askscience

I know evolution is governed by chance and it is random but does it make sense to “ruin” sleep if there’s light? I mean normally, outside, you never have pure darkness, there are the moon and stars even at night. In certain zones of the Earth we also have long periods of no sunshine and long periods of only sunshine....

Now that late spring/early summer is upon us, there’s increasingly more headlines about less rain in various places (recent floods notwithstanding). I’m assuming that’s because water is evaporating and not returning to those places, but where is it going?...

I assume it would break into smaller particles similar to the formation of microplastics. I hear about the effects of microplastics all the time. Are the effects of disposed rubber on the environment studied as extensively?

Is it a stable/static effect no matter what, or is it a bit more stretchy/bouncy depending on how the object is behaving?...

Say I am sitting in the shadow, but the sunlight gets reflected by some window pane onto me. Does this contain enough UV light to give me a sunburn?

If sociology’s exclusive to humans, then what might be the field of other social animal research?

They say it’s a picture of atoms, but what are the atoms: the glowing yellow balls or the entire meatball including the darker red? If it’s the meatballs, then why do some have apparently two nuclei?...

So, let’s say there’s a species of bacteria that is known to dwell in Greek yogurt. How long would it take before that species of yogurt-dweller only has modern descendants different enough to qualify as one or more new species?

I’m thinking of switching fields within STEM and there are some mathsy modules which I missed out on during my undergrad (biology) that would come in really handy right now....

I have a question I need to ask but I want to do it privately as the topic it correlates to is pretty taboo. Please comment or dm me, and I’ll dm you back.

I seem to remember as a young child being told that it is safe to touch a Van de Graff generator (for the hair demonstration), but that if you let go before it is safe you will get a nasty shock. I know a bit more about electricity now, and I’m a little skeptical now. Is it possible to get a shock from letting go of something?

Let’s say you are dying of starvation. You pull one of your teeth out, causing blood to slowly seep into your mouth, which you swallow. The calories from the blood getting digested will delay the time you die of starvation, right? Or will losing blood while starving kill you faster?

How hot would it have to be?

You dirty dirty… It’s time to show off! What is the most extreme cleaning you’ve ever performed?

I just watched the recent video from Stephen Milo on human life 1 million years ago. He mentions cannibalism evidence across multiple events. That has me thinking about morality in isolated groups and how it might have evolved or could evolve differently....

Mars influence on the Milankovitch cycles:...

Since we know that it isn’t constant with time, how can we be sure that it is constant with space? This might be a reason the variability in our measurements which seem to disagree....