- AskScience AMA Series: I'm Wallace Arthur, enthusiast about extraterrestrial life, author of The Biological Universe: Life in the Milky Way and Beyond (Cambridge University Press), and Emeritus Professor of Zoology at the National University of Ireland, Galway. AMA about our search for alien life!
- I have heard that a disease like measles can wipe out a persons immune “history” and knowledge. How does this affect autoimmune conditions like allergies, Crohns etc?
- If someone has COVID-19 but is asymptomatic then doesn’t that mean that their immune system isn’t fighting to get rid of the virus? And if that’s the case how do they ever get rid of it?
- If we were to harvest asteroids, could we simply slow them down enough to just drop them into our oceans without causing significant damage?
- If shorter waves have more energy than longer waves and 5g is actually the same as „light“ but with *longer* wavelengths: How can 5g be harmfull?
- Why are COVID 19 infection rates so low in Africa?
- Ask Anything Wednesday - Biology, Chemistry, Neuroscience, Medicine, Psychology
- If asymptomatic COVID carriers aren’t coughing, can they still be transmitting the virus on their breath? I understand the whole ‘social distancing’ is based on the distance of a cough / sneeze vs normal breathing. I’m wondering how asymtomatic carriers can really spread the virus. Thanks!
- Why does one's arm become sore after a flu vaccination hours (vs. more quickly) after? What's happening on a cellular level at the time?
- How is radioactive decay used to determine the age of things that are millions or billions of years old?
- How do scientists detect molecular data on other planets and moons in the solar system without sending probes?
- How did people figure out what the atmosphere was like on other planets without being able to go there?
- When the sun burns out, will it be gradual or immediate? And if gradual, will the planets slowly move further from the sun?
| Posted: 29 Oct 2020 04:00 AM PDT I'm a biologist who has spent over 40 years studying the diversity of life on planet Earth. I've written many books dealing with questions about this amazing biodiversity, but recently I've become fascinated by questions about life on other planets. The number of known planets is now well over 4000 - a very large number compared with the mere eight we knew of until recently, and yet only the tip of the suspected iceberg of about a trillion planets spread across our local galaxy. Some of these planets almost certainly host life. But how many, and what is it like? These are the central questions of my new book The Biological Universe, published by Cambridge University Press. I began my scientific career with a PhD from Nottingham University in England, went on to teach and carry out research at several other British universities, and am now Emeritus Professor at the National University of Ireland in Galway. I have held visiting positions at Harvard and Cambridge universities. I was one of the founding editors of the scientific journal Evolution & Development. My previous books include Life through Time and Space (Harvard 2017). This was described as 'brilliant and thought-provoking in every way' by Sir Arnold Wolfendale, Britain's Astronomer Royal (only the 14th person to hold this position since its origin in the year 1675). Ask me anything about:
I'll be on at 12 noon Eastern (16 UT), AMA! Username: /u/WallaceArthur [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 28 Oct 2020 08:29 PM PDT Does it reset the response for these too, giving the immune system and chance to "correct" and learn the appropriate response to these factors? Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 28 Oct 2020 07:08 AM PDT |
| Posted: 29 Oct 2020 04:05 AM PDT Given advancements in propulsion technology, I can't imagine dropping a huge asteroid near terminal velocity would be that devastating to the ocean or cause massive tidal waves. We used to test nukes in the ocean and they didn't destroy the land around them right? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 29 Oct 2020 03:39 AM PDT Light, 5g are both actually electromagnetic radiation. 5G should contain less energy (it's mmwave instead of nmwave). So why could it be harmfull? [link] [comments]  |
| Why are COVID 19 infection rates so low in Africa? Posted: 29 Oct 2020 12:02 AM PDT Initially it was suggested that it was due to lack of testing. However the data and on ground events show that the rate of transmission really is that low. How do nations with some of the worst emergency health services out perform the EU and USA? Even South Africa's cases have dramatically dropped and life has almost gone back to normal. [link] [comments]  |
| Ask Anything Wednesday - Biology, Chemistry, Neuroscience, Medicine, Psychology Posted: 28 Oct 2020 08:08 AM PDT 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! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 28 Oct 2020 08:46 PM PDT |
| Posted: 29 Oct 2020 03:58 AM PDT |
| Posted: 28 Oct 2020 10:44 PM PDT I know the basics of how radioactive decay works. Certain isotopes of elements are unstable and decay into more stable elements over time. These reactions happen at a predictable rate, so we could determine the age of a sample of we can compare how much of the isotope is left compared to how much there was to start. Carbon-14 decay is the most widely explained example. C14 is constantly being created by high energy radiation from the Sun and living organisms incorporate C14 from the environment as they take in carbon to build their biological structures. The ratio of C14 to C12 is fairly constant, so we can know what proportion of C14 we can expect to find in an organism right after it dies. After an organism dies the C14 stays locked in its remains and C14 has a half-life of about 5,730 years I believe. So, if we measure the amount of remaining C14 in a sample and compared it to the amount of C14 it should have had while alive, we can determine how old an organism is. This seems simple enough but because C14's half-life is relatively short, it can't be used to determine the age of something which is millions or billions of years old, as there would be no C14 left to measure. So how is radioactive decay used to determine the age of really old things? The C14 dating system seems to work because new C14 is constantly being created, so we can expect living organisms to have a predictable amount of C14 despite the fact that C14 is decaying all of the time. But what about other elements? I know that some uranium isotopes have a half-life of several billion years. This is adequate for dating something really old, but wouldn't the uranium decay constantly since the moment it was created in the collision of neutrons stars? Wouldn't all samples containing uranium on Earth have the same ratio of the unstable isotopes because the uranium has been decaying since the formation of the solar system? How could we determine that a sediment layer or fossil is 100 million years old instead of 4.6 billion years old (the approximate age of the Earth)? What isotopes are measured and how can we know that is the age that they were when they were incorporated into a sample (sediment layer or fossil) as opposed to their absolute age (the amount of time since the elements were created in a star)? I know I've asked a lot of questions (some rhetorical) but underlying question is how can we accurately determine the age of a sample without using C14 dating? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 28 Oct 2020 10:11 AM PDT |
| Posted: 28 Oct 2020 07:24 AM PDT |
| Posted: 27 Oct 2020 09:34 PM PDT |
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