Ask Science

Greetings, everyone!...

Me and the fiance we always fight about the A/C or dehumidifier. For me coming from central Europe, as soon as the humidity goes over 65% I’m sweaty and hot and can’t get dry, I hate it. She as a Korean seems never to sweat at all and even when the humidity is at 80% she seems to have no problems and thinks running the A/C...

Starting from a molecule on up, to cells and beyond, at what system level is a being actually making a decision rather than reacting to their chemical environment based on purely chemical laws? For example, the molecules in a cells are solely reacting to their environment based on chemical fundamentals. However, a person thinks...

So, I learned in physics class at school in the UK that the value of acceleration due to gravity is a constant called g and that it was 9.81m/s^2. I knew that this value is not a true constant as it is affected by terrain and location. However I didn’t know that it can be so significantly different as to be 9.776 m/s^2 in...

Could we, in theory, use something like CRISPR to give a new baby replacement super-kidneys (or whatever organ it is that makes drinking saltwater be a bad time)? It seems like if we cracked that, we’d be set as a species....

I know it can be a hot topic. I have long wondered what the real isolation timelines were for East Asia, India, Africa, and Europe. I’m most curious about the first two as they seem so divergent. Like a group had to be mobile enough to relocate, but then stay within a region for a (?) long time with little influx....

Think “you wake up in the woods naked,” Dr. Stone-style tech reset. How could humans acquire a 1-gram weight, a centimeter ruler, an HH:MM:SS timekeeping device, etc. starting with natural resources?...

This seems like something that should be true, but I think I remember seeing a Mythbusters episode where they decided it didn't make a difference. That show was more about entertainment than science, so I wondered if there was a more rigorous study done? I've definitely seen splashes of water(?) come out from flushes so that...

Like many, when I heard about Folding@HOME and how I could contribute to the fight against COVID, I put my hardware to work. Now that’s it has been a while, what effect did those projects ultimately have on the outcome? Did it actually help with the creation of vaccines, or was it effectively just a massive waste of energy?

Some people suggest the idea of a multiverse with each universe having a unique set of laws of physics governing it, but not many delve deeper into this. I was wondering if it was even possible to imagine a universe that is different to ours in this regard....

The moon rotates once per revolution around the Earth, but that’s not a coincidence. Somehow the rotation and revolution are connected to each other. Some force is keeping them the same. How exactly does that work?

What is your favourite fact?

Landfills have been around for a long time now, and some of them get quite large. I know seagulls are changing their habits and living off landfills, but are there any other interesting ecosystems forming around them? Maybe some new microorganisms we haven’t seen before?

I want this place to succeed and grow, so let’s get active!