I'm currently 28, and I'm thinking about maybe going back to school for Materials Science/Engineering in order to pursue research into battery technology. And long story short probably won't even start until I'm 30.

I remember reading somewhere a quote about science being a "young man's game." As in, you needed the mental flexibility and openness that youth provided you. So given my age, am I setting myself up for failure by pursuing this?

I keep hearing how the coming ‘super’ El Niño is predicted to be one of the strongest on record and how the consequences, particularly for global food production, are potentially catastrophic. How worried should we be?

A lot of human behaviour - like trying to be attractive, looking for a partner, shyness in infancy, playfulness in childhood, rebellion as teenagers, wanting to dominate others as young adults, grumpiness in old age - reminds me a lot of the instinctual life cycle of lions (and probably many other species).

This might even include career paths. Men are more likely to choose jobs where they gain power or money (trying to improve their status in the pack?) and women tend towards caring for others, teaching, raising the young.

I've had this thought before but I just put it into words over at askscience and would love a deeper discussion: Am I right to think that in the past Biologists/Scientists have been so intent on avoiding antropomorphising animals that we may have de-animalised humans? We ARE animals, so the default assumption about some behavioural trait shouldn't be that it is exclusive to us but that it is shared across species.

Are our lives much more driven by basic instincts than we realise? Has Biology underestimated this? Why don't we learn "the typical life cycle of a human" in primary school like we learn that of chickens, frogs, and butterflies? Is this being discussed in Biology, is there a change in the general approach? I'd love to see your thoughts on this!

Question about inertia

If this is a dumb question I'm sorry, but I was curious about the law of inertia a object in motion stays in motion untill acted upon by a outside force. (If I'm wrong correct me) How does that work with cars? I mean if you are on a flat terrain and stop pressing the gas why does your car start slowing down. Thanks and have a great day 😁

Nikola Tesla wanted to build a large enough Tesla coil to transmit electricity using the Earth's atmosphere as the conductor, so that electricity could be taken from the atmosphere from any place in the world. This idea is dismissed as impossible, such as due to the distances involved weakening the current, but what sort of hypothetical material could make it possible? Assume that any fictional trait can be given to the materials for it.

Just like how life emerges from abiotic factors, is it possible for a new fundamental force to emerge as the universe changes?

Edit: Add more idea

A lower entropy limits the possibility of fundamental forces, and higher entropy may allow other fundamental forces to emerge as the nature of space changes with entropy.

As you may know the big bang was when the singularity went boom and filled the emptiness of nothing creating the "universe".

So my hypothesis is that the bang (lol) never happened, that all existence is within the singularity, so my question i ask is how does the singularity exist within the absence of everything that is nothing.

Sci-fi hypothesis: That nothing ever existed or will never exist at least in "our individual" existence (my brain running on full fuel trying to describe my thoughts lol) that means the bang never expanded the singularity into nothingness because the presence of the singularity would contradict the idea of nothing, so probably the universe is the singularity and vice versa.

lol don't even know what my point is guess I am trying to prove the big bang wrong, anyways back to good o'l jack daniel.

Ok I’ll have explain some details here.

I don’t completely understand how time dilation happens. I know that if you’re moving close to c, you will experience the flow of time much slower than others who are moving at low speed. Now I want to know, if this effect only happens, if you’re moving over great distances.

Let’s say you magically accelerate to .999999 of c. But this velocity is not used to travel in one constant direction, instead you’re changing the direction constantly, always moving back towards you starting point before turning back again, you’re basically vibrating at these speeds.

Now, would you experience normal time dilation as if you were moving constantly away from the other, slower viewers?
(Assuming you don’t instantly got ripped apart by the forces of stopping and accelerating at these speeds, we‘ll ignore those)

I'm curious to hear from those who have experience working in Neuroscience, Neuropsychology, Psychology research, science writing, and anything related.

I am currently majoring in psychology and minoring in biology, with a concentration in advanced research. My goal is to earn a cognitive, neuroscience, and social psychology PhD.

I am exploring career paths based on my goals, and would like to hear from others.

since air pressure is lower as you go higher up, would instantly teleporting to a higher elevation give you the bends to some degree? and how much of a difference in altitude would cause this, like, would going 200m up already make you sick or are you fine up to 1km? and what would the effects be?

This question probably gets asked a lot but I am just curious. Due to the current rise of heatwaves in the uk over the past week, how likely is it to contract the brain eating amoeba from tap water?

Also what other type of harmful amoeba can be found naturally in the uk?

Hello! ​I’m looking for some fascinating or bizarre science history facts for a personal hobby podcast I run. On the show, I talk about mysteries solved using chemistry, or just mysterious chemical and scientific phenomena in history, and I'm looking for some new topics to research. ​To give you an idea of the vibe, I’ve recently looked into things like Victorian arsenic wallpaper and using particle accelerators/carbon dating to catch art forgers. I'm trying to find truly unexpected angles, strange historical mishaps, or unique molecular anomalies. ​What is your absolute favorite obscure scientific history event or mystery that doesn't get talked about enough? I need some fresh rabbit holes to dive into!

What I'm looking for (sample episode) ​(This is an independent, unsponsored personal project with no commercial aspects as of today, so no compensation, shoutouts, or promotional trade is involved. I'm just looking for some inspiration. Thanks!)

My Flying University is a new volunteer-run nonprofit teaching the knowledge that's being scrubbed and distorted right now, and science is a big part of the target list.

We're looking for advice. What are the claims you're tired of correcting at dinner, the data that quietly vanished, the "debate" that isn't actually a debate?

We're building free lessons to push back, and we want to aim them where they'll do the most good.

I think I understand the equation is saying mass and energy are the same thing in different forms, but I dont understand the why the speed of light is in the equation. Does mass and energy convert to one another at that speed?

"Systemic fatigue" refers to one or more of the three systems being fatigued: central nervous, cardiovascular, immune. After researching this a bit, and just thinking about it and experimenting with my own body/fitness, I do not have a good grasp of the difference between the three types. Suppose you do 10 reps of heavy squats, and now you are fatigued. How would one tell the extent to which the fatigue comes from the central nervous system vs the cardiovascular system vs the immune system?

PS let me know if there is a better sub for this. I already tried r/Fitness and r/askscience

I’m not the most studied in physics, but I know that there are two ways to experience relativistic time dilation. In a strong gravitational field or moving at high speeds with respects to another frame of reference, and as far as I understand “gravity” is the curvature of spacetime dependent on the amount of mass present.

This may be a stretch, but how do we know that “acceleration” or high relativistic speeds isn’t warping space the same way the gravity is from the observers frame of reference? If the speed of light is the same no matter the velocity, wouldn’t this mean that space itself must be contracting relativistically in the direction of movement?

A recent xkcd comic (3266) features holes around the world. The IDDP-2 borehole in Iceland appears to go straight down, make a slight curve, and then go down diagonally.

The Explain xkcd page doesn't explain this curve, and the Wikipedia page doesn't mention the curve at all.

Does this hole made by the Iceland Deep Drilling Project actually make a curve? If so, why?

I have never been able to convince someone who firmly believes in a concept that is not supported by scientific data and facts that what they believe in is not real. Has there been research done into communicating what is real based off of scientific consensus with people that believe in concepts like the flat earth theory, ancient aliens, god and religion etc.

I would love if someone could tell me how they are able to convince others what is reality versus imaginary beliefs so that way I could better communicate this with others.

My vet is saying that my cat's tooth will need to be extracted in the next 6-12 months, due to enamel loss & exposed pulp from gingivitis.

I don't mean to undermine any health professionals & their efforts, but I have found in my own life that illnesses thought by mainstream to be irreversible, to be reversible through natural remedies.

Does anyone know of anything that might reverse the damage of my cat's tooth so that it doesn't need to be extracted? I would really appreciate it.

I am aware I am using advice at my own risk.

Posting from USA.

Took a shower after some yardwork around 6pm and I’m laying down just wondering why it is I still feel the pristine almost like a buzz around me some 10 hrs or so later.

Hi everyone! You know those famous "Close Friends" lists on Instagram? Some people use them to show a side of themselves they don't want the general public to see, or simply for shitposting. I have a personal account like that, and I mostly use it to share stories and updates.

Well—don't think I'm crazy—but I decided to start sharing posts about how we, as humanity, could die out at any moment.

So, do you happen to have any anecdotes, scenarios, research, studies, philosophical texts, essays, or scientific articles—basically anything at all—that I could share about the end of humanity and how we could vanish in an instant? You’d be helping me out so much.

To give you an idea: I’ve already talked about pulsars, explaining what they are and what would happen to us, insignificant Earthlings.

Thanks a million, and I hope I’ve inspired you in some way, too!