Recent comments in /f/askscience

pathoj3nn t1_j6bzjmu wrote

Reply to comment by Kingnahum17 in Why can an adult’s GI tract expel C. botulinum spores while an infant can’t? by curiousnboredd

It’s more likely in that instance that the separated cheese came from a botulism infected source. Clostridium botulinum is a obligate anaerobe so it can’t grow in the air we breathe but it can grow in canned food. Can then gets super puffy and if someone doesn’t notice or realize the problem all the toxins go into the food. You can to cook the food at a high temperature for a long time to inactivate it making botulism one of the big food poisoning agents.

5

eyrieowl t1_j6by87q wrote

Reply to comment by CrustalTrudger in can gemstones be melted into a gradient? by Acceptable_Shift_247

So here's a thought: could you take a corundum crystal and dope one portion with Fe Ti to get a sapphire blue, and the other part with vanadium to get an amethyst hue. It wouldn't be exactly the all, but it would give the look of it. I have no doubt it would be prohibitively expensive to figure out the process, but... Is that even theoretically possible?

1

Objective_Regret4763 t1_j6bw595 wrote

Reply to comment by Ausoge in What does it actually mean to “burn fat” during exercise? by orange-robin

Actually fats are not much more complex than sugar molecules, if at all. Fats are essentially just 3 straight chain hydrocarbons that may or may not be saturated. Once lipolysis begins it is actually a faster process than breaking down glycogen and sugar. It’s just the body will delay initiating the process because our body prioritizes the use of glucose over fats for energy for various reasons.

Google a picture of triglycerides and a picture of glycogen and see which is more complex.

2

PopeBrendicus t1_j6bt0mp wrote

Reply to comment by RShArren in Is there an upper limit to structure size in a vacuum? Could a sufficiently advanced civilisation build a galaxy sized structure in space or would it become too massive and collapse in on itself? by CubanHermes

>Let's assume that the nanites are made of carbon

>the mass of the Moon is 10^22 kg. So one Moon is more than enough to build such a ring around the Galaxy...

Carbon is only available in trace amounts on the moon. Carbon makes up about 0.46% of the universe, but it's not like it's conveniently all in one place for mining.

6

ZekeDarwin t1_j6bs61q wrote

Reply to comment by Dbeka_X in Has a new animal species evolved since mankind’s existence? by coding_ac

Nah, absolutely not a certain metric. Biologists deal with life, and life is super complex. Way too complex to categorize into the little boxes that we desire.

Hybridization is very common in the animal kingdom, way more common than we realized in the early days of taxonomy… centuries before dna would be discovered.

7