Like the title says, what were your experiences when you were already in a long time relationship with your partner when deciding to do pursue a PhD somewhere further away or even in another country? Were you both in the field or only one? Did someone have to compromise more? Did you have to break up? Would love to hear experiences/opinions as my partner are going through the same process of choosing where to do our PhD so that we wouldn’t have to be too far apart for too long and what are the best solutions.

As a geology student, during an advanced mineralogy lecture, I was introduced to the work of Hazen et al. titled Mineral Evolution. Their framework proposes that terrestrial mineral diversity is not static but has instead increased incrementally over 4.5 billion years, driven by the dynamic interplay of geological processes (e.g., plate tectonics), global geochemical shifts (such as the Great Oxidation Event), and crucially, the influence of life. A paradigmatic example is clay minerals, whose complexity is directly linked to biological activity.

The model, elaborated in publications such as Mineral Evolution (Hazen et al., 2008) and Clay Mineral Evolution (Hazen et al., 2012), has garnered significant interest among mineralogists. It is no coincidence that Hazen has been honoured with distinctions such as the Roebling Medal (2016) and the Mineralogical Association’s Medal of Excellence in Mineralogical Research (2021).

However, I interested to know whether substantive critiques or alternative perspectives to Hazen’s model exist in the literature. While I have yet to encounter systematic counterarguments, this does not preclude their existence. I would be grateful if anyone could direct me to such studies.

What are your thoughts on this integrative approach to mineralogy? Do you consider it a robust framework for reconciling geological, biological, and planetary processes, or does it risk overextending its theoretical scope?

Edit: The thing about the name, just a personal reflection, is that I think it can be a bit confusing at times. When I talk to people outside the field of geology about how interested I am in mineral evolution, they often imagine something completely different. That’s why I have some doubts about the term. I even had a situation with a faculty member in my program who didn’t take my mention of mineral evolution very seriously. But maybe it’s just a matter of explaining more clearly what the concept actually means.

It is as the title suggests, I know that gravitational collapse such as stars going supernova happens when gravity pulls matter into itself.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_collapse

I was wondering, is gravitational collapse related to Gravitational Binding or Potential Energy?

I’m a senior in high school and halfway committed to college. I’ve thought I’ve always wanted to do Environmental Science, but after taking APES this year, it just doesn’t hit like I thought it would. But I took a biotech class and fell IN LOVE with all the lab activity and actual biology aspect. I’m planning to go to vet school, but I wanted to do EnvroScience as a backup so I can get a good job if vet school doesn’t work out. But I’ve seen so many people with those degrees underpaid and unable to find work, and also due to the current political climate I’m just not sure if that’s the right option. Can anyone share thier experience with a B.S. in Biology or Environmental Science? I know they’re both very broad, and you can do a lot with both but what did you do with it? What’s the salary like? And how easy was it to find a job that’s right for you? Have you done environmental work with a biology degree and vise versa?I’d really like some advice on what to do because I just feel like I’m not sure of anything anymore. Thank you!

Is there something about them that makes them less able to form more complicated, multi-Archea life forms? I know there are some colony Archea, but not true multi-cellular organisms. Though a colony is perhaps on the way there.

Or is this something where, we basically have no idea?

I suppose most of the ocean would freeze, but I wonder if the parts near the vents would not freeze.

And then I wonder if the life that doesn't need the sun down there, would still live.

Does sexism or racism exist within the medical field? If so in what forms do they exist? How are doctors able to mitigate potential implicit biases when treating patients?

As in the title, what will the consequences be is sites like NCBI (specifically databases like genebank) are shut down? How much data is saved in sources like uniprot, and what are likely initiatives to rebuild? Will we end up in a world where all geopolitical factions produce their own science, or is there any group that could set up a new globally used database?

1. my first question would be, how often does U-235 as an example, shoot out a ray of alpha radiation. Alpha radiation is a helium atom, but how often does that happen? because the half-life of U-235 is 700 million years, it'd take 100 g that many years to become 50 g. But throughout those 700 million years, is the alpha decay a constant drip?
2. If I only have 1 atom of U-235, does that mean its just neutral for 700 million years, until it eventually shoots out 1 helium atom and decays?

Preface: for the purpose of discussion, lets make the following assumptions:

1. Any information that could be used to conclusively trace a piece of data back to an individual is scrubbed from the system before submission. Demographic data (age, sex, race, location etc.,) is allowed so long as it doesn't affect anonymity. Assume that the anonymization process is fool proof and bad actors like insurance companies would never be able to ID an individual.
2. Healthcare providers are obliged to upload these 'cleaned' records to public databases that are free to access; they can't hoard it for their own research benefits and can't sell the data to private companies.
3. By health records, I mean everything so long as it doesn't conflict with #1. Medical imaging, lab assays, genetic data, generic info (eg weight, height, vaccination records etc), equipment used, etc,

I bring this question up because we live in an age of "big data" - the use of high-throughput omics studies have become widespread in research and are very valuable for gleaming insights on disease mechanisms. Likewise, computational tools (eg ML) are rapidly developing and have enormous potential to find patterns in data that a human never could (eg in medical imaging). However, in both cases, the insights gained and the predictive models developed are only as good as the input data. While the volume of the dataset is important to obtain a robust model, it is difficult to account for things like demographics and this is critical to select appropriate samples for inclusion in the study. There was a news article in Science today that highlights a good example of this.

Would you be in favor of my hypothetical proposal? Why or why not? If you were a patient and there was complete certainty your health data would be anonymized, what are some reasons why you may be against sharing this information?

If a star in a Constellation went out, we'd all notice, it would be huge news.

But what about the other stars? Given a general lifespan of 75ish years and average eyesight, how may stars in our field of view would have vanished in that time? Am I seeing the same stars now as when I was a child? Or are a few missing without notice?

I understand also that we are seeing "ghosts" already due to light travel time. A lot of the stars we still see are already gone, but the light of that event hasn't reached our eyes yet.

Just being existential at the moment

For example, if Jupiter were nearer to the sun, would that move their mutual barycenter slightly farther from the sun? Or if Pluto and Charon were orbiting closer together, would their barycenter be at a different location?

Found answers online but they talked about multiple bodies, so they weren't clear about if two isolated bodies were orbiting at different distances from each other if that would affect the barycenter position.

So I have a question about ice. Does ice melt at an exponential rate because as it melts there is less “cold” or does the shrinking surface area cancel that out? Like does it work like the reverse of icicles forming or is that effect negated by the shrinking surface area that is exposed to the ambient temperature? Idk I don’t do thermodynamics so if someone does could you answer this. Feel free to call me dumb if this is a stupid question.

Would it be some radioactive elements just decayed over millions of years ago and now we don't know their existence (idk anything abt radioactive things , it's just a random question popped out in my head)

I mean, could time dilation mitigate the effect of spreadly over distance?

im so confused rn, ive googled this and some say that based on ohms law, conductivity decrease as length and resistance increase, while others say that length and conductivity have nothing to do with each other, can someone please explain

Hello. This is my first time posting something on Reddit—hehe. I would like to become a scientist of some kind, but I'm unsure how to pursue that goal. I'm interested in many fields of science, so I want to learn a good chunk about each of them. I know that sounds a little ambitious, but not knowing something in a specific field makes me feel mediocre and stupid. ;-;

I'm currently on summer break, so I have a lot of time on my hands. Every part of science piques my interest and curiosity, and I'm dedicated to learning and exploring. Unfortunately, I don't have any libraries nearby, but if I really need a specific book, I guess I could order it. Other than that, I will do whatever it takes to achieve what I want—or at least try. ;-;

Idk if this is even the right thread or topic or whatever to post this on. ;-;

Gosh, making this post or whatever makes me feel stupid and filled with anxiety for some reason. ;-;

Hawking's discovery was that black holes radiate. The radiation temperature inversely proportional to the mass of the black hole.

This should mean that a very small black hole could reach high temperatures. But they still behave as a black body absorbing all incident light right?

If we give the black hole light from a low temperature source and it radiates at high temperature... Let's suppose we balance it so the amount of energy we put in equals the amount of energy it radiates so that the black hole mass stays the same over time. Isn't the black hole converting low quality energy into high quality energy? (Low temperature light into high temperature light) What is the entropy balance? Is entropy being deleted?

Hi everyone! My long distance bff is currently in her 3rd year of a PhD neuroscience program in the US, and I have never seen her more burnt out. She is dealing with grant submissions, writing her prospectus and preparing to defend, an unhelpful PI, and having her career and funding called into question due to the political situation in the US right now. I'm really worried for her physical and mental health. She is a ridiculously smart and diligent person but seems to be legit hanging on by a thread right now.

I feel bad that I can't seem to help much aside from being there for her from 10 states away and trying to be as encouraging/comforting as I can. My question to all the scientists in this sub is - when you were experiencing similar stressors/were at a similar point in your PhD journey, was there anything *specific* you wished the people in your life had done for you (or purchased for you)? Like what was the worst part about it for you and was there anything the people in your life could have done to make it appreciably better?

Thanks!

Or would it be appropriate to consider that different life could be compared to fires in the sense that there are different chemical interactions that produce the same result?

An extension of this question that I find much more interesting: Given that life is a chemical reaction, do you think that the first life on earth was a single instance/single reaction, or multiple reactions/instances of which were perhaps chemically the same so coexisted, but one survived?

My knowledge of chirality is limited but from what I understand the same chirality of every life form would indicate that we came from the same original chemical structure --- but wouldn't that indicate the possibility of other instances of the same basic origin of life, but different than what we originated from? Maybe ours was the one that could sustain itself due to our composition, or would other life be able to life with different chirality?

The brings the question, how long did the first life form exist and how long did it take for it to reproduce? If other instances are possible, and if there were, I wonder if maybe only we were able to reproduce...so that brings yet another question -- is reproduction even a fundamental characteristic of life? (Probably a very bad analogy) but there are sterile life by defect so maybe if there were multiple instances they started off with different traits and chemical composition isn't so rigid. Maybe we were just lucky enough with our specific composition to be able to be sustained.

Obviously this is all [amateur] speculation and nobody knows, but I am wondering what other people think and if people more knowledgeable on the subject think there is any foundation to this speculation.

On Earth we usually say yellow, partially filtered by the atmosphere but it is in reality more white.

I know Pluto does have a significant nitrogen atmosphere but hopefully that won't affect the results too much. Make it the dwarf planet Charon if you need to.

I am curious about areas where particle sensing still faces significant challenges or where existing solutions are inefficient, unreliable, or too expensive.

For example, I know that detecting airborne particles (like pollutants for example) is a well explored field, but I wonder if there are less obvious, unusual sensing needs..

Are there any hard-to-detect particles that current technology struggles with? What are some non-airborne particle sensing challenges? Are there specific industries or research areas where improved particle sensing could benefit of?

Hello! I am a 13 year old from Turkey. Ever since kindergarden I wanted to be a scientist. I was always interested in science. But whenever I tell this to my older brother, he tells me to grow up and give up on my childhood dreams. My mother says the same. "They dont care about scientists" And I feel heartbroken. What do you think?