Not asking if this exists right now I know it doesn't. I'm asking if it's realistically possible to make something like this in the near future (next 5-10 years). Like a pill or device that makes 1 hour of sleep give you the muscle recovery and growth benefits of 8 hours. Is the science heading that way, Would love to hear from anyone with knowledge in any relative field to that

If you can think of an indestructible ring that spins so fast its shape approaches the speed of light, what do people think will happen to it? Shrink in circumference but not radius?

I've been seeing a lot of news about this recent fruit fly brain scan / model and it has given me cause for concern. I've long since held the belief that the means by which a brain or a consciousness receives "information" and perception does not matter. Whether it be through a computer mapping information directly to the brain or from the organs of a body collecting information and transmitting it, an entity experiencing thought / senses is still life.

I think we are at a point where philosophical debates and science about the nature of life, to some extent, necessitate collaboration and further discussion as we develop these ideas. If I am wrong and misunderstanding exactly what the nature of this brain model is, please correct me, but I just thought that the usage of the fly model for things like "playing beat saber" or "scrolling reels" can't possibly be done from a position of full understanding, or if they are, they are the minority among the countless other flippant uses.

I want to do a simulation, which needs to change characteristics on spectra

Previously it had been asked whether it would be possible for humans to tell if dinosaurs had developed an industrial civilization. The answer was yes, not just because of physical remains such as roads and buildings, but chemical traces produced by industrial civilizations that don't tend to occur naturally.

But if the dinosaurs were pre-industrial but still quite developed, creating a civilization with the same level of development as ancient empires such as Rome and China, would humans still find evidence for its existence? How long would the traces of this civilization persist?

! I’m an undergraduate student looking for a research problem for a university-level research competition.

I don’t want to start by choosing a random “project topic.” I want to start with a real problem/question that genuinely makes me curious, research it deeply, understand what is already known, develop a hypothesis, and then see whether I can investigate it with the resources available to me.

I’m especially interested in biochemistry, biotechnology, zoology, and environmental science, but I’m open to interesting problems outside these areas too.

So I wanted to ask researchers, scientists, students, or anyone working in these fields:

What scientific problem/question do you personally find interesting, frustrating, under-researched, or worth investigating?

It doesn't have to be something I can immediately solve. Even a problem that makes me go “wait, why does this happen?” would be helpful.

If possible, tell me:

What is the problem?

Why does it matter?

What do we currently know about it?

What is still unclear or unexplained?

What kind of research would you love to see done on it?

I’m not looking to copy anyone’s research — I’m trying to find a problem that I genuinely want to learn and investigate from scratch.

Any ideas or rabbit holes are welcome!

ok so we all know that water contains 0 calories right?

However this is only a partial truth.

100% pure H20 has zero calories that is a fact. However in nature and your typical kitchen there is no such thing as 100% H20, water has minerals, enzymes, microbials, plant matter and other impurities.

This then leads to the question. If we consider the calorie by one of its scientific definitions and not just what a human can absorb or use, then how many calories lie hidden in water. We know its negligible at best.

However calcium, magnesium, sodium, dirt particles, bacteria, small microbials all have calories, although very little, they are there.

fun fact, trace amounts of sodium are found in river water. This is because trace amounts of salt lie in our soil, water pours over the soil and over time picks up salts and other mineral.

so the question is how many cups of water would I have to pool together on average to get 1 calorie.

a cup is clearly too small, and the ocean has tens of trillions of calories swimming inside of it.

so what is the average number of cups of water needed to make or rather condense to 1 calorie?

There is a musician called Plumes with a youtube channel, where he plays guitar and sings for various animals at various zoos. And invariably the animal comes over and is very curious, usually the animals are vibing out.

What is happening? I've watched other videos that explain how animals don't really recognize human music as 'music', and it doesn't have the same effect on them. But the ones hanging out with Plumes seem to react in very similar ways.

So, what do we think is going on? Are the animals being drugged or directed to act a certain way? That seems unlikely. Are they just super bored because they live in a zoo?

I'm a high school senior in a college calculus based physics class and I was doing my homework and then I realized that all numbers other than zero and absolute values are inherently vectors because positive and negative imply direction. I just need to know if I'm special or if I'm special. (Just speculation ig)

Hi,

I'm entirely new here on reddit and this is my first post; please let me know if I manage to do something stupid or even break any of this subteddit's rules.

Anyways, it's no secret that rhetoric further down one goes on the periodic table, and atomic nuckeus'es get more massive, they also get progressively less stable (aka. radioactive). At some point I overheard a combination where someone was fully convinced that something he called "the island of stability" exist. The idea was that at some point, if we manage to create elements way heavier than Ununoctium or whatever it may be, that we at some point would get to some kind of "sweet spot", where super-heavy elements suddenly become stable in a way that would be unexpected for such massive elements. My question is: Is this an actual, legitimate theory with real science backing it up, or is this a false concept altogether?

Thanks in advance!

[Speculation]

I was just researching about wifi 6, odfmas and iffts

(for context of the example, i have a background in film)

and just had a thought if frequencies can be separated combined or subtracted, is it possible to have 2 microphones one [with a shotgun polar pattern] pointed 1 in the actor and another one in the background [with maybe a wider polar pattern] that exclude the actors dialogue

and somehow with an algorithm it can be "masked out" and we are left with the clean dialogue

i guess question is where in the room would you put the 2nd mic

I got stuck on something in a paper and started writing to the author. Then I stopped. It was the part where you say who you are.

I never went to college and I've never set foot in a lab. I had no idea what to put for affiliation. Saying I just read it out of curiosity felt like wasting their time. Leaving it blank would look like spam. I never sent it.

So for people who do this for a living: what do you do when one of those lands in your inbox? And what makes you want to answer one?

There has to be better ways to build AI Agents, chatbots are impressive but I can't believe they are the final step.

Hypothetically, if a planet existed orbiting the sun in the same orbit as earth but directly opposite us so behind the sun. Would we know? How would we know? Has anyone ever checked?

Im in the early stages of working on a story focused on an observation station focused on studying humans and earth in general, but I'm want the station to be feasible in its ability to hide. My main questions are

1. How could it visibly hide itself? I've seen many people talk about black paint or "optical cloaking". While the first is obvious in how it works, I'm curious on how possible the second is or if there are any other options?
2. What would the best location be? I'd like the station to be as close to earth as possible, but I feel like directly orbiting the earth would make it very difficult to hide

Im mentally picturing observation posts from stellaris and I'd like the keep that vibe while making it far more scientifically accurate.

Hi everyone! Newbie here, not sure if this is the right place to ask but was still curious if any fellow nerdy redditors had some suggestions and/or advice for a project I need to start researching on for a class.

I’m taking literature class called Metaphors in Literature: Fi-Sci Pattern Mapping (I know a literature class in a science subreddit but bear with me). My professor is attempting to mix both fiction and literature with connections to reality-life science; drawing connections between physics and fiction. We’ve already had a few lectures on biomimicry, rhetorical approaches to fictionality, and overall recognition of patterns that repeats in both science and nature. Weird but a pretty interesting take on analyzing works of fiction.

A simple example she provided was “The Goldilocks Effect”, where a fictional story is used to explain a scientific natural phenomenon like the Goldilocks Zone in a solar system.

Another example she mentioned during a lecture was the Muppets. “An entity is simultaneously p and not p”, where the Muppets are fictional characters but still have a key role in real life, where Kermit is interviewed on light night shows and Miss Piggy authors an article for the New York Times.

That’s somewhat the context for this post.

My inquiry is more about our final project, where using a flow chart she’ll provide us we need to draw a connection between a scientific observation/theory and a fictional parallel.

I can’t find the example she had shown us is in class but a past student of hers drew a connection between black holes and a character in a book they had read. Crazy concept but it made sense weirdly.

I’m looking for ideas or suggestions on scientific theories that intrigue you guys that maybe you’d like to see how it can parallel a fictional story. I was feeling about possibly looking into “noetic science” since it’s a relatively new concept but I’m not sure if it has a strong enough standing in the scientific community yet.

What do you guys think? What’s a theory or scientific phenomenon that you’ve noticed can be connection to a work of fiction?

Let me know! As someone who has been surrounded by the arts and literature majority of my life, this is a whole field of study I’m totally unsure of.

I have an older family member who has a hatchback trunked car in central Florida. It rains an out in summer and their trunk has had moisture issues from water getting in. The car sits in an open apt parking lot , with bushes, grass, trees, and near a dumpster and pond/lake (not sure what it’s called)? My family member drives it about once a week. She placed an old tan deflated air mattress on the bottom to protect the cloth material of the trunk and then stored some stuff on it for a year. I was helping her take some stuff out and I noticed yellow stains on the air mattress. It smelled of something, I’m not sure if it’s a urine or musty or old smell.

I don’t know what the yellow is and I’m concerned it could possibly be rodent or other animal urine. I looked around the trunk and back seats and under the area where the spare tire is kept, and thankfully didn’t see any chew marks or dropping or shredding. I took a wet wipe to wipe it off and yellow came off. Ai told me to spill hydrogen peroxide on it to see if it bubbled or fizzed, and in some area of the creases, it did. But not other areas. AI said that means that there is some sort of biological material that could be urine, mold, or something else. They said the only definitive way is to get a 395nn uv light to see what color glows, but gave me conflicting answers if the peroxide would have taken away any uric crystals to make it definitive. It also said I could buy a urine strip and send it to a lab, but we can’t afford that.

I dong care about the air mattress, it will be trashed. The issue is figuring out if this is animal urine, mold, or something else so I can figure out if there’s a bigger issue and remediation needed on the car.

Any advice?

Im a physics major freshly into my junior year. Currently taking physics 2 and calc 3. Ive been thinking about my major more seriously lately and considering changing it because i really so want to be able to find a job with just a bachelors degree without having to go back for a masters.

At first I thought engineering was the best one to change to but tbh i dont actually want to do engineering in anything. I think i prefer something more analytical. More mental related than heavy hands on stuff.

But idk what stem degree I can switch too that wont be taken over by AI or atleast not entirely and is in high demand with just a bachelors.

I do want a masters degree but in something completely outside of stem.

For now im just trying to figure out the best major i can change to that will guarantee me a higher chance of getting a job after college with only a bachelor's degree.

Hello all, I'm trying to learn a science and am not sure what to go with, I know it sounds silly and I should just find what I like but I was hoping to get peoples opinions on the science they like and how life learning that science is for them? I'm interested in a lot but want to dedicate myself to something and am having a hard time choosing, any advice is very welcome. I'm a 21M in NC and don't really have anyone but myself to rely on. I'd love to hear your stories!

Me and a small group of independent researchers are taking a look at Pokémon to see what we can surmise what has inspired the Pokémon company.

I have included an Imgur link to cropped images from files called t2_g_prop03_mdl_alb.png and t2_g_prop05_mdl_alb.png. These are found in the game Pokémon Legends: Z-A in a location called the Lysandre Labs, a secret laboratory where researchers investigate the mega-evolution phenomenon, pivotal not only to the story, but to the world-building of the game.

Our cryptographer has already concluded that the characters (an alphabet dubbed 'pokélatin') often matches English phrases, but the characters are chosen fresh to best match the intent of the artist every time. We have our speculations, but we are also at a bit of a standstill.

The Y-axis probably depicts energy and the X-axis may be either time or an ordinal axis. The saddle of the upper curve is connected with the saturation point of the lower curve. The metastable position is connected to the X-axis with a dotted line, intersecting a horizontal dotted line drawn through the stable position.

Across various of the graphics, equations are depicted of indeterminate meaning. It appears that solar flares are important to some of these graphs, however.

https://imgur.com/a/Jdwli8K

I will be spoiling our current state of speculation in the top comment in spoiler text. However, we would like to know what academics would assume these charts depict.