can there be an arctic methane release large enough to cause an extinction level event and how long would that take? |
- can there be an arctic methane release large enough to cause an extinction level event and how long would that take?
- Why can't we handle division by zero the same way we handle the square root of -1?
- What is the relationship between Intelligence and Mental Illness? Are people "too smart for their own good"?
- Is it actually impossible for matter to occupy the same space, or is it just difficult due to repulsive effects of electromagnetism or some other force?
- The earth's crust is very hot at great depth; How can the ocean floor remain cold?
- I read somewhere that depression occurs due to chemical changes in the brain. What does it really mean and how true is that statement?
- How do our brains mark "the place where X happened" on our interior maps? Do positive and negative experiences store differently, or is it the strength of the emotion that counts most?
- Does time have a standard speed?
- Has there been a recorded case where a comatose patient has woken up claiming to be another person?
- How do computers work chemically/ atomically speaking?
- Is time dilation like a wave function collapse?
- Diapsids vs. Synapsids?
- Why is it that in the summer, I'm comfortable or sometimes too warm when it's 22 Celsius in my apartment, but in the winter, when it's still 22 in my apartment, I'm cold and my hands and feet are cold and numb?
- What is the limit to the number of particles that can become quantum entangled? Can molecules become entangled?
- Do prison inmates have higher than average levels of testosterone?
- Inverse Laplace transforms and complex integrals in statistical mechanics?
- How can two completely different things smell similar to the olfactory?
- What happens to our brain when we win or lose a game? Does the experience differ from person to person?
- What determines the "slipperiness" of a liquid?
- Do metals have a glass transition temperature?
- How could meat production result in higher levels of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere?
| Posted: 18 Nov 2015 05:05 PM PST |
| Why can't we handle division by zero the same way we handle the square root of -1? Posted: 18 Nov 2015 06:40 PM PST Define 1/0=m Three dimensional space with axes Real, Imaginary, m Using m whenever division by zero occurs may allow carrying through proofs until m cancels. Identities: If m = 1/0, 0*m=1 1/m = 0 [link] [135 comments]  |
| Posted: 18 Nov 2015 05:23 PM PST Is the brain being overly developed a cause for both? It seems like the two are related. Are we at a point where the brain is too smart for its own good and the complex world? Compared to that our brain didn't really evolve for modern thought and our society, just primitive survival. For example: 47% of graduate students suffer from depression. 10% of academics contemplate suicide. 3-4x more academics suffer from mental illness than general population. Higher rates of anxiety and social anxiety. Higher rate of alcoholism and drug abuse. More difficulty stay clean [link] [29 comments]  |
| Posted: 19 Nov 2015 06:36 AM PST |
| The earth's crust is very hot at great depth; How can the ocean floor remain cold? Posted: 19 Nov 2015 12:40 AM PST Question I can't quite grasp- The ocean's floor, average 3.6 km depth, is 2-4 degrees C. Descending into the earth increases the temperature for, on average, 3 C every 100m, putting the earth's temperature 3,600m down at 108C. The average surface temperature of the ocean is 17 C. If the temperature of earth at such a depth should be higher, and the surface temperature is known to be higher, why would the ocean depths be so cold? (Sources may not be the most accurate, but as far as I can tell the core point still stands) [link] [8 comments]  |
| Posted: 18 Nov 2015 09:18 PM PST |
| Posted: 18 Nov 2015 12:06 PM PST If I "look" at my personal interior map, there are little Google markers where events occurred. I can "see" the map from "above" and see all markers, or I can choose specific categories -- for example, wildlife sightings. "Here's where the baby moose came out of the bushes, here's where the black bear crossed the road right in front of me, here's where I finally spotted a bald eagle." The memories of good experiences are durable and will involuntarily pop up like sidebar ads when I physically pass through that spot. The memories of bad ones seem to store differently. I know where my cat died, where I had the car accident, but I don't as regularly remember the events when revisiting the places. Is the difference in how things are stored upfront? Does a brief surge of pleasure "set" a memory differently than a moment of pain? Or do all strong experiences set a marker, and we suppress the less pleasant on recall? Or am I totally off base and it all works quite differently from either scenario? [link] [5 comments]  |
| Does time have a standard speed? Posted: 19 Nov 2015 06:38 AM PST I understand that time can be slowed due to intense gravity or intense velocity, but in a situation where time isn't affected by either of those, does it move at a fixed speed? Has it been measured? [link] [3 comments]  |
| Has there been a recorded case where a comatose patient has woken up claiming to be another person? Posted: 18 Nov 2015 06:30 PM PST I'm doing some research to a story i want to write where something like this happens. Any article will be very helpful. [link] [1 comment]  |
| How do computers work chemically/ atomically speaking? Posted: 19 Nov 2015 02:56 AM PST I know how computers work technology wise, but during a conversation with my friend about graphics cards, I wondered, "What makes one better than another chemically speaking? Or when I play a game what is happening on a chemical/molecular level in the screen and tower?" [link] [2 comments]  |
| Is time dilation like a wave function collapse? Posted: 18 Nov 2015 06:45 PM PST Time dilation is relative: 2 space ships going at different speeds, and moving through empty space without any reference points or prior knowledge of their velocity would not be able to determine which of them is going faster or experiencing higher time dilation. A 3rd party observer would be able to make that distinction. Is this not similar to a wave function collapse? [link] [9 comments]  |
| Posted: 18 Nov 2015 08:48 PM PST So I understand that diapsids have two temporal fenestrae while synapsids have one, but I've never really understood where on a mammalian skull this temporal fenestra is exactly. Is this where the sphenoid is located and you just can't see it? Is that true of all mammals? Thanks! [link] [3 comments]  |
| Posted: 18 Nov 2015 10:08 AM PST |
| Posted: 18 Nov 2015 07:02 PM PST |
| Do prison inmates have higher than average levels of testosterone? Posted: 18 Nov 2015 10:27 PM PST |
| Inverse Laplace transforms and complex integrals in statistical mechanics? Posted: 18 Nov 2015 06:18 PM PST I have never taken a complex analysis nor a mathematical methods course, so I'm struggling a little with the idea of inverse Laplace transforms. In my statistical mechanics course, we saw how the partition function Z(β) is the Laplace transform of the density of states. I understand that just fine, but what I don't understand is how to get a density of states as the inverse Laplace transform of Z(β). I know for simple ones I can just look them up in a table, but I'd like to understand how they're really calculated. I'm using the first equality in this as my definition of the density of states in terms of Z(β). So is β being treated as a complex variable? What does that mean physically? I see that the integral is taken over all of the imaginary part of β, so the end result will only depend on Re(β)? What is Re(β) now that β is complex? My professor briefly stated in class that you just "integrate along a contour to the right of all singularities." So do I just pick some vertical line that is further right than all singularities? Does it matter which line I pick? My undergraduate circuits professor went over Laplace transforms as well, and he briefly mentioned that you could use the residue theorem to solve inverse Laplace transforms? But my (probably wrong) understanding of the residue theorem is that you use it when your contour encloses a singularity. But if I'm just integrating along a vertical line, how can it enclose anything? I have tried referencing books to teach myself how to do contour integrals, but I learn better from lectures. If anybody has a link to some video lecture series about complex variables or specifically complex integration, I'd be very grateful. Thanks. [link] [3 comments]  |
| How can two completely different things smell similar to the olfactory? Posted: 18 Nov 2015 09:57 PM PST The only example I can think of off the top of my head is pretty odd: there's a particular type of tree that smells like... dried semen. [link] [4 comments]  |
| Posted: 18 Nov 2015 05:13 PM PST Whenever I play games, particularly online against other people, the rush I feel is so powerful and addictive. I immediately want to get that feeling again and I find it very hard to pull myself away from a game to do something productive. But when I lose, I have a similar rush and I tell myself, "That one didn't count" or "Just one more win and I'll be done". Does everyone experience this addictive rush? Do some people experience this more strongly than others? I've heard on podcasts about the 'near-miss' phenomena where the brain will interpret a near miss as a win. And how casinos exploit this to keep people gambling. [link] [comment]  |
| What determines the "slipperiness" of a liquid? Posted: 18 Nov 2015 02:53 PM PST |
| Do metals have a glass transition temperature? Posted: 18 Nov 2015 02:19 PM PST Glass transition happens in amorphous solids when heated. It's not a phase change like melting and freezing, but more like the gradual softening of a material once it hits a certain temperature. This phenomenon occurs in all amorphous solids (glasses). But then...what's with steel softening when you heat it to yellow? I've melted zinc with a small butane torch (while poking it with a steel nail periodically because I like experimenting and I'm a stupid person). I've also spent a week working in a forge for a weeklong intro-to-welding thing. I observed that the zinc doesn't seem to get softer before it melts. It's a solid, and then suddenly it's a liquid. But I've observed that steel does get softer and it becomes flexible (but not liquid) when it's heated to bright yellow. It's clearly neither a liquid nor a brittle solid, but steel does have a crystal structure so it can't possibly experience glass transition, right? [link] [3 comments]  |
| How could meat production result in higher levels of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere? Posted: 18 Nov 2015 07:23 AM PST We read a lot about meat production leading to higher levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. From my limited understanding this is mainly that the level of CO2 is getting higher and higher, thus carbon emissions? Now my thought was that since the animals we breed for food eat plants and plants grow by absorbing carbon from the air would this not just end up in a 1=1 game and no new carbon is introduced to the atmosphere? I gather the fact that maybe the rain forests are more effective than whatever we grow to feed the livestock and this might be one source of higher greenhouse gas levels but I still see stats regarding the dangers of the actual gas emitted from livestock in of themselves. [link] [13 comments]  |
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