#science rant

[thefloralmenace]

I was recently informed by a science professor I know that journals do not publish papers that don't yield interesting results, and while I understand that journals would rather publish your paper on how you cured cancer than all the things you tried that didn't, I am ENRAGED by this idea.

If you don't publish the experiments that didn't yield interesting results, people are going to waste time repeating them because when they look in the database and see nothing published on them, they're going to assume the experiment hasn't been done???

And then my professor told me that scientists just "assume that if the experiment would be relatively easy to set up, but there's nothing published on it, that means someone has already done it with no significant results." WHAT? That means we could be assuming that important experiments have been done just because they seem to be too easy???

Not to mention that this also encourages people to fudge results towards significance for career advancement because no one wants to spend YEARS on a project they don't get any credit for.

This convention of the culture is DELAYING scientific progress, I guarantee it. Please let me be financially successful enough that I can start my own journal for publishing experiments with no significant results. I AM ANGRY AT THIS INEFFICIENCY.

[rainbowcahya]

project hail mary is so pure and perfect from beginning to end like. as a molecular biology PhD student i screamed the moment i saw ryland was a molecular biologist cause yea we are not the least abundant scientists but it's not common to see us in media that reaches so many people but like. the very first thing he says is that he believes there has to be another life forms not based on water, cause hydrogen and oxygen are not so uncommon nor important when im like. my fascination about biochemistry and ultimately molecular biology started thig the water molecule. how that specific bond between its atoms gives it properties no other molecule has, and ultimately became the reason why life on this planet is the way it is (living beings are based on carbon bla bla bla WRONG. its all thanks to my favourite molecule aka water). [also those are so many words for my first take and not even the longest one omg].

but then you see grace on space, analysing samples. using eppendorf tubes (although he doesn't balance them properly in the centrifuge which is funny considering the importance of the centrifuge force on the ship lol). and he uses micropipettes like. my everyday most used instrument is shown in a movie, and ryan gosling is the actor using them like woahhhh.

and as so many scifi movies it starts with the soon to happen destruction of the earth and all of that. but suddenly the movie is a love letter to life itself????? which i didn't expect at all????? quoting grace, "life is reason star not die." life as we know it, life as bacterias amoebas, protozoa, are saving us even from the death of our sun but some alien microorganism. the very same diversity and lifeforms we humans are daily destroying with our stupid way of living.

and ultimately the movie is a love letter to friendship, which is so refreshing nowadays. ryland finds his purpose, his reason to live, to die for, by making an alien friend. THAT IS SO HUGE. platonic love do deserve this kind of recognition. at the end of the day we are social animals who need friends and partners (not necessarily romantic thou) to share our life with, even if we are in our planet earth or among the stars. someone who listens, who asks, who's there for us, who wants to be a part of our lives, even when it makes them sacrifice years of their life only to help us, even when they won't even see the result, but will be glad that we made it back thanks to them. DO YOU EVEN START TO REALISE HOW MUCH LOVE THERE IS BETWEEN THIS CHARACTERS???? and it's portrayed so easily, so simple, cause it's just like breathing. it just is.

anyways im about to find the book in my closest local bookstore cause this movie has become my new current favourite story right now. im profoundly amazed by all of it.

[spenglercore]

ok this has been bugging me. I already blocked the sender but I got an ask earlier for an OLD ass post on my main blog where this fucking chud tried to mansplain physics to me and I just.

I cannot get over this bro telling me that ram air isn't why things burn up on re-entry, and then trying to bullshit some pseudoscience physics about how the vibration of the atoms rubbing on the object plus the atoms sliding across it's surface is what causes it.

No that's not how it works and the fact that you dug up a six year old post on my blog tells me you have nothing better to do than start shit with people and would simply put your fingers in your ears and yell LALALALALALA if I tried to flatten you with the actual physics.

Things don't just burn up on re-entry, modern supersonic aircraft ALSO heat up due to ram pressure in flight, to the point where the X-15 - with a skin made of ICONEL (a nickel-chromium alloy) which is a superb heatsink, fucking started MELTING in flight. Concord had problems with heat from ram air. The Blackbird leaks fuel like a sieve because it's components were made too small on purpose to account for thermal expansion due to - you fuckin guessed it - ram air.

See in physics gases do this funny thing when compressed and heat up. No heat is added, so much as the heat energy in a given volume of gas is now forced into a smaller space and thus the temperature rises. Compress it enough, like when you're forcing something through the upper atmosphere at 4,520mph or coming back down from orbit at 17,500mph or more, the pressure put on atmospheric gases causes them to heat up, and that heat is absorbed by the object.

[fanartfunart]

Annoying thing about the Scientific Community.... It’s..so....slow.....

So, first of we have the problem of articles/studies that prove the hypothesis or make Great Big Impacts are the main ones published- and therefore, we have lower access to A) important works that disprove popular theory and B) works with important impacts that are less obvious. (The bias in publishing is...really bothersome)

And then we have the fact that it takes years to get a study going, and then it takes more years to get it reviewed and published, and then it takes even more years to get either disproved or re-proven. So people take something as Fact for 100 years when it was disproved 10 times over the last 40 years but those studies weren’t sparkly and new and they didn’t get published because the hypothesis was that it was supposed to work. And by then you have to fight Popular Theory more than the actual scientific community.

[anna12o]

Does it bug anyone else when sci-fi shows that are supposed to be really smart use dimensions when they CLEARLY mean universes? You aren't traveling through alternate dimensions, you're traveling through alternate universes, if you were going through dimensions shit would get real boring real fast, because there are only four dimensions we can even comprehend, zero dimension is a point, first dimension is a line, second dimension is a plane, third dimension is a cube, hence 3D. Anything past that is purely theoretical, because as third dimensional beings we can't comprehend anything past 3D, it doesn't matter how smart you are, unless you can come up with an entirely new direction. The closest we've gotten is that we may be perceiving the fourth dimension as time. Stop calling alternate universes alternate dimensions, you sound like an idiot, go pick up some Stphen Hawking's, and don't come back until you know what you're talking about.

[bigboxofbees]

A theory is not a hypothesis

The statement above may seem obvious; those are in fact two different things, duh. But, that doesn't mean people always treat it that way.

We throw around the word "theory" a lot. From reading conspiracy theories to saying "well that's my theory" after guessing why the teacher is wearing fur on her hands. The way we use the word "theory" in everyday life isn't always very accurate. This can become an issue when we're talking about science. Now, I'm not saying we should start saying "conspiracy hypothesis", I often use the word "theory" casually as well. But we do need to make sure that people know what a theory actually is.

This is the definition for a scientific theory from dictionary.com:

"noun

a coherent group of propositions formulated to explain a group of facts or phenomena in the natural world and repeatedly confirmed through experiment or observation."

So, what's the problem? Well, for the people who don't know what a theory actually is, given how we talk about them it might seem like just an idea of what could be true. Or something that hasn't been proven. And that's not true. But this might lead to the conclusion: theory = guess.

You see, a theory is what is considered true. It's the highest tier of scientific relevancy. There is nothing higher than a theory, because a theory is what should be viewed as fact, it's the closest we can get to the objective reality. In order for something to be called a "theory" you have to have evidence, and usually a lot of it, that's why the definition mentions "repreatedly confirmed", because one study is not enough to create a proper theory. And if there is evidence that disproves it, then it's out the window.

When you talk about something that has not been proven, you are talking about a hypothesis, not a theory. And this really doesn't matter when you're talking with friends, but it can become a problem when you suddenly have people trying to explain to you that evolution didn't happen because "it's just a theory without evidence".

[lovelyardie]

My new Fave™️

People who don’t understand quantum mechanics (or any principles of physical chemistry for that matter) making Schrödinger's cat analogies...

#scienceisnotphilosophy 

[manedwoof]

Okay, but like...

I know almost nobody will see this, but this is what happens when I watch How the Universe Works at midnight.

The New Horizons probe in 2015 discovered these kinds of volcanoes on Pluto called cryo-volcanoes. Basically, instead of magma being brought up to the surface, it’s SLUSH. Like, partially-frozen water. It freezes immediately, of course, but still.

So there’s this thing that happens that when water freezes, it actually gives off a little bit of heat. Counter-intuitive, I know, but it happens. This happens in a huge underground ocean under the surface of Pluto and that allows a little bit of slush-water to be able to travel through the surface and it comes out like a normal volcano on earth would! It’s literally the opposite of what we think of volcanoes as, but it (almost certainly) happens. Obviously, there’s no way to know for sure unless we land something on the surface or whatever, but still!