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Saturday, September 12, 2020

Register for Keynote Address by Prof. Alex Wellerstein, "The Atomic Bomb and Visions of the New Post War Order"! Live at 1 PM ET, 9/15 as part of the AskHistorians 2020 Digital Conference.

Register for Keynote Address by Prof. Alex Wellerstein, "The Atomic Bomb and Visions of the New Post War Order"! Live at 1 PM ET, 9/15 as part of the AskHistorians 2020 Digital Conference.


Register for Keynote Address by Prof. Alex Wellerstein, "The Atomic Bomb and Visions of the New Post War Order"! Live at 1 PM ET, 9/15 as part of the AskHistorians 2020 Digital Conference.

Posted: 12 Sep 2020 07:45 AM PDT

Announcement and Zoom registration form.

This event is coordinated by our friends at /r/AskHistorians, but given the overlap of the keynote address with the sciences, we thought the readers of /r/AskScience would be interested.

This thread is just an announcement of the event, so comments will be locked here. If you're interested in attending the event (via Zoom), fill out the registration form above.

submitted by /u/AskScienceModerator
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Does other viral respiratory illnesses like common cold or influenza also cause long lasting cardiopulmonary or neurological sequelae like COVID-19 is doing?

Posted: 12 Sep 2020 03:02 AM PDT

Does gravity increase or decrease as you get closer to the core?

Posted: 12 Sep 2020 06:14 AM PDT

Say you were to dig a hole down 75% through the mantle and stood there (assuming you had some special suit for the heat).

Would there be more or less gravitational force? There would be less mass below you but you would be closer to the dense core.

Also, would atmospheric pressure be much greater in the hole?

submitted by /u/GuyFromNowhereUSA
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When did sunburns become common? Are they a result of relatively recent climate changes or are UV Rays something that humans have always had to contend with?

Posted: 11 Sep 2020 06:47 PM PDT

Does hand sanitiser use make pathogens more hand sanitiser resistant, in the same way antibiotic use does?

Posted: 11 Sep 2020 03:04 PM PDT

While absolutely necessary at the moment, seeing hand sanitiser everywhere had got me thinking. We have really overused antibiotics, creating a new problem for ourselves with antibiotic resistant pathogens, is there a chance we are in the process of doing the same with hand sanitisers?

submitted by /u/FergingtonVonAwesome
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What is the hospitalization rate for people who contract coronavirus?

Posted: 11 Sep 2020 10:13 PM PDT

I've found it difficult to track down what seems an important statistic: if you contract the coronavirus, what are your odds (on average, or by age, etc.) of getting so sick you need hospitalization?

submitted by /u/CelloVerp
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When the NASA Probe "Cassini" made to Saturn, it was put in an elliptical orbit that passed between the planet and it's ring over and over again. How does NASA send a probe and have it go such a specific course so precisely?

Posted: 11 Sep 2020 11:59 PM PDT

How do they achieve this sending an object to something so far away?

submitted by /u/CrossonTheGroove
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i know there isn't STRONG evidence for the quark star theory in the first place, but what makes it even considerable?

Posted: 11 Sep 2020 07:43 PM PDT

so from what I (hopefully) understand, what keeps a neutron star from collapsing in on itself is the neutron degeneracy pressure, and once the star absorbs too much mass, its gravitational pull overpowers the neutron degeneracy and it collapses into a black hole.

or, theoretically, it could become a quark star, but I don't understand how that would work? if the star collapsed to the point where the neutrons broke down into quarks, how would it not just continue collapsing? I feel like the way that I'm trying to picture that process is all wrong lol

also, I thought quarks were so small that they essentially take up zero space? I hope this doesn't sound silly, but how could quarks alone even make up something of substance if they don't take up space?

also im sorry in advance!! I'm a junior in high-school so my knowledge on advanced physics is just based off doing research on the internet, i wouldn't be surprised if im not understanding something correctly :p

submitted by /u/ukuleo
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Is it possible to know long after-the-fact if a person ever had CoViD-19, even if they were largely asymptomatic and never got tested while they were an active case?

Posted: 11 Sep 2020 08:19 PM PDT

Are there any lingering indications that can be detected, even if they were a very mild case?

submitted by /u/LinkUnseen
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Is air brought in through the nose cleaner than air brought in through the mouth?

Posted: 11 Sep 2020 07:33 PM PDT

Anthropologists, what did our ancestors (both recent and modern) use as diapers for their children?

Posted: 11 Sep 2020 06:36 PM PDT

Question about CO2 absorbing IR light?

Posted: 11 Sep 2020 08:55 AM PDT

I was trying to understand the greenhouse effect more, and know that the Infrared light gets absorbed by greenhouse gases due to their vibration modes corresponding to frequencies of light that fall in the IR range. My question is, are these vibrations the result of the electrons in the molecular bonds becoming excited, and the manifestation of that excitement appears as the atoms in the molecule vibrating about? Or is it the atoms themselves absorbing the photons, causing them to have more kinetic energy, and those vibrate around a center of mass? Furthermore, if a molecule of CO2 absorbs an IR photon and it's vibrational modes begin moving faster, shouldn't the molecule be able to aborb photons of higher and higher frequencies of light that correspond to faster and faster vibrational modes, until the molecule eventually gets ripped apart? I know this does not really happen, but do not understand why. Sorry if this was really poorly worded.

submitted by /u/Watch45
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How is it possible to filter out all the waste, drugs, and bodily fluids that end up being flushed down the toilet, and come out with such clean potable water?

Posted: 11 Sep 2020 10:10 AM PDT

There's so many things that people throw down the drain and toilet like food, human waste, drugs; I guess the simple answer is filters, but how strong of filters or counter chemicals do we need to have in order to squeeze out clean water?

submitted by /u/Buddhist_Punk1
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Is the Higgs Boson the only scalar boson that exists, or is there a possibility of another?

Posted: 11 Sep 2020 10:00 AM PDT

How is liquid breathing advantageous over air breathing for divers?

Posted: 11 Sep 2020 04:56 PM PDT

Does it have something to do with saturation of nitrogen or helium in the tissues? How does it prevent the adverse effects of gaseous toxicity experienced by saturation divers?

submitted by /u/Eunectes7
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Will the American West lose its boreal forests?

Posted: 11 Sep 2020 10:52 AM PDT

How exactly does a flu vaccine work?

Posted: 11 Sep 2020 03:56 PM PDT

I know it has an inactivated form of the virus and that causes an immune response, however, I want to know the specifics of exactly how it works. From creation to immunity.

Don't hold back, I am a Biology major so I'd like to think I can understand.

submitted by /u/chunkydrizzle
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Why do humans seem to have an affinity for symmetry in almost everything, and do we share this affinity with other animals?

Posted: 11 Sep 2020 06:51 AM PDT

Was the spanish flu worse in the winter than all other seasons?

Posted: 11 Sep 2020 03:05 PM PDT

Friday, September 11, 2020

How would the Chernobyl disaster have appeared to observers at a range of galactic and intergalactic distances?

How would the Chernobyl disaster have appeared to observers at a range of galactic and intergalactic distances?


How would the Chernobyl disaster have appeared to observers at a range of galactic and intergalactic distances?

Posted: 10 Sep 2020 11:05 PM PDT

I'm assuming it would not have been detectable at intergalactic, or even medial galactic distances. But if we had had a radio telescope pointed at a similar event on a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri, could we conceivably have caught it? What we we have observed?

submitted by /u/the_turn
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Did the 1918 pandemic have asymptomatic carriers as the covid 19 pandemic does?

Posted: 11 Sep 2020 07:29 AM PDT

What do newly-hatched spiderlings or young scorpions eat while they live on their mother's back?

Posted: 10 Sep 2020 11:05 PM PDT

I know that not all arachnids do this, but for the species that do, as in this image, what do their young eat? They don't make milk, obviously; is there some equivalent arthropod secretion that the young feed upon? Do they eat a share of the prey their mothers capture? Do they scatter and hunt for themselves, only returning to the mother for protection?

submitted by /u/straycanoe
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If a superconductor has 0 resistance, will a current not cause the superconductor to heat up?

Posted: 10 Sep 2020 01:01 PM PDT

I'm thinking about how if you have a very high current going through a small wire, the wire heats up and starts to glow orange, but if a superconductor has no resistance, then none of the energy is lost, so no heat would be produced, right? Or am I missing something?

submitted by /u/Catsaclysm
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How does the human body pick the right antibody to fight a virus?

Posted: 10 Sep 2020 10:19 PM PDT

I was reading about how the immune system and vaccines work to fight viruses that enter the body. When the body isn't vaccinated to a particular virus, you get sick because the T cells are searching for the correct antibody to lock on to the virus's proteins. A vaccine triggers the immune system to start producing those antibodies without exposing the body to the real sickness.

My question is- when the body picks the antibody to generate from the "menu" of a trillion (?) unique antibodies, how does it know which antibody to pick? What if the body does not have an existing mapping of the antibody that combats the virus?

submitted by /u/impurekitkat
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How are we able to have microscopes that use UV light without damaging the specimen?

Posted: 11 Sep 2020 07:33 AM PDT

Why does the immobilization of enzymes reduce the inhibitory effects that heavy metals have on them (such as catalase)?

Posted: 11 Sep 2020 07:05 AM PDT

How is palladium and other platinum group metals mined?

Posted: 11 Sep 2020 06:58 AM PDT

Hi all,

It crossed my attention on how rare the PGMs are and I was curious how they are mined. From what I understand, they are usually a by product of nickel-cooper mines but looking online references are scarce. How does that process work and how is the PGMs separated from the other metals? Also what concentration in the ore does the PGMs need to have for it to be economically viable? I can't imagine there are huge veins of the stuff that are easy to extract.

Thanks in advance!

submitted by /u/GlassGodz
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Five million years ago, the Nullarbor plains in Western Australia was a forest, but was a desert before that, just as it is now. What event(s) caused this relatively spontaneous formation of a new ecosystem and relatively quick return back to a desert?

Posted: 10 Sep 2020 06:46 AM PDT

Wondering what could possibly cause a stable desert climate to 'transiently' gain enough water to grow trees for a couple ages just to lose it. Also, was there any other region that became a desert concomitantly during this time?

submitted by /u/Mytiesinmymaitai
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Why do our eyes handle HDR situations fine (ex. looking own a hall at a bright window) but a camera needs a special mode?

Posted: 10 Sep 2020 08:43 AM PDT

how can one find linear refractive index, and nonlinear refractive index of amorphous or crystalline materials separately using various refractive index models?

Posted: 11 Sep 2020 12:53 AM PDT

n can be written as, n= n0 + n2(I), where n0 is the linear refractive index and n2 is the nonlinear refractive index, I is the intensity of light. There are different models for finding refractive index: Cauchy's formula, Sellmeier Formula, Lorentz formula, Herzberger Formula, Herve Vandamme Formula, Drude Model, Bruggeman Model, Bragg and Pippard model, Bottcher Formula....so how can one find linear refractive index, and nonlinear refractive index separately using these models?

submitted by /u/AvengerC3PO
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How many synthetic elements can be made? What’s the process that enables us to make them in the first place?

Posted: 10 Sep 2020 10:59 PM PDT

How do Ferris wheels like the Singapore Flyer keep the capsule upright throughout the entire ride?

Posted: 10 Sep 2020 09:01 PM PDT

Why does there need to be a control group when testing a vaccine in phase 3?

Posted: 10 Sep 2020 08:57 PM PDT

I'm not trying to be contentious or argumentative here, but I asked this same question in a similar thread and didn't get a very satisfactory answer.

I work in statistics, and am genuinely curious here if someone who has does both a medical and a statistics background can comment?

Without making you kind people click that link, I am wondering why there needs to be a control group when studying whether a vaccine works or not, and if so why it needs to be 50% and not something like 10%.

From my own experience in statistics neither of these things really seem to make a lot of sense to me.

I fully understand why a control group is necessary when testing a treatment, but there you have a population that is sick, and you are testing ways to treat their sickness. Here you have a population of people that aren't sick, and are testing to see if a drug will prevent them from getting sick.

It would almost seem more statistically relevant to me to not even have a control group and then look to see who in that population ended up getting sick.

Last point which was brought up in the previous thread is that I can grasp the idea of getting some good data when comparing whether or not someone gets sick or experiences mild symptoms when injected with the vaccine, or a placebo, but isn't that completely irrelevant by phase 3? Maybe this is where I'm going off the reservation, but if that is the only reason for the control group then wouldn't 10% be sufficient, or couldn't you compare the % of people who do experience mild symptoms with other types of drugs to see if it is within an acceptable variance?

I'm part of a COVID trial (Pfizer) and was chatting with one of the people involved, and she reckoned it was more a product of archaic FDA regulations and practices that might not be statistically necessary, but similarly to the other person I was chatting with in the above thread went on to say that she was not particularly familiar with statistics... so here I am. :)

Thank you.

submitted by /u/stiffupperleg
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Did the impact that created the moon have a substantial effect on Earth's orbit?

Posted: 10 Sep 2020 02:21 PM PDT

I've read that the existence of the moon itself stabilizes Earth's orbit and makes the planet more hospitable to life, but I was wondering more about the impact itself. Do we know if there was a meaningful change to Earth's orbit after the collision?

submitted by /u/Words_are_Windy
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Can musicians simultaneously draw two different images with each hand (e.g. a circle with their left, a square with their right) better than non-musicians?

Posted: 10 Sep 2020 06:48 AM PDT

In a lecture we watched a video about a split-brain patient, and it showed that they were perfectly able to simultaneously draw a circle with one hand, and a square with the other, without looking at them. When the show's host try to do the same, they were unable to do it.

The question is then whether musicians, especially people who played instruments like the harp or the piano, would perform better at this task, since they have had extensive training in performing different movements with their hands simultaneously.

submitted by /u/FiveFootSun
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How does the "I am not a robot" checkbox know I'm not a robot?

Posted: 10 Sep 2020 03:24 PM PDT

What exactly happens when you put Salt on Slugs?

Posted: 10 Sep 2020 07:06 PM PDT

Im sorry for the stupid question but how exactly does salt kill the slugs? They shrivel up after and dissolve and how does that work exactly? Are slugs composed mainly of water? Are their skins very permeable since exposure to salt causes them to shrivel up otherwise if their skin weren't that thin, the water from their insides wouldn't get sucked out.

Sorry for the stupid question, my girlfriend and I have been debating about this for 3 days now.

submitted by /u/grassfedlemon
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You know that bit in Finding Nemo where Nemo swims out to touch the boat, leaving the reef and swimming over that big drop? If a person were to swim from the reef over such a drop would they be able to feel a difference, for example is it harder to swim over?

Posted: 10 Sep 2020 05:27 AM PDT

Before bees existed, how did plants pollinate?

Posted: 09 Sep 2020 10:25 PM PDT

Thursday, September 10, 2020

If fat is hydrophobic and milk is 87% water, how is there fat in milk, as in how it doesn't glob up and float to the top of the cup/ container?

If fat is hydrophobic and milk is 87% water, how is there fat in milk, as in how it doesn't glob up and float to the top of the cup/ container?


If fat is hydrophobic and milk is 87% water, how is there fat in milk, as in how it doesn't glob up and float to the top of the cup/ container?

Posted: 09 Sep 2020 11:56 AM PDT

Why are rain clouds dark?

Posted: 10 Sep 2020 05:42 AM PDT

Before it rains, dark clouds roll in. Why are they dark?

submitted by /u/fedude
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What is the difference between Fluarix and Flulaval vaccines?

Posted: 10 Sep 2020 06:05 AM PDT

Looking quickly at them, both are made by GSK and seem to be the same quad formula. What are the differences and/or anyone know why they are branded differently? Thanks!

submitted by /u/ds1749320
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How does a landlocked state develop CAT 3 winds and why is there no name for this type of storm?

Posted: 09 Sep 2020 07:16 AM PDT

Utah just had winds over 100 mph the last few days and it's never happened here previously.

submitted by /u/pxelove
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Why does the Moon's gravity cause tides on earth but the Sun's gravity doesn't?

Posted: 10 Sep 2020 05:36 AM PDT

Could the Earth and Moon be considered a binary planetary system?

Posted: 09 Sep 2020 04:49 PM PDT

I've done a little bit of research, and I've learned that if a systems barycenter is outside a planet, its sattelite gets promoted to planetary status. Pluto is smaller than the Moon, and it's theres a dwarf planet. There has been talk that Ceres can be a planet. So if the moon can't be a planet, it coud atleast be a dwarf planet, right?

submitted by /u/Haydenny600
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Are asymptomatic carriers completely immune to that disease? And can they show symptoms if certain conditions are met in the long run?

Posted: 09 Sep 2020 11:40 AM PDT

If CO2 can be artificially sequestered, why is global warming still such an important issue?

Posted: 09 Sep 2020 09:23 PM PDT

Do western states participate in controlled/prescribed burns?

Posted: 09 Sep 2020 06:44 AM PDT

Howdy folks,

I live in North Florida but always see news about huge wildfires in California, Arizona, Colorado, etc. every couple years. My impression is that wildfires are super uncommon in my home state, and controlled burns are common in large tracts of land like wildlife management areas. I understand the importance of controlled burns on Florida ecology, and that controlled burns clear out any vegetation debris that has built up over a couple years, so if there was a wildfire it wouldn't spread as violently. I'm wondering, does California (or other western states where wildfires are frequent) conduct controlled burns, and if they do, why can fires there spread to huge areas?

submitted by /u/luckysprout
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Will we eventually run out of radioactive materials/Isotopes?

Posted: 09 Sep 2020 01:37 PM PDT

Since all the radioactive substances will eventually become stable, even if it takes billions and billions of years, would the universe theoretically run out at some point in time?

submitted by /u/TheTsar88
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How does blood genetics work?

Posted: 09 Sep 2020 09:46 PM PDT

If a piecewise function is continuous and smooth, is there an analytical function that equals the piecewise function everywhere?

Posted: 09 Sep 2020 06:45 AM PDT

Example: Here is a simple piecewise function that is continuous and smooth where the pieces meet. Overlaid in dotted blue is a logistic function that approximates the piecewise function. Is there an analytical function that exactly equals the piecewise function everywhere? Closed analytical functions are preferable to the limits of infinite series.

https://www.desmos.com/calculator/twsxcuwxnl

submitted by /u/ulallume
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The gravity on ISS is much stronger then mars gravity correct?

Posted: 09 Sep 2020 09:50 PM PDT

I keep reading posts on Reddit, armchair scientists saying how we've only tested living in 0g with 1000 word essays filled with jargon on why they're right. But, they seem to have forgotten the effect earth has on the ISS? I'm trying to find as much information as I can on workarounds to living on mars due to gravity, it's hard to find a lot for me seeing as I don't know where to look. Am I correct about the ISS having relatively a lot more gravity compared to mars? That the effects on organs would be maybe much worse on mars? You have astronauts damaging their vision after a year only 250 miles away from Earth. I do not see how mars is at all feasible.

submitted by /u/extremeskater619
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Would Wildfires like we see in California exist without humans starting them?

Posted: 09 Sep 2020 02:54 PM PDT

The wildfires in California get worse every year due to climate change, that I understand.

Every news story about the fires I see explains that they were started by a careless human doing something they shouldn't have during the dry season.

Without humans doing careless things with fires, would there still be this many, widespread fires?

submitted by /u/muhaccount
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