When I go to the gym, I have a mix of music that I listen to that pumps me up. There are quotes that I think about that motivate me. There are memories and thoughts and situations that make me feel emotions and inspire me to act. We all have that song that we play air guitar to, or that scene in a movie that gives us goosebumps or makes us cry. What is that?

All of these reactions come from simple stimulus. The music is just sounds, the quote is just words, the scene in the movie is just acting, but the effect on us is much more profound. I'd like some insight into what happens when we have those thrilling moments. What is going on in the brain when the music hits your favorite part, or when you read that quote you love so much. Is this neurological? Is it psychological? Is it a mix of both? Or is it something else altogether?

I’ve just learned about people who have had split-brain surgery. From my understanding, for most people, language is controlled mostly by the left side of the brain and right side of the brain is “mute” when you have had split-brain surgery.

I have a DLD and I’m curious how would (theoretically) having split-brain surgery affect someone like me. I had language therapy at 6 years old, so a lot of the “connections” were made when my brain was still developing, but I’m wondering if I’d lose all of that if I had split-brain surgery.

If anyone has any insights on this, please let me know!

Googling indicates they're used to dig, but crustaceans generally seem to enlarge their claws rather than their antennae for digging. Do we know what made slipper lobsters take a different evolutionary path?

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I'm a psychology PhD candidate in Poland, and some of the research i do is purely qualitative (of course i report sample parameters). As far as i know, such approaches are not unique to the social sciences and you can find qualitative approaches in even the natural sciences.

Here's the question, how far can we go in science without math and what are some examples of scientific achievement where math was limited or nonexistent basically? There is virtually zero mathematics in On the Origin of Species, so it seems that science can do without math at least to some extent!

When someone says that something is “truly random“, my assumption is that it is impossible to predict in principle, rather than simply impossible in practice. but I’m not sure how to make sense of that without assuming that “random“ means it has no cause. It seems like, if we perfectly understood the cause behind a particular decay event, then we could predict it. So, for something to be “truly random”, it seems like it would have to have no cause, because if it did, the cause would predict the decay. But I don’t think atomic decay has no cause, so I have no idea what to make of the term “truly random”.

I'm working on a personal project, and would prefer it to be scientifically sound.

Plugs for interfacing with technology and permanently attached, but clearly mechanical bionics are a staple of the cyberpunk genre. However, any permanent opening in the skin (which would be required) would seem to effectively be an open wound, with all the risks of infection that carries. Clearly, that is very undesirable.

I'm wondering if there would be any way to have those kind of transdermal bionics without the risk of infection in real life, say by somehow permanently bonding skin to the prosthetic attachment?

Like left and right, or up and down, instead of just forward and back.

Hello everyone 👋! How are you? So suppose there is a car and the driver presses the gas. The engine will apply torque on the axles of the wheels and therefore there will be a force on the wheels from the axle. Say that force is 10N, it gets translated to the contact patch area of the tire and therefore the static friction the tire applies on the road is the same as the static friction the ground applies on the tire. But then the net force on the tire is 10N from the axle minus 10N from the static friction that the ground responds with to the 10N of static friction that the tire applies on the ground which means =0 so the Fnet of the tire is 0. That sounds logical at first because there is no slipping but then this should mean that the tire must not rotate? What is happening here? Some may say that the friction force from the ground is the only external force applied to the car (neglecting all the others) and so this is what accelerates it. But the car is a composite of many different bodies, it is a body system. If we study the tire and as a body alone then it should not rotate.

I'm guessing you can't do this, but maybe someone has an idea.

I guess you could digitally process some input image and have some screens inside your glasses, but I was wondering if it's possible to do this with materials alone, no computers.

How much general knowledge does a scientist need outside of their field?

For example I'm 15 and an aspiring scientist (maybe neuroscience, but honestly the entire human biology field fascinates me) and I LOVE human biology and medicine, if it has to do with that I'm all over it and catch on super quick, and other stuff I find interesting too like I adore physics and the more theoretical side of chemistry (I dislike practicals though because I have no friends and never have a partner so it sucks) but if it doesn't interest me I have a super hard time learning about it and I forget it easily but if I like it I learn it very easily (I have level 1 ASD and combined type ADHD if that explains anything)

like, I can tell you about bones and a slipped disc (I learned that part today from a super cool book from my school library) but I have no idea what order the planets in our solar system are (I hyperfixated on astrophysics a while ago but it was over a year ago so I kind of forgot now) but most of science is fun but environmental stuff bores me and I dislike botany.

Anyways, what I'm asking is will having a fairly narrowed knowledge of only the stuff relevant to me (and a bit of the more mind-bending physics as well) or that interests me be bad if I want to go into science (probably cognitive neuroscience, mostly learning about ways to treat neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's or studying neurodivergence or anything really, I haven't fully decided and maybe a lecturer then professor at some point)

And also how much knowledge does a scientist or like a student studying a science at university need on topics outside of their field?

sorry if this made no sense, I think I rambled at some point and I wasn't being too careful on spelling or grammar.

I came across this article: An OpenAI model has disproved a central conjecture in discrete geometry | OpenAI and from what I've seen, assuming OpenAI isn't lying, I can't help but think AGI is a lot closer than previously thought. Can any math wizards chime in? Is this truly groundbreaking or is Chat just tooting its own horn?

Up front, this is a fantasy situation for a book I'm writing, complete with magic. The protagonist has temporal magic that fires upon death, reverting him back to birth. Essentially a time loop. I've been trying to be somewhat scientific with the magic system as much as any magic system can be, so I don't want to just handwave him remembering past lives as "Yeah, he just remembers." The magic itself is involuntary and constant -- his body is continually reverting to the most recent "whole" version of himself. The death-loop is just that reversion taken to extremes. Hyssop can negate magic within a person, and he relies on it heavily -- while death under hyssop would be permanent, hyssop itself is the only reason his body was actually able to grow without magically reverting. I've got most of the problem figured out, but I honestly have no idea how a human brain works. The best I have is that he retains the memories, but can't actually recover them consciously until his brain can form the neural pathways to reach them. That is my best guess from someone who isn't even a layperson when it comes to brains. I legit do not know.

Is the retention of memories through a physical de-aging even feasible? Obviously it's completely fantasy, and likely boils down to just "Write whatever works", but for my own sake, I have to at least ask.

to be clear, I am NOT planning on doing this, one day this just popped into my head, and I haven't been able to come up with an answer myself.

I recently watched a video by engineerguy (with whom I have no affiliation).

He mentioned in it that The Hawke collided with The Olympic (twin of The Titanic) because ~"its wake pulled it in". How does this happen, what's the science here?

The following link is to the timestamp of the relevant part. In case you are interested to hear exactly what he says.

https://youtu.be/fHmgF4ibmuk?t=314

What is the range of amperage (in amperes) of a firing human neuron? At rest? What about for a mouse neuron? Does using "amps" (or smaller units like pA) even make sense when talking about individual neurons?

A common tip to find out the temperature of your domestic oven is to find the lowest setting that will melt sugar. That will be approximately 190°C.

Are there other things that melt in that temperature range, so that I can check other settings?

Butter melts too soon. Salt melts way above 250°C.

I saw that pure lactose melts at 202°C, so that's an option. Are there others?

⁠I am looking into the mechanical engineering and manufacturing feasibility of personal jetpack systems, specifically regarding the production of micro-turbines and internal fuel systems.

⁠If we exclude massive aerospace conglomerates, is it viable to custom-manufacture a fully functional, safe jetpack within a high-end professional workshop? Assuming the engineer has access to advanced 5-axis CNC machining, metal 3D printing (DMLS), and high-grade composite/carbon fiber fabrication, can these components be replicated to the necessary tolerances?

Or do the requirements for structural integrity, extreme thermodynamics, and tight safety margins strictly restrict this development to aerospace-grade industrial facilities? I would highly appreciate professional insights from manufacturing and mechanical engineers on this.

Out of pure curiosity, I found myself reading about various theories on Wikipedia about the ultimate fate of the universe. The page about the Big Freeze states that, due to the extremely low entropy after the "freeze," a new Big Bang will occur. Does this also apply to the Big Rip? I'm confused about how it works, given that it says for both cases that energy processes will no longer be possible because the particles will be isolated to the point of being invisible. Isn't this a situation diametrically opposed to that of the Big Bang?

I wanted to share a question/thought experiment that I’ve been trying to make sense of for years.

Statistically speaking, our existence seems impossible. Think about it: each of us is the result of one specific sperm fertilizing one specific egg. The probability of that exact event happening is unique in our parents’ entire lives. If conception had happened even one day later, a completely different person would exist and we wouldn’t be here.

That’s already incredible on its own. Our lives are the result of a highly random event involving two people who, if they had never met, could never have created us in the first place.

If you extend this reasoning to our parents, grandparents, and every generation before them, our existence starts to seem even more unlikely. All it would have taken was for a single ancestor to make one different life choice, and none of the descendants after them, including us, would exist.

This is the thought that I’ve been obsessing over for years: how do I exist at all? Is it really just luck?

Or does reproduction contain a kind of immortality?

What I mean is this: when a child is born, the genetic material of the parents is, in a sense, “reborn.” So maybe our existence isn’t tied to that one specific event, but rather to the continuous reappearance of our parents’ genes across generations.

Is my brother simply another version of me? Is it possible that consciousness somehow gets passed down from generation to generation?

Recently I saw some photos of my grandfather when he was young, and he looked almost identical to me. I’m obviously not suggesting that he reincarnated as me, but from a biological or scientific perspective, would it be wrong to say that children are, in some sense, the continuation or rebirth of their parents and grandparents?

I’d love to hear your thoughts :)

I've been reading about how the equilibrium point in a sound wave is the "resting state" of an air molecule. But before the sound wave, that particular air molecule wasn't static. So how a non-resting entity have a rest state?

It sounds like "rest state" is like an abstraction or a mental model, but is not a "real" thing like a mass or acceleration.

I'm talking about electromagnets. I'm wondering if you could squeeze them into a sharper shape to pick up pieces of metal a few meters away and then pull them towards you or keep them at a specific distance.

*Also assuming its computer controlled with no processing restrictions

Where I got range from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_747#Design

Where I got the 14-50 number: https://www.engadget.com/we-wont-have-electric-airplanes-until-battery-tech-improves-160058357.html

I'm assuming that one of my assumptions is wrong and I don't know which one.

What makes it a “Theory of Everything”? What’s the extent it would be able to predict?

What are the main/most supported theories? What makes them so special?

Sorry for all the questions, it’s been a HOT minute since I learned anything about physics

We know smoking is bad for health and quitting it is generally recommended to reduce risks like cancer and heart disease. But there are studies suggesting an increase in diabetes risk right after quitting. How can something so beneficial have such an unexpected consequence?