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askscience
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> This is an interesting idea but I have to wonder, is this really a necessary result of there being pockets of both? As I understand it, just from this solar system to the next is light years. So if we then imagine from this galaxy to the next, or from this supercluster to the next etc could it not be simply possible that the distances are great enough that this can't be noticed? Doesn't empty space in our solar system have an extremely low amount of matter in it, like a few hydrogen atoms per square meter or something? Is there even less outside of the solar system? Would that even be enough to notice the transitional zones really far out?
While interstellar (and intergalactic) space has extremely low particle densities, they are not zero and these areas of space are extremely large. The sheer size of these regions compensates for their low density to the point where if there was some matter/antimatter border region, we'd still expect to see some kind of signal caused by annihilation events.
> I think it important to consider that maybe the universe is infinite in size as well.
There is no indication that it is.
> One other weird thought, if matter can become energy from the two colliding, matter and antimatter, is there some way energy can turn back into matter?
Sure. This is done all the time in particle accelerators, like the LHC at CERN. Particles are accelerated to very high energies and then made to collide. This produces a whole slew of new particles, with a combined mass that can easily exceed the masses of the two source particles. For example, the Higgs boson has a mass of 125 GeV/c^2 and is created in the collision between two protons, each having a mass of less than 1 GeV/c^(2).
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askscience
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>I guess I'm not imagining it as a small unlikely pocket, but rather enormous bubbles (Trillions?) of lightyears across so that most observable universe-sized volumes are contained within a homogenous form of matter, and it's actually an unlikely possibility to be near one of the boundaries. I'm picturing something like the next scale up from a galaxy filament; incomprehensibly enormous structures of either matter or anti-matter. Pure speculation and I don't know how we could ever test such a hypothesis, but if the universe is truly infinite and flat, it would seem a potential explanation.
By definition we have zero information about the region outside the observable universe, so we could never test hypotheses about stuff outside it. Now, at the moment it is expanding so we could get additional information over time, but the observable universe will also eventually start contracting.
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askscience
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That still has the same problem (actually it's even worse): how do those bubbles form? Forming by chance is even more staggeringly unlikely than our universe alone forming out of just matter. Basically, the larger the volume of matter-only space you need, the less likely it is to happen by chance. Physicists could maybe accept it if those early fluctuations had formed matter/anti-matter pockets the size of galaxies today. But it isn't: it's at least the size of the entire visible universe. And since the formation of matter/anti-matter in the early universe happened well after inflation or anything else that could turn tiny pockets of homogeneity into large ones,
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askscience
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No, because there's energy being added with every piece that falls over. Putting a domino piece upright increases its potential energy compared to it laying flat on the ground. When a piece is tipped over, that potential energy is converted into kinetic energy by the force of gravity. If the pieces are correctly positioned, the falling piece should gain enough kinetic energy to tip over the next piece, which in turn will also have its potential energy converted into kinetic energy.
So in theory, a well constructed domino line should be able to go on indefinitely.
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askscience
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Um, yeah, in the whole system, I agree the energy has to go somewhere, but I mean looking per domino in a hypothetical infinite, straight, domino chain. Yes, in a finite domino chain the last piece shoots forward and undergoes much more friction than the rest of the pieces (or like in a curve as we see in this video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9tOF1J6sFc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9tOF1J6sFc)) but not per piece in the straightaway sections.
​
Edit: I keep thinking about this, and now I'm not so sure. My line of thinking is thus: if the energy isn't being dissipated at a constant rate (through mostly heat, like you say) than would the propagation speed increase? Now I wish I had a set of dominoes to test if the last one shoots out further as the line gets longer! :-)
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askscience
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>The clearest statement is that there is no dynamics associated with such a state
The classical analog of an s-orbital isn't just a particle sitting still, if that's what you're getting at. Its orbital angular momentum is zero, but its kinetic energy (taking the quantum expectation value) is not. You can imagine a classical object moving in and out radially through r = 0. It's still moving (and hence, "dynamics"), but it has no orbital angular momentum.
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askscience
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Okay, this really is splitting hairs. There is no orbit you can draw that is isotropic when time averaged and yet lacks angular momentum. With wave phenomena one can ascribe the "kinetic energy" term to an energy penalty for being sharply located (i.e. having a non-zero square of gradient is a no-no). That's not the same as dynamics, there's not a meaningful time dependence to, for example, the radius of an s-orbital. It's not like a experiment can exist that will catch an "orbiting" electron at an in-opportune point in its "orbit".
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askscience
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>Okay, this really is splitting hairs.
There aren't really any hairs to split. You made a completely vague statement. What does "dynamics" mean to you?
>That's not the same as dynamics, there's not a meaningful time dependence to, for example, the radius of an s-orbital.
If "dynamics" means "nontrivial time evolution", then that's true of any stationary state. Why did you single out s-orbitals?
>It's not like a experiment can exist that will catch an "orbiting" electron at an in-opportune point in its "orbit".
I'm not sure what you mean by that. Scattering experiments can indeed probe the distributions of the electrons in position and momentum space. You can easily calculate the momentum-space wavefunctions of electrons in bound orbitals of arbitrary L, and you will find that they are indeed "moving" even for L = 0.
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askscience
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Agreed but then there's a very real point that a more classically friendly object can acquire a very real angular momentum from scattering off an electron in an orbital where L isn't 0. Take for example a photon where there's a real association with angular momentum and classical polarization.
Take for another example something like Spin-Transfer Torque(STT) it's pretty impossible to deny that one can associate a very real angular momentum in a case like that.
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askscience
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Sure. Can we agree on the statements: 1) every stationary quantum state has time dynamics, 2) generally that time dynamics vanishes when brought to measurement and thus is largely academic, 3) historically, order-of-magnitude estimates for these states were made under an assumption of meaningful classical arguments of an orbiting object, 4) those classical arguments have proven themselves to be wrong, 5) despite those arguments being wrong, there ARE time dynamics (see 1), 6) but those time dynamics can't be meaningfully attached to the classical ideas that spawned 3)
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askscience
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If I'm understanding your question correctly, it's because when you bring two orbitals on separate atoms close together, they mix because the symmetry of the total system is no longer that of a single atom. Every orbital (in molecular orbital theory, at least) will have a symmetry that depends on the symmetry of the molecule as a whole.
That's a consequence of the symmetry requirements of the overall wavefunction, where **𝚿** (a,b) = - **𝚿** (b,a).
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askscience
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No. Valence-bond theory is a working approximation that can predict some but not all molecular geometries but not a whole lot else (e.g. MO explains aromaticity, conjugated bond systems, inorganic complexes with > 8 valence electrons, boron allotropes, kinetic effects of substitution in SN2 reactions). But the theory itself is wrong or incomplete: covalent bonds do not form discretely between overlapping atomic orbitals with nonbonding electrons smushing them off to one side. In most polyatomic molecules, the bonding orbitals span across the entire molecule, and the symmetry of the molecule’s geometry determines the types of bonding that can occur between atomic orbitals.
Valence bond theory is to MO theory what Newtonian physics is to relativity: accurate and useful within certain limits, but fundamentally untrue.
But yes, the orbitals supply the probability of finding an electron in a location. If psi is the wavefunction, then | psi^2 (x,t)| is the probability that the electron exists at x at time t. That’s from the postulates of quantum mechanics, though, not valence bond theory or MO theory.
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askscience
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Hey, what an extensive response. First, let me thank you for the time it must have taken to write that masterpiece. Here's my riposte.
I didn't understand the question the OP was asking, and I was hoping that my stab in the dark would bring some clarity to that question. As for your rejection and your assertion that VESPR has nothing to do with the answer to the question, I suppose you would know the correct response to this query better than I would. Naturally, I agree that the theory is incomplete, as all theories are incomplete; some theories are more useful than others, but a scientific philosopher rejects all theories.
I'm glad you brought up Newtonian physics, since I believe Newtonian mechanics are fundamentally true, especially within the limits where that theory may be applied. What's interesting is that, for example with electron flows, the same principles apply as apply with, say, the flow of water through a pipe. And the way we understand the one invisible system is by comparing it to something we can observe and measure and with which we are familiar. Wave physics is similar in this regard, transverse waves like the ocean and, oh what's the other one called, like sound waves?
Edit: They are called longitudinal waves.
@Moira
Perhaps you are correct. I compared the quantic behavior of electrons to a probability field. Probability is something I know about from statistics, while I learned about fields when studying electromagnetism.
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askscience
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This is an overlapping subject, whose contents might be taught in either a quantum mechanics course in a physics department or in a physical chemistry course (I think) in a chemistry department. The basic notion of the mixing of energy levels due to interactions is very fundamental in quantum physics, and needs to be understood by any physicist or chemist who works with quantum systems.
The properties of the electronic configurations in molecules is more in the realm of chemistry departments/journals than physics, but there's no hard line. I had a quantum professor in my undergrad physics department whose PhD was in chemistry, and we covered a lot more properties of molecules than any course I TAed for in grad school.
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askscience
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It doesn't even have to hit us. It can just wander in the general neighborhood of the Sun and disrupt our orbit so we get ejected from the solar system. Not even within the solar system, depending on the mass. Then we freeze to death as the Sun gets farther and farther away. Life is truly tenuous. Solar and wind is great but to be free of the Sun we'd need fusion and on a huge scale. Even then we'd be limited to small, livable areas and wildlife preserves.
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askscience
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> there is a chance a whole STAR hits our planet?
Well yes, duh! There's an estimated 100-400 billion stars in the Milky Way. All whizzing around just looking for a planet to slam into. Heck, as lunchlady55 says, they don't even have to hit us directly to cause an extinction-level-event.
However, stars have a couple of qualities that do allow us to conclude that there is no imminent danger from being unduly affected by the passage of a nearby star:
1. They're really, really, far away. 4 light years away at the closest and that one isn't even headed directly for us.
2. They're very bright, so they can't sneak up us. It also makes keeping track of them fairly easy.
Thus, through diligent research over several centuries our courageous astronomers have determined that no star will come closer than ~3 light-years for the next 100,000 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Near-stars-past-future-en.svg
After that all bets are off.
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askscience
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I'm just calling attention to that fact that it could disrupt the solar system with out entering it. That paper also describes the perturbation of TNOs, not planets, so I'm not sure what the exact parameters would need to be to disrupt the inner solar system. The positions of the planets are chaotic and can't be predicted on long time scales (millions of years.) It's even [possible that Mercury could be ejected even without external disruption on a long timescale.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stability_of_the_Solar_System#Mercury%E2%80%93Jupiter_1:1_perihelion-precession_resonance). A slight nudge from a passing star could have catastrophic effects.
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askscience
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> The positions of the planets are chaotic and can't be predicted on long time scales (millions of years.)
Technically correct, but the main effect is an unknown location within the orbit. In other words, it is hard to predict how many times Earth will orbit the Sun in a given time, but it is easy to predict Earth will roughly keep the same distance to the Sun (slightly receding in a predictable way as the Sun loses mass).
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askscience
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It depends on the location. Here on Earth, if the rest of the Milky Way and its satellite galaxies vanished we'd just have the Moon, the naked-eye planets, and two faint fuzzy bits of light (M31 Andromeda and M33 Triangulum) readily visible to the naked eye, with a few more visible to someone with really good night vision.
Pick a rogue star in a random spot in the universe and I'd expect something similar. In a rich galaxy cluster you might see dozens of fuzzies, whereas in much of the universe you wouldn't even see anything outside your solar system.
If a rogue star is near a large galaxy (say if it's been ejected from said galaxy) then said galaxy would look much like the Milky Way or Magellanic Clouds, just a different shape.
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askscience
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That's the limit for oxygen, but that doesn't need a space suit to be corrected: a simple oxygen mask will suffice. For mountaineering, it's considered particularly daring to go up an 8000er without any bottled oxygen. If you have a plentiful supply of oxygen, the bigger issue to face will either be the cold - which depends fully on how well wrapped up you are- or the pressure. At this point the question becomes: what altitude can you survive at without a [pressure suit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressure_suit)? That article is a decent read to get a general idea: it suggests the ["Armstrong Limit"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armstrong_limit) (19000m) as the hard limit for survival without a pressure suit, even with supplemental oxygen. This point is where water will boil at just 37C (human body temperature).
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askscience
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Hmmm. I'm not sure I buy into this entirely. When you say "space suit" I assume you mean full-body pressure suit, which maintains a minimum amount of atmospheric pressure on your entire body all the time. You can avoid altitude sickness without a pressure suit at altitudes far in excess of 26k, you just need a pressure breathing apparatus. This would be a fitted face mask that allows breathing of pure oxygen under pressure. Here's some info about [aviation oxygen systems](https://www.faa.gov/pilots/safety/pilotsafetybrochures/media/Oxygen_Equipment.pdf). This FAA pamphlet says a pressure demand regulator allows flight above 40k ft.
You can, in fact, avoid death even at zero pressure for quite some time if you have pressurized breathing apparatus. Human skin is gas tight, but [requires the mechanical compression afforded by a full-body pressure suit to prevent swelling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressure_suit).
USAF pilots do not wear pressure suits unless they fly above 60k feet.
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askscience
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Slight correction. Among many of the experienced in the community not using oxygen isn't seen as daring, it's seen as sensible. If you can't make it up without oxygen, you shouldn't be going up. If you go up relying on oxygen and you run out, which does happen, you will die. Unfortunately it's lead to a black market of oxygen on Everest, where people will essentially sell life to a dying person for whatever they feel they can get.
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askscience
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Sort of both.
If you go up without, your body adapts a bit if done right, but also if you do reach a point you can't deal with, it's more gradual and you simply drop back down to where you were last ok.
Go up with oxygen and you're on it all the time. Peoples bodies rely on it, you even sleep on it past a certain height, and if you're beyond a point where your body could naturally cope when you run out, you're too far out of your safety zone to make it back down before bits start failing and you die.
If I ever have a crack at Everest I'm not going near the stuff.
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askscience
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Time is not some weird abstract thing, time is how long a process takes (e.g. ticks of a clock). You measure how long something takes by starting to count clock ticks at the start of a process and you stop counting at the end of the process.
Time dilations means that the time it takes for any process (including clock ticks) to occur in one system changes when measured with a clock in a different reference system. Discussing whether this means that all processes run slower or whether time runs slower is purely tautological.
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askscience
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We define time. Therefore one second is always one second no matter where you are in the universe. Any effect of gravity, is in the instrument used to detect as well as our perception of that instrument. Time does not actually slow because we define time.
For instance, if we lived elsewhere in the universe what we would define as one second may differ, but that will always be one second in "that time."
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askscience
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We don't only ever measure one process. And furthermore, the effects of time dilation were mathematically predicted before being confirmed experimentally, based on the fact that the speed of light is constant in all reference frames. If you're going 50% the speed of light, and you observe a photon to be moving away from you at the same speed that someone standing still sees it, the only way for that to happen is if you are experiencing time slower.
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askscience
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That's not how things work. One second at 50% the speed of light has been *mathematically proven* to be longer than one second standing still. If you're going 50% the speed of light, and you observe a photon to be moving away from you at the same speed that someone standing still sees it, the only way for that to happen is if you are experiencing time slower. And since the speed of light is constant in all reference frames, that's exactly what happens.
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askscience
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This is still just perception of time. I'm not saying you are incorrect. I'm saying you are misrepresenting the concept of time. Relativity is real. We can assume with little doubt that Einstein's theory is accurate. What you can't change is what is defined as one second. That would be the same as saying one meter is actually 1.2 meters in space. It's not and that doesn't make any sense to say it is.
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askscience
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I'm familiar with length contraction and my claim would be it's the exact same argument. We can perceive measurable differences in time, weight, length, it anything else we are choosing to measure with. Whatever the case though, the perceived difference in measurement is a result of outside influences and not a change in the "object" we are measuring itself. So, with length contraction specifically the measured object returns to it's normal "state" in each environment it is tested in. So again, it's not that the definition of 1 meter changes a high speeds, it's that our perception of that definition changes. Essentially to provide a most accurate comparable measurement, we would need to refine what a meter is in various environments. If we took that step, the measurement of the object would come back the same as the original control measurement. Therefore, if we did see an measurable change in length we could assume it is due to a physical force of some sort.
To your first point, I do see a difference in your two points, but again only in measurement. If we maintain a certain frame of reference for everything we perceive, and then we experience a new frame of reference where literally everything takes longer then it absolutely does feel like time has slowed down. It "feeling that way" is just our perception. You said it yourself. Everything just takes longer.
I'm typing on mobile so apologies for formatting and grammer issues.
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askscience
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The decay process isn't slowed - it occurs at exactly the same rate in its own frame of reference. It's only when observing it from a different frame of reference that it appears slow. This is what relativity is - there is no absolute time reference. You can't say that your time reference is the correct one and someone else is on the 'wrong' time. From their perspective the reverse is true. You both have your own time (and length scale) and you can use special or general relativity to transform measurements from one to the other.
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askscience
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Reading this comment, it seems to me that you believe that the laws of relativity can be used to model our observations, but reject the common explanation that time moves at different rates at different reference frames. Is that correct? Would you say that there exists a singular "true" reference frame? Or rather do you believe that the truth is only expressed in a reference frame in which it is local, and all observations in nonlocal reference frames are distorted, and GR models that distortion? Please let me know.
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askscience
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I guess the latter would be closest to my thoughts on it. To put my argument in its simplest form, I mainly believe that there tends to be a generalized misrepresentation of the concept. It comes down to saying 1.0 seconds is 1.2 seconds or 1.0 seconds feels like 1.2 seconds. Personally I equate it to framerate. 30 vs 60 offers a very different experience for the same 1 second representation of time.
I feel like this comes to a head with the twin theory. I view time in this theory as a "cellular second" or the rate at which our "cells" decay and ultimately kill us. If we accept two twins are going to live exactly 1 million cellular seconds, then those two twins will die at the exact same "time" relative to when they begin no matter where they are in the universe. However in relation to reach other the experience could feel very different. Thoughts?
I haven't quite figured out my thoughts with the twin theory perfectly. I'm certainly open to criticism if I've missed something.
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askscience
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I see. Your problem is one of the language used to describe the physics, not so much the physical laws themselves. As with much of modern physics, there exists a certain dogmatic interpretation which is propagated amongst science enthusiasts and even some scientists that are less conformable with nuances in interpretations. These individuals often confuse doubt in interpretations with doubt in the laws themselves, and often react with vitriol more appropriate for Flat Earthers than people confused about relativistic interpretations. When people believe these things dogmatically instead of with nuance, it is easy to fall into trouble. Think of all those people that claim centrifugal force doesn't exist, when it clearly appears in derivations in rotating reference frames. Their zealotry can actually impede them from accepting that both descriptions are equivalent.
Personally, I'm less certain about how to interpret the twin paradox. To model the acceleration requires GR, which I'm less familiar with. I know that the experiment has been conducted multiple times with atomic clocks, but there are a number of atomic phenomena (i.e. tunneling, entanglement, etc) that do not exist on the macroscale. I would be interested to know if the experiment has ever been conducted with bacteria. I think that would put my mind at ease about the twin paradox once and for all.
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askscience
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Say you have 2 clocks, one orbiting the earth and one on the surface. The one on the surface will experience more gravity and because electrons have mass the orbit of the electrons in the atomic clock will be slightly displaced by the gravity as compared to the one experiencing less gravity in orbit. Is this effect completely swamped by the more powerful nuclear force acting on the electrons so that it is impossible to measure or is it accounted for?
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askscience
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Yes the binding forces inside atoms overwhelmingly swamp out gravitational effects. A common comparison is done for the attraction between an electron and a proton. Doing it quickly at ~1 femtometer, I get the electrostatic attraction at ≈3×10^(4) N and the gravitational attraction at ≈1×10^(-37) N. So gravity is around a factor of ≈3×10^(-42) weaker than electrostatic attraction. Even considering entire Earth's gravitational attraction, the ratio of that to the electrostatic attraction is ≈3×10^(-34). This is why gravity is so negligible at small scales.
We can also see that the properties of atoms in higher gravity environments - like the Sun - behave in exactly the same way as they do here on Earth.
With regards to Special Relativity, you can detect time dilation occurring in [Cosmic Muons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_testing_of_time_dilation#Atmospheric_tests), which are fundamental particles as far as we can tell.
For General Relativity, we see other predicted effects like frame-dragging (see [Gravity Probe B](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_Probe_B#Experimental_setup)).
Edit: Just to clarify; atoms do behave differently under differing gravitational fields. This effect, [gravitational redshift](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_redshift#Experimental_verification) is one of the tests of General Relativity. However, if you subtract this effect you see the same behaviour as in a lab.
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askscience
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This depends very much on the orbit's characteristics, i.e. how high it is. In low earth orbit, at about the altitude that the International Space Station orbits (~400km), gravity is still ~90% of that experienced on the surface. But an object in a geostationary orbit (~36,000km) experiences less than 3% of the gravitational acceleration it would on the surface. Both are equally in orbit and "endlessly free falling", though frankly the "endlessly" bit is pretty suspect for objects in LEO. The decay rates are just too high.
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askscience
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All of this is false. The satellite in orbit will have the faster clock.
The satellite’s clock is slowed relative to us as a result of special relativity (it is traveling quickly relative to us).
Our own clocks are slowed relative to the satellite’s clocks as a result of being deeper in the gravity well of Earth (general relativity).
In this case, the effect of the gravity well contributes more than the effect of the satellite’s orbital velocity (about ~6X more), so the satellite’s clock is faster than ours. Not slower.
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askscience
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Depends on the orbit. Low orbit objects are moving very fast, and really aren't all that high up in the scheme of things, only about 250 miles, so the effect from the speed wins out. So on the ISS, clocks run about 0.0000000014% slow. In higher orbit, the orbital velocity is low, and the satellites are much higher up, so the effect from gravity wins out. The GPS satellites for instance about .000000044% fast. Which is why I specified low orbit.
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askscience
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Lightning bolts don't "go" anywhere, they're just the visible glow of ionized air. Lightning happens when the electric potential difference between clouds and the ground is too high and the air can no longer sustain it. The air breaks down, forming an ionized channel (the lightning bolt) that allows current to flow until the two regions are at the same potential. Afterwards, there is no potential difference and therefore no discharge. The air that made up the lightning bolt is just normal, non-ionized air again and some electrons have been transferred to the ground.
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askscience
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Well, the electrical charge disperses from the point it "hits the ground" and since the ground would considered to be at 0 volts and the bolt at tens of million volts, it will depending on the resistance of the earth, take some distance before the voltage reaches zero.
If you stand close to the "hitting point", the potential between your feet can reach to high values and a current will flow up one of your legs and down the other. So even if the bolt doesn't hit you, you can get electrocuted this way.
This is the reason to why some advice says to run away from dangerous spots with only one feet on the ground at the same time.
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askscience
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It does. His answer is highly misleading because it focuses on the luminous affect you see (the lightning) not the collection and flow of electrons that occurs to balance the potential difference which causes the lightning bolt.
For starters, the electrons flow up from the ground to the sky.
Once the voltage potential is high enough it starts to "break down" air by ionizing it. This ionization causes the air to glow purple because that's the color ionized (atmospheric) nitrogen is. (One of the running jokes in the energy-systems group is "If you see purple, hit the deck.") In weather parlance these purple, ionized bits of air are called *feelers* and they will seek from the clouds down and from the ground up. When two feelers touch you complete a circuit and a massive flow of electrons shoots through the ionized air, which is a conductive plasma, and that causes the highly luminescent lightning bolt. This whole process takes a few microseconds.
The same thing happens, on a much smaller scale, when a capacitor fails (and sometimes explodes.)
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askscience
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Think of it as a giant capacitor, so clouds are charged and so is the ground, but the charge is opposite. Now this means that charges particles want to travel to the other side (so electrons are negative so they want to go to the positive charged zone). Now they can't because of the air between them acts like a wall. So the charges build up.
Now every medium has different resistance to a charge flowing through it. So when the charge exceeds the limit it goes through it anyways, and all at once. Imagine it is like a balloon holding the air back until there is too much. This is what you call lightning. So all that's happening is the charge hits the ground and then spreads through and disperses.
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askscience
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It’s not so much that the person is more conductive than the ground, what he’s referring to is what’s called a “voltage gradient”. Think of the strike point as the bullseye on a target. Let’s say at that point there is 1 million volts if potential, and radiating out from that point, there are rings of decreasing potential say 800k, 600k, etc. this is caused by differences in soil composition and other factors. So if you had one foot in an 800k gradient, and one foot in a 600k, boom you now have 200,000 volts of potential between your feet, and you’re going to have a bad time.
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askscience
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The flow of electrons is from the ground up.
[Because of a quirk in how electricity works/was-discovered we measure it "backwards" so the current flows down from the sky to the ground.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_current#Conventions) This is because we discovered "electron holes" before we discovered electrons.
*Feelers* are extended from both the clouds down and the ground up and once two of them touch it completes a circuit and that causes the lightning bolt.
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askscience
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It does disperse through the ground. Say you were to meter from the center of the bolt to 1' away and it read 100v (just a number, not scientific), when you would meter between 1' and 2' away out would be 50v (again, nowhere close to realistic numbers). When we're digging out primary feeds, which are usually 13,200v, it's extremely dangerous to stand near it incase you break into a wire.
Another coolish thing: say your standing close to a machine that hits a 13kv line. If your feet are equidistant from the wire, you'll be fine (usually) because there's no differential between your feet and no potential for the electric to flow through. If you're standing with one foot closer however, your closer foot is going to have a greater potential than your back foot and you become a short in the circuit.
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askscience
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The lightning bolt is the ‘dispersal’. The opposite charges attract each other and electrons gather, usually at a high conductive point on the ground (lightning rod) or the low point of a cloud. The bolt reduces the total electrical potential. If you feel your hair standing on end from electric charge and you are near a storm, get down and away if you can. After the bolt your hair would return to normal if you are still alive.
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askscience
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Objects rubbing together can generate an electric charge. This means that some objects end up with more electrons than other objects.
If you have a thick rug or carpet, you can drag your feet around on the carpet for a few minutes to build up static charge on yourself, then touch a conductor (door knob, etc) to equalize the charges. There's a little zap that happens.
When a lot of objects start to rub together, you can get bigger zaps. Clouds are the same as us, rubbing our feet on the carpet. Eventually they have so much charge built up that the ground (the doorknob) can exchange this extra charge with the clouds.
For this to happen, there has to be a path through the air for the extra charge to flow. Normally the molecules in air aren't very good at this, but with enough charge build up, they'll form a path and the lightning will strike along that route. Big zap
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askscience
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No the other way around. Electrons flow up from the ground to the cloud to rebalance the electric potential.
The feelers are the result of the electric potential overcoming the *dielectric strength* (insulation) of the air and ionizing it (turns it into a conductive plasma) and they reach in both directions. Once two of them touch it completes the circuit and the bolt of electron flows up. Note that is backwards from how current is defined because we discovered electron-holes before we discovered electrons.
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askscience
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Clouds actually shed electrons as they move and rub across the atmosphere. This makes them become more and more positively charged. Every material has a *dielectric strength* which is a measure of how insulating it is. Once the cloud sheds enough electrons to overcome the dielectric strength of air it starts to ionize the air, which makes it glow bluish-purple because ionized oxygen glows blue and nitrogen glows purple. This is when the feelers happen and they both reach up from the ground and down from the sky. When two of the feelers touch it completes a circuit and a massive bolt of electrons flows up from the ground to the sky.
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askscience
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Most is cloud-to-cloud.
To answer GtC vs. CtG you have to be a lot more specific in your terms and definitions.
The electrons flow from ground to cloud. Current is defined "backwards" so this means the current flow is from cloud to ground.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_current#Conventions
I'm do not have sufficient knowledgeable of atmospheric science to say the electrons never flow from the cloud to the ground but I don't see how that could ever naturally occur. It might happen if, say, you detonate a nuclear bomb in the air (as an EMP pulse generator). A lot of people seem to confuse the reaching out of the feelers from both sides to means the current flows both ways (it doesn't.)
If you stop and think about this for a moment you'll also realize that it cannot possibly be the flow of electrons that causes ionization because there's almost no flow during the feeler stage. It must be the exchange of photons that causes ionization and to really blow your mind it's not even real photons it's so-called virtual photons. (Which frankly is more demonstrative of our primitive understanding of physics than anything else, maybe quantum-gravity and E8 will help us understand what is happening here better in the future.)
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askscience
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Somewhat, yes.
Air normally tries to stop the current from flowing, but when electricity has enough energy, it 'zaps' the atoms in the air and uses the zapped atoms (which are no longer 'entirely air') to make the wire.
Imagine that you have a water system with a paper plate stuck in the middle of a pipe. If you have enough pressure in the pipe, the water will tear a hole *through* the plate and keep going to where it wants to be.
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askscience
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If it were a perfect system then theoretically yes, but the rings are not perfect circles, and you would most likely have zero time to react. If you actually survive/are un-injured by the initial strike, then you likely were already standing within a single gradient. This knowledge is mostly useful in knowing that you should hop away from the site on one foot. This also applies to downed power lines or other large sources of unchecked electrical power.
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askscience
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The charge (electrons) physically move from clouds to ground (or vice versa). The Earth is one huge conductor, which is why it's used as ground potential so often, eg. the neutral wires in your house are literally connected to a huge stake in the ground outside your house.
Voltage [is just a difference in charge potential](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltage), so it doesn't "go" anywhere, it just equalizes once the charges move.
IIRC the clouds have so many electrons from [friction transfer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triboelectric_effect) with the wind, causing such a high (negative) potential.
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askscience
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Yup, got bit by a brown recluse deep in the high desert of Texas. Had to cut necrotic flesh off my forehead using a Leatherman and signal mirror while walking the three days back to my car. Cool scar, great story and the thing just fades away. The scar on my leg I got tripping over a rock when I was eight? That one looks like it happened three weeks ago.
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askscience
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I know it's a subjective kinda thing, but I classify a violent death as pretty much any death where your conscious the whole time, in agony with little ability to stop it, feeling every bit of pain whilst you die, and no way for you to come to terms with it before it actually ends.
Deaths where one second your there and the next your not, as I said while can be perceived as outwardly violent, eg dying from the blast of a nuclear explosion, isn't so much inwardly as you never experienced anything, just one second your alive, the next your dead.
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askscience
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Its not necessarily more conductive but just another path for current to take. People say current follows the path of least resistance but really current follows all paths its just that most of it follows the path of least resistance. Lightning bolts contain a tremendous amount of current, think thousands of amps, but even 0.1 amp will probably kill you.
The resistance of the body can be estimated as 500 per leg and 1000 for the torso. That's only 2000 ohms and you could easily have 2,000 volts potential difference between your feet, and I've heard estimates many times higher than that. From there use V=I*R and you easily get 1A of current and a trip to the morgue.
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askscience
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But even with a voltage gradient across your feet, if there's less resistance within the ground, the current is going to go that way, right? The same way that there's a voltage gradient across a column of air during a lighting strike, but if there's a handy water-laden tree in the way, the charge is going to go through that's arboreal path of least resistance even though the voltage gradient still exists in the neighbouring air.
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askscience
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I would argue that your definition of a violent death could be better described as the difference between a good (or easy) death (there one moment, gone the next) and a bad (or hard) death (alive and aware for _way_ too much of it).
You can have violent good deaths, and non-violent bad deaths.
But we would probably agree on what kinds of deaths we really, really don't want, even if we use different language. :)
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askscience
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Average temperature is correlated with latitude, but it is not directly controlled by it. See [this map](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/Annual_Average_Temperature_Map.png) of average temperature across the globe.
How hot and cold air are able to move across land matters a lot. So things like plains and mountains change where the air can go. Ocean temperature also matters, and similar to the air, there are currents and parts of the ocean are warmer or colder because of those currents than you would expect just based on latitude alone. Here's [a map](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_surface_temperature#/media/File:SST_20131220_blended_Global.png) of that.
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askscience
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The southern tip of Chile is ~6200 km south of the equator. The southernmost point of the Canada US border is ~4900 km north of the equator. The longest straight stretch of border in the west is ~5400 km north.
Buenos Aires and Edmonton are about 210 km apart for what it's worth
E: ugh, you said Argentina not Chile. I can't be bothered to figure out the comparison for Argentina. .
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askscience
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Yeap, generally due to their inexperience and therefore lack of fear of our species. They can be fairly easily deterred though (not speaking from experience I have to say). As far as I know (from nature articles and documentaries etc) tigers are the biggest killers of humans, another animal that we're actively driving to extinction. Two huge predators, beautiful but deadly, that our activities are having a huge impact upon. I really wish humans would wise up and protect and actively preserve animals. Makes me sad
Also for bonus and less cuddly man eater check out [gustave the croc](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_(crocodile))
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askscience
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Well, technically the biggest animal killers of humans are mosquitos, who may have killed half the humans ever born. Tigers do reap a decent harvest to this day but so do hippos.
Polar bears enjoy a fair amount of protection these days. Have a friend who worked in northern alaska and he said that if you shoot a polar bear, you'd better have bite marks on your ass or you could be looking at prosecution. This even though polar bears will pursue you actively, so it's on you to retreat to a vehicle or scare them off.
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askscience
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The Antarctica current which encircles Antarctica ensures that no part of Antarctica is ever allowed relief from freezing, but it also kind of keeps the cold bottled up there. There's little circulation forcing the cold northward ever, it just spins around Antarctica (with the fastest ocean currents and wind speeds of any ocean, due to no land mass blocking it's path). Antarctica had forests before it split from south America and the unimpeded current was allowed to form. Now the only plants are a couple of small flowering plants in the Antarctic Peninsula. It is also speculated that the formation of the unimpeded current 20 million years ago is what triggered the current ice age.
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askscience
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You should see a map of the amount of snowfall it takes to close schools on average. The Pacific Coast sticks out like a sore thumb, closing with much less snow than anywhere at that latitude on the continent. Not sure why this is. The California current is actually cold. The Alaska current is warm (it keeps anchorage livable), but I don't think it begins until nearly the Canadian American border.
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askscience
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> https://slideplayer.com/slide/5286448/17/images/19/Global+Temperature+Ranges.jpg
Sorry Guys but all the temp maps I I have seen on this thread are so wrong about Europe...
It looks like temp in UK are thesame than South of France or Spain... Ain't possible...
Even between north of France and south of France the difference is massive. something like 10-15 degres difference. on all these maps, including top post, it seems the temp is quite the same or few degres.
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askscience
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>and being on the West coast they dont get the severe winters like out East.
I think that was the point. People don't guess Seattle because it's hard for people to associate Seattle with being very far North, since it's not known for getting much snow or very cold weather. So hearing that Seattle is the Northern-most MLB team can help serve as a teaching moment for people to disassociate latitude with temperature patterns.
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askscience
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Thanks for pointing this out. For any non-Europeans reading this, Galicia is wetter, windier, often colder and even more miserable than Britain, which is really saying something. Speaking of, the climate in mainland Britain varies pretty wildly (compare the microclimate of Cornwall to say, Aberdeen) and it's a fraction of the size of the Iberian peninsula. Spain is nice (and actually I love the wind-whipped misery of Galicia) but anyone expecting a climate similar to Andalucia in Northern Spain is in for a big shock.
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askscience
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I lived in Marbella, Anadlucia for a few years so it's synonymous with Spain for me. But yes the north of Spain (I've been there a few times) is absolutely beautiful.
I also just said "California" - just like how you said Spain isn't just Andalucia, California isn't just LA. You have Northern California which is also extremely similar to Northern Spain in climate and terrain. I just didn't include that part to not make my comment longer than necessary. But yes, California overall is similar to Spain overall.
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askscience
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Areas that are located very far from large bodies of water (like central Russia) generally see large swings in temperature over the seasons. The oceans act as a heat reservoir and help moderate the hot summer or cold winters, evening out seasonal temperature shifts.
This is similar to why deserts experience big temperature swings between day and night. No moisture in the air means that there is nothing to hold onto heat that was accumulating during the daytime.
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askscience
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It annoys me that nobody has given you a decent answer yet, so I'm going to make that happen by offering some incorrect guesses. That oughta flush our expert.
I think that Poland happens to lie just south of one of the larger unobstructed north-south air currents in Europe. It originates in the Arctic, hops the small land bridge at the Swedish/Finnish border, gains strength as it blows south through the back-end of the frigid Baltic, and then disperses over Poland with virtually no vertical geography to stop or slow it down.
There, that's not the right answer, but it might buy us one a little later.
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askscience
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It [doesn't look that asymmetric to me](http://folk.uio.no/sigurdkn/world_temperature_mirrored.png). The bulk of south america matches up pretty well with most of the USA and Canada when flipped around the equator. The very tip looks a bit warmer, but it's very thin and therefore very coastal, and if we compare it with the west coast of North America at that latitude we see similar temperatures, albeit not stretching as far from the coast there.
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askscience
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“Skin contains the pigment melanin which is activated by exposure to light. The palms of your hands and the soles of your feet have much thicker layers of skin due to their regular contact and friction with other objects (the ground, tools, etc). Melanocytes exist in the dermal layers of your palms and soles, but are buried beneath the more callous layers and are rarely directed at the sun. You could in theory try to tan your hands but the results would be pretty minimal compared to the rest of your body.”
[sauce](http://health.answers.com/mobile/Q/Why_cant_you_get_a_tan_on_your_palms)
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askscience
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Friction is how we hold things. Our palms are actually designed to be higher friction than other parts of our skin -- that's the function of fingerprints.
Maybe you're thinking friction = rubbing? That's not actually what we mean -- friction is the property of something that prevents things from sliding past each other easily. When you rub two things together rapidly, heat is generated due to the energy used to overcome friction.
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askscience
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How is this wrong? It's basic anatomy. The skin on your palms and soles of your feet is genetically/structurally different than on the rest of your body. It's literally just called thick skin vs thin skin. The thick skin has a much thicker layer of dead keratinocytes (stratum corneum) that covers up the stratum basale/spinosum where melanocytes that produce melanin and make skin dark exist.
The melanocytes produce melanin in RESPONSE to UV so, if UV can't reach them as much, then they'll produce less melanin. So the melanocytes would produce less melanin and also be covered in a thick layer of keratinocytes and keratin coated in lipids which typically look whiter.
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askscience
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Melanocytes secrete the melanosomes to the keratinocytes which then carry it „up“ as they travel through the different layers of skin.
That they are located at the bottom of the epidermis (stratum basale, just above the the dermins) is irrelevant to the color of the skin.
Furthermore, the keratinocytes being exposed to sun is the actual stimulating factor for melanocytes to produce melanin. Again, it doesn‘t matter by how many cells they are covered as they don‘t need direct sun exposure to produce melanin.
I sadly don‘t know the answer to OP‘s question, but yours is definitely not correct, or at least not the full story.
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askscience
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So is the extra dead skin with no melanin literally white? Translucent?
If my palms have the same dead melaninless layer as someone who's black why is there no notable contrast between my palms and arms but there is on a black person?
I guess what I'm saying is, shouldn't my palms be even MORE white? I have so little melanin to start with that the skin on my palms should look nearly completely melaninless to the point where I should have palms that look made of paper or are just super see through?
In reality my palms are slightly darker and pinker than the rest of my arm.
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askscience
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IIRC some neurohormone (melanocortin?) stimulates melanin production when it's being released, but only for dermal tissue that's growing right then. So any dermal tissue that grows entirely because of—or coincidentally during—melanocortin release, will end up dark.
It's why pregnant womens' areolae end up dark—the tissue grows and stretches, and melanocortin is active at the time, so the new skin is dark.
It's also why certain scar tissue or stretch marks can end up dark, if the scar's healing or the skin's stretching is occurring during melanocortin release.
Now, although we don't really fully understand human sexual-arousal neurology, we know that activation of some of melanocortin's receptors tends to make people (more) horny. There was a [drug made to exploit that effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bremelanotide).
So *my guess* at an explanation here, is that skin that grows (or regrows due to use/abuse/scarring/stretching) entirely *while* you're sexually aroused... where that sexual arousal was being stimulated by melanocortin production... might end up growing in darker.
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askscience
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I thnk this is incorrect.
Melanocyte precursor cells are in the hair follicles. No hair, no melanocytes. We have no hair on our palms....ergo no melanocytes...ergo no pigment. In the rest of our skin they migrate from the hair follicles to the nearby skin after differentiation....also...in people whose hair has gone completely white, they are generating no new melanocytes, and they have an age-related version of vitiligo (pigment loss) in which the skin is pink and white in splotches. Look at some white-haired person's skin sometime...
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askscience
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"Very early in the process one of the scientists, Mac Hadley, who was conducting experiments on himself with an early tool compound, melanotan II, injected himself with twice the dose he intended and experienced an eight-hour erection, along with nausea and vomiting."
It works!
Also, "A New Drug Application of bremelanotide for female sexual dysfunction was accepted by the FDA in June 2018 with a PDUFA date set for March 23, 2019", so that is still to come in the US, at least.
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askscience
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The problem of telomeres shortened by aging or chronic inflammation (smoking, certain infectious diseases...) is that the shortening actually protects against cancer, since the highly mutated cells are unable to replicate. You could potentially activate telomerase (which increases telomere length) in aged people, potentially holding back aging worst traits but that comes at an increased risk of cancer. For that purpose CRISPR is not needed, there are better theorical tools for that (which don't work exactly well in humans for now)
That said, CRISPR should be great to treat telomere diseases such as dyskeratosis, which are manifested early in life.
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askscience
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im not sure its the same as unused sperm. sperm will die because of lack of androgens (male sex hormone) while breast tissue will die due to a decrease in stimulating hormones (oxytocin).
also, there is a thing called the "blood testis barrier" that stops communication between the body of the male and anything inside the reproductive track in the testis. that barrier is very strong. removal of dead sperm is much more difficult than removal of normal dead cells
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askscience
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The cells in the breast that produce milk are going to either commit suicide (this is called apoptosis and is completely normal) or the connections between those cells and neighboring cells are removed and the cells die of starvation. Other cells come in and destroy the junk that’s left behind and will get rid of most of the harmful stuff left behind. The clean up cells and the remaining cells will most likely take up and use the nutrients left behind. The destroyed cells are replaced with fat cells.
Breast milk contains protein, fat, and carbs. ~~All of these things can be pushed into the blood stream and easily degraded by the liver or just released in the urine.~~
Edit: a lot of the time, any milk left over after weaning will leak out of the breast. unless the ducts in the breast that carry milk to the nipple are blocked, there will be discharge. release of milk is caused by a few mechanisms and it takes a while (up to months) to destroy the majority of milk producing cells.
Edit 2: those clean up cells will do all the work (macrophages), VERY little of those proteins, fats, or carbs will enter the blood.
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askscience
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Technically, you can. The cells don't actually stop you, although they try to keep the company running as best as they could. Not sure if that's why you cry though. In fact when you are feeling suicidal, the body almost always come with a strong desire to reproduce, in an attempt to pass the genes down to the next person.
Not all genes make it to the end, but there is some sort of common agreement where every gene is given a fair shot down the transport train. Unfortunately also, this desire to reproduce as you are suicidal comes off as desperate in modern context. There's a lot of things we misunderstand about the human body actually =)
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askscience
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Hormone changes in pregnancy specifically block the release of milk while at the same time increasing milk production. The interaction between all of these hormones are crazy. some hormones that have nothing to do with breast/milk development act to increase mammary development just because there is so much of them circulating in the blood stream. (these hormones do have a similar structure but do not assist in breast/milk development when hormones levels are "normal"/non-pregnant)
technically, breast feeding can work as contraceptive. but a woman would need to breast feed about 10+ times per day for extended period of time each time. super hard to pull off
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askscience
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According to the MSDS of [HTH](http://fileserve.newporthigh.co.uk/Manuals/Volume%207%20of%208/Buckingham%20Pools/16.%20HtH%20Calcium%20Hypochlorite%20tablets.pdf), the source of chlorine for the disinfectant is calcium hypochlorite. It also contains some calcium hydroxide and calcium carbonate to keep the pH above 7 which prevents the creation and release of poisonous chlorine gas. I couldn't find any information on Clarity as a pool disinfectant. However, it is likely that the Clarity brand contained [Dichlor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dichloroisocyanuric_acid) which is an acid based pool disinfectant (pKa = \~6 for the non-chlorinated isocyanuric acid - dicloroisocyanuric acid will definitely be much more acidic). Mixing the acid pool disinfectant with the calcium hypochlorite produced green chlorine gas, which you observed, and a lot of heat.
​
EDIT 1: Are you sure Clarity is specifically a pool disinfectant? I did some more digging and found a general peroxide disinfectant called [Clarity](http://www.peroxychem.com/chemistries/peracetic-acid/products/clarity). Peroxides also react with hypochlorites to generate heat but oxygen gas instead. This also removes the chlorine source giving dissolved chloride. I'm now unsure how the chlorine gas (which it what you seem to describe) is produced.
​
EDIT 2: Clarity is most likely trichlor or dichlor which produces chlorine gas and a lot of heat when mixed with hypochlorites. This seems to be a very explosive reaction. see this [video](https://www.chemaxx.com/pool_chemical_explosion5.htm) posted by u/Vew below.
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askscience
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It is also possible that the Cal hypo product added with the small amount of water added a lot of the heat too. I worked for a pool company and the first thing they explained was how if you add small amounts of water to Cal hypo products they have a nasty tendency of catching on fire or exploding. Since I'm not the smartest of people a couple of the other employees and me tested this and it quite violently set on fire I'm sure with the other product it just made it more violent.
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askscience
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I didn't dig into what is in the mixtures but if there were any Nitrogen containing items in the mix then he likely made [trichloramine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_trichloride). I've made this in the lab before from hypochlorite (household bleach) and ammonia salts in the presence of acid. The acid drives the hyochlorite to Cl/Cl2 which then reacts with the nitrogen to sequentially create the chloramine species (NH2Cl, NHCl2, and NCl3). I was only working with probably 100ml of bleach and made 1-3ml of NCl3.
NCl3 is a primary explosive and will detonate violently on shock or heat. It is also not miscible in water so it aggregates quickly at the base and doesn't take much to make a big boom (don't ask me how I know).
Edit: The NCl3 is denser than water and would collect at the bottom of the bucket creating the pressure needed to cause the explosion/fragmentation of the bucket.
Edit2: I put it in a top level comment but its confirmed here. https://cameochemicals.noaa.gov/chemical/9131
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askscience
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There is a mystery I can solve for once!
Whatever he did created NCl3... which is a liquid. The heat boiled some of it, creating a gas that was likely mixed with the chlorine gas, but most of it would sinc to the bottom, being denser than water. It's pretty volatile stuff, and the water itself would act as the seal. If enough of this liquid built up at the bottom of the bucket, and then it got set off somehow. Since it is sensitive to light, heat, and shock, it would be pretty easy for that to happen.
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askscience
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Ran a pool store for some time. This reaction is *exactly* why we tell people not to combine the three primary types of solid chlorinating pool disinfectant.
Somewhere I have a picture of a 4" charred hole in a concrete pool deck (the verge around a typical in-ground pool). This was a result of some genius mixing powdered MPS, dichlor, trichlor, and calcium hypochlorite. His excuse was that he wanted the most effective granular shock possible. I suggested he just add them to the pool next time like the damn instructions suggest.
Edit: another key detail that might help explain the chain of events...
Hydrochloric acid (sold as muriatic acid) was also present. The man was adjusting his pool pH that day. It was found to be far too low (5.5), so he possibly used *waaaaay* too much HCL.
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askscience
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My question is, where the hell is the Consumer Products Safety Commission when you need them? This is apparently a really common situation, and it's super deadly. One of these two chemicals should be banned, or both need to have gigantic banner warning labels on them telling you not to mix them. Like, "THIS IS A CLASS A CHLORINE COMPOUND. DO NOT MIX WITH CLASS B CHLORINE COMPOUNDS."
This kind of fuckup should not be possible in a modern society.
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askscience
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So the government should step in and ban the sale of 1 of 2 kinds of pool cleaners (despite both having different use cases) or require even larger warning labels (that still wouldn't be read) to fix a problem killing, maybe, a handful of people per decade?
Keeping in mind that approx. the same number of people will be killed or rendered vegetative by brain amoeba from swimming in lakes each decade.
Life is risky, no one gets out alive. Hopefully OP learned a lesson about reading warning labels on things sold as "Dangerous Chemicals".
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askscience
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I can only speak anecdotally here.
When I made it, I added ammonium chloride to bleach in a round bottom flask then added a few ml of HCl. Quickly topped with a condenser to cool any escaping NClx back into to solution and let it stir in an ice bath for a while until the solution stop being cloudy. The output went to a water bubbler to trap the Cl2. I was able to pipette the NCl3 out with a glass pipet into a glass vial covered in foil without issue. It sat out for about a day that way at room temp.
Later I went to transfer some via syringe to measure it and that's where I hit the problem. I tested it wouldn't react to the rubber (its highly oxidizing) and I tested it wouldn't react with the metal in the syringe. However when I pierced a septum to inject the sample, the needle cored the septum blocking the syringe exit. The simple act of pressing on the plastic syringe with tip blocked detonated the sample in my hand. Luckily it was only about 50 microliters.
The rest of the sample we just threw on a paper towel and burned for disposal. The towel just burned like it had some alcohol on it.
tl;dr its pretty darn sensitive. Just leaving it in light, dropping it or putting some pressure on it makes it explode. Fire is apparently ok.
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askscience
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Explosives explode even if they are just sitting out in the open. Chlorine reacts rapidly in certain situations, one of which the OP seems to have created - so just sitting in a bucket with an open top wouldn't prevent it. It's possible he mixed them in just the right amounts for such an explosive reaction, and that you and I might not be able to replicate the reaction. It's also possible that the older chemicals had decomposed or reacted with air or other things in the environment to make new chemicals and that the new chemicals helped set off the reaction. But all of these things can happen and have happened, but its usually pretty hard to figure out exactly *what* happened. So the general rule is *do not mix chemicals,* unless you are absolutely sure you know what chemicals you're mixing and what they are made from, and you know what will happen when you mix them and are trying to achieve that result.
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askscience
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I don't see how what u/agate_ said was unreasonable or unnecessary intervention by the government. If you're not a chemist and you go to a pool shop to buy "chlorine", it's completely within reason to expect that these different "chlorine" products are equivalent and would pose no hazard upon mixing. Judging by other comments in this thread, it seems to be more common than you'd expect. I think a large label saying do not mix class A with class B type warning is a great idea.
There's a difference between typically encountered "dangerous chemicals" (bleach, drain cleaner, HCl, solvents etc.) and ones that to the layperson appear to be the same thing yet when mixed result in the formation of an impact, light, and temperature sensitive primary explosive.
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askscience
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They actually do say exactly that right on the sides of chlorines. The brand I buy has a huge warning on the side AND a sticker on the top. I know because when I did the exact same thing as the OP (like a complete moron) I thought the same thing, then went to check the container out, and lo and behold it was marked all over.
Sometimes you just can't stop stupidity no matter how hard you try.
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askscience
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Someone should probably be researching this at the very least. It seems like we have a good idea of what happened from the discussion in this thread, but as with all science we could be totally off the mark and when it comes to explosions it's important to understand why exactly they happened so they don't happen again.
This is something that seems like a very easy mistake to make, and if we don't change something it will almost definitely happen again.
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askscience
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You've got it. I made this mistake once by mixing the chlorine and acid in the bucket together instead of separately. Massive overflowing cloud of green gas came flowing out and then it started violently boiling over and sloshing. Never exploded but I bet it could have been nasty if there wasn't water in the bucket. The cloud dispersed eventually and the bucket calmed down. It was warm to the touch. Now I'm careful to mix everything separately.
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askscience
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I work in a field closely related to drinking water treatment. This sounds like a reaction we work with fairly frequently called quenching since Sodium Hypochlorite is one of the main treatment chemicals. Calcium Hypochlorite reacts similarly, but for reasons that are beyond the scope of this course you don't need to worry about quenching Calcium Hypochlorite. The point of this reaction is to get the chlorine out of the solution to stop the decay of the Hypochlorite and see what's left over.
If what u/Appaulingly says is true and the Clarity has Peroxide in it, then OP likely quenched the calcium or sodium hypochlorite, whichever it actually was. You can also quench sodium hypochlorite with acids though, so any of those theories as to what's in the Clarity will provide the same reaction.
The quenching reaction is typically violent and it releases pure chlorine gas, which is poisonous. When you quench, you typically add the quenching agent drop by drop to the Hypochlorite and do it under a fume hood so you don't poison everyone or make the beaker explode. It sounds like whatever was in that Clarity basically quenched the whole bucket at once, which created a ton of chlorine gas and nuked the bucket.
And that's the bell! Everyone remember to drop your homework in the box on the way out and remember the quiz on Friday!
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askscience
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These reactions are thoroughly understood, but the circumstances in which they took place are not. Strictly speaking this would be public safety research, not chemistry research.
And yes indeed almost all cleaning compounds with have a giant warning label not to mix them with other cleaning compounds, but the average person probably doesn't understand that two similar products by different brands are actually different chemical compounds.
In theory additional research shouldn't be necessary, but we now have empirical evidence that it might be.
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askscience
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That's not how public safety research works.
As an individual, you are responsible for keeping yourself safe. The responsibility of the entity in charge of product safety however, is to reduce the overall risk of injury/death to zero. Obviously that's impossible, but it's still the goal.
This research isn't "done," that's not how research works either. We are currently in a thread that provides evidence that this research is not done, and unless OP is lying, which I don't think is a reasonable assumption, then it is complete proof that this research *isn't* done.
Edit: [Here](https://www.chemaxx.com/images/walmart29a-Blue-Green.jpg) is a side-by-side photo of the labels, taken from [this](https://www.chemaxx.com/pool_chemical_explosion5.htm) website posted elsewhere in this thread.
Also from that website:
>Since both products are sold as a form of "pool chlorine," consumers most likely would not expect them to be incompatible with each other and might even consider them to be the same pool chemical product.
>Consumers need to be aware that these seemingly similar pool chemical products are explosively incompatible. Chemaxx believes that short of drastic measures, the ordinary consumer is not likely to appreciate the full seriousness of the hazard via conventional warnings.
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