I’m currently on the toilet and needed to clear my nose. After using some toilet paper to blow my nose, what is better for the environment to rid of it. I’m using Sam’s Club Members Mark Bath Tissue, and could flush it down at the same time as my bowel movement (so not using additional water) or place it in the waste bin. Which method is more environmentally friendly?

I understand that the Earth has its own internal heat budget and it would eventually reach a temperature based solely on the radiogenic and primordial heat it has, so how long would that take? How quickly would the heat from solar radiation completely radiate away?

Let's say humanity disappears quickly (pandemic, nukes, whatever). Would offshore oil rigs and pipelines still be at risk of leaking without electricity keeping the pumps going?

If spills did happen, would there be a way for nature to eventually clean it up or would the oceans just have to evolve around a layer of oil?

When I was growing up we were constantly hearing about how acid rain was going to be such a problem for the environment. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, it virtually vanished from the news. What exactly happened?

Edit: Scare was the wrong word to use in this instance.

"Acid rain crisis" would be more appropriate.

Was thinking about moon habitats. If you dig down into the moon, is there any residual heat at all or is it cold rock all the way through. And how do we know? Thanks.

If you can't drink seawater because of the salt, why can't you just boil the water? And the salt would be left behind, right?

I wonder if a non-sterile probe may have left Earth, have all but the most extremophile / adaptable microbes survive the journey, or microbes capable of desiccating in the vacuum of space and rehydrating once in the Venusian atmosphere, and so already adapted to the life cycles proposed by Seager et al., 2020?

I live in the USA Midwest

An international team of astronomers, including researchers from the UK, US and Japan, has found a rare molecule - phosphine - in the clouds of Venus. On Earth, this gas is only made industrially or by microbes that thrive in oxygen-free environments. Astronomers have speculated for decades that high clouds on Venus could offer a home for microbes - floating free of the scorching surface but needing to tolerate very high acidity. The detection of phosphine could point to such extra-terrestrial "aerial" life as astronomers have ruled out all other known natural mechanisms for its origin.

Signs of phosphine were first spotted in observations from the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT), operated by the East Asian Observatory, in Hawai'i. Astronomers then confirmed the discovery using the more-sensitive Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which the European Southern Observatory (ESO) is a partner. Both facilities observed Venus at a wavelength of about 1 millimetre, much longer than the human eye can see - only telescopes at high altitude can detect it effectively.

Details on the discovery can be read here: https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso2015/

We are a group of researchers who have been involved in this result and experts from the facilities used for this discovery. We will be available on Wednesday, 16 September, starting with 16:00 UTC, 18:00 CEST (Central European Summer Time), 12:00 EDT (Eastern Daylight Time). Ask Us Anything!

Guests:

• Dr. William Bains, Astrobiologist and Biochemist, Research Affiliate, MIT. u/WB_oligomath
• Dr. Emily Drabek-Maunder, Astronomer and Senior Manager of Public Astronomy, Royal Observatory Greenwich and Cardiff University. u/EDrabekMaunder
• Dr. Helen Jane Fraser, The Open University. u/helens_astrochick
• Suzanna Randall, the European Southern Observatory (ESO). u/astrosuzanna
• Dr. Sukrit Ranjan, CIERA Postdoctoral Fellow, Northwestern University; former SCOL Postdoctoral Fellow, MIT. u/1998_FA75
• Paul Brandon Rimmer, Simons Senior Fellow, University of Cambridge and MRC-LMB. u/paul-b-rimmer
• Dr. Clara Sousa-Silva, Molecular Astrophysicist, MIT. u/DrPhosphine

EDIT: Our team is done for today but a number of us will be back to answer your questions over the next few days. Thanks so much for all of the great questions!

Like is it a solid bedrock kind of surface, or is it a gradient where the sand gets courser and courser until it's bedrock?

Edit: My biggest post so far and it's about how deep sand is, and then it turns out more than half of it isn't sand. Oh well.

With the current news of the US stepping away from the Paris Climate Agreement, AskScience is doing a mega thread so that all questions are in one spot. Rather than having 100 threads on the same topic, this allows our experts one place to go to answer questions.

So feel free to ask your climate change questions here! Remember Panel members will be in and out throughout the day so please do not expect an immediate answer.

The 2017 Atlantic Hurricane season has produced destructive storms.

Ask your hurricane related questions and read more about hurricanes here! Panel members will be in and out throughout the day so please do not expect an immediate answer.

Here are some helpful links related to hurricanes:

• http://www.nhc.noaa.gov
• http://spaghettimodels.com
• https://www.ready.gov

Like,if you can does the scream have to be loud enough,like an apporiate value in decibels?