As light is part of the electromagnetic spectrum why is it referred to in terms of photons whereas frequencies that are higher/lower are not? | AskScience Blog

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Tuesday, October 5, 2021

As light is part of the electromagnetic spectrum why is it referred to in terms of photons whereas frequencies that are higher/lower are not?

As light is part of the electromagnetic spectrum why is it referred to in terms of photons whereas frequencies that are higher/lower are not?


As light is part of the electromagnetic spectrum why is it referred to in terms of photons whereas frequencies that are higher/lower are not?

Posted: 05 Oct 2021 05:11 AM PDT

If the Higgs field gives mass to matter, and the mass of matter curves spacetime, and said curvature is the basis of gravity; does this imply that the Higgs field causes gravity?

Posted: 05 Oct 2021 07:48 AM PDT

Is the Asteroid Belt in our Solar System 'flat' or does it cover 360 degrees around Mars?

Posted: 04 Oct 2021 12:18 PM PDT

This may be an absurdly dumb question, but just curious

So was wondering - is the asteroid belt in our solar system flat like the belt of rocks around Saturn or does it basically cover 360 degrees around the area between Mars and Jupiter? I know the asteroids are very far apart from each other, but was curious if they coalesced into a "flat" formation like Saturn's ring or are they in every single direction?

Thank you for your time!

submitted by /u/RockBandDood
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How do the lipid nanoparticles in mRNA vaccines trigger membrane fusion?

Posted: 04 Oct 2021 07:43 PM PDT

As far as I know, enveloped viruses have proteins that cause the viral envelope to fuse with cell membranes. It doesn't look like the vaccine lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) have any such proteins, so why are they able to fuse with cell membranes without them when viruses don't seem to be able to do that?

Also, is there any evidence that we're going to have the same worry with LNP formulations that we do with adenovirus-based vaccines -- namely, prior exposure to that particular vector may cause the immune system to attack it before it can deliver its payload?

submitted by /u/ateegar
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Why is the sun composed of just hydrogen and helium while the rest of the solar system is made predominantly of heavier elements?

Posted: 04 Oct 2021 06:57 PM PDT

If we (and the planets) are indeed made of stardust from exploded stars, why then isn't also our sun?

submitted by /u/IGottaHandItToMe
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Is it possible that there's a planet orbiting the sun perpendicular to the coplanar orbit of the eight planets?

Posted: 04 Oct 2021 07:46 PM PDT

And assuming it exists, what would it mean for our solar sytem and could it be a reason for some anomalies Just a thought question.

submitted by /u/zzz_yeiji
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How does the synchronizer work in a manual transmission? especially at a high speed?

Posted: 04 Oct 2021 08:54 PM PDT

Do plants have some form of adaptive immunity similar to that found in animals?

Posted: 04 Oct 2021 08:28 PM PDT

For example, upon repeated encounters with the same pathogen the plant will recover faster. If plants indeed have some form of adaptive immunity, would plant "vaccinations" - artificially inserting pathogens into the plant - be a plausible idea? If plants do not have an adaptive immune system, what is the evolutionary reason for lacking an adaptive immune system which you would think would be helpful for survival?

submitted by /u/jer-jk
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Why is Laplace's equation so important in electrodynamics?

Posted: 04 Oct 2021 03:02 PM PDT

I'm taking an E&M class and using Griffith's *Electrodynamics* textbook and in the section about Laplace's equation he talks about it like the it's most amazing thing ever, but I don't get it. Why do we care so much about the case when the charge density is zero? If I understand the Laplacian operator correctly, that would mean the E field has to have a constant value in that region (although it feels like it should be zero, a physicist friend assures me that's not necessarily the case) and that doesn't sound very interesting. I mean, I get why the equation would be important to other branches of physics since the Laplacian being zero in vector calculus is analogous to the first derivative being constant in single variable calculus and those kinds of functions are just easier to work with, but I don't get why it's so important in E&M in particular.

submitted by /u/dcfan105
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How do we know that asymptomatic infections exist?

Posted: 04 Oct 2021 11:46 AM PDT

I personally don't understand how anyone can get infected by a virus and not show symptoms, so I'm asking why for clarity.

submitted by /u/Luffy507
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How do pilots or sailors navigate over the poles? Do we have gps capabilities at high latitudes to overcome the acuteness of the magnetic direction?

Posted: 04 Oct 2021 07:13 PM PDT

Additionally, how close can a flight get to passing over the magnetic pole? I assume they try to avoid is if possible.

submitted by /u/Kyjoza
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How does Niemann-Pick disease (type A) cause organ swelling?

Posted: 04 Oct 2021 09:10 PM PDT

I understand that the disease causes a buildup of sphingomyelin in cells due to a deficiency of acid sphingomyelinase, but how does this contribute to the swelling of the spleen and liver that's seen in so many cases of the disease?

submitted by /u/IntrovertNeptune
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Watched a video on the JWST and it was said it orbits the L2 of the Sun-Earth system. How can it orbit that point with no mass there?

Posted: 04 Oct 2021 09:29 AM PDT

Smarter Every Day interview with Dr. John Mather

At L2 (about 4x the distance to the moon) the pull of the sun and earth create enough combined gravity for a stable orbit around the sun. I don't see what can provide the acceleration though to orbit around that point. It seemed like he was about to say it was more fuel efficient to orbit than to come to rest, I can see that.

EDIT: What's with the copy and pasting? Karma farming accounts?

submitted by /u/SuperSimpleSam
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Why are fossil fuel deposits all hydrocarbons?

Posted: 04 Oct 2021 12:25 PM PDT

I've heard multiple times that fossil fuels consist of hydrocarbons, mostly alkanes and cyclic thingies. But if fossil fuels are made of the remains of compressed organic matter, where is all the nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur etc?

submitted by /u/TranquilityTurtle
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Why did Pfizer's COVID vaccine clinical trials EXCLUDE those previously infected?

Posted: 04 Oct 2021 05:56 PM PDT

In the official clinical trial documents, I noticed that people who have had COVID were excluded from the study:

Exclusion Criteria:

...

Previous clinical (based on COVID-19 symptoms/signs alone, if a SARS-CoV-2 NAAT result was not available) or microbiological (based on COVID-19 symptoms/signs and a positive SARS-CoV-2 NAAT result) diagnosis of COVID 19

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04368728

My question is, what is the scientific reasoning behind this exclusion, when usually clinical trials try to recruit a more diverse group of subjects?

submitted by /u/a_teletubby
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Where do butterflies get their pigmentation and wing patterns from? Why do they have different wing patterns?

Posted: 03 Oct 2021 07:54 PM PDT

I teach in an after school program for middle schoolers and a student said to me she rather believe fairies exist because it's more fun to imagine that the fairies paint butterflies and give them their colors/wing patterns rather than the butterflies just coming out that way from their chrysalis.

This experience led to some conflicting emotions inside me. While I don't want to extinguish any creativity/imagination in children, I also don't want them believing in things that are false and thinking that the world is boring when in fact everything is wonderfully complex and ridiculously interesting on so many different levels.

I like to believe that a lot of the time, truth genuinely is way stranger than fiction (like the fact that we're living on a ball, half of it is sticking upside down and it's spinning around a big glob of gas and fire in space as Richard Feynman put it https://youtu.be/lmTmGLzPVyM)

However, I know nothing about butterflies and I'm not nearly as great a scientific communicator as Richard Feynman - I'm like a chimp compared to him haha

How can I explain the phenomenon of butterfly wing designs/colors in a compelling and accurate way - and in a way that a middle school student (and myself for that matter) can understand?

Thank you!

submitted by /u/jgonzalez-cs
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Does a Tesseract have 24 or 34 faces?

Posted: 04 Oct 2021 05:12 AM PDT

So, I wanted to design some 4th dimensional dice, just for kicks. It turns out someone's already done that. Well, I still want to make my own, but wikipedia says the Tesseract has: 8 Cells, 24 Faces, 32 Edges, and 16 Vertices... but when I counted a net of a tesseract I came up with 34 faces instead. Can someone look at the picture? It's color coded so it should be easy to see how I counted all the faces. But which part is wrong? How many faces can land upwards on a tesseract?

submitted by /u/ninety-eightpointsix
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Do icebreakers and other large ships destroying ice sheets have detrimental effects on Arctic ice build up?

Posted: 03 Oct 2021 06:41 PM PDT

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