Recent comments in /f/askscience

viscence t1_jci1l90 wrote

Reply to comment by the_fungible_man in Energy can not dissappear or be created, only change form, right? Earth is blasted by the sun 24/7, where does the excess energy go, because I guess it doesn't stay here or we'd cook by mr_greenmash

Oddly enough you can somewhat argue about both of these, as billions of years ago the gravitational effect of what would become the sun had a significant impact in getting that energy into what would become the earth... or that nuclear energy comes from isotopes formed from previous stars. It just becomes a matter of definitions at some point though.

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Ridley_Himself t1_jci18bb wrote

Reply to Energy can not dissappear or be created, only change form, right? Earth is blasted by the sun 24/7, where does the excess energy go, because I guess it doesn't stay here or we'd cook by mr_greenmash

Heat can be transferred in four basic ways: conduction, convection, advection, and radiation. While the first three require a medium, radiation can travel through a vacuum.

All objects will emit thermal radiation at an intensity and range of wavelengths dependent on their temperature. Earth’s thermal radiation is infrared.

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the_fungible_man t1_jci0mls wrote

Reply to comment by dangil in Energy can not dissappear or be created, only change form, right? Earth is blasted by the sun 24/7, where does the excess energy go, because I guess it doesn't stay here or we'd cook by mr_greenmash

>Basically every form of energy on earth available to humanity or not comes from the sun’s energy.

Two significant exceptions come to mind:

  • Nuclear energy does not come from the Sun.

  • Geothermal energy is not powered by the Sun.

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viscence t1_jchzsoa wrote

Reply to Over the course of a human lifetime, do any of the photons emitted by humans via blackbody radiation ever successfully make it through the atmosphere and into space? by hippofountain

At body temperature, you emit around one or two times ten to the power of 22 photons per sterradian per second per meter squared, at around several to tens of microns of wavelength. The atmosphere doesn't let all of these through, but a lot! if you have a surface area of 1 square meter and lived 80 years under an open cloudless sky of 2*pi sterradians, you've probably sent more than 100000000000000000000000000000000 photons into space.

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dangil t1_jchydwx wrote

Reply to Energy can not dissappear or be created, only change form, right? Earth is blasted by the sun 24/7, where does the excess energy go, because I guess it doesn't stay here or we'd cook by mr_greenmash

99.99??% of this energy is reflected or reemited by earth

The problem is that this tiny fraction can eventually increase the total energy inside earth. Depends on how well earth can radiate energy.

But ideally we let it all go except for a tiny fraction that builds biomass. Basically every form of energy on earth available to humanity or not comes from the sun’s energy.

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viscence t1_jchxkmb wrote

Reply to Energy can not dissappear or be created, only change form, right? Earth is blasted by the sun 24/7, where does the excess energy go, because I guess it doesn't stay here or we'd cook by mr_greenmash

The sun manages to transfer heat through a vacuum just fine -- radiatively, by emitting photons of light. That is also how the earth loses heat. Like the sun, the earth has a temperature and therefore glows, radiating away heat. The earth is a lot colder than the sun, so it radiates much less, and invisibly in the infrared.

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zekromNLR t1_jchro7m wrote

Reply to comment by aphilsphan in Is there a type of precipitation that exists on other planets but not ours? Or theoretical precipitation that doesn’t happen here? by ButIHateTheTaste

If Venus were cooled to a sufficiently cold temperature (to achieve that, most of the sunlight that hits it would need to be blocked), most of its supercritical CO2 atmosphere would condense out into an ocean of liquid CO2, that would then freeze over into a crust of dry ice hundreds of meters thick.

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Thick-Molasses-8960 t1_jchlpvl wrote

Reply to Does regularly taking aspirin reduce its effectiveness to reduce pain? by tiltedpyramid

No. There is no significant "tolerance" built for pain medication such as aspirin, acetaminophen(tylenol), or anitinflammatories. Especially not on a biophysical level the way opioid medications develop tolerance.

If you feel the effect of aspirin is reduced over time, it's more likely that 1) your pain is worse or 2) you use it often enough you are no longer "impressed" by the same level of pain relief

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mali73 t1_jch9lo4 wrote

Reply to comment by Bbrhuft in Radon is a monatomic gas, but its decay products are solids. After a decay, what happens to the individual atoms of the daughter elements? Do they stay suspended in the atmosphere or slowly rain out? by foodtower

Yes, you're right with compelling literature. I should've looked into the actual conditions the daughter joins are formed under but I typed it at 1am. I get rilled up if I see poor reasoning and tend to go after it without consideration of context and probably should've stopped after the first paragraph.

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