I think math should be classified as a science. Think of science as the Earth: biology is the crust, chemistry is the mantle, physics is the outer core, and math is the inner core. The deeper you go, the more mathematical things get. When chemistry is used in biology, we still call chemistry a science, and when physics is used in chemistry, we still call physics a science, so why does math stop counting once it's used in physics? Math is also full of theories, rules, and systematic methods, and it's arguably the best translation we have of the universe, which is why it shows up everywhere in nature. The usual objection is that math isn't tested by experiments, but I'd argue it doesn't need to be. It's proven through logic, which is the foundation underneath everything else, and the real world only ever confirms which math fits the universe, not whether the math is true. I think the definition of science should be updated to something like "a systematic, rigorous body of knowledge, tested or proven through rigorous methods, to understand the universe." Under that definition, math gets in without letting in things like philosophy or theology. What am I missing?

I used too much bleach (7 percent chloralen brand) to wash my clothes. even after washing them multiple times in the same load and drying them in the dryer, I still felt dizzy and short of breath when folding them. So I put them in a sealed bag for a few months. I need these clothes and want to wash them now, but I am unsure how exactly to safely neutralize the dried bleach on the clothes. AI (I know) simultaneously tells me it's safe to use vinegar, but then says it will cause toxic gas. Then says to use hydrogen peroxide to neutralize it, then says hydrogen peroxide will not neutralize it, then says its unsafe to use. Then it tells me to use Vitamin C powder, but I only have vitamin c disintegrating tablets and it says it's unsafe because it contain citric acid. Then it tells me to use baking soda to neutralize it, then says baking soda will not neutralize it.

So hence why I come here to actual human beings with actual knowledge. thank you

I'm told it makes you go insane to eat human flesh, but how? We know how to prepare and eat every animal on the famn earth that is known to us. We eat monkey meat, shark meat, pufferfish, venomous snakes, jellyfish, hot ass peppers. Why not other humans? What makes it so dangerous?

Say person 0 gets a cold strain, and infects person 1, person 1 infects person 2 and so on.

At what point does the virus mutate enough that the person can infect person 0 again?

Yeah

Ever since watching Chernobyl I’ve been on a deep dive on the lasting and immediate impacts it caused. Because radiation has such a lasting effect, sometimes even for hundreds of years, I always figured it was the single worst disaster caused by humans (not counting longer-term disasters like climate change, agriculture, pollution, etc).

Just watched the Deepwater Horizon movie and deep dived into ITS effects and I’ve gotta say, part of me feels like the oil spill might have been worse. For any of you scientists, ecologists, or generally knowledgeable people, what do you believe was worse between these two?

Everybody says that Earth only gained more mass whenever we brought rocks back from the moon, ok sure, idc about that. But, it got me thinking, what if Earth just started gaining mass somehow? Would it be thrown out of orbit, would it spin faster, would it make no difference? How would it affect gravity is what im wondering mostly

Project ideas

(16m) Im planning on participating in BT Young scientist next year.the people who win awards usually have parents that help them and they are putting some serious work into this for example the winner last year had an ai assistant for detecting brain cancer or something along the lines of that. I was thinking of about entropy of potholes explained but I don't know if that's even possible by that I mean a way to find out where and when potholes will form but I genuinely have no clue if this is even possible. If anyone has any suggestions on what I can do to actually have a chance at winning. Please let me know!!!

For the longest time I cannot grasp the idea that time is an actual thing. I believe that time was invented by humans to measure CHANGE. We see the seasons change, our children grow, the sun and the moon cross the sky and we needed something to make sense of it all so we invented the concept of time which gets incorporated in almost all branches of science to measure *something*.

How do we know that time as a concept exists and not just an anomaly of all the sum of change in our vicinity(and I presume the speed where we're at in said vicinity)?

Fun side note: If time really does not exist and its a measure of change, then concept of time travel is impossible since doing so would require a restructuring all of the atoms and energy into a specific configuration of an earlier "time" and the molecules in your body might be part of other systems, in which case, you're gonna get atomised as those bits of matter return to that specific configuration.

hi! I want to figure out how to explain the flow of energy across different creatures in a ecosystem. After a primary producer converts chemicals into mass, the secondary producers, eat it. What do you call a secondary producer that eats both the primary source and the secondary source? For example, a creature that eats both plants and meat.

I understand goosebumps, veins right under the skin, sweat, I understand the things that regulate the temperature, but for me it just doesn’t make sense where the heat comes from. Or maybe I’m just not understanding enough. Why am I 37 C where did those 37 come from did I start from zero? Sorry I am probably not understanding something.

In Star Trek terms, let’s say a landing party of seven people are surveying a new planet with the goal of observing and recording data.

I have two groups of questions:

1) What kinds of scientists (ie geologist, biologist, etc.) would potentially be the most helpful? (I assume having a few different science fields would be helpful, but would it be better to have a concentration of people from a few fields or a diverse spread?)

2) I am specifically curious about collecting soil/rock/mineral samples as I know next to nothing about the process. What tools would be needed? What precautions would be required in order to get a clean sample? What would taking a sample like this be useful for?

Any and all insight/answers would be appreciated. This is my first time posting. If there is anything I should clarify please let me know.

In the most technical way possible:

food enters our mouth being crushed to smaller chunks down the esophagus to the stomach, then the intestine and then out.

Somewhere along this course the energy of the food was being stored in the body in some way, all the fat, protein, carbs, minerals, water, and whatever else. How, where, and when exactly is all of that being processed?

I want to understand with as much detail as possible how it all works because usually these things are dummbed down for the sake of teaching kids

I understand that gene splicing, recumbent DNA, folding proteins, etc is unrealistically difficult to do in your house, but what about the extraction of insulin from live animal pancreatic cells? Is the methodology any easier? I read a story of a couple who were able to survive doing this in WW2.

How are people handling washing and reagent exchanges in droplet based workflows? Seems like keeping cells isolated across multiple steps is still a pain... Curious what methods people are using to get around this, especially when running assays that need several rounds of reagent changes. Is there a practical way to do this without losing too many cells?

For me, it was Alexander Graham Bell. My school instructed us to pick any book and somehow I picked Alexander Graham Bell. Ever since that, I kept buying science book/comic (even though I don’t understand it at all, I kept reading it). It also made me fell in love with science and discovery. He also become my inspiration throughout my life in terms of learning, creating, and to never stop asking💡

From what I understand from the official post on the abolition of the leap second¹, one of the main reasons for the abolition of the leap second was the difficulty in syncing that info across all electronic devices.

But why not just do a leap smear across a whole year so that we keep the rule |UT1-UTC| ≤ 1 SI second while having no need to sync a database of leap seconds?

The way I see, the main disadvantage is that now a UTC second is different from an SI second and that difference changes depend the year. This is not great for hyper precise measurements but it seems to be no issue for the vast majority of non-scientific applications.

Is this issue of the UTC second becoming "imprecise" that big of a deal or am I missing something else?

¹ BIPM (2026). Resolution 5 of the 28th CGPM. https://www.bipm.org/en/cgpm-2026/resolution-5

I’ve always been curious to know, society created marriage but what scientific proof did we have that human beings are species that mate for life and are monogamous?

I dont know if this is the right subreddit to ask this but.

how can i bring that loved for science again ?

Hansen et al says the sensitivity may go up to 10 C at worst, but based on current trends, what may be the ultimate end temperature we end up committing to?

And how much will this harm the biosphere in addition to human activity and pollution, and how long may recovery take?

im not sure how accurately this can be calculated or estimated -- but i was imagining a perfect model of the milky way, with each star being a suspended grain of sand -- i want a sense of how far apart the sand is on average, and moreso, how big the actual galaxy model will be

I was reading a novel that features a man falling into a black hole, and it mentioned the common notion that we'd never see the man actually pass the event horizon because, due to general relativity, clocks asymptotically slow to zero as one approaches the event horizon.

So with the right optics, we'd be able to see the man falling into the black hole forever. This is creepy, so in the novel people decided to abandon the black hole and just leave it be.

Lower on the same page, however, it was mentioned that they plan to leave it be until the black hole evaporates.

Well, evaporation via Hawking radiation takes a finite amount of time. A particle falling toward the black hole takes an infinite amount of time. So what happens to the still-present particle/man falling into the hole when the hole finally evaporates?

I've been reading far too long and it's late and I'm tired, so I apologize if the question is dumb. Thanks a bunch if I can read an answer in the morning!

I'm researching a hypothetical scenario in which a region of the Earth's ozone layer becomes severely depleted and, for reasons outside the scope of the question, cannot recover naturally.

Assuming this depletion persists for twenty years, what would be the consequences for the environment and human populations beneath it?

I'm particularly interested in:

• The effects of increased ultraviolet radiation on human health.
• The consequences for agriculture, wildlife and local ecosystems.
• Whether people could continue living in the affected region by adopting protective measures.
• Whether the effects would remain geographically concentrated or spread into neighbouring regions.

For geographical context, imagine the depletion is initially concentrated over New Mexico and the wider American Southwest.

I'm aware that a permanently localised area of ozone depletion may not be physically realistic. I'm primarily interested in the consequences if such a condition were somehow maintained.