AskScience Panel of Scientists XXII | AskScience Blog

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Friday, May 15, 2020

AskScience Panel of Scientists XXII

AskScience Panel of Scientists XXII


AskScience Panel of Scientists XXII

Posted: 24 Jan 2020 05:32 PM PST

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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How come mild cases of viruses might not develop anti bodies?

Posted: 15 May 2020 02:34 AM PDT

This isn't specifically about COVID but I read an article about a study on COVID that 99% of patients have developed anti bodies which gives good hope for the fact that people with mild symptoms might also develop them. Which indicates that in general people with mild symptoms of any virus might have a larger chance/risk of not developing anti bodies.

From my limited reasoning, mild symptoms would mean that your immune system managed to fight it early enough before more serious symptoms could develop themselves. But that also means anti bodies doesn't it? It's anti bodies that do the whole defending your body thing against that virus?

submitted by /u/Friendofabook
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How long after you get exposed to the COVID-19 virus does a test able to detect it?

Posted: 15 May 2020 03:57 AM PDT

Are the orbital planes of other solar systems parallel to ours?

Posted: 15 May 2020 12:16 AM PDT

I know that we can observe exoplanets when they pass in front of their star and we can get a peek at the atmosphere because photons are able to pass through it and then reach us. However, it seems like such an event is very unlikely. Why is it that all of these exoplanets seem to be going directly in between their host star and earth in order for us to be able to view them so consistently? What are the chances of that? Are the orbital planes of different solar systems parallel with each other? This is the only explanation I can think of.

submitted by /u/user78p
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For how long can a person who is asymptomatic unknowingly spread Covid-19 around their community?

Posted: 15 May 2020 07:20 AM PDT

Why are all the planets' orbits on the same plane?

Posted: 14 May 2020 11:06 PM PDT

Its almost as if they were just rolling around on the floor, is it possible for a planit to orbit the sun vertically?

submitted by /u/D4ZB
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My girlfriend just bought new vitamins after doing some research and is raving to me about nootropics. I'm extremely skeptical, should I be?

Posted: 14 May 2020 07:48 PM PDT

Apparently they're supposed to "help with the creation of new neurons" but it sounds very hoaxy. I'm currently googling now, but figured I'd ask reddit as well. I appreciate any insight.

submitted by /u/funfactsarecool
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Does the human immune system weaken in the short term if you are not around the normal minor viruses and bacteria of other humans?

Posted: 14 May 2020 07:59 PM PDT

On a recent episode of the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, Bro Scientist Joe Rogan theorized that the lockdown is weakening immune systems by instituting Social Distancing due to essentially "not exercising" the immune system, and could potential make Covid-19 infections worse. What do we have for research that would dispute/confirm this?

submitted by /u/kuuzo
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In depictions of dinosaurs from say the Triassic era, the background landscape of the image is often full of extreme geological environments. Did the earth just have more ‘extreme’ landscapes 250 million years ago?

Posted: 15 May 2020 04:37 AM PDT

If you look up 'Triassic era', nearly every image has a background populated by erupting volcanoes, huge canyons, alien looking trees, tall mountains.

Is the modern earth just 'boring' compared to the surface of the planet 250 MYA? Was there just far more geological activity back then?

submitted by /u/Velvet_frog
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How does DNA primase know where to bind?

Posted: 15 May 2020 08:08 AM PDT

Does DNA primase bind haphazardly or is there a mechanism that ensures it binds in specific areas of the DNA stand?

submitted by /u/josh822
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Is acceleration a continuous function of time?

Posted: 14 May 2020 09:55 PM PDT

Note on background: I am a student of math who has not studied physics. I know only the bits I have read on the web and some books.

I have seen acceleration defined as the second derivative of position w.r.t. time. Knowing this, acceleration is not necessarily continuous, but it at least takes all intermediate values on an interval.

However, I am not sure I like this definition and its consequences.

I have heard of the "jerk," the third derivative of position w.r.t. time. If this derivative exists, then acceleration is differentiable, therefore continuous. However, I have no intuitive reason to believe "jerk" always exists.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I think we also have the following:

In an inertial frame of reference, for a body of constant mass m, we have (1/m)F = a. This feels like a more fundamental characterization of acceleration, but perhaps I am just pushing my curiosity onto forces.

If force is necessarily a continuous function of time, then acceleration is continuous as a consequence. The converse holds, too.

Are acceleration and force continuous functions of time? If so, how do we know? Do these results hold at all size scales at any speed?

Bonus points: Are there any good books about classical mechanics for someone of my background? I find myself in a strange place: beginning undergraduate books are very frustrating because they obscure the truth behind physical notions and focus on menial calculations in extremely limited scenarios ("incline plane problems", "pendulum problems", etc.). Higher level books, on the other hand, assume complete knowledge of simpler concepts. However, I haven't seen any book which properly teachers fundamental notions (such as the question I've asked), so I don't see how people make this transition.

Thank you very much!

submitted by /u/Borsevik
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What does the amount of sun spot on the sun indicative of? If there are more or less would it affect the temperature on earth?

Posted: 15 May 2020 06:14 AM PDT

Just read something about sun "lockdown" and just wondering if this is this a hoax?

submitted by /u/kiraxkage
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Has there historically been a lower incidence of viral illness in countries where wearing masks has been common for many years?

Posted: 15 May 2020 05:58 AM PDT

The "common cold" is a coronavirus, for instance, and it seems like a not a huge leap to think that there should be a wealth of data around whether having the general public wear masks everywhere they go has shown to be effective in lowering the incidence of illness.

I know there's a ton of data showing that masks work in a clinical setting, I'm more interested in understanding the "daily driver" kind of mask wearing that has been commonplace in Asian countries for much longer than anywhere else.

Also would be interesting to validate (or invalidate!) my assumption that Covid-19 and other coronaviruses can be lumped together when talking about ways to protect against them, or if they're different enough that comparing infection rates between them is not useful.

submitted by /u/EnormousChord
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Is "time" on Earth the same as time in space? For example is Earth's "time" relevant on Mars?

Posted: 14 May 2020 10:41 PM PDT

Another example in the movie Interstellar a group of people went to a planet and when they came back a few years has been passed while for them it was just a few hours that has been passed. So could something like that really exist?

submitted by /u/Mr-Jabba
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How are the effects of emotions like fear studied? How can they be recreated in a controlled enviroment?

Posted: 15 May 2020 08:09 AM PDT

If someone knows that they will experience fear as part of research, wouldn't that make that induced feeling different? How is genuine fear (or any other emotion) studied?

submitted by /u/Wrath_of_Ytar
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Does electron interact with itself while being "distributed" in orbital?

Posted: 15 May 2020 04:04 AM PDT

We all know more or less that precise electron position around the nuclei does not make much sense. If is rather distributed across the orbital, being in certain position with certain probability. Therefore, if there is "distribution" of electric charge along the position distribution, does it mean that electron is interacting with itself by means of coulomb interactions? I guess that it is not true, and there is an elegant explanation why.

submitted by /u/gleorn
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Are you able to be allergic to EpiPen? And if so what alternative would there be for someone that has an allergic reaction?

Posted: 15 May 2020 03:33 AM PDT

Do we know yet if Covid-19 has any long term effects, similar to the way Measles hampers your immune system for as long as two years after recovery?

Posted: 14 May 2020 07:08 PM PDT

Measles really wrecks your immune system for as long as two years after recovery. Chicken Pox can hide in your nerve cells for decades, coming back later as the very painful shingles.

Do we have any way of knowing if Covid-19 will be giving us even more problems in the coming years?

submitted by /u/seanbrockest
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What is the 'madness' that is caused by Mercury poisoning?

Posted: 14 May 2020 02:57 PM PDT

I came across the expression 'mad as a hatter', and how it comes from how hatters used to work with Mercury and often, over the course of a career, 'go mad' from it. We have since advanced considerably in our understanding of both medicine and human psychology. So can we now give a fuller explanation of what happened in the body to cause people of the past to 'go mad' from Mercury poisoning, and what actual psychological issues does it cause?

Also, was it always permanent?

submitted by /u/Rhamni
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Where does the energy go if I were to turn on boosters at light speed?

Posted: 15 May 2020 12:17 AM PDT

I would assume that no ship actually can get to light speed in reality, and that turning on boosters/engines only near lightspeed would get ate up by the exponential power needs to chase light speed decimals.

BUT

in theory going light speed, and i turn on boosters, if i cant have an opposite reaction forward when firing, where would that energy go? any theorys?

submitted by /u/TheDiggityDoo
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What is the purpose of the inability for sieve tube cells to divide?

Posted: 15 May 2020 03:20 AM PDT

I am aware that they lack a nucleus and ribosomes but do we know what the purpose of this function serves? Does it prevent the sieve tube cells from overswelling and restricting the movement of carbohydrates?

submitted by /u/RunUpTheSoundWaves
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Can anything be said in every language?

Posted: 15 May 2020 03:05 AM PDT

I know some languages don't express certain words or concepts. Like English borrowed "rendezvous" among very many others because there isn't a good substitute. And some languages lack certain color words. And there are probably many more examples. But other than maybe "yes", "no", and greeting (and even then I can't be sure if that's true), is there any concept that's universal among languages? If so, what/why?

submitted by /u/Veridically_
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