What is the average temperature of earth?
Sounds like a stupidly easy question to find out with a quick internet search, but it’s not....
Why are the graphs for the distribution of light from the Sun as a function of (a) frequency and (b) wavelength not exactly reversed? ( www.wtamu.edu )
I thought that the frequency of light was directly inverse to the wavelength by a constant. In other words, I assumed that graphing the frequency of light as a function of wavelength would be a straight inverse line. Because of that, the graphs for the distribution of light from the sun as functions of frequency and wavelength...
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Potential energy created by same poles of magnets
Found this very useful Youtube video about How do Magnets & Magnetic Fields Work? and within it I finally found someone willing to explain greater details about how same poles repel in laymen terms. The link above takes you to the section where the Presenter explains how (as I understand him) potential energy forms between the...
How can you replace your addiction with a more healthy one? And will this lead to a negative spiral? Can you break from an addictive personality?
Is the air in a closed container at 100% relative humidity?
Imagine a sealed container filled with any amount of liquid water at any constant temperature and pressure where water can be liquid. Is the air in the container necessarily at 100% relative humidity?
Why are we so concerned with oxygen production yet we never hear about nitrogen production, though we actually need 78% nitrogen vs 21% oxygen to survive?
Excess oxygen is actually harmful to humans, but all the climate warnings are about losing oxygen, not nitrogen edit: but when we look for habitable planets, our focus is ‘oxygen rich atmosphere’, not ‘nitrogen rich’, and in medical settings, we’re always concerned about low oxygen, not nitrogen....
Are certain typos/grammar errors harder to read than others?
cross-posted from: programming.dev/post/6822168...
Emergent fields (theoretical physics)
Curious non-professional here....
Why do many microwave ovens hum in an interval of a minor 7th?
Something that I’ve noticed across most of the microwave ovens that I’ve used is that when they hum while cooking food, I can pick out 2 distinct tones. One of them is pretty clearly 60 120 hz, the 2nd harmonic of the AC power frequency. The other is consistently a minor 7th above that (which would be somewhere around...
[Mycology] Are yeasts analogous to each other, to the point they can be used in food interchangeably?
Amouranth, the Kick streamer, is allegedly brewing beer with her vaginal yeast. It’s an obvious publicity stunt to squeeze more money from her impressionable and “thirsty” audience....
Does a (phone|laptop) charger plugged in the socket but not connected to the device still consume electricity?
And if so, how much? Less, same or more than if it was actually charging something?...
Does everyone learn the same gravity in school or is it different everywhere?
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...
[Solved] Trees supposedly take 30 years *before* they absorb CO₂. Why?
I often hear science-adjacent folks stating that a tree needs to be 30 years old before it starts absorbing CO₂, usually paired with the statement that it’s therefore pointless to start planting tons of trees now for slowing climate change....
Can cold-blooded animals die of hypothermia?
Zero-point Energy fields - reality Vs best description
According to quantum field theory, the universe can be thought of not as isolated particles but continuous fluctuating fields: matter fields, whose quanta are fermions (i.e., leptons and quarks), and force fields, whose quanta are bosons (e.g., photons and gluons). All these fields have zero-point energy.>...
What part of sunlight causes algae to grow?
I’ve been trying different searches but everything I find just says “sunlight”. Since sunlight consists of multiple parts such as UV, Infrared and the normal visible spectrum, I’m curious which part is actually responsible for photosynthesis to occur? On that note, depending on what part of the light, would it still grow...
Can someone give me a semi-layperson explanation of emission spectra?
There’s supposedly a variety of different spectroscopy methods but what drives the choice of one method over another? If elements drive the colors, how do you parse out individual elements from a compound?...
If GPTs only predict the next word how do they decide between "a" and "an". Wouldn't this have massive effect on their abilities?
Can sufficiently energetic EM waves of a specific frequency affect weaker EM waves of a different frequency?
My initial thought is “no,” since our eyes, being receivers for specific wavelengths of EM radiation, can’t see frequencies like infrared, no matter how bright. Likewise, my cell phone’s WiFi and cell modules don’t conflict with each other (as far as this layperson can tell, anyway)....
Does Higgs exist in nature or is it merely artificially synthesized particle?
In nuclear chemistry elements beyond Plutonium do not occur in nature and are synthesized artificially. Is it a similar case for Higgs boson too?...
Is there an insect that can devour plastic, breaking it down to less harmful components? ( www.youtube.com )
I felt a strange urge to buy me some bugs and let them eat my plastic garbage after watching this video 😂...
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Could, in theory, we merge black holes to prolong the life of the universe?
Seeing as the heat death of the universe occurs once black holes have stopped emitting Hawking radiation, and BH’s life spans are tied to their mass, could a (very, very advanced) civilisation bring two or more together? Assuming nobody’s succumbed to proton decay before then, of course....
If a sun burns hotter with greater mass, does adding a tonne of water make it hotter?
Why are so many galaxies symmetrical?
On their massive scale you’d think that several would have opposing arms different lengths due to the way suns and solar systems end up forming. Most of the imagery I see shows almost all galaxies symmetrical. Just curious.