hi! I want to figure out how to explain the flow of energy across different creatures in a ecosystem. After a primary producer converts chemicals into mass, the secondary producers, eat it. What do you call a secondary producer that eats both the primary source and the secondary source? For example, a creature that eats both plants and meat.

I understand that gene splicing, recumbent DNA, folding proteins, etc is unrealistically difficult to do in your house, but what about the extraction of insulin from live animal pancreatic cells? Is the methodology any easier? I read a story of a couple who were able to survive doing this in WW2.

In Star Trek terms, let’s say a landing party of seven people are surveying a new planet with the goal of observing and recording data.

I have two groups of questions:

1) What kinds of scientists (ie geologist, biologist, etc.) would potentially be the most helpful? (I assume having a few different science fields would be helpful, but would it be better to have a concentration of people from a few fields or a diverse spread?)

2) I am specifically curious about collecting soil/rock/mineral samples as I know next to nothing about the process. What tools would be needed? What precautions would be required in order to get a clean sample? What would taking a sample like this be useful for?

Any and all insight/answers would be appreciated. This is my first time posting. If there is anything I should clarify please let me know.

I understand goosebumps, veins right under the skin, sweat, I understand the things that regulate the temperature, but for me it just doesn’t make sense where the heat comes from. Or maybe I’m just not understanding enough. Why am I 37 C where did those 37 come from did I start from zero? Sorry I am probably not understanding something.

In the most technical way possible:

food enters our mouth being crushed to smaller chunks down the esophagus to the stomach, then the intestine and then out.

Somewhere along this course the energy of the food was being stored in the body in some way, all the fat, protein, carbs, minerals, water, and whatever else. How, where, and when exactly is all of that being processed?

I want to understand with as much detail as possible how it all works because usually these things are dummbed down for the sake of teaching kids

How are people handling washing and reagent exchanges in droplet based workflows? Seems like keeping cells isolated across multiple steps is still a pain... Curious what methods people are using to get around this, especially when running assays that need several rounds of reagent changes. Is there a practical way to do this without losing too many cells?

For me, it was Alexander Graham Bell. My school instructed us to pick any book and somehow I picked Alexander Graham Bell. Ever since that, I kept buying science book/comic (even though I don’t understand it at all, I kept reading it). It also made me fell in love with science and discovery. He also become my inspiration throughout my life in terms of learning, creating, and to never stop asking💡

I've recently purchased a Sperti Vitamin D Sunlamp (DUV-4F), which produces UVB radiation to stimulate vitamin D production.

A friend previously mentioned PubMed research suggesting that sunlight or UV radiation might affect mercury compounds or detoxification pathways.

I found two potentially relevant papers:

1. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8368946/ — Research on UV-induced breakdown of organic mercury compounds in seawater.
2. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11684452/ — Research discussing how solar radiation affects detoxification-related enzymes in skin.

I realise neither study establishes that UVB exposure removes mercury from humans.

My questions are:

• Is there any human research showing that sunlight or UVB exposure increases mercury excretion?
• Could a Sperti UVB lamp theoretically produce a similar effect, or is the mechanism completely different?
• Could eating UV-exposed vitamin D2-rich mushrooms influence mercury elimination, or is that unrelated?

I'm interested in understanding the evidence and biological mechanisms, not promoting an unproven detoxification treatment.

I'd appreciate any peer-reviewed research on this topic.

From what I understand from the official post on the abolition of the leap second¹, one of the main reasons for the abolition of the leap second was the difficulty in syncing that info across all electronic devices.

But why not just do a leap smear across a whole year so that we keep the rule |UT1-UTC| ≤ 1 SI second while having no need to sync a database of leap seconds?

The way I see, the main disadvantage is that now a UTC second is different from an SI second and that difference changes depend the year. This is not great for hyper precise measurements but it seems to be no issue for the vast majority of non-scientific applications.

Is this issue of the UTC second becoming "imprecise" that big of a deal or am I missing something else?

¹ BIPM (2026). Resolution 5 of the 28th CGPM. https://www.bipm.org/en/cgpm-2026/resolution-5

I’ve always been curious to know, society created marriage but what scientific proof did we have that human beings are species that mate for life and are monogamous?

I dont know if this is the right subreddit to ask this but.

how can i bring that loved for science again ?

Hansen et al says the sensitivity may go up to 10 C at worst, but based on current trends, what may be the ultimate end temperature we end up committing to?

And how much will this harm the biosphere in addition to human activity and pollution, and how long may recovery take?

im not sure how accurately this can be calculated or estimated -- but i was imagining a perfect model of the milky way, with each star being a suspended grain of sand -- i want a sense of how far apart the sand is on average, and moreso, how big the actual galaxy model will be

I was reading a novel that features a man falling into a black hole, and it mentioned the common notion that we'd never see the man actually pass the event horizon because, due to general relativity, clocks asymptotically slow to zero as one approaches the event horizon.

So with the right optics, we'd be able to see the man falling into the black hole forever. This is creepy, so in the novel people decided to abandon the black hole and just leave it be.

Lower on the same page, however, it was mentioned that they plan to leave it be until the black hole evaporates.

Well, evaporation via Hawking radiation takes a finite amount of time. A particle falling toward the black hole takes an infinite amount of time. So what happens to the still-present particle/man falling into the hole when the hole finally evaporates?

I've been reading far too long and it's late and I'm tired, so I apologize if the question is dumb. Thanks a bunch if I can read an answer in the morning!

I'm researching a hypothetical scenario in which a region of the Earth's ozone layer becomes severely depleted and, for reasons outside the scope of the question, cannot recover naturally.

Assuming this depletion persists for twenty years, what would be the consequences for the environment and human populations beneath it?

I'm particularly interested in:

• The effects of increased ultraviolet radiation on human health.
• The consequences for agriculture, wildlife and local ecosystems.
• Whether people could continue living in the affected region by adopting protective measures.
• Whether the effects would remain geographically concentrated or spread into neighbouring regions.

For geographical context, imagine the depletion is initially concentrated over New Mexico and the wider American Southwest.

I'm aware that a permanently localised area of ozone depletion may not be physically realistic. I'm primarily interested in the consequences if such a condition were somehow maintained.

Ignoring the fluid, pressure and resistance issues 0 gravity causes, like, lets act like the person doesnt have blood pressure problems after being in space. If someone aged years without the influence of gravity, would skin still sag? Wrinkes would appear of course because of loss of collagen and creasing with costant movement, but would it sag? If so would it sag less? Would it sag in a way that even adding gravity back the deformation would look different?

That didn't happen in the 80s and 90s, but NOW time passes very quickly and it's not just my feeling, many agree with this.

I’m currently studying science theory and research methodology and my professors and my text books have really been hammering in that there’s a lot of flaws in the current system.

The problem seems to be that scientific progress isn’t the only incentive at play. Researchers also need to make a living, secure funding, publish papers, and advance their careers. These incentives can encourage questionable research practices, even without outright fraud. Academic journals have their own incentives, too, and the pressure to publish novel, attention-grabbing findings can come at the expense of scientific rigour. Peer review was suppose to be a solution to a lot of the issues in how research is conducted but I’ve learnt that they are often also very poorly conducted because the journals have an incentive for quantity over quality.

A lot of people understand that we have to trust experts since it would be ridiculous to assume we know more than them. But a lot of people don’t know about the above mentioned issues which leaves the door open for bad actors to take advantage of that using perceived expertise. Especially since the experts who are easily found tend to be more interested in fame rather than scientific rigour. Jordan Peterson for example, he is by far the most famous psychologist alive but most psychologists would probably agree that he isn’t the best expert in the field to get your information from (I don’t know much about him or psychology so I’m not making my own claim here, just an example I’m aware of).

So this leads to my question: what’s the best bang-for-your-buck strategy for learning about a subject when you don’t have the time or interest to become an expert yourself?

I want to invest some time upfront in figuring out whom to trust so that I can rely on their judgement afterwards, rather than constantly having to evaluate every individual claim myself.

I’ve subconsciously developed this framework throughout my life:
I assess experts until I find 2-4 in a field that I deem trustworthy. Ideally they have some opposing opinions so I get a more nuanced total picture. When assessing I look for red flags like overly confident, chasing fame, money etc. And I look for green flags like intellectual honesty (like admitting when they don’t know the answer and acknowledging counter arguments).

How do you approach this? Do you have a better strategy or are there particular methods you use to identify trustworthy experts?

Are they getting ready to hibernate? Or is it because they're old and no longer have much energy?

It's a bit annoying because I open the window and try to scare them for them to flee... but they just stay on the table.

What if earth was a hollow ball and everything on its surface just flipped on the inner side. And let’s say we can turn on the light in the middle on/off. What sort of cool things will I be able to see beyond the horizon and in the sky? Horizon here means imaginary horizon, since I assume there won’t be any actual horizon in this case.

P.S. the question is about optics and how far will we be able to see in case I was not clear. Can you see NYC from Philadelphia? Considering the atmosphere is present around the inner surface

Thank you!!

Hey everyone, after reading Project Hail Mary, I started wondering: why don’t we build massive solar farms across a small percentage of the Sahara Desert and use that energy to power the world?
The desert gets enormous amounts of sunlight, but could a project on this scale actually change the Earth’s climate?
Would it affect rainfall, temperatures, wildlife, or ecosystems? Could it even create environmental problems that outweigh the benefits?

Like, if we had the technology and money to do this, would it be a brilliant solution to the world’s energy crisis, or could we end up creating a bigger problem?
What do you think?

If your memories, habits, beliefs, and preferences are shaped by genetics, childhood, culture, and experiences you never consciously chose, how much control do you really have over the person you become?

Have psychologists found evidence that meaningfully separates our deliberate choices from the unconscious processes that influence them?

I’m interested in scientific research, not just philosophical opinions.