You can have an electric field strength of zero, that is commonly called "no electric field". You could argue that zero is the strength of the existing field, but that's just semantics. In practice you won't achieve a field strength of exactly zero, of course, but that's just an experimental limit.

I recall reading elsewhere that the elements themselves (not compounds, per se) are distributed throughout the observable universe according to Zipf’s law (or something like it), so that they get less common as the atomic number increases. So, would it be a reasonable extrapolation to estimate compounds’ prevalence, then, by the chemical reactivities of their forming elements?

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Here's an article with a couple examples

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One definition of species is that they can't interbreed with fertile offspring.

But in many cases, they are distinct because they live too far apart.

It seems that lions and tigers can interbreed, but normally live too far apart.

The offspring, ligers and tigrons, depending on which one is the mom and which is the dad. But humans have spread all over the world.

Otherwise, we have carefully defined species such that there is only one of us!

Sounds like fun, source?

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Are all salts NaCl? I was under the assumption that salts were a family of compounds, of which NaCl is merely the most common?

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Reminds me of the story where a woman has a discussion with some guy at a conference. He mansplains to her that her theory is wrong, and she should really read a recent publication on the subject by X, who is considered a top authority in the field. She then tells the guy to take a look at her badge, because she's X.

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Now we need some armchair scientist to tell him he is wrong, citing his own paper.

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It is absolutely insane the amount of information that can be extracted from the "color" of incoming light. They're talking about trying to see the light from a distant star but not just any light. Specifically they are looking for light from that distant star when it passes through the atmosphere of a planet orbiting that star. The difference between that light and the light of the star can tell you about the chemical composition of the planet's atmosphere.

Would it be fair to say that you see it where you can and at rates you’d expect but don’t want to extrapolate because of the lack of direct evidence.

I just want to say you are incredibly smart and I really enjoy reading your explanations even though a lot of it is over my head. Thank you for sharing so much!

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Scales get weird in physics. A week or two ago I was explaining just how cold helium needs to be to display superfluidity and ended up describing something like 25K as “balmy”, which it is compared to 2.1K or whatever it was for helium.

Well... still stars but not with conventional fusion, they happen during much more extreme events such as supernovae explosion