While reading on the Internet, one of the sites I sometimes visit is Reddit – for those that don’t know, Reddit is like a huge online forum, covering many diverse topics and opinions. Each topic is organised into what is called a a sub-reddit.
Some of these sub-reddits can be unsavoury but one of the safe and interesting ones is AskScience.

AskScience is a place where people can ask questions and get answers from people who are well-versed in that area of knowledge. Answers based on speculation are not allowed, so quality is maintained. A voting system allows irrelevant or incorrect information to be “downvoted” to the point where it is no longer visible, and a moderation team removes other non-applicable replies.

There are many interesting astronomy, space and physics related questions asked, and I thought I’d collect together some of the recent ones which I’ve found interesting, for you.

• How do Astronauts aboard the ISS digest food, do the contents of the stomach float around? Is the digestive process reliant on gravity at all?
• Why are planets made of such different stuff?
• How do xray machines generate xrays?
• Is there an equivalent to a rainbow for the other waves (X-ray, UV, gamma etc), that we just can’t perceive?
• Are there any visual (not radio) telescopes in existence or in development, that would be able to see either voyager spacecraft?
• When particles collide in the LHC, does it make a sound?
• What things work on earth that wouldn’t work in space?
• Why doesn’t the sun bleach everything in space?
• What do the thick bars represent on atomic spectrum lines?
• Taking into account the rotation of the earth, the earth’s transit around the sun, and the sun’s transit around the solar system, is it possible to work out approximately how far a human being moves through space in one day?
• How loud would something have to be to hear it on the other side of earth?
• How far do lasers travel in space?
• Why do some materials, like water, do a really good job of blocking nuclear radiation, but allow light to pass through practically unhindered?Why do some materials, like water, do a really good job of blocking nuclear radiation, but allow light to pass through practically unhindered?

These are just some of the most recent – there are lots more on the site. Click here to visit reddit.com/r/AskScience.