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The original post: /r/askscience by /u/Nearby-Bathroom618 on 2024-12-27 02:40:19.

Iirc, I learned that grapefruits can block certain enzymes in medicine,and the reason it's cautioned against eating grapefruit with most medicine is because it can cause a buildup of it. So if grapefruit causes it, would it be because grapefruit has a particular chemical that other citrus fruits don't? Or is it that citrus fruits do interfere, just not as much as grapefruit? Because if it interfered at the same strength grapefruit does, I'd assume the warning on medicines would be akin to "don't take with citrus products" instead of grapefruit specifically.

The original post: /r/askscience by /u/kheret on 2024-12-26 18:01:18.

I’ve heard a lot of things about Norovirus. Only bleach kills it. It only takes a few particles to become infected. It lives on surfaces for two weeks. Immunity only lasts two months. You shed virus for weeks after infection.

If all of this is true, how come it isn’t a LOT more widespread? I’ve read it infects about 5-10% of the population annually. I got norovirus or something like it twice last spring from my son who got it at school. Before that, I think I MIGHT have had it once in my life when I was a kid. But if all of the above is true, you’d expect to get it a lot more often.

The original post: /r/askscience by /u/RedditServiceUK on 2024-12-25 15:37:30.

If Enceladus is confirmed to have water below it's oceans, with confirmed vapour spews then why is NASA going to the more skeptical Europa with it's Europa clipper mission? Why is Europa more likely to have life compared to Enceladus?

The original post: /r/askscience by /u/Significant-Factor-9 on 2024-12-25 03:03:39.

Whenever you watch documentaries or read about the late Cretaceous it is always said that the dinosaurs were declining before the impact. Sometimes this is framed as the beginning of a minor extinction event, other times the implication is that the dinosaurs would have vanished with or without the asteroid. But it is never elaborated on. However looking on the surface it looks like the dinosaurs were just fine. Archosaurs still filled almost all megafauna niches on earth. Dinosaurs were still THE dominant land vertebrates and were even starting to encroach on aerial and aquatic niches. From what I'm seeing, the dinosaurs in the late Cretaceous were even more dominant, diverse and abundant than at other times of the Mesozoic. I don't see why the dinosaurs couldn't have kept this success up until today had the asteroid never hit. Does anyone know what is meant by this "decline"?

The original post: /r/askscience by /u/Pippa016 on 2024-12-24 21:57:30.

The original post: /r/askscience by /u/GeneralGigan817 on 2024-12-24 06:43:41.

The original post: /r/askscience by /u/OdettesKnife on 2024-12-24 19:12:06.

I live in western Maryland, so we have a lot of waterfowl in the summer and spring. I have always been taught that they fly south for the winter and that's why we don't see them in the colder months.

Last week, we had a day that was unusually warm, about 60-65 degrees, and I was surprised to see that there were ducks in the pond near my house. This confused me, since it seems like it would take them a very long time to fly back up north, and we only had the warm weather for a day. I've seen this before, but I guess I've never thought too hard about it.

The original post: /r/askscience by /u/the6thReplicant on 2024-12-24 14:03:28.

A lot of "little information is a dangerous thing" here. I know that all* eukaryotes have mitochondrion in their cells. Mitochondrion use aerobic respiration to create ATP. So what are plants using these processes for.

Plus how did they evolve in an oxygen poor early Earth?

Obviously I could be totally wrong on my above assumptions e.g. they need oxygen to produce ATP etc

Edit: Thanks for all the answers even though this post is at 0 votes.

The original post: /r/askscience by /u/Fun_Light_7027 on 2024-12-24 06:58:02.

The original post: /r/askscience by /u/Fuzzymelon1 on 2024-12-24 00:17:36.

Wouldn’t mammalian meat be more biologically available and suitable for a human’s body, since we are also mammals?

The original post: /r/askscience by /u/Redqueenhypo on 2024-12-23 23:34:27.

There are insects that continuously inbreed with their siblings, and mouse colonies or all of Australia’s rabbits are started by just a few individuals. How have they avoided accumulating Habsburg-level inbreeding issues?

The original post: /r/askscience by /u/Elegant-Mammoth5249 on 2024-12-23 16:08:10.

The original post: /r/askscience by /u/femvo on 2024-12-21 23:48:34.

The original post: /r/askscience by /u/ResultIntelligent856 on 2024-12-22 19:36:12.

I totally get wearing masks at the store and 6-8 ft social distancing, but I just saw a linus tech tips video of two people in a 50 sqft room standing next to each other with Razer masks on.

so like, how much of a difference did it actually make?

The original post: /r/askscience by /u/HillWithSomeTrees on 2024-12-22 14:15:22.

I'm 12 and full of questions. My da can't answer my questions, so he told me to come here. What are atoms made out of and is there a difference between two atoms from different substances?

The original post: /r/askscience by /u/Marvinkmooneyoz on 2024-12-22 07:19:48.

Are there, or have there ever been any humans that could reproduce both as a male and as a female? And if not, have there at least been any that had both types of sex cells, sperm and eggs?

There are plenty of people with some sort of intersex traits. I know that there is usually a strong push towards full of one or the other, so I wouldnt be TOO surprised if its truly never happened. Still, my bet would be that there has been.

The original post: /r/askscience by /u/cablewastoolong on 2024-12-22 02:20:28.

Proxima Centauri B is so much further away, and Hubble imaged Pluto better than a spec of light, so why not Eris?

The original post: /r/askscience by /u/Typical-Dark-7635 on 2024-12-21 01:38:38.

My understanding is that mammal lungs are fairly delicate by necessity. But according to NOAA sperm whales can dive to 10000ft, doesn't that mean that the volume of their lungs is 1/300 that at the surface? How is this possible without damaging the lungs? Is it simply having a highly specialized surfactant or are there other structural changes protecting the lungs? NOAA also says the can stay down for 60 minutes, it doesn't seem like significant gas exchange would occur at that volume, at least relative to the metabolic needs of such a large animal. Are they just relying on the O2 saturation they achieved at the surface to function for that long? Is that how it works when we hold our breath?

Sorry for the run-on question

The original post: /r/askscience by /u/Mister___Me on 2024-12-19 17:02:23.

I'm currently studying for my embryology exam and there's one thing during I can't understand.

One of the first thing the embryo does when arriving int the uterus is nesting in the endometrium. A this point the embryo is under the simple epithelia of the endometrium.

But once the embryo turns into a foetus and start to get bigger how does this small layer contain the foetus ? There must be a point where the foetus break the epithelia to develop in the womb cavity where he has a place to grow and from where he'll be able to get out during child birth ?

The original post: /r/askscience by /u/Environmental-Cold24 on 2024-12-20 09:13:21.

I was trying to search on reddit the answer to this question, assuming the question has been asked before. And I was surprised to read that many answered the question by saying that there was no scientific evidence, that animals always show irratic behavior with the slightest disturbance in their proximity, that animals would only be alerted due to P-waves at most a few minutes to an hour earlier than humans.

I found that highly weird, since there seems to be plenty of evidence at least very indicative of animals having advanced 'knowledge' of natural events like earthquakes many hours before it happens, in some cases even days.

See this article below for example:

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220211-the-animals-that-predict-disasters

So why do animals know and humans don't? [or do we?]

The original post: /r/askscience by /u/platypodus on 2024-12-19 21:19:00.

Do they have to crack the plates? Drill them open? Saw them out and replace them?

I really can't imagine it would be easy.

The original post: /r/askscience by /u/TheoXDM on 2024-12-18 20:08:02.

Does all visible light travel at the same speed? Or does the (wavelength? frequency?) change the speed at which light will travel. So like purple light vs red light. What about something like radio waves vs gamma?

The original post: /r/askscience by /u/AutoModerator on 2024-12-18 15:00:41.

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The original post: /r/askscience by /u/Xtrouble_yt on 2024-12-17 20:40:19.

By genetic code I of course mean the set of rules for the language of genes, not just how genes are encoded in general. That is to say, somewhere it is somehow encoded that codons are three bases wide and that for example UGG is the code for Tryptophan… But the fact that the rules for this language are encoded in the language itself is puzzling to me as to how it can work? Not only that but from what I understand we’ve been successful at changing this code in the lab to add new amino acids to the table!! So we must not only know that it’s stored in there somewhere but be able to locate it, like, we must know the specific genes that code for the genetic code, no? Which makes me also wonder, do we know in which chromosome that is stored in humans? or perhaps it’s in all of them? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ but that’s not my main question, I’m more just wondering how the rules for the language are able to be written in the language itself. Thanks!

The original post: /r/askscience by /u/Several_Bank5722 on 2024-12-17 01:26:13.

Just interested as I've been studying physics for a couple of years but only touch on plasma references here and there but I'm genuinely stumped on what plasma could be used for. I know plasma cutters exist and somehow theres plasma in TVs from the gases interacting with electricity.

Are there variations of plasma used? Especially those used for real world application?