AskScience Panel of Scientists XIV | AskScience Blog

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Sunday, January 31, 2016

AskScience Panel of Scientists XIV

AskScience Panel of Scientists XIV


AskScience Panel of Scientists XIV

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. or equivalent degree in the sciences, AND,

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


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 particular area of research 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 which you feel are indicative of your scholarship. Applications will not be approved without several comments made in /r/AskScience itself.


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/foretopsail General field: Anthropology Specific field: Maritime Archaeology Particular areas of research include historical archaeology, archaeometry, and ship construction. Education: MA in archaeology, researcher for several years. 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/AskScienceModerator
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If you were orbiting a black hole just a few feet outside the event horizon and you stuck your arm past, what would happen when you tried to pull it out?

Posted:

Is anthropogenic climate change predicted to modify seasonal lag?

Posted:

I was out jogging in shorts today on what is normally the coldest day of the year, and I was wondering, ignoring stochastic weather patterns and my own confirmation bias, whether anthropogenic climate change is expected to move the coldest day of winter farther away from the solstice.

submitted by /u/iorgfeflkd
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Why do we think that the universe should be slowing down without dark energy pushing it to accelerate?

Posted:

How do we know that there is another force responsible for the acceleration of matter in the universe (i.e. dark energy) rather than the acceleration being a direct result of the big bang itself? Why do we think that everything should be slowing down at this point without that force? Having a bit of trouble with my phrasing as I'm not well versed, but hopefully this gets my question across.

submitted by /u/shrubberynights
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Is there a way that lexical-taste synesthesia could develop in a manner similar to color-grapheme synesthesia being learned from colorful refrigerator magnets?

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When a black hole is rotating what exactly is physically rotating?

Posted:

Black holes are supposedly a singularity (to the best of our knowledge) if the black hole is a singularity how can it be rotating? Is space itself rotating? Do we know that black holes actually rotate, i.e. have we detected rotating black holes in some way?

submitted by /u/ergzay
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If space is constantly expanding and stars/galaxies are moving through space at high speed, how come the constellations have remained the same for all of recorded astronomical history?

Posted:

I recently saw a Facebook post from a "flat-earther" (someone who believes Earth is a flat plane and not a globe) that posed this question as supposed "proof" that we live on a flat earth and that the rest of the universe orbits us.

submitted by /u/masterianwong
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How is it that radiation suits protect people?

Posted:

Maybe this is TV magic and I don't know what a real suit looks like but it seems like people become immune to radiation when they put on these thin plastic suits. How is it that radiation can be so dangerous and yet so easily dealt with.

submitted by /u/Xoboo
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Which circumstances must be present to have a tidal locked planet/moon?

Posted:

I just watched the newest video of "In a Nutshell" about red dwarfs were they say, that planets which circle red dwarfs in an inhabitable distance would be too close to the star and therefore tidal locked, just like the moon is tidal locked to our earth. (time-code to the point in the video)

So, which circumstances must be present, that such a tidal lock develops?

Why are for instance moons like Himalia (surrounds Jupiter) or Phoebe (surrounds Saturn) not tidal locked?

submitted by /u/SikkiNixx
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What would our color spectrum look like if we had four (or two!) cones rather than three?

Posted:

I had already asked this question on asksciencefiction, but was told it probably belonged here.

FWIW, I'm asking mostly from a writing perspective, as in I want to have a species that varies in number of cones, or the specific wavelengths of cones than humans, but I'm having trouble wrapping my head around the idea. I'm currently learning about visual sensation and perception in one of my courses this semester, if that helps at all with answers either

submitted by /u/Azdusha
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What is the minimum amount of time a human can perceive?

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It's regularly stated that someone next to a detonating nuclear bomb would feel nothing. But what would be the minimum amount of time needed to feel something? Would people on the planes on 9/11 for example actually have felt anything?

submitted by /u/I_Am_Really_Terrible
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Every summer in NYC, the mosquitoes are surprisingly prevalent. Every winter, obviously, they die off. How do they repopulate?

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What is causing the erosion in the cracks of this rock on the Moon?

Posted:

This is a recent image taken from China's Yutu rover. The large rock has several cracks in it, the corners of which appear to be worn, with "soft" corners. I assume the cracks were more sharp when they were created.

I'm aware that the Moon has a tenuous atmosphere, but is it enough to produce wind-borne erosion?

submitted by /u/Phydeaux
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How accurate is Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's theory of 'Flow'?

Posted:

I'm wondering, how well respected are Csikszentmihalyi and his book Flow (1990) in academic psychology circles?

I have heard the theory detailed by numerous internet commentators, and searching for his work here on Reddit -- I've found it mostly discussed on pseudo-scientific subs such as Myers-Briggs centered groups and other questionable, less than rigorous self-help subs such as r/getmotivated.

It seems Csikszentmihalyi does hold a reputable position at Claremont's graduate psychology program, but I was just wondering how his theories have been received in the academic sphere.

Thanks.

submitted by /u/williamiamiam
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Do superconductors exhibit zero resistance at all frequencies, or is it only 0-ohm at DC?

Posted:

My understanding is that a superconductor has a structure that has a very long mean-free-path for electrons.

When you have a high frequency current, does the skin effect push the current to the edges of this path and cause collisions, i.e. R>0?

Or is this not how superconductors work?

submitted by /u/harrypancakes
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If an outbreak occurs in a small population, e.g. meningitis on a college campus, can you determine patient zero from antibody concentration alone using a technique such as ELISA?

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i.e. is antibody titer a reliable indicator of WHEN you were infected? If not, how can epidemiologists determine patient zero?

submitted by /u/yelli2
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Statistically speaking, if I were to generate a number from 1 to infinity, what could that number be?

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Would it have to be infinity? Could it be just any number?

submitted by /u/jinxsimpson
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How can one measure the age of humans?

Posted:

I came across this comment about refugees in Sweden saying that adults are getting away with crimes by pretending to be under 15.
I've wondered if there's any way to measure/verify the age of these people, since they throw away their IDs.

submitted by /u/Lustig1374
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Countable vs uncountable infinity: 0 to 1?

Posted:

So, I was just watching this Vsauce video and it states the following part way through:

Even the numbers 0 through 1 are uncountable

And this felt off to me.

Albeit I'm a little tipsy right now, and this post is taking me way too long to write, but isn't the "infinity" countable if you've bounded the upper limit?

Specifically between 0 and 1, I could use a system that went:

0,0.1,0.2,0.3, ..... 0.9

0.01, 0.02, 0.03, ... 0. 99

0.001, 0.002, 0.003 ... 0.999

Basically, can't you cycle through 1, 2, 3 then 4 ... digit numbers, in order, to have a countable infinity? Slowly but surely I'd state every number between 0 and 1.

I've seen this a few times (there are more real numbers between 0 and 1 than integers between 0 and infinity) but it just doesn't sound right to me.

Hopefully someone can explain, and hopefully this question doesn't sound stupid when I wake up in the morning.


Basically, I don't get why this feels uncountable vs fractions which are meant to be countable. And the argument he uses (where you have a list that you can always create a new number) also seems to work for integers where there's no fixed length. All in all, it seems like these feel the same to me.

submitted by /u/Pluckerpluck
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Why do people grind their teeth while sleeping?

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Noticed this last night while my friend crashed with me. Her teeth just kept me up all night.

submitted by /u/BooBoo-is-God
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A few questions regarding incandescence?

Posted:

1: Looking on the interweb, I have come across two sites that say that if something incandesces at the same color, they're generally around the same temperature. Is this true, and why is this?

2: Incandescence is pumping thermal energy into something until it starts glowing. Does that mean that you can make anything incandesce, like water or wood, if it were in an ideal environment (no oxygen ect)?

3: Thermal energy starts with the infrared right? And if you keep adding energy it starts creating visible light. By extrapolating "forward", can we assume that more and more heat will start causing ultraviolet, x-ray, and gamma rays to be eventually emitted (assuming the material doesn't decompose by then)? By extrapolating "backwards", do ALL materials emit radio waves at the very lowest-energy end of the spectrum?

Thanks

submitted by /u/tylerchu
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What can I feed to dinoflagellates?

Posted:

Hello AskScience. My family has some pet dinoflagellates (specifically unicellular protists of the division Dinoflagellata and of the species Pyrocystis fusiformis) and we have been buying "dino food" from the company we purchased them from but I can't shake the feeling that I am dramatically overpaying for a solution I could make myself or purchase from a scientific supply company. Unfortunately the Google has been less than helpful in describing what they eat. (There is an otherwise great page from the Smithsonian however.) So, can anyone tell me what to feed these jewel-encrusted sea monkeys? Thank you!

submitted by /u/putasporkinit
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How do we measure time in the early universe?

Posted:

Can someone help me wrap my brain around what cosmologists mean when they say something like "1 second/minute/year after the Big Bang" How can you measure time in the very early universe before atoms formed? Wouldn't the tremendous gravitational forces also warp the passage of time?

Physics

submitted by /u/Gzogzez88
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What is the smallest possible size a star could have and still be classified as a star?

Posted:

Alternatively, is there a limit as to how large a star can get?

submitted by /u/HiroHitowasalright
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