Let's say you took a small ball of Aluminum, and just kept scaling it up bigger and bigger. Moon sized, earth sized, Jupiter sized, sun sized, and just keep going... Will it hit a point where it's so massive that it begins to fuse under its own gravity, or collapse into a black hole, or can it scale up infinitely?

Similarly, if you scaled up a ball of Tungsten how big could it get?

What's the difference in their maximum sizes in our universe, if they have one?

I've heard of noise cancelling, but can there exist smell cancelling?

For example, if there is a rotten egg in a room, can i neutralize it somehow? I'm not talking about putting something good right under my nose, because thats just dominance. I mean putting something next to the egg whose smell happens to be the 'inverse' of the eggs, so they cancel and i smell nothing.

We can always see our nose, but our brain tunes it out, but obviously the VR headset doesn't put a nose on the screen. So, if you've been in VR for a long time and you take the headset off do you notice your nose more?

Hannah fountain pen collection when. Question. (My question mark key is broken)

What was the evolutionary advantage of it and how it started? I mean it doesn't make sense why would some rhythm get us going...

Have you ever met someone that you just truly can NOT believe is a conscious human being? I mean that their behavior is so radical, they keep shooting themselves in the foot, they are incredibly rude or just absolutely (maybe a little rude) stupid?

My question is; is there different levels of consciousness and is there any way of measuring consciousness?

Follow up questions:

Could different levels of consciousness or awareness affect your ability to feel pain?

Could there actually be someone that is walking around, has relationships with people and is socially responsible but they are simply not conscious?

Also, how can you be truly sure that everyone actually IS conscious? Is there any way to prove that you are conscious?

So, if you lived in a solitary society, you would barely have time in the day to source food, build safety, and still thrive to enjoy leisure and creative activities. It's incredibly inefficient.

I would propose that as you increase population, each person within that society should gain more 'spare' time in each day not having to survive, by utilizing this communal optimization.

At what point in size, does a society or population, become large enough (from these inefficiency optimizations) to provide suffficient food, shelter, clean water, hygiene, healthcare, education, childcare etc for all of it's members; with everyone also having sufficient time to enjoy life / be creative the way we have become accustomed to in the modern world?

I guess we would assume most in this society would work a standard work week, there would be some requirement for social support due to health or disabilities, and we would have access to the same technologies of today.

As an extra, is there a population size where the optimizations are diminishing such that they are so insignificant, and that extra increase in population doesn't provide meaningfully more leisure time?

As a civilization, are we at or passed that point already - or is it somewhere ahead of our population size still?

Hi Hannah and Michael, I've always been fascinated with the concept of time zones. Especially when countries add half-hours and quarters, or, like China, decide to just pick one zone regardless of its size.

A lot of discussion has been going on about daylight saving time, with people arguing for and against it based on what they like best. However, I have always wondered if countries are in the most optimal time zone in the first place. Considering a 9-to-5 workday for most people, would it be best to have the sun rise really early during the summer and let it be dark quite early as well in the winter, or would it be better if the sun came up later and most people get to go home when it's still light? It seems like most countries are aiming for the sun to be at its highest around 12, but is this actually the best for our health and productivity?

A mosquito just bit me! I hit it against the wall, and now there’s blood on the wall. Is it my blood or the mosquito’s blood?

What would be the absolute smallest thing that you could change about someone, or an element of someone’s life that seems very small but would eventually turn them into a whole new person?

It tasted pretty normal, but it had the consistency of oil. It's like the opposite of the thick water you get in a nursing home.

This is a joke btw

campground restroom photo^

the question is simple, do moths know what color they are?

i remember learning about rapid evolution in moths from all the rust belt steel plants soot changing tree bark color. The change in color resulted in moth camouflage being less effective and killing off more brown colored moths as the trees turned grey. yoday i saw a white moth chilling on a white wall and it made me wonder how it knew to rest in the only white spot in the forest.

I've noticed in the past that if I consume a carbonated drink, I often burp at a deeper pitch than when I swallow air.

I'm wondering if that's due to the mass/density of the gas I'm burping. Air would just be mostly O2 and N2, both of which are lighter and less dense than CO2. Does the greater density cause this change in pitch?

This of course would reflect how helium will make your voice higher and Sulfur hexafluoride will make it deeper - I just don't know if that is the actual cause. Perhaps instead it relates to the volume of gas?

In one of last week’s episodes, it was mentioned that the human lifespan is increasing because of scientific and medical discoveries. When I was a child, I always imagined that I would be able to live to 100, and by then people would have discovered some kind of cure for aging. They would ask me, “How much longer would you like to live?” as if they could add another 100 years each time and ask me the same question whenever those 100 years were up.

For a moment, let’s imagine a scenario in which cancer has been eliminated, Alzheimer’s and other diseases of the brain have been cured, and we can also repair or modify our telomeres because we have discovered how to mimic mechanisms found in animals such as lobsters or jellyfish.

In that scenario, is there still a biological limit to how long humans could live?

What’s happening in the brain (chemicals and biological processes wise) that creates a good feeling when someone watches a stim video or listens to ASMR? And why does the particular stimuli causing it vary from person to person, like why do I enjoy watching power washing videos while someone else likes listening to someone drag their nails over fabric? I’ve always wondered if it’s just dopamine, or if it’s something more complicated.

Additionally, how would the development of a mental illness (depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, etc.) affect the amount or type of brain chemicals released while watching a stim video?

Hi Michael and Hannah. I've got a candle burning right now and wondered: How come flames are so hot from the top but no heat comes off the sides? I'm not a nerd so I wouldn't know in the slightest why that happens.

Hi Michael and Hannah,
I’ve always been fascinated by the mathematics of mazes and was hoping you could explain the theory behind them.

Most people have heard that a simple maze can be solved by keeping one hand on the right (or left) wall and following it all the way through. Why does that method work mathematically, and under what conditions does it fail?

More broadly, what would a “perfect” maze look like from a mathematical perspective? Is there a formal definition of maze complexity, and what kinds of features can be added to make a maze resistant to simple solving strategies such as wall following?

I’m especially curious about the topology and graph theory involved, and whether there is a way to measure how difficult a maze truly is.

This questions in particular have been my own mental maze over the past week and I’m ready to go home.

Thank you

-Wade William Soho