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Monday, February 15, 2016

Is there a scientific explanation for the phenomenon of humor?

Is there a scientific explanation for the phenomenon of humor?


Is there a scientific explanation for the phenomenon of humor?

Posted: 14 Feb 2016 06:43 AM PST

When you think about it, humor and laughter are really odd. Why do certain situations cause you to uncontrollably seize up and make loud gaspy happy shouts? Does it serve a function? Do any other animals understand humor, and do they find the same types of things funny?

submitted by /u/FilthyGodlessHippie
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How come, if we know the genetic sequence of an organism, we can't just...generate it? Could this ever be possible, and why or why not?

Posted: 14 Feb 2016 03:42 PM PST

Can time be divided into infinitely small increments?

Posted: 14 Feb 2016 08:33 PM PST

Or is there a finite limit?

submitted by /u/evictor
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Why does a flat universe indicate an infinite universe?

Posted: 14 Feb 2016 06:24 PM PST

What's the deepest hole we could reasonably dig with our current level of technology? If you fell down it, how long would it take to hit the bottom?

Posted: 15 Feb 2016 05:58 AM PST

In the 19th century, the concept of ether was disproven, but the Higgs field sounds a lot like ether to me. How are they different?

Posted: 14 Feb 2016 07:21 AM PST

What's the effect of sound in a object moving at high speeds (as much as to experience time dilation) ? Also , will our thought processes be slower and would we be aware of that?

Posted: 15 Feb 2016 05:46 AM PST

If someone standing behind me talks to me , or if I use headphones to listen to music while moving in a vehicle close to the speed of light, how would it feel like?

submitted by /u/lickmyspaghetti
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No information can travel faster than c, so no event inside an event horizon can have any causal effect on the external universe. How then do external objects "know" the mass of a black hole? Is that information somehow accumulated at/outside the event horizon over the life of the black hole?

Posted: 15 Feb 2016 12:15 AM PST

What is the difference between two vectors or lines being perpendicular v. being orthogonal? Or, if there is no difference, why do we have two different terms to describe the same thing?

Posted: 14 Feb 2016 05:06 PM PST

I was reading Gilbert Strang's Linear Algebra and its Applications, and came across a chapter on orthogonality. I can see no difference between orthogonality and perpendicularity, so I was wondering if there actually was one.

submitted by /u/c3n3k
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Specifically, how are senescent cells harmful to the body?

Posted: 15 Feb 2016 01:04 AM PST

It's been in the news recently that mice who have been genetically engineered to destroy their senescent cells upon creation of their signature p16 protein (not sure if that's redundant) have had increased healthy lifespans by about 25%. In this article by GEN News (http://www.genengnews.com/gen-news-highlights/shedding-doddering-cells-could-extend-lifespan-healthspan/81252340/), it's claimed that the senescent cells are harmful to the body because they "[consume] resources and [secrete] factors that are, on the whole, harmful." What factors do senescent cells secrete that are harmful?

submitted by /u/ElderineJohn
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How can an up quark decay into a down quark?

Posted: 14 Feb 2016 07:31 AM PST

I am puzzled as to how this happens since the up quark is lighter than a down quark. The process calls for a W+ boson to be emitted from an up quark, converting the up into a down. Since the up quark is ~1.8-3.0MeV, and the down quark is ~4.8MeV, how does this "decay" happen?

submitted by /u/mistaknomore
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If you were to choose a number randomly between 0 and infinity, what are the odds your number is a 4?

Posted: 14 Feb 2016 07:00 PM PST

or any specific number, for that matter.

My guess is literally 0, but that can't be right, can it?

submitted by /u/ImUsingTheWrongWords
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Why is the areas around the deserts and tropics hotter than the areas around the equator?

Posted: 14 Feb 2016 06:41 AM PST

The Sahara Desert, for example, is located around Tropic of Cancer, and not the equator, and is still one of the hottest places on Earth. The insolation around the equator is also much higher, because of the way the Earth is bent. There's also a high pressure around the Tropics and low pressure around the equator. High pressure often have lower temperature than low pressure zones.

submitted by /u/SajmonTheFirst
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Would merging black holes without accretion disks produce a flash of light or other particles?

Posted: 14 Feb 2016 06:18 PM PST

Obviously inspired by the LIGO stuff. I'm asking because I see references to the "luminosity" of the merger, and I'm unclear as to whether that refers to the energy carried away in g-waves or whether energy was carried off in some other way as well.

It seems unlikely, but it seems wild for there to be such a large energy release and have it be basically unnoticeable.

submitted by /u/phyzome
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Has the Banach–Tarski paradox been generalized to higher dimensions? Can it be generalized?

Posted: 15 Feb 2016 04:46 AM PST

As I understand it, the Banach–Tarski paradox allows choosing an infinite number of points from a surface, such as a sphere, and by rotating and translating the points, reassemble a different surface, such as two copies of the original sphere or a larger sphere.

Has this been generalized? Can it be generalized? Can an infinite selection of surfaces be reassembled into two copies of the original volume they're taken?

submitted by /u/anime_a_shit
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How are novel metabolite precursors identified?

Posted: 14 Feb 2016 03:12 PM PST

For example, if a scientist discovers a new metabolite, how do they begin building a metabolic pathway? I suppose radioactive tracers can be used to identify anything downstream, but how do they identify anything upstream of this new metabolite?

submitted by /u/Hamburglar6
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If it only takes 23 people in a room to have a 50% chance that two of them share a birthday, how many shuffles of a standard card deck does it take to have a 50% chance that two of them are the same (they end in the same order of cards in the deck) ?

Posted: 14 Feb 2016 01:00 PM PST

Did LIGO get incredibly lucky with two black holes colliding or are these fairly frequent?

Posted: 14 Feb 2016 09:24 AM PST

Also, Did we know this was going to happen beforehand? I understand how LIGO detected the gravity waves but how did we detect the merger in the first place?

submitted by /u/dimechimes
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With technology advancing to a point where stem cells are being used to regrow new body parts and attach them, but do the nerves attach also?

Posted: 14 Feb 2016 03:29 PM PST

If the part of the brain that processes the body part was never used because it was never there before, is there some way the brain will connect to the nerves in the newly grown structure and be able to process them, or will the body part be primarily for looks and function, not sensation?

submitted by /u/intreption
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What would happen to a tachyon in a black hole?

Posted: 14 Feb 2016 11:17 PM PST

Since tachyons exist faster than the speed of light, would they be able to exit a black hole?

submitted by /u/TheTickterd
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Sunday, February 14, 2016

Does the discovery of gravitational waves mean that eventually we will be able to detect and map dark matter as gravity is the only evidence of its existance?

Does the discovery of gravitational waves mean that eventually we will be able to detect and map dark matter as gravity is the only evidence of its existance?


Does the discovery of gravitational waves mean that eventually we will be able to detect and map dark matter as gravity is the only evidence of its existance?

Posted: 13 Feb 2016 06:00 PM PST

Why does dopamine and other "feel good" chemicals actually feel good? Why is our brain happy when it experiences these chemicals?

Posted: 13 Feb 2016 09:12 PM PST

does everything emit gravitational waves?

Posted: 13 Feb 2016 05:52 PM PST

hello

I did a lot of googling and there seems to be a lot of confusion regarding the new discovery, in one paper i read that only accelerating things emit gravitational waves, in the other i read that only moving objects do. If only moving objects do, moving compared to what?? Could anyone explain how does this work exactly?

Another question: they are waves, so they should have frequencies and amplitudes? how do those values get determined exactly?

submitted by /u/Ricike
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Why does water have no taste or smell?

Posted: 13 Feb 2016 05:46 PM PST

Do g-waves attenuate with time(or when they interact with matter)?

Posted: 13 Feb 2016 09:14 PM PST

If they do attenuate, how can we determine the source considering the waves could have interacted with a random number of matter

submitted by /u/ArunB92
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How does the 'security pattern' in the Canadian polymer bills work?

Posted: 13 Feb 2016 06:28 PM PST

Short description of what I'm talking about:

In 2011, the Bank of Canada started issuing the Frontier Series of Canadian banknotes, which were the first to be produced on polymer.

If you look through the circle in the middle of the frosted maple leaf, there is kind of a 'display' of the denomination of the bill.

How does this work? Specifically, why can't I see it on the actual bill (i.e. in the reflection of the circle), and why does it stay centred on the point of light? For that matter, why does it only work with a small light source anyways?

Examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnNAhJk0Qqs, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5r_9b4XuSA

submitted by /u/Hello71
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Does a container with a perfect vacuum in it float?

Posted: 13 Feb 2016 06:26 PM PST

Is a measurement of Planck time arbitrary in time?

Posted: 13 Feb 2016 05:15 PM PST

Does a measurement of Planck time have to occur during a discrete period/cycle (i.e. clock cycle), or can it be measured during any arbitrary period along an infinite timeline? And if time is not infinite, does this then impose a universe "clock cycle"?

submitted by /u/cradle_slayer
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How close to GW150914 (the black hole merger) would I have to be to feel the gravitational waves on my body?

Posted: 13 Feb 2016 02:15 PM PST

I asked this question in the megathread, but it was buried, so I'm trying again here. How close would I have to be to the GW150914 event (the black hole merger) to feel the effect of the gravitational waves on my body?

submitted by /u/andrerav
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Why does superconductivity only happen when its cold?

Posted: 13 Feb 2016 09:44 PM PST

Given the extreme difficulty of unifying Gravity with the other three fundamental forces is it not likely that it's just a completely unrelated phenomenon?

Posted: 13 Feb 2016 03:16 PM PST

As I understand it gravity is a fairly stable deformation of spacetime (or, possibly the cause of the deformation, I'm unclear on the specifics), while the other three forces have no similar effect. In fact it seems to behave completely differently from the others, and to me this suggests it isn't similar enough to be unified (seems like suggesting that a rope and a phone call are similar because they can, given the right circumstances, be used to move an object closer to me). Why, then, is there such a strong desire within the physics community to unify them? Or (and I consider this far more likely, given my relative ignorance on the subject compared to actual physics researchers) am I completely missing something?

submitted by /u/StarkRG
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Would a Cro Magnon born today be smarter than a modern human since Cro Magnon had larger brains?

Posted: 13 Feb 2016 08:54 PM PST

Are the LIGO detectors susceptible to seismic activity?

Posted: 13 Feb 2016 02:18 PM PST

Saw this gif of how the LIGO detectors worked to determine gravitational waves and it got me thinking, if the two detectors are separated by a large distance (in this case Louisiana and Washington), and are trying to measure perturbations smaller than a proton, couldn't seismic activity confound the data?

submitted by /u/anubis_of_q
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Why does atmosphere thickness (and ground pressure) does not depend solely on planet's surface gravity ?

Posted: 13 Feb 2016 02:35 PM PST

Venus has a lower surface gravity than Earth, yet its atmospheric pressure is much bigger ... Has this something to do with atmosphere composition ? Bonus question : With the same composition, would atmospheric pressure be then only dependent on planet gravity ? Thanks

submitted by /u/Omfraax
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How to convert sucrose mol/dm^3 to concentration %?

Posted: 13 Feb 2016 04:45 PM PST

How can you measure something at 1 billion light years away, if it would take at least 2 billion years to measure that distance?

Posted: 13 Feb 2016 03:01 PM PST

can a blind person get motion sickness?

Posted: 13 Feb 2016 12:19 PM PST

Just something that crossed my mind today.

submitted by /u/SuperJesus0123
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Why does Oklahoma have so many earthquakes when it's not on a fault line?

Posted: 13 Feb 2016 09:51 AM PST

Many of the links I found were just talking about fracking causing them, but these quakes have happened long before fracking and it doesn't make sense to me.

submitted by /u/flobbus
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Why are long radioactive half-lives bad when talking about waste from nuclear power generation? Doesn't a long half life mean there is less radioactivity?

Posted: 13 Feb 2016 12:38 PM PST

When reading news about long term storage of nuclear waste I get the impression that a long half life is much worse than a shorter half life.

I get that a very short half life is good. If it has a half life of hours or days it is easy to contain until it is no longer radioactive.

But when we are talking about hundreds of years compared with hundreds of thousands of years, both are essentially gonna be around "forever" from a human perspective. Then it seems like 1000x less radiation might be better.

submitted by /u/almost_useless
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Why are viruses non-living when they are not in the lytic cycle and attached to a living host?

Posted: 13 Feb 2016 12:41 PM PST

I got this information from Pearson's Biology textbook. Correct me if I'm wrong.

submitted by /u/SpectroThorn
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How can animals such as a snake, shark, or alligator only eat once a month to a year and live such long lives?

Posted: 13 Feb 2016 07:37 PM PST

What is the process in their bodies that allow them to eat so seldom?

submitted by /u/NippleSubmissions
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Saturday, February 13, 2016

AskScience AMA Series: I'm Thomas Hurting, we make tiny human brains out of skin cells, modeling brain development to help research treatments for diseases like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s or Multiples Sclerosis, and to help develop personalized medicine. Ask me anything!

AskScience AMA Series: I'm Thomas Hurting, we make tiny human brains out of skin cells, modeling brain development to help research treatments for diseases like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s or Multiples Sclerosis, and to help develop personalized medicine. Ask me anything!


AskScience AMA Series: I'm Thomas Hurting, we make tiny human brains out of skin cells, modeling brain development to help research treatments for diseases like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s or Multiples Sclerosis, and to help develop personalized medicine. Ask me anything!

Posted: 13 Feb 2016 04:34 AM PST

Hi Reddit,

Making your skin cells think – researchers create mini-brains from donated skin cells. It sounds like science fiction, but ten years ago Shinya Yamanaka's lab in Kyoto, Japan, showed how to make stem cells from small skin donations. Now my team at Johns Hopkins University is making little brains from them, modeling the first two to three months of brain development.

These cell balls are very versatile – we can study the effects of drugs or chemicals. This promises treatments for diseases like Parkinson's, Alzheimer or Multiples Sclerosis. But also the disturbance of brain development, for example leading to autism, can be studied.

And we can create these mini-brains probably from anybody. This opens up possibilities for personalized medicine. Cells from somebody with the genetic background contributing to any of these diseases can be invaluable to test the drugs of the future. Take autism – we know that neither genetics nor exposure to chemicals alone leads to the disease. Perhaps we can finally unravel this with mini-brains from the skin of autistic children? They bring the genetic background – the researchers bring the chemicals to test.

And the mini-brains are actually thinking. They fire electrical impulses and communicate via their normal networks, the axons and neurites. The size of a fly eye, they are just nicely visible. Most of the different brain cell types are present, not only various types of neurons. This is opening up for a more human-relevant research to study diseases and test substances

We've started to study viral infections, but stroke, trauma and brain cancer are now obvious areas of use.

We want to make available mini-brains by back-order and delivered within days by parcel service. Nobody should have an excuse to still use the old animal models.

And the future? Customized brains for drug research – such as brains from Parkinson patients to test new Parkinson drugs. Effects of illicit drugs on the brain. Effects of flavors added to e-cigarettes? Screening to find chemical threat agents to develop countermeasures for terroristic attacks. Disease models for infections. The list is long.

And the ultimate vision? A human-on-chip combining different mini-organs to study the interactions of the human body. Far away? Models with up to ten organs are actually already on the way.

This AMA is facilitated by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) as part of their Annual Meeting

Thomas Hartung, director of the Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing, Johns Hopkins University Bloomburg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD. Understanding Neurotoxicity: Building Human Mini-Brains From Patient's Stem Cells

I'll be back at 2 pm EST (11 am PST, 7 pm UTC) to answer your questions, ask me anything!

submitted by /u/Thomas_Hartung
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Is there any evidence that dogs behave differently around human infants compared to around human adults?

Posted: 12 Feb 2016 05:55 PM PST

I often hear anecdotes of dogs acting more gently or protectively around babies/infants, but I wonder how much of this is just anthopomorphizing. Is there any scientific evidence to back this up?

submitted by /u/Judgment_Reversed
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Is there an evolutionary reason that aquatic reptiles (such as ichtyosaurs) moved their tails horizontally, while aquatic mammals move their tails vertically?

Posted: 12 Feb 2016 03:13 PM PST

Why aren't local anaesthetics used for all surgery?

Posted: 13 Feb 2016 06:34 AM PST

After all, it's far safer, and doesn't involve putting somebody into a coma. I mean, local anaesthetic is used for some major surgeries (I.e. Brain surgery), so why isn't it used for all surgeries?

Even so, why can't a patient just request local anaesthesia if they're afraid of going under?

submitted by /u/Blimtole
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Is there a point when children become sentient? Like, is it just a sudden "I exist", or is it more of a gradual thing?

Posted: 13 Feb 2016 06:16 AM PST

Would firing a bullet in a highly polluted area (ex: Beijing) have different ballistics than if it were fired in a clear environment (ex: montana)?

Posted: 12 Feb 2016 08:53 PM PST

Specifically I am wondering if it would be more (or less) difficult to make extreme long range shots in a location that has high air pollution density.

In addition, are there any factors other than just the PPM that would affect the ballistics of the round?

submitted by /u/Hilamary
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How is there native fish in Lake Titicaca?

Posted: 12 Feb 2016 09:13 PM PST

I understand how invasive especies can be introduced, but how did the fish that are native got there in the first place, after the lakes formation?

submitted by /u/blococurupira
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Does the confirmation of gravitational waves contradict String Theory?

Posted: 13 Feb 2016 02:24 AM PST

So I'm new to reddit, but i don't know where to ask this. Since the discovery of gravitational waves has confirmed that Einstein was right: gravity is a property of Space-Time, as Space-Time is deformed by mass, thus giving objects their trajectory through space; does this mean that String Theory is wrong?

I might have no understood String Theory right, but if i understand correctly, it, like some of the theories that are being tested at the LHC are looking for the graviton, the particle that transfers the force of gravity.

To me it seems that these two theories are incompatible. I may be very wrong, since it's unlikely that I understood String Theory. Thank you.

submitted by /u/Dughau
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Does light moving in a medium have a reference frame?

Posted: 12 Feb 2016 02:09 PM PST

I've heard that something moving at the speed of light doesn't have a reference frame. Does this mean when light is moving slower it suddenly has a reference frame?

submitted by /u/Im_thatguy
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Where in the universe does the Earth sit?

Posted: 12 Feb 2016 04:41 PM PST

Are we above most things? Are we near the bottom? How far would would fall to the bottom?

submitted by /u/rhinofitness
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Does our brain use more calories if we are actively doing something mentally stimulating?

Posted: 12 Feb 2016 01:17 PM PST

If our brains use around 20% of our calories, is this a general flat rate the brain just uses, or if we're doing something like learning or problem solving does it require more calories?

submitted by /u/graystripeblack
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If in the ancestral environment hunter-gatherers humans lived in groups of 150-200 members, what caused the limit size or the consequent split?

Posted: 12 Feb 2016 01:26 PM PST

Anthropology.

Sorry my english.

submitted by /u/Sone3D
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Would it be possible to release large amounts Dopamin, just by thinking of it?

Posted: 13 Feb 2016 04:29 AM PST

And if so, would it be addictive?

submitted by /u/iLostMyAcc
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I get on a spaceship and travel at nearly the speed of light. When I come back to earth, I've aged less than you. But given that speed is relative, how does the universe "know" which one of us was moving quickly?

Posted: 12 Feb 2016 04:04 PM PST

Do humans work better under pressure?

Posted: 13 Feb 2016 07:12 AM PST

If I point a gun in someone's head and require a specific task done will the pressure of a life-threatening situation speed up the process or slow it down ?

submitted by /u/zarie125
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Does gravity increase as mass increases?

Posted: 13 Feb 2016 06:43 AM PST

My son and I were discussing how you can never reach the speed of light because as you get closer to the speed of light you mass increases until you have almost infinite mass and it would take almost infinite energy to accelerate that mass to the actual speed of light.

He wondered if there would be any harmful effects for a person going that fast and I wasn't sure how to answer.

My first thought is that as you increase in mass, your own gravity would increase to the point that your bone and muscles could no longer support you and you would collapse into a gooey ball.

Is there any truth to this? Does your own gravity increase as you increase velocity?

submitted by /u/angels_fan
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Are we currently able to observe what a thought 'looks like' in the brain, i.e. see the exact path it takes between neurons?

Posted: 13 Feb 2016 12:42 AM PST

When we think of the same thing twice, are the thoughts physically identical (i.e same path)? Or am i asking the wrong questions?

submitted by /u/SeveralGoats
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Is the LIGO experiment using the same design/layout with Michaelson's and Morley's experiment?

Posted: 13 Feb 2016 06:05 AM PST

From what I have understood in both the LIGO and the Michaelson and Morley experiments a light beam is splitted and let run across some km. Then it is combined through the same prism and the energy change is measured through symbolometry. This energy change is caused because one of the two beams runs quickier.

The only difference I can see is the size (LIGO is some km long amd M&M built it within an library) and most importantly that in LIGO one of the beams runs faster because of the space-time distortion (caused by the Gravitational waves) while in the Michaelson's and Morley's experiment the speed change is caused by the fact that one of the beams is running through the aether amd being affected by the earth's movement.

I am not trying by any means to demote the importance of this discovery or the LIGO team. What they found is astonishing. I am just observing some similarities and asking for more info. Thanks!

submitted by /u/cnpapado
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Speed of the gravitational wave detected?

Posted: 12 Feb 2016 08:02 PM PST

So the gravity wave that was just detected came from over 1 billion light years away, but does that mean it began its travel more than 1 billion years ago? How fast does a ripple in space time propagate? I know the speed of light is the universal speed limit, but does this phenomena follow that rule?

submitted by /u/prkirby
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What are the hazards of Fusion technology?

Posted: 12 Feb 2016 07:19 AM PST

Generally speaking, what are the hazards of the process of harnessing energy through nuclear fusion and more specifically what is the worst case scenario while operating the Stellarator or Tokamak type reactors?

submitted by /u/FlamingHerbalist
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Does one addiction reinforce the brain's Dopamine reward-loop for other addictions?

Posted: 12 Feb 2016 06:15 PM PST

How important was Clifford's work in the developpement of General Relativity?

Posted: 13 Feb 2016 04:31 AM PST

Put someone on bypass when a heart stops?

Posted: 13 Feb 2016 03:57 AM PST

So.. I was just wondering the other night, I'm sure there a lots of cases where a patients heart stop in a hospital during surgery/medical ward. I was wondering how often, after failed attempts of resuscitation, do they put a patient on bypass (blood pump of somekind - we have those,right?) Or would it take too much time to set up and the damage done would be irreversible?

submitted by /u/Milchy
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[Physics]How do we really know speed affects time?

Posted: 12 Feb 2016 01:42 PM PST

I know that there was an atomic clock kept on the ground and they put an atomic clock in a plane and flew it around the world, and the clocks showed different times. Now I like to ponder the mysteries of the universe like a curious fellow I am. Now my question is, how did they arrive at the conclusion that speed affects time, when they used a device that counts the tiny vibrations of a cesium atom, which requires the movement of it. Now the reason I have this question is because if the speed of light is the fastest something can go, wouldn't the vibrations be reduced to zero? If the atom is moving at the speed of light, it wouldn't be able to vibrate in the direction of travel, thus giving a false positive right? I may be wrong here, or I am missing something stupid that slips my mind, I don't know. Can anyone here shed some light here?

submitted by /u/Liveonafarm
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