I have green eyes. One day when I was a child, while playing with my father's binoculars, a strange thing happened.

No kidding, I don't know how, but I could see inside my iris and it was all green with a mix of yellow and very detailed.

It felt like an universe. Then it never happened again. How?

I want to start by saying, please no mean comments. My upbringing and my own cognitive impairments have made a lot of things difficult for me, including doing well in school. Although, I will take responsibility for the fact I could’ve tried harder. I am also not in the greatest company. Most of the people I’m around and have always been around are not academic and don’t care to be. I am now 25 and I want to start learning as in my spare time I take care of children (mostly picking them up from school, taking them to the park and making sure they eat etc.) and the children ask me a lot of questions about the world: like why is the sky blue and how do plants grow. And in those moments it occurred to me, I have no clue about anything. I apologise to them for not knowing and ask them to ask their parents or teachers because they are good questions. It’s an uncomfortable and disturbing feeling to know I know nothing about the world I live in, I just accept I exist in it and that’s that. Everyone I’m close to, like my family and friends, seem to be the same way. I don’t want to be that way anymore. So, where do I start? Any book recommendations, YouTubers, podcasts? Any sites I can go to for practise questions and answers? Please, very low level stuff. When I say I don’t know a damn thing, I really don’t know a damn thing.

I’d assume catalyst development might be one of the most promising approaches, given how it can make reactions more efficient and reduce energy consumption. Would you agree, or is there another technique that’s even more impactful?

Would a more durable glass make a stronger prince Rupert's drop?

Could you make them out of crystals like quarts or sapphire or other crystal minerals?

Question asked with the background that if to involve search engine to search Internet for term Design Science the list of matches quickly lands to design science research field.

Not every source providing the introduction to the design science field make clear the elaboration to be made in scope of information systems. Signals had been encountered for IS to be the branch where term DSR originates.

Using my own perspective, a layman's one I interpret two terms following way - no guarantee the understanding to be correct

design science - the science addressing questions/problems of designing a stuff

design science research - research conducted to add to state of design science new findings

Ganymede is the largest moon in the solar system. It has a mass comparable to 2.48% of that of earth, with a gravity comparable to 14.6% of earth.

The moon has a mass comparable to 1.23% of earths mass and gravity of 16.6% of earth’s gravity.

How do these moons have so much gravity with so little mass compared to earth, and why does our moon have more gravity than the moon with the most mass in the solar system?

I am posing this for people with average or slightly above average level of intelligence who are deeply involved in science- physics/math/chemistry and even more so the abstract topics.

What was your path to learning? When you were first learning in school and undergraduate what was your strategy to get better? how did you approach concepts that were muddy or unclear? did you have any that you just learned as a factoid but only later came to realize in depth what it was about ?

I guess I am asking what your learning journey was going from a layperson to becoming a deep expert

Edit: unfortunately cannot change the title. this is not about IQ but just a way of trying to understand how you learned how to learn and techniques in science education and learning

TIL the fact that mass spectrometers are apparently quite rare to use in testing for things such as allergens or gluten in commercial food production. Instead, ELISA enzyme assay tests are preferred, even though they have known flaws and inaccuracies (e.g., the 20 ppm standard set by the National Celiac Association and adopted by the FDA, et al, is actually the margin of error of the tests available around 2005, not actually because it is specifically medically sound).

This technology is obviously not new, and a quick search indicates that submission of samples to labs for either testing method appears to be a similar cost. Why has no one thought to use it for this until recently?

Hi,

The last coal power station was shut down a couple of weeks ago, but sometimes, steam still comes from the cooling towers. I assume this is part of the 'two-year decommissioning process', but what would they be doing during that time that requires the turbines to run, and how are they running now that all the coal stores (at least outside the plant) have been used up?

Here is the wiki page for the power station in case anyone doesn't know about it: Ratcliffe-on-Soar Power Station - Wikipedia

It's usually just a couple of towers, which I assume are two towers per turbine, so only one turbine is running at once.

Basically the title, I’m not any sort of astronomer, astrophysicist, or engineer, so I don’t know much but I enjoy discussion on the topic.

How would this happen?

I'm a little weirded out by how inconsistent the internet has been on this subject when doing searches. I work in a manufacturing plant and we have buggies that are manually pushed from one department to another. Some of these buggies are getting to be quite heavy, and it's becoming more physically demanding to move them.

In an effort to reduce the strain on the employees, we are looking into different types of wheels that could reduce the force needed to push the buggies. I tried out a wheel that has a reduced wheel width in an effort to reduce the contact area with the floor and thus reduce friction, but somehow, it actually seemed harder to push the buggy compared to the wider wheels we currently use. Maybe I was barking up the wrong tree with that line of thinking.

I'm now contemplating looking into larger wheel diameters instead, but I wanted to get other opinions before I just start buying random wheels. They need to be welded on, so I want to be at least a bit more certain before trying again. Thanks so much!

To anyone who has worked in or around a scientific team that is systemically incompetent, have you seen things turn around for the better, and if so, how did that turn around occur?

I have left this question intentionally open and vague. I'm a government research scientist who is approaching mid career, and am well aware of the persistent issues in government and academia. Interested in stories or insights from people (in any science sector) who have seen dysfunctional scientific teams that improved. Or maybe cases where those teams were held accountable and completely dissolved. As an example, dysfunctional could mean producing sloppy work, no QA/QC of results, lack of motivation or accountability for team members to perform basic background research/appropriately contextualize results, team leadership with no background in the research area and no interest in learning or leading....or any other cocktail of dysfunction that impacts scientific validity. My assumption is that these situations are able to exist due to artificial boulstering (eg. excess funding with no audits, hiding behind the cover of other more competent teams, etc.). Curious to hear examples where the chickens came home to roost! Thanks!

this doesnt really have a practical reason i just thought it would be cool and since they are "small" i was wondering if it would be possible to force both Deimos and phobos to crash into mars with our current technology level

Title

If the amounts are small enough, is there any other way to detect some element or isotope other than mass spectrometer?

Science seems to be quite unclear about those elements well beyond those that have been made. Is it because (current?) algorithms / softwares are too slow for (current?) computers to predict / calculate / compute / simulate the nuclear properties? If so, maybe a different approach with the algorithms might enable enough efficiency or maybe a computer could be fast enough for current softwares or algorithms( because, generally those are possibilities to consider at least shortly, when talking about computing and maybe not knowing much about the specific problem) ?

Even if all the properties could be computed, who knows, it might be possible that there is some yet unknown physics that would make the calculations be off for the new elements. Just a remote possibility.

Who knows, maybe some normal looking meteorite has some normal looking specks of material that contain minuscule amounts of some yet unknown element. And one of those specks would have to be destroyed in the right kind of mass spectrometer.

How many manufacturers are there?

Maybe this is all wrong. If so, it is not obviously and ridiculously wrong by the standards and user base of this subreddit, so please have some understanding and use this opportunity to dispell some myths or bust misconceptions (and knowing about those can have value).

What is the science that studies topography of land, hills and valleys, etc. and also changes in soil that occur ? I live in the Midlands of South Carolina and it’s interesting that in a short period of time you go from one soil type to another, at least at the top level, and we do have a lot of rolling hills down to the river. Want to get a topography map and am asking - what science could I read about to explain changes to the soil caused by forces over time.

What makes some animals want to play while they are young, while others won't bother?

Is there a specific level of intelligence required or is it something else? Surely microscopic animals don't play around right?

We've catalogued all the dangerous asteroids, but what about the dangerous comets from beyond the asteroid/kuiper belts?

Since the Y chromosome in many mouse species is about 8090 million base pairs in length, while the human Y chromosome is only 5060 million bases long, it does look like that the mouse Y chromosome has longer overall length than humans. But what about the male-specific region of the Y chromosome (MSY) they have? Do mice also have a larger MSY region, like 90% of their Y chromosome is the MSY? Or is their MSY portion actually smaller than humans, which most of the parts on their Y chromosome are the pseudoautosomal regions (PARs)?

So I was listening to a podcast that was talking about different types of cleaners (riveting, I know) and the lady speaking was saying soaps did not disinfect or kill bacteria - they only help remove them and wash them down the drain.

My understanding was that regular soap actually dissolve bacteria and virus, specifically the capsid protecting their genetic material. This would make me think the regular old dawn dish soap or the like would also kill bacteria & viruses, right? If they're dissolved into bits, they can't replicate, right?

I did a bit of googling and found people agreeing with what the lady on the podcast was saying but without addressing what I'm talking about. I also found people agreeing with me.

Can someone break this down for me? I've always sort of scoffed at things like disinfectant wipes as I always understood things like soapy water or 3-5% ammonia to disinfect AND clean.

Thanks!

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-74141-w

There are so many problems with this paper that it's not even worth listing them all, so I'll give the highlights:

1. Using "wind" from fans to generate more electricity than the fans consume.
2. Using vertical-axis (radial-flow) wind turbines to generate electricity from a vertical air flow.
3. Using a wind turbine to generate electricity from air flow "columns" that do not pass through the space occupied by the turbine.

I have seen comments that the "scientific reports" section is generally lower quality, but as a "scientific passerby", even I can tell that this is ABSOLUTE garbage content. Is there any form of review before something like this gets published?

EDIT: I'm quite disappointed in the commenters in this subreddit; most of the upvoted commenters didn't even read the paper enough to answer their own questions.

• They measured the airflow of the fans, and their own data indicates almost zero contribution from natural wind.
• They can't be using waste heat, because the airflow they measured is created by fans on the exhaust side of the heat exchanger, so heat expansion isn't contributing to the airflow.
• They did not actually test their concept, and the numbers they are quoting are "estimates" based on incorrect assumptions.
• Again, they measured vertical wind speed but selected a vertical axis wind turbine which is only able to use horizontal airflow to generate power.

In simple terms, what is dark matter and dark energy and how far have we progressed in research in that area? Can you also guide me to a resource/ book to read about this.

So I have heard a lot of people espousing the benefits of using ethanol over petroleum in automobiles. But can they be used airplanes and ships? If yes, what are the most effective generation of biofuels? And do they work under colder climates?

It doesn't matter what language :)

What exactly is the equation in the hypothetical unified 'theory of everything' ?

I have heard of the hypothetical, sought-after theory of everything, unifying gravity with the quantim forces, and that it would be nice to have a single equation to describe the universe. I do not understand what this equation would return. (MV²)/2 returns the kinetic energy of an object based on its mass and velocity, but what would be the variables in the theory of everything? Has anyone made an equation anyway using a known approximation/assumption like modified Newtonian dynamics, or quantum gravity?

As in this thing.

I saw articles talking about an MIT project 6ish years ago but nothing (?) more recently. I'm asking purely out of curiosity, how efficient or good is this kind of thing compared to other kinds of flight?

(Not sure if I flair-ed this correctly, apologies if not.)

I read in other parts of the body, the scar cells get replaced after several years with original tissue

Can glial scars be gradually removed over time, or are they permanent?

Even in areas of the brain where neurogenesis takes place?

I was reading that If the conditions which caused the insult have been resolved, the process of replacing the scar can happen

a neural stem cells first specialize into a type of glial progenitor cell (radial glia) and those control the scaffolding and specialization of other stem cells into new neurons. This process takes place throughout our lifetime, albeit slower with age. Very small scars are formed and removed on a constant basis.