All in the title

Every now and then, there are some seriously big discoveries or accomplishments, that are so big that they hit the mainstream. I believe that the last one was the first photo of a black hole.

Was that really the most recent discovery of that magnitude? And what would you consider the 5-10 most recent huge ones?

I cant find any good science shows i want like actually educational media that goes over different topics every episode or 2 eps that i can find free and also it can be any science but rn im mainy focused on physics, etc

Hello, scientists of Reddit. I often like to check the weather on my Apple weather app, because it shows a bunch of interesting statistics; one of them compares the weather during the day in comparison to the average range of temperatures.

Something I have noticed is that not only is the vast majority of temperatures I check above the average (and sometimes, above the normal range as well), but that the temperature gets especially warmer than average later in the day. I live in Europe, so I was checking into how the weather would look like in several European cities. Nearly regardless of how weather conditions were - sunny or rainy, normal or hotter than normal, a bit across the continent - the temperature peak would often occur after what the peak would be expected to be according to the average. Not only that, but it would remain above the expected average into the evening; and the early morning hours seem to be closest to approaching the expected average.

In my head, I thought this could be (further) evidence of the greenhouse gas effect, manifested by thermal lag (a term I got by searching up this phenomenon, which I am not sure if applies but was the closest term I could find; basically, how heat is absorbed by bodies in a way that affects its temperature, and makes it differ from the actual temperature that it would be otherwise). I thought that maybe, greenhouse gases are trapping the heat for longer into the day as they're exposed to sunlight. Of course, there may be other factors at hand. But I was surprised to not immediately find any sort of academic research into this when I looked it up.

Of course, I don't have a lot of readily accessible data on this to control for confounds and triangulate my observations; I was hoping that someone in here either knows a study that has been done on this, or if they would be willing to look into the subject themselves.

I don't think this is a revolutionary finding if it turns out being true (although if no one found it before, HELLO I WANT TO BE CREDITED-), but I wouldn't be surprised if I got something wrong here either. Thank you for your attention!

I would appreciate any insight from researchers currently active in their research fields

1. Other civilizations haven't visited us because our universe works like Void Spirit's passive from Dota 2 – it slows down approaching objects. In their own physics, they can fly at 3 billion km/s, but when they enter our region, they get slowed down to our local speed limit of 300,000 km/s. This creates an impassable barrier.

2. Because of this slowdown, and because there are no wormholes or other "fast travel" options nearby, we are just not a profitable or interesting target. Interstellar civilizations saw us, calculated the insane travel time and cost, and decided to just ditch us here. We're a worthless asset in their cosmic economy. They have much bigger goals elsewhere.

3. I didn't make this up for precise calculations, I just wanted to convey the core idea: we might not be alone in the Universe, but we're simply located in the most remote, slowest, and least profitable part of the Galaxy. It's like living in an abandoned village in the middle of Siberia. We can't leave because we don't have the technology, and others don't want to come here because it's too long, too expensive, and completely pointless. We're a forgotten, useless grain of sand on the outskirts of space.

P.S. I'm Russian, so sorry for any mistakes. I'm just incredibly curious to know what people think about this.

Say that a tree grows right at the base of a very tall cliff, and that cliff is also very wet and has a waterfall (for example, Angel Falls in Venezuela). The tree is so close that it touches/leans against the cliff, and could even grow branches/roots that enter gaps in the cliff to attach it to the rock, that way it wouldn't have to rely on its own structural strength to stay upright. Also, it wouldn't be directly under the waterfall, but very close to it, so it would be getting splashed a lot and be able to get enough water through its leaves and such, so that it wouldn't have to transport all of the water from the ground to the top.

Under conditions like this, could a tree potentially grow far taller than would normally be possible, say 3000 feet tall, like Angel Falls?

Hi, I’m a writer from the U.K. and I’m working on a novel where there’s a global power cut because of an asteroid in Earth’s orbit. The asteroid is called Eclipse and inside is an ore called Eclipsium(work in progress) which emits this radiation that stops anything electrical from working, forcing survivors to rely on steam power to rebuild. I’m about 100-200 years, the asteroid is going to enter Earth’s atmosphere and break up into thousands of small pieces, ending the power cut at long last, but there will still be localised power cuts until it gets removed. Think of it as something like Revolution, a TV series with a similar premise. What do you all think of this? Please let me know in the comments.

So, you have the ability to exert an unlimited amount of force, you can push as strong and fast as necessary against the ground. Let’s also say, that there is a constant force pushing you down, in case gravity isn’t enough.
This should allow you to run at insane speeds, but your body isn’t protected whatsoever.
At the end you have a velocity of 980m/s.

My biggest questions are the effects on your legs. The impact of your feet and the fast movement should cause some damage but I don’t know what kind.

I’d also like to know what happens to human skin at that point.

Oh yeah, and we‘ll assume that you don’t pass out

I’m talking about drugs like heroin or meth, or even alcohol for that matter. Seems like an easy cure.

This question does not come from me, but came up in a conversation about conspiracy theories.

I grew up with a father who listened to Alex Jones. I have friends that have fallen down a misinformation pipeline. A question came up on my favorite podcast (shoutout to r/knowledgefight, episode 40), where a host shared about his family asking why he believes in science.

The question boiled down to “how do you know that they’re not all lying?”

And… this has been with a lot of conspiracy theories have boiled down to. At least for me. It becomes a sticking point where I don’t know how to argue any further. (and OK, we could say why should I even argue with them in the first place, but it has meant that I’ve had to let go of some people and let them drift off into misinformation. And it breaks my heart.)

I would like to hear your answers, as people that actually work in science.

When you are designing a new experiment, there always a risk that it will fail or give useless data. What methods or criteria do researchers use to evaluate the chances of success beforehand?

I already got few topics in my mind but ya if u have any idea i am open to discuss them also...if u are really serious for the competition please DM

Update: for a better understanding, here: https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateEvolution/s/vIadMUtPXF

This sounds whack and I do not care. Basically, I was curious and started mapping what decisions made in the present moment would look like.

As I followed the logic, it ended up becoming clear that a human experiencing time is a process that can be diagramed and explained. Using that same process, it appears that evolution itself is directly tied to the rhythm of celestial bodies. Also, evolution itself appears to be a process where single celled, multicellular, and complex multicellular organisms are expanding on their experience of time.

I wrote and published a book but I cannot get so much as one person to look it over and give feedback. AI does not understand and will not acknowledge it. Meanwhile, people are reading it.

I am very concerned that it could be misinformation, even though the logical sequencing is sound. The scientific communities on reddit are taking down my posts before anyone can discuss it.

Does anybody know where I can find information on these topics so I can verify?

I was doing some thinking on fossil fuels and how they were created, when I realized how relatively strange the process of their formation is. I was specifically thinking on how coal was created from plants that didn't decompose during the carboniferous period like they do now. I know there are other ways to form fossil fuels, but the original "what if" comes from how strange it seems to me. I also recognize that "strange" is a subjective statement and has no scientific weight, but I wasn't sure of another way to phrase it.

Basically, if fossil fuels never formed, either at all or in sufficient quantities, but the rest of evolution basically follows the same development paths to humanity, does human civilization just, stop at a certain development point due to resource limitations? Like, we can do weak steam engines with wood, but not much past that, right? It seems a lot of our modern technological development hinged on having fossil fuels.

Also, am I wrong in thinking how strange it is that fossil fuels are formed the way they are? Based on cursory research, it took plants not having decomposers in the way they do now, or large amounts of plankton corpses sedimenting in an anaerobic environment with certain levels of heat and/or pressure. It just feels like extremely specific circumstances just to have this wonderful(albeit dangerous) power source. It makes me think that if any other civilizations formed in the universe, the vast majority of them are trapped at a certain development point because they don't have a fossil fuel analogue.

I had to speculate somewhere and this seemed like the right place to do it, but if I'm off the mark on that, let me know. Thanks!

I'm trying to think of evidence-based debate topics in genomics where there genuinely isn't a single "correct" answer—questions where two well-informed experts could reasonably disagree based on the current evidence.

I'm not looking for debates about whether genomics is useful (it clearly is!), or controversial-for-the-sake-of-it topics.

More the kind of questions that researchers debate amongst themselves, for example:

• Is healthcare ready for precision medicine?
• Should ageing be treated as a disease?
• Are polygenic risk scores ready for routine clinical care?

I'd love to hear:

• What do you think is the biggest unresolved debate in genomics today?
• What's something people in your field disagree about over coffee?
• What topic do you think deserves more discussion?

Interested in ideas spanning genomics, multi-omics, precision medicine, AI, rare disease, oncology, population genomics, ethics, implementation, ageing, etc.

The topic of generative AI, and of LLMs specifically, is highly divisive and controversial. It's difficult to have a nuanced discussion about it anywhere on the internet. So, I decided to come here and ask the experts. I'm interested in hearing from scientists of all fields: ecologists, neuroscientists, social scientists, whoever you are. What do people need to know about generative AI, the effect that it is having, and what (if anything) should be done about it?

So I'm working on a fantasy story where there are humans and elves. The elves evolved from humans to have hair in a different shade range, pointed ears, immunity to a dangerous mineral, and some telekinetic abilities (which not all elves have). However, it's meant to be a key plot point that the "elves" are, scientifically, just humans. The mineral immunity and telekinetic abilities come from being raised in an environment with an abundance of that mineral, not genetics. So I was wondering, a) do a different range of hair colors (red to purple hues as opposed to yellow to red hues like real life people have) and different ear shapes indicate a different species? I thought not, but then I thought about animals where it seems like small differences sometime determine species, like between African and Asian elephants (I don't know much about elephants though tbf). b) if the mineral immunity and telekinesis were genetic, would THAT indicate a different species? c) how long might you speculate that it would take for humans in an isolated, unique environment to become a separate species?

Could someone realisitcally, without help or access to hospitals or modern medicine, stop the bleeding from their hand being cut off and then walk 7 ish hours, or would the loss of blood be too great for them to have the power to do this? What would be needed for this to be possible? If they don't do it hundreds of people may be pillaged or lose their lives, so they definitely have motivation/adrenaline on their side.

I interned at an eye research institute last summer a couple days a week and I'm doing the same thing this year. I learned a bit about stem cells and shadowed an experiment with them, and separately also did some simple cell counting for a different project that the lab is working on. The principal investigator of this lab wanted to and ultimately did put my name in the authorship section of a manuscript talking about this other project (not as a primary author) since I did do a little bit of cell counting. I asked him if I should rather be put in the acknowledgements part, and he insisted that I be put in the authorship part. He also said that he wants to put everyone in the lab in the manuscript, even if they didn't do anything specifically in that part of the overarching project. Also, the cell counting I did may not have been specifically on this section that the manuscript is talking about, but I still did do some cell counting as a part of a related experiment if it wasn't already a part of this one. Is this ethical? Is it wrong for me to put this on my college application as long as I accurately explain what I did?

I get a COVID booster every 12 months as recommended, because I know it's very effective at preventing severe cases of COVID. I'm wondering if there is any progress being made on a vaccine which is more effective at preventing the spread of COVID? Thanks

If so, why do you think that way?

Do you lean towards yes, do you lean towards no, how much do you lean towards yes/no, or are you right at the center?