Recent comments in /f/askscience

sticklebat t1_j9z3v8i wrote

Wait long enough and every system will tend toward its highest entropy and typically lowest energy state. But then we’re not really talking about the effect of the magnet’s magnetic field anymore so that’s a whole different conversation that depends on things like the stability of atoms and protons.

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CattleDependent3989 t1_j9z29zy wrote

I find this kind of stuff extremely fascinating! As a child, I loved anything related to science. I remember having this mail order binder set, where every month they mailed a new insert on a topic and it was anything from the Hubble Space Telescope to DNA.

I remember reading about the Human Genome Project and how it was anticipated to be completed somewhere in the early 2000s and what they hoped to achieve with it. When they finally announced it’s completion, I was ecstatic! I couldn’t believe something I read about as a child was finally coming to life.

Nowadays, you can literally go to a Walmart and grab a kit, spit in a vial and know your genetic lineage and genetic predispositions to certain conditions as well as genetic traits. You can get a Pap Smear with HPV genotyping and find out if it’s of a certain genotype that increases your chance of developing cervical cancer by ~70%. You can test for the BRCA gene impairment and find out if you’ll likely develop breast cancer in your lifetime.

We don’t have flying cars and robots just yet, but holy hell we have come so far and it’s delicious

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greenappletree t1_j9z23l9 wrote

so in the brain we have two main type of neurons ( excitatory and inhibitory ) or glumate vs gaba. When glumate is release it causes a neuron to fire and thus exitatory. Adenosine is release when neurons fire sometimes (what we call presynaptic) and feed back onto itself, when it binds to the receptor it inhibit glutamate release and thus decreases activity. There are other mechnism, like I mentioned above such as increasing release of gaba, but I think this is the main one.

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numatter t1_j9z1zz3 wrote

Thank you for that. I was thinking in terms of Newtons 1st law of motion in a perfect vacuum (and over eons of time) and didn't consider that light itself has inertia and would affect its angular momentum as its being radiated. But, isn't it still conceivable that even down to the last atom of the magnet, there's a mathematical improbability that the spin would be zero, considering entropy? Or maybe the opposite is true, that entropy was working toward bringing the very last atom down to the lowest energy state possible, essentially converting any remaining angular momentum into light so that it can achieve the lowest energy state possible. I could see it going both ways, maybe even being in an entangled state of both outcomes until an observation is made.

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KenethSargatanas t1_j9z1ivk wrote

Water is created (and destroyed) in a huge number of chemical reactions. Acid+Base reactions are a notable example. For instance, Hydrochloric Acid and Sodium Hydroxide react to make Water and Salt. (HCl + NaOH -> NaCl + H2O)

So, plants using water as part of their biological processes are countered by other natural processes that create it.

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vasopressin334 t1_j9z0vri wrote

To be precise, plants convert water and carbon dioxide into carbohydrates through the process of photosynthesis. Those carbohydrates are not just used for energy - they are made into structural molecules that make up the plants themselves. For instance, cell walls in plants are essentially sugar polymers.

The lost water is therefore "captured" by the structure of the plant in an equal ratio to the carbon dioxide captured. This process is commonly referred to as "carbon capture" because people care more about atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Edit: This got some attention so let me add two more specific examples of water capture. The cellulose that makes up virtually every tree is a sugar polymer, so trees themselves are literally made of sugar. All of that involves captured water molecules that will only ever be released when the tree decays, burns down, or is eaten by termites.

A very different example is the fat in a camel's hump. When fatty acids are made, a great deal of water molecules are stripped of their hydrogens and the oxygen is released. Those water molecules are gone in a real sense, as the oxygen in them is gone. However, digesting that fatty acid requires adding the oxygen atoms back, and water and carbon dioxide is released. This is how camels "store" water in a form that is highly compact and actually devoid of the oxygen atom needed to make the water.

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MonkeyMoney101 t1_j9yxs4l wrote

When plants grow, they don't destroy the atoms that make up water (and carbon dioxide), they build new cells using them. Those cells break down when they die because the process that was supplying them with energy for homeostasis has ended. When the cells break down, those atoms are still there. If something eats them and there's water inside, they pee it out. It's always still there, somewhere.

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By_AspenRH t1_j9yxnur wrote

>if we eat plants , then it has to be lost forever.

It is not lost "forever" the molecules just breakdown and get combined into different things which eventually breakdown themselves or converted into something else, eventually the moluces (hydrogen and oxygen) get back to being water and so the cycle continues.

Nothing is "lost forever" because it has to go somewhere but it'll come back eventually in some shape or form.

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