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Wednesday, June 20, 2018

Do ticks or other blood sucking bugs (mosquitoes, etc) show preference to certain people?

Do ticks or other blood sucking bugs (mosquitoes, etc) show preference to certain people?


Do ticks or other blood sucking bugs (mosquitoes, etc) show preference to certain people?

Posted: 19 Jun 2018 12:55 PM PDT

I'm currently on a hike and my friends have found about 1-3 ticks each while I've found 17 and an hour later another 15. Is there a reason that ticks seem to 'love' me much more than my friends?

submitted by /u/WillyD15
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What’s the fastest spinning man made object? What’s the fastest spinning natural object?

Posted: 19 Jun 2018 10:17 AM PDT

Why is poo brown?

Posted: 20 Jun 2018 01:46 AM PDT

How small can an object be in space and still support an atmosphere?

Posted: 20 Jun 2018 03:04 AM PDT

I'm assuming it would not only require enough mass but maybe a magnetic field too. Could a large asteroid potentially have a very thin atmosphere? Thanks.

submitted by /u/spawlicker
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Are there any organisms here on Earth that would have no problem surviving on other planets/moons in our solar system?

Posted: 19 Jun 2018 04:56 PM PDT

I understand we've found (or found evidence of) ice and liquid water on other planets and moons. Are there any organisms that would likely be able to survive on any of them?

Not suggesting we should, but I guess what I'm getting at is, would it be possible to send a population of organisms to other planets and moons, and expect them to thrive and grow?

Are there particularly resilient organisms that you'd expect to successfully survive and procreate on Mars or Europa?

submitted by /u/DoNotReadNegatively
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How would superconductor work at all?

Posted: 19 Jun 2018 08:02 PM PDT

Let say I have a superconducting electromagnet and I want to use it to lift a magnetic object. I apply some voltage to the electromagnet from a battery, because of Ohm's law, I=V/R the current would be infinite and because P=VI the power consumption would be infinite and it would drain the battery's energy in 0 second so I wouldn't even able to life the magnetic object for 1 second. Well, let say the voltage is 0 because the resistance is so low then the current would be 0 and because P=VI the power consumption would be 0 and the electromagnet wouldn't lift the magnetic object at all because there're no energy going into the electromagnet.

submitted by /u/Gabriel38
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What gives new book its unique smell?

Posted: 19 Jun 2018 05:34 PM PDT

So why do we named galaxies NGC #####?

Posted: 20 Jun 2018 05:36 AM PDT

I am currently curious as to why we name most galaxies just numbers instead of giving them real names actually? It's honestly superior to know which galaxies are which when they're called the "Sombreo" galaxy or the "Pinwheel" galaxy similar as to how nearby stars have named like Centauri, Bernard's Star, Sirius etc

submitted by /u/feelmysoul01
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Why does the soil rise around constructions?

Posted: 20 Jun 2018 04:09 AM PDT

When I build a terrance, I always build it a few inches above ground level. Though no matter how well the foundation is laid, the soil still rises above it in a few years. Why does the soil rise above such contructions?

submitted by /u/Sa-alam_winter
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Does the pressure around a solid have an effet on its vibrations ?

Posted: 20 Jun 2018 03:57 AM PDT

For example, if I were to hit a drum on earth and in space, would there be any difference in the vibrations of the drum ? Of course the sound wouldn't be heard in space because of the vacuum-like environment, but would the object still vibrate in the same way (frequency, amplitude, etc) ?

submitted by /u/SaintRebbel
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Why is the fine structure constant called "fine structure"?

Posted: 19 Jun 2018 09:04 AM PDT

Are all anti-leptons unstable?

Posted: 19 Jun 2018 09:31 AM PDT

I couldn't find any info on the internet.

submitted by /u/emregunduz
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Why can’t we harness the Casimir effect as an energy source?

Posted: 19 Jun 2018 11:12 AM PDT

Sixty Symbols- Casimir Effect and Black Holes From what I understand it would not ever produce too much energy even if harnessed. Let me be clear I am a chemistry undergrad senior with only basic knowledge of physics, so please excuse my naïvety; but would it be possible to use plates with some sort of piezoelectric properties to convert the pressure differential between the inter-plate space and outer-plate space into an electric charge that could be exported to a battery? Or am I misunderstanding the kind of energy differential between those plates? The smart-ass sci-fi buff in me wants this to be a viable theory, but I've read countless times that there's absolutely no way it could work; and i've always found the explanations lacking. Can anyone explain this one to me?

submitted by /u/PizzaDickOrDickPizza
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How do plants move?

Posted: 19 Jun 2018 07:24 AM PDT

Hey r/askscience,

Today my mom put some flowers in a bowl with water and as i watched them closing i started to wonder what actually causes the movements of plants.

With movement i mean for example the opening and closing of the blossom and the sunflower orientating itself towards the sun

How do they do that? What kind of mechanism does that?

submitted by /u/N1biru
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Is there any way to tell foreshocks from the main quake?

Posted: 19 Jun 2018 07:23 AM PDT

Will be travelling to Osaka next week. Is there any way to tell whether an earthquake is a foreshock or the main quake until weeks/months after it happened? What's the probability the 6.1 Osaka quake was the main quake? (If possible to tell) Thanks!

submitted by /u/thepostmanpat
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Why do mosquito bites cause a lump on your skin that itches?

Posted: 19 Jun 2018 11:22 AM PDT

Basically what the title is asking. Is it some kind of allergic reaction that all humans are allergic to?

submitted by /u/Vexonal
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How do weather stations distinguish between the actual temperature and what it feels like outside?

Posted: 19 Jun 2018 01:35 PM PDT

How does room temperature salt added to ice lower its temperature?

Posted: 19 Jun 2018 07:35 AM PDT

I can't understand how ice, which is 0 degrees, can LOSE temperature when room temperature salt is added to it. On a fundamental level it doesn't make sense. There are so many questions.

I've read that the process of melting absorbs energy, but that just makes me think then surely it can't melt. If freezing releases energy and melting absorbs it, does that mean the process interferes with itself? Water freezes, which releases energy, which should melt it again.

If the temperature of the ice drops, where's that energy gone? I mean it has to still be there. If it still has the same energy, why is the temperature less?

Temperature is just particle movement, right? So temperature dropping means the particles are moving more slowly. I guess salt makes the molecules in the ice both detach from each other (melting the ice) AND makes them move more slowly than they were when they were attached. Is that accurate?

I've tried reading explanations but they just say a) salt lowers the melting point so it melts and b) melting absorbs energy so it gets colder. But I still don't feel like I understand.

submitted by /u/Pluvialis
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Why is CO more dangerous to the body than CO2?

Posted: 18 Jun 2018 11:22 PM PDT

Why does one less oxygen ion make it more dangerous to inhale? Carbon monoxide (CO) vs carbon dioxide (CO2)

submitted by /u/Perfectclaw
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Tuesday, June 19, 2018

What types of signals do bees release under distress or after death?

What types of signals do bees release under distress or after death?


What types of signals do bees release under distress or after death?

Posted: 18 Jun 2018 10:01 PM PDT

Today I opened the window to my apartment for about 3 minutes. One bee got in, so I closed the window. The one that got in continuous made buzzing noises and hitting the glass window to get out, it died within 2-3 minutes. One minute later there's about 10 bees slamming into my window trying to get in. Did the trapped bee release some sort of stress signal that I can't observe?

submitted by /u/Haffie13
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What determines how long a rumble of thunder will last?

Posted: 18 Jun 2018 06:32 PM PDT

Could sand be considered a fluid?

Posted: 19 Jun 2018 12:27 AM PDT

Fluid is a state where the body can easily change it's shape with little force applied, it takes a shape of the vessel it is put in. Sand on a macro scale ( so thousands/millions of grains rather then a single few) also has those qualities. As such can it be considered a fluid? Of not can a powdrr with smaller grain size be considered a fluid? Where is the boundary ?

submitted by /u/Lolovitz
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When a rechargable battery is made, does it start out at full charge or no charge?

Posted: 18 Jun 2018 08:09 PM PDT

How do animals know that they should perform certain behaviours, even if never shown by their parents/peers?

Posted: 18 Jun 2018 11:21 PM PDT

For example, my rabbit was kept in a hutch from birth separated from the mother. And as soon as I took her home and allowed her to run in my backyard under supervision, the very first thing she did was start digging a burrow. How did she know to do that? She had never, ever been shown to do that by any other rabbit.

submitted by /u/TheSoulOfTheRose
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Why doesn't a moving massive object within a black hole's event horizon affect the gravitational force of the black hole (including said object) felt by observers outside the event horizon?

Posted: 18 Jun 2018 12:48 PM PDT

Consider Alice, drifting just outside the event horizon, and Bob, located 1 meter away, just inside the event horizon. As Bob starts drifting towards the center of the black hole, the distance between him and Alice increases and one would think that the gravitational force experienced by Alice (caused by Bob and the black hole) should decrease. But obviously this can't be the case since no information can escape the event horizon. But how should one think in order to understand this? Is there even a simple way to describe why this cannot be so? A related question: does the gravitational force of a black hole behave as if all mass contained within the event horizon was located at the center of the black hole?

submitted by /u/marr1977
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What impacts the speed at which lava flows on land other than gravity?

Posted: 18 Jun 2018 10:14 PM PDT

Video example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnrg3cfDfrY

I have never seen anything like this and it seems completely impossible. All video I can find of lava flow is extremely slow when not falling down a steep pitch.

submitted by /u/literallyHlTLER
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Why do some foods go bad, but others go stale?

Posted: 18 Jun 2018 07:21 PM PDT

You can have a bag of chips open for a month and eat out of it. You won't get sick but it may go stale. You can leave a raw potato out for a week and it will be just fine, but the moment you cook it, it spoils when you don't refrigerate it. Why do some foods spoil but others are seemingly fine?

submitted by /u/wtfisAntifa
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Will the Physics change after superconductors?

Posted: 18 Jun 2018 08:59 PM PDT

Super conductors are the conductors wilth "ZERO" resistance. If I was attentive in my 9th grade I remember that every object has a resistance to offer. In this case of what I have researched and understood is that the super conductors will provide a energy which will never end. If explained in simple way if powered once the electrons present will be powered and if there's no resistance it will never loose it's energy (meaning having indefinite energy supply) and will revolutionised our ordinary day. Now if I remember my 8th grade, I had a sentence stating that Energy can't be created nor destroyed. I cannot understand how the super conductors have Zero Resistance and provide indefinite energy. Now the main question is if we get to control the super conductor and use it in daily life, many fundamental laws as the law of conversation of energy, Newton's laws, etc, will get Disturbed. Need your opinions

submitted by /u/RamblingBulgie9090
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Does everything become solid?

Posted: 18 Jun 2018 01:19 PM PDT

If cooling something down really reduces the kinetic energy of the particles, thus changing the state of matter from (plasma), gas to liquid, to solid- shouldn't everything, gasses included, turn to a solid at absolute zero? If so, how would a solid oxygen look like? If not, why so?

submitted by /u/jjcaderr
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Why are fighter jets so much louder than passenger jets?

Posted: 18 Jun 2018 12:23 PM PDT

Is there a favoured hypothesis regarding increased mortality rates and anxiolytics?

Posted: 18 Jun 2018 02:29 PM PDT

According to a number of articles I've read on the NCBI site, anxiolytic and hypnotic drugs have a notable correlation with increased mortality (apparently even after correcting for confounding factors). Is this accepted as a likely causal link, and is there a favoured hypothesis as to what the specific cause might be?

It seems strange/concerning that an entire category of drugs, some of which aren't chemically similar, has this correlation with increased mortality.

submitted by /u/burf
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Does woodwind instruments change pitch when played at different atmospheric pressures?

Posted: 18 Jun 2018 03:52 AM PDT

Woodwind instruments produce pitch by having a standing wave in the air of a tube. Would changing the pressure (or the type of gas) in the tube change the frequency of the standing wave?

submitted by /u/12112122
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Can objects that pass inside of an event horizon go into orbit around the singularity?

Posted: 18 Jun 2018 05:38 PM PDT

Are there any techniques on collecting Anti-matter?

Posted: 18 Jun 2018 10:14 AM PDT

Has there ever been a collection of anti-matter done, or has anti-matter when ever produced/collected been just one or two particles at a time?

submitted by /u/Could_0f
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Monday, June 18, 2018

AskScience AMA Series: I'm Max Welling, a research chair in Machine Learning at University of Amsterdam and VP of Technology at Qualcomm. I've over 200 scientific publications in machine learning, computer vision, statistics and physics. I'm currently researching energy efficient AI. AMA!

AskScience AMA Series: I'm Max Welling, a research chair in Machine Learning at University of Amsterdam and VP of Technology at Qualcomm. I've over 200 scientific publications in machine learning, computer vision, statistics and physics. I'm currently researching energy efficient AI. AMA!


AskScience AMA Series: I'm Max Welling, a research chair in Machine Learning at University of Amsterdam and VP of Technology at Qualcomm. I've over 200 scientific publications in machine learning, computer vision, statistics and physics. I'm currently researching energy efficient AI. AMA!

Posted: 18 Jun 2018 04:00 AM PDT

Prof. Dr. Max Welling is a research chair in Machine Learning at the University of Amsterdam and a VP Technologies at Qualcomm. He has a secondary appointment as a senior fellow at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR). He is co-founder of "Scyfer BV" a university spin-off in deep learning which got acquired by Qualcomm in summer 2017. In the past he held postdoctoral positions at Caltech ('98-'00), UCL ('00-'01) and the U. Toronto ('01-'03). He received his PhD in '98 under supervision of Nobel laureate Prof. G. 't Hooft. Max Welling has served as associate editor in chief of IEEE TPAMI from 2011-2015 (impact factor 4.8). He serves on the board of the NIPS foundation since 2015 (the largest conference in machine learning) and has been program chair and general chair of NIPS in 2013 and 2014 respectively. He was also program chair of AISTATS in 2009 and ECCV in 2016 and general chair of MIDL 2018. He has served on the editorial boards of JMLR and JML and was an associate editor for Neurocomputing, JCGS and TPAMI. He received multiple grants from Google, Facebook, Yahoo, NSF, NIH, NWO and ONR-MURI among which an NSF career grant in 2005. He is recipient of the ECCV Koenderink Prize in 2010. Welling is in the board of the Data Science Research Center in Amsterdam, he directs the Amsterdam Machine Learning Lab (AMLAB), and co-directs the Qualcomm-UvA deep learning lab (QUVA) and the Bosch-UvA Deep Learning lab (DELTA).

He will be with us at 12:30 ET (ET, 17:30 UT) to answer your questions!

submitted by /u/AskScienceModerator
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If Thorium is so abundant and cheap, why is it so hard to get a sample of?

Posted: 17 Jun 2018 09:08 PM PDT

This video from "Periodic Table of Videos" stresses how hard to get Thorium is, but every proponent of Thorium ever has noted that a major benefit of thorium is that it is so abundant and cheap to mine...

So which is it, and if it's both, then how is this inconsistency settled?

Are people just throwing away Thorium because it has no use currently? I would still expect there to be SOMEONE selling nice thorium spheres or cubes for classrooms...

Edit:

I'll clarify that I'm not asking about Thorium reactors or LFTRs or MSRs.... Just why is it so hard for a chemist to get a sample, and when he does why is that sample so tiny?

As far as I understand Thorium emits only alpha particles which are easily stopped by the lightest of shielding and might even be safe to handle with only gloves... I'd assume someone would be selling chunks of it!

submitted by /u/Leav
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Does the sun orbit in a subgalactic disk with other stars like the planetary plane or is the stellar neighborhood amorphously dispersed?

Posted: 17 Jun 2018 09:38 PM PDT

In the 18 years since we’ve been using the ISS, what kind of experiments have been conducted in outer space, what have we discovered, and what are we still trying to find out?

Posted: 17 Jun 2018 02:29 PM PDT

I've flaired this as Astronomy, but I'm not exactly sure if it 100% fits this category. Didn't seem like Planetary Sciences was the right choice, either.

submitted by /u/Funes15
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What is the most efficient mechanism for converting matter to energy?

Posted: 17 Jun 2018 09:35 PM PDT

At the moment the most efficient I know of would be nuclear fusion. Is there anything that's more efficient?

submitted by /u/Darvy0
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How do engineers determine their recommendations for an engine's oil?

Posted: 17 Jun 2018 11:02 PM PDT

Aside from the obvious climate rating, what determines if an engine requires heavy or thin oil? How can Mobil oil be the recommended oil for Porsche engines?

submitted by /u/sodapop43
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Is energy always conserved? Are there exceptions ?

Posted: 18 Jun 2018 04:14 AM PDT

This video suggests that this isn't the case. During red-shift of photon, the energy is simply lost!

Questions:

  1. Why does photons get red-shifted ?(I always thought red-shift was a local phenomenon, between the observer and object, or within the reference frame.)
  2. This link suggests that energy is used by the universe itself while expanding, does that mean entire laws of physics will change? All the constants that define the universe will change?
  3. This paper seems to suggest that it all depends upon the frame of reference, so all the constants and measurements we do is solely dependent upon the frame of reference ? Or is it that some measurements are local and some are universal ?
  4. Is space-time is not flat, and is curved , what are the observable effects ? and what are the effects due to it ?

PS: Physics is clearly not my forte :P

submitted by /u/somu1795
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Why do I get light headed when I stand up and stretch?

Posted: 17 Jun 2018 09:38 PM PDT

How bad is the environmental damage from the fukushima disaster and how much worse will it get?

Posted: 17 Jun 2018 07:12 PM PDT

How does cold denaturation work?

Posted: 18 Jun 2018 03:45 AM PDT

In simplest terms?

submitted by /u/foreheadofsecurity
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If I throw a dice twice and want to know the probability of getting a 6 at least once, why do I have to square the probability of "not getting a 6" first ? What is the logic behind computing the opposite instead ?

Posted: 18 Jun 2018 05:33 AM PDT

The probability is 1 - (5/6)2 whereas the intuitive solution would be 2 x 1/6

What maths phenomenon makes it so that the probability of "not being a 6" the way to have to solution ? Does it have to do with independance of the throws ?

submitted by /u/BlueInt32
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If heat breaks things down, why does cooking your steak make it tougher?

Posted: 17 Jun 2018 09:34 PM PDT

Did Sputnik 5 pass the Karman Line?

Posted: 17 Jun 2018 10:57 PM PDT

Can your ears "pop" from air pressure change from weather fronts?

Posted: 17 Jun 2018 10:01 PM PDT

I work at a lake and today that was a storm that rolled in during my shift. I was outside working while it came and and started to pour. I began to feel that weird thing in my ears like there was pressure. It was raining a lot and I work at a lake (I wasn't swimming in the water) so it could have been water in my ears. I'm just wondering if the pressure change from different types of fronts can affect people.

submitted by /u/NotActuallyReal1
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How do world powers develop new nuclear weapons/warheads/systems if testing has been banned since 1996?

Posted: 17 Jun 2018 01:14 PM PDT

If Mars once had complex multicellular life, would there be any evidence leftover on the surface today?

Posted: 17 Jun 2018 07:39 PM PDT

[Social Sciences] How long did it take for the first homo sapiens to migrate from Africa to the rest of the world?

Posted: 17 Jun 2018 03:49 PM PDT

And did the other humanoid species travel at the same time but just die before getting to modern day Russia?

I guess the main question is how long from Africa to The Americas.

submitted by /u/WarOnErrorism
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What would happen if a hole was drilled through the centre of the Earth and something was dropped into the hole?

Posted: 17 Jun 2018 08:35 PM PDT

If a hole was drilled through the centre of the Earth and an object was dropped in it, would it come out the other end?

How would gravity affect the object as it passed the equator and the gravitational force was flipped?

Would there be a difference in how the object acted if you dropped it from north pole to south pole vs east side of the earth to west?

submitted by /u/Yamikoa
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Can we see the Big Bang?

Posted: 17 Jun 2018 12:49 PM PDT

Given how when we observe objects farther than a light-year away we are technically seeing the past, is it possible to one day build something capable of seeing far enough away that we would see the big-bang or the very early effects of it?

submitted by /u/wax-ladrian
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How do we communicate with far away satellites and probes?

Posted: 17 Jun 2018 03:11 PM PDT

How do alcoholic drinks have sugar in them if yeast consumes sugar in order to make alcohol?

Posted: 17 Jun 2018 06:55 PM PDT

I understand that some alcoholic beverages may start as a juice (wine for example) which is high in sugar but yeast is supposed to consume sugar and as a byproduct make alcohol. Despite this a lot of alcoholic beverages have a lot of sugar in them. Why doesn't the yeast just consume all of the sugar?

submitted by /u/creasingwolf
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Why exactly does Saturn have rings?

Posted: 17 Jun 2018 08:46 AM PDT