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r/askscience

AskScience: Got Questions? Get Answers.. Ask a science question, get a science answer. Founded 2008 · 26.4M members · text posts only

26.4M members. The best post we have captured here reached 11K upvotes, which works out to 0 per 1,000 members.

0peak upvotes per 1,000 members
26.4Mmembers
11Kbest post
893most comments
435posts we track

Open r/askscience on Reddit ↗

What actually lands here

The mix of post types among everything we have captured. Posting a link where almost nothing but images lands is wasted effort, and this is the fastest way to see it.

93%
Question 93% Text 6%

The topics it labels

Flairs are the community's own categories, and the closest thing a subreddit has to telling you what it wants.

Biology 139 Earth Sciences 68 Physics 43 Astronomy 35 Human Body 25 Chemistry 20 Planetary Sci. 19 Engineering 17 Medicine 12 Computing 10

What the ceiling looks like

The biggest posts we have captured here. Links go to the original on Reddit.

We will lose contact with Voyager somewhere 2036 because of the distance between us. Would it be theoretically possible, to send a probe in the direc…

↑ 11K 💬 652 question 2026

Do wild animals have free time? What do they do with it?

↑ 6.6K 💬 417 question 2026

Can someone explain the evolutionary benefit of overt menstruation? All female mammals have a menstrual cycle but most reabsorb the blood via covert …

↑ 5.2K 💬 515 question 2026

Pineapple contains bromelain that helps tenderize meat. If I were to put my hand in pineapple juice or puree for 24 hours, would it eventually break …

↑ 4.4K 💬 391 question 2026

If a vacuum is an excellent insulator, wouldn’t heat build up in spacecraft?

↑ 3.6K 💬 574 question 2026

Why is there no transmissible therapeutic virus if biology doesn't forbid it? For example, a harmless virus that spreads from person to person but ac…

↑ 3.3K 💬 229 question 2026

Why is there a vaccine for Lyme disease for dogs but not humans?

↑ 2.6K 💬 260 question 2026

Why has the coyote become so wildly successful, while the wolf continues to decline?

↑ 2.5K 💬 351 question 2026

If a spider sets up a web and nothing is caught does the spider move locations and if so how long does it take for them to decide to do so?

↑ 2.3K 💬 179 question 2026

What is actually happening in the 5 to 10 seconds when I absolutely cannot do another rep at the gym, take that extremely short rest, and then can li…

↑ 2.2K 💬 88 question 2026

Communities its size

Within four times the member count either way, so the comparison is fair. Sorted by upside.

r/askscience, in numbers

Answered from the posts ViralHunt holds from this community, not from Reddit's own about page.

What is r/askscience?
r/askscience ("AskScience: Got Questions? Get Answers.") describes itself this way: Ask a science question, get a science answer. It was founded in 2008 and has 26.4M members.
How many members does r/askscience have?
r/askscience has about 26.4M members. ViralHunt has tracked 435 of its posts; the biggest reached 11K upvotes, which is 0 per 1,000 members.
What is the most viral post on r/askscience?
"We will lose contact with Voyager somewhere 2036 because of the distance between us. Would it be theoretically possible, to send a probe in " reached 11K upvotes and 652 comments in 2026, the highest score among the posts we hold from r/askscience.
What subreddits are similar to r/askscience?
Communities of a comparable size we track: r/therewasanattempt, r/me_irl, r/nextfuckinglevel, r/WatchPeopleDieInside, r/oddlysatisfying, r/MadeMeSmile.
What kind of posts do best on r/askscience?
Of the posts we hold, 93% are question posts and 6% are text posts.
When is the best time to post on r/askscience?
Across 427 timestamped posts we hold, the slots whose posts averaged the highest score are Thursday at 17:00 UTC (2K avg upvotes), Friday at 20:00 UTC (1.8K avg upvotes), Friday at 21:00 UTC (1.8K avg upvotes). The busiest day is Friday. For Reddit as a whole, see the best time to post on Reddit page.
How many upvotes does a post need to reach the top of r/askscience?
The 20th-best post we hold from r/askscience has 1.7K upvotes, so that is roughly the bar for the top twenty. We captured 80 posts from it in the last 30 days.

See what is climbing here before you write

ViralHunt tracks Reddit and eight other networks, records how every post grows, and puts what is taking off in front of your team in one list.

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Every figure here is what ViralHunt has captured from r/askscience, not everything the community has ever posted. We deliberately do not publish an average score: our sample is weighted toward a community's best posts, so an average would be flattering and wrong. Peak per 1,000 members is computed the same way for every community listed. See how we measure.