How do scientists know we've only discovered 14% of all living species? | AskScience Blog

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Wednesday, March 28, 2018

How do scientists know we've only discovered 14% of all living species?

How do scientists know we've only discovered 14% of all living species?


How do scientists know we've only discovered 14% of all living species?

Posted: 27 Mar 2018 11:32 PM PDT

Why do we sometimes have problems telling apart left and right, but not up and down?

Posted: 27 Mar 2018 09:00 AM PDT

Edit: Just for clarification: I don't mean the absolut terms of up and down like relative to the earths gravity, those make sense to me as well. I mean the relative up and down, like relative to your field of view.

submitted by /u/ifif1000
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Do other social species (like ants, for example) organize themselves into rural, suburban, and urban areas, similar to humans?

Posted: 27 Mar 2018 09:41 AM PDT

I was recently thinking about how the high efficiency of services and goods access in urban areas seem to make their development inevitable, particularly with advancing technology. And many other potential reasons, but I won't get into the weeds.

But obviously, there are plenty of humans who do still live in rural and suburban areas.

So I'm wondering if other social species have a similar spectrum of living areas, and if so, what contributes to why some animals stay rural whereas others are more suburban or urban. Have there been any studies published on this?

submitted by /u/MRC1986
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Say we scale down an aircraft proportionately (say, all dimensions divided by a factor of 2). What happens to the lift, drag, wing efficiency, etc? What are the scaling laws here?

Posted: 27 Mar 2018 01:38 PM PDT

How does having more trees on a hillside help to prevent landslide?

Posted: 28 Mar 2018 07:32 AM PDT

I've heard some explanation long time ago about the roots "holding on" to the soil, what is the exact mechanism? I don't suppose the roots have any sort of "grip" in the conventional sense.

submitted by /u/finally_got_username
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What methods have been suggested to directly observe right handed neutrinos?

Posted: 28 Mar 2018 03:37 AM PDT

If they don't interact through Standard Model interactions, how can we ever directly observe them? And if we can't, how do we know that they exist?

submitted by /u/fiddybucks420
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Do all orbitals have infinite ranges with only specific regions of high probability of finding an electron? And if so, does it mean that technically an atom is infinite in size?

Posted: 28 Mar 2018 06:11 AM PDT

Do any young animals cry like human children?

Posted: 27 Mar 2018 07:21 PM PDT

Ask Anything Wednesday - Economics, Political Science, Linguistics, Anthropology

Posted: 28 Mar 2018 08:07 AM PDT

Welcome to our weekly feature, Ask Anything Wednesday - this week we are focusing on Economics, Political Science, Linguistics, Anthropology

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
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whats the difference between single double and coaxial prop thrust?

Posted: 27 Mar 2018 10:26 PM PDT

At fixed diameter and rpm, what is the difference in potential thrust between
A. a single full diameter rotor blade.
B. An X shaped blade of the same diameter
C. two full diameter rotor blades as in example A sharing a common axis but spinning in counter to one another

Does B=2A? Are B and C different in potential thrust output?

submitted by /u/PoweRaider
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Nuclear Reactor : Control rods - What causes the difference in reactivity of the core when control rods are withdrawn at full power and all control rods are inserted at zero power?

Posted: 27 Mar 2018 05:32 PM PDT

Hi all,

I am interested to understand the effect of control rods during a shutdown margin and how the value of keff could change between the two scenarios.

Many thanks for your help

submitted by /u/helix_413
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Why can we get some diseases only once when others require vaccines every few years ?

Posted: 27 Mar 2018 10:31 AM PDT

Unless I'm completely mistaken some diseases like chickenpox or mumps you can only get once whether it be by actually being affected by it or by getting vaccinated for it and then you never get that disease again.

But then for most vaccines you're supposed to get back every few years to get vaccinated again like for tetanus for example.

I understand that acquired immunity comes from your lymphocyte B memory cells and you need to get vaccinated every few years because their numbers decrease over the years if you don't get exposed to the disease but why do some diseases like chickenpox only require 1 vaccination for your entire life ?

submitted by /u/Elvenstar32
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Do polarized lenses completely block the light when kept at an angle 90 degree?

Posted: 27 Mar 2018 10:14 PM PDT

If yes the must be the darkest thingies

submitted by /u/homosapien__
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What are some "anomalous" or unexplained fossils/biological materials that we've found?

Posted: 27 Mar 2018 04:00 PM PDT

(Sorry for the wonky title, automod doesn't let you submit topics that don't end with a question mark.)

By "unexplained" I just mean "Things we don't have an explanation for just yet." (E.g. The "Devils Corkscrews" before we figured out what they were.)

I was thinking about the topic because of this article which describes a human effort to protect coral reefs. If this effort is successful, and humanity were to forget about it, then wouldn't future archeologists be confused (at least at first) as to how it happened?

Is there anything we have now that we can't explain just yet, or that we can explain but that had an interesting explanation?

submitted by /u/ThiZ
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Are mascara and make-up a problem in satellite clean rooms?

Posted: 27 Mar 2018 08:43 AM PDT

I just happened to see photos of people in a satellite clean room and one had mascara and make-up. I was thinking about potential contamination of the device if some mascara or make-up dust would fall on the device.

submitted by /u/thargos
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How do gravitational fields interact with each other?

Posted: 27 Mar 2018 01:59 PM PDT

When I think of how gravity works from the planetary scale to the galactic and universal scale, I get a bit lost with the mental image I make.

Here's my imagination:

The sun is the obvious gravitational well in the solar system, therefore we are within its "web" so to speak. We constantly fall towards it, such as the moon does the Earth. But that is where I get bundled up, and it applies all the way to the larger scale. Are gravitational fields within other fields amplified or reduced in any way?

I guess some visuals would help me here. I understand the concept but have a hard time putting an accurate picture together.

submitted by /u/PressingSoda
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The Australian Cricket Scandal: How does rubbing tape against the ball make it move unpredictably?

Posted: 27 Mar 2018 11:24 AM PDT

So lately there has been this huge controversy in Cricket where the Australian team was caught ball tampering. The bowler apparently rubbed the ball with yellow tape and "roughed up the ball on one side," making it more challenging for the batsmen to hit.

How does A). Rubbing a ball with tape rough it up? Is tape really that damaging to the surface of a cricket ball What does tape do to the surface of cricket ball.

B). How much of a difference does that actually make? How does the trajectory of the ball change when one side is more rough? How uneven does the surface of the ball have to be to make a noticeable difference?

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/26/sports/cricket/australia-cricket-scandal.html

submitted by /u/Yakety_Sax
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What is the Calabi-Yua manifold ?

Posted: 27 Mar 2018 08:01 AM PDT

I'd really like to learn more about it but I can't find much about it. I'd appreciate if someone could take the time to explain it to me, Thanks.

submitted by /u/Ampdoesntmiss
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How do we know that the solar system is a remnant of an earlier one?

Posted: 27 Mar 2018 10:18 PM PDT

[Biology] Does human testicular volume change throughout adulthood?

Posted: 27 Mar 2018 07:53 AM PDT

Are there any landforms that exist in theory, but of which there no current examples on Earth?

Posted: 27 Mar 2018 06:40 AM PDT

Do molten metals in the Earth's mantle, outer, and inner layers separate by density?

Posted: 27 Mar 2018 01:40 PM PDT

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