type my words as clearly as I'd like to. | [
"From the FAQ on the ",
"NASA website on orbital debris",
":",
"\nMore than 21,000 orbital debris larger than 10 cm are known to exist. The estimated population of particles between 1 and 10 cm in diameter is approximately 500,000. The number of particles smaller than 1 cm exceeds 100 million. ",
"\nMost or... | [
"I ain't no rocket scientist either, but this answer sounds legit. Thanks for taking the time to respond! Very interesting stuff. "
] | [
"In order for a very knowing person (not me) to make a legitimate calculation, you will also have to put in a lower boundary on the size of the piece of debris, and maybe a time frame. Technically, spaceships hit space debris all the time. The vast majority of the time, the debris is too tiny to cause a problem."... |
[
"I need some help with Fetal alcohol syndrome!"
] | [
false
] | I'm writing a paper on the use of Folic Acid on the development of neural tube defects in embryos that have had ethanol introduced within the first 2 weeks of gastrulation. I am reading a whole bunch of articles that mainly focus on how the use of folic acid helps prevent the formation of NTDs but I don't understand ho... | [
"Folic acid is important in prevention of neural tube defects for all pregnancies, not just in relation to fetal alcohol syndrome. Here is an excerpt from a unit in my Nutrition in Growth and Development class:",
"\"Because the neural tube forms before most women know they are pregnant, folic acid is an especiall... | [
"thanks but do you know exactly how folic acid interacts with the adhesion of the spine? I don't know if my professors care that much about detail but this is just really interesting for me haha."
] | [
"Sorry, I don't. You might be able to find that in an advanced metabolism or A&P book, or scholarly journal articles about folic acid and NTDs."
] |
[
"What conditions on Earth have helped in harboring Oxygen compared to other planets?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Life. Particularly first the Cyanobacteria, and later eukaryotic phototrophs like primitive plants. When Cyanobacteria capable of photosynthesis first evolved, they pumped so much oxygen to the atmosphere that they completely oxidized all the planet (like sure get minerals of iron etc.) and caused a mass extinctio... | [
"Life.",
"This is also the reason astronomers are so interested in looking for oxygen in the atmospheres of other planets. While there are ideas how it could be created without life: Finding oxygen would be a strong hit that there might be life. Finding oxygen plus something that reacts quickly with oxygen (like ... | [
"that they are hypothesized to cause a massive ice age known as snowball earth.",
"There are several hypothesised 'snowball earth' episodes and the one associated with the GOE is the Makganyene Glaciation. However, the more famous snowball earth are the Sturtian and Marinoan Glaciations during the Cryogenian, alm... |
[
"when you use your muscles to lift things for a long enough period of time, what is happening to them when they can't lift anything anymore?"
] | [
false
] | Like when you bench, and you hit your limit and you just can't bench anymore. Also, is it possible to push past that point? | [
"A build up of lactic acid, combined with a lack of fuel to run those muscles. The fuel issue subsides with rest and recovery from the exercise in question. This is why you can burn out your muscles, wait 4 minutes, and then use those muscles again.",
"The fuel in this case is ATP, someone please correct me if ... | [
"In addition to what others have said there has been some recent research done on pushing past this point. I heard it on news radio so I can't remember the source but researchers have found that super-cooling your muscles (sticking you arm in a bucket of ice for example) you can dramatically increase your muscle en... | [
"True, I wonder if my gym would let me stand in giant ice-buckets when I squat?"
] |
[
"How does the average lifespan of an organism affect the rate of evolution?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"This should read: How does the \"maturation time\" of an organism affect its rate of evolution. This is really the more important issue, however it is generally true that animals that live longer have a longer time from birth to maturation. "
] | [
"You essentially have it right.",
"Given a bacteria with a lifespan of only a few days the rate at which they evolve is quite easy to demonstrate. A common experiment you'll see that demonstrates this concept in evolutionary biology courses has the student take a small paper disk with an anti-microbial (like tric... | [
"the bacteria that you transfer are those existing closest to the anti-microbial, so they're the most likely to have extant organisms with a resistance to the Triclosan. So you're essentially transferring the most resistant bacteria from one dish to the next.",
"Edit: I made a ",
" scientific example of what th... |
[
"If orbits increase as orbital energy decreases, why do things in low earth orbit fall inward instead of move outward?"
] | [
false
] | I was thinking about how the moon is slowly moving away from the earth due to orbital energy being decreased by tidal forces. Then I wondered, if this is the case, why do objects in low earth orbit facing atmospheric drag fall in towards earth instead of get larger orbits? | [
"For the moon, this is called ",
"tidal acceleration",
", and it ",
" the energy of the moon, not decreases. (Although contrary to what the word \"acceleration\" may imply, it actually slows the moon down.)",
"The total energy of an object in an elliptical orbit of semi-major axis a is E = -GMm/(2a), where ... | [
"I am well versed in these areas and the terminology and language used makes it clear to me they have been reading material specifically in my wheelhouse.",
"I'm sure ",
" are (although I'm a bit surprised you've apparently ",
" encountered an alternative definition of orbital energy when they do exist, albei... | [
"I am well versed in these areas and the terminology and language used makes it clear to me they have been reading material specifically in my wheelhouse.",
"I'm sure ",
" are (although I'm a bit surprised you've apparently ",
" encountered an alternative definition of orbital energy when they do exist, albei... |
[
"How can an electron have a positive and negative spin?"
] | [
false
] | I am in eleventh grade and we are just introduced to the concept of quantum numbers so my question may sound very stupid as I don't fully understand quantum numbers and I am still very new to it🙏🙏 If I have my facts right, spin quantum numbers are used to calculate the spin of an electron and if the electron spins cl... | [
"In this case, the quantum mechanical nature of the system is irrelevant. This can be fully understood classically.",
"In physics, it's common to pick coordinate system that simplify your problem. For example, if you're studying a train going along a straight track, you're obviously going to pick one axis (Cartes... | [
"Spin can be quite misleading, since the name implies that something is \"spinning\". However, an electron is a point particle, and a point can't spin.",
"Therefore, it is best not to think of the quantum mechanical spin as something actually spinning, but rather as a new quantum property of particles that does n... | [
"So does it not have a negative value from one side and a positive value from the other side?",
"That is correct.",
"Personally, I wouldn't call that quantum number \"spin\" though. It is the ",
" of spin (assuming you call your quantisation axis z), or the magnetic spin quantum number. When people say that e... |
[
"Why is the acceleration due to gravity of two different objects independent of their masses?"
] | [
false
] | This question has plagued me since day one of learning physics, and I haven't really found a good, intuitive, explanation for it. Is it simply "coincidence" because that is just how the math works out? Any time I look for an answer to this question, the answers all come in the form of explaining it with the equations, ... | [
"The question you are asking could be reformulated as, \"Why is gravitational mass the same as inertial mass?\" According to Einstein, mass (actually energy) bends spacetime, and what we perceive as gravitational force is actually a sort of free motion in this bent spacetime. As such, it is unsurprising that two ba... | [
"So, in the bigger picture, gravity isn't a force at all? It's just the result of the geometry of the path that all the objects follow?"
] | [
"Yes, gravity is just a geometrical property. It's important to remember that it's the geometry of space",
", however, otherwise you'd think that the bending of space is so drastic that a satellite orbiting a planet is moving along a straight line ",
", and that's really not the case."
] |
[
"How does the brain distinguish between images you are actually seeing and images you are imagining? Can the two become confused?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"We experience the visual world as being complete and in rich detail, but in actually, our brains are doing a lot of \"filling-in\", construction, reconstruction, and guess-work. The most obvious example of ",
"filling in",
" occurs at the ",
"blind spot",
") where nerves exit the eye and there are no photo... | [
"Imagine the letters D and J. Take the letter D and turn it sideways so that the rounded part is on top. Stick the turned letter on top of the J. What shape does it make? If you can do this, you are engaging in mental imagery.",
"Another example: imagine a block letter F. Start at the lower right corner of the F ... | [
"I think at this point we should also talk about probabilistic inference and the theory of Predictive Coding. I'm in the lab so I can't write stuff up right now, but I can edit this comment after I get home!",
"Edit - Here is an introduction I once wrote. ",
"During everyday life we are challenged with a pletho... |
[
"On a clear night, all conditions being optimal for star gazing, how many stars am I likely to be able to see in a single moment?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"Naked eye? Thousands.",
"Theoretically, in a typical dark sky, the dark adapted human eye would see the about 5,600 stars brighter than +6m[5] while in perfect dark sky conditions about 45,000 stars brighter than +8m might be visible.[2] In practice, the atmospheric extinction and dust reduces this number somewh... | [
"Basically yes. Galaxies can appear as fairly large diffuse groups of light, but the actual stars in them are too far away for us to make out. "
] | [
"Basically yes. Galaxies can appear as fairly large diffuse groups of light, but the actual stars in them are too far away for us to make out. "
] |
[
"Do we know which direction the center of the universe is in, based on the speed of galaxies around us."
] | [
false
] | I just have been reading Hawking's "The Universe in a Nutshell" and he mentions that, thanks to Hubble, we know that the universe is expanding because we can observe that all the galaxies around us are moving away from us. It seems to me that the galaxies further out from the center would be moving faster, relative to ... | [
"There's no center. ",
"- ",
"http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/GR/centre.html",
" - "
] | [
"Sure, there is no center with respect to its expansion. But if time were frozen, at which point we can obviously ignore expansion, could we find a center in a way similar to that of finding the center of gravity of a complex 3-dimensional object?"
] | [
"The center of gravity doesn't really make sense in this setting.",
"To see this, imagine that the universe is a circle, for example. You are picturing the circle in the plane, but it doesn't actually live there. There is no ambient space, and no point outside the circle has any meaning at all. It's not in the... |
[
"Why does water prevent/put out fire?"
] | [
false
] | What is it about the chemical H2O that allows it to douse fire, and likewise why do wet things not burn as easily as dry things? Is it possible to put out fire with other liquids or is this unique to water? | [
"Water has a high specific heat. Meaning it is really good at cooling things down stopping the material from reaching combustion heat. It also has the ability to snuf out where it lands as it stops it from getting the O2 gas that is required for a combustion reaction. "
] | [
"To sustain a fire, you need three things: fuel, oxidant, and energy. Take away any one of those things and the fire will go out. Lots of liquids fit the bill to knock out a flame's sources of oxidant and/or thermal energy. Few fire extinguishers contain water anymore in favor of carbon dioxide or some kind of ... | [
"There are certain conditions that must be met for a reaction to take place. Some chemicals by nature create an environment that does not suit one or another reaction to occur. However, its important to note that there are usually ways around this. Fire can burn on the surface of water if something like oil is floa... |
[
"Why do we think that space was created during the big bang and not just matter?"
] | [
false
] | How do we know for instance that there isn't just an infinite field of ever expanding space, with occasionally disruptive quantum fluctuations that create a bunch of stuff? | [
"We don't think that, nor do we know that.",
"In fact we know very little before the CMBR, previous to that we have models which predict what would happen and indirect evidence. As you approach the moment of the big bang things keep getting more and more fuzzy.",
"The only thing we can say is that we don't know... | [
"We can't see to the Big Bang, so we don't know.",
"The Cosmic Microwave Background is light that has been greatly red-shifted from the expansion of space to appear very cold, but it was actually very hot plasma. Which surrounded us long ago.",
"Remember that light takes time to travel, so when we look out, we ... | [
"In fact we know very little before the CMBR",
"This is a bit too strong. For example, the standard cosmological model predicts ",
"the production of various light nuclei",
" (deuterium, helium, lithium), which provide a significant test of the theory. "
] |
[
"Why does steam and hot 'irons' remove creases from clothes so quickly and efficiently, and what is the science behind what's happening on a molecular level?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Steam is great for transferring heat, much better than hot air (hence why getting scalded by steam is so serious), as is a heavy metal object pressing on the fabric. ",
"Heat beaks down the weak-cross chain bonds in the fabric, allowing creases to be straightened. And then as it cools, those bonds reform and you... | [
"While the method of heating is important, the material of the clothing has the greatest impact. The reason that ironing works is that the majority of clothing materials act as thermoplastics. What this means, is that the material will become malleable if it is reheated, compared to a thermoset, which becomes har... | [
"Sure, this is why people run the dryer for awhile at low heat if they let the clothes cool in there, to un-wrinkle them."
] |
[
"What will happen to the gas giants once the sun becomes a white dwarf? Will they break free from the solar system? How long will they stay as gas giants?"
] | [
false
] | There are a lot of sources out there describing what would happen to the solar system ones the sun becomes a red giant. Mercury, Venus, and Earth would be swallowed by the sun, Europa, Enceladus, Titan etc would probably have better conditions for life, Saturn would lose its rings etc. But what I don't find a lot of so... | [
"By the time the Sun passes through the red giant phase, our neighborhood will look drastically different. While there is still a small amount of debate as to what will happen to Earth, (mainly because even scientists don't want to admit Earth is doomed eventually in my opinion) the general consensus is that it ind... | [
"We don’t know precisely where the outer shell of the Sun will be in relation to Earth so we can’t say definitely if Earth will be swallowed up. ",
"In any case it’s kinda irrelevant since Earth will be uninhabitable for life in about 600 million years due to normal increase in temperature of the Sun as more Heli... | [
"From Wiki: According to a 2008 model, Earth's orbit is shrinking due to ",
"tidal forces",
" (and, eventually, drag from the lower ",
"chromosphere",
"), so that it will be engulfed by the Sun near the tip of the red giant branch phase, 3.8 and 1 million years after Mercury and Venus have respectively ... |
[
"If I were to recreate a modern microprocessor with TTL chips on a gigantic breadboard, how large would it be, how much power would it need, and what would be its speed?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Your clock cycle would be limited by the speed of light. Increasing the size of the processor is extremely detrimental because of this constraint. Everything needs to be close together to have a high processing speed.",
": This is the right answer so stop down-voting. This is the whole reason they need 'micropro... | [
"Here's a back-of-the-envelope calculation:",
"Take Intel's Ivy Bridge as a reference point\n",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Core_i7_microprocessors#.22Ivy_Bridge.22_.2822_nm.29",
"Wikipedia says it has about 1.4 billion transistors. If you budget about 6 transistors per logic gate (which is pr... | [
"It's not quite speed of light, it's closer to 0.6c and more importantly depends entirely on voltage, conductor, and temperature [it gets slower as the wire gets hotter].",
"But the gist of what you're saying is right."
] |
[
"If an orbital ring/elevator system was established (connected to the earth via pillars/elevators) would it have enough rotational force to create artificial gravity so that people would stand the opposite way, facing the earth rather than space?"
] | [
false
] | And how would the distance away from earth affect it? | [
"Just a side note: something like this features in Iain M Banks 'culture' scifi series"
] | [
"Thanks a lot, that was a perfect answer"
] | [
"I really need to read that series, I've heard so many good things about it!"
] |
[
"Is it true we burn more calories chewing celery than we get from the celery itself?"
] | [
false
] | I just checked the nutrition info for the celery in my fridge. "2 large stalks" contain 25 calories, so that strikes me as some pretty intense chewing. But I'm wondering this, and so many take it on faith and quote this very fact, so I'm asking science. | [
"Celery is partially made of cellulose, ",
"which the body does not break down",
".",
"If you ate only the cellulose, you'd gain 0 calories of energy and therefore burn a few. You burn around 2 calories chewing celery for twenty minutes.",
"The celery you bought is not made ONLY of cellulose, so if you eat... | [
"Remember that food calories are kilocalories.",
"I've looked into the amount of ice you'd need to eat as a weight loss program. It's infeasible."
] | [
"The human body doesn't digest celery well, I don't think chewing burns many calories but it's irrelevant if the food you're eating can't be broken down into anything useful."
] |
[
"Is there any reason why we haven't built permanent habitats in the ocean?"
] | [
false
] | I was curious if there was something stopping our technology or there's a reason we're opting to build on other planets before building homes under the water? | [
"Multiple underwater hotels have been built, showing the technology and engineering exists. ",
"https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.cntraveler.com/galleries/2016-07-09/11-coolest-underwater-hotels-in-the-world/amp",
"So the question to ask is what advantages does it offer for long-term living and just as importa... | [
"This seems like a weird route to go. There are a lot of variables with space impacts, hurricanes, tsunamis, etc. I think looking at practical, day to day issues is more relevant.",
"Air - How will you get it? We know you can, but it is much safer to be on land than try to figure out how to keep an underwater liv... | [
"The most common way to generate oxygen is through the electrolysis of water, which divides water molecules into separate hydrogen and oxygen atoms. This is the main way the ISS generates oxygen for the crew (though there are a few other methods as well), as well as on submarines. It's a very energy intensive proce... |
[
"Does my clap add sound to a sea of applause?"
] | [
false
] | Let's say my clap is 5 db loud. If I clap in an applauding crowd, am I adding 5 db to the overall noise? | [
"Further more the decibel scale is a logarithmic scale so the distance between 0 and 5 db is not the same in absolute intensity as the distance between 50 and 55 db."
] | [
"Not 5 db. The resulting sound wave will be the sum of all the waves, where by sum, I mean the result of the interference between all the waves (",
"http://www.physicsclassroom.com/class/waves/u10l3c.cfm",
")"
] | [
"Electrical Engineer here. One thing I want to point out is that decibels (dB) are a measure of relative power, calculated by 10log(Pout/Pin) (base 10 log). When you're talking about loudness, we're actually talking about pressure waves, rather than power, so our dB calculation is actually 20log(pout/pin), where ... |
[
"Mom always said, \"Chew your food!\" But, from a total efficiency standpoint, is it really more efficient chewing your food or letting your digestive enzymes do all the work?"
] | [
false
] | So I was eating dinner last night, and as I was attempting to chew a big bite of spaghetti I thought, is it really worth the effort to chew this or should I just let my gastric juices do the work? I understand that chewing functions to mechanically breakdown food in order to increase the surface area for digestive enzy... | [
"Chewing increases the surface area at which the enzymes will do their work (cube-square law):",
". = enzyme",
"\n# = food",
"\nIllustrated in only two dimensions: ",
"Unchewed: 16 \"enzymes\" work on 9 \"food bits\", 16/9 = 4/3",
"..... \n.###. \n.###. \n.###. \n..... \n",
"Chewed: 72 enzym... | [
"I will agree that this is an excellent diagram of the situation, but I already stated that in the original post. ",
"My question really resides in the realm of efficiency, where on one hand you have mechanical breakdown via chewing and on the other hand you have chemical breakdown with enzymatic catalysis. The... | [
"Efficiency can be measured in time as well as energy. The smaller the particles entering your stomach, the less time it takes to digest them (surface area/volume ratio). Depending on the energy content per-unit-volume of your food, the digestion time of a big chunk can be a limiting factor. I suspect this is on... |
[
"Are the younger generations addicted to information or \"stimulus-hungry\" ?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"http://www.reddit.com/r/asksocialscience/"
] | [
"I think calling at an \"addiction\" isn't accurate; addiction usually implies a physiological need.",
"Your question also presumes that young adults ",
" to be watching TV and/or some other activity while doing homework when that hasn't been established and can easily be explained by the young people not wanti... | [
"Can there be follow up on how this compares to previous generations?"
] |
[
"When Donating Blood/Bone Marrow/Plasma, why do they ask if you have ever had sex with a man, if you're male? (Maybe NSFW)"
] | [
true
] | I recently signed up as a bone marrow donor and have donated blood/plasma in the past and on all the questioners they have asked if I have ever had sex with a male in the last 5 years. My only guess is that anal sex could increase your chances of Hepatitis, but if that were the case wouldn't your chances be the same if... | [
"There is good ",
"evidence",
" that homosexual men have a higher prevalence of HIV infection than comparable heterosexual populations. ",
"A study involving american populations as well.",
"The tests for HIV are good, but not perfect. ",
"See here",
" that 3 in 1000 is a false negative. This is an un... | [
"Receptive MSM are at significantly increased risk for HIV."
] | [
"Why is HIV more prevelant in homosexual men? I've heard this before but have never been told why. Is it because of the increased likelyhood of engagement in anal sex? "
] |
[
"Would it be plausible to build a clothes dryer that uses vacuum to boil water rather than heat?"
] | [
false
] | I know there are a couple potential problems with this, like forgetting a pen in your pocket; But would it be more efficient to put clothing in to a vacuum chamber and withdraw the water vapor via a vacuum pump? Since water boils at low temps around (76 degrees @ 26hg), it seems that this could work. Is it too dangerou... | [
"People have proposed this for decades, and there are multiple patents about it.",
"Let's think for a moment about how a vacuum clothes dryer would work.",
"First, you need a vacuum pump. These don't really like sucking up water directly, so you'll also want a cold condenser for the water to condense on.",
"... | [
"Sounds like foretopsail gave a great explanation. To give an idea of how long it takes to dry materials inside a vacuum pump without increasing the heat, I'll quickly tell about some personal experience just to give a better picture.",
"I work with inert atmosphere glove boxes at work in order to protect people ... | [
"Haha, yeah.",
"Thing is, archaeologists are usually so underfunded that we end up learning a lot of stuff.",
"Especially those of us who work at sea. If you can't fix an outboard (at least), you're not near as valuable as one who can. And if you don't understand gas laws, you probably shouldn't be working in... |
[
"Neutrons, fission and tunneling?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"No... where did you get that?"
] | [
"What would you like to know?"
] | [
"I am curious about an upper limit of times fused, density, mass ect. If there is a difference between neutron-neutron fussion and tunneling, if n-n tunneling is even possible."
] |
[
"How much pain do small insects experience when they are smashed and killed by humans?"
] | [
false
] | I know pain is relative which is why i'd like if there is a comparison with a certain kind of pain humans experience. | [
"Current scientific thinking is that insects don't feel pain. In fact the only invertebrates thought to feel pain are cephalopods - octopus, squid, cuttlefish.",
"The IASP (International Association for the Study of Pain) define pain as requiring both an automatic physical reaction to noxious stimuli (nociception... | [
"By mirror test, do you mean when a living being is able to recognize its reflexion in a mirror?",
"If it's the case, I believe it's unrelated to the explanation given above. Recognition of self and emotional suffering are not on the same level of neural activity as far as I'm aware."
] | [
"This question is far from having a definite answer and sadly has very little scientific interest behind it, despite having enormous moral and ethical implications. ",
"With the said, the effective altruism community has been interested in this, and there are some interesting forum posts on the EA forum (one of t... |
[
"When a person urinates, why doesn't their bladder create a vacuum? Or does it?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"The bladder ",
"contracts",
" because it is made of flexible tissue. There is no void left behind so there is no vacuum to pull air in. The only analogy I can think of off hand is an IV bag. As it dispenses, the walls of the bag collapse around the fluid. It doesn’t pull blood from you nor does it slow dispens... | [
"When a bladder is empty there is always a bit of residual urine, but more than 200mL is considered urinary retention. Most people have far less.",
"There are a number of points along the urethra where urine flow is regulated or inhibited - mostly by sphincters. If one of these tightens it can cut the stream of u... | [
"Your lungs are just about the only space in your body that contains an air pocket. Everything else is filled with pressurized fluid. An air bubble inside your body, other than in your digestive tract where it is easily released (and even there when it's not promptly ejected it quickly becomes uncomfortable), is a ... |
[
"Do all dogs speak the same language?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"No nonhuman animals have language."
] | [
"Apologies I didn’t mean language like humans have language, I mean being able to understand each other through whatever form of communication that species has"
] | [
"I don't believe it's even agreed upon that dogs use barking for specific communication/signaling. The Types section here has a reasonable overview: ",
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bark_(sound)"
] |
[
"How far from the moon does a satellite have to be in order to achieve a stable orbit?"
] | [
false
] | I just read article about the uneven lunar gravity and how it affects orbiting satellites and I wanted to know especially with the asteriod that NASA hopes to bring into orbit of the moon how high does it need to be for these area to have little to no affect on the orbit? (I apologize for typos im on my new phone) | [
"Shamelessly stolen from Wikipedia",
"\"Low Lunar orbit (LLO)—orbits below 100 kilometres (62 mi) altitude—are of particular interest in exploration of the moon, but suffer from gravitational perturbation effects that make most unstable, and leave only a few orbital inclinations possible for indefinite frozen orb... | [
"Yes... but how low? Could it be... meters?"
] | [
"The general answer for the general question is the ",
"Hill Sphere",
". Its limits are defined by the L1 and L2 positions.",
"The orbit we would use for an asteroid around the moon would most likely be much closer to the surface of the moon, and wouldn't even come close to reaching the Lagrangian points."
] |
[
"Assuming I have 2 CFL bulbs of the same Wattage, that emit the same amount of lumens but one of them has a warmer color temperature. Will there be any difference in the amount of heat they produce?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"\"Wattage\" is heat. A 50W bulb makes 50W of heat. End of story.",
"That depends on what you count in the \"heat\" bucket. If you count the energy that leaves the lamp by conduction, convection, and thermal radiation, it's less than the input power (15 W is more realistic than 50 W for a CFL): there might be 3 ... | [
"\"Wattage\" is heat. A 50W bulb makes 50W of heat. End of story.",
"That depends on what you count in the \"heat\" bucket. If you count the energy that leaves the lamp by conduction, convection, and thermal radiation, it's less than the input power (15 W is more realistic than 50 W for a CFL): there might be 3 ... | [
"It doesn't matter if you illuminate a room with 50W of red light or 50W of blue light, the same amount of energy will be dumped into the room once all the photons have been absorbed."
] |
[
"Is carbon dioxide uniquely able to make a beverage effervescent?"
] | [
false
] | Or is it just the most cost effective and/or safest? | [
"Draft Guinness is aerated with nitrogen as well as carbon dioxide, which creates less acidity and smaller bubbles. The yeast which create the alcohol in beverages also create carbon dioxide, just as the do in leavened bread, so carbon dioxide is the natural aerating gas for beer and sparking wine. Joseph Priestly ... | [
"Given the right solvent and a great enough pressure, any gas can be dissolved in a solution and then released by reducing the pressure. ",
"However the qualities of CO2 arise not just from its reasonably high solubility in water (the pressure in a soda can is only about 70% greater than the normal atmosphere) b... | [
"a variety of Monster energy drink […] uses nitrous oxide ",
"Really? Nitrous oxide is nasty stuff, it's hard to believe that a soft drink could go on sale containing something that used as both an anaesthetic and a rocket fuel oxidiser, is somewhat toxic and is a very, very bad greenhouse gas. ",
"It creates a... |
[
"How does the spindle apparatus know what to do during cell division?"
] | [
false
] | When the chromosomes are lined up and then pulled to the poles of the cell, how does this process happen so carefully and exactly with no neurology guiding anything? If the brain doesn't control this process what ultimately does? The DNA itself is being copied and pulled around. How does this organized process happen? | [
"This is remarkable to me. I don't know why this isn't talked about more. Every inch of us is composed of cells - yet the function of these cells (you could almost say the function of \"you\") is entirely a chemical process based on random interactions. The spindle emerging and grabbing hold of chromosomes and arra... | [
"\"Weak\" chemical interactions like dispersion forces. Chemical interactions control all molecular positions and functions in a cell. Behind this, it's all controlled by Gibb's free energy, enthalpy, and entropy. ",
"These forces partition molecules to certain locations to control whether or not they function... | [
"Yes. The laws of physics are always working on the larger scale and the smaller scale. There's a lot of reasons why a car works, internal combustion engine, friction of the tires, blah blah blah, but ultimately it's fundamental physics. ",
"Physical chemistry is the hardest undergraduate level class. There's... |
[
"A question about eyesight."
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Could possibly be a result of ",
"chromatic aberration",
" after you've worn your glasses for an extended period of time.",
"tl;dr of the article is that thick lenses can cause waves of light to have different focus points (think prism)"
] | [
"Go to an ophthalmologist. This post is too much like asking for medical advice. ",
"Am I ill?"
] | [
"I seem to get it when I'm not wearing glasses as well, perhaps more so. Is this just a result of my eyes having different focal points?"
] |
[
"This article describes a 'diamond planet' several times the size of earth. How do we know what a planet billions of miles away is made of? How can we know the science is good if we can't actually verify it? What is the science behind astrogeology (if that's the correct term)?"
] | [
false
] | Here's the article. | [
"It's not an accurate representation of the actual paper. It's overstepping what we know. While we know it's around a carbon-rich star, we don't know the composition of the planet. We do know, though, the planet's mass and radius. Based off that, we can suggest possibilities of what structure would allow that sort ... | [
"It's a multi-step process.",
"Here is the outline:",
"The diameter, and hence volume, of the exoplanet is determined by how much the host star dims when the exoplanet transits in front of the star.",
"The mass of the exoplanet by how much the host star wiggles (determined by the Doppler shift in the host sta... | [
"The composition or even presence of an atmosphere for this planet is not yet known. As Madhusudhan et al. say in ",
"their article announcing the discovery",
",",
"High-precision spectroscopy in the future may also be able to constrain the presence of an atmosphere in 55 Cancri e and its composition."
] |
[
"Could the appearance of the surface of the moon be spoiled by man?"
] | [
false
] | Once man develops a presence on the Moon, how much activity in the form of both artificial construction (buildings, pipelines, roads, etc.) and surface mining would be required before we can see it from Earth through binoculars (or even from the naked eye?) I would imagine it would have to be vast acreage to even begin... | [
"If you were on the moon; there is no object you can see on Earth to tell it had life. Unless you were really clever; during nighttime you may see the glow of cities but thats a collection of sources you are seeing; not any individual object.",
"Now I say that assuming you meant naked eye/binoculars, if you had a... | [
"Yep, pretty tough to see any man made features.\n",
"http://www.mhhe.com/physsci/astronomy/fix/student/images/09f03.jpg"
] | [
"Earth's atmosphere obscures most things. It does make me wonder if you can see any city lights when the moon views the night side of our planet.",
"It is still my contention that if man went up there and started strip mining, bulldozing, etc. for whatever minerals/other goodies that we'd want, that at some point... |
[
"Where would be the rainiest places on Saturn's moon Titan? How comparable would (methane) rainfall there be to rain here on Earth?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"It looks like Titan has seasons similar to the Earth and it rains during the summer. When Cassini first arrived it was summer in the southern hemisphere and it's now summer in the northern hemisphere. Low latitudes are more desert-like. There's no real measurement or even direct observation of rain as far as I kno... | [
"the moon only has one massive hadley cell apparently which switches direction depending on the season.",
"Yes, this is the atmospheric circulation expected for a slow rotator (Titan's rotation period: 16 days).",
"The reason Earth's Hadley cell only extends to ~30° latitude is because air coming from the equat... | [
"i was doing some reading last night and found that the intertropical convergence zone on titan sorta wanders from pole to pole, making the moon \"tropical\", so to speak. the moon only has one massive hadley cell apparently which switches direction depending on the season."
] |
[
"AskScience AMA Series: We're the New Horizons team that flew past Pluto and are studying some of the oldest, farthest objects in the Solar System. Ask us anything!"
] | [
false
] | Four years after NASA's New Horizons flew by Pluto, and seven months after our flyby of 2104 MU69 in the Kuiper Belt, we have discovered more than ever before about the origins of the Solar System, but there is still so much more to explore! The team is meeting at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab, the home of the ... | [
"Based on how much we have learned about Pluto: Is there something you regret about the design of New Horizon now? Which additional instrument would have been the most useful addition?"
] | [
"What's the plan after Ultima Thule? Is there enough power/fuel left for a flyby of another Kuiper Belt Object?"
] | [
"No, but it's like Tetris fitting the flight software into the available memory. - CH"
] |
[
"Is there a nuclear decay process that yields an isotope of Au? If so, could we say we've solved the old alchemical quest of deriving precious from nonprecious metals?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Lots of ",
"isotopes of Mercury",
" decay into various isotopes of gold. You can also make various gold isotopes using particle accelerators. So in a technical sense, you can turn other elements into gold, but none of these methods, either setting up particle accelerators ",
", are less expensive than just o... | [
"Super cool! I certainly did not imagine that this manner of obtaining gold would be cheaper than the cost of the gold itself, but it is a cool curiosity. Thanks!"
] | [
"Part of my doctoral research involved irradiating materials with mercury in them in a nuclear reactor. Some of the neutrons from the reactor were absorbed by the mercury isotope Hg-196 which turns it into Hg-197. This isotope radioactively decays into the stable gold isotope Au-197. Measuring the gamma rays from... |
[
"What exactly happens when someone is tickled? Do animals other than humans feel ticklish?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"I can't speak to the details of exactly what happens, but many other animals can be tickled. YouTube is full of baby animals being tickled, but here's a clip from a documentary which shows a bonobo laughing when it is tickled, in a way that pretty clearly mirrors a human response. Animals like rats also \"laugh\... | [
"Well, the feeling of being tickled starts with the nervous cell receptors in our skin and the relaying of that to the brain. In the processing of the feeling, certain autonomous reactions are initiated in the brain, then traveling back out through the nervous system, causing some reaction, for example, a muscle se... | [
"that was delightful, thank you"
] |
[
"What does it mean for two diamonds to become 'entangled' at a quantum scale?"
] | [
false
] | This is mostly a response to . I get the gist of how this works at the smallest scale, but what further implications might this have concerning the way we think about the universe? | [
"Normally, these entanglement effects are seen in systems that are cryogenically cooled. While these systems are important for studying the physics of entanglement and quantum information, they are terribly impractical for large-scale deployment in computing.",
"This work is relevant because it extends this work ... | [
"If you want a better picture of QM's implications, ",
"this",
" is as good as I've seen. It has quite a few profound implications, are there any in particular you are interested about?"
] | [
"It's important to note that it's not the two diamonds, macroscopic objects, which are entangled in that experiment. It's rather a phonon, or a single vibrational excitation of the diamond lattice which gets entangled with another. In that sense, it's not so incredibly different from experiments which have already ... |
[
"How does electromagnetic radiation interact with mirrors to cause it to reflect?"
] | [
false
] | So, I know that light reflects off of some surfaces, mirrors being particularly good at it. However I don't know exactly why it does so. I'm of an understanding that it is to do with the electrons being in the same energy states as those wavelengths of light that it reflects but I don't really get the whole picture. If... | [
"The incident wave causes the electrons in the silver to vibrate like in an antenna. Though by vibrating they also emit the same light. So it's the electrons at the surface of the silver that reflects the incoming wave. EM waves are part electric and part magnetic, but these cannot be taken apart they are each othe... | [
" If light didn't reflect off of most surfaces then there wouldn't be color, and we wouldn't be able to see. Light is more or less used to describe the range of waves that we can see in the electromagnetic spectrum. So all of the different colors have different wave lengths. A blue wall is blue because it absorbs e... | [
"More simply, there are two factors that will make a mirror perfect.",
"[1] Incidence deviation. If a mirror ",
" light then it is more and more difficult to see the original picture. Instead you just see the thing reflecting it. A perfect mirror reflect light at the exact incident angle, reverse along the surf... |
[
"Does water in motion inside a sealed environment emit light?"
] | [
false
] | If you have water inside a glass sphere i assume there would be some form of light emitted if the water is in motion, and higher speed, more light? Will it emit any light? | [
"Everything emits blackbody radiation, if that's what you're asking, which is a form of light. If it had a higher speed it would have more energy and thus radiate more. But I'm not sure if this is what you're really asking?"
] | [
"Apart from the \"mundane\" sources of light such as thermal radiation, you can have really bizarre effects like ",
"Sonoluminescence",
"."
] | [
"Thanks maybe a water body with enough motion will act as a light source"
] |
[
"Why do drug trials include placebos?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Taking a placebo has some effect. It could be due to the power of positive thinking. It could just be people reporting things differently. It doesn't matter. The point is that if one group is given a drug and the other is not, people will say the drug helped even if it does absolutely nothing. If you want to make ... | [
"In an ideal experiment, where you want to see if X does Y, you want to set up at least two groups. One group you give X to see if/how much Y happens, and the other group you want to keep as similar to the first as possible, except you don't give it X. This way, you can tell how much of Y is because of X, and not b... | [
"Protecting the drug, controlling release, holding the drug together to make it more amenable to swallowing, probably other reasons.",
"The point, however, was that that was just an example. Even with a IV administered drug, you need to have a control administration."
] |
[
"Why does Titan, Triton and Io have atmospheres when our Moon has little to none even though our Moon is made up from the same material as Earth (Thea impact)? Did the Moon once have an atmosphere like early Earth (a primordial like atmosphere like Titan)?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"The whole \"magnetospheres shield atmospheres\" thing is heavily overstated in layman literature. While somewhat true in the case of Mars, planetary escape velocity, exobase temperature, active tectonics, and atmospheric molecular weight are all more important mechanisms for atmospheric retention. Surprisingly, it... | [
"To expand point 2: These moons are much colder, which lowers the average energy of molecules, making it harder for them to escape."
] | [
"The reason Earth's moon has no atmosphere (or not much of one, as it technically does), is because of a few factors:",
"The reason the moons of Saturn and Jupiter have atmospheres (some of them, at least), is because of a few other reasons:"
] |
[
"Are the positions of protons as indeterminate as those of electrons?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"If we are talking about protons and electrons in matter, the proton has higher momentum and is confined to a much smaller region than the electron, so its position can be measured more accurately.",
"Protons aren't point objects, though, so defining its position (and size, for that matter) is a bit tricky. If yo... | [
"To give you some numbers, a proton has a size of approximately 1 fm = 10",
" m while an atom has a size of about 1Å = 10",
" m. In both cases, one should not think of hard spheres but of a roughly exponentially decaying wave function.",
"Free electrons, on the other hand, appear to be point particles (i.e. o... | [
"It depends, sometimes it refers to the expectation value...sometimes (especially when drawing the orbitals) it's used as a value where the probability of finding the electron is 90%",
"But be aware that these number just give you the order of magnitude."
] |
[
"They say that all blue eyed humans have a common ancestor 7-10 thousand years ago. What about blue eyed dogs, horses or other animals? Is the mutation similar in all species? What would cause such a similar mutation among such varied species?"
] | [
false
] | Looking at my blue eyed dog and wondering. | [
"Once you know what causes blue eyes, you'll see how it could be common.",
"Dark eye color comes from ",
"pigment in your iris",
".",
"However, blue eye color isn't from a blue pigment, rather it is the ",
" of pigment that results in blue eyes. ",
"Rayleigh scattering",
" of light as it enters the ey... | [
"Because the common ancestor study only looked at few of the blue eyed populations. "
] | [
"That makes sense. Thanks!"
] |
[
"If adrenaline is used to get us out of life-threatening situations, why do some enjoy it?"
] | [
false
] | So anyway, in prehistoric times, early humans would mostly use adrenaline to escape from, or hurt their attackers, right? Now, I'm not sure if the human body is programmed to adrenaline as such, I definitely know that the presence of adrenaline in the bloodstream provides a desirable buzz, i.e, when on a rollercoaster,... | [
"Basically, I was asking wouldn't evolution have 'devolved' the ability to enjoy adrenaline if it might have killed a lot of prehistoric dudes.",
"But I'm pretty sure you answered it correctly."
] | [
"Basically, I was asking wouldn't evolution have 'devolved' the ability to enjoy adrenaline if it might have killed a lot of prehistoric dudes.",
"But I'm pretty sure you answered it correctly."
] | [
"Yes, but these enjoyable endorphins would encourage prehistoric man to get into more fights, potentially endangering your life, no?"
] |
[
"Why is it that the same soda in a can, tastes different in a plastic bottle?"
] | [
false
] | Does it have to do with a chemical reation with the material its held in? | [
"I'd recommend an experiment: Pour soda from a can and soda from a plastic bottle into different glasses (or even better, have someone else do it; and use more than two glasses, labeled so you don't know which is which) and then try whether you can taste a difference.",
"I'm asking that because my hunch is that s... | [
"I'd also imagine that the sensory interaction between the smell of aluminum and your sense of taste makes your brain believe that it is a slightly different liquid you are drinking."
] | [
"Hot damn thats a good idea! Ill try it asap and report back."
] |
[
"If I drop dyes constant volume but at different concentrations in water, which one will diffuse faster and why?"
] | [
false
] | Seems to me that the one with the higher concentration will move faster but I'm still unsure | [
"The driving force for diffusion is a difference in concentration (a concentration gradient). All things being equal except for the concentration of the dye, the dye with the highest concentration will cause the highest concentration gradient, and as a result, exhibit the fastest rate of diffusion.",
"Fick's laws... | [
"So we can actually calculate this using Fick's Laws of Diffusion.\nWe're going to use the second law, but I'm going to use a numerical solution for slab volumes because I really don't want to solve ",
"this by hand",
":",
"Here is a numerical approximation for diffusion through a plane.",
"** t = 1/D * ... | [
"Density of the dye solution, this is because heavier molecules move slower. The higher concentration is likely a higher density so will diffuse faster."
] |
[
"Why don't we see a change in brightness as our pupil shrinks?"
] | [
false
] | I was looking at my eyes in the mirror today, and noticed something. I'm not vain, I was just observing how my pupil reacts to light :) Then I thought about it and realized that when, for example, I turn on a bright light, my pupil takes about 1 second to fully react. During that time, the brightness of the light falli... | [
"They shrink for us not to see the change in brightness. Our eyes are adapted to a certain dynamical range of brightness. If it gets lighter or darker, we wouldn't see good enough, so there must be a mechanism to change the amount of light that can enter our eyes. It is done with changing the size of entrance pupil... | [
"The neurons at your eyes and brain compensates for it. Like a camera, there is a range of lighting that you can see without discomfort. Your brain opens or closes your pupils in order to put your eyes somewhere in that range, making your retinas receive an acceptable quatity of light.",
"Also, there are some che... | [
"Think about walking outside from a dim room on a bright day, or vice-versa. Walking outside, you can't see for a few seconds because it's too bright. What's happening in your eye at this point is that the neurons are being \"flooded\" with too much light, and are all triggering at once. This can actually feel pain... |
[
"How does water fluoridation protect our teeth when it's highly diluted and much of it doesn't even touch our teeth at all? Is it at all harmful once ingested?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"From ",
"Wikipedia",
":",
"Fluoride's effects depend on the total daily intake of fluoride from all sources. About 70–90% of ingested fluoride is absorbed into the blood, where it distributes throughout the body. In infants 80–90% of absorbed fluoride is retained, with the rest excreted, mostly via urine; in... | [
"I read somewhere that fluoridated water was used in Nazi camps to make the prisoners more complacent. Is there any science showing that it does or doesn't have such an effect? (Also, does anyone know if they actually did that?)"
] | [
"Do you mean ",
"-industrialized countries, with respect to swallowing toothpaste? In either case, do you have any source for that.",
"For what it's worth, toothpaste packages are quite clear that you are not to swallow it at all. The warning typically refers you to contact a poison control center if you swal... |
[
"If you go colorblind later in life, are you still able to recall the color you can no longer see?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"While \"The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat\" is a great book, Sacks also wrote some other, perhaps more relevant books:",
"The Island of the Colorblind (which I've never read); and\nAn Anthropologist on Mars (which contains The Case of the Colourblind Painter, where an artist loses all perception of colour i... | [
"It depends on what caused your colorblindness, what part of the brain has been damaged and how badly. A few weeks back I was reading some cases by Oliver Sacks about colorblindness and it's explained really well. I'd try to summarise it, but you're definitely better off reading his books, particularly The Man Who ... | [
"Yeah I've read An Anthropologist on Mars, too. I read them quite close together so I may be confusing which one has the more blindness-based cases. If the colorblind painter one is in Anthropologist, then that may be the one I'm thinking of. "
] |
[
"How does day/night work on Europa?"
] | [
false
] | I understand that a year/day on Europa is 3.5 days (or 85 hours). Does this mean that there are 3 Earth days of Sun and 3 Earth days of Night on Europa? | [
"Based on your numbers, nearly. A planet or moon that rotates slower than the Earth will have hte sun move more slowly through the sky. So a 3.5 earth day long day on Europa would mean from dawn to the next dawn takes 85 hours. So 1.75ish day long \"day\" and a 1.75ish day long \"Night\"."
] | [
"Cool! Thanks! Now I can finally keep track of days on earth! (Jk, just humor me)"
] | [
"The 3.5 days are a full revolution, so half of that is day, half of that is night. The axial tilt is tiny, so you have 50% sunlight and 50% no sunlight nearly everywhere on Europa.",
"One side is always seeing Jupiter: If it's night there, you see the sunlit side of Jupiter, so it never gets completely dark ther... |
[
"Could you fill a party balloon with a mix of helium and regular air that causes the balloon to be suspended in midair when you let go of it?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"You can make a balloon neutrally buoyant, but it's a pretty fine balance to achieve. You don't need a helium-air mixture, you just need to put exactly the right amount of helium in the balloon to counteract it's weight.",
"Or, as I did as a kid, attach legos to the string of a fully inflated balloon until the w... | [
"Paperclips where much easier. "
] | [
"Yes, such a ratio is possible, but no, it isn't like being suspended in space. Helium balloons float because of buoyancy, while things in space \"float\" because of either a lack of significant forces, or because they are in perpetual free fall around another body (orbit). "
] |
[
"Are some existing ecosystems more valuable to human survival than others ?"
] | [
false
] | Is it even possible to determine the value of an ecosystem ? If yes, can this value be determined relative to human life (e.g. ) ? If some ecosystems are more valuable than others for human survival, could we identify those valuable ecosystems and artificially maintain/manage them (e.g. with ecological engineering) ? | [
"I would think the problem with making a judgement like this would be that you'd have to understand the whole interconnected web of species relationships to be able to say what and how much benefit we receive from them.",
"I would venture to guess that one useful measure of the value of an ecosystem is the amount... | [
"Increasingly we've found that ecosystems are interconnected. So altering the arctic ecosystem, for example, has effects on animal migrations, which has an effect on ecosystems on the other end of those migration patterns, etc...",
"So it's really hard to untangle ecosystems and point to any single system being u... | [
"In the context of preserving biodiversity, is the idea of selecting more \"essential components\" (i.e. ecosystems, species, etc.) to human life is even a possibility ? Or are the ecological interactions necessary for sustaining current level of biodiversity are so complex that it force an \"all or nothing\" appro... |
[
"Do we actually know the charge of quarks, or do we just infer them because of how they form to make protons and neutrons?"
] | [
false
] | I have read that up quarks have a +2/3 charge and down quarks have a -1/3 charge. Do we actually know that they have these charges, or are they inferred because we know that a proton is made of 2 up quarks and 1 down quark and a neutron of 1 up and 2 down? | [
"If you go to a high enough energy, the scattering behaviour of a point particle (fundamental) is different from an extended, compound particle. If you go to even higher energies, a compound particle should break up (\"inelastic scattering\").",
"At all energies we've probed (many times greater than those where a... | [
"We know their charges. Through a process called deep inelastic scattering, which involves very high energy particle collisions, we can proble the internal structure of particles and measure the properties of their constituents, and in this way, measure the charges of quarks."
] | [
"We have no evidence that electrons or quarks have substructure, but that does not mean it's impossible. What we can say is that down to distance scales of around 10",
" meters, there is no evidence of substructure and it's legitimate to treat these as point particles. As we probe shorter distances, we will fin... |
[
"What is the mechanism for alcohol dependence?"
] | [
false
] | It seems like alcohol (along with opiates) are rare in that withdrawal can actually cause harm, like seizures or even death. From what I understand, things like nicotine or cocaine, or caffeine; while not being pleasant aren't going to physically cause you harm if you go cold turkey in basically any case. My friends a... | [
"Opioids are one of the safest drug classes when it comes to withdrawal. While withdrawal can be mentally and physically unpleasant, it is not considered unsafe and going cold turkey with just supportive care (i.e. treating symptoms not underlying cause) is almost always a valid option (the notable contraindicati... | [
"Alcohol is incredibly broad spectrum as a drug. Its primary targets include the following signaling modalities: NMDA, GABA(sub A) , glycine, 5-hydroxytryptamine(sub 3) (serotonin) and nicotinic ACh receptors as well as L-type Ca2+ channels and G-protein-activated inwardly rectifying K+ channels.",
"Once alcohol ... | [
"This is an excellent science-y explanation of alcohol addiction. Perhaps I can give a more lay-friendly version. ",
"Alcohol is a messy drug in that it interacts with multiple systems in the brain. However, like all drugs of abuse, its addictive properties ultimately stem from forcing your brain from goal-direct... |
[
"Can humans \"sense\" testosterone/estrogen release from the opposite gender?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Yes using brain imaging, Swedish researchers have found evidence that men and women can in fact send and receive subconscious odor signals. And, that men and women respond to the smells differently.",
"Source ",
"http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=116833&page=1"
] | [
"Has there ever been a study that looks at men's sex drive while their partner is ovulating? I swear to good I can count the days till my wife has her period, based on my desire to 'get all up in that', as it were."
] | [
"Although whether or not this causes any physiological effects like pheromones do is debated. Because our branch of primates lack the vomeronasal organ, we probably don't respond to pheromones. "
] |
[
"Why can't many people stand the sound of fingernails scratching a blackboard?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"There are two hypotheses for this phenomenon: the first being that the sound mimics the warning call of primates. The second being that the human ear has evolved over time to amplify certain frequencies (2000-4000 Hz) and the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard falls within this range of frequencies and is amplif... | [
"Follow up: you already mention the sound of styrofoam having a similar effect on people. I recently spoke to someone who shivers at the sound of snow crunching underneath her feet. Would this be related in a similar way to the blackboard or styrofoam, or would it be more of a question of negative associations?"
] | [
"I can't say for certain that's the reason, but it is probably related. Just like all things, every individual has personal preference and your friend may just dislike the sound for an unrelated reason. I don't know whether the sound of snow crunching falls within the range of 2000-4000 Hz, but that's definitely so... |
[
"Is there a way to trigger adrenaline on command?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Well, daily stress (from work or whatnot) alone can trigger the \"fight or flight\" response, which delivers adrenaline to your blood."
] | [
"No, because, it is absorbed into your blood stream, and used as soon as it is released"
] | [
"Is there a way to accumulate that and store it, then use it when ever?"
] |
[
"How do you program a quantum computer?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"All the videos say is that things will go a lot faster since you can compute everything at the same time. Sure, that might be true, but the computation will be worthless if you can’t present the result in an understandable way, and it will be even more worthless if it isn’t even the answer to the question you aske... | [
"So it is possible to make a quantum computer behave as a classical computer on a atomic scale? Or will it be slower? I understand that it wont solve problems much faster, only interested in if we can continue to shrink transistors and fit more in a chip."
] | [
"Hello there. Not really an authority on this topic, just pointing out that there's a programming language being developed called 'QCL', or quantum computing language. It's being designed to simulate quantum bits (qubits) and how they would behave in a normal quantum computer. Thing is, they take up a massive amoun... |
[
"How is a measured physical quantity converted to a value on a computer?"
] | [
false
] | Bit of an ambiguous question so here is an example: A thermometer takes a reading of outdoor air temperature. This value is needed for some calculation on a computer or maybe to create a graph of average temperature for the month. How does this transfer happen? A more general example would be some sensor that records t... | [
"A transducer -",
"\n{from wikipedia}",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transducer",
"\nA transducer is a device that converts energy from one form to another. Usually a transducer converts a signal in one form of energy to a signal in another.",
"Transducers are often employed at the boundaries of automatio... | [
"Yes a transducer or better yet a sensor. But you also need an analog to digital converter. The converter samples the variable, digitises it and transmits it to the computer. "
] | [
"There's a whole chain of things going on here, for example in a project I'm working on now we have:"
] |
[
"Why do muffled sounds sound different than just a sound that is soft?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Yes.",
"Non-technical version: Imagine a photograph of a forest. You can pick out leaves, trees, animals, the sun, clouds. Now blur it a little, blur it more. The more your blur it, the harder it is to pick out individual objects in the picture. This blurring is a lot like what happens when you muffle sounds... | [
"Lower frequencies tend to travel through objects better than higher frequencies at the same amplitude. (higher frequencies vibrate the molecules faster, thus taking more energy to travel through materials) So the overall sound you get on the other side is distorted, depending on the material, dimensions and dens... | [
"I'm gonna assume that you know some basics about waves. Let me know if you do need those broken down for you.",
"A soft sound simply means a lower amplitude.",
"A muffled sound is one that has passed through some obstacle which distorted its waveform. Parts of the wave have refracted around and reflected off t... |
[
"How do scientists know that 1 Billion crab went missing ?"
] | [
false
] | If they are tracking them that accurately it seems like fishing then would be pretty easy, if they’re trying to trap them and just not finding any it could just be bad luck. Canceling the crab season is a big deal so they must know this with some certainty. What methods do they use to get this information? | [
"There are a lot of ways you can estimate the population of a species. In fisheries we usually do surveys exactly the same way every year to get a general idea of the population size and trends, and mark recapture studies. If you tag 100 Cod and then next year you catch 100 Cod and three are tagged, that would sugg... | [
"Fisheries scientist cosigning. They may also track how many teeny tiny baby crabs they find in plankton, which is one predictor of how many bigger ones there will be later in the year (we do this for fish, assuming it's possible for crabs too).",
"Probably they use this kind of information, plus climate predicti... | [
"I’m a science teacher in Norway, and my school had a project where we helped marinebiologists counting crabs. We caught aproximatly 100 crabs in an area, marked them with a small mark of pink nail polish, and released them. Then some weeks later we caught another 100 crabs, and counted how many was marked. If 10/1... |
[
"Physiologically speaking, how does age effect the speed at which the body repairs injuries?"
] | [
false
] | As a follow up what age does recovery speed become noticeably different and why does it occur at that age? | [
"Senescence research isn't my forte, but I do a bit of work with stem cells, and I've come across some reviews and articles which seem to suggest part of senescence (the scientific term for biological aging) is due to an increasing lack of regenerative ability of resident stem cells as we age. ",
"Here",
" is ... | [
"Aging can be hard to define in science because you need to have proof of anything you say, while aging really is a change in the entire body. At the simplest level, aging can be seen as the slowing to cellular reproduction, meaning that aging slows repair because the rate of new cell production decreases. As far a... | [
"I guess I am thinking about athletes. Whenever an older player gets injured,there is always mention that his recovery time is slower because of his advanced age. Is there any scientific evidence to support this claim?"
] |
[
"Is the element at 118 on the periodic table the last element that can possibly exist, or is it feasible that elements higher than that could exist with more protons in the nucleus, or electron orbitals higher than 7p, etc?"
] | [
false
] | Just played around with an online tool that showed electron spins in the various orbitals for each element on the periodic table. It got me thinking why does the orbital stop at 7p - could a 7d+ exist? Why or why not? | [
"Wow great read. Thanks for the info "
] | [
"Interesting. So assuming these elements could last longer - we could have materials that enhance certain metals or that the materials themselves would have properties that can change their magnetic/conductive properties?"
] | [
"Interesting. So assuming these elements could last longer - we could have materials that enhance certain metals or that the materials themselves would have properties that can change their magnetic/conductive properties?"
] |
[
"Is it possible to induce (through planted explosives, artificial sealing of fissures, etc) a volcanic winter in a last-ditch effort to reverse climate change?"
] | [
false
] | I know nothing about geology, tectonics, etc, so any information is appreciated. The reason I ask is because I was reading about the Toba Catastrophe Theory. Since it looks like the Earth is going to hurtle past the point of no return at some time with regards to the melting of polar ice and inability to photosynthesis... | [
"There are multiple geo-engineering tactics that 'could' be used, including seeding the atmosphere to cause lower temperatures. However, most view this as a bad thing, because of possible cascading effects that we might not have foreseen. For example, CO2's threat isn't from the CO2, but the fact that the small tem... | [
"Since it looks like the Earth is going to hurtle past the point of no return",
"This would be true at ",
" level of technolgy. In 2060 they will not be using the technology of 2011 to fight global warming they will have 5 additional decades of innovation to use. To put it in perspective imagine trying to comba... | [
"Indeed. Geo-engineering can control the temperature, but it is another kind of climate change and not a reversal."
] |
[
"Does an extremely fast orbital period have any practical repercussions for activity on the planet's surface?"
] | [
false
] | This question is inspired by . One planet has an orbital period of 27,000 years, and the other has an orbital period of just 11 hours! An 11-hour year seems incredibly fast. My question is whether such an immense speed affects what happens on the planet's surface. I'm wondering particularly about whether meteors a... | [
"If the planet has an 11 hour ",
" (compare to 88 ",
" for Mercury and 225 for Venus), it's very ",
" close to its star. There's most likely little to no atmosphere left, but despite that the planet should be ",
" hot on the side that faces the star (assuming it's tidally locked). "
] | [
"If the planet has an 11 hour ",
" (compare to 88 ",
" for Mercury and 225 for Venus), it's very ",
" close to its star. There's most likely little to no atmosphere left, but despite that the planet should be ",
" hot on the side that faces the star (assuming it's tidally locked). "
] | [
"The 11 hour orbital period implies that the planet is very close to its sun. So even if the star is a red dwarf, the planet will be very hot, and probably tidally locked to its orbital period. It will have one hot hemisphere and one cold hemisphere."
] |
[
"Why do things like ice cream get harder the colder they are, but water is either frozen solid or liquid?"
] | [
false
] | I have two freezers at home. One is slightly colder. If I put ice cream in the slightly colder one, it ends up being harder and more difficult to eat. If I put water in either of the freezers,it ends up being frozen solid either way. | [
"Because ice-cream is an emulsion of water and grease with a lot of air mixed in. So it's ingredients have different temperatures at which they turn from liquid to solid.",
"Every material that is more or less pure goes from liquid to solid at one specific temperature and doesn't get more solid if you cool it fur... | [
"Ice does get harder as it gets colder.",
"It has long been known that ice is subject to great varieties of hardness according to temperature. According to observations recorded by Carl Teichert in 1939, the hardness of ice increases from about 2 (on the Mohrs scale) or less at temperatures near freezing-point, t... | [
"Assuming constant pressure right?"
] |
[
"Why do we use steel from ships made before 1945 atomic bombings for radiological instruments? Is it just cheaper or are we totally unable to purify steel with today's processes?"
] | [
false
] | Why do we use steel from ships made before the 1945 atomic bombings for radiological instruments? Is it just cheaper or are we totally unable to purify steel with today's processes? | [
"Once it's in there there's really no simple way to get it out, also steel production uses a lot of air, filtering that air to remove the contaminants would be tricky to do and expensive.",
"These days the electronics used are sophisticated enough that we can compensate for the background radiation in most cases ... | [
"The story about how this was discovered is well documented. The government tried to build a lab and could not get the base numbers for background radiation. It caused a rift in the scientific community for a while. Many scientists didn’t believe it. In the end, it was discovered that all steel since the 40s is sli... | [
"It's less like a scale constantly reading 5 pounds heavy and more like a microphone that has a tiny speaker in it constantly playing static. Trying to use that microphone to record sound quieter than the static is basically impossible."
] |
[
"How does water affect the resonant frequency of a glass?"
] | [
false
] | For example the glasses in video. I know the original resonant frequencies of the glasses are dependent on their size, but how does water change that? | [
"The water damps and slows the vibration and makes the resonant frequency lower. Note that this is because it's the glass that's vibrating, if it were air in a bottle then more water would raise the frequency."
] | [
"That makes sense. Thanks! Do you know why the pitch modulates if the water is swirled around? It seems that with the same amount of water the pitch shouldn't change."
] | [
"If you swirl it so more water touches the inside of the glass, it will probably lower the pitch still."
] |
[
"What other shapes fit perfectly together in groups like the simple squares and the hexagons (honeycomb pattern) do?"
] | [
false
] | Are there more shapes like this? I'm asking this because I finally got into Civilization V, after insisting to myself that the squares of earlier Civs where much better (spoiler alert: They aren't). I am a game designer myself and I'm always thinking of different shapes for board games, but I can't think of anything re... | [
"The interior angles of a polygon will add to 180*(N-2), where N is the number of sides. So in a regular polygon, in which all angles are equal, each angle will be: 180(N-2)/N.",
"Now you want a number of regular polygons to \"fit together\" in the plane; this requires that some integer multiple of that interior... | [
"You can also do it with arrows, like this: ",
"https://m2.behance.net/rendition/pm/12351777/disp/04b839cf51bfef611d1fd1dde7ce2dcb.png"
] | [
"http://www.theguardian.com/science/alexs-adventures-in-numberland/2015/aug/10/attack-on-the-pentagon-results-in-discovery-of-new-mathematical-tile"
] |
[
"[Physics] What is the ear pounding warbling effect that occurs when driving in a 4D sedan with only the back windows halfway down (at 45mph or above)?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"What's happening is that the incoming air has no where to escape to, so it is forced back through window it came through. Since there is still air attempting to get into the window, the air trying to escape won't get out until the pressure in the car overcomes the pressure of the air attempting to enter. At a cert... | [
"Why doesn't it do this when you only roll the front windows down? I think it must have something to do with the volume of air building in the front part of the car like a bladder and a hot water tank. When you have the fronts down, it is more of a jitter sound than pounding sound. "
] | [
"The front windows usually have a low pressure zone around the front of the window where the mirror blocks the wind. Air can escape constantly through this hole of sorts and this the main flow doesn't ever hit the back pressure needed to stop it. Technically it could happen at the front windows if there was a breez... |
[
"Is it theoretically possible to make a meaningful genetic alteration to a fetus more than a few days after conception?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Gene therapy has been performed for years, so it's not a thing in the future. It's current.",
"Often, there is not specific viral DNA or RNA (in the case of retroviruses) that leads to cell death. It is more often a response of the infected cells, over-replication of the virus that bursts the cell, or an immune ... | [
"In ultra-super-simplifying layman terms, gene theraphy is looking like it will be a thing in the future. You basically pick a virus, remove the part on its DNA/RNA that causes cell death or allows it to hide in your cells (like AIDS does, for example) and put instead the \"healthy\" genetic code there, so instead ... | [
"Gene therapy via viral vectors can be performed using a virus that targets the cells intended to undergo therapy, so actually, the latter option that you mention, \"make alterations to the DNA of a smaller set of cells that would use the targeted area of DNA to function,\" is feasible.",
"I think the larger obst... |
[
"Dear /r/askscience, how would a baby growing up in space differ from us?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Being in low gravity environments like orbit causes humans to lose muscle (and bone?) mass. The baby born in space would be much weaker and would probably not be able to safely go to Earth's surface and walk around."
] | [
"Aging has nothing to do with how we percieve time. It has to do with DNA replication limits based on the amount of ",
"Telomerase",
" is present on the ends of our DNA. So even if we think time is moving faster, we still can't change the rate at which DNA needs to replicate to keep our body functioning. ",
"... | [
"Except for melatonin and circadian rhythms which sets our biological clock to an approximate 25 hour/day cycle. Unless space somehow changed our pituitary gland..."
] |
[
"Many animals (rats, possums, bats, etc.) carry diseases harmful to humans. Do humans carry any diseases harmful to animals?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Yes! It’s called reverse zoonosis. While diphtheria is potential fatal to humans, it causes harmless ulcers on cattle. Other human infections such as hepatitis and influenza is transmitted via human contact in farms, zoos or even through veterinary surgeries."
] | [
"Humans don't get the canine form of the flu virus, but ",
"dogs ",
" get flu from humans",
"!"
] | [
"If a groundhog is exposed to human hepatitis B it will always develop liver cancer, so they're used in studying the virus as well as liver cancer. ",
"https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/thoughtful-animal/eight-things-you-didnt-know-about-groundhogs/",
"Groundhogs happen to be a good animal model for the stu... |
[
"What would happen if a spoonful of White Dwarf matter collided with the Earth?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"The issue is that white dwarf matter is only dense because of the intense gravity. As soon as you try to remove it from the white dwarf, the immense pressure will cause it to blow itself apart. So you can't really take a spoonful of it and throw it at the Earth.",
"But in general, if you throw something very den... | [
"Plus, it would probably break the spoon."
] | [
"Well, if you asked \"what happens if you throw the Earth at a white dwarf\" then that's something I could answer.",
"The answer is boom."
] |
[
"Question about time travel and perspective."
] | [
false
] | So it is a fact that astronauts are currently traveling in time right now as we speak: . So I am curious as to what this means by he aged .02 of a second less than everyone else on earth. Does this just mean his eternal body clock is .02 seconds slower than everyone else? Or does this mean he has traveled in to a new d... | [
"What they mean is that if Sergei had a perfect clone on earth that stayed behind he would come back 0.02 seconds younger. Or, it he had synchronized two identical clocks before leaving, the one he took with him would read 0.02 seconds earlier than the one that stayed behind.",
"It says nothing about alternate di... | [
"It means he has experienced 0.02 seconds less than everybody on Earth. Imagine you have a clock that ticks once per second (i.e., a normal clock). Avdeyev brings it with him, and while they're in space the clock ticks slightly slower. When he brings it back the clock is now behind by 0.02 seconds because it was ti... | [
"His body has aged .02 seconds less."
] |
[
"Regarding the recent massive black hole discovery, couldn't it just be an extremely old black hole in a formerly massive galaxy?"
] | [
false
] | This might be a dumb question as I'm not a physicist and I just enjoy reading about science, but does it not fit with our current models that this could simply be a very very old black hole that has engulfed most of its massive galaxy? Or am I misunderstanding and is that what they're trying to suggest? | [
"Black holes aren't cosmic vacuum cleaners - matter is whizzing around, and has to lose quite a lot of energy to fall in. And when I say quite a lot, I mean ~10% of the rest mass-energy! That energy gets radiated away from the accretion disk and blasts the surrounding galaxy, preventing star formation. The natural ... | [
"What about two galaxies rotating in opposite directions colliding perfectly along their axis of rotation (e.g. like two pancakes coming together but spinning in opposite directions). Would this cause enough disruption or loss of energy to cause much of the matter to slow down enough to fall inward?"
] | [
"I think this is because there is a hypothetical limit for how much matter a black hole can consume in a given time. The reasoning for this is due to the amount of energy that's radiated away from the black hole by in-falling matter pushing away the black hole's future meal. "
] |
[
"Trying to get a foot in the door of a career in neuro- interface technology. Maybe Prosthesis? (Without losing an arm and a leg)"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"There are a lot of folks working on that. The most advanced stuff is with lab animals (since they can be \"destroyed\" after...; that's why I don't do \"wet neuroscience). Look into the field of Brain-Computer Interfaces, but don't have too high of hopes!"
] | [
"Interfacing with the brain is more sci-fi than is believed.",
"The best \"interfaces to the brain\" are current technologies like EEG, fMRI, PET/SPECT and a bunch of others used in research. There are implants, but the problem with implants (i.e., electrodes in the brain) is that can be quickly rejected. The bod... | [
"I am interested in intrusive implants (not sure how much I am in the surgery; that's what, 14 years of school before I can personally crack open a skull?), but I guess more specifically I could say I'm interested in the nervous system as a whole, and how to interface with it in a way for mechanical or digital purp... |
[
"Because anti-depressants have shown to increase dendritic branching in depressed patients, is it possible to take anti-depressents and receive benefit from them even if a patient isn't depressed?"
] | [
false
] | (Duman et al. 2011). (Duman et al. 2010). (Jacobs et al. 2000). (Jacobs et al. 2000). (Jacobs et al. 2000). For the record, , whatever that even means at the molecular level. I'm asking if the general class of that cause a growth in dendritic spines in individuals that are not diagnosed with depression. Also, I should ... | [
"the mechanisms underlying neuronal functioning and morphology which the drug acts on would be pretty consistent.",
"Neurons work under the same principles, no doubt, but drug effectiveness depends critically on receptor expression which can be surprisingly different. For instance, a couple of months ago a projec... | [
"I think your first point is the most valid, but the second and third may not hold too much weight. While things may not carry over identically, the mechanisms underlying neuronal functioning and morphology which the drug acts on would be pretty consistent. Also, if 'depressed' control rats exhibit spine density/br... | [
"I think your first point is the most valid, but the second and third may not hold too much weight. While things may not carry over identically, the mechanisms underlying neuronal functioning and morphology which the drug acts on would be pretty consistent. Also, if 'depressed' control rats exhibit spine density/br... |
[
"How did the sand in the desert come to be?"
] | [
false
] | You usually hear sand being formed by the waves of the ocean repeatedly hitting the rock, but how did the sand in deserts exist? | [
"Searched",
"Relevant ",
"discussion",
"Original question by ",
"randy9876",
"Where did the massive amount of the sand that forms the Sahara Desert come from?",
"Top comment courtesy ",
"jomisebo",
"The sand is primarily derived from weathering of Cretaceous sandstones in North Africa. When these sa... | [
"Is there a FAQ for this bot? From the search terms it generates, it looks like it's partially curated by a human to input the search term, and then the rest of the output is automated."
] | [
"Basically, the sand starts off as a rock, and is weathered down to create sand. This weathering process can occur in lots of different ways, but in the desert the most prevalent is via wind erosion, where a rock will be kind of sand blasted, and small pieces of it will break off, creating sand. Obviously this proc... |
[
"Is there any way to \"see\" a black hole?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"You can also detect a black hole by noticing light from a star being lensed as the black hole passes between the star and the observer."
] | [
"You can also detect a black hole by noticing light from a star being lensed as the black hole passes between the star and the observer."
] | [
"Here is what gravitational lensing looks like",
"http://www.space.com/14481-hubble-photo-brightest-galaxy-gravitational-lens.html"
] |
[
"Why can humans build up a tolerance to certain compounds (benzos, alcohol, opiates, etc.) but not others such as acetaminophen or ibuprofen?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"This sort of thing happens all the time by accident, or trial and error.",
"For example: we have a very poor understanding of a lot of drugs related to mental health (e.g. lithium for bipolar, SSRIs for depression), we just know that they seem to work in some cases.",
"Another one: Viagra was originally intend... | [
"Tolerance requires there to be an interaction with the body instead of the thing causing the pain. Opiates interact with receptors in the body where acetaminophen (one hypothesis, since exact mode of action is unknown) is thought to work by inhibiting the production of prostaglandins (responsible for inflammation... | [
"Another one: what is now known as the birth control pill was originally prescribed to alleviate PMS symptoms.",
"Again, turns out there was a side effect."
] |
[
"Why are male mammals' testicles so exposed?"
] | [
true
] | null | [
"Sperm production is most efficient at a certain temperature, and having external testicles and a scrotum that can adjust their proximity to the body allow for temperature regulation and optimal sperm production."
] | [
"This was my first thought too. Is there a scientific reason as to why sperm operates at a temperature other than 98.7 (in a human's case)? "
] | [
"Nearly Everything your cells do is regulated by protein based chemicals called enzymes; there are many different kinds, each with its own job or set of jobs. They are able to do those jobs because of their shapes. Changes in temperature can change the shape of the enzyme, making it less efficient or completely i... |
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