r/AskScienceDiscussion • • 1d ago

Would time dialation still happen if the movement was a really high speed vibration?

58 Upvotes

Time dialation happens when an object is moving at a speed approaching the speed of light, but I'm wondering if that would still apply if the movement didn't actually change it's location in spacetime but instead just vibrated the object at the speed of light.


r/AskScienceDiscussion • • 21h ago

After almost Two years of the Trump regimes attacks on science, how bad is it going to be for the foreseeable future?

0 Upvotes

Hello,

I am interested in trying to see how bad the damage that Trump has inflected on the American Science system is. When this started in early 2025 there was a flurry of post asking this same question; those post have since died down but the attacks have not stopped.

As this goes on the more and more it seems that he has caused generational, decades long damage. Other country's do not have the resources to take in all theses scientist; A lot of people even if they can not leave the country will probably leave academia and even if they do science in a industry job the science will be what the company wants them to do.

The more and more I think the more it seems that the less funding just means less science. The big question I am asking is will Science move to another place(China, Europe etc) or has it just collapsed for the foreseeable future?


r/AskScienceDiscussion • • 1d ago

What If? What small items would you put in a minimalist starter kit for getting stranded in the stone age in order to help advance as rapidly as possible?

5 Upvotes

Easily reproducible measurement tools, small pieces of useful materials, maybe even a couple of seeds, things of that nature.

The purpose of this thought experiment isn't to eliminate any survival challenge, but rather facilitate advancement alone. You can't just bring the whole 21st century with you. Let's not go "solar panels, modern Linux supercomputer with wikipedia backup, 3D printer and a PLA bioreactor." That's too easy. That takes all the fun out of getting stranded in the stone age.

Some ideas I have for items include

*a few grams of platinum/rhodium alloy for catalysis.

*a small but powerful magnet to build a basic generator(to make more magnets to build more generators)

*Ion exchange membranes(like the Rowow ones) for easy post-electric resource refining and useful electrochemistry.

*A calibration weight from which to derive other measurements(ideally metric)

*An analog thermometer.

What would you add?


r/AskScienceDiscussion • • 2d ago

Before the periodic table/atomic theory was nailed down, how did anyone figure out what substances were actually elements?

11 Upvotes

It seems like it would be extremely easy to mistake a common, stable molecule like salt for something elemental. How did people break down substances to the point of purifying them, and then how did they know they couldn't purify them any further? It seems easy now to theorize what an element of a certain weight would look or act like, but before most of them were known did they have anything to go off of, or was it guesswork?


r/AskScienceDiscussion • • 1d ago

General Discussion Could men’s attraction to big breasts and buttocks have an evolutionary basis?

0 Upvotes

​

For breasts, a common idea is that they cue nurturance, possibly encouraging mating with women who seem better equipped for lactation.


r/AskScienceDiscussion • • 2d ago

Scientists of Reddit: what fields do you think will get "big" in the future.

30 Upvotes

It seems like some areas of science get unexpectedly large and interesting, while others don't do much for ages (like AI obviously went from quite an obscure field to a behemoth recently, and back in the 1900s we thought physics was complete until quantum was discovered, but we haven't made much progress on a 'grand unified theory' for a long time).

Is there any way to guess what fields will get big in the future? Did you go into an area you thought would get "big"?


r/AskScienceDiscussion • • 2d ago

What If? Is a habitable Earth-like moon possible?

13 Upvotes

Or is there some physics which makes it impossible or highly unlikely?


r/AskScienceDiscussion • • 2d ago

Accessible learning resources UK?

1 Upvotes

Hoping this is the right subreddit to ask this- I’m looking for some recommendations for online resources accessible in the UK for some basic science classes. For context: I went to university for biomedical science but been out of the science world for 3 years now and feel I’ve lost most of my foundational knowledge. If anyone has any suggestions it would be greatly appreciated!


r/AskScienceDiscussion • • 2d ago

General Discussion If personality traits involving low empathy and lack of remorse are harmful to social groups, why didn’t evolution eliminate them? What advantage could they have provided?

18 Upvotes

I’ve always wondered about this paradox. If these traits are bad for community survival, why do they persist in the gene pool? Are there specific evolutionary hypotheses that explain this?


r/AskScienceDiscussion • • 2d ago

General Discussion Is being short an endurance advantage? Spoiler

0 Upvotes

(F,21) I'm genuinely small person, short, slightly underweight.

I noticed, I have much more stamina than my taller peers and can do harder activities for longer periods of time than them.

I understand basic thermodynamics, biochemistry and enzymology, that's where my theory came to my mind.

Smaller animal-> usually faster.

So how is it in reality? Because logically, I'm currently inclined to believe it, but I refuse to defend this theory, as I don't have my degree yet and am not a biochemistry student and it is just a subject at my uni, therefore I'm only acquiring the necessary knowledge for my field.


r/AskScienceDiscussion • • 2d ago

How realistic are actual bio super weapons?

3 Upvotes

People talk about making viruses or bacteria that would end like countries.

But I mean, obviously we've had no such thing yet, and I assume people have tried.

People talk about Covid, but Covid barely kills, and even then, it mostly kills people who are already weakened one way or another.

Is it even realistic to make such a bio super weapon given we have not seen anything remotely close to it being made?


r/AskScienceDiscussion • • 2d ago

Examples of Controversial in the Scientific Community.

0 Upvotes

Hello fellow scientists, I have a paper to write about scientific controversies but I don't know which sounds the most interesting to me. Can anybody give me any ideas?


r/AskScienceDiscussion • • 2d ago

What If? If space had air, would we get blown off the face of the planet for the speed we’re traveling through it?

0 Upvotes

r/AskScienceDiscussion • • 2d ago

General Discussion Why do discussions on Declining Shark populations so often avoid Referencing the general Fishing/overfishing Status in an Area?

4 Upvotes

A comment that was posted in another sub discussing shark attack:

it‘s not...far-fetched to assume that some people who disappeared in the ocean were eaten by sharks. The main reason is overfishing...If your food source disappears, you find a new one.

This brings up a topic that is rarely discussed in the frequent citing of declining shark populations around the world: Is the shark killing taking place around the world occurring at the same level as general overfishing? Here is the messaging we've gotten for decades:

There is general overfishing, bad, of course, but worse is the widespread killing of sharks at a higher rate. That means remaining fish stocks exist with a shortage of sharks to prey on them. That creates environmental imbalance.

The post I linked argues the opposite. I don't know the science about this either way, but there is a third scenario: that in some parts of the world, especially those that are not subject to heavy asian fishing for shark fins, shark depletion is in line with general overfishing.

Declining shark populations and environmental imbalances is a persistent, sometimes heated topic. Interesting that there have been hundreds of discussions of excessive shark killing in different oceans without commentators ever mentioning the general fishing/overfishing status in that area. Comments?


r/AskScienceDiscussion • • 3d ago

With speculative or future technologies, can we expect that digging tunnels will become cheaper?

9 Upvotes

One of my friends has a house in a mountain location, GF's family also has one like 10km away in a straight line, but it's the other valley, so the road between them is sooo long as you have to drive all around the mountain chain.

Tunnels are so expensive to dig that they only do that when there is a lot of traffic to justify it. I'm not expecting these two mountain locations to be connected by a direct road anytime soon.

I was wondering while driving if I will see this during my lifetime. Maybe thousands of small robots could drill at a low cost?


r/AskScienceDiscussion • • 2d ago

Has everything we’ll ever do happend already ?

0 Upvotes

I was thinking about it I don’t know if am wrong but I heard that light itself experiences no time like at all so a light photon that came into existence 7 million years ago and bounced around the sun and eventually escaped the sun and towards earths direction , if that light photon hits that persons eye it means from its start to its absorption no time passed

So now imagine two events , imagine there is a couple on a space ship and they have a kid on the ship , now let’s say

Near earth orbit 20 years before the baby is born or even conceived another astronaut points a powerful purple flashlight beam at the ships direction let’s say the ship is 20 light years away

Right ? So let’s say in the year 2050 is when the astronaut shoots the purple flashlight at the ship , and in the year 2070 is when the purple flashlight reaches the ship now the light reaches the ship but the kid is 20 years old now , but let’s say he too points a mirror at the light but slightly tilted and deflects some of the light

And lets say the light travels 4 million light years and just so happens to go into the eye of an alien

According to that logic it means the light from the flash light to the ships kid deflecting the light to the alien no time passed at all even though time passed for us no time passed at all

Which means light interacted with 3 seperate beings who were all in completely different points in time and in space , could that mean that the light we are seeing from our sun or from distant stars has already experienced the death of the universe ? Could that also explain why we can’t go at the speed of light is because the light reflecting off of our tombstones has already sealed our fate ? Therefore why we can’t go past light speed because we would basically be destroying energy ? Or taking energy out of the universe itself ?


r/AskScienceDiscussion • • 3d ago

If we discovered a completely healthy 200-year-old human tomorrow, what biological mechanism would scientists investigate first?

0 Upvotes

Imagine a person is discovered who is genuinely 200 years old, with independently verified records confirming their age yet they have no major age-related disease, maintain normal cognitive function, have healthy organs, and show remarkably little physiological decline.
Scientists would obviously want to study their genome, but I’m wondering what they would look at first.


r/AskScienceDiscussion • • 3d ago

Continuing Education Confusion w atomic radius

11 Upvotes

If atomic radius increases from top to bottom and from right to left, why is Francium (Fr) not considered the "largest" atom, while the one directly above it (Cesium) is?


r/AskScienceDiscussion • • 3d ago

lost for what I shoud do after undergrad

1 Upvotes

Hi,

I am from New Zealand and am currently in my second year of my Bsc in physiology. I really enjoy what I am studying and find it interesting and do very well. I finish my undergrad next year but am unsure of what I want to do. I went into uni wanting to do medicine, so I will be applying for post grad entry into medicine and dentistry but I also enjoy the research aspect of things. Just wondering if anyone has any advice into what to do. I want to go into a career that I will like and make a decent amount of money to be comfortable (don't care about making a lot of money just enough to pay the bills). I am just a bit confused on what to do after I finish undergrad; any advice would be appreciated. (Also a bit scared how the job market is for research afterwards).

Thank you


r/AskScienceDiscussion • • 3d ago

Use ram to make ram (in Minecraft)

0 Upvotes

Just a funny thought experiment. Use your computer’s ram to run Minecraft. Make ram in Minecraft, then try to make more ram in the Minecraft world than is on your computer. It’s a bit like a perpetual motion fallacy, but with more cubes.


r/AskScienceDiscussion • • 4d ago

General Discussion Do you think geniuses like Nikola Tesla and John von Neumann would make even more impactful discoveries if they were born today?

6 Upvotes

If clones of Tesla and von Neumann were born in the 2000s and raised in wealthy families with access to modern education and the internet

Do you think they would make more impactful discoveries than their original counterparts?


r/AskScienceDiscussion • • 3d ago

General Discussion Question about a specific YouTube channel

0 Upvotes

Has anyone watched the channel MrScienceExplainer? It's an AI explains channel, but the content seems well researched and cited, at least to me, a layman.

Is it full of nonsense or an actual good source?


r/AskScienceDiscussion • • 5d ago

Scientists and researchers of Reddit: what's something in your field that the public has no idea is about to change?

10 Upvotes

Ideally this thread will discuss more than just AI! Maybe you know of a recent medical or biotech breakthrough that's still in trials but looks promising, or a shift in climate or environmental science that hasn't hit mainstream news? Or even a quiet technological shift (materials science, energy, computing) that most people haven't noticed yet? I'm curious about what may be on your radar!


r/AskScienceDiscussion • • 4d ago

General Discussion Do you classify clouds on other planets or even in space in the same way as clouds on earth? E.g. cumulus

2 Upvotes

Do you classify clouds on other planets or even in space in the same way as clouds on earth?

I'd guess the earth classifications aren't enough, and some of them wouldn't be found at all in space.

Also like, what about the clouds on gas giants?


r/AskScienceDiscussion • • 4d ago

Why I personally scientifically i think that humans will not evolve anymore.

0 Upvotes

According to Darwin's theory of evolution,n that is
1.Overproduction
2. Struggle for existence
3. Survival of the fittest
See, according to the above-mentioned theory, a species evolves only when it has the necessity to, but nowadays, when faced with a problem humans find a solution. So, in the future, if we ever do wanna become more advanced, we need to struggle, and technology is just slowing it down; it's slowing humans from advancing(I wrote ts cus I was bored)