TL;DR:
In honour of British Science Week, we’re back for our fourth time to do another AMA/AUA! We had such a blast last time that we wanted to come back again to answer whatever science or technology questions Reddit wants to throw our way. So please ask us any questions any of you have to do with science or technology and how they affect your life. There are no silly questions – ask us anything and we will try to give an easy-to-understand answer and, wherever possible, provide some further sources to enable you to do your own research/reading.
Our goal is simply to advance everyone’s understanding of science, engineering, and technology and to help people be better informed about the issues likely to affect them and their families.
More info / Longer read:
CSES is a registered charity in the UK, founded in 1920! We’re a volunteer group comprising over 250 members and our key strength is our diversity of thought and interdisciplinary expertise. Our members come from a variety of educational, social, and economic backgrounds, from industry and academia and a multitude of age groups; representing multiple generations – from Gen-Z all the way to the Silent Generation!
Today’s global interconnectedness, while being hugely beneficial for making information easily accessible to everyone, has made it ever more difficult to determine ‘truth’ and who to trust. As an independent charity, not affiliated or biased to any particular group, but with broad knowledge, we are here to answer any questions you may have and to hopefully point you to further reading!
Our goal is simply to answer as many of your questions as we can – but we aren’t able to give advice on things – sorry! We will also be clear where what we are saying is the experience-based opinion of someone in our team.
So, Reddit, we’ll be on all day… Ask us anything!
CSES will draw from its large pool of volunteers to answer your questions, however some of the people standing by to answer comments are:
- Gary C: Over 30 years’ experience in Research and Development, covering a wide range of technologies. Currently Chief Engineer for Cyber and Electromagnetic Affects within an aerospace company.
- Professor David Humber: Over 30 years’ experience as a researcher, lecturer and senior university manager specialising in immuno-biology and the life sciences.
- David Whyte: Technologist and Chartered Systems Engineer with over 14 years’ Research and Development experience, and 17 international patents across a wide range of technologies. Honoured by The Queen for services to engineering and technology.
- Roger Pittock: Over 40 years’ experience in electronics, software, mechanical, electrical, process engineering, and safety systems. Avid supporter of the Consumers’ Association, and previously served on their council.
- Adam Wood: Chartered Engineer with over 17 years’ experience in electronics, software, and systems engineering – working in the medical / healthcare, transport, and aerospace industries.
Username: /u/chelmsfordses
Comments
In a publication called De novo origins of multicellularity in response to predation, the authors show how multicellular life evolved from unicellular life. What practical implications for medicine and other life science can this experiment have?
Given our increasing knowledge of technology’s effect on the body; how come we don’t see technology itself adapt to minimize those effects?
For example, we’re told staring at computer screens is bad because it damages the eyes over long term. There’s special glasses you can buy that supposedly help with that, why not bake things like that into the tech itself?
Thank you for doing this. My question is why do AIs lie and make things up when they don’t know the answer?
What is the most seemingly unimportant thing you do on your field that might have huge consequences if you do it worng?
Bit of a sausage fest in those bios. Where the ladies at?
Science at the moment is under extreme attack by trump, how are scientists organising to ensure the rot is stopped in the UK?
What kind of tools, software, and or hardware do you use day to day in your respective fields?
Is most of it bespoke / custom made or are there standard tools or programs that people coming into the field can familiarise themselves with to get a sense of what your daily job entails?
Are LLMs an actual big deal in scientific research? Or is it looking like it will be a big nothing burger? (Or something in between?) And why?
Three questions here, feel free to answer only one if you want.
When we use telescopes to look back to the dawn of time to understand the big bang, are we looking in one place? Do we know where this is? And does everything radiate from that point? Or are there remnants of the beginning and galaxies spread out randomly in every direction?
Are there any simplified large-scale (that is, where the small scale details are unimportant) CFD-like aerodynamic and fluid models that can run in or close to realtime? And if so, where can I look to learn more?
How close are we to having a fusion reactor? It seems we have been told it’s "20 years away" for the last 40 years.
Does taking 10mg per day of spermidine while (water) fasting for 48 hours has a potential of boosting autophagy?
Do human brains have a finite intelligence and is it possible that some aspects of the true nature of reality or the universe are simply beyond our intellectual capacity?
Hi, I’d like to ask two questions.
Why is hyaluronic acid so widely used in skincare products?
Trying to keep this apolitical, but with cuts, freezes, and/or delays in funding from NIH and DoD to diseases, does it severely harm our efforts in curing things like cancer? Will research continue enough at a global level to carry that torch until America gets back on track?
(I have and continue to ask my representatives to get this sorted)
Not sure if this is in any of your wheelhouses but here I go. After all the technological advances why has no one been able to figure out a way to fix a scratched vinyl album? Thank you.
In what ways would you say Degrowth could be achieved?
What’s in the future for crowdsourced citizen science? AI seems to have solved protein folding and is faster/cheaper at classification of galaxies than human volunteers. Is there still something we’re better at doing collectively?
Why is caffeine such a common compound produce by plants, such asvarious tea leaves, cocao, and coffee bean. What benefits to plant get from producing it?
Hello everyone, I know that the AMA says it is finished but we are all still here happy to answer questions and will be active until around 7am GMT on the 25th March (2025).
Because of time zones and availability of our members, do bear in mind that there could be a delay in you getting an answer but we will do our best to answer everything we can!
I am looking to get an electric bike. There seems to be a multitude of brands out there mostly shipped to the US from all over the world. I am looking to get a brand that has a stocked US warehouse for replacement parts. If an electric bike breaks down which brand has replacement parts in the US?
What’s one scientific concept that you think everyone should understand better in 2025?
What is the feeling in your group about the Star Trek teleporter? Is the person that arrives at the destination actually the original person, or is the original person destroyed, and what arrives is merely a clone with the memories of the original, and no idea that they’re a clone?
A old PI of mine while ranting about the focus bio-research took around applied science, in this case CRISPR, said that despite all the hype, nobody had been able to achieve gene over expression with it and the applications would be limited until that is figured out. This was several years ago and Google says that’s been largely figured out by now.
With that in mind, has there been leaps towards curing seemingly simple genetic diseases? The first one that comes to mind is Cystic Fibrosis, which my understanding is a single base pair change to a protein.
I’m into science and have always favoured biology.
Recently, however, with BBC news in the UK over the last year showcasing some of the cool celestial things happening, i’ve been kind of interested in being able to see some of these things. We were lucky enough to get an awesome show of the Northern Lights last year, despite how far south east we are and a couple of years ago, the field behind our house was a great spot to see a metorite shower – although I can’t remember which one.
With this in mind – are there any ‘beginner’ or amateur home telescopes that are actually worth looking at for someone who might like to ‘have a go’ at seeing things? Or are they all sort of not worth it really? Or is that something only people with a lot of £ spare can do for fun?
What is the mechanism for trees "knowing" what season it is i.e. knowing when to blossom?
>There are no silly questions – ask us anything
Well you said there’s no silly questions. So hopefully you can answer this because I’m genuinely curious.
Hypothetically if we could clone humans right now. What would be the biggest scientific and technological challenge in order to make AI inhabit human clones as biological platforms through other tech like neuralink or similar to bridge the gap?
Morals and ethics aside. What field of science is lagging behind the most to make this possible?
Do you have some cool news about fusion?
How do we know atoms are mostly empty?
I’ve read about the Gold Foil experiment, but does this take quantumania into account?
Follow-up question.
If you stand on a hydrogen proton, and the proton was the size of Earth in relation to your body, how far away would the electrons start appearing? Also, are electrons just an electric charge and not matter?
Should we stop use of the word "theory" in science or change it’s meaning to match conversational english? Feels like use of the word opens up possibility of intentional/unintentional miscommunication.
What can be done to convince people to believe basic science issues that are easily proven but widely believed to be untrue?