AskScience AMA Series: I'm a disaster researcher and scientist for fiction with irrepressible curiosity about our wonderfully weird universe. AMA! |
- AskScience AMA Series: I'm a disaster researcher and scientist for fiction with irrepressible curiosity about our wonderfully weird universe. AMA!
- Does any species have a symbiosis with viruses?
- What quantity would be conserved if physics were T symmetric?
- How does our body determine it needs X amount of energy and how much it need to pull from fat cells?
- Does 2s orbital shield the 1s to a certain extend?
- To what extent is the severity of the western USA's forest fires caused by Climate Change?
- What’s the relationship between degrees kelvin and the speed of atoms? Is it linear or otherwise? and will a certain speed of an atom correspond to a certain temperature or does the speed differ by element?
- If the spin of a proton is 1/2, why is it said that the combined spins of its three quarks do not add up to the proton's total spin?
- Why do patients who were previously vaccinated against rabies need additional doses upon future exposure?
- What is the physiological manifestation of the q and s wave on an ECG?
- How would an electrically charged particle like an electron interact with a magnetic monopole?
- Why do isomers have different heats of combustion?
- How do secure phones like the ones that governments use work to send secure communications?
- How are new proteins discovered?
| Posted: 15 Sep 2020 04:00 AM PDT Academically, I'm a physicist and geophysicist specializing in disasters-tsunami, earthquakes, asteroid impacts-pretty much all the heart-pounding, doom-riddled science. Practically speaking, I give tasting notes on rocks, tweak party planning to enhance disaster preparedness, and spend way too much time talking about doom. My work involves everything from figuring out landslides on asteroids for Project ESPRESSO to scrawling equations and establishing plausibility for fiction like Stargate and Star Trek. I'm also a science writer, with bylines in Wired, io9, Popular Science, Vox, and more. I share my press passes (and social media) with a bevy of mischievous plush creatures. Science links:
Social media links:
I'll see everyone at 10am PT (1 PM ET, 17 UT), AMA! Username: /u/setiinstitute [link] [comments]  |
| Does any species have a symbiosis with viruses? Posted: 14 Sep 2020 02:53 PM PDT Many species including humans have formed symbiosis with some other lifeform. One example being humans and gut bacteria. Does any species have a symbiosis with viruses? And if so, how does it work? And if not, why are viruses so special in this regard? Thanks in advance! [link] [comments]  |
| What quantity would be conserved if physics were T symmetric? Posted: 15 Sep 2020 05:31 AM PDT I understand that T translation invariance leads to conservation of energy, but presumably this is not the same thing as invariance under T reversal, just as space-translation-invariance is not the same as P symmetry. So, if the laws of physics were invariant under T reversal, what would be the corresponding conserved quantity? [link] [comments]  |
| How does our body determine it needs X amount of energy and how much it need to pull from fat cells? Posted: 15 Sep 2020 01:31 AM PDT So like the title says. How is this determined, for example when will the body know it needs X amount of energy to be pulled from the fatcells into the blood stream? Also bonus questions, what happens if your body where to pull too much energy into the blood stream? [link] [comments]  |
| Does 2s orbital shield the 1s to a certain extend? Posted: 15 Sep 2020 05:05 AM PDT To what I have seen, the wavefunction allows 2s electrons to be closer to the nucleus then 1s. Do I think correctly and it provides some shielding or am I misunderstanding how wavefunction work and the 1s experience the full charge of the nucleus as the effective nuclear charge? [link] [comments]  |
| To what extent is the severity of the western USA's forest fires caused by Climate Change? Posted: 15 Sep 2020 01:58 AM PDT I understand that the initial blazes were caused by severe lightning (also climate change?) but in what way is it worse due to climate change? US politicians who feel the need to get people to "believe in" climate change point to the fires as a symptom of climate change, but to what extent is that accurate, scientifically speaking? (I am not asking for proof of Climate Change itself, given that there appears to be ample evidence for it, and it is the current consensus among experts.) [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 15 Sep 2020 06:07 AM PDT |
| Posted: 15 Sep 2020 07:33 AM PDT I have been trying to teach myself some of the basics of quantum mechanics and am running into the formation of the idea behind spin. I know photons and electrons can have spin, and since quarks are fermions, they carry spin in increments of ħ/2 . Since a proton is made up of three quarks, and the spin of a proton is 1/2, I assumed the three quarks' spins would add up in such a way that two of the quarks spins cancel each other out(1/2-1/2), and the third quark's spin (1/2). It has been discovered, however, that the spin of the quarks contributes very little to the spin of the proton (called the proton spin crisis) and that the proton gets the majority of its spin from somewhere else, but I am confused by this because the spin of a proton has been measured to be 1/2? If the net spin of the three quarks is 1/2, doesn't that completely account for the magnitude of spin in the proton? If quarks have spin 1/2 and a proton has a spin of 1/2, why is it said the quarks only contribute 5-25% of the total spin of the proton, which is equal? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 15 Sep 2020 02:16 AM PDT Hello. I've got a question about vaccination against rabies. Why is it that those who have been vaccinated previously have to receive an additional two doses if they are exposed in the future? I get why someone would probably be better off getting booster doses if they were vaccinated, say, 15 years ago and got exposed again. But why is it that if someone got exposed only, say, a year after being vaccinated, needs to get additional doses? Wouldn't the previous vaccine be enough, as the patient would still have a high level of antibodies? Or is this just a just-in-case protocol, seeing as the virus is so deadly? Is it likely that the patient would still be protected if they received pre-exposure prophylaxis, got exposed a year later, and didn't get booster doses? [link] [comments]  |
| What is the physiological manifestation of the q and s wave on an ECG? Posted: 15 Sep 2020 12:39 AM PDT So the r wave is ventricular repolarization, but what does the previous small deflection and post deflection waves indicate physiologically in the heart? [link] [comments]  |
| How would an electrically charged particle like an electron interact with a magnetic monopole? Posted: 14 Sep 2020 11:07 PM PDT It's fairly widely known that, if matter and antimatter were to come into contact, they would be annihilated by one another and release their mass energy. It's also fairly widely known there is no conclusive evidence proving that magnetic monopoles exist. However, there is a question as to why there is more matter than antimatter in the universe, and because matter and antimatter annihilate one another, eventually the one for which there was a greater amount would eventually become the only type remaining. The inspiration for this question is that perhaps the same sort of thing happened to magnetic monopoles- maybe they were all annihilated by electrically charged particles? So, what would happen to a magnetic monopole if it came into contact with, say, an electron? What would happen if it were nearby? Would the polarity of the monopole play into this? [link] [comments]  |
| Why do isomers have different heats of combustion? Posted: 14 Sep 2020 07:58 PM PDT Particularly butan-1-ol, butan-2-ol and 2-methylpropan-2-ol, with butan-1-ol having the greatest and 2-methylpropan-2-ol having the lowest. [link] [comments]  |
| How do secure phones like the ones that governments use work to send secure communications? Posted: 14 Sep 2020 07:55 AM PDT |
| How are new proteins discovered? Posted: 14 Sep 2020 07:58 AM PDT I am familiar with methods to test for proteins that we already know about, and have sequenced, but how do you find proteins that no one has ever found before? Can it be done with a western blot? Any papers on the subject? [link] [comments]  |
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