Why does melted cheese just taste better?
What if solving interstellar travel isn't about figuring out faster than light propulsion, but how to extend our own lives?
So I was day dreaming and I caught a thought. What if what we understand about physics is actually all there is to understand? What if you objectively cannot move faster than the speed of light because you can’t do the time traveling things necessary. This would mean that the only way to travel amongst the stars would be to...
If you have some cold water evaporating, is it possible to make it evaporate sooner by adding hot water?
How hot would it have to be?
If life never emerged on Earth, would the continents still be more or less the same today? In other words, does life affect the formation and movement of continents significantly?
How do different body parts (specifically shape) emerge from our genes?
I am creating a simulation to evolve simple, multi-cell organisms. (Just for fun!)...
Are there other human traits like light skin which people developed to adapt to the "new" environment they settled in?
I'm referring to the human race evolving in the African continent and then migrating to the rest of the world....
Is the heat produced by fossil and nuclear fuel negligible?
We often talk about the climate impact based on greenhouse gases, but extracting fuel from the ground and using it in exothermal processes of course also releases energy as heat....
How does the impact of disposed rubber on the environment compare to plastics?
I assume it would break into smaller particles similar to the formation of microplastics. I hear about the effects of microplastics all the time. Are the effects of disposed rubber on the environment studied as extensively?
Could non-Newtonian fluids be used in the future as a kind of percussive ear protection?
I feel like we are ways out from seeing anything like it. From what I’ve seen non-Newtonian fluids typically take a decent amount of energy to stop something and sound wouldn’t have much energy compared to something like a bullet....
Where is all the water going from climate change?
Now that late spring/early summer is upon us, there's increasingly more headlines about less rain in various places (recent floods notwithstanding). I'm assuming that's because water is evaporating and not returning to those places, but where is it going?...
What happens when you apply a force to an object at close to the speed of light?
Was thinking about interstellar travel and the ability to provide artificial gravity by using a smooth acceleration and deceleration across the journey, changing from acceleration to deceleration at the halfway mark....
Can humans reach near neutral buoyancy in a gas that is safe to breathe and contains adequate oxygen?
People talk of potential human flight on planets. Somewhere in the recesses of my mind I still wear my inner 5 year old’s caped Superman pajamas, stressing over how many stairs one must jump from to take flight. So is it possible to flappy bird a flying monkey?
Is climate change affecting weather forecasting?
I’m in NorCal and the weather has been all over the place this winter. It is hard to get a reliable forecast, sometimes even for the same day. I was wondering if it has something to do with the weather prediction models that were built before the climate change?
What mechanism is the source for Earth's Nitrogen?
I recall an explanation of the formation of Jovian moons on the Harvard Smithsonian “CfA Colloquium” YT channel that casually mentioned how various elements freeze out of the solar wind forming ices, and this is the mechanism that allows formation of moons with large amounts of water and elements that are not found in larger...
Hard Science Futurism: What types of theoretical prefabricated materials would the first stellar generation ship carry to construct an O'Neil cylinder upon arrival?
Assuming we are talking about an era when Sol has a thriving space industry and the Solar system is broadly colonized. Current materials science supports structures up to 8 kilometers in diameter, and if large scale graphene production is possible, up to 100km in diameter, at least according to Isaac Arthor....
In terms of kWh per kWh, by how much does greenhouse CO2 from running an air-conditioner heat up the rest of the Earth?
It is said that ACs are counterproductive in fight against global warming, in that while they may make the local environment temporarily livable, the greenhouse gases produced while making the electricity needed to operate them heat up the rest of the Earth by much more than the relief from the AC itself. By how much exactly is...
Why is technetium so weird?
Specifically why is it so radioactive for no obvious reason? Why does it not have any known stable isotopes?
What are the long-term effects of childhood dehydration?
Does anyone have a list of long-term effects that may arise from periods of severe dehydration in childhood, particularly how this might affect overall health in adulthood?
Can you get a sunburn from light reflected by a window pane?
Say I am sitting in the shadow, but the sunlight gets reflected by some window pane onto me. Does this contain enough UV light to give me a sunburn?
Is Australia the core of the last supercontinent?
I saw something yesterday talking about how Australia is geologically dead with the lowest tallest mountain range of any continent due to no landmass collisions. Does that make it the last visage of a supercontinent that everything else broke away from?...
Why do trees stems grow new "parts" inside and not outside i.e. why is the oldest part of the stem the innermost "ring" and not the outermost?
Wouldn’t grow something from the inside require a very strong force to “move” the already present one? Instead growing from the last “layer” towards the outside would require a lot less force, but perhaps a lot more matter....
If it were possible for some event to destroy the fabric of spacetime at the speed of light, could we still observe and be safe bc expansion?
Just a thought, if an event happened well beyond the observable universe that caused entire galaxies to be destroyed radiating from a point source event, what would it look like from our perspective and how close could it get on our observable horizon while still being unable to reach us due to expansion of the universe?...
if something happened to the black hole at the center of our galaxy, could we know about that problem before it affected us?
We know that light and even gravitational waves propagate at the speed of light....
Where does pollution go when it rains?
I unfortunately live in a very polluted area, one where air quality apps mark in red and recommend that I never get out of my lair....