AskScience Panel of Scientists XIII | AskScience Blog

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Wednesday, January 27, 2016

AskScience Panel of Scientists XIII

AskScience Panel of Scientists XIII


AskScience Panel of Scientists XIII

Posted:

Please read this entire post carefully and format your application appropriately.

This post is for new panelist recruitment! The previous one is here.

The panel is an informal group of redditors who are either professional scientists or those in training to become so. All panelists have at least a graduate-level familiarity within their declared field of expertise and answer questions from related areas of study. A panelist's expertise is summarized in a color-coded AskScience flair.

Membership in the panel comes with access to a panelist subreddit. It is a place for panelists to interact with each other, voice concerns to the moderators, and where the moderators make announcements to the whole panel. It's a good place to network with people who share your interests!


You are eligible to join the panel if you:

  • Are studying for at least an MSc/MA/MPhil or equivalent degree in the natural or social sciences, AND,

  • Are able to communicate your knowledge of your field at a level accessible to various audiences.

  • OR have flair in /r/Science

Those studying towards undergraduate/integrated masters degrees must be in their final year.

All panel applications are at moderator discretion.


Instructions for formatting your panelist application:

  • Choose exactly one general field from the side-bar (Physics, Engineering, Social Sciences, etc.).

  • State your specific field in one word or phrase (Neuropathology, Quantum Chemistry, etc.)

  • Succinctly describe your area of research or expertise in a few words (carbon nanotube dielectric properties, myelin sheath degradation in Parkinsons patients, etc.)

  • Give us a brief synopsis of your education: are you a research scientist for three decades, or a first-year Ph.D. student?

  • Provide links to comments you've made in AskScience or another subreddit which you feel are indicative of your scholarship. Applications will not be approved without several comments made in reddit.


Ideally, these comments should clearly indicate your fluency in the fundamentals of your discipline as well as your expertise. We favor comments that contain citations so we can assess its correctness without specific domain knowledge.

Here's an example application:


Username: /u/VeryLittle

General field: Physics

Specific field: AstroPhysics

Particular areas of research including historical: Neutron stars.

Education: PhD student.

Comments: 1, 2, 3, 4.


Please do not give us personally identifiable information and please follow the template. We're not going to do real-life background checks - we're just asking for reddit's best behavior. However, several moderators are tasked with monitoring panelist activity, and your credentials will be checked against the academic content of your posts on a continuing basis.

You can submit your application by replying to this post.

submitted by /u/MockDeath
[link] [141 comments]

Planet IX Megathread

Posted:

We're getting lots of questions on the latest report of evidence for a ninth planet by K. Batygin and M. Brown released today in Astronomical Journal. If you've got questions, ask away!

submitted by /u/AskScienceModerator
[link] [2477 comments]

How can a dimension be 'small'?

Posted:

When I was trying to get a clear view on string theory, I noticed a lot of explanations presenting the 'additional' dimensions as small. I do not understand how can a dimension be small, large or whatever. Dimension is an abstract mathematical model, not something measurable.

Isn't it the width in that dimension that can be small, not the dimension itself? After all, a dimension is usually visualized as an axis, which is by definition infinite in both directions.

submitted by /u/Attil
[link] [291 comments]

What is the non-human animal process of going to sleep? Are they just lying there thinking about arbitrary things like us until they doze off?

Posted:

We found two different plants but still classified under Adiantum philippense. Could one of these be a new specie?

Posted:

Hi, first time posting here.

When I was asked to get specimen of Pteridophyta for our Systematic Botany class, we got ferns that are really similar but different in some structures.

We found herbarium sheets of both plants, but they are still classified under the same taxon.

Hers: http://images.ala.org.au/image/viewer?imageId=af1d8e6d-a2ab-42ff-8a9a-c599ad918857

Mine: http://images.ala.org.au/image/viewer?imageId=8b423a2a-73bc-4ac9-b661-40fee12457e5

We have asked our professor but she said she knows nothing about it and told us to ask other people.

I can provide the pictures that we took as we were taking it if asked.

Could this something new?

submitted by /u/Gainspipr
[link] [50 comments]

Is it possible to make an atomic nucleus containing only neutrons?

Posted:

I would imagine this to be very rare to occur in nature, since the strong force works on femtometer scales. But if we put two neutrons very close together, would they stay bound? Would one decay into a proton and electron in a short time? Or is there some other reason that it can't happen?

submitted by /u/astrawnomore
[link] [80 comments]

Due to loss of mass via hawking radiation, could there be a black hole that has an escape velocity below the speed of light, thus visible? (Physics)

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What happens if two black holes collide? What's the interaction between the two horizons?

Posted:

What is the distinction between polar bonds and and der Waals bonds?

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How did we come up with string theory?

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Is it possible to learn something without being consciously aware that you have ever learned it?

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What is John Beale talking about in this paper published by The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in 1669?

Posted:

http://i.imgur.com/BVd9DjN.png

From what I understand, Beale took various apple varieties (Pipin, Peamains, Deuxans, and Kentish Codlins (?)) and let them wither. He cut them open and carried them in his pocket for a few days. He claims that everyone who he showed the withered apples to thought the apples were made of wood. Beale also noticed their close appearance to cork. Some of the more philosophical people he met believed that Beale had perfected the art of converting all fruit into wood. John Beale goes on to say that similar results were observed when he let pears, cucumbers, turnips - and all the grains and vegetable seeds stuck within them- dry out. Here is where things get hard to understand. What does it mean to be, "cherish'd by a full supply of Marley water." Did he let some kind of seeds grow into foot long shoots? What was the closet for? How does he use the teachings of Robert Boyle to explain why everything turned to wood? This question is historical, but has elements of experimental design and biology that I think r/AskScience can explain pretty well.

Full text for context: http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/4/45-56/919.full.pdf

submitted by /u/notphillipka
[link] [1 comment]

Is the evolution of the wavefunction deterministic?

Posted:

The title is basically the question I'm asking. Ignoring wave-function collapse, does the Schrödinger equation or any other equivalent formulation guarantee that the evolution of the wave-function must be deterministic. I'm particularly interested in proof of the uniqueness of the solution, and the justification of whichever constraints are necessary on the nature of a wave-function for a uniqueness result to follow.

submitted by /u/TheKrouton
[link] [20 comments]

Would a perfectly insulated drinking glass ever sweat?

Posted:

Related: You have a poorly-insulated glass and a well-insulated glass. Each is situated above a bucket, so that any sweat collecting and falling will be measured. If both glasses are filled with the same amount of equally cold liquid, which glass will produce more sweat?

submitted by /u/mindule
[link] [16 comments]

So do we consider spacetime flat or curved after all? And could dark matter just be the result of curved spacetime?

Posted:

I know that Dark Matter is responsible for 85% of the gravitational force in the universe. I also know that the universe shows to be having critical density indicating that spacetime is flat. However according to Einstein's Theory of General Relativity he claims that spacetime is curved and Gravity isn't really a force but a bending of spacetime.

My question now: is it plausible that, what we call "dark matter" is in fact just "natural curved" spacetime that isn't precipitated by an object with mass?

submitted by /u/Feadz
[link] [25 comments]

Graphite is a good lubricant because each layer of carbon is only held together by London Dispersion forces. How can Graphene be a good lubricant if it is one layer thick?

Posted:

I'd also like to make sure my title was factual and I'm not wrong. That may be a reason for my confusion.

submitted by /u/SeismicAltop
[link] [1 comment]

What exactly is the problem preventing us from having a grand unified field theory?

Posted:

Everyone knows how QM and GR are "not compatible", but what would it take to solve the problem and what implications would the discovery of the graviton have on quantum gravity? Suppose we ignore frameworks such as M theory, is a working model mathematically impossible to build or is a lack of data the issue here?

submitted by /u/TheSoundDude
[link] [12 comments]

Is the paradigm shifting "accelerating universe" based on old, i.e. now invalid, data?

Posted:

This theory is based upon observations and measurements of galaxies billions of light-years away. Thus, this is their condition billions of years of ago when this light was emitted, and are now, most certainly, existing in a much different state. Isn't it almost certain that those galaxies have slowed down, as has ours and those around us? This is such an obvious basic fact, and such an important theory would receive thorough peer review, it could not have been overlooked. What am I missing?

submitted by /u/Gabby-Gary
[link] [20 comments]

Every day our heart makes enough energy to drive a truck 20 miles?

Posted:

Today I heard it said that every day a human heart produces enough energy to drive a truck 20 miles. That.... can't be right can it?

submitted by /u/thedaileyshow1
[link] [12 comments]

What technological obstacles need to be overcome to make solar energy viable?

Posted:

Ask Anything Wednesday - Biology, Chemistry, Neuroscience, Medicine, Psychology

Posted:

Welcome to our weekly feature, Ask Anything Wednesday - this week we are focusing on Biology, Chemistry, Neuroscience, Medicine, Psychology

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!

submitted by /u/AutoModerator
[link] [comment]

In exoplanet detection, could we ever tell if there are multiple planets dimming their star together?

Posted:

I wonder if it is possible that two planets might share an orbital period and clock position and plane around their star (not necessarily in an L1 or L2 point), would anything we can observe give it away? When there is a report of an extrasolar planet and its estimated size, is it possible it's two smaller planets combining their solar transit effects? Thank you very much for considering my question.

submitted by /u/Astrodoof
[link] [2 comments]

Could there be a micro "neutron star"?

Posted:

If the mass is small enough, you can theoretically create micro black holes using energy in the Tev region.

So if using the same amount of mass, but applying less energy, could you than over come pauli exclusion principle to the extent of electrons and protons, leaving only micro neutron matter behind?

submitted by /u/Staviao
[link] [4 comments]

Does the gravity of everything have an infinite range?

Posted:

This may seem like a dumb question but I'll go for it. I was taught a while ago that gravity is kind of like dropping a rock on a trampoline and creating a curvature in space (with the trampoline net being space).

So, if I place a black hole in the middle of the universe, is the fabric of space effected on the edges of the universe even if it is unnoticeable/incredibly minuscule?

EDIT: Okay what if I put a Hydrogen atom in the middle of the universe? Does it still have an infinite range?

submitted by /u/NippleSubmissions
[link] [1120 comments]

If a star is brighter than the Sun does it consume fuel more quickly or more slowly? If a star is more massive than the Sun does it have greater or lesser fuel reserves than the Sun?

Posted:

Antibiotics kill a wide range of bacteria, which is needlessly destructive to the human microbiome. Is there an effective alternative that only kills specified bacteria?

Posted:

If not, is there any research being conducted to create such a therapy?

submitted by /u/ferengiprophet
[link] [15 comments]

If there's no air resistance in space, does this mean that spacecraft design are irrelevant?

Posted:

Does this mean that an airplane shaped spacecraft of mass M and a humanoid shaped spacecraft of the same mass M would take up the same amount of energy to accelerate, since there's no air resistance in space?

Does that mean there's no reason to build a rocket-shaped spacecraft in space when all shape would basically behave the same in term of speed and acceleration?

submitted by /u/pbeta
[link] [7 comments]

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