r/askscience

If two large plates collide and suture together, and a small minor plate gets trapped between them, what would happen to the minor plate? Would it continually fall underneath one and get regenerated by a divergent plate boundary on the other side, creating impossibly high mountains, would it be replaced with the larger plate as it recedes beneath, would it simply fuse to the larger plate, or something else?

I saw this map on Wikipedia. It shows where on Earth there are the most light-eating creatures (so plants and algae, I guess). I immediately noticed that in the open ocean, there's a band of algae going across the equator, and a lot going on the poles, but the ocean is weirdly empty in between. Why is that? Wouldn't it make more sense for there to be light-eating things closer to where the sun is?

How does it just keep falling and never run out?

I see videos about how plants and trees grow/germinate just from individual seeds. So what use is the fruit/flesh? I always thought it provided energy underground where sunlight cannot reach but it seems I am wrong? Can someone clear it up for me and will sowing fruits make for better plants than seeds?

This question occurred to me the other day, and it's been bugging me since then. I realize the energy dynamics don't really work out if they are both each other's only primary food source, but are there any pairs of animal species that prey on each other to the extent that both species could be considered both predator and prey?

I was reading about how hantavirus pulmonary syndrome has such a high mortality rate in humans (around 38%), which is terrifying. But what blows my mind is that the rodents carrying it, like deer mice, don't seem to show any symptoms at all. How does their immune system tolerate a virus that is so lethal to us, and what exactly happens when it crosses over into humans?

Ticks are bad this year and will likely get worse with climate change. Have we combatted this with science yet?

It seems that these models were able to be retired BECAUSE of the efforts to transition to renewables and not burning coal at full capacity. Which would ostensibly mean a win for the climate advocacy movement. Yet, I see many climate denialists acting like they are entitled to a victory lap now and taking this is some sort of vindication that they were right to ignore the overwhelming scientific consensus for decades about burning fossil fuels and so now we should never trust science again. In my country, the US, the Trump admin is now banning the phrase “climate change” from any official White House policy and looking to “drill, baby, drill” on protected lands while his cronies build AI & crypto data megacenters that are using more energy and water than the entire state they’re built in.

I was watching a documentary about mammals and it made me think about how scientists figure out what these mammals did every day. They only have bones to look at. It is really interesting to me.

I know that the size of the eye sockets might give us some ideas. I do not know if we can really trust this when it comes to mammals that lived a very long time ago.

Some things I want to know about mammals are:

* Do early mammals with big eye sockets always mean they were active at night or are there some early mammals that do not fit this rule?

* Can the bones in the ear of mammals also tell us if they were active at night or not?

* How sure are the people who study bones the paleontologists, when they make conclusions about early mammals and they only have a small part of the skull?

* Are there any early mammals that scientists had very different ideas, about?

I also want to know if this way of figuring out what early mammals did works as well for early mammals from a long time ago like early mammals from 100 million years ago or if it is easier to do for early mammals that lived just a few million years ago.

Title says it all. I was just wondering if theropod dinosaurs had these tendons (I assume there's no way to know for sure), which led to me wondering when this trait evolved, which then led to me wondering if all birds have the trait. It's hard to google these questions though.

Is it possible for an earth like planet to have year that last 364 days instead of around 365,25? If yes then what would exactly have to change? Would it affect seasons? Could it also affect the lunar month? Also how much temperatures would change (I assume it has to be closer to sun)? And is there a chance for live to appear if that all is changed? I’m just a curious kid so I don’t need super specific answers but if someone wants to I’m more than happy to learn.

For example, if a person time traveled back 1 million, 30 million, or even 1 billion years; would our antibiotics be useless against a bacterial infection or would they be super potent against it?

How about if we drilled cores of ice that melted and released an ancient form of bacterial disease that could be spread through the air or coughing; would we be in trouble or could a simple course of azithromycin obliterate it?

So I've been watching an ant trail near my window and got weirdly obsessed with this question. When ants find food, they don't just send everyone they seem to scale the number of workers to the size or value of the food source. But how?

Like, does the scout ant somehow "encode" information about: Distance to the food (longer trail = more energy burned per trip)? Type/quality of food (sugar vs. protein vs. fat)? Yield vs. effort, is it even worth mobilizing 300 workers for a dry cracker 10 meters away?

Are they actually doing some form of decentralized computation through pheromone concentration and trail reinforcement, or is it more emergent like no single ant "knows" anything, but the colony as a system arrives at an efficient answer?

And do colonies ever decline a food source because the math just doesn't work out, too far, too small, too risky?

I'm not a biologist, just genuinely mind-blown that something with a brain the size of a grain of sand seems to be running logistics better than some supply chains I've heard of.

Hi

Imagine a virus appears as a red dot in someone’s x-ray image. Would we see millions of red dots in someone’s bloodstream? Say someone infected with HIV, would that xray appear with millions of red dots in all of the bloodstream?

(I know X-rays just show bones, but you get the point)