Subset (10)

eli5 · 25k rows

Split (1)

train · 25k rows

query stringlengths 20 300	positive listlengths 1 1	negative listlengths 1 1
Cities are usually warmer than their surrounding areas. Why doesn't their heat cause convection and carry smog away?	[ "It often does cause [significant convection](_URL_0_), with winds at ground level on the order of a few km/h (on average) from suburb to downtown, and the city downtown being a few degrees Celsius warmer than suburbs. The return current, which is centrifugal at high altitudes, also has the effect of slightly repel...	[ "There are two major forces at work here. The first is the chemical bonds themselves. This would be the carbon-carbon and carbon-hydrogen bonds (among others) that hold a single molecule together. The other force is intermolecular forces, which hold a bunch of molecules together into a cohesive unit. As an analogy,...
How do babies know to hold their breath when underwater?	[ "[This is a reflex that usually disappears around the age of 6 months.](_URL_0_). (edit: the babies do not know how to do that, it is an involuntary response) Infant reflexes are lost at some point but when kids get older they can replace the function by voluntarily holding their breath. The effect is called the di...	[ "It seems that evolution conspired to make breastfeeding something that has to be learned for all primates. There are studies that show monkeys, chimps and apes all have to be shown how to breastfeed successfully. Humans are in that group as well, and because of modern life we have other problems that confound what...
Why do you have to pay penalities for not having health insurance that is not wanted nor needed?	[ "It incentives people to buy into health insurance when they are healthy. The more people that buy into health insurances the more the cost of premium is driven down. The hope is that if everyone has health insurance then it will be cheap for people that do need it. Then one day when you need your health insurance ...	[ "It is to fill in differences in change when making purchases. Suppose you have $4.25 in change but the purchase costs $4.27; you can just take two pennies from the jar rather than break a larger bill. Alternatively if your purchase was $4.23 you would get two pennies in change, so rather than carry them around you...
Why do certain street lamps go out when I go near them?	[ "By an amazing strike of serendipity, tonight I gathered and crunched some data on this phenomena after a meager showing of experienced knowledge when [I asked a similar question a week ago](_URL_2_). Tonight I found a light that flickered \"when I got near it\", set up a digital camera on a tripod, and captured fi...	[ "I've had similar sensations in the past. A Doctor friend explained it to me as your brain just sort of cross-firing the pain response. From the standpoint of evolution, it could your body's way of saying, \"Hey, Klutz, you're hurting yourself, how about we just slow things down a bit?\" It's nothing and should pas...
I'm the 3rd son of the 3rd son of the 3rd son of an earl in 16th century England. Am I still a member of the gentry, or would I be a farmer or tradesmen living hand to mouth like any other commoner?	[ "I'm afraid you are simply out on your keister. Even if you were the first son of the third son you'd be out of luck. Your grandfather as the son of an earl would be referred to as \"the honorable\" when addressed in the third person but he wouldn't actually have any special rights or privileges otherwise. I found...	[ "This is usually a problem in families with rare disorders Assuming green eyes are bad..... If one of your parents has brown (dominant) eyes & another has green (recessive) then you could have Bg (and have brown eyes), & so could your sister....Now if you have kids, each of you will donate one of those genes to the...
Why do all old ladies have short curly hair?	[ "Because short, curly hair styles were really popular back when they were younger (1930s-1950s). [This](_URL_0_) is from a yearbook published in the 1930s. Notice anything?" ]	[ "They don't. It's a marketing ~~lie~~ gimmick. I used to work for a company that did a similar thing by mail. New customers were supposed to sign up by a certain time for special rates but as a specific matter of policy we'd give those rates to anyone who mailed back the special offer." ]
How to CDs work, more specifically, how does sound and picture get transmitted from a little disc?	[ "A CD is essentially a layer of metal pressed between two pieces of plastic. To record onto the CD, a laser burns pits into the metal. If there’s a pit, that represents a 0, and if there isn’t, that represents a 1. This is recorded from the inside to the outside in a tight spiral. To read the CD, another laser is s...	[ "To supplement what My_Empty_Wallet [said](_URL_0_): it's worth noting that the satellites aren't complicated flying space computers and don't tell you when to turn. They're just atomic clocks with radios and a bit of laser rangefinding gear. Your satnav/phone/whatever has a radio receiver that picks up the clock s...
Why did someone as paranoid as Stalin trust Hitler?	[ "Stalin didn't trust Hitler. However the Soviet Union and the Red Army were not ready for war at that time. The purpose of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, from the Soviet perspective, was simply to buy time as well as to move the country's western border farther west. There were no illusions about the danger that the ...	[ "You might want to check out Saul Norman's Distant Friends: The United States and Russia, 1763-1867. Suffice it to say this isn't the first time that question's been asked and there's a reasonable number of articles on it. since it's actually an interesting thought. The two, for the most part, were rather friendl...
Since when water freezes, it expands, how is it that ocean level would rise when iceberges melt. Shouldnt they lower due to the decrease in ice?	[ "Floating ice will not affect sea level. However, the ice on land (Greenland, Antarctica) will flow into the sea when it melts, thereby causing the sea level to rise. If all the ice on Greenland were to melt, the sea level would rise over 7 meters." ]	[ "The specific altitude will vary depending on the relative pressure of the contents of the balloon and the outside pressure of the air and the balloon's ability to withstand certain pressure differences. A balloon remains inflated because the rubber is thick enough to withstand the pressure from the helium inside, ...
Why aren't Bidets popular in the U.S.?	[ "American here, we don't like anything new near our buttholes. New things scare us, anything to do with buttholes scare us. We may be the best country in the world but we are very shy about our buttholes." ]	[ "To conserve water so we use less, and to increase the surface area of the water you are using too hit more of the object you want to wash." ]
What do people mean when they say "Mercury is in Retrograde"?	[ "a few times a year, the planet mercury will appear to stop and move backwards. it's not actually doing so; it's just an illusion. figuratively speaking, people used to be extra cautious during this period in which mercury appeared to be in retrograde. in roman mythology, mercury was the god of business and commun...	[ "Because the mirror actually doesn't reverse left right. It reverses _front and back_ - as if someone pulled your nose out the back of your head. If you track the image from the wall behind you, you'll notice that your back is closer to that wall than your nose is. However, if you extend this analysis to your image...
Why does the Milky Way appear arch-shaped when photographed from Earth?	[ "Any physically straigth line will always appear arc shaped if it covers long enough area of your vision. Its just our brains can make us realise they are really straigth if there is enough context. For the case of milkiway center there isnt. Cameras can cause further confusion. Its like inverse version of the prob...	[ "Air at different densities refracts light differently, like when heat waves coming off the pavement or a grill create pockets of air at different densities. The shockwave has different densities of air ahead of and behind the shockwave, which gives a lensing effect." ]
What are the actual rules/laws with dump trucks that have the sticker "Not responsible for broken windshields"?	[ "My wife had the windshield broken on her car a few years ago by a stone falling from a truck on the highway. I called the company and told them this and the guy repeated the \"not liable because of the warning sign\" crap. I told him I was calling the highway patrol to report the unsecured load and I had the licen...	[ "Have you ever blown in a bottle to get a tone? What's happening is that as you blow across the top of the bottle, it excites the air in the bottle and causes it to resonate. Now, when you open a car window, you're effectively turning the car into a giant bottle, but because it is so big, we hear the resonance as ...
Could their be a section of the Universe that's made of antimatter?	[ "If such a section existed, there would somewhere be an interface with the rest of the universe where the matter and antimatter are annihilating. There would be a lot of 511 keV gamma radiation coming from the part of the sky where this is happening, but no such place has been observed. There is only a significant ...	[ "Such hypothetical / speculative / open-ended questions are better suited for our new-ish sister sub /r/asksciencediscussion. Please consider reposting there instead." ]
Why don't Muslim Refugees go to Rich Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait or UAE instead of Europe?	[ "All of those countries are south of Syria, requiring that anyone fleeing cross ISIS territory and a true desert. Their populations are fractional - they're basically microstates. And they have not signed the convention on refugees, so there's no telling that they wouldn't just be shot crossing the border. Syria is...	[ "Sure the sea water evaporates, and ultimately comes back down as rain. But it doesn't rain down immediately above the place it evaporated from. It gets carried by high atmospheric currents, sometimes for hundreds of miles, before the conditions are right for clouds to form and rain to fall. In fact the Namib Deser...
If sodium consumption is such a big health concern, why aren't there a ton of sodium substitutes on the market like there is for sugar?	[ "Sugar is really complicated and you can make variations on it, salt is two elements mashed together. potassium chloride exists as another type of salt that people can eat but it tastes slightly worse and has a lot of the same effects sodium chloride does so it's not as worth using." ]	[ "We do, but they have to be screwed in to your jawbone with titanium screws. Natural teeth are glued in place by a layer around the base of the tooth called the periodontal ligament. It acts as a cushion and can heal itself so it doesn't wear out. Tooth implants have no shock absorber or have shock absorbers which...
Why are there seat belt laws?	[ "If you get into an accident and are paralyzed for life, how much will society have to contribute to your health, housing, food, rehabilitation for the rest of your life? Insurance won't pay for it all." ]	[ "I would imagine so if it gets caught it won't break your neck. Like cat's collars being elasticated so they don't strangle themselves in trees." ]
With modern technology, is there any substance on Earth that we cannot synthetically produce?	[ "It depends on what you mean by 'synthetic', as well as 'produce'. There are definitely processes for converting various forms of carbon into diamond, but I don't think a large-scale process exists for gold. And we can't produce most things with a complicated molecular structure, like spider's silk." ]	[ "It is not \"can't\" just \"we haven't figured out how to do it yet.\" _URL_0_ We are also working on things like genes the govern tooth regrowth, so humans might eventually regrow a lost tooth. Sources: link + sister is a dentist and almost an orthodontist." ]
How can Tardigrades survive in +100°C temperatures, but boiling water kills bacteria and other organisms?	[ "Tardigrades have to be hibernating first, which takes away a lot of their water. They also don't live very long in 100C temperatures, as opposed to some bacteria which can actually survive for a long time above 100C." ]	[ "Different people do have different levels of sensitivity to different stimuli. People with Asperger's, for instance, tend to be sensitive to light and sound. It has to do with how the nervous system process the information the nerves are feeding it. Mental toughness is also part of it, as well as various technique...
Why is Pitbull famous?	[ "Because there are a lot of people in the world completely devoid of taste." ]	[ "I could try to explain it to you, but this video is all you really need: _URL_9_" ]
How was the first nucleic acid formed?	[ "When lightning struck chemical-rich water, amino acids naturally formed, according to the Miller-Urey spark flask experiment. Mid-oceanic ridges naturally release hydrocarbons, phosphates, and everything supposedly needed to synthesize nucleotides. In 2009, Matthew Powner synthesized two of the four nucleotides th...	[ "For reference, the paper in question is \"Ignition of the Atmosphere with Nuclear Bombs\" (Konopinski, E. and Marvin, C. and Teller, E., 1946) _URL_0_" ]
How accurate, topographically speaking, was the Chernobyl level in CoD 4?	[ "I don't know about topography, but the way the game is styled is fairly accurate. Pripyat has been abandoned since the Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster, so everything has been left for mother nature to control. But the ferris wheel is actually real and is still in Pripyat and some of the more famous building are a...	[ "One big reason is map design. No road that goes north is straight. They are all designed to be curvy. This gives the impression that the map is larger because it takes longer to traverse." ]
Why are humans born with a dominant hand? Why are we not all ambidextrous by default?	[ "Followup/pre-OP's question: Are humans born with a dominant hand? Or do they just start using one more than the other?" ]	[ "We pay more attention when we get it wrong on the first try. It's a straight 50/50 shot, but it's way more annoying when we get it wrong on the first try. At the end of a given time period you might have had 10 \"successes\" and 10 \"failures\" but you'd only notice the failures." ]
is it possible to have a solar system located outside of a galaxy? And if so, how would things change if our solar system existed in such a spot?	[ "Yes, this has been found, but presently it's thought that stars only form inside galaxies, so these star systems are thought to have been thrown out of galaxies due to galaxy collisions. One example is the star HIP 13044 and its planet, [HIP 13044b](_URL_0_), which was found in a stream of vagrant stars that loop ...	[ "When launching 'laterally,' as you call it, the planet's motion contributes to the motion of the vehicle. This applies to both the orbit around the sun and the orbit around the earth. Hence, launching from the equator give the craft a little extra velocity with which to make orbit. Similarly, when moving outward i...
Why does a saxophone sound "sexier" than other instruments?	[ "I suspect it's because it's a woodwind instrument that's made with brass. The wooden reed gives a certain softness/ smokiness to the tone that you don't have in brass instruments (e.g. trumpet), but the brass gives it a sharper tone than wooden woodwinds (e.g. clarinet). It's soft, but with a little edge to it. I...	[ "The hot pan causes water from the sausage (or whatever you are cooking) to evaporate quickly. This forms a sort of cushion of gas (water vapour) between the food and the pan, allowing movement with far less friction, so the food moves around a lot more. This is the same effect as when water drops on a hot iron jum...
With all of our modern technology, why are we still forced to clean our teeth by rubbing a piece of string between them?	[ "Sometimes, you just have to remember the saying \"if it ain't broke, don't fix it\". As amazing as technology is, dental floss is a perfectly acceptable way to clean your teeth. the EKG has been around for almost 120 years, and has had almost no change to how it works, and it is still one of the best diagnostic t...	[ "It depends on the study! Be careful, these are not scientific surveys but advertisement surveys. Usually in advertisements like these, the advertisers like to get the best results possible to build their brand trust. So what they'll do is send out surveys to dentists asking them if they could \"recommend\" the bra...
Why is it that people from the United States call themselves American when they aren't the only country located on the north and south continents?	[ "Because United Statesian sounds stupid. It's really the only logical and easy shortening." ]	[ "\"Just about everyone here\" Where is \"here\" for you? It sounds like your question's premise is based on a small sample set based on personal observation. Before your question is addressed, you should be making sure the premise is valid..." ]
why do animals at the zoo often look very healthy and in shape, despite a relatively sedentary life style?	[ "The animals get exactly the right food, in exactly the right amount and they are very closely supervised and monitored by animal medical experts. If the humans lived in a cage where the only food they had to eat was the food their doctor thought would make them the most healthy, they would not be fat. If the human...	[ "There's accumulating evidence that epigenetics during pregnancy has an influence on obesity of the child. See, for example [here](_URL_0_). This result is interesting because it highlights the impact of diet on offspring: when rats are fed a normal diet, they remain slim. When rats are fed a high-fat diet, rats fr...
I heard today that only 5 countries in the world are free of national debt. How are governments able to loan/borrow/repay debts when every country is also in debt?	[ "Debt does not mean \"You have no money\" it means you have an agreement to pay some other entity money. The US Government makes money, for instance, from taxes, and they use that money to make the agreed upon payments against their debt. Similarly, if you buy a house, you probably don't pay for it all at once, bu...	[ "Say you're in class, and good work provides results in jelly beans from the teacher. These are super jelly beans, and you need 10 beans a day to survive. So any amount of 10 beans is luxury. You work hard and you earn 20 beans, but in order to get those beans you used pencils and paper provided to you. Therefore ...
Where does mold on bread and food come from?	[ "Airborne spores come into contact with the food where they germinate and form mold. This is why packing things air tight preserves them and prevents the process." ]	[ "Cause people stay in door and are close together so the disease can spread." ]
Why have animals adapted so that members of certain species die upon procreation?	[ "Plus in the case of animals that swarm around a single female, the swarm as a whole is a closer analogy to a single larger animal than are individual bees. The genetics that matter are those of the swarm as a whole. The males exist to service that single individual. So one male dies? It's done its job. There may e...	[ "Selective breeding by humans. If you want a good hunter then you breed the best hunters together, if you want a guard dog then you breed the animals that are more territorial. If you want a lap dog then you need to select the dogs that are less stressed by being around new and different humans. humans select the b...
During the 'Phoney war' period o WW2, what was the common or educated opinion on how the war would go?	[ "Interestingly Gallup polls had been established before the war - polling both in the US and Britain - and the ones from 1939 can be found here albeit it's a bit badly formatted: _URL_0_ Two key points emerge however: First, the widespread belief in America that France/Britain would win the war; which in fact may h...	[ "Is this a homework question? It says in our [rules](_URL_0_): Our users aren't here to do your homework for you, but they might be willing to help. Remember: AskHistorians helps those who help themselves. Don't just give us your essay/assignment topic and ask us for ideas. Do some research of your own, then come t...
when a plane breaks up at 30,000 feet what happens to the human body, and how fast?	[ "At 30,000 feet you have about 1 to 3 minutes of useful consciousness, and more like 30 seconds to 1 minute at the altitude MH17 was at. What happens exactly? Well, you pass out. What happens then depends on the other specifics of the incident. In Payne Stewart's case, the aircraft maintained altitude, so when the ...	[ "Ok, so in the chest cavity between the ribs and lungs there is space, which normally has lower than the atmospheric pressure. This allows the lungs to expand and fill with air when we open our airways and use our breathing muscles. If there is communication between this space and the outside (from a stab wound etc...
Does smoking THC extract or plant-based marijuana have long-term effects on memory?	[ "The answer appears to be... We strongly think so, especially given the younger age groups and stronger strains available. We won't currently say definitely yes but we're basically warning you this is gonna be a problem someday just the same way alcohol or candy are when you overdue it. It definitely affects the br...	[ "Depends on what level the study is at. Look at people who regularly eat lots of red meat and bacon, and compare it to people who don't If there is a difference in cancer rates between the two groups, something is causing a higher rate of cancer. Maybe work place exposure, food, lifestyle etc. Then take genetically...
I have at least 4 photos my great uncle took in Nagasaki about a week after the bomb dropped. Original prints. What should I be doing with these? Should I scan and send to a museum? Or....	[ "Donate them to an archive/special collections. They will have the expertise and equipment to preserve them and you can easily get really nice high res scans in return. Like this: _URL_0_ You can donate them in your great uncles name (they might be catalogued as the XXXXXXXXXXX Nagasaki Photo Collection for exampl...	[ "This patent is too old for me to be able to do it electronically, but you can call the patent office and request a copy of the file history - which is the back and forth between the Patent Examiner and the applicant's patent attorney during prosecution of the underlying application. It may have some interesting nu...
When you see a recording and a tv screen/monitor is in it etc, how come it flickers and is never clear?	[ "It has to do with the refresh rates of the camera versus the refresh rates of the monitors. Many cameras record at 24 frames a second, whereas most computer monitors refresh at 30 or 60 frames per second. This means that when a television camera is recording, it sees the screen while it's in mid-refresh. It's less...	[ "1. Not everybody fast forwards through the ads. 2. Some shows have advertising embedded into them, as advertisers pay for product placement. 3. It costs extra money for that one commercial right at the end of the show or right before the show, because people who fast forward might catch that one." ]
Non-Americans fighting in the American Civil War	[ "[Here's a very relevant article on the involvement of Finnish soldiers and sailors](_URL_9_) Quite many served on both sides of the war, but particularly in the Union forces. All were immigrants, of course. > According to Ilmonen, the participation rate of the Finns was significant and greater than expected give...	[ "I don't understand. A bunch of cities defected after Cannae. Livy gave a list: * Apuliani * Atellani * Bruttii * Calatini * Campanians * Crotoniates * all the Greeks on the coast * Hirpini * Locri * Lucanii * Metapontines * Tarentines * Uzentini Are you asking why the Latins didn't defect?" ]
If you could build a big enough ramp, could you drive a car into orbit?	[ "Yes, but the ramp would have to reach a very high orbit, and by that, a much higher orbit than the moon. If the car exits the ramp at 100 km/h then the ramp will have to reach to an altitude where the orbital speed is 100 km/h. Also, the car would have to operate without air and would need to carry an unreason...	[ "By matching its speed. Ever see a movie where someone runs up beside a train that is leaving the station, matches its speed, and then jumps inside? It's kind of like that, but a lot faster, and with rockets." ]
Why do headaches accompany nausea/vomiting/upset stomach, and vice versa?	[ "My daughter suffers from complex migraines, and her neurologist explained it like this. The network of nerves in your stomach are as complex as the ones in your head, and they suffer from the same instability during migraines. Chronic stomachaches can be caused by these nerves being unstable, or they can be impact...	[ "'Morning' is just a catchy term. It's all throughout the day for some. Some women (Princess Kate) have a rare severe form where she had to be hospitalized. It blows. I was sick well into 2d trimester. Many women..no side effects at all. And each baby (pregnancy) is different. It's annoying. 2 boys and each pregnan...
Why does Amazon's Sign Out link read "Not \[yourName\]? Sign Out"	[ "For shared computers. You want to make sure you are signed in on your own account, not your roommates (for example) because of your saved payment and shipping information." ]	[ "It's just done to give prominence to that actor. A lot of that crediting stuff originated with Jonathan Harris in Lost in Space. He didn't like being listed last in the credits, so he had them credit him as a \"Special Guest Star\" in every episode of the series - it made him more prominent in the credits. Nowad...
Could someone explain why in situations such as this, the person is killed by unveiling their lower body? Shouldn't the initial twisting kill the person?	[ "What the dude is describing is the top of the torso being already effectively severed from the bottom of the torso (perhaps held by some pieces of twisted up muscle and other tissue). The compressive force between the train and the platform is however still squeezing shut the major blood vessels and organs prevent...	[ "When the two observers measure the entangled spins along different axes, they actually both still always get either up/down along their respective axis. In your case, if the original spins were in an entangled \"singlet\" state (opposite spins), then if one observer sees spin up, the other observer will see spin...
Why do cats "chitter" or "chirp" when watching birds?	[ "_URL_0_ \" Chattering, chittering, or twittering are the noises your cat makes when she's sitting in the window watching birds or squirrels. Some experts think that this is an exaggeration of the \"killing bite,\" when a cat grabs her prey by the neck and works her teeth through the bones to snap them.\"" ]	[ "Air cavitates behind bullets is my understanding. You can hear them pass (the hiss) but in order to hear the cavitation (the snap, quite literally the air behind the bullet \"slamming shut\") you need to be quite close. Hence the saying." ]
How do employees at a suicide hotline or a psychiatrist/psychologist assess the risk of suicide?	[ "There generally isn't a gradual scale of risk, the assumption that everyone who calls needs the service. The only time there is a call for elevation (calling police, etc.) is when the caller makes a specific and immediate threat to themselves or others. In addition to basic training, call operators have a set of ...	[ "They have an investment bank do it for them! But there are a couple of methods they can use: 1) The value today of all future cash flows that the business is expected to generate 2) The value of all of the businesses assets, if you sold them. 3) The market capitalization of their stock" ]
Why do we have 12 hour AM/PM as well as 24 hour systems? Which came first and why was the second one created?	[ "In Roman times, daylight was divided into twelve equal hours. So an hour in summer was considerably longer than an hour in winter. Unless you were a sentry, you had little need to measure time during darkness." ]	[ "Part of it is what we are conditioned to listen to. Lots of music is in 4/4 so it has a context we can fit it into. As a professional musician, I've played lots of music in many mixed meters, so those don't sound or feel awkward to me anymore. I've been conditioned to have a way to understand them compared to lots...
How is it legal for a company like De Beers to have a monopoly over the diamond trade. I thought monopolies were supposed to be illegal.	[ "Attempts to monopolize are illegal in the US, DeBeers wasn't in the US (they sold to US firms, but if they had no assets or people in the US, there was very little the US could do about them). Also, they were unable to capture enough of the Canadian diamond mines (who had vast access to US markets) and [their mon...	[ "The word is that the Denver Colorado dispensary was funded by money received from Mexican drug cartels. The DEA got word through an informant and shut it down. Tldr: local$$= ok Cartel $$= fed jail" ]
The difference between the Taliban and Al-Qaeda!	[ "The Taliban is an Islamic Fundamentalist and political movement principally in Afghanistan. Among other things, it was temporarily the ruling political force in the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, which controlled roughly 90% of the country. Al-Qaeda is a global militant Sunni Islamist organizati...	[ "> based off of the information in the book \"Before European Hegemony,\" What other resources have you consulted? You've run against the main reason it's not a great idea to use only one source when researching a question: you depend entirely on what that one author thinks is important about the subject, and how...
If wave function collapse occurs when the wave function is observed or interacts with the 'external world,' how can we know it was in a superpositioned state before observation?	[ "Your feeling is correct that a single measurement does not justify the use of superposition. It is the interference effects observed in large collections of measurement results (within a single quantum experiment) that require us to say each particle travelled along multiple superposed trajectories." ]	[ "The \"standard model of cosmology\", i.e. [the lambda-CDM model](_URL_0_) treats dark energy as the result of having a non-zero cosmological constant. \"Constant\" being the key word. Ideas like the Big Rip only come about when you imagine a cosmology where the cosmological \"constant\" is actually some elaborate ...
Why have we not been able to domesticate large breed felines ( lions, tigers etc.) like we have with large breed canines ( Mastiffs, St. Bernards etc.)?	[ "Large breed felines are all different species. All domesticated dogs are the same specices - with specific traits (size) bread into it over centuries or millennia. Dogs started from wolves thousands of years ago." ]	[ "> So I'm wondering why land speed records aren't set by huge rockets tipped sideways on wheels. Their are different categories for the different records, all with their own sets of rules and regulations. There is a governing body, so you can't just \"build whatever you want\". > And in regards of Piston powered c...
I have seen European paintings from (I'm guessing) the Middle Ages, where the painting is placed in what looks like a wooden cabinet, with the subject almost always pertaining to religion. Is there a name for this practice? Is there any significance behind it? Link in text shows what I'm describing.	[ "That type of object is known as a tryptich, from the Greek to mean three-fold. They are an incredibly common phenomenon throughout the medieval period across Europe, particularly in works of devotional art, and could range in size from giant cathedral altarpieces to something the size of a matchbox that could be c...	[ "Well it's essentially down to the fact that the mind picks up more from visual clues about where sound is coming from. > \"Ventriloquism relies on the fact that the ability of the human ear to locate the source of a sound without visual and other cues is very poor. What the ventriloquist does is supply misleading...
Where did "Righty Tighty, Lefty Loosey" come from, and how have we decided to orient almost everything to that rule?	[ "Basically everything tightens to the right because threads are cut clockwise. It's easier to turn your wrist to the outside than to the inside - you're stronger turning your right hand clockwise, and your left hand counter-clockwise. Most people are right handed, so the standard is the one that's easiest for righ...	[ "It's a safety thing. The wires in a plug are hot and neutral. Neutral is at ground voltage and hot wiggles around it. If you have a device with an on/off switch you want to put the hot wire on the far end of the switch so nowhere on the device past the switch has any voltage." ]
What is the difference between dubstep, house, progressive, trance, electro, and techno?	[ "* Dubstep: has the WUBS and BWAAAHS. Don't forget the--DROPS. * House: is consistently consistent in its beatings of the beats and and continually continues to move move you like like you were were in the club clubbing * Progressive: Gradually^gets^higher^energy^and^more^uplifting * Trance: putsyouintoastateoftran...	[ "I usually explain it to my friends using phones: & nbsp; Switch - You can call anyone in your area code but can't get anyone outside of your area code. & nbsp; Router - You can call people in your area code(switch), but anything not in your area code is forwarded from the switch to the router. The Router can for...
How can helium-3 have a negative heat of fusion?	[ "Well first of all it's actually the entropy of fusion that's negative. But yes that does mean that adding heat causes it to freeze up. I've always thought of it like this... at low temperature close to absolute zero the small molecules are so still that the London Dispersion forces really don't have much of an opp...	[ "Having not seen the presentation myself I can't comment on what was said, but I think the issue may be the difference between an source of energy and an energy currency. Technologies like thermal generation (coal, nuclear, gas) or environmental generators (wind, tidal, etc.) are true sources of energy. The net su...
Is there a limit to how fast humans can travel?	[ "I realize this was not your original question, but relativity aside, there are at least problems with acceleration. A sustained g-force of anything about 3-5 Gs will be extremely unpleasant and unhealthy. For instance, the [Euthanasia Coaster](_URL_0_) would subject passengers to 10 Gs for a minute, more than en...	[ "Above the threshold of the oracle at Delphi were three inscriptions which are characteristically Greek. The one to focus on here would be \"nothing in excess\". The Greeks believed that people should live life on a fine line where they sought to achieve personal excellence while at the same time remembering their ...
Why are all electrons the same mass, as well as protons and neutrons?	[ "Because the fundamental components of nature, as far as we understand it, aren't particles: they're fields. There is the electron field, the up-quark field, etc and those fields permeate the whole universe. When one of those fields is excited, this excitation is perceived as a particle." ]	[ "Normal microscopes use visible light, which reflects off of the object you are looking at, back through the lens, and into your eye. The constraint to that is that light has a specific wavelength, and it is very difficult to see things that are smaller than the wavelength of light you are using. Electron microscop...
Friday Free-for-All \| July 19, 2013	[ "I posted on ActiveHistory yesterday about a controversial statue of Edward Cornwallis in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Cornwallis, the renowned founder of the city, also has a little bit of historical baggage wherein he proclaimed a bounty on Mi'kmaq scalps in 1749 - a fairly bloodthirsty act. Similarly, he expressed the ...	[ "Here's an ancient forum post from 1997 that you might find interesting...though you actually have to click the links to navigate. Also, I wonder if that's _the_ John Conway leaving replies there... _URL_0_" ]
Why is there such a loud sound when we clap?	[ "You're compressing the air between your hands rapidly, creating a pressure wave. Which is, you know, what sound is. The best, loudest claps involve cupping your hands to trap more air between them. Your hands squeeze that air together before it rapidly expands again out through the gaps between your hands. That ra...	[ "To let others around us know we are in danger. This tells them that we need help. It also alerts those around us of a potentially dangerous situation that they should be careful around." ]
Why does a sunrise light up the sky differently than a sunset?	[ "During the day, you've got a number of things happening. The sun is beaming down and evaporating water from various sources, lakes, rivers, oceans and rain. When you combine the haze from this with the everyday increase in traffic and industry pollution, you get a ton of particles in the air that weren't there in ...	[ "I'm not citing a source because this is just speculation, but mood and neurotransmitters probably have much do with it. You haven't established a routine, so your body doesn't have a circadian rhythm in terms of when to release which chemicals in the body. That might make you awake and alert and driven at noon on ...
Why is it that we feel uneasy whenever it's 37,5 degrees (99.5 °F) outside, although our bodies have that temperature?	[ "Minor inaccuracy: our bodies are 98.6 degrees fahrenheit. But the reason we feel uncomfortable is because our bodies can't lose heat. We're constantly metabolizing - turning food into energy - so our body can do stuff like think and move... and that process creates heat, especially when we're doing stuff like har...	[ "The vitamin D we get from food and supplements is D3. But our body actually needs to convert that to D2 to be useful. Sunlight helps that conversion. You can eat all the D3 you want, but unless your body makes the conversion, it's not going to do much good. At my worst, my D3 levels were 6.7 (they're supposed to b...
Why use a savings account when you have a checking account?	[ "Back in the 90s and earlier, interest rates were WAY higher. We're talking 10% on your savings accounts. Having even $1000 in your account means you made $100+ in interest per year for doing nothing. Nowadays, interests rates are insanely low, often in the 0.5-1.5%. It's not really worth it to keep money you might...	[ "I would have to guess probably the efficiency of the code itself. I wrote a program that converts images to black and white in real time (shows the conversion on screen) and before I streamlined the code it didn't matter how fast the pc was it took the same length of time to process basically. once i streamlined i...
What is the role of the primary and secondary antibodies in a western blot?	[ "The primary antibody labels the protein of interest, but, especially in experiments requiring Western, is probably quite hard to come by. The secondary antibody is usually a widely available antibody specially designed to target a generic portion of the primary antibody (generally the Fc domain) and includes a pig...	[ "Antiviruses hook system calls to add their verification routines. System calls addresses are stored in the system service dispatch table (SSDT). Simply put, when a program wants to open a file, it tells Windows \"Open file.txt please\", and Windows looks at the SSDT where is the function to open a file, and calls ...
Limitations of presidential pardons?	[ "The president can pardon any federal crime comitted by anyone. Examples of federal crimes on Wikipedia include > ... aircraft hijacking, kidnapping, bank robbery, child pornography, obscenity, tax evasion, counterfeiting, violation of the Espionage Act, wiretapping, art theft from a museum, damaging or destroying...	[ "Yes, there are. However, that's a lot of information to review...in lieu of me typing a novel, is there a more specific question you have?" ]
Why is eating raw egg considered dangerous when the egg itself is enclosed in a germ free state?	[ "In the US and a few other countries, we wash the eggs after they pop out of the chicken. This washes away the natural protective layer which can let some bad bacteria in through microscopic fractures in the egg. That's why we refrigerate the eggs to keep them from going bad. Also it's possible the chicken might ha...	[ "It's about novelty. When it's new, we cherish it and want to take care of it. Novelty eventually becomes familiarity. We see this a lot with cars. That new car, the owner is so careful. At some point, however, it becomes OK to toss that empty Big Mac box in the back seat." ]
Where did the expression "paint the town red" come from? Why the color red?	[ "The phrase “paint the town red” most likely owes its origin to one legendary night of drunkenness. In 1837, the Marquis of Waterford—a known lush and mischief maker—led a group of friends on a night of drinking through the English town of Melton Mowbray. The bender culminated in vandalism after Waterford and his f...	[ "TL;DR: Power. A big part of our social structure is based on one person having power over other people. Most of us either want to lead, are jealous of the leader, or understand we're not the right person to be that leader. We see this in a lot of other animals like horses and sheep. The large-and-in-charge 'st...
Why is "everything but country" such a popular taste in music? Nobody says they like "everything but rock". Is this just a bias against country, or is it objectively distinct from rock, metal, pop, rap, etc.?	[ "In my humble opinion its because modern pop country has become one of mankind's most wretched creations. Over done, unoriginal, lacking all soul and meaning, it appeals to dull knuckle dragging vacant minds. I believe any passing alien species who heard it would be within their right to end all human life on this ...	[ "Imagine you have 3 bags of treats. One is Oreos (Apple OSX), the other is Skittles (Windows), and finally Nutella (Linux). All of these treats are absolutely delicious. With Oreos, it is what you get. Simple and clean, what you see is what you eat. With Skittles they come in different colors, but ultimately are th...
What's the physical meaning of the constants in Cauchy's Equation?	[ "None. It is an empirical relationship that works well enough for several materials within the visible region. One experimentally obtains A and B by measuring the refractive index of the material at different wavelengths and fitting the equation. You can then provide A and B on a table so other people can calculat...	[ "Think about things bouncing around. Imagine a box with a fan in it. Put 20 balls in ithe box. Now imagine a basket to one side just the right size for the balls. Turn on the fan. The balls jump around randomly. At some point a ball will fall into the basket. This will happen at a given rate which will depends on h...
While I understand the majority of the Muslim community would condone the actions in France, how do they convince the the small subsection that murder is an acceptable path?	[ "Can you edit thread titles? Cause I dont think the majority of Muslims condone the actions in France." ]	[ "I have a question for you. Do you want the version that is super, super long and includes a write-up on what actually went down at Munich, and the subsequent responses back and forth? Or do you want the shorter version that only talks about media coverage of the incident and how it changed things?" ]
Why we find things funny and what makes something funny.	[ "Explained by Daniel Dennett in a wonderful 25 minute video _URL_0_" ]	[ "They're vulnerable areas that you reflexively want to protect. In nature, tickling teaches how to protect your sensitive areas, how to fight others while not doing harm or damaging (too severely) social bonds. The purpose of play, basically." ]
Why are hot wings served with celery so often?	[ "Celery is inexpensive, the vegetable not only stores well, but it also requires very little preparation. Adding celery to the plate is an easy an inexpensive way to add an additional flavor and texture profile. Celery is also a palate cleanser, so it can allow patrons to taste various sauces without the aftertas...	[ "Availability of the spices in which spiciness is derived. Culturally and historically you use what you had near you. History dictates what culture perpetuates." ]
How come is it incredibly hard for me to get back in shape at age of 45?	[ "This is going to get removed but here it is: Fiber is the key. Fiber and water. You have to poop a lot. That's it." ]	[ "Because you are not paying attention to what time it is. Your focus is on the task at hand. (Space filler because autobot will delete answer) Because you are not paying attention to what time it is. Your focus is on the task at hand. Because you are not paying attention to what time it is. Your focus is on the t...
How does a computer know how long a second is?	[ "Your computer has a slice of rock in it that moves back and forth when you run electricity through it. It counts the number of times it moves back and forth, and it knows how many times it moves back and forth in one second. When it has moved back and forth the correct number of times, it knows one second has pass...	[ "When you watch a video it only needs to send the video as fast as it needs to in order to play it back. When you download a large file from Steam it attempts to get you the file as quickly as possible." ]
How do people get homeless? Especially in the U.S	[ "> if you got a job lol > at minimum pay you should be able to get a home and basic needs super lol Seriously, you sound like someone who has never had to pay a bill. You can't live on most places in the US on minimum wage. If you lose your job and dont have a family who can support you then you're homeless. Simp...	[ "Watch \"The Big Short\" they give a good explaination of how the housing market collapsed resulting a financial breakdown. Ofcourse there are more factors in play bit this is something that is to complicated to explain on the level of a 5 year old." ]
Could someone clarify the situation with Nazi Germany and the Catholic Church.	[ "It was not always so. Initially, there was support from the Catholic Church for the Nazi regime based on the Nazis' anti-communism, the Nazis' conservative nationalism (which many German priests shared), and the anti-semitism that both groups shared. However, the Nazis were always somewhat suspicious of the Cathol...	[ "Sorry but there's several different time frames of the Holy Roman Empire so it might help to talk about what time period you're talking about... That being said during the first Holy Roman Empire (circa 790 CE) France (or Francia) was well and truly a part of the HRE heartlands and the majority of Spain was held b...
Why do human babies cry when they are born but other animal babies do not cry when they are born?	[ "Crying can be both an evolutionary advantage and disadvantage. If babies can signal to their parents that they need attention, that is good. But if crying inadvertently attracts predators or warns off prey, that is bad. So whether babies crying is, on the whole, an advantage, depends a lot on the particular niche...	[ "Part of the presence of pain is its purpose. Your nervous system continues to remind your brain the pain you've experienced so you know to protect it. For us, that means going to a doctor for a broken finger. But in nature, that means \"I need to guard this finger until it heals, or else I may die. If I try to ...
Why is the Oort cloud spherical and not a ring on the same plane as the rest of the Solar system?	[ "Gravity. The spherical oort cloud is extremely far away (some of it is outside the heliopause) and thus feels very little gravitational influence from the sun - becoming much more vulnerable to perturbations by passing stars, etc. There is actually an inner oort cloud, which feels more gravitational impact from th...	[ "Easy: They're not, really. Even a healthy iris is rarely PERFECTLY round when viewed close up. A healthy iris will 'average' to round but the tissues that make it up have some texture of their own. _URL_0_" ]
Why does short fur seem to stop growing at a certain length?	[ "It does do that. This is most commonly observed with body hair, but head hair will do the same thing when sufficiently long" ]	[ "From personal experience, the mind becomes attached to great moments in life and finds something to bring that memory back, like hair or feet. Same thing with great trauma unfortunately. Seen a movie about a girl been gang raped and when she got older that was how she got off, by recreating the same circumstances....
What is the deal with the Netanyahu speech?	[ "Typically, the president is the one to invite foreign leaders to come and speak to Congress. In this case, Republicans and Congress just kinda gave Obama the middle finger and invited Netanyahu anyway. So naturally Democrats are going to be upset about that. The other issue is that Obama and the Republicans/Neta...	[ "You might also be interested in [this past post](_URL_0_ \"Was Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement really a mistake given the context? : AskHistorians\"), in which a user put the 1930s decisions in context with previous European diplomacy and assumptions while showing why they failed in the end." ]
Why is it that some farts sound like thunderclaps, while others sound like the air is being slowly released from a balloon? And then, there are the silent ones that usually smell worse than the audible ones. I need some help understanding the science of flatulence.	[ "Think of your ass as your mouth for a second. Your lips are now your ass cheeks. Open your mouth (lips) and blow air out of your mouth. Here's the \"air out of balloon\" sound. Now close your mouth and blow (force) air out - you may have to lick your lips for added sweaty ass lube. The lips will vibrate and creat...	[ "Speak for yourself, I love the smell of the soft, canned cat treats! But 10 year old me found out that I do not enjoy the taste of soft, canned cat treats." ]
Where in your body is your DNA?	[ "A complete copy of you DNA is in the nucleus of each of you cells. There is a few exception like red blod cell that lack a nucleus and sex cells that have half the number of chromosomes." ]	[ "They store it all on a hard drive the size of Texas! Actually, it's split across thousands and thousands of hard drives, in probably hundreds of buildings. Here's a [picture](_URL_0_) of just one of them. This one is in Iowa." ]
how cruise ships produce electricity	[ "Same as a car, essentially - part of the power from the engine is used to drive a generator." ]	[ "I hope this comports with the subreddit guidelines. South of Paris is a chateau called the Vaux-le-Vicomte. It's purportedly the last privately owned grand chateau in France. It was built in the 1600s. They give tours and one of the features of the tours is that they they light the chateau with candlelight. And th...
Antibiotic-resistant viruses and bacteria supposedly might harm the human race, but why can't we just develop stronger antibiotics/treatment?	[ "Not necessarily, and not at great cost of time and money. The thing about antibiotics is that they are designed to hurt only the bacteria. Designing something that only kills one very specific type of living creature is actually very hard! Most living creatures don't reinvent the wheel, and share very similar ...	[ "We actually already use [genetic algorithms](_URL_2_), which simulate evolutionary processes, to create better artificial intelligence, often from [connectionist](_URL_0_) systems like [neural networks](_URL_1_). However, these AI are still bad, usually devoted to a single task, such as playing a virtual board gam...
How rare is it for a death to occur from picking at pimples on the Death Pyramid?	[ "TIL there is a \"danger triangle of the face\". I thought this was an April fools joke at first." ]	[ "Not a historian, just someone who likes to lurk and learn new things, but I can maybe point you to a few similar questions I’ve seen about kids and their obsessions while you wait to hear from an expert. [This post](_URL_2_) has an ancient Roman source from u/rkiga that mentions a toddler obsessed with birds. Furt...
Is it possible to know you're asleep in a dream?	[ "I have realized I was dreaming, it's actually happened a lot. Just last week I had a dream that I was home alone with the baby and my fiancee had left our truck at her work. We needed to go somewhere and I was pissed that I had to walk with the baby a couple miles to get the truck. Like really pissed and frustrate...	[ "I love this question. There is a movie called Waking Life that addresses this idea. The whole movie is on YouTube right now for free and is awesome. Check it out. But at the minute 40:35 is when your question gets talked about. _URL_8_" ]
Why are we so good at remembering some things but not others? Is our brain really that compartmentalized?	[ "To the consistence of retaining information: You dont know how & when your brain initially associated objects. According to these associations structures (pathways) were made (hard setting). Still unconscious area. They are then used as automated patterns which match or dont match with real-time inputs. Relations ...	[ "Imagine you're trying to find a coffee shop in a city. If you've been there recently, it should be pretty easy to find. If it's been 10 years since you've been to the coffee shop or the city, it might take you a LONG time to find. It also might take long to find if you've been to other, similar coffee shops in the...
Was each sperm different from the one that created me or would the next sperm created an entirely different looking person?	[ "Our DNA is composed of 23 pairs of chromosomes (one chromosome of each pair from each of your parents). Each gamete (sperm and egg) has one half of the individual's 23 chromosome pairs (so it has one complete half of the human genome). But which half of each pair is completely random. Without taking mutation i...	[ "A CPU is a list of instructions. By necessity, they all have to run the same instructions no matter who makes it, otherwise every piece of software would have to have multiple versions based on what CPU is in the machine (just like they have to have multiple versions for PC, Mac, Sparc, etc). Imagine there are 3 c...
Will a bottle of isopropyl alcohol explode in my car?	[ "The boiling temperature of organic solvents is often lower than the ignition temperatures. This would be of more concern when storing the bottle, since the bottle could potentially lead to a BLEVE. It would probably just blow the lid off the plastic bottle, but that would be a mess. Fortunately, the boiling temper...	[ "We're not supposed to use our phones at gas stations?" ]
Katyn Massacre and Nazis	[ "Although only focused specifically on Katyn for a small portion, [this](_URL_0_) will likely be of interest for you." ]	[ "This submission has been removed because it is [soapboxing](_URL_1_.), [promoting a political agenda, or moralizing](_URL_0_). We don't allow content that does these things because they are detrimental to unbiased and academic discussion of history." ]
Why does it seem Democrats support higher taxes, but Republicans support lower taxes?	[ "That's a fundamental difference between fiscal left (Democrats) and right (Republicans, Libertarians). Left = bigger government, more regulation, more services, more taxes required. Right = lower taxes, lower regulation, requiring smaller government and fewer services." ]	[ "Plant cells have little starchy organelles called statoliths - they're much heavier than other components of the cells. The statoliths fall to the bottom of the cells. In cells in the stem, statoliths on the bottom of the cell trigger the hormone auxin to inhibit growth on the lower part of the cell. This makes ...
What's the point of the more "extreme" fashion outfits that are only seen in shows? Does showing/designing/making these outfits serve a purpose other than just "art"?	[ "It's like concept cars. They're putting all of these extreme ideas on display, and the ready-to-wear version will be more subdued. It's meant to show the idea. Project Runway sometimes does a competition where the designers have to make 2 looks. One ready to wear, and one avant garde, but they have to have the sam...	[ "Professional chef speaking. Typically, we add salt & pepper toward the end of a recipe as a fine tuning of the final taste. Sometimes we add salt/pepper early on, depending on the recipe & the ingredients; but adding at the end is a matter of rounding off the process & the flavors." ]
Would eating a bunch of cooked bacteria be nutritionally similar to eating cooked meat?	[ "Don't know about bacteria but I can find nutritional information on nutritional yeast. Yeast are single-celled organisms but they're technically fungi & not bacteria. Here's the nutritional information from a 100g serving: \| Yeast \| Beef (cooked) \| -\|--------\|------\| calories \| 281 \| 211 calories from fat \| 31 \| ...	[ "Microwaves are not energetic enough to break up DNA bonds the way UV light does (which is how UV sterilizes, and causes skin cancer), so they cannot sterilize anything directly. However, they heat the food, which will sterilize it as surely as a stove or oven will. 180F is 180F, no matter how you got there, and fe...
The difference between being decisive and being impulsive.	[ "OK. Impulsive people make decisions without thinking through the consequences*. Decisive people make a decision after having thought through the consequences. They are differentiated from indecisive people in that an indecisive person will use thinking it through as an excuse not to make a choice. So of the 3 cla...	[ "Ask Reddit is for personal opinions, stories, and the like. Essentially subjective answers to questions without hard answers. Something like \"whats your favorite food\" is a good post there ELI5 is for getting a simplified answer or explanation to a question that you don't understand. A good thread here would som...
What's the deal with same-sex marriage in the US?	[ "Every time I read a post starting \"what's the deal with ...\" I imagine it's by Jerry Seinfeld." ]	[ "[Search before submitting, especially when asking about current events. The search box is in the upper righthand corner of the page.](_URL_0_)" ]
I tried boiling water in the microwave and it didn't work, until I took it out and it spontaneously erupted for 5 seconds and stopped as suddenly as it started. Why?	[ "Your guess was right. Pyrex is very smooth. If there are no irregularities, it's possible that no bubbles form. The water just basically becomes superheated. Once it's disturbed, causing irregularity, it'll boil in a flash. When I microwave water in Pyrex, I always put a wooden skewer in there to give the bubbles ...	[ "It's similar to the principles behind a volcano. Pressure keeps building up and building up in one specific point. However, there is some strong material resisting that pressure, in the volcano case it is the dirt, rock, and metal sitting above it, and in the book case it's the pages sitting under the press. Howev...
In Newtonian mechanics mass(m), momentum (mv) and kinetic energy (1/2 mv^2) are conserved. Are the further integrals wrt velocity also conserved?	[ "In general, no, integrals of mass wrt. velocity are not conserved. Even kinetic energy is not conserved on its own, since its only a part of the total energy. Conservation laws comes from symmetries of your system. Conservation of energy is there if your laws of physics do not change with time, so called time tra...	[ "It is not generally thought so, due to neutrino's that we know of being too \"hot\" or fast moving. If dark matter were neutrino's they would not reproduce the velocity curves around galaxies. No neutrino ever seen has less than the escape velocity of the galaxy, something that is required by dark matter. Dark Ma...
Aging in the movie Interstellar	[ "When you travel really fast or experience really heavy gravity, time works differently. When they went to that first planet, they knew ahead of time that because of its speed and proximity to the black hole, for every hour they spent on that planet, 7 years would pass on earth. It sounds crazy, but it's one of t...	[ "I misread your question, there is not a time dilation effect between the Earth's pole and equator. While pure circular motion should induce such dilation, the special relativistic and general relativistic contributions cancel out because the Earth buldges from centrifugal effects. Here's a more detailed overview I...
Why do hair dryers heat up so quickly, and why can't we use the same technology in car heaters?	[ "Hair dryers are very inefficient and use an enormous amount of electricity to get hot so fast. Car heaters use the heat of the engine to heat the car gradually. For a car to use hair dryer technology it would cause a huge draw on the electrical system and battery of the car which would shorten the life of both. ...	[ "Metals are good conductors. Microwaves induce a current in these metals. Depending on the geometry of the conductor, the voltage might be very large across certain paths through the air -- especially if there are two pointy ends of metal with a small gap between. It may be easier for current to cause dielectric br...
What is the evolutionary purpose of having two nostrils? Why isn't it just one hole?	[ "That's a bad way of looking at it. Evolution doesn't go around fixing what's \"wrong\". It just tends to eliminate the stuff that decreases the chance for survival. Nothing about having 2 nostrils is having an adverse effect on those animals that have them. There's even a benefit. Most people have experienced havi...	[ "Specializing helps with optimization. Cows can't eat meat, but their teeth and multiple stomachs are ideal for eating grass. Humans have to have sharp teeth for meat and grinding teeth for plants and our digestive system is inefficient at processing plant matter. Versatility is obviously useful, but there are trad...
what's Happening when I'm by myself but it feels/sounds like someone just entered the room?	[ "Its a sensory illusion. misinterpretation of external events and internal thoughts. Your brain doesn't take chances with your safety, it encourages you to check just to be sure. Since the only thing that would likely make you react in that way is another person, you momentarily think there may be anohter person wh...	[ "You could have [tinnitus](_URL_0_). You should see a doctor if you want any further information, since asking for medical advice is not allowed in this forum." ]
Why do we find 100 degrees Fahrenheit too hot if it's our body temperature?	[ "Your body generates heat and it needs to dump that excess heat or it will, well, overheat. When the air is 100 degrees your body has a harder time getting rid of that excess heat so to us it feels hot because you are warming up." ]	[ "It's because of sensory adaptation. If we're honest about the situation then we realize that going INTO a casino or a smelly car is just as likely to grab out attention. Sensory adaptation is what happens whenever your brain is exposed to the same stimulus for an extended period of time. So if you're inside for an...
Why do people who are abused as a child (sometimes) become sexually compulsive later in life?	[ "They want to feel like they're in charge of their sexuality. Someone took that power, that choice from them. This is one way for the victim to reclaim control." ]	[ "It doesn't, the ad was intended to make you associate Colgate with feeling virtuous and then want to buy Colgate the next time you're at the store." ]
Do HIV attack b-cells and natural killer cells?	[ "I’ll answer all your questions but remember that TLRs are not the way in which the HIV virus enters cells. HIV infects CD4+ T-cells, macrophages and microglial cells. It does not infect B-cells or NK cells directly. HIV entry into T-cells and macrophages is mediated by interactions between virion envelope glycopro...	[ "It's called the oligodynamic effect. Here you can read about it, but usually it's pretty easy to google these types of questions: _URL_0_ Apparently several heavy metals do it including copper (Brass is an alloy of copper) and silver. Basically heavy metal ions bond with bits of proteins in bacteria and make them ...

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