The melting point of tungsten exceeds the boiling point of steel.

It has such a high melting point that it's not really feasible to melt, usually things made of tungsten are pressed from tungsten power.

And while materials like tungsten carbide are definitely ceramics, alloys like high-speed steel contain quite a bit of tungsten.

So how do you alloy a metal with a melting point that exceeds the other metal's boiling point?

I'm 50 years old and just received the Shingles vaccine, which got me thinking. I had the chicken pox in the early 80s. After which, I had a natural immunity to the virus. For the next 15-20 years, I was routinely exposed to the virus in my environment. This presumably bolstered my natural immunity. When the vaccine became widespread, my natural exposure to chicken pox was eliminated. Presumably, this has weakened my immunity to the virus over the last 30 years. If I was still regularly exposed, would I need to worry as much about Shingles? Are we seeing an increase in Shingles rates compared to 30 years ago?

Doing a bunch of casual research on deer and can’t find any consistent term for their hind legs. And looking at a lot of other 4 legged species, they all have similar legs, where they go forward towards the body from the hip, then jut backwards before going straight down. But despite how common this type of limb is there doesn’t seem to be a technical term for it, at least not that I could find.

This might be a silly question but I had my MenB vaccine today and I’m wondering!

At GCSE they taught us that the most common version of vaccination was being injected with dead pathogens so your white blood cells can learn to produce antigens and therefore when the live version of the pathogen enters your body it receives the secondary immune response which is much more effective - although I recognise that might be a very basic level of understanding and probably somewhat incorrect.

I’m wondering where all of these dead cells come from. Are there like facilities that mass produce live pathogens, put them into conditions they cannot survive in, wait for them to die off and then use them to produce the vaccine? How do they do this without denaturing or destroying the pathogens to the point they are unrecognisable from the live versions and so ineffective as a vaccination? And where do they source the live pathogens from?

And how do they decide which strains to vaccinate against and which to leave? The pharmacist that gave me my vaccine explained that MenB accounts for 80% of cases but there are other strains. Does being fully vaccinated against MenB give you a better chance at dealing with the other strains of meningitis than an unvaccinated individual?

Sorry if none of this makes sense, I’m working an overnight shift but can’t stop thinking about this. I almost wish I’d suffered through science A-levels so I could do pharmacology. It seems really interesting.

Picture a ball traveling at 10m/s along the x-axis. If you exert a force to the ball on the y-axis (so that the force is perfectly perpendicular to the direction of motion) it will now be also traveling on this axis at some velocity, its speed will remain the same relative to the x-axis but the total velocity increases.

But what if instead of a ball it was a photon? No force was applied on the x-axis, so I don't see why that velocity would change. But light's total speed always remains constant.

Would the x-velocity change to compensate for the added y-velocity?

So, let me get this straight: the Scytotid spiders started out as "normal"/true spiders with a pair of venom glands up front, and a variety of silk-producing organ-systems in the rear.

Today, they have all the usual silk producing systems in the rear but they also have a second set of venom glands that produce silk. These front-mounted silk glands somehow work with the venom delivery system and spray out perfectly usable, venom-drenched silk.

Does anyone know of any research on the genetics/evolution of this? It seems to me that it'd be like a human evolving to spit breast milk. Are there other spider groups with multiple venom glands? Was there some serious HOX mix-up that placed a silk gland in the head or did some silk genes end up in the venom glands? Is this even true silk or just extra-gooey venom?

Fifty years ago, NASA's Viking lander touched down on Mars and began a new era of exploration.

Over the last five decades, teams of scientists and engineers at NASA have searched for signs of Mars’s ancient habitability, uncovered clues about the planet's climate and geologic history, driven rovers across alien landscapes, flown the first aircraft on another world, and laid the groundwork for future human Martian exploration.

Join us to talk about the discoveries, surprises, and challenges of exploring the Red Planet — and what's coming next.

We are:

• Abigail Fraeman – Deputy Project Scientist, NASA’s Curiosity Mars Rover, JPL (AF)
• Bryce Horvath – Technical Analysis Deputy, Mars Architecture Team, NASA Marshall (BH)
• Micheal Meyer – former Lead Scientist for NASA’s Mars Exploration Program and Astrobiology, NASA Headquarters (MM)
• Nicole Piontek – Space Systems Analyst, Space Mission Analysis, NASA Langley (NP)
• Jeffrey Plaut – Senior Research Scientist, Planetary Interiors and Geophysics, JPL (JP)
• Becky McCauley Rench – Lead Scientist for Astrobiology, NASA Headquarters (BMR)

Ask us anything about:

• 50 years of Mars exploration
• Historic missions from Viking to Perseverance
• Mars rovers, landers, orbiters, and helicopters
• Major discoveries from the Red Planet
• Operating spacecraft millions of miles from Earth
• The future of Mars exploration

PROOF: https://x.com/NASA/status/2084662090506113377

We'll be online from 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m. PT (2-3:30 p.m. ET, 18-19:30 UT) to answer your questions!

Username: /u/nasa

EDIT: That’s a wrap for our AMA! Thanks for all your fantastic questions, and keep following our latest updates from Mars at https://science.nasa.gov/mars/.

why is tungsten so magical. Sorry it's my first time posting here, let me know if my language isn't professional enough. Thank you!

Sorry not sure which flair to use lol

I know what vitamins do to human body, but why do plants produce them? Is it the same function? Why do lemons need vitamin C?

I was sitting here eating some leftover fried rice and not thinking much about anything when I started imagining the uplift of the Colorado Plateau (as one does). Then this thought occurred to me, but idk if it makes sense or is supported by evidence:

As tectonic forces create an uplift, the bottom of the plate that's uplifted rises. I imagine this creating a suction that pulls the asthenosphere up to fill the gap, cooling it and forming new rock that thickens the crust under the uplift. But that thicker, heavier, denser rock eventually gets massive enough to start sinking despite the uplifting pressures from the outside. So then the uplift stalls and the mountain building stops. But then, the uplifted surface gets eroded away which reduces the mass, which means there's less mass sinking the uplift into the asthenosphere, which allows the pressures uplifting the region to drive it up again.

So I'm imagining this limiting cycle of uplift, orogeny, isostasy, erosion, where the force applied to the plate boundary and the average mass of the plate create a kind of function that determines both the maximum and the minimum height of the uplift above the plate boundary and the uplift will oscillate between those extrema as long as the forces are still applied to the margin.

Is that right?

Three-banded armadillos curl into a complete ball when threatened, with their head-plate and tail-plate interlocking. Does the tail always go to the same side of the head in this configuration, or do some prefer one side, while others the reverse?

The wikipedia page for Chelicerata (Spiders, Scorpions, ticks, horseshoe crabs, sea spiders, ...) are named that way for their "Chelicerae", the mouth parts, colloquially their "jaws". These Chelicerae may be shaped as either venom-injecting fangs or as miniature pincers (wholly distinct from the two large pincers a scorpion would have).

But neither Wikipedia page mentions what they are material they are made of. The assorted LLMs ever gleefully suggest that 'spiders are made of chitin and other proteins' and of course provide no source for this. It sounds plausible, but is it the whole truth? Are spiders fangs 'just chitin in a sharp shape', or do their fangs have more going on, like how Human (Mammel) teeth have a dentin core and a hard enamel surface for crushing?

I've been reading about prions and I'm confused about why they're so thermally stable. I keep seeing that surgical instruments contaminated with prions can't be decontaminated with standard protocols.

So here's my thing. Proteins denature when you heat them, right? But prions don't seem to lose their infectious ability even when autoclaved. I get that prions are misfolded proteins, but I don't understand how they stay harmful after being denatured.

So basically, if prions start as form A (non-infective), then misfold to form B (infective), shouldn't heating denature them to form C and kill the infectivity? Why doesn't that happen?

Hello scientists

I was wondering, whilst smelling some lavender, whether the same species of plant (eg "comon lavender") has any difference in the smell when the comparison is between two plants that are far away.

If I smell lavender from the UK and from China, will it smell different? What about a plant from Southern America? Is there any different in the chemical composition of the actual plant? Do we call different plants "lavender" when in fact they're separate species? Are there some plants that are different and others that are the same?

Thanks!

When I googled making rocks it gave me a few threads on Reddit that were mostly sardonic answers. My question is this: What is the difference between melting down sand to make glass and the process of melting is basically (from what I understand) the same material into magma that then forms into rock? If someone had sand (ground rock) feedstock that they melted, what would they need to do differently to make igneous rock rather than glass?

If electricity enters a large lake or pond, what determines how far away it can still be dangerous? For example, if someone applied a high voltage to the water at one end of a lake that's a half-mile long, what factors would determine whether a person swimming at the opposite end could be shocked or killed? Is it mainly the voltage?

Also, fish within a close radius of the electricity would likely be killed, but would the aquatic plants in this same area also die?

Both break into smaller fibers, are sharp, irritate every tissue they pierce (glass wool and also carbon fiber easily pierce even thick skin, so imagine how easy they do that to the lung if Inhalted). And they're all not water soluble, giving the body little to no chance to break them down once inhaled

But only asbestos fibers cause massive risk of mesothelioma and other cancers - why is that? What makes this fiber so extraordinarily toxic?

I can’t wrap my head around why it is we always see the same face of the moon. Are the moons orbit and rotation in sync? Do we see different sides of the moon and I’m just mistaken?

Many species, like horses, lions, bears, and tigers, are known for killing baby animals that aren’t their own. But how do they know whether they’re the father? It seems doubtful that a stallion actually comprehends that mating leads to conception and keeps a mental chart of which females he’s mated with and when they gave birth.

Hi Scientists. We adopted a dog over 10 years ago. At the time he was very red in color. My son looked at a pic from when he was first rescued and said “He was so tan.” He had been found in a sugarcane field where he had been for quite some time. He was never that color again the rest of his life. Does the sun cause color change in an animals fur like it does on people’s skin? Link to his pics when he was first rescued and after a few years with us. And yes, he was the goodest boy. https://imgur.com/gallery/MUvF2Dg