Pick a face. Or hit shuffle and read what they actually wrote.
Geoffrey Hintonu/geoffhintonGot the idea for dropout from his bank's tellers
John Matheru/johnmatherHis Nobel started with a thesis experiment that failed
Brian Schmidtu/Schmidt_and_FrancisWent looking for a slowing universe, found it speeding up
Randy Schekmanu/schekmanPromised Berkeley his Nobel parking spot won't squeeze anyone
Carolyn Bertozziu/Carolyn_BertozziHer Nobel chemistry idea came while writing a sophomore lecture
Paul Greengardu/DrGreengardRented his tails for the Nobel Prize ceremony
Buzz Aldrinu/BuzzAldrinHereAdmitted his own idea jammed Apollo 11's docking guidance
Scott Kellyu/StationCDRKellyExplained why your foot calluses fall off in space
Terry Virtsu/Astro-TerryLoves SpaceX because they delivered his clean underwear
Ron Garanu/RonGaranSays re-entry is Niagara Falls in a burning barrel
Ed Luu/edluB612His spacesuit cooling failed while he was sealed inside
Mike Massiminou/MikeMassiminoExplained that astronauts still pay income tax in orbit
Jeffrey Hoffmanu/jhoffma1A sleeping crewmate woke to a mystery hand. His own
Chris Hadfieldu/ColChrisHadfieldForgot his own shuttle commander's name on live TV
Mae Jemisonu/Dr_Mae_JemisonCalled Lt. Uhura an image of the possible
Mike Melvillu/Mike_MelvillBurt Rutan flew his homebuilt plane, then hired him
Anousheh Ansariu/Anousheh_AnsariAs a kid she prayed aliens would abduct her
Emily Lakdawallau/elakdawallaHyperventilated in the press room when Curiosity landed
Alex Filippenkou/AlexFilippenkoQuit chemistry after a couple of bad explosives accidents
Janna Levinu/Janna_LevinWarned that hiding behind a black hole doesn't work
Mike Brownu/Dr_Mike_BrownFound an icy cloud from a dwarf planet collision
Seth Shostaku/sshostakWhy aliens might still use radio: he still uses wheels
Yvette Cendesu/Andromeda321Unfolding paper beats all the radio energy astronomers ever caught
Craig DeForestu/Craig_DeForestExplained the Sun's corona to a 3- and 7-year-old
Katie Macku/astro_katieFixed neutrino detector parts from a boat inside Super-Kamiokande
Neil deGrasse Tysonu/neiltysonExplained why light never experiences any time at all
Brian Coxu/ProfessorBrianCoxPlanned what to eat while falling into a black hole
Sean Carrollu/seanmcarrollCalls the bearded biologist Sean B. Carroll his evil twin
Max Tegmarku/MaxTegmarkExplained why space has exactly three dimensions
Michio Kakuu/michiokakuauthorExplained string theory as a symphony of vibrating strings
Brian Greeneu/briangreeneauthorWonders if we're like dogs trying to get quantum mechanics
Stephen Hawkingu/Prof-Stephen-HawkingExplained AI risk with an anthill and a dam
Anthony Aguirreu/Anthony_AguirreExplained a universe with no center using Asteroids
Stephen Wolframu/StephenWolfram-RealMir lost a laptop to space, so support got called
Robert Sapolskyu/RobertSapolskyGot lost with a dozy baboon named Benjamin
George Churchu/George-ChurchExplained the rumor about his strange 1970s liquid diet
Eric Landeru/Eric_LanderWould rather sequence 100 duck-sized horses than one duck
Brian Fisheru/Brian_FisherPointed out Ant-Man's ants should all have been female
Carl Safinau/Carl_SafinaTold how an orca family decoyed the capture helicopters
Temple Grandinu/Prof_Temple_GrandinBuilt a pig ramp that fixed the wrong problem
Jerry Coyneu/Jerry_CoyneSees every squirrel through the eyes of natural selection
Heather Hendricksonu/Heather_HendricksonCalls phages trained assassins and antibiotics a nuclear bomb
Cassandra Quaveu/Cassandra_QuaveListed one grass's uses, from fork to wound dressing
David Eaglemanu/Dr_David_EaglemanExplained why the 10 percent brain myth won't die
Julia Shawu/Dr_Julia_ShawA false memory researcher who says your past is fiction
David Dunningu/Dr_David_DunningNever named the Dunning-Kruger effect, just stuck with it
Chris Frenchu/Prof_Chris_FrenchSays haunted house vigils are like watching paint dry
Jane Goodallu/janegoodall_officialWas sad Tarzan married the wrong Jane
Ed Boydenu/Ed_BoydenMakes brain tissue physically bigger to see it better
Francis Collinsu/NIHDirectorHopes he didn't say junk DNA, at least not often
Adrian Owenu/ProfAdrianOwenAsked unresponsive patients questions using a brain scanner and tennis
Eric Greenu/Eric_GreenRuns genomics research but never heard the word in school
Matt Parkeru/standupmathsConfessed his crank belief that 2 and 3 aren't prime
James Grimeu/JamesGrimeBecame a mathematician because, he says, he is lazy
Hannah Fryu/HannahFryExplained why always and never are bad signs in arguments
Jordan Ellenbergu/Jordan-EllenbergTold a struggling calculus student that math is just hard
Edward Frenkelu/EdwardFrenkelExplained why math would exist even without Pythagoras
Yann LeCunu/ylecunShared his family's recipe for an awesome sandwich
Yoshua Bengiou/yoshua_bengioCalled the coming language breakthrough back in 2014
Andrew Ngu/andrewyngRecalled building one of the first GPU deep learning codes
Jürgen Schmidhuberu/JuergenSchmidhuberGot teased about his Schmidhubris by Joseph Weizenbaum
Jeff Deanu/jeffatgoogleA paperwork mix-up made Geoffrey Hinton his summer intern
Ian Goodfellowu/goodfellow_ianExplained why his GANs couldn't write words back then
Luis von Ahnu/vonahnGot quizzed in Portuguese by 1,000 Duolingo users in Brazil
Tim Berners-Leeu/timblListed the names he almost gave the Web instead
Radia Perlmanu/rjp2022RedmondDesigned spanning tree in one night, then wrote a poem
Bjarne Stroustrupu/bstroustrupWhy Dennis Ritchie didn't mind C++: he helped build it
Tom Crowtheru/Tom_CrowtherCompared ignoring climate change to ignoring an oncoming bus
Kerry Emanuelu/kerryemanuelExplained the speed limit on how strong hurricanes can get
Josh Willisu/ClimateElvisFailed his physics exam and became a happier oceanographer
Forrest M. Mims IIIu/Forrest_MimsHand-lettered a bestselling electronics book in India ink
Hugh Herru/Hugh_HerrOnce made his climbing legs tall enough to stand 3m
Burt Rutanu/Burt_RutanCalled a glider pilot a liar, then watched him fly
Robert Zubrinu/RobertMZubrinWants Mars soil shipped home so he's buried in it
Scott Manleyu/illectroSays Hullo because nobody would ever ban Hull
Bill Nyeu/sundialbillPicked Earth as his favorite planet, for the air
Emily Calandrelliu/emilycalThinks the world needs a thousand Bill Nyes
Karl Kruszelnickiu/DrKarlKruszelnickiLearned from Bo Diddley why repeat questions never get old
Derek Mulleru/veritasiumBill Nye drilled him on tying a bow tie
Randall Munroeu/xkcdLost a geography bee thinking Illinois was closer to Spain
Carl Zimmeru/CarlZimmerTapeworms don't make you thin, but their eggs can crawl
Ed Yongu/edyong209Described the mantis shrimp as Thor with really good eyes
Alie Wardu/AlieWardWent looking for a fancier word, found a real chickenologist
Michael Stevensu/Michael_StevensHunted four years for the postcard behind an album coverA redditor wrote, in r/MachineLearning: AMA: We are the Google Brain team. We'd love to answer your questions about machine learning.
There were actually three aha moments. One was in about 2004 when Radford Neal suggested to me that the brain might be big because it was learning a large ensemble of models. I thought this would be a very inefficient…
A redditor wrote, in r/MachineLearning: AMA: We are the Google Brain team. We'd love to answer your questions about machine learning.
I did not like experimental psychology. The kinds of theories they were willing to entertain were hopelessly simple. So I became a carpenter for a year. I wasn't very good at that so I did a PhD in AI. Unfortunately…
A redditor wrote, in r/MachineLearning: AMA Geoffrey Hinton
Terry Sejnowski had the idea of combining simulated annealing with Hopfield nets. We then figured out that the neurons would have to use the logistic function to make this work. Initially we thought of these stochastic Hopfield nets as just…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I am Dr. John Mather, Nobel Laureate and James Webb Space Telescope Project Scientist, AMA
2. The Nobel work came by a roundabout path. My thesis project at Berkeley was chosen because it was exciting and I liked the professors. Then it failed to function and I thought I would give up on the cosmic…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I am Dr. John Mather, Nobel Laureate and James Webb Space Telescope Project Scientist, AMA
I think people have a really hard time grasping how empty outer space is, in the sense of immense distances between objects, and immense time spent going from one to another. There's a lot of talk about space aliens as…
A redditor wrote, in r/askscience: AskScience AMA Series: We are Brian Schmidt and Paul Francis, Cosmology researchers and professors at Australian National University. AUA!
We were trying to measure how the Universe was slowing down (its expansion - where everything in the Universe moves away from everything else) over time - Predicted by General Relativity - instead we found the Universe was speeding up…
A redditor wrote, in r/askscience: AskScience AMA Series: We are Brian Schmidt and Paul Francis, Cosmology researchers and professors at Australian National University. AUA!
I love both - Ia's gave me Nobel Prize, and Type II's gave me my PhD thesis. Ia's are the more spectacular explosions - but type IIs make the Carbon and Oxygen that allow us to exist...
A redditor wrote, in r/askscience: AskScience AMA Series: We are Brian Schmidt and Paul Francis, Cosmology researchers and professors at Australian National University. AUA!
So we burned to the ground on 18 January 2003 - See for example http://www.naturalhistorymag.com/htmlsite/0405/images/0405feature4.jpg Paul and I were part of a project to map the southern sky - (we started on 1 January 2013) - We would have completed…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I’m Randy Schekman, co-recipient of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, awarded this past Tuesday. Ask me anything.
No, I am n the Li Ka Shing building. Fortunately, there are usually enough spaces in the garage in which I park that the addition of my NL spot will have little to no effect on the freedom of others to park in this garage.
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I’m Randy Schekman, co-recipient of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, awarded this past Tuesday. Ask me anything.
My work has already yielded practical applications. When we found that yeast cells use a pathway of secretion similar to animal cells, the biotech industry engineered yeast to express and secrete useful quantities of human proteins such as insulin.
A redditor wrote, in r/science: Science AMA Series: I am Carolyn Bertozzi, Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University, & Editor-in-Chief of ACS Central Science. I study how sugar molecules on the surfaces of cells let them “talk” to each other. AMAA.
From a practical perspective, teaching can be a muse for new research ideas. Indeed, we developed a reaction called "copper-free click chemistry" that exploits the ring strain of a cyclooctyne reagent to activate its reaction with azides. That idea came…
A redditor wrote, in r/science: Science AMA Series: I am Carolyn Bertozzi, Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University, & Editor-in-Chief of ACS Central Science. I study how sugar molecules on the surfaces of cells let them “talk” to each other. AMAA.
I started as a biology major, maybe premed, but then fell in love with organic chemistry - synthesis and mechanism, really - when I took the intro organic chemistry course my sophomore year. After that year, I tried to get…
A redditor wrote, in r/science: Science AMA Series: I am Carolyn Bertozzi, Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University, & Editor-in-Chief of ACS Central Science. I study how sugar molecules on the surfaces of cells let them “talk” to each other. AMAA.
One thing I did learn in grad school which has been immensely helpful in all areas of life is how to be a "closer". That is, how to bring a project to a stage of completion where you have a…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: IamA Nobel Laureate, Dr. Paul Greengard, Director of The Fisher Center for Alzheimer's Research. AMA!
The Nobel Foundation requires that one wear tails. Tuxedos are not acceptable. I rented my tails!
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I am Buzz Aldrin, engineer, American astronaut, and the second person to walk on the moon during the Apollo 11 moon landing. AMA!
I believe it was after leaving the surface of the moon and completing a successful rendezvous with Mike Collins in the command module, as we approached connecting / docking, the procedures in the checklist said one thing, and I thought…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I am Dr. Buzz Aldrin, back again on reddit. I am an aeroastro engineer, and crew member of humanity's first landing on the moon. AMA!
To continue trying to fix the problem until the lack of oxygen caused us go to sleep.
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I am Buzz Aldrin, engineer, American astronaut, and the second person to walk on the moon during the Apollo 11 moon landing. AMA!
"Where are the billions and billions and billions of people, on what I'm looking at? We're the only 3 that are not back there." And we didn't get to celebrate. Because we were out of town.
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I am Buzz Aldrin, engineer, American astronaut, and the second person to walk on the moon during the Apollo 11 moon landing. AMA!
My first words of my impression of being on the surface of the Moon that just came to my mind was "Magnificent desolation." The magnificence of human beings, humanity, Planet Earth, maturing the technologies, imagination and courage to expand our…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I am Astronaut Scott Kelly, currently spending a year in space. AMA!
The calluses on your feet in space will eventually fall off. So, the bottoms of your feet become very soft like newborn baby feet. But the top of my feet develop rough alligator skin because I use the top of…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I am Astronaut Scott Kelly, currently spending a year in space. AMA!
Your arms don't hang by your side in space like they do on Earth because there is no gravity. It feels awkward to have them floating in front of me. It is just more comfortable to have them folded. I…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I am Scott Kelly, retired NASA astronaut. AMA!
After my first flight, I had a tendency to want to that. I definitely tried to float out of bed to go to the bathroom.
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I am Scott Kelly, former NASA astronaut and author of ENDURANCE—ask me anything!
That they were always the smartest kid in the class, and I was not.
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I'm Astronaut Col. Terry Virts – Ask Me Anything!
I'm a big fan of SpaceX. They sent up two cargo ships of food and clean underwear for me while I was up there, so I'm 100% supportive of commercial space flights!
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I'm Astronaut Col. Terry Virts – Ask Me Anything!
I gained about 5 cm while in space. I was finally six foot tall! Sadly, as soon as our feet hit the plant we go back to our original height :(
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I'm Astronaut Col. Terry Virts – Ask Me Anything!
There were a few- but a small piece of equipment came loose during my first launch and it banged against the back wall and made a loud noise- we were all 😳😳😳. Luckily it was OK! we found it floating…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I'm Astronaut Col. Terry Virts – Ask Me Anything!
I was worried about that at first, but it was actually the easiest and best sleep I've ever had in my life!
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: IAmA NASA Astronaut that recently returned to Earth after a 1/2 year in space. I'm brand new to reddit (like hours ago) AMA
it was like going over Niagara Falls in a barrel (that's on fire) followed by a high speed crash
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: IAmA NASA Astronaut that recently returned to Earth after a 1/2 year in space. I'm brand new to reddit (like hours ago) AMA
I have done 4 spacewalks (in total I have been "outside over 27 hours) It's actually not that quiet since your spacesuit has fans running (you're basically in your own self-contained spaceship)
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I am NASA astronaut Ron Garan, I want to do an AMA but instead I want to ask you: What do you think NASA should do next? What's should be the next destination for human space exploration?
Part of my brain said, "This is an amazingly beautiful experience" - another part said, "Yeah, it's beautiful but it's not real" since on my 1st spacewalk I had no experience base to compare it to, part of me couldn't accept it was real
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: IAmA NASA Astronaut that recently returned to Earth after a 1/2 year in space. I'm brand new to reddit (like hours ago) AMA
While sleeping I free floated (interesting that I usually woke up up-side-down - in relation to my stuff)
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I am Ed Lu - former NASA astronaut and now running the B612 Foundation which is building an asteroid spotting space telescope
We were actually just getting suited up on ISS for a spacesuit test. Yuri and I were in the airlock, and all buttoned up in our EVA suits. Then the cooling failed in my suit. But the suit generates a…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I'm retired astronaut Ed Lu, now running the B612 Foundation. We are a private organization at the forefront of protecting the Earth from asteroid impacts. AMA!
BTW, the only time I actually spoke to Carl Sagan was when I was an undergrad at Cornell. I was late for something and running down a hall in the physics building. I came around a corner and nearly ran…
u/edluB612 wrote, in r/IAmA: I'm retired astronaut Ed Lu, now running the B612 Foundation. We are a private organization at the forefront of protecting the Earth from asteroid impacts. AMA!
BTW, my crewmates and I on Shuttle mission STS-106 all watched Galaxy Quest in crew quarters just before our launch! "Never Give Up!"
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I’m Mike Massimino, former NASA Astronaut and author of Spaceman. AMA!
Income taxes yes, sales tax no - there is nothing to buy up there...unless you sop online They still pay us while in space, but we dont get any overtime or even harzardous duty pay
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I’m Mike Massimino, former NASA Astronaut and author of Spaceman. AMA!
I love the food in space, I was one of the few astronauts who gained weight in space - some of my favorites: shrimp cocktail, macaroni and cheese, lasagna, and chocolate fudge cake..... no wonder I gained weight.
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: IamA former NASA astronaut with 1000 hours aboard the Space Shuttle and a professor in MITâs Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. I'm Jeff Hoffmanâ Ask Me Anything!
The most surprising thing that anyone found floating in front of his face was, I think, his own hand! When you are weightless, you can lose track of your arms and legs if you are totally relaxed. A sleeping astronaut…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: IamA former NASA astronaut with 1000 hours aboard the Space Shuttle and a professor in MITâs Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. I'm Jeff Hoffmanâ Ask Me Anything!
The most critical mission was the rescue/repair of the Hubble Space Telescope. On the first day, after replacing the gyroscopes, the main door would not close, which would have doomed the telescope. It took us an hour to figure out…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: IamA former NASA astronaut with 1000 hours aboard the Space Shuttle and a professor in MITâs Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. I'm Jeff Hoffmanâ Ask Me Anything!
Dust in space is a real problem, because it doesn't fall to the ground. The air is constantly circulated through filters to remove dust and lint, but we need to be careful to minimize the amount of dust created -…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: IamA former NASA astronaut with 1000 hours aboard the Space Shuttle and a professor in MITâs Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. I'm Jeff Hoffmanâ Ask Me Anything!
On my last flight (STS-75 in 1996) we deployed the tethered satellite, a 1.5 m diameter sphere that remained attached to the shuttle by a 20 km long wire. Looking up at the wire disappearing into space, I felt like Jack looking up at the beanstalk!
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I Am Astronaut Chris Hadfield, currently orbiting planet Earth.
During my 2nd spaceflight, while doing a live National TV News broadcast, I forgot the name of the Space Shuttle Commander. He always went by his nickname of Rommel, and to come up with Kent Rominger somehow escaped me. Instead…
A redditor wrote, in r/pics: I met Col. Chris Hadfield today, and the one photo I get with him I look like a complete jerk for ignoring his handshake.
I'm not sure what you photoshopped. This is what I remember having happened.
A redditor wrote, in r/science: Science AMA Series: Ask Me Anything about learning and teaching science! I’m Dr. Mae Jemison—physician, engineer, educator, entrepreneur, Bayer national science literacy advocate, lead of 100 Year Starship, and oh yeah, first woman of color astronaut—AMA!
Hello, actually I was interested in science very early on. Lt Uhura was an image of the possible. My best role models were my parents.
A redditor wrote, in r/science: XPrize AMA: Hi I’m Mike Melvill, the world’s first commercial (non-governmental) astronaut. Self-taught engineer, I took up piloting mid-life and went on to fly the first private spacecraft into space at 63. AMA!
Sad to say you just have to be lucky! I happened to buy a set of plans to build a homebuilt plane. The designer happened to be Burt Rutan! I had never heard of Burt. When It was flying My…
In a thread on r/science: XPrize AMA: Hi I’m Mike Melvill, the world’s first commercial (non-governmental) astronaut. Self-taught engineer, I took up piloting mid-life and went on to fly the first private spacecraft into space at 63. AMA!
We got permission from the base commander of Edwards Air Force Base to take off in the mother ship, Whiteknight with me hanging under its belly in SpaceShipOne, climb to around 50,000 feet, and then drop the SS1 off the…
A redditor wrote, in r/science: XPrize AMA: Hi I’m Mike Melvill, the world’s first commercial (non-governmental) astronaut. Self-taught engineer, I took up piloting mid-life and went on to fly the first private spacecraft into space at 63. AMA!
Good question Swag_train! I have had several scary moments, including a few engine out forced landings, but the one that sticks in my mind was a flight test involving spins in a small two place aircraft designed by my Boss…
A redditor wrote, in r/science: Prize AMA: I am Anousheh Ansari, the first woman and first Iranian to fly to space as a private citizen, not on behalf of a government. AMA!
I wanted to go to space since I was 6 years old. I never knew how because I was living in Iran but I just knew I would find a way. I even prayed for aliens to abduct me :)
A redditor wrote, in r/science: Prize AMA: I am Anousheh Ansari, the first woman and first Iranian to fly to space as a private citizen, not on behalf of a government. AMA!
are you kidding? an Astronaut :) Specifically I wanted to be Ms. Spock. I wanted to be the Science Officer on board space ship Enterprise!
A redditor wrote, in r/space: I’m Emily Lakdawalla, planetary evangelist for The Planetary Society — AMA about Rosetta and Philae
Man, that's tough. Landings like Philae's are always really stressful. I remember all of them quite clearly. But then they're followed by the euphoria of seeing that first photo from the surface. I was with the science teams for both…
A redditor wrote, in r/space: I’m Emily Lakdawalla, planetary evangelist for The Planetary Society — AMA about Rosetta and Philae
It had an internal flywheel that spun up before it was released from Rosetta to give it stability. The moment it touched down the first time, the flywheel began to spin down. That turns out to have been insanely fortunate…
A redditor wrote, in r/space: I’m Emily Lakdawalla, planetary evangelist for The Planetary Society — AMA about New Horizons at Pluto
First of all, it's not really that dim; it's like twilight on Earth. Do a Google search on "Pluto time" for explainers on that. Second of all, just as in photography on Earth, you choose a camera detector and an…
A redditor posted in r/Damnthatsinteresting: Cosmic Dress
Hey, that's me, in a skirt I designed using photos from Cassini, and printed at Spoonflower, and stitched myself. The woman behind me is National Geographic reporter Nadia Drake in a dress from Belle Neptune that also uses Cassini photos…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I'm Alex Fillipenko, Astrophysist at Berkeley, and contributor to History Channel's 'The Universe', promoting 3.14 pi day! AMA
I've always been fascinated by science. From ages 10 through 17, my main interest was chemistry, but as a freshman in high school I was given a small telescope. With it, I "discovered" Saturn -- the third "star" at which…
A redditor wrote, in r/space: I am Alex Filippenko, astrophysicist and enthusiastic science popularizer at the University of California, Berkeley. Today is Astronomy Day, a good public outreach opportunity for this "gateway science," so go ahead and AMA.
It's actually a misconception that a vacuum exerts a force that "sucks" air into it. Air can spread out from where it is located, into a vacuum if there's one nearby. But Earth's gravity keeps the air in our atmosphere from spreading out into space.
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I am Alex Filippenko, astrophysicist at the University of California, Berkeley, and noted science popularizer, celebrating Astronomy Day today. AMA.
Yes, that's right. I think current estimates place the volume of the entire Universe to be at least 80 times the volume of the observable part of our Universe. But in fact, the entire Universe may well be far, far…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I am Alex Filippenko, astrophysicist at the University of California, Berkeley, and noted science popularizer, celebrating Astronomy Day today. AMA.
Well, one of the things I tell them is that each of them is special in a cosmic sense, not just an insignificant speck of dust in the Universe, because they have the intellectual capacity to understand what scientists are…
A redditor wrote, in r/science: Science AMA Series: I'm Janna Levin—astrophysicist, author, and host of NOVA's "Black Hole Apocalypse." Ask me anything about black holes, the universe, life, whatever!
All black holes, rotating or not, allow you to see behind them because even light travels along the curved spacetime. If you were to shine a flashlight directly “behind” (can’t say which is the front or the back) a black…
A redditor wrote, in r/science: Science AMA Series: I'm Janna Levin—astrophysicist, author, and host of NOVA's "Black Hole Apocalypse." Ask me anything about black holes, the universe, life, whatever!
There is no expansion inside a gigantic black hole. The expansion of the universe has a domain of domination, the largest scales. The black hole overpowers that expansion locally, on the scale of the interior of the black hole. As…
A redditor wrote, in r/science: Science AMA Series: I'm Janna Levin—astrophysicist, author, and host of NOVA's "Black Hole Apocalypse." Ask me anything about black holes, the universe, life, whatever!
If only we knew. Here the predictions of general relativity become unreliable. Like a dying man scrawling in the dirt, relativity is telling us something as it breaks down. The singularity is a clue not a genuine prediction, a clue…
A redditor wrote, in r/science: Science AMA Series: I'm Janna Levin—astrophysicist, author, and host of NOVA's "Black Hole Apocalypse." Ask me anything about black holes, the universe, life, whatever!
Yes, I love this. Think of a black hole as inducing a rotation of space into time and time into space for an infalling astronaut relative to a space traveller at a safe distance. At the event horizon the rotation…
A redditor wrote, in r/science: Science AMA Series: I'm Mike Brown, a planetary astronomer at Caltech and Fellow at the California Academy of Sciences. I explore the outer parts of our solar system trying to understand how planetary systems get put together. Also I killed Pluto. Sorry. AMA!
When we first discovered the dwarf planet Haumea we knew it was weird. Almost as dense as pure rock, but covered in pure ice, spinning faster than ANY large body in the solar system (~4 hrs!), and shaped like a…
A redditor wrote, in r/science: Science AMA Series: I'm Mike Brown, a planetary astronomer at Caltech and Fellow at the California Academy of Sciences. I explore the outer parts of our solar system trying to understand how planetary systems get put together. Also I killed Pluto. Sorry. AMA!
I have had the privilege of naming Eris, Dysnomia, Haumea, Namaka, Hi'iaka, Makemake, Orcus, Vanth, Quaoar, Weywoot, Sedna.... I think that's it. There's also an asteroid named for me: Mikebrown. As I like to say, it's oddly inclined, and not very bright.
A redditor wrote, in r/science: I’m Seth Shostak, and I direct the search for extraterrestrials at the SETI Institute in California. We’re trying to find evidence of intelligent life in space: aliens at least as clever as we are. AMA!
I still use the wheel every day. It's old, but it never ceases to be useful.
A redditor wrote, in r/askscience: AskScience AMA Series: I am Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI institute. Ask Me Anything!
In the case of the 1997 false alarm we had, I just got very nervous, and worried about canceling all the meetings on my calendar for the next two weeks. And then realized that this was going to change my job for a lot longer than that!
In a thread on r/IAmA: I'm Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute AMA.
Our galaxy has roughly a trillion planets. Hard to imagine that they're ALL sterile. Traveling between galaxies is hard ... typical distances are millions of light-years. That's a trip that, even with our fastest rockets, would take longer than the…
A redditor wrote, in r/askscience: AskScience AMA Series: I am Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI institute. Ask Me Anything!
Actually, I've never asked them this! But I don't think any of the scientists would work here if they didn't think that biology is more of an infection than a miracle. Heck, this is the Silicon Valley. There are better-paying jobs across the street ...
A redditor posted in r/AskReddit: What fact or statistic seems like obvious exaggeration, but isn't?
Radio astronomer here! You exert more energy when you unfold a single piece of paper than we have collected in all the radio waves we have ever collected from outer space.
A redditor posted in r/AskReddit: What is surprisingly NOT scientifically proven?
Astronomer here! Many of you have likely heard about pulsars, which are neutron stars the size of a city that rotate as fast as thousands of times a second (and, at slowest, a few seconds per spin). We know this…
A redditor posted in r/AskReddit: What false facts are thought as real ones because of film industry?
Astronomer here! There are a lot of bad things people think are true about astronomy because of movies, but to just highlight one: asteroid fields are completely different than what most people think they're like. People tend to think of…
A redditor posted in r/AskReddit: What's the smallest decision you made that had the biggest impact on your life?
From 6-12th grade (or age 11-18 for those not from the USA), I had a school bus ride home that lasted about an hour. It sucked, and I spent the morning going in doing homework and the afternoon home reading…
A redditor wrote, in r/science: Science AMA Series: I'm Craig DeForest, a solar astrophysicist. I’m here to talk about next week’s eclipse: how to view it safely, what to look for, why you should plan to be in the path of totality, and logistics of getting there.
The corona is the largest, brightest object in the sky -- other than the Sun. The problem is that you can never really see it, because the Sun is so bright. An eclipse is a great chance to see it…
A redditor wrote, in r/science: Science AMA Series: I'm Craig DeForest, a solar astrophysicist. I’m here to talk about next week’s eclipse: how to view it safely, what to look for, why you should plan to be in the path of totality, and logistics of getting there.
If you're a 4 hour freeway drive away from totality, you'll see about a 90% partial eclipse (90% of the Sun occulted). If there are no clouds, you will see some optical effects -- like "gloomy sunlight" that feels a…
A redditor wrote, in r/science: I'm Dr. Katie Mack, an astrophysicist studying dark matter, black holes, and the early universe, AMA.
This is a really tough question. As a theorist, I don't often get to see new data come in that I've been involved with, and I haven't yet seen any of my ideas totally confirmed or falsified. There've been a…
A redditor wrote, in r/science: I'm Dr. Katie Mack, an astrophysicist studying dark matter, black holes, and the early universe, AMA.
I usually like to start with something like the intro to this piece -- I tell them that when they touch the table, what they're feeling is the electromagnetic repulsion (or, you know, I use some less jargony way of…
A redditor wrote, in r/askscience: AskScience AMA Series: I'm Dr. Katie Mack, theoretical astrophysicist, TED Fellow, and author of The End of Everything, which describes five possible ways the universe could end. I'm here to answer questions about cosmic apocalypses, the universe in general, and writing (or tweeting) about science!
Thank you! The things I struggled with most were landings (which are always the hardest part, I suppose) -- especially short-field and soft-field landings -- and soft-field take-offs. And I still get super nervous whenever I have to talk to…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I am Neil deGrasse Tyson -- AMA
yes. Precisely. Which means ----- are you seated? Photons have no ticking time at all, which means, as far as they are concerned, they are absorbed the instant they are emitted, even if the distance traveled is across the universe itself.
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I am Neil deGrasse Tyson -- AMA
1) The fact that an electron has no known size -- it's smaller than the smallest measurement we have ever made of anything. 2) That Quarks come only in pairs: If you try to separate two of them, the energy…
A redditor wrote, in r/space: I'm Brian Cox, Professor of Physics, Touring Speaker, Author, Host of BBC Documentaries and Podcasts. Ask Me Anything!
It depends on the mass of the black hole. For a small black hole you have less time before you meet the end of time at the singularity and so maybe a quick curry, whereas for a supermassive black hole…
A redditor wrote, in r/space: I'm Brian Cox, Professor of Physics, Touring Speaker, Author, Host of BBC Documentaries and Podcasts. Ask Me Anything!
A black hole is essentially pure spacetime geometry, and the paths of photons 'follow' the geometry as it were. There are lots of ways of thinking about this. One is to use the equivalent principle, If you fire a laser…
A redditor wrote, in r/space: I'm Brian Cox, Professor of Physics, Touring Speaker, Author, Host of BBC Documentaries and Podcasts. Ask Me Anything!
The singularity inside a Schwarzschild black hole (not spinning) is actually a moment in time - the end of time in fact. it's not a place in space. Inside an eternal Kerr (spinning) black hole it's a ring.
A redditor wrote, in r/askscience: AskScience AMA Series: I’m Sean Carroll, physicist and author of best-selling book THE BIG PICTURE. Ask Me Anything about the universe and what it means!
There is photographic evidence that we can exist in the same spatial vicinity without mutual destruction. But he is clearly the evil twin, given the evidence of the beard.
A redditor wrote, in r/askscience: AskScience AMA Series: I’m Sean Carroll, physicist and author of best-selling book THE BIG PICTURE. Ask Me Anything about the universe and what it means!
As an author, as long as you've purchased the book, your work here is done.
A redditor posted in r/seancarroll: Sean Carroll's new book - acknowledgements
Spoiler alert: the last paragraph of the acknowledgements reads as follows. "Thanks also to Jennifer for bringing into our lives Ariel and Caliban, the best writing-partner cats an author could ask for. No actual cats were subjected to thought experiments during the composition of this book."
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: IamA Max Tegmark – AMA!
As described in https://arxiv.org/pdf/gr-qc/9702052.pdf and in my 1st book (http://mathematicaluniverse.org), you can't have stable atoms or solar systems if there are more than 3 spatial dimensions, you don't have gravitational attraction in less than 3, and you can't predict anything…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I am Max Tegmark, an MIT physics professor fascinated by our universe and others, black holes, consciousness, AI and the future of humanity. AMA=Ask Max Anything!
The undergrad pranks are mindblowing. One morning, I looked out my office window to see a life-size replica of the Apollo 11 Lunar Lander atop the great dome.
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I am Max Tegmark, an MIT physics professor fascinated by our universe and others, black holes, consciousness, AI and the future of humanity. AMA=Ask Max Anything!
I'm betting against it. I used to think that this was a pity, but I've changed my mind: it's actually very convenient for us if malevolent extraterrestrials are unable to reach us for billions of years even if their technology…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: IamA Max Tegmark – AMA!
I think that consciousness is the way information feels when being processed in certain complex ways. To me, the exciting remaining challenge is to clarify what precisely those "certain complex ways" are, so that we can predict which entities are conscious. :-)
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I am Michio Kaku, physicist, futurist and author of **The Future of Humanity**. AMA!
Briefly, each sub atomic particle we see (and there are hundreds of them) are nothing but tiny vibrations of a string, a rubble band. So each particle is just a musical note. That explains why we have so many particles…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I am Michio Kaku, physicist, futurist and author of THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY-AMA!!
I do not think we live in a computer simulation. No digital computer can compute all the motions of molecules in a simple object, e.g. the weather. The smallest object which can simulate the weather is the weather itself. When…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I am Michio Kaku, physicist, futurist and author of **The Future of Humanity**. AMA!
No one knows. But one possibility is that the universe is a bubble of some sort. We live on the skin of the bubble. If you travel in one direction far enough, you come back to where you started. So…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I am Michio Kaku, physicist, futurist and author of THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY-AMA!!
Thank you. We are all born scientists. We are born wondering where we came from, why the sun shines, why the stars twinkle, etc. But eventually we hit one of the greatest destroyers of science known to science, high school…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I am Brian Greene, Theoretical Physicist & author of "Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe" AMA!
From my perspective, the biggest questions are (a) the nature of spacetime and (b) the nature of consciousness. Regarding limits to human knowledge--there could well be things we are unable to understand. Take dogs. They're smart creatures but they seemingly…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I am Brian Greene, Theoretical Physicist & author of "Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe" AMA!
I do. I hold to a so-called physicalist perspective that imagines consciousness/mind not requiring any "spark" or "force" or "substance" that stands outside the very same types of ingredients that make up my desk or coffee cup. Some recoil at…
u/Prof-Stephen-Hawking posted in r/science: Science AMA Series: Stephen Hawking AMA Answers!
You’re right: media often misrepresent what is actually said. The real risk with AI isn’t malice but competence. A superintelligent AI will be extremely good at accomplishing its goals, and if those goals aren’t aligned with ours, we’re in trouble…
A redditor wrote, in r/science: Science AMA Series: I’m Anthony Aguirre, Professor of Physics at UC Santa Cruz. I’m searching for other universes, trying to understand black holes, bringing funding to not-quite-crazy physics, worrying about superintelligent AI, and crowd-forecasting the future. AMA!
The balloon metaphor is good but suffers from the flaw that people always ask about the inside and outside of the balloon, when you're supposed to imagine being a flatlander stuck on its surface. Here's another way to think about…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I'm Stephen Wolfram (Mathematica, NKS, Wolfram|Alpha, ...), Ask Me Anything
There are so many; very hard to pick just one. An old one for Mathematica: Mike Foale was using it on the Mir space station; there was an accident; the computer it was on got sucked into space; Mike had…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I'm Stephen Wolfram---Ask Me Anything
Richard Feynman and I had rather different styles of solving problems ... so there was often a certain amount of "I don't understand what you're talking about" on both sides. We worked on quantum computing back around 1982 or so…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I'm Stephen Wolfram---Ask Me Anything
I sometimes think the problem is not the creation of artificial intelligence, but the avoidance of artificial stupidity... I put some of my favorites from the history of Wolfram|Alpha in http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2012/04/overcoming-artificial-stupidity/ E.g. "all the king's horses" used to be interpreted…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I'm Stephen Wolfram---Ask Me Anything
I'm certainly no expert on fighting ... but here's how I might approach the problem. Basically I would want to make models of these creatures---their mechanics, and if possible their behaviors. I know Mathematica has been used a bunch to…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I'm Robert Sapolsky, a neurobiologist/primatologist at Stanford. Ask me anything
There was this young adult male who I really liked in one of my troops (name was Benjamin). He was a little on the dozy side, and one day I was doing a lengthy observational sample on him and it…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I'm Robert Sapolsky, a neurobiologist/primatologist at Stanford. Ask me anything
Well, there was one that struck me as hugely unusual coming out of my baboon research (which is to say that it sure struck me as unexpected, but all sorts of sensible people would not have been at all surprised)…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I'm Robert Sapolsky, a neurobiologist/primatologist at Stanford. Ask me anything
The social culture of that troop continued for about 15 more years, and it was a bit lucky -- male baboons change troops at puberty, so there'd be a new adolescent male show up now and then. Invariably, having grown…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I'm Robert Sapolsky, a neurobiologist/primatologist at Stanford. Ask me anything
Nonetheless, there are types of stress that are not damaging. In fact, there are types that are so great that you pay to experience it -- eg., a roller coaster, a good scary movie. This sort of good stress has…
A redditor wrote, in r/science: Science AMA Series: I’m George Church, professor at Harvard and MIT, founder of PersonalGenomes.org. My lab develops technologies for sequencing genomes, editing DNA in living cells, and harnessing DNA as a molecular tool. AMA!
The record for DNA persistence is 700,000 years (stored under less than ideal circumstances in a yukon horse). Stored in a dry, anoxic state this could be longer. As with other archival systems, redundancy is key. No energy is required…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I am Eric Lander, a leader of the Human Genome Project and presidential advisor on science and technology. Ask me anything!
No contest: I'd rather map the genome of 100 duck-sized horses than 1 horse-sized duck! With 100, you get information about the population genetics. So you can learn cool things about why some of the duck-sized horses can fly better…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I am Eric Lander, a leader of the Human Genome Project and presidential advisor on science and technology. Ask me anything!
Two memories: (1) Getting on the phone every Thursday at 11am Eastern for three years, with the same group of people around the world dedicated to a common goal. We argued with each other, yelled at each other, cajoled each…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I am Eric Lander, a leader of the Human Genome Project and presidential advisor on science and technology. Ask me anything!
It came VERY late! I loved math (and hated biology) in high school, college and grad school. It was only when I was out of grad school and my brother gave me some papers to read about the brain that…
A redditor wrote, in r/science: Science AMA Series: I’m Brian Fisher, ant specialist and Curator of Entomology at the California Academy of Sciences, aka “the real Ant Man.” My research focuses on new technology to discover and document global ant diversity—and on making sure that data gets used for conservation action. AMA!
You are right, the Ant-Man film got it wrong. The ants in the film are all female and thus Anthony should have been Antoinette. They got so many aspects of ant society right, it is amazing they missed this obvious…
A redditor wrote, in r/science: Science AMA Series: I’m Brian Fisher, ant specialist and Curator of Entomology at the California Academy of Sciences, aka “the real Ant Man.” My research focuses on new technology to discover and document global ant diversity—and on making sure that data gets used for conservation action. AMA!
Ants, like humans, have many strategies for defending their territory. One interesting example is the Pavement ant, Tetramorium sp. E. (why sp. E, well that is another story). This species is native to Eurasia but was introduced to North America…
A redditor wrote, in r/science: Science AMA Series: I’m Brian Fisher, ant specialist and Curator of Entomology at the California Academy of Sciences, aka “the real Ant Man.” My research focuses on new technology to discover and document global ant diversity—and on making sure that data gets used for conservation action. AMA!
How lucky you are!! To have ants visit you, right in your home. Nature not at your doorstep but in your own living room. I can understand how at first this may feel like an invasion. But stop, don't reach…
A redditor wrote, in r/science: Science AMA Series: I'm Carl Safina, ecologist and writer focused on how humanity is changing the natural world and affecting the lives of non-human animals, especially in the ocean. AMA!
During the era of captures in the Northwest, when they'd learned that the helicopters would bring the catch boats, one family split with the mothers and little babies going one way and staying underwater a long time and the others…
A redditor wrote, in r/science: Science AMA Series: I'm Carl Safina, ecologist and writer focused on how humanity is changing the natural world and affecting the lives of non-human animals, especially in the ocean. AMA!
I wouldn't. I would teach them to love the living world. I would show them how we act when we love and care for the world. I would let them get wet, dirty, sandy, and happy.
A redditor wrote, in r/science: Science AMA Series: I'm Temple Grandin, professor of animal science at Colorado State University and autism advocate. AMA!
A project I managed in 1980 is an example of something I did completely wrong. I installed a ramp with a conveyor floor to get pigs from stockyards to the third floor of a packing plant, because the pigs were…
A redditor wrote, in r/science: Science AMA Series: I'm Temple Grandin, professor of animal science at Colorado State University and autism advocate. AMA!
Often simple modifications, such as providing non-slip flooring in the stun box can make huge differences. Cattle panic when they do not have secure footing. They also do not like to enter dark spaces, so you might experiment with placing…
A redditor wrote, in r/science: Science AMA Series: I'm Temple Grandin, professor of animal science at Colorado State University and autism advocate. AMA!
Many people ask about the HBO movie, and it accurately shows how my visual thinking works. The scene that showed all the shoes appearing in rapid succession is exactly how I think. The images that appear around animal movement are…
A redditor wrote, in r/science: Science AMA Series: I'm Jerry Coyne, evolutionary biologist and author of FAITH VERSUS FACT and WHY EVOLUTION IS TRUE. AMA!
When I look at a squirrel, for instance, I see it through the eyes of natural selection, and to me that makes the experience immensely richer. Think of all that morphology and behavior that has evolved: the teeth, the fur…
A redditor wrote, in r/science: Science AMA Series: I'm Jerry Coyne, evolutionary biologist and author of FAITH VERSUS FACT and WHY EVOLUTION IS TRUE. AMA!
In fact, for chromosome fissions and fusions (the latter are more common, so I'll use that as an example), there's often no selective disadvantage to the new chromosome. When it's formed, it pairs up fine with its two-chromosome ancestor in…
A redditor wrote, in r/science: Science AMA Series: I'm Heather Hendrickson, Senior Lecturer in Molecular Biosciences at Massey University in Aukland, New Zealand. I'm here to answer questions about bacterial resistance and the future of health. AMA!
One of the ideas that I really like in this arena is actually an old one that has been in use in Russia and Georgia for decades. They still use viruses. These are called bacteriophages, the viruses that specifically attack…
A redditor wrote, in r/science: Science AMA Series: I'm Heather Hendrickson, Senior Lecturer in Molecular Biosciences at Massey University in Aukland, New Zealand. I'm here to answer questions about bacterial resistance and the future of health. AMA!
Bacteriophages have had 2 billion years to start infecting humans and they haven't yet. To be honest, this isn't a big surprise ... there are WAY more bacterial cells on the planet to attack than there are human cells! Also…
A redditor wrote, in r/science: Science AMA Series: I’m Cassandra Quave, a medical ethnobotanist. I study the botanical ingredients used in traditional medicines for infectious disease to discover new solutions for antibiotic resistance. AMA!
Hmmm... this is a tough one. There are so many interesting plants that I've worked with over the years. I'm most interested in understanding human uses of wild plants. One really neat one that has multiple uses is Arundo donax…
A redditor wrote, in r/science: Science AMA Series: I’m Cassandra Quave, a medical ethnobotanist. I study the botanical ingredients used in traditional medicines for infectious disease to discover new solutions for antibiotic resistance. AMA!
Very good concern. Plants did not grow to become medicines; they grew to survive and give rise to progeny. And the medicinal chemicals they did produce were produced to achieve that end. So I do not think that the plant…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I'm David Eagleman author of LIVEWIRED, a new popular-science book about brain plasticity. Ask Me Anything!
One of the stickiest myths is that we use only 3% (or 5%, or 10%) of our brains. In fact, we use all of the brain, all of the time (even when we're asleep). I suspect the myth sticks around…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I'm David Eagleman author of LIVEWIRED, a new popular-science book about brain plasticity. Ask Me Anything!
3) In the book I address the issue that older people often say they would want the brain plasticity of young people. But there may be a philosophical problem here. The reason your brain has less plasticity as you age…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I'm David Eagleman author of LIVEWIRED, a new popular-science book about brain plasticity. Ask Me Anything!
Imagine that you had a friend born blind, and she were to say to you "how in the world can you concentrate when you are capturing and analyzing billions of photons all the time? Don't you find that overwhelming?" Or…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I'm David Eagleman author of LIVEWIRED, a new popular-science book about brain plasticity. Ask Me Anything!
Would be great, although quite a technological challenge. However, note that in LIVEWIRED I discuss the fact that some people with cataracts will get a synthetic lens put in their eye... and that lens can pass UV light through (unlike…
A redditor wrote, in r/askscience: AskScience AMA Series: I’m Dr. Julia Shaw, a memory scientist and criminal psychologist. I study how we create complex false memories. AMA!
Everything! The question isn't whether our memories are false, it's how false are our memories. COMPLEX and full false memories (of entire events) are probably less common than PARTIAL false memories (where we misremember parts of events that happened), but…
A redditor wrote, in r/askscience: AskScience AMA Series: I’m Dr. Julia Shaw, a memory scientist and criminal psychologist. I study how we create complex false memories. AMA!
While I was always cautious about memory accuracy (as far as I remember, hah!), now I am convinced that no memories are to be trusted. I am confident that we create our memories every day anew, if ever so slightly…
A redditor wrote, in r/askscience: AskScience AMA Series: I’m Dr. Julia Shaw, a memory scientist and criminal psychologist. I study how we create complex false memories. AMA!
Flashbulb memories, such as vividly remembering the twin towers get hit during 9/11, are indeed susceptible to all the same kinds of memory errors as any other kind of memory. As you say, they may even be MORE prone to…
In a thread on r/askscience: AskScience AMA Series: I’m Dr. Julia Shaw, a memory scientist and criminal psychologist. I study how we create complex false memories. AMA!
I like to call these early childhood false memories "stolen" memories. Many of these events probably did happen, you were just told the stories by loved ones and you appropriated them in a way that now makes them feel like…
A redditor wrote, in r/science: Science AMA Series:I’m David Dunning, a social psychologist whose research focuses on accuracy and illusion in self-judgment (you may have heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect). How good are we at “knowing thyself”? AMA!
Oh, and how did I get top billing in the naming of the effect? Dunno. It does show that Justin Kruger and I did not provide the name. We don’t know how it happened, we just know that our good…
A redditor wrote, in r/science: Science AMA Series:I’m David Dunning, a social psychologist whose research focuses on accuracy and illusion in self-judgment (you may have heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect). How good are we at “knowing thyself”? AMA!
But the other big misconception is that the DKE is a story about other people: that other people suffer from it but not I. I believe this has caused the idea to become a second Godwin's Law, an epithet to…
A redditor wrote, in r/science: Science AMA Series:I’m David Dunning, a social psychologist whose research focuses on accuracy and illusion in self-judgment (you may have heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect). How good are we at “knowing thyself”? AMA!
I am no longer so surprised about being wrong, and much more willing to listen to the lessons that the world and other people are telling me. As I grow older, I recognize just how little I know. I forgot…
In a thread on r/science: Science AMA Series: I'm Professor Chris French, Director of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths, University of London. I research paranormal belief and paranormal experiences including hauntings, belief in conspiracy theories, false memories, demonic possession and UFOs. AMA!
I've spent more nights in supposedly haunted houses than I care to remember. As a kid, I was terrified of the dark. These days, I find sitting in the dark in "haunted houses" about as exciting as watching paint dry…
A redditor wrote, in r/science: Science AMA Series: I'm Professor Chris French, Director of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths, University of London. I research paranormal belief and paranormal experiences including hauntings, belief in conspiracy theories, false memories, demonic possession and UFOs. AMA!
Reincarnation claims in general do fall into my area but I’m afraid I have not looked into this particular case in any detail. I do find reincarnation claims fascinating. So much so that I paid £500 last week to join…
A redditor wrote, in r/science: Science AMA Series: I'm Professor Chris French, Director of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths, University of London. I’m back on Halloween to talk about my research on the psychology of paranormal beliefs and experiences. AMA!
Contrary to the view offered in Hollywood movies, hypnotic regression does not provide a magical key to unlock hidden or repressed memories. Instead, it provides the perfect context for the formation of false memories based upon fragments of real memories…
A redditor wrote, in r/science: Science AMA Series: I'm Professor Chris French, Director of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths, University of London. I’m back on Halloween to talk about my research on the psychology of paranormal beliefs and experiences. AMA!
I have lots of personal favourites but certainly one that would be very near the top of the list would be Melvin Harris’s masterful debunking of the so-called “Bloxham Tapes”. Arnall Bloxham was a Cardiff-based hypnotherapist who used to hypnotically…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I am Dr. Jane Goodall, a scientist, conservationist, peacemaker, and mentor. AMA.
When I was growing up, what I read where the Doctor Dolittle books. I learned a great deal from those books. When I was ten years old I read "Tarzan." I was sad when he married the wrong Jane. It…
A redditor wrote, in r/askscience: AskScience AMA Series: I’m Ed Boyden professor of biological engineering and brain and cognitive sciences at the MIT Media Lab and the MIT McGovern Institute, ask me anything!
Expansion microscopy (http://expansionmicroscopy.org/) physically makes biological specimens bigger. It does require up front preparation, to form the polymers and make the specimens swell. But then, you can image on inexpensive, conventional microscopy hardware. So the latter parts of the imaging…
A redditor wrote, in r/science: I’m Francis Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health. As we celebrate the 15th anniversary of the completion of the Human Genome Project, I’m here to talk about its history and the critical role it has played in precision medicine. Ask me anything!
Yes! That was an unfortunate term, and I hope I was not one of the ones who used it . . . at least not very often. We are learning more every day about the 98 percent of the genome…
A redditor wrote, in r/science: Science AMA Series: I am Francis Collins, current Director of the National Institutes of Health and former U.S. leader of the successful Human Genome Project. Ask me anything!
If you look closely enough, all of our genomes are unique unless we have an identical twin. Each of us has about 60 new mutations that were not present in our parents and may never have been present in anyone…
A redditor wrote, in r/science: Science AMA Series: We're a Group of Doctors who Communicate with people in Vegetative States, AMA!
It is not limited to yes/no responses at all. In principle, we can associate the mental imagery tasks with anything (e.g." Playing tennis if you want me to stop asking you questions"). But using a hierarchical series of Yes/No questions…
A redditor wrote, in r/science: Science AMA Series: We're a Group of Doctors who Communicate with people in Vegetative States, AMA!
Does the person asking the question know the answer? Of course not - that would introduce the possibility of experimenter bias. Indeed, for the most part, the decision is made, not by a human at all, but by a computer…
In a thread on r/science: Science AMA Series: I’m Dr. Adrian Owen, a neuroscientist whose research focuses on brain imaging, cognitive function and consciousness. We’re finding new ways to decode the complex workings of the brain. AMA.
Transplants fascinate me, because they have changed medicine in so many fantastic ways, yet the idea of ‘head transplants’ really is fundamentally different. Without a heart we can live on with the help of machines. A patient with an artificial…
A redditor wrote, in r/science: Science AMA Series: Hi Reddit! I'm Eric Green, Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). I'm excited to talk about the Human Genome Project, and Genomic Medicine. Ask Me Anything!
The word ‘genomics’ was not coined until around 1987-- and the field of genomics did not exist until then. Meanwhile, I graduated medical school and graduate school in 1987, which means that I never once heard the word ‘genomics’ at…
A redditor posted in r/badmathematics: Do you have any mathematical beliefs that border on being crank-y?
My crank belief would be that 2 and 3 are not prime. They’re too small to really have factors and so only meet the criteria for prime-ness by default. 5 is the smallest prime which is bigger than a composite…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: It's me, Matt Parker, maths author, youtuber and creator of semi-adequate magic squares. A+M+A
The short answer is that I flipped a normal coin 10,000 times to see how many times it would land on its edge. I had a chance to do this a while back and so I spent three days on…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: It's me, Matt Parker, maths author, youtuber and creator of semi-adequate magic squares. A+M+A
For the general public: that being bad at math is an immutable personal trait. I want people to realise that everyone finds math difficult to some extent and the people who are 'good to math' are just those who enjoy…
A redditor wrote, in r/AskReddit: History nerds of Reddit, what's a historical fact/tidbit that will always get you to chuckle?
Yes indeed: they put a Harrier jet in the 1995 commercial for 7,000,000 Pepsi points as a zany joke… but extra points cost 10c each and the jet was worth over $20 million. Guy called John Leonard put $700,008.50 (inc…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I am James Grime, mathematician, Alan Turing fan, and numberphile. AMA!
The real answer to that is because I am lazy. And maths is the perfect subject for the lazy student. If you go to lectures you can do the coursework, if you can do the coursework you can do the…
In a thread on r/IAmA: I am James Grime, mathematician, Alan Turing fan, and numberphile. AMA!
I get asked this one a lot, and I will give you the real answer - I do not have a favourite number. (shock!) To me they are tools, and I have not anthropomorphised the numbers. Mathematicians do get asked…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I am James Grime, mathematician, Alan Turing fan, and numberphile. AMA!
If you don't know this it's pretty cool. Alan wanted to answer the question, why do Zebras have stripes, leopards have spots, cows have patches. He model the development of the pigmentation with mathematical equations similar to the equations that…
A redditor wrote, in r/science: Science AMA Series: I'm Hannah Fry, mathematician and author of "The Mathematics of Love", AMA!
One thing I really like from Gottman's study is the distinction between the language used by couples who are in a 'good' or 'bad' relationship. Couples who are doing well have a deep-seated positive view of each other & dismiss…
A redditor wrote, in r/science: Science AMA Series: I'm Hannah Fry, mathematician and author of "The Mathematics of Love", AMA!
There have been a number of qualitative surveys of maths PhD students & of the ones I've seen there is always a stark contrast between the way that boys and girls speak about things. Both find the PhD hard, but…
A redditor wrote, in r/science: I’m Jordan Ellenberg, author of How Not To Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking, and I’m on this week's NOVA: “Prediction By The Numbers.” Ask me anything about mathematics, predicting the future, predicting the future of mathematics, data, and number theory!
Math isn't easy to understand. It's hard to understand. There's a reason it took thousands of years of mathematical progress to get to calculus! The worst thing a teacher can say is "This is simple." It isn't simple! But it's…
In a thread on r/science: I’m Jordan Ellenberg, author of How Not To Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking, and I’m on this week's NOVA: “Prediction By The Numbers.” Ask me anything about mathematics, predicting the future, predicting the future of mathematics, data, and number theory!
Are you going to be trampled and left in the dust by brilliant kids? Well, we all are, eventually, right? In math, there is always someone stronger/faster/more advanced than you. That is not a reason not to do it. If…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I am Edward Frenkel, Mathematician and Author of "Love and Math" - AMA!
If Leo Tolstoy had not lived, we would have never known "Anna Karenina". There is no reason to believe that another author would have written that same novel. But if Pythagoras had not lived, someone else would have discovered exactly…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: IamA (Edward Frenkel, Mathematician and Author of "Love and Math") AMA!
People often get frustrated with math because they feel they "don't understand." But I say: good! Life would be so boring if we could understand everything easily. :) If anything, I should be worried about what I think I understand…
A redditor wrote, in r/MachineLearning: AMA: Yann LeCun
I don't often eat sandwiches, but when I do, I make what my family calls "awesome sandwiches". They are a kind of spicy Reuben: pastrami with a mixture of Dijon mustard, Russian dressing and curry powder. I also like panini…
A redditor wrote, in r/MachineLearning: AMA: Yann LeCun
Something like the intelligent agent in "Her" is totally out of reach of current technology. We will need to invent new concepts, new principles, new paradigms, new algorithms. The agent in Her has a deep understanding of human behavior and…
A redditor posted in r/MachineLearning: [Tribute] An art made by André Pinto (Anthill Comics) for our Machine Learning Meetup
That's really funny, and nicely drawn. It makes me look thinner than I am too ;-) I'm just slightly worried about Bender's nasty look. He is clearly not interested in ConvNets. He is probably thinking "I'm 30‰ ConvNet" or "kill…
A redditor wrote, in r/MachineLearning: AMA: Yoshua Bengio
I predict that deep learning will have a big impact in natural language processing. It has already had an impact, in part due to an old idea of mine (from NIPS'2000 and a 2003 paper in JMLR): represent words by…
A redditor wrote, in r/MachineLearning: AMA: Yoshua Bengio
Briefly, since neural nets already beat n-grams on language modeling, you can first use them to replace the language-modeling part of MT. Then you can use them to replace the translation table (after all it's just another table of conditional…
A redditor wrote, in r/MachineLearning: AMA Andrew Ng and Adam Coates
For example, in 2008, we built I think the first CUDA/GPU deep learning implementation, and helped lead the field to use GPUs. In 2011, I (Andrew) founded and led the Google Deep Learning team (then called Google Brain) to use…
A redditor wrote, in r/MachineLearning: I am Jürgen Schmidhuber, AMA!
IMO, Joseph Weizenbaum was by far the coolest of the invited speakers. The rest of us pulled out their slides and tried to make their point. When it was his turn, he sat down, noticed that the projector was still…
A redditor wrote, in r/MachineLearning: I am Jürgen Schmidhuber, AMA!
I think the basic motivation (objective function) of artists and scientists and comedians is data compression progress, that is, the first derivative of data compression performance on the observed history. I have published extensively about this. A physicist gets intrinsic…
A redditor wrote, in r/MachineLearning: We are the Google Brain team. We’d love to answer your questions (again)
In 2012, I hosted Geoffrey Hinton as a visiting researcher in our group for the summer, but due to a snafu in how it was set up, he was classified as my intern. We don’t have any age cutoffs for…
A redditor wrote, in r/MachineLearning: AMA: We are the Google Brain team. We'd love to answer your questions about machine learning.
Regarding energy efficiency, real brains are definitely much more energy efficient and have much more computational ability than current machines. However, the gap is perhaps not as bad as it might seem, for the reason that real brains take ~20…
A redditor wrote, in r/MachineLearning: AMA: We are the Google Brain team. We'd love to answer your questions about machine learning.
A 6, but I refuse to be pinned down to whether the scale is linear or logarithmic.
A redditor wrote, in r/MachineLearning: AMA: We are the Google Brain team. We'd love to answer your questions about machine learning.
I had to write a thesis to graduate with honors at the University of Minnesota, so I worked with my advisor, Vipin Kumar, and settled on the problem of exploring parallel training of neural nets on a 64 processor hypercube…
A redditor posted in r/MachineLearning: Generative Adversarial Networks for Text
Hi there, this is Ian Goodfellow, inventor of GANs (verification: http://imgur.com/WDnukgP). GANs have not been applied to NLP because GANs are only defined for real-valued data. GANs work by training a generator network that outputs synthetic data, then running a…
A redditor posted in r/AskReddit: Has anyone here completed a language in Duolingo? How well versed in the language were you, by the end?
When I had done about half the course, I went to Brazil to give a talk about Duolingo (in English), and the first question I got afterwards was what language I was learning myself. I made the mistake of saying…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: IAmA scientist and entrepreneur named Luis von Ahn. I’m the CEO/co-founder of Duolingo, a totally free way to learn languages. I won’t rest until people stop paying for crappy language learning software. I also developed CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA, those squiggly characters all over the web -- sorry! AMA
I'm perfectly fluent in English and Spanish. Learning Portuguese, and failed at learning French in high school (though, in my defense, I only took it cuz I had a crush on a girl).
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: IAmA scientist and entrepreneur named Luis von Ahn. I’m the CEO/co-founder of Duolingo, a totally free way to learn languages. I won’t rest until people stop paying for crappy language learning software. I also developed CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA, those squiggly characters all over the web -- sorry! AMA
The other day we found a quarter under the couch. I think that's the entirety of our revenue so far.
A redditor posted in r/duolingo: I find it slightly annoying that Duolingo always has the first word capitalised on these matching exercises, making it super obvious what the first word of the answer is.
I hate that too! Unfortunately whenever we try removing it, more people complain and our metrics go down :/ Sometimes you just can't win. --Luis (CEO of Duolingo)
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I am Tim Berners-Lee. I invented the WWW 25 years ago and I am concerned and excited about its future. AMA
Mine of Information, The Information Mine, The Mesh None had quite the right ring. I liked WWW partly because I could start global variable names with a W and not have them clash with other peoples' (in a C world) ...in fact I used HT for them)
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I am Tim Berners-Lee. I invented the WWW 25 years ago and I am concerned and excited about its future. AMA
I got a M6800 evaluation kit in 1976, and built a bunch of 3U high cards, put them in a rack with a car battery in the bottom of the crate as UPS. All hand-soldered on veroboard , and programmed…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I am Tim Berners-Lee. I invented the WWW 25 years ago and I am concerned and excited about its future. AMA
No, my speling is still terible. Hopefully not to much or it will get into header field names without some review at this stage!
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I am Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Web. Join me to talk about making the future of technology more human, reddit. AMA!
Nope. I was head down getting stuff working.... the server and client were both on my machine at that stage... I wasn't using source code control, so I could nto go back and find the critical commit with the "hmm GET seems to work" comment :-)
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I am Radia Perlman, the network engineer behind STP, the Spanning Tree Protocol. Ask me anything!
There actually were no challenges. My manager thought it was going to be a really hard thing, but it turned out to be really simple, once I realized the "obvious" solution. He proposed the problem to me late on a…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I am Radia Perlman, the network engineer behind STP, the Spanning Tree Protocol. Ask me anything!
When my manager proposed the problem to me, he was saying "have bridges break all the symmetries and find a loop-free subset of the topology that reaches everyone". It was that night that I realized "Hey! A tree! That's a…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I am Radia Perlman, the network engineer behind STP, the Spanning Tree Protocol. Ask me anything!
I love this question! I've always hated the term "Internet"....to me, if you have two networks, and connect them, you don't get an "Internet"...you get a bigger network. So I'd say that two lasagnas stacked on top of each other…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I am Radia Perlman, the network engineer behind STP, the Spanning Tree Protocol. Ask me anything!
I took a programming class in high school, which (from the answer to another question) I basically didn't learn anything, and was sure at that point that I wanted to avoid computers. I was taking a physics class. The TA…
A redditor posted in r/learnprogramming: Why did Bjarne Stroustrup not get into copyright trouble with Dennis Ritchie, for basically copying C and adding his new features?
Why should Dennis have complained? He helped me. The "const" design is partly his and he gave me the troff source of the C manual to use as a starting point for the C with Classes manual. Bell Labs Computer Science Research Lab was quite a friendly environment.
A redditor posted in r/OldSchoolCool: Bjarne Stroustrup, the creator of C++, circa 1979
It is later than 1996 and earlier than 2001. It's taken in my office at AT&T Labs - Research in Florham Park, NJ
A redditor wrote, in r/science: Science AMA Series: I'm Tom Crowther, a Scientist from Yale University and the Netherlands Institute of Ecology. My research shows how human activity affects ecosystems worldwide, leading to global climate change. AMA!
Ignoring climate change because we will be plunged into an ice age in 20,000 years is like ignoring a bus because we are all going to die when we are 90 anyway. The Earth is always going through massive glaciation…
A redditor wrote, in r/science: Science AMA Series: I'm Tom Crowther, a Scientist from Yale University and the Netherlands Institute of Ecology. My research shows how human activity affects ecosystems worldwide, leading to global climate change. AMA!
I am funded by an EU Marie Curie research grant. So they have absolutely no agendas - they just support innovative science. In all honesty, in the proposal that I wrote to get that grant, I proposed that I would…
A redditor wrote, in r/science: Science AMA Series: I'm Kerry Emanuel, a Professor of Atmospheric Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I do research on hurricanes and other types of severe weather, on climate change, and how climate change might affect severe weather. AMAA!
Yes. There is a theoretical limit which is around 1000 km for the storms outer dimension. There is also a limit on wind speed which in the present climate, in the hottest parts of the tropical oceans, is about 190…
A redditor wrote, in r/askscience: NASA/JPL Climate Scientist Josh Willis AMA - with focus on how to get started on an Earth science career
I actually set out to get a PhD in Physics, but ran aground when I didn't pass the Physics departmental exam. It was then that I switched to Oceanography, which has made me much happier in the long run, I think.
A redditor wrote, in r/science: Science AMA Series: I'm amateur scientist and author Forrest M. Mims III. For many years I wrote books and developed lab kits for RadioShack, which still stocks my best-selling “Getting Started in Electronics.”
Radio Shack editor Dave Gunzel was familiar with my hand-lettered lab notebooks, and at he asked if I could do an entire book the same way I prepared the notebooks. This became the first "Engineer's Notebook," which sold 650,000 copies…
A redditor wrote, in r/science: Science AMA Series: I'm amateur scientist and author Forrest M. Mims III. For many years I wrote books and developed lab kits for RadioShack, which still stocks my best-selling “Getting Started in Electronics.”
You mentioned biking to Radio Shack. That reminds me about dictating my earliest Radio Shack books into a portable tape recorder while riding my bike 20 miles every afternoon.
A redditor wrote, in r/science: Science AMA Series: I'm amateur scientist and author Forrest M. Mims III. For many years I wrote books and developed lab kits for RadioShack, which still stocks my best-selling “Getting Started in Electronics.”
Ozone efficiently absorbs UV-B and UV-C wavelengths. It also absorbs in the visible, with peaks around 590 nm and 610 nm (the Chappuis band), I detect ozone with a 2- or 3-channel instrument that measures sunlight at 300 nm, 305…
A redditor wrote, in r/science: Science AMA Series: I'm Hugh Herr, professor and co-director of the Center for Extreme Bionics at the MIT Media Lab. At 17 I lost both my legs during a blizzard while rock climbing. Now I design bionic limbs that let us transcend disability and augment the human condition. AMA!
Years ago, when I was climbing actively, I on occasion made my height very very excessive. There was one occasion where I was 3m high! And yes indeed, it is very hard to balance (and a large distance to fall!).
A redditor wrote, in r/science: Science AMA Series: I'm Hugh Herr, professor and co-director of the Center for Extreme Bionics at the MIT Media Lab. At 17 I lost both my legs during a blizzard while rock climbing. Now I design bionic limbs that let us transcend disability and augment the human condition. AMA!
The performance of biological systems is of course phenomenal, one characteristic of animals is extraordinary robustness or durability. Sometimes we go 80 years or more without maintenance or repair. Engineered machines go a very short time before needing repair –…
A redditor wrote, in r/science: X-Prize AMA: I am Burt Rutan, designer of the world’s first private spaceship (SpaceShipOne), and the first aircraft to fly around the world without stopping or refueling (Voyager). AMA!
True story. A world class RC DS guy came to scaled and gave a presentation. I stood up and called him a lier, with fake videos (a bit tongue-in-cheek for my employees :-) ). I then followed him to a…
A redditor wrote, in r/science: X-Prize AMA: I am Burt Rutan, designer of the world’s first private spaceship (SpaceShipOne), and the first aircraft to fly around the world without stopping or refueling (Voyager). AMA!
My original concepts for SS1 were capsules, with high-drag devices for reentry (feathers). However, an employee reminded me that I was an airplane designer and that parachutes were inherently unreliable. My focus then led to the invention of the feathering config on ss1.
A redditor wrote, in r/science: X-Prize AMA: I am Burt Rutan, designer of the world’s first private spaceship (SpaceShipOne), and the first aircraft to fly around the world without stopping or refueling (Voyager). AMA!
The flat spin in the F-4E at Edwards AFB, 1969. Piloted by Jerry Gentry, with me in the back seat. It remains the only flat spin in an F4 that was followed by a normal landing, not a fireball crash.
A redditor wrote, in r/science: X-Prize AMA: I am Burt Rutan, designer of the world’s first private spaceship (SpaceShipOne), and the first aircraft to fly around the world without stopping or refueling (Voyager). AMA!
There is nothing else to do in Mojave California. I lived in that small desert area for 46 years.
A redditor wrote, in r/spacex: Dr. Robert Zubrin r/SpaceX AMA
I would want the Mars colonists to send back enough Mars soil so I can be buried in it here.
A redditor wrote, in r/spacex: Dr. Robert Zubrin r/SpaceX AMA
first ten years- The ability to fix balky equipment and skills in field exploration. Second ten years- the ability to fix balky equipment and skills in construction, farming, and industrial engineering.
A redditor wrote, in r/spacex: Dr. Robert Zubrin r/SpaceX AMA
Greenhouses don't need radiation protection. They need sunlight. So think transparant walls for them. Exploration crews can get by without radiation protection too. But settlements should have radiation protection. Putting them under fish farms is an attractive option. Have your…
A redditor posted in r/EliteDangerous: "Hello" is a banned word because it contains "Hell", which is banned for no apparent reason either. The word filter is a ridiculous idea.
That's why I say 'Hullo!' Because nobody would ever ban Hull
A redditor posted in r/KerbalSpaceProgram: Open Letter to Scott Manley
When I started playing KSP I had it in my mind that manually flying a rocket into orbit was probably beyond the skills of a human without computer assistance, KSP surprised me by showing that it is a learnable skill…
A redditor posted in r/KerbalSpaceProgram: So I was playing around with HyperEdit and I accidentally the Sun...
When the Mun comes between the Sun and Kerbin we get a solar eclipse, when Kerbin is between the Sun and the Mun we (should) get a munar eclipse, When the Sun is between Kerbin and the Mun we get the Apocalpyse.
In a thread on r/IAmA: Bill Nye, UNDENIABLY back. AMA.
Earth. Earth is my favorite planet. All my friends are here, and I stay here for the air.
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: Bill Nye, UNDENIABLY back. AMA.
That the universe is not slowing down in its expansion, it's accelerating. And, do you know why? NOBODY KNOWS WHY!
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I am Bill Nye and I’m here to dare I say it…. save the world. Ask Me Anything!
You and I are made of the same material as the stars. We are star dust. Therefore, you and I are at least one way that the universe knows itself. Cue the spooky music.
A redditor wrote, in r/askscience: AskScience AMA Series: I'm Emily Calandrelli, I have 4 degrees in science and engineering and I'm the host and co-Executive Producer of Emily's Wonder Lab on NETFLIX - AMA!
haha I definitely appreciate the sentiment :) Though I will also say I don't think we need the next Bill Nye...I think we need 1000 Bill Nyes. We need people who look like the audience we're trying to reach and…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I'm Dr Karl Kruszelnicki, AMA!
“Does it ever irritate you to have people call up asking the same question time after time?” Never. One thing I learnt being a roadie for Bo Diddley, after hearing him sing the same songs, night after night. For the audience, it's their first time.
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I'm Dr Karl Kruszelnicki, AMA!
“What is the most astounding fact you can tell us about the universe/life in general?” 1)all the gold you will ever touch was made inside an exploding star 2)Kilogram for kilogram, your compost pile generates 33,000 times more power than our Sun
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I'm Dr Karl Kruszelnicki, AMA!
Education. When I was in Bangkok Airport checking in a group of schoolkids (I was not the teacher, but she was in hospital, so I took over), the person behind the counter asked if I was a teacher. I said…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I'm Dr Karl Kruszelnicki, AMA!
Strangest experience as a taxi driver? Getting lost in the huge Yagoona Tip(garbage dump) at 0200, with no stars to navigate out by, and out of radio range. I had to wait for dawn.
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: IamA guy who makes science videos on YouTube (Destin from Smarter Every Day). Derek from Veritasium and I performed an experiment in both the North and South hemispheres to finally determine the Truth about Toilet Swirl. It's awesome and we're excited about it. AMA!
I think of all my inspirations, the one I enjoyed meeting most was Bill Nye because he's a very down-to-Earth, unpretentious guy. And he taught me how to tie a bowtie, very patiently. He was an excellent teacher (as you…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: IamA guy who makes science videos on YouTube (Destin from Smarter Every Day). Derek from Veritasium and I performed an experiment in both the North and South hemispheres to finally determine the Truth about Toilet Swirl. It's awesome and we're excited about it. AMA!
He notes that the 6 foot pool he used provided a 30,000 amplification of the rotation of the Earth at Boston. This is through conservation of angular momentum as the water drains from the outside towards the middle. As the…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: IamA guy who makes science videos on YouTube (Destin from Smarter Every Day). Derek from Veritasium and I performed an experiment in both the North and South hemispheres to finally determine the Truth about Toilet Swirl. It's awesome and we're excited about it. AMA!
This is a very important question. For most questions the vast majority of people get it wrong, I'm talking 90-95%, sometimes all of them. My goal when I edit the videos is to show people's perceptions as they are, not…
A redditor wrote, in r/askscience: Discussion: Veritasium's newest YouTube video on simulating quantum mechanics with oil droplets!
Local means no interactions faster than the speed of light. And realism means if when you look at it you find a particle, then it's a particle when you're not looking at it too.
A redditor wrote, in r/pics: Al Franken is a Geography God [PIC]
When I was a kid, I got tracing paper and an atlas for the same birthday. So it just seemed logical to me to trace everything in the atlas. This meant I knew tons about geography but nothing about demographics…
A redditor posted in r/pics: Snake fail
If L is the length of the snake and T is the thickness of its body wall, and the snake swallows up to length S, the snake's growing diameter is given by R=2T(1+int(L/(L-S))). Since the horizontal diameter of the snake-donut…
A redditor posted in r/science: The Electromagnetic Spectrum (pic)
Whoa, that's one of my dad's sites. That poster -- that specific one in the photo -- hung above my bed as a kid, and it really helped get me interested in science. I learned so much from it. There…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: IAmA Carl Zimmer, a science writer with an inordinate fondness for tapeworms. AMAA
Tapeworms don't make you lose weight! Common misperception. It would be an awful thing for a tapeworm to starve its host. Instead, people just carry them around for many years, with a normal appetite, pooping out millions of their eggs…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: IAmA Carl Zimmer, a science writer with an inordinate fondness for tapeworms. AMAA
Pure good fortune. Got a job as a copy editor at Discover, turned out to be bad at copy editing (too many damn commas!), and was shifted over to fact-checking. Pretty quickly realized science writing was the best kind of…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: We are four National Geographic bloggers who are obsessed with everything from dinosaur fossils to the latest advances in brain science. Ask Us Anything!
This is Carl. I have to say my mind has now been blown by a virus with an immune system. I learned about this a couple weeks ago, and I can say that I NEVER thought such a thing was…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: IAmA Carl Zimmer, a science writer with an inordinate fondness for tapeworms. AMAA
If I say, "I'd like to talk to you about frequency-dependent selection, broadly neutralizing antibodies, and trophic interactions," you might say, "Err....thanks, but I'm not a bio major, so I don't have to." But if I say, "I'd like to…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: We are four National Geographic bloggers who are obsessed with everything from dinosaur fossils to the latest advances in brain science. Ask Us Anything!
THE MANTIS SHRIMP! It's a type of crustacean and not a mantis or a shrimp. It has some of the most sophisticated eyes in the animal kingdom--sensitive to 12 colours instead of our 3 and capable of seeing bits of…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: We are four National Geographic bloggers who are obsessed with everything from dinosaur fossils to the latest advances in brain science. Ask Us Anything!
Bees can sense the electric fields of flowers! That discovery was published last month and it completely blew my mind. Flowers obviously have bright colours and aromatic nectar, but it turns out that they’re also like electric billboards. They have…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: We are four National Geographic bloggers who are obsessed with everything from dinosaur fossils to the latest advances in brain science. Ask Us Anything!
Thanks! I have to say that I loathe the phrase "dumbing down". It's an arrogant way of describing the act of making something accessible. The best science writers never underestimate their audience's intelligence but never overestimate their knowledge either. I…
A redditor wrote, in r/Music: Violinists can’t tell the difference between Stradivarius violins and new ones | Not Exactly Rocket Science | Discover Magazine
That's one of the reasons why a study like this has been so long in coming. "Excuse me, can we borrow your 10M instrument so that a blindfolded stranger can play it? Wait... where are you going?"
A redditor wrote, in r/OlogiesPodcast: Ologies: Chickenology (HENS & ROOSTERS) Part 1 with Tove Danovich
Hi! Just your weird dad chiming in way late to say, YES. This is not the coolest term. I thought maybe Gallusology would have been used in the literature at least once, but nope. Nowhere. Rather, I found one of…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I'm Alie Ward, Daytime Emmy Award winning host and STEM enthuiast! Ask Me Anything! #AskAlieAMA
Good question. This week I was editing the Ologies epode on #FunctionalMorphology with Dr. Joy Reidenberg and learned that sperm whale echolocation clicks are loud enough to burst human eardrums and also that the 1883 Krakatoa eruption was so loud…
u/Michael_Stevens posted in r/neutralmilkhotel: I Found Another Original Postcard With The Image That Was Adapted For "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea"!
When I saw that u/tom-dooley had found an original, I set up my own eBay alert for "bathing beauties postcard 1900." I checked it every time there were new matches (which was a few times a week on average), and…
A redditor wrote, in r/IAmA: I am Michael Stevens from Vsauce, AMA!
Essentially, I had started to lose the ability to differentiate dreams from reality . For some reason, I was in the room in both. I dreamt that someone (not anyone I'd ever met, but someone who seemed familiar in the…
A redditor posted in r/todayilearned: TIL that honey is the only food that will not rot. A jar of honey may remain edible for over 3000 years.
Honey's resistance to "rot" has to do with its relatively low water activity -- a measure of how intensely a material's water content will associate with things like microorganisms. Honey contains water, but it's not very easy for the agents…
Subreddits with the most picked posts and replies.
How we know each account is theirs is on their page. A dash means no page: we couldn't find a freely licensed photo of them yet.
Research task CompletedFind about 80 scientists who post on Reddit under an account publicly tied to them, for a public page called Scientists on Reddit. Think Nobel laureates, astronauts (NASA, ESA, JAXA, CSA), famous researchers, doctors, engineers, mathematicians and science communicators: the people behind r/science and r/IAmA science AMAs, flaired r/askscience panelists who use their real name, NASA and ESA mission folks and r/space regulars, mathematicians in r/math, physicists answering in r/AskPhysics, and AI researchers in r/MachineLearning. Chris Hadfield, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Katie Mack, Brian Cox, Jane Goodall, Bill Nye, Destin Sandlin, Hank Green and Mark Rober are already on our celebrities page, so mostly look past them. For each person, find the exact Reddit username, how it is tied to them (their AMA post with proof, verified flair, their own site or socials linking it, or press naming it), and their two to four best moments on Reddit with permalinks and the exact words: a top scientist explaining something perfectly to a stranger, kindly correcting a misconception, a lab-failure or mission story, or answering a question about their own famous paper or discovery. You can search all of Reddit yourself: full Pushshift/Arctic Shift dumps are in a Backblaze B2 bucket [access details removed].