If we've only had plastics for the last 80 years, how do we know it will take thousands of years to decompose? | AskScience Blog

Pages

Friday, October 19, 2018

If we've only had plastics for the last 80 years, how do we know it will take thousands of years to decompose?

If we've only had plastics for the last 80 years, how do we know it will take thousands of years to decompose?


If we've only had plastics for the last 80 years, how do we know it will take thousands of years to decompose?

Posted: 18 Oct 2018 06:01 PM PDT

How come we are able to detect planets thousands (millions?) of light years away from us, but we have yet to determine with 100% certainty whether or not there is a ninth planet in our solar system?

Posted: 19 Oct 2018 04:15 AM PDT

I've been trying to teach myself a little about time, but as someone with little knowledge to base my understanding off of, I am having a hard time understanding why time passes differently if you are standing on a mountain than if you are sitting in a valley. Could you explain this concept to me?

Posted: 19 Oct 2018 12:14 AM PDT

Outside of the moral implications for humans, is cannibalism within a given species harmful?

Posted: 19 Oct 2018 03:03 AM PDT

What effect, if any, does the earth’s rotation have on weather patterns?

Posted: 19 Oct 2018 03:14 AM PDT

Michael from VSauce explained in one of his videos that "gravity" may not be an independent force but the result of objects trying to move in a straight line through time in curved time space. How does this fit with string theory/ why isn't there more information on this theory?

Posted: 18 Oct 2018 09:47 PM PDT

The video is on YouTube and titled "Which way is down?"

submitted by /u/xXCANCERGIVERXx
[link] [comments]

When a virus injects a cell with DNA, what makes the cell able to follow the instructions? Could the process be controlled for medically useful reactions?

Posted: 18 Oct 2018 08:09 PM PDT

From what I've remember in school, viruses inject a living cell with DNA in a way that somehow makes it listen to that instead of what it already had, reproducing virus after virus until the cell is depleted. How does the new DNA supplant the existing DNA?

Once replaced, what enables the cell to turn itself into something else? I was under the impression that stem cells were valuable for their special ability to do something similar?

If viruses are reproducing that effect, can we use them?

I'm sorry if this is super obvious or simplistic, but I tried to research it today and everything I found was not helpful at all.

submitted by /u/DanNeider
[link] [comments]

What would the Environmental/Physical Constraints be of sending Garbage to the Bottom of the Ocean?

Posted: 19 Oct 2018 06:25 AM PDT

With the great pressure at those depths it would compact all the plastic, It wouldn't mess with 99% of wildlife, and all you need to do is contain and weigh-down the garbage. If you make compact Cubes of it (Like crushing Cars) how well would this work? Is it only a Cost thing? Any Environmental concerns I'm not considering? Other than the obvious Fluids etc contamination which is likely much less than our current state. Would the pressure cause the decomposition of this material faster? Would small pieces just continuously break off making it no better than traditional dumping? Would a Net to contain this break off work or be a viable solution?

Any other Questions or In-site would be appreciated.

submitted by /u/Engineer_ThorW_Away
[link] [comments]

What's between protons/neutrons and electrons?

Posted: 19 Oct 2018 06:03 AM PDT

How Are Supermassive Black Holes Formed?

Posted: 18 Oct 2018 11:28 PM PDT

Why is the Barium Ion paramagnetic if it has no unpaired electrons?

Posted: 18 Oct 2018 08:22 PM PDT

Really confused on this and I am having a lot of trouble finding any articles with explanations on this. Was wondering if any chemists knew the answer.

submitted by /u/TheLegendaryTrev
[link] [comments]

How accurate are mental health diagnoses? Isn’t it heavily based on what the patient says they are experiencing without any biological or chemical markers to validate the claims?

Posted: 18 Oct 2018 04:13 PM PDT

Also, isn't it fair to say that due to the nature of mental illness the actual people who are mentally ill probably aren't aware enough, or are able to avoid seeking treatment whereas people who are overly sensitive may seek treatment for something that isn't actually in need of psychological treatment?

submitted by /u/karpomalice
[link] [comments]

According to the Theory of Evolution and the Theory of Plate Tectonics and Continental Drift, how did humans get all throughout the world?

Posted: 18 Oct 2018 11:44 PM PDT

From my understanding of below basic biology of animals and adaptation, how did humans, or the mammal(s) that evolved to eventually become humans, live in certain climates? If at one point Pangea existed, and eventually the land masses break apart, how would the mammals of that continent become human? Mammals need certain climates to survive, so in a cold climate like Russia or Alaska, how did the certain mammal that became human survive the conditions of weather and climate in a place like russia?

submitted by /u/Warlock9510
[link] [comments]

Some aminoacids need sodium to be absorbed?

Posted: 18 Oct 2018 02:37 PM PDT

if an aminoacid is absorbed with the help of sodium- dependent transporters does that the AA must be taken with sodium in order to be absorbed from the intestinse or the blood sodium levels have an impact on the rate of absorbtion?

submitted by /u/tisho23
[link] [comments]

Is there reasearch done for how color enhances memory?

Posted: 18 Oct 2018 01:23 PM PDT

I'm looking for research that I could have sworn I've read but now I can not find.

I'm looking for an experiment were the color a word is written in is the same as the color of the object that word represents eg. Writing firetruck in red, or grass in green.

Has anyone read and remember any research like this?

submitted by /u/Shupsta
[link] [comments]

What are the main cognitive mechanisms, either conscious or subconscious in nature, guiding speech production in conversational settings ?

Posted: 18 Oct 2018 03:51 PM PDT

I was always under the impression that engaging in conversations involved mostly subconscious thinking, as opposed to other communication activities such as giving a speech off a text/memory or giving a presentation by reading things off slides, both of which typically have a more dominant conscious cognitive component. When we converse with a friend for instance, we usually just translate whatever thoughts popping in our minds into words and sentences, with minimal conscious filtering/selection and structuring... But then I thought about the case of purely improvisational talking situations such as improv theatre or freestyle rapping, and how speech production in these is even more subconsciously-dominated, implying that my initial intuition might be wrong and that there might be an important conscious component to speech production in typical conversation-making.

All of which brings me to the following question(s): in a conversational situation, how does the mental process governing speech production usually go ? Upon hearing and understanding a question, do our brains subconsciously come up with a certain structure to our answers, which we then proceed to subconsciously follow as we speak ? Or is that structuring more of a conscious process ? Or is there no structuring process at all involved, and instead -as I've described at the very beginning- what happens is a purely subconscious translation of whatever thoughts our brains generate at the moment of us talking/responding ?

To use Daniel Kahneman's language, by subconscious I mean system 1 thinking and by conscious its system 2 counterpart. I apologize if my question and terminology are confusing as I am no psychology/cognitive science expert, but this question has been perplexing me a lot lately !

submitted by /u/MC_Tikchbila
[link] [comments]

Can the energy of a particle be deduced from its De Broglie wavelength?

Posted: 18 Oct 2018 01:12 PM PDT

I know that for a single photon we have : E = h * f

On the other hand we have the De Broglie equation : LambdaB = h / p, which as far as I know is true for any particle.

So from the De broglie equation we can deduce a "de Broglie wavelength" (lambdaB) for any particle, and from that wavelength, a frequency "fB" (as de Broglie frequency).

So I wondered if we could have a relation between the total energy of said particle, and the de Broglie frequency "fB", in a fashion similar to E = h f, which however would be true for any particle. (or a formula that would work in both cases)

And what formula would give the energy of a gluon or a graviton which are massless?

submitted by /u/EresArslan
[link] [comments]

Does compulsory therapy work? Why or why not?

Posted: 18 Oct 2018 08:24 PM PDT

Can Outside noises evoke images in our dreams?

Posted: 18 Oct 2018 04:01 PM PDT

Today, I set my morning alarm. I have had the same alarm tone for one week straight. Today, I was so used to hearing it, that i could hear the alarm in a dream I was having. That made me wonder, could any sound do that? I was curious and kept thinking on the subject today. So I wondered "Could the sounds of the outside evoke thoughts in our dreams?" For example, if you played a voice recording of your friend, and it didn't wake you, would you think things about, or would your friend appear, in your dream?

submitted by /u/blkrj33
[link] [comments]

How do freezer burns happen?

Posted: 18 Oct 2018 08:37 AM PDT

I was always thinking that the fast movement of heated atoms/molecules was causing burns since these fast moving particles destroy our skin cells because of the High Amounts of Energy. So I recently found myself stuck when i thought about Freezer burns. How do Very cold particles cause such burns? I thought cold meant absence of Energy, am I missing something? I'd Love to hear an answer, thanks in Advance!

submitted by /u/MisterR4Z0R
[link] [comments]

Are there any images of de novo synthesized nucleotides?

Posted: 18 Oct 2018 03:18 PM PDT

It is my understanding that nucleotides are synthesised in the liver and are ubiquitous intracellular compounds. Have they ever been extracted/isolated and imaged or had their structure solved, or is this beyond our capabilities?

Cryo EM crystallography, NMR should be appropriate techniques to determine the structure and atom disposition of molecules this size. I am struggling to find the data. Any pointers?

submitted by /u/ImportantDingo
[link] [comments]

No comments:

Post a Comment