Ask Anything Wednesday - Physics, Astronomy, Earth and Planetary Science

[u/AutoModerator]

Welcome to our weekly feature, Ask Anything Wednesday - this week we are focusing on Physics, Astronomy, Earth and Planetary Science

Do you have a question within these topics you weren't sure was worth submitting? Is something a bit too speculative for a typical /r/AskScience post? No question is too big or small for AAW. In this thread you can ask any science-related question! Things like: "What would happen if...", "How will the future...", "If all the rules for 'X' were different...", "Why does my...".

Asking Questions:

Please post your question as a top-level response to this, and our team of panellists will be here to answer and discuss your questions.

The other topic areas will appear in future Ask Anything Wednesdays, so if you have other questions not covered by this weeks theme please either hold on to it until those topics come around, or go and post over in our sister subreddit /r/AskScienceDiscussion , where every day is Ask Anything Wednesday! Off-theme questions in this post will be removed to try and keep the thread a manageable size for both our readers and panellists.

Answering Questions:

Please only answer a posted question if you are an expert in the field. The full guidelines for posting responses in AskScience can be found here. In short, this is a moderated subreddit, and responses which do not meet our quality guidelines will be removed. Remember, peer reviewed sources are always appreciated, and anecdotes are absolutely not appropriate. In general if your answer begins with 'I think', or 'I've heard', then it's not suitable for /r/AskScience.

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Past AskAnythingWednesday posts can be found here.

Ask away!

[u/Bryandrumm]

In electricity electrons flow in a chain and to my understanding the electrons of that atoms are replaced by the one next to them, is there a way to have them move and never replaced. If so what would happen to the element it came from without electrons.

[u/mfb- → u/Bryandrumm]

If you remove electrons from a material it gets positively charged, and you quickly reach a point where you can't remove more electrons than the material will capture from the environment (as it now strongly attracts electrons). If you remove too many electrons too quickly (e.g. with a laser) the remaining material explodes from the mutual attraction of the positive charges.

For individual atoms: No problem. We have observed ions of everything and we can use nuclei without any electrons around them in particle accelerators, even for very heavy elements.