/r/askscience
Ask a science question, get a science answer.
Title | Description |
---|---|
Physics | Theoretical Physics, Experimental Physics, High-energy Physics, Solid-State Physics, Fluid Dynamics, Relativity, Quantum Physics, Plasma Physics |
Mathematics | Mathematics, Statistics, Number Theory, Calculus, Algebra |
Astronomy | Astronomy, Astrophysics, Cosmology, Planetary Formation |
Computing | Computing, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Computability |
Earth and Planetary Sciences | Earth Science, Atmospheric Science, Oceanography, Geology |
Engineering | Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Structural Engineering, Computer Engineering, Aerospace Engineering |
Chemistry | Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, Polymers, Biochemistry |
Social Sciences | Social Science, Political Science, Economics, Archaeology, Anthropology, Linguistics |
Biology | Biology, Evolution, Morphology, Ecology, Synthetic Biology, Microbiology, Cellular Biology, Molecular Biology, Paleontology |
Psychology | Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Abnormal, Social Psychology |
Medicine | Medicine, Oncology, Dentistry, Physiology, Epidemiology, Infectious Disease, Pharmacy, Human Body |
Neuroscience | Neuroscience, Neurology, Neurochemistry, Cognitive Neuroscience |
Date | Description |
---|---|
23 Oct | Ask Anything Wednesday - Biology, Chemistry, Neuroscience, Medicine, Psychology |
23 Oct | Mole Day |
24 Oct | AskScience AMA Series: Dr. Brent Seales, Vesuvius Challenge |
28 Oct | Jonas Salk's Birthday (b.1914) |
30 Oct | Ask Anything Wednesday - Economics, Political Science, Linguistics, Anthropology |
6 Nov | Ask Anything Wednesday - Physics, Astronomy, Earth and Planetary Science |
7 Nov | AskScience AMA Series: Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Atmospheric Rivers |
7 Nov | Marie Curie's Birthday (b.1867) |
13 Nov | Ask Anything Wednesday - Engineering, Mathematics, Computer science |
We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers. -Carl Sagan, Cosmos
/r/askscience
Would Jupiter, or any gas giant like Neptune or Saturn, have the greatest gravitational pull somewhere near the "top" or would it be near the center/core. also would the center be some dense metal or just a bunch of gases that collected together over the years.
Free neutrons have a half life of a little over 10 minutes, but a lot of atomic nuclei containing neutrons are longer lived. Are neutrons actually more stable in nuclei (i.e., having longer half lives), or do they still decay but just get replaced as protons turn back into neutrons (akin to finding an equilibrium in chemistry)? Either way, why?
Mutations often happen during cell replication. Similarly telomeres are shortened over time as a result of cell replication. Does this therefore mean that things that increase cell turnover, even if they may seem good (for example skin exfoliation), increase risk of cancer and speed up aging?
I watched a video a while back about the Chernobyl power plant, and how still in operation (the documentary was before the war). There was a part where they talk about the stalkers, and show a video of a stalker filming himself exploring, and at some point he picks something up (I forget what), and the guy in the documentary says he hopes the stalker didn’t take the item home, because it was radioactive, and obviously dangerous. What makes it radioactive now though? Why would exposing something like a chair (obviously not radioactive) to radiation make it radioactive?
Welcome to our weekly feature, Ask Anything Wednesday - this week we are focusing on Engineering, Mathematics, Computer Science
Do you have a question within these topics you weren't sure was worth submitting? Is something a bit too speculative for a typical /r/AskScience post? No question is too big or small for AAW. In this thread you can ask any science-related question! Things like: "What would happen if...", "How will the future...", "If all the rules for 'X' were different...", "Why does my...".
Asking Questions:
Please post your question as a top-level response to this, and our team of panellists will be here to answer and discuss your questions. The other topic areas will appear in future Ask Anything Wednesdays, so if you have other questions not covered by this weeks theme please either hold on to it until those topics come around, or go and post over in our sister subreddit /r/AskScienceDiscussion , where every day is Ask Anything Wednesday! Off-theme questions in this post will be removed to try and keep the thread a manageable size for both our readers and panellists.
Answering Questions:
Please only answer a posted question if you are an expert in the field. The full guidelines for posting responses in AskScience can be found here. In short, this is a moderated subreddit, and responses which do not meet our quality guidelines will be removed. Remember, peer reviewed sources are always appreciated, and anecdotes are absolutely not appropriate. In general if your answer begins with 'I think', or 'I've heard', then it's not suitable for /r/AskScience.
If you would like to become a member of the AskScience panel, please refer to the information provided here.
Past AskAnythingWednesday posts can be found here. Ask away!
I recently saw a television commercial about a solar flare causing a 25th hour in the day. Is this possible? (Tag could be wrong)
I mean, I know they would depend on the sun to pull Earth together as a planet but could life exist down there without life existing up here? Or did it evolve from life up here and find a new source of energy?
NASA and SpaceX work super hard to have heat shielding on the body of their spacecraft. I get that they go so fast that it can melt the steel. But they have a parachute on board, why don’t they deploy the parachute right away after starting to fall to earth? If they used Kevlar or something heat resistant, couldn’t that basically get rid of heat shielding because of how much slower they would go through the atmosphere?
I know opposite electric charges attract each other, and the same charges repel each other, but I can't understand why thats the case. I've learned that everything "wants" to be in a lower energy state, so does that mean the charges attract each other because they are minimising energy by cancelling each other out?
I mean I dont even know if negative and positive charges would actually cancel each other out in physics but thats what I assume it would do because thats the case in math.
So from what I understand an allergy is your body building up an intense immune response to something harmless, so from then on out every time you’re exposed to that thing your immune system will kick in and give you a bad reaction.
But when it comes to diseases, once our bodies build up that same(?) immune response, we’re immune now and won’t get sick from it again (at least until the immunity wears off)
Why aren’t people getting hives and anaphylaxis after breathing in the same cold virus twice? What’s the difference?
There's a spider web in my yard that spans a gap between 2 trees about 12 feet apart. How do they do that? Let the wind carry one end? Let it drift until it sticks to the other side? Dive from a branch above the middle and spray in both directions like Spiderman? (JK) And, of course, what's the greatest distance they could span based on silk strength, spray ability, vision, etc
I know the simple answer is that relatives share genes, but people have similar genes to unrelated people.
I have a friend who was a bone marrow transplant recipient, which requires two people to be very genetically similar. Her donor shares more genes with her than her mother, father, or siblings, who weren’t similar enough to her to donate. As I understand it, this is pretty common.
How is it that paternity testing, forensics, and services like 23andMe can tell when someone is actually related to another person rather than just coincidentally born with the same genes?
I’ve been watching and listening to unhealthy amounts of fermi paradox theories recently and they always talk about how we can’t see any signs of intelligent life in our universe but if our technology only sees light that traveled from millions and possibly billons of years ago how do we know if they’re actually not there?
Might be a stupid question, that’s why I’m asking it on reddit instead of my teacher.
Today I was learning about Maillard's Reaction in cooking. It's described as a reaction between amino acids and sugars, and it's what produces a beautiful crust on steaks and an amazing flavor.
However, when I Googled "how much sugar naturally exists in meat", the majority of the results stated that there was a very miniscule amount, if any.
How can Maillard's reaction occur in meat if this is the case?
Can someone who knows something about this topic tell me if this is possible or not? That the body recognises the same virus, but the antibodies are only partially effective, so the body has a tough time dealing with the rest of it?
How long does an infectioned mosquito have to bite you before it transmits a disease such as malaria or dengue? Is it as soon as it bites you or until it's full. Thank you!
Everything I can find says red aurora is due to low concentrations of oxygen at higher altitude, whereas green aurora is due to higher concentrations at lower altitude. That's quite an unsatisfying explanation though.
What exactly is the mechanism for exciting different wavelengths at different altitudes?
Across disparate mountain ranges, the tallest peaks are all in the 14,000s in height. From rainier in the cascades at 14410, to Whitney in the Sierra Nevadas, and all the 14ers in Colorado - why does there seem to be an elevation limit?
If chromosome fusion occurs as a single event in one generation, and organisms with different numbers of chromosomes generally don't produce viable offspring, then who would this organism with newly fused chromosomes produce offspring with?
For example, in the human genome when chromosome 2 formed from the fusion of two other chromosomes, who did this newly fused unique organism mate with?
Is it simply that they usually don't produce viable offspring but in some rare cases they do? If so, then maybe this fusion happened more than once and it took many attempts at offspring before it caught on and a viable offspring was produced?