AskScience AMA Series: I am the co-founder of iNaturalist, an online social network for sharing biodiversity information. Ask Me Anything! |
- AskScience AMA Series: I am the co-founder of iNaturalist, an online social network for sharing biodiversity information. Ask Me Anything!
- Why are electromagnetic waves depicted as moving "up and down"? Why don't photons go in a complete straight line?
- Do radioactive material decay at the same rate regardless of gravity?
- Will drilling through a neodynium magnet cause it to lose its magnetism?
- Can photons move slower than the speed of light when near a black hole?
- If light is a subatomic particle can you make it a liquid? If so, would it be similar to the theoretical kugelblitz?
- If quantum particles are waves, why do they make tracks in detectors as if they were point particles?
- Why do multiples of 9, always come back to 9 when their digits are added together?
- Could virtual particles turn out to be just mathematical fictions, a bit like epicycles?
- Will particle-antiparticle annihilation create gravitons?
- Is it possible to for a random number generator (using all real numbers) to generate an integer?
- How precisely is it possible to measure spacetime curvature?
- How quickly can the human body gain weight?
- When I pour a glass of water really full, it can fill above the rim of the glass, would this happen on a planet with a much stronger or lighter, gravitational force?
- What does serotonin do in the gut, why is it there and how closely related is it to the serotonin in brain?
- How do transistors work?
- Why the same thermos can keep the drink cold for 24 hrs but the hot drink for only 6 hrs?
- How many possibilities are there to arrange these objects?
- Drilling a hole through a planet and the gravitational effect on an object thrown into the hole. What would happen?
- If an electric current flowing through a coiled wire creates a magnetic field, does coiling a magnetic field produce anything?
- A diet Lipton Iced Tea has zero calories. I know there are *things* in it, hence "energy," so how can there be zero calories?
- How fast does a nuclear bomb ignite?
| Posted: 01 Sep 2016 05:00 AM PDT iNaturalist is an online social network of people sharing biodiversity information to help each other learn about nature. It's also a crowdsourced species identification system and an organism occurrence recording tool. You can use it to record your own observations, get help with identifications, collaborate with others to collect this kind of information for a common purpose, or access the observational data collected by iNaturalist users. If you have any questions about iNaturalist or the state of natural history on the Internet, iNat co-founder Ken-ichi Ueda will be fielding questions around noon EDT (17 UT). AMA! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 31 Aug 2016 07:03 PM PDT Let's say I shoot a single photon from A to B in a long box where the wavelength is larger than the box. Does this mean the photon crashes into the walls of the box? If it wobbles like that, what causes it to go back to it's original path after it's changed path to follow the "wave"? [link] [comments]  |
| Do radioactive material decay at the same rate regardless of gravity? Posted: 01 Sep 2016 05:02 AM PDT If gravity distorts time would it effect the rate of radioactive decay of a material width in a field of gravity. Ex uranium taking longer to decay on earth then the moon. [link] [comments]  |
| Will drilling through a neodynium magnet cause it to lose its magnetism? Posted: 01 Sep 2016 04:29 AM PDT I'm making something with some of these and need to drill through them. Also, are there precautions to take (other than standard safety) when dealing with these metals? [link] [comments]  |
| Can photons move slower than the speed of light when near a black hole? Posted: 01 Sep 2016 04:46 AM PDT We know photons always move at the speed of light. However my theory is that when a black hole is made there is a point where 1 photon is still going away from the black hole and the other one will be sucked in by the black hole. So the last photon was moving away from the black hole but the force of gravity massively increases and the photon will be forced to go in the direction of the black hole. What if all forces on that photon pull it the exact same amount which means there is no side besides up or down to which the photon can move. The black hole pulls harder than the rest of the sides of the photon which means the photon can't bend in any direction. The photon will then be forced to slow down to 0 and then ramp up again to the speed of ligh towards the black hole. I hope you can understand me as this is quite hard to explain for me since i'm not natively english. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 31 Aug 2016 06:11 PM PDT |
| Posted: 01 Sep 2016 04:15 AM PDT I imagine the wavefunctions of particles created in collisions or decay have some sort of spread. Therefore I'd expect that when the wave reaches a detector it should excite atoms in the detector in a spread out area, if that makes any sense. Why instead are the particles always detected at a series of points on a straight line, in for example bubble chambers, LHC, etc? Only thing I can think of is the first detection of the particle collapses the wavefunction to that point. But then the information about the original velocity is lost and it should start spreading in all directions. So the series of detections should not be all on a straight line. [link] [comments]  |
| Why do multiples of 9, always come back to 9 when their digits are added together? Posted: 31 Aug 2016 11:31 PM PDT Sorry I could have probably worded the title better. I remember my second grade teacher taught me this but never explained why she just said it was a a magic number lol. Example: 9*2=18, 1+8=9 9*3=27, 2+7=9 9*4=36, 3+6=9 etc, etc, etc....., Of course there are many interesting recurrences with small number and wen we learned our multiplication tables as kids, but this trend seems to stay the same even as the number you multiply by 9 increase. Even with random numbers in the tens and hundreds similar pattern. Example 9*53=477, 4+7+7=18, 1+8=9 9*87=783, 7+8+3=18, 1+8=9 9*681=6129, 6+1+2+9=18, 1+8=9 9*217=1953, 1+9+5+3=18, 1+8=9 Now I've only used positive integers, haven't even looked into negatives, nor decimals, nor any other parameters so to speak. Are there any exceptions doing this with positive integers? And why does this work? This is a smart sub and I'm sure the answer is simple but I've just always been curious about it. I'll try a few more larger random numbers with greater number of digits. 9*876,257=7,886,313 : 7+8+8+6+3+1+3=36, 3+6=9 One more even larger number 9*12,345,678=111,111,102 : 1+1+1+1+1+1+1+0+2=9 Are there any other weird happenstances like this? if so please elaborate... [link] [comments]  |
| Could virtual particles turn out to be just mathematical fictions, a bit like epicycles? Posted: 31 Aug 2016 06:36 PM PDT |
| Will particle-antiparticle annihilation create gravitons? Posted: 01 Sep 2016 03:25 AM PDT Usually, we are told that when a particle and antiparticle annihilate, they produce photons, and the higher the mass, the greater the frequency of the photons. The quantum of gravitational waves is a graviton, and the only difference I know between graviton and photons is that the former has spin 2 and latter spin 0 boson. Both are massless, so both travel at the speed of light. Has there been any investigation on this topic, or is it even worth investigation (in the highly likely case that my question is completely wrong)? Or do we need a QM theory of gravity before we can even begin to consider such a question? Are there any approximate Quantum Gravity theories (parallel of "old quantum theory" of light-matter interaction) that deal with this issue? [link] [comments]  |
| Is it possible to for a random number generator (using all real numbers) to generate an integer? Posted: 31 Aug 2016 02:50 PM PDT So I've been thinking about random number selection, and came upon this idea. If you were to generate a random number (doesn't have to be an integer) between 1 and 10, wouldn't the chance of the number selected being an integer be 0, because there are a finite number of integers between 1 and 10? And, following the same logic wouldn't there be no chance of the number being anything other than a never-ending decimal? It makes sense to me, but seems odd at the same time and I'm wondering if I have made a mistake with my logic. [link] [comments]  |
| How precisely is it possible to measure spacetime curvature? Posted: 31 Aug 2016 07:58 PM PDT Is there a fundamental uncertainty principle like the one in quantum mechanics? If so, what's the variable conjugate to the curvature? Edit: I'm sorry, I wasn't clear, I meant measuring the local curvature of spacetime due to some matter nearby. Not the large scale curvature of the universe. [link] [comments]  |
| How quickly can the human body gain weight? Posted: 31 Aug 2016 08:37 PM PDT Could someone consume enough calories and turn that energy into fat quickly enough to Pop? (to some degree or another) [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 31 Aug 2016 08:46 PM PDT I believe the water goes above the rim due to surface tension, but could this happen with different forces of gravity?? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 31 Aug 2016 01:54 PM PDT |
| Posted: 31 Aug 2016 02:18 PM PDT I'm curious about how they work and how a computer can read those operations [link] [comments]  |
| Why the same thermos can keep the drink cold for 24 hrs but the hot drink for only 6 hrs? Posted: 31 Aug 2016 08:39 PM PDT |
| How many possibilities are there to arrange these objects? Posted: 01 Sep 2016 01:56 AM PDT Assuming I have three of A, one of B and one of C, how many possibilities are there to arrange these five objects and is it possible to calculate the number or do I have to make a list and count them? How would more objects (e.g. 4xA 2xB 3xC 1xD) change it. I know how to calculate the number of possiblities if there are no multiple of one object (5 different objects => 5!=120 possiblities to arrange them). I'd rather not make a list because I'm pretty sure I will forget at least one possibility. I hope you understood my question and are able to help me with my problem. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 01 Sep 2016 07:46 AM PDT Let's say we would be on a planet with a solid, cool core and we would drill a hole straight through the planet, perfectly through the core. So we have a hole through the planet, starting at the north pole and coming out at the south pole. Now, what would happen with an object that we throw into one of the starting points? Would it stop falling right at the core or what would actually happen? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 01 Sep 2016 06:48 AM PDT This might sound a bit confusing. but imagine coiling copper wire around a flexible tube (which would produce a magnetic field when a current passes through), then coil the flexible tube around another tube. Does anything happen? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 31 Aug 2016 07:42 PM PDT |
| How fast does a nuclear bomb ignite? Posted: 01 Sep 2016 04:19 AM PDT When critical mass is reached, how long does it take for the bomb to actually explode, let's say till it destroys the casing. Does it build a few seconds or does it all happen in micro seconds? [link] [comments]  |
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