question stringlengths 3 300 | contexts sequence | gold_answer stringlengths 10 26.1k |
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why do the healthiest of foods cause bad gas? | [
"Actually it is because most of people eat that food not so often, so their gut bacteria doesn't know how to digest it, but researches shows that if you eat legumes every day for 21 day your bacteria will adapt and you will get maximum 3% gas more than usual if at all",
"For things like beans and greens, the item... | These foods contain certain sugars that our body cannot digest. Therefore when those sugars reach the colon the bacteria in the colon begins to ferment the sugars causing gas. (Similar to the way gas escapes a carboy through an airlock when fermenting beer)
|
In layman's terms, what would actually happen in the event that a theoretical vaccum decay would occur? | [
"The decay of false vacuum is a fascinating topic! I think there are multiple mechanisms for this to occur, and I don't know them all. The one I'm most familiar with is nucleation of bubbles of true vacuum.\n\nThat is, at each point in spacetime there's always a non-zero chance of the Universe spontaneously decayin... | I'd answer the question but the default reddit "there doesn't seem to be anything here" seems to have done it for me... oh wait, damn. |
When I move at speed through the air, it's cold. When an object reenters the atmosphere, it burns up. Why? | [
"The spacecraft re-enters through the atmosphere at supersonic speeds. For an orbital vehicle, it would have to go through the atmosphere from Mach 25 to subsonic speed before landing. Supersonic airflow is heated due to air compression. As the air flow is slowed down tremendously, its kinetic energy is converted t... | There are (at least) 3 different competing mechanisms going on here.
The first is recycling the air that is conducting with your skin. This is why you feel colder when there is wind or when you move. When the air is cooler than your skin and could be kept completely still what would happen is heat is conducted from yo... |
what is the big deal about russia invading ukraine and taking over crimea, and what do i, as a us citizen have to worry about it? | [
"National Sovereignty is a very big deal so anytime a country (especially a country with nukes) starts to reject previously agreed upon borders it is a big deal.\n\nThe reason you should care is that Russia has been for quite sometime trying to maintain some degree of influence over several former Soviet republics.... | Essentially the events in Crimea threaten to destabilize the European continent.
To give you some scale Crimea is about roughly the same size as Belgium. The real scale of territory that Russia seized really did not hit me until I really compared them on a map. Anyway, since the Second World War there has not been any... |
why are there different types of helmets if you're riding a bicycle, a motorcycle or a snowboard etc? | [
"Most helmets are pretty similar in basic construction, actually. They're made of a layer of impact protection (frequently polystyrene) with padding for comfort/fit and a shell to spread out the impact, and to cover and protect the impact layer.\n\nAfter that, the design varies to suit the activity. A motorcycle h... | To have as little protection as is safe for the activity. More protection just gets in the way if you dont need it |
As the sun expands will Mars eventually enter the habitable zone while Earth leaves it? | [
"I don't have an answer, but I *would* like to tack on to the question: would Mars *remain* in a hospitable zone for any length of time? Or would the sun continue expanding at a sufficient rate so that it would simply be within the transition from one inhospitable climate directly to another?",
"Mars is already ... | I believe Mars is considered to be on the edge of the habitable zone right now, and it may actually harbour life under the surface. With a bit more heat from the sun Mars would become more habitable than it is today but it would still be a harsh dead place due to it's thin atmosphere and weak magnetic field.
Also, it'... |
What protocol do human nerves use? | [
"It's mostly spikes of difference in potential that travels through the nerves. Upon reaching the end of the nerve, at the axone, the difference in potential provokes the release of neurotransmitters. For the muscular nerves, try looking up neuromuscular junction.\nI don't think there's a protocol, in a sense that ... | I'm pretty sure there's not a protocol. Frequency of action potentials encodes to intensity of stimulus, but that's not really a protocol in the sense that a different message will be sent by different codes. |
why is it hard to get a good picture of something that "glows in the dark?" | [
"The reason is that a camera is basically a array of small sensors elements that detects how many photons (light particles) that collides at each element during. Since the number of photons sent out per time unit is so low you would need to record for a long time to be able to distinguish the actual signal from the... | Your eyes are magnificent sensors, and cameras are not as good. Your eye has adaptive gain control, which allows you to see better in the dark by trading "frame rate" for sensitivity. To get the same effect in a camera, you need a longer exposure. If you have a nice camera and a tripod, you should be able to get gre... |
if our part of the brain which records memories shuts down when we are drunk, why is it that we still remember as long as we are awake and/or drunk? why do we only forget after waking up? | [
"There isn't necessarily a part of our brain that \"records memories\" as memories are all encoded and retrieved in different parts of the cortex. Yet the part of the brain that transfers memories from short term to long term is the hippocampus. I'm assuming that alcohol interferes with the function of the hippocam... | It is said that information is moved from shorter-term memory to permanent memory while you sleep, and that this process is disturbed when you are drunk. |
How is it that dogs and wolves are still the same species? How much more do dogs need to change before they become a different species? | [
"I think being able to interbreed and the resulting offspring is still fertile has something to do with it. When they can't breed and/or the offspring is infertile, they will have separated significantly enough to not be considered so closely related.. I am most definitely not an expert, so take this with every bit... | Dogs and wolves *are* separate species, *Canis lupus* and *Canis familiaris*. There are many species of animals that can still interbreed but are still classified as separate species due to physical, behavioral, or temporal barriers that make it extremely unlikely for the animals to hybridize. Dogs and wolves are more ... |
why would a human get a disease (kuru) from eating another human's brain? | [
"[Kuru is a prion disease.](_URL_0_) \nA prion is a a protein that turns other proteins into copies of itself. \nThe proteins that Kuru can work with are usually located in the brain. \nWhen you eat that infected brain, it contains the Kuru prion, which then starts turning those proteins into more of the prion. ... | The disease comes from improperly folded proteins called prions getting to the brain and destroying tissue. Every person has a small number of these accumulate over their lifetime but if you eat the brain of a closely related species or of your own you have a high probability of greatly increasing the number that you w... |
When performing a gravitational slingshot maneuver, does the direction the planet is rotating in relative to a spacecrafts trajectory make a difference? | [
"Normally no, however if you try to make a slingshot off an object with very uneven gravity, then it might make a difference. Imagine a planet where half of it is made of something very heavy, and the other half something very light, in such a way that you experience stronger pull when you're facing the \"heavy\" s... | You're right, the rotation of the planet about its axis has no impact on a slingshot. What matters is the direction that the planet is orbiting around the sun and where the spacecraft crosses through its sphere of influence. |
Radio waves and Light waves are on the same spectrum. So could you make a "Radio" that uses light waves instead? | [
"actually yes, but its very difficult. To make an optimal antenna you need it to be wavelength/4. For the FM spectrum the wavelength is a meter, so the antenna needs to be about 3/4 of a meter or about 2 and a half feet. Visible light is from 400nm to 700nm so the antenna would need to be from 100nm to 200nm. That ... | What you are talking about is basically fiber optic communication.
The main limiting factor for visible light communication is signal degradation due to the atmosphere, or simply something blocking the line of sight to the transmitter. if you remove those two factors by shooting the beam of light down a glass fiber, y... |
why is it that a system like the nintendo 3ds/ds can play a game without loading screens, yet games on systems like the ps4/xbox one cannot? | [
"Thats not necessarily the case though. For instance, Pokemon Rumble World has a fairly long loading screen. But for the most part, its because games on the 3ds are not as resource heavy.\n\nI think you can see why [This game](_URL_0_) would load faster than [This one](_URL_1_).",
"Not all 3ds games don't have lo... | Games on the PS4 and Xbone have a lot more information to process and load, and the 3DS and DS have flash memory on SD cards, which while you can put a SSD in the PS4/Xbone to reduce load times, their default Hard Drive is a Hard Disk Drive with 5600 Rotations per minute, meaning they access information off the memory ... |
what is torque, and why do high torque engines not have super high rotation speed? | [
"Try pushing a wall. Harder. No Harder than that. Did it move? No? well just because you didn't actually didn't do any work doesn't mean you didn't exert a force.\n\nForces have nothing to do with velocity. Power cares about velocity.\n\nTo get a large amount of torque from an engine, for starters you need a eng... | Torque is not related to rotation speed. Torque is defined as the force you are using to turn something multiplied by the distance the force is from the center of rotation. For example, if you pull on a 2 foot long lever with 50 pounds of force, you will create the same amount of torque no matter how long it takes you ... |
british currency. pounds, sterling, quid, pence?! | [
"The British Pound Sterling is their official currency. The current exchange rate is 1 British pound per 1.45 us dollars. Quid is just a slang term for a pound. 1 pence is like a penny. Theres 100 pence in a british pound. It has the same name as the unit of weight because 1 pound of silver used to be a standard of... | Pounds are like dollars, pence are like cents. pounds is short for "pounds sterling." Quid is like saying "bucks." |
Light Speed | [
"Yes they do, the speed is based off of how fast we measured light to travel. Our current most accurate measurements would suggest that speed to be 299,792,458 meters per second in a vacuum. ",
"Yes. Light, being massless, is uniquely sensitive to the *structure* of spacetime itself. In particular, it's sensitive... | > Do all wavelengths of light travel at the same speed?
Yes. In fact, anything massless will travel at this speed at all times. It gets weirder when you look into relativity and find out that it's same no matter how you're moving, so if you move at 99.99999% the speed of light away from me and I shine a flashlight... |
why everyone hates stephen harper | [
"He has a majority government despite having less than half of the popular vote.",
"[These are a few reasons](_URL_0_)\n\nEDIT: Just noticed they changed the front page of that website, to see \"shit harper did\" click the tab at the top right",
"Aside from most of Reddit (mostly liberal demographic) and Quebec... | The answer to this question is a 3 parter. Here goes...
* **Sample Bias.** Stephen Harper is from the Conservative Party. Reddit users tend to lean in the non-conservative direction. It could possibly be that young people tend not to be conservative, and Reddit has more younger users than older users. All that is deba... |
why do news anchors and politicians say "an history" instead of a history? | [
"The 'h' in history wasn't always emphasized, so 'an' made more sense than 'a', (possibly in England) and the practice hasn't completely ended. Different sources have different views on the correct form, but generally either should work.",
"Basically put, if a person emphasizes the h, it should be a history. If a... | No. It's not whether it's a vowel or not.
It's whether it's a vowel sound or not.
|
Does the human brain differ on a physical level, before and after acquiring knowledge? | [
"I know that the brain, when it practices certain things repeatedly, will reinforce the neural connections that were created when the person is learning. So in a sense, yes, the brain does differ on a physical level after acquiring and practicing knowledge. But you can't artificially implant a skill in someone, nor... | Your question is super interesting but science cannot yet explain consciousness, and it seems like "knowledge" refers to a conscious awareness of some fact or state of affairs, so your question is primarily addressed by philosophy (and is often called the mind-body problem).
Assuming that there's nothing like a soul i... |
why do more experienced drivers find the interior lights distracting when driving at night? | [
"If you're paying attention to the road you're constantly aware of small sources of light - these could be the headlights or taillights of other cars, reflective stickers on lane markings or guardrails, road signs, stopped cars, or the flashing light on an emergency vehicle. You're also pretty constantly looking a... | It makes it harder to see out when it's dark outside. Stand at a house window at nighttime with the lights out and then with the lights on and it'll be a lot harder to see outside. |
Is whale sperm any bigger than human sperm? | [
"How is the sperm of whales collected? Is it done in the wild or post-mortem?",
" > wouldn't the whale sperm have to swim more\n\nNo, because the whale penis and volume of ejaculate are also very large.",
"I may be treading dangerously, but can someone tell me why there are always so many posts deleted/removed ... | [In male humans, sperm cells consists of a head 5 microns by 3 microns and a tail 41 microns long.](_URL_2_)
Whale sperm vary in length according to species: [73.8 micron for a porpoise, 40.6 for a sperm whale, 52.5 for a humpback whale.](_URL_1_)
I couldn't find it for the blue whale though, sadly. I will assume the... |
What is the Kashmir Conflict? Why has it been going on for almost 70 years? Will it ever be solved? | [
"So, I wrote my masters thesis on the evolution of Indo-Pakistani relations, in the context of Kashmir. This will be a pretty long answer, but below I have pasted some of the most relevant pieces of my thesis. I haven't touched it since 2012, so there is nothing in there post-12. If anyone is interested, I will gla... | So this is an excerpt from an essay I wrote on the topic that essentially summarizes the conflict. I have cited the sources used in this section at the bottom, hope it helps. If this is not allowed, I will remove it ASAP!
> As both India and Pakistan gained dominion status in mid 1947 around 600 princely states had ... |
How does time near the speed of light work for two different frames of reference? | [
"This is the reason that the [twin paradox](_URL_0_) is called a paradox. The astronaut on his journey will see time progress slowly on earth- however, when he turns around to come back to earth, he changes his frame of reference. When he changes frame of reference, many of his coordinates get relabeled. In a sense... | Ah this is the classic [twin paradox](_URL_0_).
Special relativity states that reference frames that are uniform are equivalent. i.e. they are either traveling at a constant speed or stationary.
The thought experiment is: if you are on a bus that's traveling at a constant speed, it is indistinguishable from if you a... |
why is unrefined sugar more expensive than white
sugar? by the same token, why do whole grain
products like whole grain bread and brown rice
tend to be more expensive than their white, refined
counterparts? surely, refining should add extra
cost? | [
"For most products, the price you pay at the store has a lot more to do with what people are **willing** to pay than what the product costs to make. If a company can make more money by charging more, because people are willing to pay that much, they will. If raising the price too much costs them sales and profits, ... | In a third world country unrefined food is cheaper than refined food. But in the western world they realized they can charge more by calling it "healthy". |
why can't we recreate dinosaurs just like in jurassic park? | [
"I read in a dawkins book that there's just no way the DNA could survive so long. Even enclosed in amber and mosquito bodies.",
"I highly recommend watching the TED talk by Jack Horner: [Building a Dinosaur From a Chicken](_URL_0_)",
"Did you even see Jurassic Park?! THATS WHY. It was a documentary.",
"Bec... | To create clones you need to take the nucleus of a cell of one animal and place it in an egg without a nucleus of the same species. This is then given to the female and is grown in the normal fashion. Blood (in human's certainly) tends not have cell nuclei, hence it wouldn't be possible for humans. Even if you were ... |
how do so many countries commit war crimes, and yet there seems to be little action against it? | [
"Leaders don't want to start justice-fuelled conflict because it's expensive and won't get the people on side because the war crimes are kept a secret anyway, so the public don't see them as a problem. The thing you've got to remember is, nothing in international politics is humanitarian. ",
"There is no global g... | There is no world court that can go around arresting people for committing war crimes. The closest thing you have to that is the International Court of Justice. But the ICJ is more of a Western European political tool than anything else. It would never prosecute a Western European leader, and cannot operate in count... |
What impact did Marcus Licinius Crassus have on society after his death? | [
"Also, while you shouldn't ever cite Wikipedia, their references can sometimes be helpful and a jumping off point. ",
"The fact that in death Crassus lost the standards of his legion to the Parthians had serious political ramifications. Recovering the standards was a major foreign policy point and when Augustus w... | I'm on my phone but I must say this makes my heart happy.
You might try Alan Mason Ward's "Marcus Crassus and the Late Roman Republic" as a good start. Maybe Plutarch's Lives as well.
I hope these help.
Source: I've written a biography on Crassus. |
why does some electronic equipment (smart tv’s, consoles, computers etc) respond so slowly when they are first turned on? | [
"because you are effectively booting up a computer each time you turn the TV on. What doesn't help is that you are used to analog style tvs, which just needed their components to heat up to effectively start working. modern tvs have parts the need to effectively boot to start working enough for you to see a picture... | They have a lot of things to load into memory and process (startup processes, kernal modules, etc)
Think of it like eating breakfast. It takes a while to get to the eating part because you have stuff to do prior like cooking, getting the dishes, bringing them to the table, etc. |
why do christians think the plain red cups at starbucks are anti-christian, when previous cups' reindeer and snowflakes and evergreens were nordic-germanic pagan symbols and not related to jesus in the first place? | [
"A percentage of Christians is too concerned with appearing to be more Christian and caring about Christian things to stop and actually think about what they're doing.\n\nWhich is something that happens with every group of people. They're too busy being [subgroup]y to stop and consider what, exactly, it means to b... | You shouldn't go looking for logic in this red cup nonsense.
Not to mention that this is a very small *very* vocal minority who is complaining about this crap. |
how do 'fake news' companies make money | [
"Have you ever had to \"Ctrl-Alt-Delete\" on a fake news site because of the 456 billion ads spamming and freezing your computer on each page?",
"Ads.\n\nAdvertising models mean clicks= views= ad revenue.\n\n > I mostly see them in facebook.\n\nIf you click the hyperlink, the web page it brings you to will have a... | Adverts on their websites and most likely by selling any information that website can gather from you, too. |
how is it that for two months california has had a methane leak and it won't be fixed until spring? | [
"I work in oil and gas at a large plant so I'll answer you what it PROBABLY is, though without knowing the details it honestly could be anything. First of all, shuting off machines cost industry HUGE money, in chemical processing plants like those used to refine and process oil and gas, if one machine goes down, of... | In order to fix the leak, workers have to drill 8500 feet down into the earth, find the underground well, and pump it full of concrete. This process will take months, and can't realistically be sped up.
EDIT: For a more detailed answer, see u/WalterLSU below.
EDIT 2: More info with pictures:
_URL_0_ |
Besides Market Garden, what are some other notable and interesting Allied failures of World War 2? | [
"[Here's a great thread on this topic, which includes an answer from yours truly.](_URL_0_)",
"A non-exhaustive list:\n\n1. Norway 1940: the British and French fail to hold Norway against a fairly light Wehrmacht force, despite maintaining a hold on the important port of Narvik for some time.\n\n2. Greece and Cre... | While this might be a bit of a stretch since in the end it is billed as an Allied military victory, I think the Battle of Anzio and its after effects failed to accomplish their primary objectives.
At the end of 1943/beginning of 1944 the Allies were bogged down assaulting the Gustav line, a series of German defensive... |
how is crime handled in international waters? | [
"What if you're on the high seas and:\n\na.) your ship is not registered to any country. You built it yourself. \nand \nb.) you have legally renounced your citizenship. You're a man without a country.\n\nWould you be autonomous and untouchable? Somehow I doubt it..\n",
"Interpol would get involved if the crime ... | Law on a cruise ship (or any other ship) starts with the flag the ship is flying under. A ship flies the flag of the country where it's registered, and, in general, the laws onboard a ship are the laws of that country. However, when figuring out which laws apply on a sea vessel, territory also must be taken into consid... |
Twin Paradox - Is the travelling twin younger? | [
"The traveling twin will be younger upon returning to earth. As I recall there are different interpretations on what the 'paradox' should be, but one often confusing point is why it is the twin in the spacecraft who will be the younger, since from his frame of reference the twin staying on earth is the one doing th... | Author of the link sounds totally schizo.
Of course traveling twin is younger. The twin on Earth is inertial and so he maximises proper time between departure and arrival. No matter what the other twin does, Earth twin will always be older. |
When studying electromagnetic forces, how do you picture them? | [
"Be careful with the language. An electromagnetic *field* is different from an electromagnetic *force*. A *field* occupies space like a [vector field](_URL_0_). An electromagnetic force is associated with a specific object, and can be pictured by a singe vector originating from the object to which the force is b... | I found that the best solution is to stop trying to visualize stuff like electromagnetic in terms of what you already understand, because they are not like something you already understand. You should ofcause gain knowledge of how they work, but i like to rely on the equations and try not to reason to much about anythi... |
why do we curse as a reflex? | [
"I would think it is just a learned behavior. As children we see swearing from our parents, the media, and our peers and some of us develop the desire to swear because it's new and often times forbidden. Usually because of the new and forbidden nature of swearing most children become EXTREMELY foul mouthed but brea... | That isn't a reflex. It's a habit.
Comparing the two introduces some really interesting neuroscience topics that have to do with habituation and learning.
A reflex is, broadly speaking, any response that happens *without* conscious thought. If you touch a hot stove, you're gonna pull your hand back *before* the fact ... |
why is testosterone a controlled substance but estrogen is not? | [
"In some areas you can get estrogen in the form of birth control pills over the counter. In many areas you still need to visit a doctor though.\n\nAnd the reason why these hormones aren't really available over the counter (barring, again, birth control in certain areas) is because they are not harmless fun drugs. T... | Testosterone can be used for cheating in athletes, and has high potential for unsafe abuse. You might as well ask why steroids are illegal, its just as good a question. |
In WW2 are there any overlooked Axis achievements like the Allied cracking of Enigma or figuring out the magnetic shipping mines and the subsequent degaussing of ships? | [
"While the supported operation had a lot of issues to put it mildly, the deception plan for Wacht am Rhein (the German operational title for the Ardennes winter 1944-45 counter offensive) was quite good.\n\nThis should not be confused with the various infiltration attempts using US uniforms or disguised equipment, ... | Unironically, the Jerry Can.
Simple, cheap, ergonomic design that allowed compact storage of fuel in a sturdy container resistant to impact, puncture, across a wide range of temperatures, along with maximizing the fuel gotten out of the container as opposed to older containers required a funnel or sort that were use... |
fall television - why do networks premier their "hot shows" in the fall? | [
"Because this is the season where Americans are the least likely to travel in general. Also this is the least likely season when Americans travel overseas; even if they go travel they will still be able to watch their American shows. ",
"During the summer, it is light out later, and people are more likely to be a... | No expert but I'm going to take a guess. It gets darker and colder causing more people to spend time indoors than outdoors. Because of this, they'll get more viewers. More viewers = more money. |
Is it possible for current human technology to destroy ALL life on Earth? | [
"nice try dr evil",
"No. But we can destroy our civilization easily. That is to disrupt chains of resource extraction,process and distribution. A full scale nuclear & biological & chemical war in 80-th would have resulted in reduction of population to 100 -200 millions of people. ",
"I submit [mass asteroid bo... | No. We couldn't even wipe ourselves (humanity) off the face of the Earth even if we tried _really_ hard. That's not to say we won't have the ability to one day, but at the moment it wouldn't be possible. |
I've noticed on a lot of milk crates they say something along the lines of "using this for anything other than milk is punishable by law" was stealing milk crates ever such a big problem that they had to make a law to address it or was this just a precaution? | [
"hi! could you specify which country you're referring to? thanks!",
"I don't feel like this is a history question at all. Really a cursory google could answer this:\n\n > Theft of milk crates, as it turns out, is an issue taken very, very seriously by the dairy industry. The International Dairy Foods Association ... | Yes, that is the case. During the 1970s and 80s these plastic crates were regularly pilfered because of their solid construction and light weight. Today manufacturers have copied these designs and they're sold in stores as consumer goods.
Some states have similar laws for shopping carts, possession is illegal. |
why does everyone on reddit seem to have roommates? (i'm european) | [
"My wife would be *pissed* if I told her to move out.",
"Yes, normally people are ashamed of living with their parents so they try to get good apartments they can't afford and split it with someone else. They would both live together and also there are roommates in college because if everyone had their own room i... | bias. when people have roomates, they do things and people post shit about it. When people dont have roomates, nothing about roomates is said. No one says 'i live alone and this happened'. so you notice the occasional roomate post and move on to the next ten thousand posts and then after a while you wonder why so many ... |
why do cops use numbers like 10-4 to talk to each other instead of saying what’s actually happening? | [
"Because it is just supposed to alert other officers of the crime so they will arrive. If someone’s life is at stake it is much more important to get the situation under control prior to figuring out the entire situation,",
"Once upon a time, radio was an analog medium. There was static, and the longer the sente... | Because there are multiple officers all trying to talk on the same frequency so it's good to be brief. Also in case someone is listening it isn't immediately obvious what's going on |
how are hackers able to hack into major companies, steal tons of data, and get out without a trace? | [
"Companies have security measures commensurate to their perceived risk. Sure, some GoT scripts leaked, but that's not going to keep people from watching.\n\nHBO can't afford the sort of IT that would be more hacker resistant. Even the NSA has insiders who leak stuff, that's a much harder threat to deal with that ... | First of all, when you 'steal' data, you don't actually 'steal' it. You replicate it. Unless you work at a highly secured site, the IT professionals aren't likely to track access down to this level. If the Vice President of Marketing wants to download 1.5 TB worth of Game of Thrones scripts, so be it. At most, your... |
What happened to Roman patrician family names? Why don't we see people carrying the surnames Julius, Tarquinius, etc.? | [
"Like most names, they died out when people stopped liking them and using them, e.g. when the family ceased to exist. Some cases, they're just no longer in a recognizable form thanks to linguistic mutations. In others, they fell out of fashion and were replaced by those that were more popular. In Frankish Gaul, for... | /u/SheepExplosion is right to say that the names simply fell out of use (particularly after romantic naming conventions changed in late antiquity) but it's also true that if we're asking about the patrician families, those had mostly died out by the Principate. The patrician clans of the Principate were artificially cr... |
If I were to build a potato clock, then later removed and ate the potato, would I no longer gain as many nutrients/calories from the potato? | [
" > The energy for the battery comes from the chemical change in the zinc (or other metal) when it dissolves into the acid. The energy does not come from the lemon or potato. The zinc is oxidized inside the lemon, exchanging some of its electrons with the acid in order to reach a lower energy state, and the energy ... | As /u/Osymandius said, you won't get any less energy from the potato, but it will have metal ions dissolved in it, and so you might get rather sick. So uh...don't eat the potato. |
what is the difference between "neo-liberals" and the modern "left" and why do they have beef? | [
"First thing to understand is that Left and Right are to do with economic views. Left being lots of government control, right being complete market freedoms. The second part of the scale is Authoritarian vs Libertarian. Authoritarian being that the government tells you how to live, who to marry etc Libertarian bein... | Neo-Liberal has become a term of derision used by some on the Left on people who support the status-quo, usually in areas like economic growth oriented policies, free trade, free speech, and a general position that things are good enough to improve with minor tinkering, not radical change.
The modern Left has factions... |
: why don't we use morphine for lethal injection? | [
"Cyanide is painful and inhumane compared to the current injections.",
"Is a morphine overdose considered cruel?\n\n8th amendment protects against cruel and unusual punishments (which is why states stopped using the gas chamber)",
"Morphine doesn't work very reliably as a poison. Many people take huge doses reg... | There are many pharmaceutical companies that explicitly state "If you want to buy our drug, you have to promise not to use it to kill people." This is the reason that the US has had so many issues with lethal injection drugs recently; some cocktails have been disallowed by the manufacturers, and some of the new mixtur... |
Why do most experimental fusion reactors focus on deuterium-tritium fusion, and why isn't deuterium-proton fusion ever used? | [
"Well the Coulomb barrier is the same, but the Q-value for DT fusion is over 17 MeV while the Q-value for d(p,γ)^(3)He is only about 5 MeV.",
"The reason is because deuterium-tritium fusion has *by far* the lowest triple product of *any* fusion reaction. The triple product is a quantitative statement of the neces... | The difficulty in fusion is over coming the positive repulsion between protons in the 2 nuclei. The closer 2 nuclei get, the more the protons push each other away. Sounds like you're probably aware of that, and also aware that the only way to overcome this barrier is the strong nuclear force exerted by all nucleons at ... |
Over the last few centuries, how did organized sports grow from a pastime, to the crazy multi-billion dollar industry that it is today? | [
"Mass market daily newspapers, in the late Victorian era, developed sports pages to increase their circulation numbers. This increased interest in professional sports among the general public. However, it was the advent of television that allowed the massive increase in reven... | Yes, great question.
Probably *first* asked in circa 2AD by redditius user handocles about the obscene wealth amassed by that crazy charioteer [Gaius Appuleius Diocles](_URL_0_) who when retiring at the age of 42 after a 24 year career reportedly had winnings totalling 35,863,120 sesterces ($US 15 billion), ma... |
This week's theme: Feminism | [
"I've always been curious about Queen Victoria's strong aversion to feminism (\"Feminists ought to get a good whipping\"). Was there some specific identifiable group of feminists she was reacting to, or did she generally really just hate anyone who advocated for women's rights? Did she have any interactions with fe... | I hope you guys know what you're in for |
why are vehicles built that under and/or oversteer? | [
"most vehicles don't oversteer from the factory, that's a dangerous thing for the average driver\n\nundersteer makes the driver realize they are going too fast and they react by slowing down, especially with audible feedback from the tires. for an average driver understeer is much safer and easier to control",
"... | A 'neutral' car where all four wheels lose traction at the same time all the time is impossible. The balance between front and rear grip is a constantly changing equation, depending on how tight the corner is (cars want to understeer more at low speed than at high speed) and on whether or not you're accelerating (pres... |
what's the difference between underwater pressure and space pressure, and why haven't we explored the ocean as much as space? | [
"Space has no pressure, so the maximum pressure difference is going to be 1 atmosphere (between sea-level and the vacuum of space). Underwater you get an extra atmosphere of pressure (so 2 atmospheres) when you go down as little as 10m, so exploring deep involves a LOT of pressure.\n\nEdit: quick google for a press... | (edited) There is nearly zero pressure in space, but if you had a spacecraft with air for humans to live in inside, there would be pressure pushing *outwards.* This is sometimes referred to as negative 'gauge pressure.' Similarly, in a submarine you have more pressure outside than inside, so it's pushing *inwards* - po... |
Why does a star need to go supernova before it turns into a black hole? | [
"This isn't my specialty, but my understanding is that the fusion reaction occurring in a star resists the inward pull of gravity. When a star has run out of matter to fuse, collapse can occur. Depending on the mass of the star at this point, a number of things can happen (black hole, neutron star, white dwarf).\n... | Mackinstyle is more or less correct. A ball of gas that is big enough to ignite fusion (a star) will be in a state of hydrostatic equilibrium, where the push of the fusion resists the pull of gravity. When the fuel for fusion runs out, gravity dominates and it begins to collapse. But then the pressure becomes greater, ... |
Seeing as how Jupiter is a gas giant, what would happen if we would step foot on it? Would we keep falling to the centre? | [
"I've written about this [here](_URL_0_).",
"From what I can gather reading this article you would freeze on the \"surface\" then get blown away by the 200 mph winds and then get incinerated if you made it to the core. \n\n_URL_0_",
"We'd stop a couple feet down and be crushed by the pressure of the gas, agon... | Well, if you weren't wearing a space suit, no matter where you started you would die almost instantly because there is essentially no oxygen at any level of Jupiter's atmosphere.
But let's say you do have a space suit. What do you mean by "step foot on it"? Jupiter is, as you noted in your question, a *gas giant*, mea... |
hypothetically, what stops someone from flying to a country and never leaving? | [
"If the country they are flying to doesn't want them there, and figures out they are there",
"Nothing really. However if you get caught without a visa you will get deported. You could do it if you lived completely off the grid"
] | Many countries have immigration laws that forbid this. If you violate those laws, the police can deport you. Also, being an illegal alien makes it difficult to get a job or do any other sort of business in that country.
In order to enter some countries, you also have to prove you have plans to leave, like a return p... |
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