title list | over_18 list | post_content stringlengths 0 9.37k ⌀ | C1 list | C2 list | C3 list |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
[
"Has there ever been a lifelong case of anterograde amnesia?"
] | [
false
] | Has there ever been an instance of someone never developing the ability to form memories, either due to the necessary parts of the brain not developing or an amnesia-causing event? | [
"kind of, Henry Gustav Molaison had seizures and in an attempt to treat them, they removed the middle part of both temporal lobes of the brain. This was the first time both sides had been removed and so was an important person in the study of memory as after the surgery, he could no longer form new memories.\nThoug... | [
"There are a few cases of individuals who lost the ability to form new memories as a result of disease, injury or intervention.",
"H.M. is the case that comes to mind for most people. H.M. suffered from epilepsy that was not otherwise treatable. In an attempt to control the seizures he underwent surgery that remo... | [
"Two other commenters have already mentioned Henry Molaison, or H.M. I just wanted to link to ",
"this interview",
" with one of the researchers who worked with him over many decades, because I found it fascinating and a pretty wonderful read."
] |
[
"Why don't plants in cold climates have black leaves?"
] | [
false
] | I read about this in a article by Freeman Dyson, where he reasoned that it makes sense for plants in warm climates to absorb only a small fraction of sunlight so that they wouldn't overheat. But in colder climates, plants are still green. Wouldn't it make sense for them to be darker? Why aren't they? | [
"The plant isn't green because it absorbs light, the chlorophyll reflects green light and absorbs other wavelengths.",
"If it was black it would be because it was absorbing as much light as it was presented with, rather than it being beneficial to be black. The green would theoretically be absorbed by this chloro... | [
"Chlorophyll is green. That's why plants are the colour they are.",
"How would you suggest that the plants be coloured black? With pigment? That would keep some light from participating in photosynthesis, which would be a bad thing.",
"I've heard it said that modern plants use chlorophyll because, in the past, ... | [
"Since then, those other, non-chlorophyll plants have died out.",
"That is incorrect. ",
"Indian Pipe",
" has no chlorophyll and does in fact still exist."
] |
[
"If I were to sleepwalk to an unknown location, would the information of how I got there still be stored in my brain?"
] | [
false
] | In other words, if I traveled to a place I had never been before in my life while sleepwalking, would my journey be recorded in my subconscious? If so, how in depth would the information be? Could this knowledge in any way be used to backtrack my steps and return to where I was before? | [
"The OP's question is definitely a good one, but I think tsjb above was instead responding to a joke comment that has since been removed."
] | [
"The OP's question is definitely a good one, but I think tsjb above was instead responding to a joke comment that has since been removed."
] | [
"Hmm, it's hard to say because so much of this hinges on semantics. ",
"I think the critical distinction is between the \"unconscious\" and the \"subconscious.\" These are ideas which are similar on the surface (both refer to the stuff your brain does that you're not explicitly aware of), but the diverge in an i... |
[
"What happens bichemically when you build a tolerance to a drug?"
] | [
false
] | If the answer varies greatly from one drug to another, I would like an opiate specific explanation, if possible. I wouldn't think that receptor binding is diminished, so the response post-binding would presumably be the cause of the changes one feels. I could definitely be wrong about this, though. But, ultimately, ch... | [
"In the case of opioids, receptor density is a big part. Opioid receptors are of a subtype called G-Protein Coupled Receptors (GPCR) which are notoriously fast at desensitizing. When the cell senses that a GPCR is being over stimulated, the cell will internalize the receptor and either recycle it or destroy it. The... | [
"Yes! Although I don't believe olfactory neurons remove their GPCRs. Internal mechanisms activate molecules like calmodulin-dependent kinase II and phosphodiesterase upon repeated or continuous application of a stimulus, which prevent the olfactory neuron from depolarizing."
] | [
"Orly? Well damn, my pharmacology prof apparently made a bad generalization when he was describing GPCRs. Thanks for the insight!"
] |
[
"Why did the Apollo missions take 3D photographs on the moon?"
] | [
false
] | What's the scientific advantage? | [
"Well, for one, a 3D photograph shows more of what something would've looked like had you been standing there looking at it much better than a 2D photograph. Some things, like the distance between two objects in a picture, the position of objects, the thickness and depth, etc, are just more pronounced and much more... | [
"Specifically, if you know about the lenses (angle of view), and the distance/angle between the two cameras, you can use triangulation to calculate how far away a point is from camera (and by extension, the distance between two points - allowing you to, say, measure the size of a rock etc)",
"The Triangulation (c... | [
"You can generate stereo-imagery from a single \"light-field camera\" capture, no need for multiple lenses.",
"It's based on the exact same method you use for adjusting focus - basically one set of the micro-lenses see an image as-if you moved the camera left (moved left the radius of the lens), and you can gener... |
[
"We are told that if you travel near c, time slows down. But relativity tells us that in your frame of reference, it is the Earth that would be travelling near c, so in your frame of reference, earth's time should be slowing down?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"What you said is correct. Both observers see each others' clocks ticking slow."
] | [
"But let's say you return to Earth. Will you have aged at the same rate as everyone else?"
] | [
"If you return to Earth, you break the symmetry. Because you have to change inertial frames in order to turn around and come back. So at the end of it, you will have aged much less than the people on Earth."
] |
[
"Can a black hole exert an electrical force?"
] | [
false
] | If you say bombarded a black hole with an electron gun, and gave it a large negative charge, would the black hole then exert an electrical field on the surroundings, or would the electrical field somehow be negated by the immense gravity? | [
"Yes you can have ",
"charged black holes",
"."
] | [
"Could the electric charge do work e.g. transmit electricity to a nearby object"
] | [
"It works like any other electric charge. For example, black holes with large net charge are expected to repel particles with the same charge and attract particles with different charge so they effectively radiate the charge away."
] |
[
"Why do I wake up 5-10 minutes before my alarm?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"I'd be interested to know why I feel very awake if I wake up too early, but cannot drag myself out of bed if the alarm clock wakes me."
] | [
"Likely circadian rhythms, as posted above. When you are waking up \"Too early,\" you're between sleep cycles. But when your alarm is waking you up, you're smack in the middle of a cycle, so you're still dead tired. ",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_rhythm"
] | [
"For people who want to time things correctly... ",
"sleepyti.me",
" :)"
] |
[
"Events in space seem to happen very slowly due to the scale of things. Are there any massive atomic reactions or events that happen 'quickly' (relative to the human perception of time)?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Supernovae come to mind (",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova",
" - essentially giant to supergiant red stars exploding after having exhausted their fuel supply), they occur suddenly and evolve over a course of weeks to months."
] | [
"Supernovae are crazy - for core collapse SNe, the core will have collapsed into a neutron star/black hole before the outer layers of the star even know something's happening."
] | [
"Core collapse can reach 25% c , which should be fast enough for anyone to notice. Safely, thousands of years later, from a long way off. "
] |
[
"Have we ever observed a star going supernova? (or undergoing any other transformation)"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Here is a timelapse of the 1987 supernova"
] | [
"The answer is yes, but they tend to be rather far away (possibly healthier for us), occasionally we have even seen one nearby in the form of the ",
"Crab supernova",
" in 1054 which was visible to the naked eye. This is very unusual.",
"Here",
" is a list of candidates that may go at any time (or may have... | [
"yes:",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SN_2011fe"
] |
[
"Does irregular positioning of ears affect the ability to perceive its location?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"Yes. Ears are also slightly rotated up and down in different directions which can help a bit in determining whether a sound is coming from above or below. Different heights would help with this as well. "
] | [
"Here's an extreme example of asymmetry in an owl skull:",
"http://imgur.com/RcSmjjN"
] | [
"Some owls",
" have very ",
"asymmetric ears",
" for this purpose."
] |
[
"I brushed my teeth with benzoyl peroxid. How fucked am I ? (Pic in post)"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Tu peux appeler le 112 pour toutes urgences ou contacter le centre anti-poison le plus proche de chez toi ",
"(lien)"
] | [
"Please contact a poison control center.",
"Here is the poison control center in the US: ",
"http://www.aapcc.org/",
"If you're not in the US, Google should show you a poison control center based on your area: ",
"https://www.google.com/search?q=poison+control"
] | [
"I'm not sure if we have that in France. I think i'll call 15 (it's like 911) just to ask them what they think"
] |
[
"How is it that people date celestial objects? Is the method considered reliable and accurate?"
] | [
false
] | was recently posted in the science subreddit, and it brought to mind a question. How is it that scientists come to calculating the age of galaxies and other celestial objects? Obviously it's not the same process as dating something that we can pick up here on Earth, where we can use its composition and known decay rate... | [
"From the errors given in the original paper mentioned in your link, the precision on the lookback time is roughly 2% - so the galaxy in question could be 10.9 to 10.5 billion years old. That's based on a 0.005% error on the redshift measurement and about 1.5% error on the Hubble's constant measurements.",
"Howev... | [
"Since the universe is expanding, light waves in transit from the target object become stretched out as they travel over expanding space (1). This causes the wavelength of the light from that object to increase, making objects appear more red. If you select a specific, known wavelength to look at with your telescop... | [
"Wow, that's pretty awesome. Thank you! I gather then that this method gives pretty precise results? Once you nail down the groundwork it seems like a fairly straightforward equation."
] |
[
"Are more people developing allergies than before, or are we as a society being more accommodating to those who have the allergy?"
] | [
false
] | Growing up, I knew of exactly one person that had a severe peanut allergy (puffy eyes, hives, and throat swelling upon contact), and one person with a shellfish allergy (throat swelling). Nowadays it seems food allergies and intolerances (dairy and gluten) seem to be much more commonplace, so that many schools are bann... | [
"I never would've thought the two could be in any way connected if not for an old episode of Radiolab. Someone who first theorized about it couldn't get any labs to sell him actual hookworms, so he flew to Africa IIRC and walked around their latrines barefoot. Basically, he just walked through several villages' po... | [
"There seems to be a connection between allergies and parasites. It is believed by some scientific communities that the decrease in hookworm infestations has increased susceptibility to allergies, and some allergy sufferers have voluntarily infected themselves to treat it. ",
"link",
"EDIT: ",
"another link"
... | [
"I always suspected it had something to do with the sterilization of our living environments. Now I just have to convince my germaphobe fiancée that \"dirt don't hurt\". "
] |
[
"Could a moon be gaseous?"
] | [
false
] | Is it possible for there to be a moon made out of gas like Jupiter or Saturn? | [
"Technically it should be possible. ",
"Let's look at it this way: ",
"In the Solar system the biggest moon in comparison to its planet size is actually our Moon. Its mass is 0.0123 of the Earth's mass. That is, Earth is 81.3x more massive than Moon. The Earth-Moon system is a bit exceptional - all other moons ... | [
"Yes, a gas moon would necessarily be orbiting a gas giant planet."
] | [
"So let's take that as an example. If it's enough for a planet (or a moon) to be 2.1x larger than Earth to be a gas planet, and if it's enough for the planet to be 81.3x more massive than its moon, then (2.1*81.3=170.73) a planet that is 170.73x more massive than Earth could in theory have a gas moon. And that's no... |
[
"When we go long periods of time without eating, does our body have a \"priority system\" to decide what to use first for energy (fat, muscles, something else)?"
] | [
false
] | Or maybe it's a mix of multiple things? | [
"Ran across ",
"an article about 400lb man not eating for a year",
" and just living off his body fat. He had to eat yeast though to gain protein otherwise his body might have taken protein from his heart and killed him.",
"Once you stop eating, your body gets its energy from the glucose in your bloodstream a... | [
"Yes it does. Fat goes first. Since fat is basically stored sugar for later use. Our bodies when processing food we ate can store energy from it as fat. After you run out of sugar and fat usually protein comes third. Which essentially is what muscles are made off. \nSo first sugar, then fat and then protein. When y... | [
"The average non-obese 70-kilogram male carries about 8,000 kilojoules of energy in glycogen, and about 400,000 kilojoules in his body fat",
"If that's true, assuming a ",
"10.000 Kj consumption per day",
" an average non-obese 20something year old male could live about 40 days without eating. That sounds wro... |
[
"How do IR thermometers work? Or more specifically, do they guess the emissivity of what they are measuring?"
] | [
false
] | Since real objects aren't ideal black bodies how does the IR thermometer measure temperature? | [
"They don't guess, the majority of IR thermometers need to be told about the emissivity of the object via a setting on the device. If you have one try pointing it at different materials.",
"More expensive ones measure two or three separate frequencies, 3 is enough to get the full information needed for temperatur... | [
"Both the absolute intensity radiated and the frequency of the radiation maximum is temperature dependent. If you only measure the intensity on one frequency, you can only get the absolute intensity and you need the emisivity to calculate the temperature out of that. If you measure 3 relevant frequencies, you can c... | [
"Could you elaborate on the 3 channels? Does that mean that the device does no longer need information about emissivity and can calculate it on the fly ?"
] |
[
"Coronavirus Megathread"
] | [
false
] | This thread is for questions related to the current coronavirus outbreak. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is closely monitoring developments around an outbreak of respiratory illness caused by a novel (new) coronavirus first identified in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China. Chinese authorities identified... | [
"It seems like we get a virus scare every couple of years, the last one being Ebola. Is this one any worse than previous viruses?"
] | [
"So far, no.",
"At this point the World Health organization does not consider it a global emergency.",
"2009 Swine flu, 2014 Polio, 2014 Ebola, 2016 Zika virus, 2018–20 Kivu Ebola were all considered global emergencies.",
"There is of course the potential for coronavirus to mutate, become more lethal and spr... | [
"After experiencing so many viral outbreaks the CDC and local health organizations have gotten much better at responding to these situations. We simply have better protocols in place and better precautions to help contain the disease as much as possible. The hyper-vigilance is more preventative than anything. Also ... |
[
"The Moon orbits Earth. Earth orbits the Sun. The Sun travels around the center of our galaxy. Is the Milky Way moving around something? If so, how far does this pattern go, and would there be a final \"center\"?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"The Milky Way is the second biggest member of a galaxy cluster, the so called ",
"Local Group",
". It's currently on a crash course with its biggest member, the ",
"Andromeda Galaxy M31",
". The Milky Way isn't orbiting anything, but similar to its greater neighbor it has small satellite galaxies orbiting ... | [
"Nope, stress the ",
"search function",
". The big bang was no explosion and there is no center of the universe, if that ",
" happens to be correct. ",
"Expansion of the universe doesn't mean an explosion from a point in space, but the increase of distance between two given points. In other words, new space... | [
"We don't actually know that! It could very well be finite and have a center. The shape and extent of the universe are NOT known."
] |
[
"How realistically viable are mrna vaccines in treating autoimmune disorders?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Yes, it’s an area of active research. Of course, with autoimmune vaccination, the goal is to activate the tolerizing components of the immune system, but conceptually many of the same processes are needed (particularly activation of specific T cell subsets, which means delivering the antigen to dendritic cells or ... | [
"This is a 2021 article talking about animal research. I assume we are at best 5–10 years from human trials."
] | [
"Autoimmune disorders aren't one thing. There are a whole lot of different things going on and it can be very different for different people.",
"So not likely that there will be a silver bullet that will help fix everything.",
"Specifically inducing tolerance to an auto-antigen seems feasible. The mRNA delivery... |
[
"Why do planets' rotational axes tilt?"
] | [
false
] | Why are planets not oriented perpendicular to the point they are orbiting around? | [
"It all depends on how their material came together originally to form the planet. If there was an uneven distribution of mass in the direction perpendicular to their orbit plane then the resulting spin will have a tilt. Then you'll also get some ",
"axial precession",
", which is some gyroscopic black magic fu... | [
"Why would it be exactly aligned? That would be a very weird coincidence."
] | [
"It's more of a wobble really. I like to think of it as a top. The axis of ration changes, but not significantly over the course of a human lifespan. Perhaps eventually the axis will be oriented perpendicular to the point it's orbiting around eventually. "
] |
[
"Why Aren't There Nuclear Plants Everywhere?"
] | [
false
] | From my understanding, nuclear energy is safer, cheaper, and causes less pollution than any other energy source . Is it just because of social stigmas or could anyone explain if my understanding is wrong? Nuclear Energy is Safer: | [
"The reason for this is referred to as NIMBY, or \"not in my back yard.\" Though nuclear power is safer for the planet, any harmful effects from an accident are (in the public's collective mind) highly localized and accute (e.g. Chernobyl.) The negative effects of fossil fuels are typically chronic and much more de... | [
"People think Nuclear Power plants are bad, dangerous, poisonous and poluting. All of these things are un-true, but that's the TL;DR synopsis of why there aren't nuclear power plants everywhere."
] | [
"I'm going to split this into two parts.",
"First is the economical part. With shale gas and the recession, the cost of power has dropped where nuclear is not as competitive as natural gas. Many companies which wanted to build nuclear see no purpose to do so because of this. Natural gas is currently driving costs... |
[
"Mathematically, how thin would an A4 piece of paper need to be in order for it to be able to fold in half 8 times? 9 times? n times?"
] | [
false
] | The common wisdom is that is impossible to fold your standard A4 (8.5"x11") sheet of paper in half more than seven times, although people have done it using very thin sheets of paper. So how is the paper thickness related to the amount of times it can be folded? EDIT: Alternating the direction of the folds. | [
"I hate to be a stickler, but A4 is not 8.5x11.\nThere I said it. Sorry."
] | [
"I don't know about thickness, but Mythbusters did ",
"more than 7 folds",
" by adding length and width."
] | [
"To me that is the same as shrinking the relative thickness though. "
] |
[
"Why does putting a wooden spoon over the top of a pan with boiling water prevent the water from boiling over?"
] | [
false
] | I've googled it but only read some vague answers. | [
"Chef here. The foam is formed by starch clinging together. This foam will expand until A) the temperature drops, which is unlikely over a boiling pot of water, or B) it is physically broken. You could really use anything to create this physical barrier, I usually just blow on it."
] | [
"And people say wooden spoon because it won't melt and is unlikely to catch fire like a plastic one, and won't burn your hand as bad as a metal one."
] | [
"If it's just water and it's still boiling over, you have too much water in the pot. If there isn't too much water in the pot and its boiling over...you really need to wash your pot."
] |
[
"How does random number generation work?"
] | [
false
] | My knowledge of computer programs is very limited. What I do know is that computers do what we tell them to do. How do you tell a computer to be random? | [
"Computers can't generate a truly random number. They use ",
"pseudorandom number generators",
", which is an algorithm that generates a seemingly random sequence of numbers based on some seed. The \"seed\" is the starting value of the generator, and each newly generated value gets fed into the algorithm again ... | [
"You are describing ",
"hardware RNG",
".",
"Software is not allowed to produce truly random numbers, but hardware can. If you want completely and utterly random numbers you can have a very complex setup which ",
"counts radioactive decays",
", or you can just put the lens cap on a $10 webcam and some sof... | [
"Being \"somewhat random\" and being random are not the same.",
"Randomness is not a yes/no thing. There are tests to qualify the randomness of a number sequence. Some RNGs are better than others.",
"XOR by definition is not random because the results follow a chart describing the output.",
"If XOR uncorrelat... |
[
"In multiverse theory, could other universes be based on something other than hydrogen, or even comprise of a completely different set of elements unknown to us?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"Yes. In the ",
"string theory landscape",
" there are a near-infinite number of universes each with different physical laws, particles masses, and so on. There is no scientific evidence for string theory due technological limitations, however it is one of the most popular beyond-the-standard-model theories, th... | [
"There is no scientific multiverse theory. There certainly isn't some accepted thing that you can ask simple yes and no questions about, multiverses are a vague philosophical idea that could fit into a lot of places but which we don't have any scientific evidence for that can't also be explained in other ways.",
... | [
"I'll change your question a little bit, but I'll basically answer the same. Could the universe be any other way? Also known as the 'Did God have a choice' question.",
"Some scentists think that if we finally figure out how the universe is, they would look at it and say; Yes, that is how it is. And that is how it... |
[
"How do you go about learning robotics and what is a cost-effective way to begin? What is it like working in the field of robotics?"
] | [
false
] | I've always adored robots. When I was a kid, I would look at the marine robots that would help us explore the world beneath the waves. Now, robots are making their way to Mars and I am really excited about this field. How do you get into it? I search online and everything seems to be expensive or take a great deal of t... | [
"Study machine learning. You can do it on ",
"youtube",
" for free and see how much the math attracts you. The math is awesome, by the way."
] | [
"I was a member of a FIRST Robotics team during high school. Six weeks to build a 150lb robot to compete in a game. I'm really tired right now so im having trouble typing out a response. PM me if you'd like to talk"
] | [
"What team were you on? I was on 180 - SPAM. Being on the team made me realize I wanted to major in engineering in college."
] |
[
"Given E=mcc, (how) can a massless particle have energy?"
] | [
false
] | I'm thinking of photons, though I'm not sure if they count since they travel at the speed of light and thus don't exist for any length of time (in their frame of reference), are also a wave etc. Please feel free to slap me and tell me that I have too many wrong assumptions in my question to allow for a satisfactory ans... | [
"The full equation is E",
" = m",
" c",
" ",
". Light doesn't have mass, but it ",
" have momentum, so it still can have energy."
] | [
"E != mc",
"E",
" = (mc",
" )",
" + (pc)",
"It's from a common misconception. For massless particles, m=0, so the above equation simplifies to",
"E = p c",
"Which is ",
"exactly the expression we use for a photon's energy given its momentum",
".",
"The famous E=mc",
" is the ",
" of an objec... | [
"I learned this once but have since forgotten it. Why do photons have momentum if no mass? I am assuming the p = mv does not apply for some reason."
] |
[
"Theoretically the efficiency of a solar panel can’t pass 31 % of output power, why ??"
] | [
false
] | An information i know is that with today’s science we only reached an efficiency of 26.6 %. | [
"That theoretical limit is called the shockley-queisser limit. ",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shockley%E2%80%93Queisser_limit",
"It has to do with the fact that photons that are absorbed by a semiconductor (silicon most commonly for solar cells) with a specific band gap. For silicon that band gap is 1.1 ele... | [
"As a follow up, NREL puts out a periodically-updated chart of the best research solar cell efficiencies published:\n",
"https://www.nrel.gov/pv/cell-efficiency.html",
"One thing you'll notice from that figure is that there are many research cells with efficiencies higher than what would be considered the shoc... | [
"There’s more than just mechanically stacked tandem cells as well, the use of optical splitters is a cheaper option: placing a splitter at a 45 degree angle would reflect certain wavelengths to one solar panel on a 90 degree while letting other wavelengths pass through the splitter to a different panel. This way yo... |
[
"Help? Algorithm for a random, non repeating pattern of bathroom tiles"
] | [
false
] | Basically I have a math question to ask: what algorithm should I use to display 10/10 tiles on a surface of 400/250? I need to remodel my bathroom and have a disco theme in mind for 2 of the walls (200x250 each). I know that I would need a map with all the colored tiles being randomly displayed, and not sitting next to... | [
"There's a bunch of non reoccurring tile patterns but most of them aren't square. ",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aperiodic_sets_of_tiles",
"I would do it by dividing your tiles into two sets of 4 called A and B, and tiling the whole thing as A B A B A .... Then flip a coin twice to decide which tile... | [
"This will violate the requirement that no adjacent tiles are of the same colour, and is not practical. ",
"Have you tried mixing tiles without chipping them?"
] | [
"B A B A",
"A B A B",
"B A B A",
"If you're going to do the grouping this way, I would recommend thinking about the vertical as well as the horizontal. As long as diagonals are not a problem.",
"Also make sure to try it out on the floor without grouting them in first to make sure you like this 'random' arra... |
[
"I was reading something that said any quantity of lead is poisonous? Really? So even one atom of lead can be poisonous?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Such sweeping claims are either hyperbole or charged rhetoric designed to push some point across.",
"The basic principle of toxicology is ",
"\"the dose makes the poison\"",
"."
] | [
"Yep. Because if the doses are small enough to not harm they don't cause harm. "
] | [
"That depends on how fast the susbance is metabolised/eliminated from the body. Drinking five liters of water in an hour can be lethal, drinking five liters of water in three days is nothing out of the ordinary. This is why maximum dosages are usually shown as dose per time period. "
] |
[
"What's best to do if exposed to acid?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Hold the exposed area under a stream of cold running water for 10-15 minutes. This washes away the acid, and cools the tissue at the same time. Dilution of conc acid releases a lot of heat, so the burns are both thermal and chemical. Remove any clothes that the acid has soaked into. ",
"Read MSDS data for the ac... | [
"Yes, because the neutralization releases heat as part of the reaction. The heat released by the neutralization would cause thermal burning instead of chemical burning. Cold water dilutes the acid via dissociation and, as hyperblaster said, has the benefit of being cold, so it will cool any tissue it contacts."
] | [
"would it be a bad idea to splash some basic solution to neutralize it?"
] |
[
"If Pluto instantly stopped moving (relative to the sun), and the sun's gravity started pulling it in, approximately how fast would it be going by the time it plunged into to sun?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"The answer to this question is the same as the answer to the question \"what is the escape velocity from the sun at its surface,\" because both are answered by equating gravitational potential and kinetic energy, and is generally 41% more than orbital velocity at the sun's surface. The formula is v",
" = 2GM/r, ... | [
"I think you mean the escape velocity at the surface of the sun, or about 617 km/s. If you want to be a bit more precise, you could calculate the change in energy from Pluto's orbit instead of from infinity and get:",
"v",
" = 2GM(1/r_sun-1/r_pluto)",
"Where r_sun is the radius of the sun and r_pluto is the r... | [
"How does it occur that the velocity would be the same as the escape velocity of the surface of the sun?",
"Escape velocity is the velocity required to move an object from a position on the surface of a gravitational body to a point infinitely far away. This situation only requires it be moved to the orbital radi... |
[
"Do all organisms need water to survive, even unicellular ones?"
] | [
false
] | The reason being, I was thinking, if we were to send a lander out into the universe somewhere, surely we would be targeting places where liquid water could exist (or at least this is what I gather from reading articles on the subject). But why would that be? Do bacteria and archaea need water? And if we were to find e... | [
"The cytosol of a cell has its basis in water, so yes, without water, life as we know it would not exist. However, some cells can survive in very dry conditions, albeit in a dormant state, not metabolising much if at all. ",
", which as its name suggests causes tuberculosis, can survive in your house as dust. Its... | [
"I'm sorry, I don't know. Not all bacteria can undergo the processes I described above, though. You'd have to ask someone else about that, though you might have a hard time as Archaea aren't that well studied."
] | [
"does that include archae bacteria in the very extreme conditions such as 110 degrees Celsius?"
] |
[
"Can we predict the color of an element based on it's atomic configuration?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"You'll need more information, like what phase it's in. A metal is shiny, an insulator, not so much.",
"You can derive this information in principle, using numerical simulations, but it's almost impossible in practice."
] | [
"The colour depends on the size of the particles as well. For example, a ",
"suspension of gold nanoparticles appears red",
" but as we know, in bulk, it appears... gold. ",
"Although, I don't fully understand this - perhaps someone could clarify if this is due to change in energy levels of the gold (d-d spli... | [
"It's pretty simple actually. In a metal, the valence electrons are largely free to move about. So as a crude model you can view them as just that, a gas of free particles*. If you know the basic ",
"particle-in-a-box",
" model, you can actually apply that (as a heuristic) here. The energy states of the particl... |
[
"Would a Harrier jet be able to vertically lift off from a marsh?"
] | [
false
] | We had a discussion with some friends and started debating on whether a Harrier jet could start from a marsh vertically if it had landed there. Let's just assume that the marsh is mushy and soft and full of water, but the intakes are somewhat above the wet moss. I am perplexed how would the surface react to 4 thrusters... | [
"I'm going to vote no. This is one of those silly questions where we can argue about competing effects and I could very well be wrong here. But you know how if you get a boot stuck in mud, it costs so much more force to lift it up? Well that's because if you have a boot on the ground air pushes fairly evenly on all... | [
"Yes. As long as it isn't sucking up marsh water (which, I would guess, would be bad for the Harrier). ",
"The plane gets upwards thrust from \"throwing\" the air particles down. It doesn't matter where it goes or what it hits. It's just like, if you are on an ice rink, throwing a heavy object will send you m... | [
"If nozzles are completely blocked, the combustion force will be totally reflected and probably stall the engine.",
"\nI am not 100% sure though, I am a pilot but not jet pilot. "
] |
[
"[Biology] Can ancient animals be cloned, would it require an artificial womb, what would the process be?"
] | [
false
] | I am not sure if I am posting this correctly. I read about species of ancient birds that seemed quite beautiful, and have seen so many extinct species. A few things I know is obviously we would need to have their genetic code, once you have that, what can you do? Is it against the law? Why hasn't it been done and how d... | [
"Thanks! Dreams crushed in 3 paragraphs hah! ",
"I wonder if human made wombs will soon be available for animal cloning. Would change the game a little bit at least."
] | [
"Thanks! Dreams crushed in 3 paragraphs hah! ",
"I wonder if human made wombs will soon be available for animal cloning. Would change the game a little bit at least."
] | [
"Perfectly explained, although it should be noted that (very) recently extinct species/ subspecies with close living relatives might be possible. I was interested to learn on a recent trip to South America about possibilities for extinct types of Galapagos Giant Tortoise. "
] |
[
"Is lightning blue because of same effect that causes ionized air, due to (cherenkov) radiation to be blue?"
] | [
false
] | In cherenkov radiation, EM waves are emitted because the electrons move faster than the phase speed of light in said dielectric medium. Is lightning doing the same? Edit: do the electrons in a lightning flash travel faster than the photons in the same lightning flash and cause additional cherenkov radition, beside the ... | [
"No, the blue is from the excitation of electrons emitting photons at a certain wavelength (in this case blue spectrum).",
"These electrons that are interacting are located in the atmosphere. Thicker atmosphere can cause a reddening (wavelength stretched towards the red spectrum) so this is why you have anywhere ... | [
"No it's not the same effect. ",
"",
"Let's understand Cherenkov effect : ",
"Cherenkov radiation occurs when charged particles like electrons are moving faster than the speed of light in a particular medium. A shock wave is generated in much the same way as the more familiar sonic boom created by supersonic... | [
"Yes. They don't travel faster than the photons. Nowhere near the speed of the photon!"
] |
[
"If a singularity is infinitely dense, how can a black hole have finite mass?"
] | [
false
] | The mass of black holes in space ranges from a few solar masses to billions of them. And yet, singularities are infinitely dense. Shouldn't that make black holes infinitely massive? | [
"If volume is zero, any mass in that volume will have an infinite density. The singularity is regarded as a point source, meaning its dimensions are effectively zero, meaning the density is effectively infinite."
] | [
"Electrons have infinite charge density but finite charge. If you describe density by a Dirac delta function (infinite at one point and zero elsewhere), if you integrate the density over space to get mass or charge or whatever, you will get a finite result."
] | [
"If a singularity is infinitely dense",
"Note that the definition of singularity is basically \"Something we don't understand\". More precisely, the laws of physics as we know them just don't work.",
"So, in practice, we know very little about a singularity.",
"If you do the math, you get (finite mass) / (zer... |
[
"When I feel cold, is heat leaving my body?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Yes. But, heat is always* leaving your body. You're warm blooded (despite what your significant other may say from time to time) and your body produces heat.",
"If you didn't radiate heat you'd heat up like an oven, eventually cooking your insides (and leaving behind a tasty morsel! j/k). Heat leaves through you... | [
"Great post, just wanted to point out that we loose heat through respiration also. "
] | [
"Oh yeah. Totally forgot we actually lose a pretty significant amount of heat from our breath. Thanks!"
] |
[
"Tensor Fields and general relativity, the basics."
] | [
false
] | I am an aspiring physics student. I learned math and physics quickly, and because of this I want to learn about general relativity, but there is no-one in my area that knows more about it than what they watch on the television. Could Science tell me the basics of tensor fields, enough to understand the equations of rel... | [
"Wouldn't give away too much personal info on reddit.",
"Anyway, you're probably familiar with the concept of scalar and vector fields. A scalar field has a value everywhere, and a vector field has a magnitude and a direction everywhere. Something like the velocity of a fluid is a vector: it has x, y, and z compo... | [
"Very good information thank you"
] | [
"I would add to iorgfeflkd's explanation that it's considerably easier to take apart the stress-energy tensor (the T on the rhs of the Einstein field equation) than the Ricci and other curvature tensors on the lhs. This guy describes how energy, momentum, and angular momentum flow through spacetime. Wiki has a dece... |
[
"What location does fat get used to create energy?"
] | [
false
] | If one were to do a cardio workout, say on a bicycle (focusing on working legs only), would the fat used for energy be burned in the region of the muscled being used (I.e The legs?) or would it be burned near the heart and then transported to the muscles through the blood or a combination of both? The follow up questio... | [
"Ok so fat is called a Triglyceride or TAG and it is called that because it is made of three fatty acid chains. This structure is very stable and is unsoluable and is stored in docks called adipose tissue. When the body runs out of glucose and glycogen as fuel it starts burning fatty acids. A number of things need ... | [
"My question is less about how the fat is turned into energy and more about where the muscle draws the fat from. Does the working leg muscle draw the fat from the leg? Does the heart draw the fat and send it to the stomach? If this is the only form of exercise, would your legs become disproportionate to the rest... | [
"Ah ok. Well adipose tissue (where fat reserves are found) is located under the skin. So that is where the fat is drawn from. So yes the muscle would more than likely be pulling the fat from the surrounding adipose tissue under the skin in the leg. ",
"The heart does not draw the fat. The heart is a pump, nothing... |
[
"Is it possible to synthesize a dicarbon molecule (C𝍬C)?"
] | [
false
] | I know quadruple bonds are a thing (though uncommon). If 2 carbon atoms were quadruple bonded to each other, it would fill all the electron holes. Following the pattern of the other diatomic molecules, dicarbon would probably be gaseous at room temperature. Is it possible to make it though? | [
"There is such a thing as a dicarbon molecule, but it exists as something like a double-bonded carbon dimer with lone pairs on each carbon, i.e. :C=C:, not a \"quadruple bond\" per se.",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diatomic_carbon",
"There is also the acetylide anion, which is a triple-bonded, doubly negativ... | [
"There is actually some debate about whether C2 forms a quadruple bond. Some groups have calculations that indicate there are additional bonding interactions in C2. Other groups say their methods indicate otherwise. I don't know enough about it to say who might be more correct.",
"Here",
" is a brief discussion... | [
"I'm not at a computer right now so I can't check but I think people have made \"stabilized\" cc quad bonded molecules (metals stabilizing the pi bonds). It's arguable if they count.\n Such a molecule would react with basically everything and be very high in energy since it's essentially forcing all the electrons v... |
[
"How does adding carbonation to a soda/pop increase the amount of sugar that can be saturated?"
] | [
false
] | I remember back in high school my teacher mentioned this but I either don't remember the follow up or he didn't say it. I believe it goes like this, if the soda was not carbonated it would only be able to saturated x amount of sugar however by adding carbonation we are able to saturate y (a larger amount) of sugar in t... | [
"The dissolved CO2 also acts as an acid, which would also counteract the sweetness, right? Would this be why flat soda tastes super syrupy and gross?"
] | [
"The dissolved CO2 also acts as an acid, which would also counteract the sweetness, right? Would this be why flat soda tastes super syrupy and gross?"
] | [
"I don't believe that carbonation significantly increases the amount of sugar that can be in solution. If this were the case, a flat soda would be a super saturated solution and drop our and crystallization of flat soda would occur."
] |
[
"What are the efficiencies of different window coverings?"
] | [
false
] | I have large windows facing south west which during the summer heat up my apartment dramatically. After spending way too much time deciding which window covering to get I ended up going for white blinds with 2" slates. They help greatly but I am curious which type of window covering would have been more efficient and... | [
"if you want just a quick advice: stickytaping aluminium foil on the inside of at least half of the window works quite well (by experience of many students with west-facing windows in our dorm).",
"i tried to find a solution to similar problem before: given an isomat with aluminium foil on one side and black foam... | [
"So would this mean blind designs of similar color/material are pretty equal in heat reflecting properties? Does the cavity between the window and cover come into play? (I imagine if the cover wasn't tight it could leak hot air)",
"An aluminum foil route, or similar taped to the window, isn't an option for a ho... | [
"well... yes, i would expect blinds of similar color and material to have similar properties. but of course, there might be some differences, for example i would expect different types of surface (e.g. polished vs. rough) to have different properties. also, the same color in visible spectrum might look different in... |
[
"Why and how does light propagate?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"For a good read on field excitations that's not too difficult, I suggest reading this: ",
"http://profmattstrassler.com/articles-and-posts/particle-physics-basics/virtual-particles-what-are-they/",
"While the focus is on virtual particles as distortions, it deals with wave motion in fields as part of the under... | [
"You are trying to use a very simplistic picture to imagine light propagation. If we look into Maxwell's Equations (the math that describes the nature of the electric and magnetic fields), we see that changing electric fields generate magnetic fields and that changing magnetic fields in turn generate electric fiel... | [
"The direction of propagation is fixed by the directions of the E and B fields. Since the photon can best be thought of as an \"energy packet\" it moves in the same direction as the propagation of the fields. The \"oscillating EM fields\" and the \"photon\" are simply different descriptions of exactly the same ... |
[
"Do radio receivers draw some power from the radio waves they receive?"
] | [
false
] | I was thinking about this the other day. When I turn on my car radio, does it actually draw some power from the EM field, weakening it? Can this affect other receivers nearby, making the signal weaker for them? | [
"A tiny bit: Yes.",
"If you live close to a strong source you can make a radio that works without battery - powered by the radiation it receives.",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_radio"
] | [
"It's actually pretty easy to understand and calculate the amount of power your antenna takes from the sky, A few simplifying assumptions apply, but to give you the gist of it . . .",
"If a radio station transmits 10,000 watts, and if that power radiates equally in all directions, the power is spread across the s... | [
"Yes; Although it is a very small amount. The antenna receives the radio waves and converts it into voltage and current, which can be read by the receiver as an audio signal.",
"In fact, Crystal radios require no batteries; it uses the signal directly to power the earphones. It’s incredibly quiet since the power ... |
[
"How do people who are born deaf think?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"I have an answer to a related question that may be of interest to you. I don't know how people who are born deaf think, but I do know that infants raised with sign language will babble in sign language. Like how hearing babies practice producing sounds (phonemes), deaf babies practice producing signs. Also, there'... | [
"You might be interested in this review paper by ",
"Wolff & Holmes",
". It's a pretty easy read and it summarizes the various viewpoints which make up what we call \"linguistic relativity\", the idea that language influences thought in some fashion.",
"Your question presupposes that thought is impossible wit... | [
"Also, interestingly enough, deaf children babble not only with their hands, but they also babble with their mouths. Initially, they babble quite similarly to hearing children making what we call \"reduplicated\" babbling (i.e. the same syllable over and over, \"babababa\"). Hearing children eventually start \"vari... |
[
"How does RFID work?"
] | [
false
] | I've tried Googling this but I can't seem to find an answer that explains RFID in terms of electromagnetism and the physics behind it in detail | [
"There are a few different forms of RFID. Probably the most common is low frequency near field RFID. But there are also passive and active high frequency RFID with longer ranges. ",
"Active RFID is where the tag has a battery or other external power supply. The tag will contain a full radio transmitter and receiv... | [
"Put a coil in an oscillating magnetic field (the \"reader\").",
"If you've short-circuited the two ends of the coil, an oscillating current is induced in the coil, which in turn produces its own oscillating magnetic field.\nIf you've left the two ends disconnected, a voltage appears on the two ends of the coil.\... | [
"Somewhat. NFC is a specialized subset of RFID, specifically high frequency RFID. NFC devices can also act as a tag or a reader, which is how they achieve peer-to-peer communication like what you can do with two Android phones, for example. NFC also operates in a much smaller range compared to RFID, a few centi... |
[
"Are certain languages more adequately equipped to facilitate effective and efficient communication in the Information Age?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"I never implied that one language might limit expressiveness. I asked if one language, given its current state (meaning baring the invention of new language), might allow for a more intuitive integration of technology, internet/text speak, and the like. ",
"It's a bit of an abstract question that is very hard to... | [
"Which gives rise to the idea that English, being a mishmash, is well suited to technical/jargon communication ",
" that sort of communication requires a mishmash. But I'm a native anglophone nerd, and not a linguist; I'm biased."
] | [
"I feel like that's for two reasons:",
"A lot of these words are invented in the English-speaking world so seem forced in other languages.",
"English is already a mishmash of words and origins so random extras aren't so out of place."
] |
[
"If cat's are covered in fur, and don't pant or sweat. How do they regulate there temperature when they fall asleep in the sun or on a heat vent?"
] | [
false
] | First off. I know cat's pant if they get hot enought but they don't while they are sleeping. Moving on, how do they keep from over heating when they are sleep for hours in hot places? Do they have a lowered body temperature while sleeping? In general cats don't seem to mind heat so are they just built for higher temps?... | [
"Well first of all cats have a higher regular internal temeprature than humans do. ",
"Remember that fur is not only for keeping them warm, it functions as a thermal insulator, so it helps keep them cool as well. Also they thermo-regulate via their large ears and by grooming themselves - the saliva from their ton... | [
"Yes that makes sense, thank you!"
] | [
"Additionally, they sweat through their paws. "
] |
[
"The surface of the Earth is moving slower at the poles compared to the equator. Does this have any noticeable impact on climate, geology or anything else?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"The difference in rotational speed as a function of latitude is what causes the Coriolis force, which is responsible for hurricanes (and not responsible for the way your toilet flushes). In general the Coriolis force affects all kinds of air and water ",
"currents",
", which are ultimately responsible for much... | [
"If it depends on the fact that Earth is not a cylinder then surely this means it depends on the fact that parts of the Earth are rotating faster than others?"
] | [
"The difference in speed at different latitudes is what causes the Coriolis force, which is why there is no Coriolis force on a cylinder as you said. I'm failing to see what was wrong in my answer."
] |
[
"Do shorter people have faster reaction speed and reflexes?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"They would, yes, although it would be very small difference. The propagation speed of the nerve conduction is something ~ 100 m/s in myelinated fibers, which is what most reflexes involve, so the overall time for a reaction is quite small to begin with.",
"Here's a study that shows the effect of height on nerve ... | [
"yay for sources!"
] | [
"100m/s would be 10ms to go a meter. That's faster than standard 200ms reaction times, but not completely negligible or immeasurable, am I wrong? An extra half a meter of nerve to to through would be 5ms or 2.5% slower reactions?"
] |
[
"We are scientists from the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology coming to you from our annual meeting in Brisbane, Australia. We study fossils. Ask Us Anything!"
] | [
false
] | Hello AskScience! We are members of the . We study fossil fish, mammals, amphibians, and reptiles — anything with a backbone! Our research includes how these organisms lived, how they were affected by environmental change like a changing climate, how they're related, and much more. You can learn more about SVP in or . ... | [
"Several years ago, Jack Horner gave a TED Talk entitled \"Where are the baby dinosaurs.\" The subject of his talk was the possibility that at least some of the variety of named species of dinosaurs are likely all members of the same species merely in different stages of development. For example, he suggests that D... | [
"Of all the extinction events in Earth's history, which is the least understood or most inexplicable?",
"Question for Dr. Drumheller specifically, how are bite marks differentiated from other trauma or bone damage on fossils?"
] | [
"Definite merit. Paleontology has trends just like any field. In the middle of last century, there was a trend for a lot of things to be oversplit, and that included mistaking different ontogenetic stages (stages of development through an individual's lifetime) for different species. One of the clades I study, ",
... |
[
"Did I get nuclear power right?"
] | [
false
] | I made a video attempting to qualitatively explain how a nuclear power plant works for a university blog. I didn't bother getting into things like molten salt reactors and whatnot, but I wanted to explain to people what a meltdown is. Did I get it right, or should I go back and edit it? Separately, I want to turn this ... | [
"Chernobyl was an exercise in doing everything wrong all the way from design to operation.",
"In Soviet Russia... that was just business as usual.",
"(what, did you expect a rehash of the old joke?)"
] | [
"Chernobyl was an exercise in doing everything wrong all the way from design to operation.",
"In Soviet Russia... that was just business as usual.",
"(what, did you expect a rehash of the old joke?)"
] | [
"I'm not sure there's enough detail, it seems like you're missing the important parts.",
"\"Melt-downs\" can happen for several reasons, typically absence of coolant is a key element but not the only factor. In the worst example (as in Chernobyl) a poor reactor design can lead to runaway fission reactions which t... |
[
"A Question About Lightning and Very Tall Buildings"
] | [
false
] | Lightning happens when the voltage between sky and ground gets high enough to ionize the air in between, right? I just saw the pic of the world's tallest building getting struck by lightning. Aren't the tops of such buildings in the clouds? So how does the potential build up in the first place? | [
"Why would it be small??. Air has a breakdown voltage. All lightning is about the same"
] | [
"I'm still confused. What current? The tower is at the same potential as the ground. The cloud is at a high potential. The lightning touches the tower and then it's like a wire straight to the ground. "
] | [
"voltage is the difference in potential. once there is 30kV of difference or so lightning happens.",
"now voltage equals electric field times distance. so, because the distance is shorter, the electric field strength can be lower...but the voltage is still the same (air won't allow current to go through until the... |
[
"How do lungs clean itself from the dust?"
] | [
false
] | On the direct sunlight we can see many dust particles flowing in the air, sometimes we inhale quite much material like working with a wood or smoking. And as our lungs are covered in moisture I wonder how do they clean them self from these particles, which should stick very easily on the wet insides of lungs. We don't ... | [
"Mucus. Basically you swallow most of it without noticing. If you are in very bad dusty dirty environments and can't clear it away fast enough you may start getting thicker darker phlegm. Some things don't clean away as easily as others, such as tars from combusting plant matter such as tobacco, but even that wil... | [
"To further elaborate, if someone inhaled dust, the initial mechanism and response of the body is to cough and expel the foreign particles out of the lungs. The lungs have very sensitive receptors (pulmonary irritant receptors) that trigger the cough reflex at the slightest trigger, and these receptors are mainly l... | [
"As well as having cells that produce mucus that line the respiratory tract, most of the respiratory tract is lined with cilia — microscopic \"hairs\" that beat in a coordinated fashion to flap mucus and microparticles trapped in the mucus back up toward the respiratory tract opening. A lot of this mucus is moved t... |
[
"Can Covid-19 be spread by mosquitoes?"
] | [
false
] | This is something that's been bothering me since the start of the pandemic. We know mosquitoes can transmit pathogens, so is it possible that mosquitoes can transmit Covid-19? | [
"Reddit isn't showing me all the responses right now, but I'm going to add this explanation in case it isn't already present. Mosquito transmitted pathogens (principally all viruses) are adapted to mosquito physiology. Once drawn from a source in blood, the viruses burrow out of the gut and move into the salivary g... | [
"Not really, SARS-COV 2 is a respiratory virus, it hangs around in air droplets and when you inhale those droplets, it specifically targets cells in your lungs. It does not enter the bloodstream so it shouldn't be transmitted via mosquito bite. Unless you inhale a mosquito that someone (infected with the virus) cou... | [
"Malaria. ",
"It's notable because OP says that mosquito transmitted pathogens are \"principally all viruses.\""
] |
[
"Has the water released by combusting hydrocarbons had any effect on the environment?"
] | [
false
] | I've always heard about the effects of additional carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels on the environment, but what about the additional water? | [
"Absolutely! Water vapour, like CO2, is a greenhouse gas. Water Vapour released by combustion--but this isn't the sole source for water vapour, of course--helps create a sort of positive feedback loop in the atmosphere, increasing the amount of warming experienced by climate change. ",
"Generally, Water vapour te... | [
"The rising oceans is almost completely a result of the ice caps melting, as far as I know. ",
"I'm not sure what you mean by 'wetter' weather; air has a limited capacity to carry water in it, although (I think) it does increase how much water it can carry. Mostly, though, we can expect stronger and longer lastin... | [
"Ah, so you mean like, more frequent rain storms or such?",
"I suppose it's possible, but unfortunately, weather records haven't really been maintained that long, as far as I know, and it's not something I should think would show up in the records we can derive from trees or such. ",
"Perhaps another user can g... |
[
"If the farther from the equator you go, the colder it gets, then how come places like southern Chile and Argentina aren't very snowy and cold?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Leap over to the map and note the line of lattitude.",
"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/Mercator_projection_SW.jpg",
" now in those first 3 layers of the north are all of Alaska, Greenland, and Russia. In the south? Pretty much Antarctica, then just the straits of Magellan, where there are... | [
"'Colder as you get further from the equator' is a very simple zero-order approximation, but the real world is more complicated than that. One of the biggest factors is how much water is nearby. Water is good at storing heat, so it has the effect of moderating the climate. This is why a North Dakota winter is much ... | [
"you mean first-order approximation right? I mean zero-order would be a constant temperature across the whole earth."
] |
[
"How feasible is an HHO car? AKA \"The Water Car\""
] | [
false
] | null | [
"The electrical input required to electrolyze the water could not be less than the energy produced by combusting the resulting gases. In fact, do to inevitable inefficiences, it would require more energy to split the water than you would regain by recombining it. ",
"The Second Law of Thermodynamics."
] | [
"You would only lose energy. In a perfect world free of energy losses, it would take exactly as much energy to split the water as you would gain by recombining it. There would be no excess energy to drive a car. In reality, no process is 100% efficient, so you'd lose energy with every step."
] | [
"Not only would it be inefficient, it could not work at all. You could run a car off of hydrogen and oxygen gas, but you would have to obtain them somewhere else. A closed system as you have described could not possibly work without some other outside source of energy."
] |
[
"If I run electricity through a steak, will it move?"
] | [
false
] | Assuming DC and other best possible settings; also what would those be? How old could it be? As in, would it happen if I bought a fairly fresh stake from the store? This question has absolutely nothing to do with scaring the everlasting shit out of kids coming to my door. | [
"Most likely not. The cycle that causes the muscle to contract requires ATP in order work. The electrical impulse just allows the muscle to contract. At this point in the steak's life, it most likely has no ATP left."
] | [
"My brother's senior project in ag engineering was a battery powered device that could be used in the field to pass current through a recently living deer to activate the ATP and tenderize the meat. We were all very proud. "
] | [
"Nothing wrong with reproducing an experiment."
] |
[
"Why does a computer power supply unit provide 12V, when all the chips need 5V?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"Almost every PSU on the market today is ATX compliant and provides 12v, 5v, and 3.3v.",
"It provides 12v because some motors need it, mainly HDD, CD, and floppy drives.",
"Quick wiki link: ",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATX#Power_supply"
] | [
"Simply put, its cheaper to distribute power at a higher voltage than a lower voltage. Power loss in wiring is directly related to the Square of current drawn. So if you distribute power at 12V instead of 5V you cut your resistive power losses in a wire by a factor of more than 5x. [12",
" / 5",
" = 5.76]",
... | [
"Well, first of all, ATX PSUs provide +5 V, -5 V, +12 V, -12 V, and +3.3 V, not just 12 V. Only the 3.3, 5 and 12 V rails have much in the way of current supply capability, though. ",
"Second, hard drives and optical drives have motors in them that require 12 V to run. The fans in the computer also run off of ... |
[
"Recurrence rates for cancer? Is it possible to live a long and healthy life after 'beating' cancer?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"It depends on the type of cancer, the type of treatment, and the cause. ",
"Some cancers are more likely to recur than others, and some treatments (like radiation therapy) can make you more likely to develop other cancers later in life. "
] | [
"This question only arises because of the monolithic view modern society has of cancer. I can't count the number of conversations I've had with friends where I've had to explain that there never will be a (single) cure for (all) cancer, because there are so many different varieties. Many of them don't believe it, b... | [
"Yep. I recall reading an article that said even breast cancer is a broad category of six different diseases. ",
"Cancer isn't monolithic, not is the prognosis."
] |
[
"Why can we not use quantum entanglement to transmit information faster than classical signals?"
] | [
false
] | If we encrypt the input on a quantum level what would be holding it back? Please educate me on this topic | [
"First, I'll give you a little background on particle spins. A particle's spin represents, in a sense, the angular momentum of that particle, which is a vector and therefore has an x-component, a y-component, and a z-component. However, it's a fundamentally quantum property, in that ",
". It can only take one of ... | [
"This is a dumbed down example Leonard Susskind gave once: ",
"You can think about this from an Information Theory perspective too. If event X is completely determined by event Y then the information content of X given Y is 0. Mathematically, H(X|Y) = 0 if X is determined by Y.",
"Rethink quantum entanglement i... | [
"It's because of ",
"Bell's theorem",
". The situation Fenring describes doesn't actually need any \"strange behaviour\" to work, but there are other situations that do; one example would be two entangled photons that go through polarizes that are at angles to each other. In this case, the correlation between t... |
[
"How do neurons know not to send the signal in the wrong direction?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"So the way neurons propagate signals is through a chain of opening and closing of ion channels. The reason it doesn't typically go backwards is because the previously opened ion channels temporarily inactivate and prevent opening again for a brief period of time."
] | [
"Yes and the neurotransmitters released at the distal ends are also packaged and transported along a cytoskeletal system, so it is highly organized and unidirectional."
] | [
"The signal gets generated in the axon hillock, a special area of a neuron. This part is located at the 'bottom' of the soma and from there the axon emerges. So, the spikes get generated there and then travel along the axon. The way this spike propagates is by tiny ion channels opening in the axon and depolarizing ... |
[
"So, about a week before my wedding, I had a toe-stroke..."
] | [
false
] | Seriously. My second toe went white, cold, and numb. And I noticed, during that stressful week, all of my toes on both feet were tingly. I've only experienced that sensation during periods of high stress. None of the neurosurgeons I work with have been able to give me anything but a joke answer. Anyone have a theo... | [
"it could be stress related - something like a raynauds phenomenon. This can occur for a variety of reasons, and would be more likely if you suffered from any autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis or SLE. If the stress was a trigger, the body sends off nervous signals to the small blood vessels in the hands... | [
"Reynauds! Why didn't I think of that?",
"I do also have psoriasis, which is autoimmune, and suffer from anxiety (which I'm on medication for).",
"Also, my wedding was 2 years ago, and I enjoyed it very much, thank you :)"
] | [
"I super-love toe stroke, and will be using it with my patients from now on. Thank you!"
] |
[
"This question is way out there, I hope it's not against any rules: We live in 4 dimensions, 3 are spatial, one is temporal. Is it possible there are other dimensions that neither? That we can not experience?"
] | [
false
] | This question might be very flawed to start with. Is it possible that there could be more than space -time? I'm just a curious guy. | [
"You can conceive of dimensions which instead of being real numbers are Grassmann numbers. Grassmann numbers are anticommuting objects; for example two real numbers like 2 and 3 have a commutative product: 2 × 3 = 3 × 2. Instead two Grassmann numbers θ,η would go θ × η = - η × θ. I'm giving you the really simplifie... | [
"This is meaningless. The dimension of configuration/phase space is just not the dimension of spacetime, and when one talks in general of \"dimensions\" in physics is never the former."
] | [
"The OP didn't ask about dimensions of \"spacetime\", and in fact explicitly didn't want answers related to it. In any case, if you believe the wavefunction is more \"real\" than the classical equivalent we observe after decoherence, its dimensions are ",
" important than the dimensions of spacetime."
] |
[
"What would it take to effectively \"mine\" the heat energy from the earth's core and turn it into power? It seems that's the perfect source of pollution-free power. Are we just one really powerful, heat-resistant drill away?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_energy"
] | [
"This is called ",
"geothermal electricity",
" but the application depends where you live. Essentially you pump water into fissures in the ground and use the heat to power a turbine. The problem is that you need to build it in a place where you don't need to drill too deep to get heat (like places with hot sp... | [
"Why go all the way to the core?",
"All you need is a heat differential, and the mantle is plenty hot for that. Run a thermocouple from the surface to near the mantle, and you save about 6000 km of drilling."
] |
[
"Do the laws of physics predict that the universe was spontaneously created from nothing?"
] | [
false
] | I was reading article, in which Stephen Hawking answers people's questions about the universe. A quote: The origin of the universe can be explained by the laws of physics, without any need for miracles or Divine intervention. These laws predict that the universe was spontaneously created out of nothing in a rapidly exp... | [
"it's a little simplified. saying \"created out of nothing\" sort of implies that there was nothingness beforehand, which is incorrect. Time itself was created then, so there was no 'beforehand.'",
"I don't think I helped. This is a difficult concept."
] | [
"If there was no beforehand could you say that there was never not time? As in at .000....001 seconds is when the universe \"began.\" How well is this accepted? What's the possibility that there was, for example, a massive collapse prior to the big bang? My brain hurts."
] | [
"Time began, as far as we know, at the big bang. At this instant, and slightly after it, our laws of physics don't really apply. And there is no definition of a \"before.\"",
"However, it's wrong to say it was made out of \"nothing,\" because we don't know what it came from. In short, it came from nothing we've s... |
[
"Why are lithium and beryllium relatively rare?"
] | [
false
] | I understand that active stars are mostly hydrogen and helium, and heavier elements are created when they get older or if they're huge and go supernova. But it's weird to me that here on Earth, we have loads of hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, etc. But these two light elements on the periodic chart seem relatively ... | [
"This is part of a really interesting story!",
"The big bang made first lots of protons and neutrons, and then it was up to nuclear physics to combine them into the nuclei which eventually formed these atoms. Over the first couple minutes of the universe the nuclei were built up one particle at a time to make hy... | [
"This is exactly what I was looking for, thanks!"
] | [
"Great answer"
] |
[
"Is the tongue really the strongest muscle in the human body? If so, in what sense is it \"strongest\"?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"The tongue is not the strongest muscle in the human body. It's a common myth.",
"The strongest muscle in the human body, defined by the it's size versus how much force it can exert is the Masseter muscle",
"[1]",
" located on both sides of your jaw. It's function is to help chew and crush the food you eat.... | [
"Tendon \"strength\" is how much tensile strain they can endure before they break.",
"Muscle \"strength\" is how much force they can exert (probably per unit mass).",
"So tendon and muscle strength are different things and can't really be compared. That said, the Achilles can probably endure more tensile strain... | [
"Actually, most muscles have a negative feedback mechanism that reduces contraction strength when pain receptors (nociceptors) and stretch receptors begin to fire. You are almost never using 100% of your potential strength, as muscles have been known to contract and break the muscles/tendons that they are attached ... |
[
"How does fluid move around in really tiny animals like ants?"
] | [
false
] | When a tiny ant drinks some water/juice, is it controlled through its body like water would be through a human (muscle contract in esophagus to move stuff along? Or is it on the scale where there's capillary action somewhere like trees? | [
"Fun (related) fact -",
"Insects don't have hemoglobin and can't transport oxygen in their \"blood\" the way that we do.",
"Instead they literally have a system of tubes to transport air inside their bodies. ",
"- ",
"https://338373gasexchange.weebly.com/uploads/1/1/0/9/11096275/657758270.gif",
... | [
"Insects have an exoskeleton, but in the inside they just have all the parts floating around in goop. It's not very organized, and they are small enough that it's mostly just them jostling as they walk that circulates."
] | [
"they are small enough that whatever they eat diffuses through the rest of the system. Also, by eating more they just push the rest further. ",
"You can actually observe this in aphids! Sometimes when they implant themselves into a plant there is a slight overpressure in the phloem. So the liquid rushes into the... |
[
"If a processor is clocked at 2.5ghz, why all the fuss about making them smaller? Why not just double its size?"
] | [
false
] | If my processor is the size of a credit card, why can't I have an "external" processor the size of a laptop that has much more computing power? (if number of transistors is what determines speed) | [
"Shrinking the transistors will lower the cost and heat output of a cpu. Making cpus bigger isn't a thing because manufacturers can save on money by shrinking the transistors. They can't when they just make it bigger. That said, soon it won't be possible to shrink transistors anymore (manufacturers are already stru... | [
"There is a more important reason. It's the defect rate of the process vs the size of the part which determines yield. wafer defects are going to be relatively randomly distributed. The larger the die the more likely it is to have a defect. The percent of the parts which have acceptable characteristics is the m... | [
"I want to start this out with saying that this is a pretty vague question and it has a lot of different, very complex answers depending on what you are getting at. I have to state the obvious though. Small yet powerful processors can fit into smaller spaces and therefore open new opportunities to expand the capabi... |
[
"Why does my laptopscreen look like a negative from an angle?"
] | [
false
] | What is it I'm looking at? How come the colors suddently turn into their negative form? | [
"So your laptop is a liquid crystal display (LCD).",
"Let's start with how LCD screens work. there is light shining from either side of your laptop screen, towards the middle. Then, each pixel is a small \"liquid crystal\" designed to reflecyt that light out at 90 degrees when that specific diode is activated wi... | [
"Cool, thanks! Some follow up questions if you don't mind: any idea what colour system the two light sources use? Cmyk? Rgb? Is it only a light source from the top and another light source from the bottom, or are there also light sources from the left and right side? \nAlso, what exactly is a liquid crystal? That s... | [
"RGB. That's the primary colors for light.",
"The light sources I'm actually not sure about. I know originally they were florescent lights on the right and left only, but if I'm not mistaken, the new LED ones have a whole array of LEDs behind them, so it's more evenly distributed and not brighter on either side."... |
[
"Electron configuration of an atom that has 3 electrons?"
] | [
false
] | I'd like to know what's the Electron configuration of an atom that has 3 electrons I'm kind of stuck, since I'm confused about "1s2" Also what's the difference between thanks. | [
"It goes like this, ",
"The first number corresponds to the principle energy level, 1,2,3... The letter stands for the orbital momentum quantum number, where 0,1,2,3 corresponds to s,p,d,f... And the last number, usually super scripted stands for how many electrons are sitting there in the atom's charge neutral ... | [
"A nice trick is that if you count the superscripts it will tell you the total number of electrons. 1 s",
" 2 s",
" (2+1=3 electrons total)\n So the difference between those that you mentioned is that the first has 3 electrons and the second has 4."
] | [
"Thanks for this."
] |
[
"Can you sweat underwater?"
] | [
false
] | Or does the water just cool your body off enough? | [
"Yes, you sweat underwater. You just don't notice, because the sweat mixes with the water."
] | [
"Sweating serves no purpose here in Florida, either, since the humidity is generally 110% and up. But we do it anyway.",
"Why? Because our bodies are dumb, and we didn't evolve in a desert, so we had no evolutionary pressure ",
" to sweat."
] | [
"Depends on the level of activity."
] |
[
"Can quadraplegics hold their breath?"
] | [
false
] | I know that all the 'automatic' funtions like digestion keep on working, and obviously they keep on breathing, but can they send a conscious signal to the lungs to hold their breath / blow hard / whatever? And if so, how does that work? | [
"I think the best answer I can give would involve explaining how conscious breathing works in a nutshell. ",
"Obviously, you or I breathe regularly without any conscious input. We have groups of neurons in our brainstem that are responsible for this. Our brainstem, which is a very primitive neural network compare... | [
"No problem. One more thing. The breathing \"center\" is in the brainstem and the motor center for the diaphragm is in the cervical spine (levels C3-5) so as long as those are both intact (ie lesion is below C5) you will still have motor control of the diaphragm "
] | [
"Depending on the level of the lesion. If it on the 4th cervical vertebra or above they can't breathe or hold their breath, they have to be conected to a ventilator if tha happens. If the lesion is lower in the spinal cord they can control their breathing. This is because the diafram is controlled by the frenic ne... |
[
"What is Gödel’s incompleteness theorem and why is it important? How did it change math/physics ?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"The incompleteness theorem is about axiomatic systems. Around the turn of the last century, there was hope that we would be able to find some kind of ultimate logical foundation that could prove everything in math. This is kind of a perennial hope, and even Gottfried Leibniz (co-inventor of calculus) hoped that we... | [
"Heyheyhey27's point is solid; mathematics is independent of observations, which is what makes it different from the sciences, so it doesn't really have anything to do with whether we're in a simulation. As to whether it means mathematicians can be replaced by programs... I think it's probably not true. Is the task... | [
"It has nothing to do with whether we're in a simulation, because mathematics isn't based on observation."
] |
[
"Why are we able to smell/taste when we are sick, and can others around you smell it too, on a scent or pheromonal level?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Before this can be properly answered you need to provide evidence (not anecdotes) that this is generally true."
] | [
"No worries, I'll repost this with a bit of rephrasing for clarification. If I DID have a question of the style for which the post was removed, where would the place be to post it? I have in the past been referred to ",
"r/asksciencediscussion",
", only to result in posts being condemned for exactly the same re... | [
"For ",
"r/AskScience",
" remember that appropriate questions can be answered with references to peer-reviewed literature; bad questions invite speculation and personal anecdotes, which end up being removed by overworked moderators."
] |
[
"Does nuclear fusion happen in the corona?"
] | [
false
] | In college I learned that in order for nuclear fusion to start happening you need the energy of your electrons to be high enough to overcome the Coulomb potential, so that they can interact with the nucleus of atoms. The equation (3/2)nkT = e /r gives a temperature of ~10 K, but taking into account quantum tunneling an... | [
"The density of the corona is something like 18(!!!) orders of magnitude lower than the core. The chances of the tunneling event in the core is extremely low (~1 in 10",
" ) and only happens when two atoms collide (but it still happens because there's a ",
" of atoms there). The chances of it happening in the... | [
"Yeah, you'd get like one reaction, a trivial amount of energy, and that's it. It probably wouldn't be measurable and would provide practically zero energy to the corona."
] | [
"And also even if that did happen, there would be no chain reaction, right? It would be a one-off."
] |
[
"[Psychology] What is the relationship between video game usage and prosocial behavior?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"This is a contentious issue at this point in time, but here is my take on the evidence.",
"I think the evidence exists to reject the idea that video games have nothing to do with violence. Brad Bushman and Craig Anderson (who are authors on the article you cite) have done a lot of quality research on this area.... | [
"Video-games have nothing to do with violent tendencies.",
"I wrote an essay about this, somewhere. It's about letting your child know that what happens in videogames is not real.",
"oh I found it.",
"\"Violent video games shouldn't be played by children under 13- because they cannot fully understand that the... | [
"While I agree with your general point of having a conversation about games, I don't think that first study is strong methodologically. Examining crime statistics and violent video game releases might not be a sensitive enough measure to capture an effect."
] |
[
"My local news just said it had a \"1,000,000 watt radar.\" Is living near that thing potentially dangerous?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"Don't worry.",
"First off they don't really emit as much energy as they seem to claim. You really think they are paying a power bill on a million watts for a radar? Hell no. ",
"Here is how: ",
"That 1 MW is referring to ERP (Effective Radiated Power). Radars are highly directional, they emit their power in ... | [
"Radar is microwave and standing very near one can be very dangerous.",
"It's simply wrong to say any radiation that isn't ionizing isn't dangerous, in particular at high intensities. Radio-waves can cook you at high enough intensity. They switch those transmitters off when they send people up there. "
] | [
"The electromagnetic field strength in that region is equivalent to what would be produced if a million watts were put into a isotropic antenna, one which radiates in all directions.",
"So, how many steradians would a RADAR beam typically cover? i.e. what's the actual power output?"
] |
[
"Does the flight from Europe and USA (and in the other way) lasts longer/shorter because of Earth movement beneath the plane?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"It doesn't create any real effect on travel time; Air in our atmosphere tends to rotate with the earth. A small headwind however can change flight times by hours. These winds tend to blow in one direction, so traveling one way you'll have a tailwind, reducing your travel time.",
"http://www.aerospaceweb.org/qu... | [
"Main reason why flights from the North America to Europe are shorter is because the upper-level winds in the atmosphere at the mid-latitudes blow west to east. Aircraft heading east travel with a tailwind whereas aircraft heading west have a headwind. ",
"Here is an image of the 250 millibar wind speeds",
" ... | [
"I'm not sure what you mean. Winds affect bullets just as Coriolis has an effect planes. Pilots also adjust for Coriolis in long flights. In the same way winds are much more significant to a bullets trajectory than Coriolis."
] |
[
"How large would an umbrella have to be to provide enough resistance to safely land a person from the top of a 2-story building?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Flat, circular parachutes have a drag coefficient between 0.5 and 0.8, with the most common U.S. Army cargo parachute (the G-12E) right in the middle at 0.65, with a rather hefty +/- 0.10. While the shape of an umbrella is closer to a sphere sliced close to the top, a flat-circular canopy which utilizes a center ... | [
"A parachute and an umbrella are very different in shape. Would it have to have the same diameter, or volume? Most umbrellas are circular."
] | [
"An umbrella wouldn't be able to let air out from under the canopy safely so it would most likely collapse instead of slow a falling person down."
] |
[
"What feedback effects will eventually not only halt, but actually reverse global warming?"
] | [
false
] | I was looking at of Antarctic temperature fluctuations over the last 800,000 years. Assuming these temperature fluctuations roughly track average earth temperatures (is this a reasonable assumption?), there are clearly cycles of warming, with the temperature reaching a peak, then suddenly reversing. I'm familiar with s... | [
"Solar forcing (decrease/increase in the sun's radiance), milankovich cycles (changes in the earth's tilt).... Hey! have you read the ",
"wikipedia article",
"? It's usually better if you start there. Come back if you have any questions!",
"Oh plus, the ice albedo effect is a positive feedback that results in... | [
"Global warming is the increase in the average temperature of Earth's near-surface air and oceans since the mid-20th century and its projected continuation. The scientific consensus is that global warming is occurring and is mostly the result of human activity. This finding is recognized by the national science aca... | [
"Nope. Rainwater has a slight acidity to it, which dissolves limestone and releasing carbonate ions into solution. CO2 exacerbates this effect. When you dissolve limestone it frees up that carbon back into the water cycle, where before it was locked away in rocks.",
"Nope, sorry. The earth is warming, and we're p... |
[
"Gender Differences in Erotic Dreams"
] | [
false
] | Is there a difference between the genders in the quantity and content of erotic dreams? Is there a difference in how often erotic dreams cause an orgasm? and as a side question do dream caused orgasms always cause the dreamer to wake up? | [
"Gender of the dreamer."
] | [
"First you linked to a movie clip and then followed it up with sources like Slate and Cosmo? You should read the sidebar. This is ",
"r/askscience",
", not ",
"r/sexandthecity",
"."
] | [
"The idea that hard science is boring is blatantly absurd. The idea that men and women might have different erotic dreams is fascinating to me. I was talking to a coworker today about dreams and she mentioned that she doesn't have erotic dreams, and I wondered if there are generalizations that could be made about ... |
[
"In what situations is it better to have higher voltage and lower current?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"Your question is a bit vague, but here is one scenario. ",
"Any time you wish to transport power (especially direct current) over a significant distance, you'll find that you lose less to transmission when your voltage is higher - power loss is represented by R*I",
" . This means that given a certain resistan... | [
"The V you are referring to in this formula is the loss of voltage in the cable, not the total amount at the end of your power plant.\nSo you have the voltage delivered by the plant (V), the voltage at the enter of your house (V') and the voltage drop due to losses (V'').\nThere is one (constant) current passing th... | [
"OP gives 1) P = IV",
"The other relevant formula is:\n2) V = IR (voltage drop across a resistor)",
"which combines with #1 for\nP = I",
" R",
"So, double the voltage, half the current (same power), one-fourth the power loss across wires.",
"So high voltage is good for anything with high power and long wi... |
[
"Is it possible to determine someone's age by analyzing the frequency of errors in their DNA?"
] | [
false
] | As stated above: Is it theoretically possible to find out how old someone is by performing an frequency analysis of the errors in certain genes. If not, is there any other way to determine someones age by their DNA? | [
"One indirect way could be to look at telomere length. Basically the very ends of chromosomes (called ",
"telomeres",
") can't be copied when the cell divides and they get shorter over time. It's not really a big deal because very early in development, an ",
"enzyme",
" adds lots of nonsensical repeats on t... | [
"A graph of telomere length vs age looks like ",
"this",
", from ",
"here",
"."
] | [
"In fact, I have done this.",
"The telomere repeat in verterbrates is TTAGGG, for kilobases on each end. You can either map reads that only have that sequence repeating, or examine the copy number surplus you find in similar TTAGGG regions throughout the genome. This surplus or directly measured amount roughly ... |
[
"Can you acquire an allergy via blood transfusion?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"The question is fine, but we do not allow the posting of any personal medical information. Please edit the text of the post."
] | [
"Updated, thanks."
] | [
"This is still too specific. I actually think the title is quite good on its own. You can clarify in the text about the special case of a newborn who gets a transfusion and then is exposed to milk and exhibits an allergy (basically cut the entire first paragraph)."
] |
[
"Why do all planets orbit in the sun in the same direction? What about moons of a planet?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"It is thought that the planets were formed from the same accretion disk as the sun, which is why they orbit and rotate in the same direction, as well as exist on the same plane. I think the same is true of moons, unless it happens to be a captured asteroid or something."
] | [
"Goddamn uninteresting, logical reasoning boring my perception of reality. I was hoping for my mind to be blown."
] | [
"lol well there are some odd things like uranus is tilted on it's axis around 97 degrees and venus spins (spins not orbits) the opposite way than the other planets",
"both probably caused by large impacts",
"i dunno about the moons, but i wouldn't be surprised if there was some counter-orbiting moon of one of t... |
[
"Is there an intuitive way to understand the Gauss-Bonnet theorem?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Gauss-Bonnet identifies a fundamental connection between geometry and topology. And, perhaps more crucially, between local properties and global properties.",
"In a sort of naive sense, topology is about ignoring geometry (topology is much more subtle and complicated than this, but roll with me here). Given a to... | [
"Thank you! That was an excellent intuitive explanation. I now feel confident to proceed to the technicalities! "
] | [
"I've never had to deal with much topology. Could you provide a (rough?) example of how to think of your explanation in terms of applying this theorem to the classic mug-donut comparison? "
] |
[
"Does being in a caloric deficit decrease the rate at which neurological pathways are formed and/or strengthened?"
] | [
false
] | What is more important for the development of neurons under normal conditions? Macronutrients or micronutrients? If being in a caloric/macronutrient deficit has a negative impact on neurological processes, does meeting your micronutrient requirements minimize that impact? How does being in a caloric deficit affect the ... | [
"Tough to find any specific research...",
"Everything I can find is what we often consider \"common knowledge\". Infants (0-5 years old) from low socio-economic-status often are more at risk from malnourishment, but pretty much everything specifically call out micro nutrients (folic acid, vitamin A, iron).",
"T... | [
"Excuse my poor formatting, I do not post here often.Your proposed questions are very broad and difficult to answer; a larger amount of context is required for a definitive \"Yes or no\" style answer.",
"I will attempt to answer what I can.",
"A major issue here is that dietary requirements, both macro and micr... | [
"No, read again. It depends on your micro nutrients. You can be a fat kid and still lack these."
] |
[
"Why do cars use internal combustion to get work from fuel, but power plants use external combustion?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Why don't power plants use pistons and internal combustion?",
"Some do. Operation expense makes use limited. These may be used for peaking/load following capacity as these power sources are only running part-time.",
"Some power plants use gas fired turbine engines (internal combustion, no pistons).",
"Is it ... | [
"This mostly comes down the the fuel type, energy density, and ease of start-and-stop. External combustion cycles (like a rankiene power plant, or a sterling \"engine\") can offer good or better than automotive thermal efficiency (~40%) similar to very high efficiency cars and semi trucks (some semi trucks approach... | [
"To really understand how to make a thermodynamic cycle more efficient, you have to understand the concept of entropy. The lower entropy the working fluid has, the more of the energy that was put into it as either work or heat can be converted back into work.",
"Work is considered to have 0 entropy, as is electr... |
[
"If my speed is relative, not absolute, and the speed of light always appears the same no matter my reference frame, how is a statement like \"I am travelling at 99% of the speed of light\" meaningful?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"It's true, this statement should be always be followed by \"with respect to some reference frame.\" If you're carrying a cup of tea in your spaceship, the cup of tea doesn't care that some guy on the moon is measuring your speed at 0.9999c."
] | [
"So if train A leaves reference point B at .99c and train C leaves reference point B in the opposite direction at .99c then train A is traveling at 1.98c measured against reference frame C, which isn't possible, right?",
"Nope -- this isn't quite right. To add two velocities in a relativistic theory, you don't s... | [
"Just to add on to this, it's generally implied for convenience. It's usually in reference to whoever you're communicating with, the earth, or - if talking about something/someone else - yourself.",
"That being said, we all know what happens when you assume."
] |
[
"What did people think prior to cell theory?"
] | [
false
] | Did they believe that humans were just singular, large organisms or was there a precursor to the concept of cells? | [
"I'd like to encourage more history of science questions here, but if you don't get a good answer, consider posting to ",
"/r/askhistorians",
", ",
"/r/historyofideas",
", ",
"/r/historyofscience",
" or ",
"/r/philosophyofscience"
] | [
"Before cell theory, to the best of my knowledge the prevailing theory was ",
"preformationism",
", which is the idea that adult organisms develop from literally pre-formed, miniature versions of themselves. Like, sperm contained itty-bitty people in them. ",
"I am not an expert in this so you might be better... | [
"This is perfect. I'd been wondering about this for two weeks and couldn't get an answer, thank you!"
] |
[
"When did science learn galaxies weren't \"orbiting\" a universal center?"
] | [
false
] | The Moon goes around the Earth, the Earth goes around the Sun, the Stars in the galaxy orbit the galactic center. The logical extension is that the galaxies are orbiting some central point. It's very logical, but "even logic must give way to physics. " It's an incorrect hypothesis. When did we FIRST disprove that hy... | [
"What we know is that galaxies clump together and those clumps clump together to form our local group which clumps....you get my point. We don't know of any universal center though."
] | [
"Well, certainly by 1929 you have Hubble's Law and the Big Bang, which aren't compatible with a \"universal center\". ",
"But since all galaxies aren't orbiting a common \"hub\", it could well have been possible to disprove a \"universal center\" long before Relativity and Hubble. "
] | [
"It was only realised in 1917 to 1922 that there ",
" galaxies other than our own.",
" So I guess the answer to your main question is: almost immediately. There was ",
" a scientific cosmological model in which the entire universe revolved around itself."
] |
[
"How do you prove blood doping when you use the athlete's own blood?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"This is what I'm thinking, but then again, one could get insane amounts of red blood cells by doing high altitude training and so on. How do you prove without a doubt that someone has cheated by doing a blood transfusion?"
] | [
"They are ",
" impossible to detect. If you have a history of testing done, it is very, ",
" easy to tell when something is different. Without that history, it is still sometimes pretty evident."
] | [
"Since there is no answer to this interesting question yet, let me put some Google results here:",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_doping#Detection_for_Autologous_Blood_doping",
"Autologous blood doping detection is done indirectly via CO rebreathing technique to measure the nonphysiologic increases in Hb m... |
[
"If the earth were condensed down to the size of a baseball would the gravity change?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"It depends what you mean.",
"If you mean \"would the gravity at the surface of baseball earth be different than regular earth\" then yes. Gravity increases or decreases at an exponential rate depending on how far away you are from the center of a massive object. Because the radius of the earth is large, you ar... | [
"No. The Earth would need to be a ",
"little less than a centimeter across",
" to become a black hole."
] | [
"Wow thank you so much. You did the math and everything!"
] |
[
"When we see those pics of the night sky where there is a galaxy, what are we looking at exactly? Is it even real?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Do you mean the milky way? "
] | [
"Yeah? "
] | [
"Perhaps you can link to a picture that is an example of what you're talking about"
] |
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