There have been multiple accounts created with the sole purpose of posting advertisement posts or replies containing unsolicited advertising.

Accounts which solely post advertisements, or persistently post them may be terminated.

askscience

This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

davidgro , in After seeing the photo of a hammerhead skull today: Can someone tell me what evolutionary pressure caused it? What is the advantage of the hammerhead skull shape?

Link to post with photo?

thebestaquaman OP ,

I’m on mobile now, so a bit more effort to link, but it’s on c/mildlyinteresting

davidgro ,

Someone else got it. Thank you

bradx3 ,
ghostface , in if something happened to the black hole at the center of our galaxy, could we know about that problem before it affected us?

I can not answer this question, but I suspect, that actual answer is yes and no. Due to the swpc they relay solar storm info to earth before it hits due to sensors.

Webwoupd need yo send probes out further yo.grab that data first

count_of_monte_carlo ,

Any data is sent at or below the speed of light. Solar storms are charged particles (mostly protons) being ejected from the sun and eventually hitting the earth’s magnetic field, causing disruptions in the field (and potentially cool auroras).

Since these storms are just particles traveling from the sun to the earth, they travel slower than light speed, so our distant sensors can warn us in advance at/near the speed of light. This won’t work if the sun were to instantly disappear or change color though, that information would travel at light speed and the probe signals would arrive at the same time.

skillissuer , in Hi, can someone explain to my small brain what reaction this is or what happened?

you’re seeing elecrochemical corrosion. if you scratch aluminum in such a way that:

  • oxide layer is removed, and
  • finely divided copper is deposited, and
  • oxide layer can’t reform

you’ll see rapid corrosion of aluminum. normally, alumnium doesn’t corrode because of very tight oxide layer. here, oxide layer is removed first by scratching and this also deposits copper in electrical contact with aluminum. then, citrate can bind aluminum removing some of oxide layer, making aluminum more exposed and so more reactive. if you used gallium as heat transfer compound (sp?) then gallium will also disturb oxide layer and make corrosion of aluminum faster. copper elements are in this case actually protected from corrosion (by dissolving aluminum)

ken_cleanairsystems , in Join Our Moderator Team at c/askscience
@ken_cleanairsystems@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Hi there. I’m interested. I’ve also got a science background (life sciences), it’s my job to communicate well, and I’ve been working remotely on a distributed team for years now, so I know how important communication and coordination are. I’d love to help foster an inclusive and informative community, and I can check Lemmy pretty frequently (multiple times a day). I’m okay using Discord. (I’m already on Slack and Telegram basically 24 hours a day, so it’d be great if that were the tool of choice, but Discord is fine, too.)

Candelestine , in Does faster than light travel violate causality? Why/Why not? How?

Explaining college level physics is outside of my pay grade, personally. Fortunately, it’s not for PBS Space Time:

youtu.be/msVuCEs8Ydo

realitista , in Have humans adopted to high / low humidity?

I don’t have the study to back this up, but personally for me it has a lot to do with how heavy I am. When I’ve been thinner I’ve been much more tolerant of humidity and heat.

jeena OP ,
@jeena@jemmy.jeena.net avatar

There might be something to it, it would much my and my fiance too, she is normal weight and I’m quite overweight.

bernieecclestoned , in Have we ever observed unique ecosystems and specific adaptations of wildlife in landfills?

Some plastic eating bacteria was found in a plastic recycling plant in Japan

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aad6359

OpenStars , in At what systemic level do we start to see living beings making decisions rather than purely chemical reactions?
@OpenStars@kbin.social avatar

Quite frankly, all of them, as in literally all of the levels. e.g., viruses are not considered "alive" in the classic sense, but they sense things sometimes & change their behavior accordingly. A single protein can do it too, like in mad cow disease / scrappy (called "prions"). Even a tiny snippet of DNA can make logical circuits akin to computer ones, implementing AND, OR, XOR, NOR, operations etc., plus feed-forward loops (& feed-backwards, and all other sorts).

Possibly even subatomic particles, and maybe even quarks (or strings?) do the same - e.g. the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle where you start to interact with something and then that changes it already so that you cannot measure other aspects of its previous "natural state". Okay that's not so much a "decision" as a "reaction" - but as you are questioning, what really distinguishes the two, REALLY?

Bacteria can sense a molecule (like sugar), literally start growing a tail (no joke!), and then swim towards it. All entirely chemically, and we have the technology to literally just kinda 3-D print all that at the molecular level (it takes an existing flagellum but once that is added to the mix, it can grow just like a crystal, by extension / copying of the old pattern).

Most of what we considered to have made humans "special" in the word turned out to be false - e.g. chimps & gorillas can "talk" (it's hard for their throats to make our kinds of sounds, but given the right apparatus they can get the job done), and think in abstract terms, and do math, and all kinds of things. Of course, humans ARE special - we are the only things on planet earth that if aliens came, could attempt to nuke them in orbit, and we literally light up the night sky! But there's a whole continuum of "dust" that share a lot of properties with us, in various ways. I'm not sure if animals have the same kind of subconscious vs. conscious interplay going on as we do, but if you have a pet and stare at it trying to work through a decision, you KNOW that it's doing the same as us, at a fundamental level. And then each time you go a level deeper, the similarities kinda never end...

Such questions may never even find answers, at least in our lifetimes, but it sure does seem worthwhile to ask anyway... it sharpens us, so keep digging!:-)

kadu , in At what systemic level do we start to see living beings making decisions rather than purely chemical reactions?
@kadu@lemmy.world avatar

Abandon the philosopical concept of an independent thinking mind capable of evaluating something by itself.

“Decisions” and “Thoughts” don’t exist without the environment, as they’re a succession of neuronal activation cascades in response to the current state of all stimulus, the previous connections formed in your brain, and reinforced patterns.

Leave a human being in an empty void and their thoughts will be built by severely boosting sensitivity and then responding to random sensory noise. Sever all sensory connections and the mind shuts down.

myogg , in Why do cats always land on their feet?

SmarterEveryDay explains it better than I ever could.

youtu.be/RtWbpyjJqrU

Appie ,

Here is an AI-generated summary of this video for the people who don’t want to go to YouTube with an added ELI5:

In this video, the host, Destin, explores why cats always land on their feet, a phenomenon known as the ‘cat righting reflex’. He uses a cat named Gigi as an example and employs a high-speed camera to analyze the process.

Destin explains that when a cat falls, the first thing it does is try to figure out which way is up. It does this using the balance organ in its ear or its eyes. Then, the cat divides its body into two separate rotation axes that are tilted from each other. It pulls in its front paws, decreasing its moment of inertia at the front so it can spin quickly. At the same time, it extends its back legs, increasing its moment of inertia at the back, resulting in a smaller twist in the opposite direction. In this way, the cat compensates for the rotation and lands safely on its feet.

Destin emphasizes that cats have very flexible spines and no functioning collarbones, which contributes to their ability to perform this complex movement. He also notes that this phenomenon has baffled scientists and engineers for centuries and is studied in various fields, including physics, robotics, space satellite control, weapons development, and biomedical engineering.

The video ends with Destin playfully chasing Gigi and thanking the viewers for their attention. He encourages viewers to check out other cat videos and subscribe to his channel, Smarter Every Day.

ELI5 (Explain Like I’m 5): Imagine you’re a cat and you’re falling. You quickly figure out which way is up and down. Then, you do a clever trick. You pull your front legs close to your body and push your back legs away. This makes your front body spin fast and your back body spin slow, but in the opposite direction. It’s like when you see ice-skaters spin really fast when they pull their arms in. Once you’ve twisted enough to face downwards, you just stretch out all your legs and get ready to land on your feet. It’s a cool trick that cats can do thanks to their super flexible bodies!

Poiar , in what is your favourite fact?

I don’t know if this counts, considering the community’s name, but here goes:

In the Philippines, there exists:

  • an island
  • in a lake
  • on an island
  • in a lake
  • on an island

and I, for some reason, think this is amazingly interesting :)

Bookmeat , in Are there other human traits like light skin which people developed to adapt to the "new" environment they settled in?

Height, build, differentiation between sexes.

Atin ,

Sexual dimorphism has been in our genes well before the Homo genus has been around.

Bookmeat ,

I read the question as a difference of traits rather than whole new traits, if that makes any sense.

So my suggestion was that the strength of sexual dimorphism varies. That is, some ethnicities may have a very significant difference in appearance between sexes, but in other ethnicities the difference would be lessened.

artichokecustard ,

sure, how about some examples to consider?

bamfic , in If two identical radios are side by side and tuned to the same frequency, will they both pick up the signal at 100%, or will they wrestle for the same radio waves?

IF’s might heterodyne

wargreymon2023 , in Beyond the established symmetries of physics - Charge, Spin, Color, Time, etc. - is there any such thing as symmetry of Information?

To narrow the scope and for ease, I take that information as “measurement” from quantum field.

If the many-world interpretation is real, we have multiverses branching off by different measurements as wave function collapse from the same universe (with all of its information). It seems to me that symmetry of information is broken continuously, as wave functions collapse continuously. This lead me to believe that it is beyond our comprehension to theorize and observe said symmetry.

someguy3 , in Does having fur help or hinder animals like otters/beavers/polar bears when they swim about?

Bit of a guess but I can only think hurts specifically for swimming. The fur is there to insulate when they are on land.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • random
  • [email protected]
  • lifeLocal
  • goranko
  • All magazines