Subset (10)

eli5 · 25k rows

Split (1)

train · 25k rows

query stringlengths 20 300	positive listlengths 1 1	negative listlengths 1 1
If iron is contained in hemoglobin which is found in our blood, how come magnets do not affect our bodies?	[ "Iron in your blood isn't ferromagnetic, which is the property you associate with everyday iron. This is the reason it isn't affected by everyday permanent magnets." ]	[ "There is something similar called the nocebo effect: if you believe something will make you ill, it will. This is what is seen in people that get a rash from being near a Wi-Fi router - whether it's turned on or not. It's not the Wi-Fi signal that's causing the rash, it's the belief. Whether the same is true for...
What things did the myth of Romulus and Remus aim to teach/communicate to the Roman people?	[ "\"So perish every one that shall hereafter leap over my wall\" ( Romulus ) _URL_0_ Once you cross the pomerium ( without any authorization ) you become an ennemy of the city and by killing his brother, Romulus acted as its guardian. Civic duties are more important than blood ties , importance of the law. W...	[ "If Republicans want to win elections, they need to convince voters that the Democrats are bad." ]
why do babies throw up/spit up so often compared to adults?	[ "Their gastric lining is super sensitive to stimuli, acidity vs. alcalinity. Also their stomachs are incredibly small, so eating too much too quickly causes vomiting naturally. They have no idea how much food they should actually consume at 1 time so that's why there's so much literature out about how many ounces a...	[ "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." ]
In the UK we must wait 12 weeks between giving blood. Why?	[ "I found this, which mentions that people who do 12 weeks instead of 16 should be warned of iron deficiency _URL_0_ \"Donors who regularly attend at intervals of less than 16 weeks should be informed that they are at increased risk of iron deficiency ... Donors with genetic haemochromatosis may donate at intervals ...	[ "CommissarAJ has it, but just to add Majority governments through parliament effectively prevent the grid lock that America has right now in Congress. The difficult part of parliamentary politics to understand is how powerful the Prime Minister is...technically he is just one vote of 308 seats...but informally he i...
Why do grasshoppers jump when they can fly?	[ "It takes less energy, and they jump faster than they can fly over short distances. Also, they present as larger easier-to-track targets when in flight, making them easier pickings for predators." ]	[ "To establish dominance. The females select their mate based on the dance moves. Once a mate is selected: the female wards off the other ones, with paralyzing glares if possible, but violent combat if necessary. The males, usually stronger than the competing females, do not usually interject in this ritual but rais...
Why do bunnies/rabbits attack each other randomly?	[ "Hares and a few other kinds of rabbit males fight each other during mating seasons to compete for females. It is where the term \"Mad as a March Hare\" comes from." ]	[ "You mean the Animal Planet one? Hype and marketing. Then it became a euphemism for menstruation (I'll fill you in if you want, but it's gross sex stuff...) and took on a life of its own." ]
How do they match a single fingerprint against all the millions of fingerprints in the fingerprint database?	[ "There's different ways a computer can do image comparison. One way is basically break down a fingerprint onto something like [grid paper](_URL_1_) with x,y positions. Then my fingerprint will say something like: Black at (4,5), Black at (4,6), White at (4,7), Black at (4,8) etc. hundreds or thousands of times. Lik...	[ "Each flu has it's own \"strain\". A type. A shape and identity. Once it gets into your body and starts reproducing, it doesn't matter much if you get a few additional cells of influenza in your body, it's a drop in the ocean. And once your immune system identifies and develops a resistance to it (based on it's s...
Does our DNA code remain the same throughout life?	[ "Your code as written in DNA stays the same, though every time a cell divides (required during development, body maintenance and cell replacement, injury repair, etc), there is the risk of [somatic mutation](_URL_2_). Somatic mutations are random - not related to the environment, adaptation or experience and will o...	[ "Tastes and styles change and/or evolve. You may enjoy certain foods now that you didn't when younger or when you are older. The food or hair hasnt changed just you." ]
How come USA and Canada aren't the same country? Weren't they colonized by the same country of UK?	[ "Quebec was first colonized by France. Although it had been conquered by Great Britain in the [French and Indian War](_URL_0_), the vast majority of its residents were French-speaking Catholics at the time of American independence. Britain enacted the [Quebec Act](_URL_1_) of 1774 (note the year) to deal with the c...	[ "The oldest condominium (i.e. territory with a shared sovereignity or territory with several sovereignities) I know about is Andora : basically, a country ruled by two foreign princes (one spanish cardinal, one french count/king/president) for the last 7 centuries. There are others, like an island between France an...
Why do singers wear an ear piece when they are performing on stage? What do they hear from it?	[ "They hear their own voice and the particular instruments they are trying to sing along with. A stage is a very noisy place and the singer needs to pay attention to particular components." ]	[ "Nielsen does this, they tell you how on [their website](_URL_0_), but basically they just randomly select people and track everything they do by asking them to write down everything and walk around the streets with microphones to record whatever people are listening to. They aggregate the data and produce the rati...
How can an atomic bomb cause a shadow to forever burned into a surface, like what can be seen at Hiroshima?	[ "Basically, the people/objects absorbed some of the radiation and acted as a shield. The 'shadow' is the part of the surface behind them that was shielded by the body/object and not burned as much as the rest of the surface." ]	[ "A few reasons: - It was a [Falcon](_URL_0_), which is a pretty good sized rocket. - The launch was at sunset. So it wasn't daylight on the ground, but the rocket itself was in daylight. The sunlight reflected off the exhaust plume. - It was a south launch into polar orbit. The track of the launch went near the pop...
Was Napoleon a revolutionary or counter-revolutionary?	[ "Yes. The problem about Napoleon is exactly this, he was both. The best example for this is also both, the Code Napoleon. The Napoleonic Code was the first secular legal code that was codified in Europe, ensuring the legal equality of all men. However it is of only men. The code is very aggressive in curbing the r...	[ "Well according to [this song](_URL_0_) he's a cannibalistic serial killer. But I think that might be fiction." ]
What is it like to be drunk?	[ "Depends on lots of things. How much you've had to drink, how do you handle your alcohol and your personality. Also some meds interact with alcohol, but you should avoid those interactions. When you've had a few, you'll notice that you care less about the other people's opinions, lowering your \"defenses\". At this...	[ "[Here you go](_URL_0_) Basically up close you'd see your head with a bunch of distorted stuff in the background. As you back away from the wall toward the center, you'd see your face get bigger and bigger until it filled your vision. Then as you continued moving backward the image would flip and get smaller and sm...
Before the American Civil War, did anyone sell "slave-free" cotton the way organic foods are sold today?	[ "There were many Free Produce Societies across America which promoted boycotts of slave-made goods and tried to source free-labor alternatives. This turned out to be very difficult and impractical and was not pursued by most abolitionists. One Free Produce advocate admitted frankly, \"Free sugar was not always as f...	[ "Not asking you to dox yourself at all, but depending on the county it might be worth contacting the county historical society and/or the local newspaper, to see if they have archives going back to the early era of when the area was settled. If I remember correctly, UNC in Chapel Hill has a newspaper archive, and s...
Why do our senses sometimes get coldness and wetness confused?	[ "Also consider that we have no wet sens nor is wet an intrinsic property of liquid. Your brain learned a long time ago to associate the physical sensation of water as wet anything similar in feeling will trick your brain." ]	[ "I think it would be all about heat transfer/ heat capacity. Water can hold a lot of heat (it's thermal capacity is high), and water would conduct heat better to your body than just warm cloth." ]
You know when you say a word over and over again and it starts to sound weird? Why does that happen?	[ "There are a few different answers because there are a few different psychological approaches. TheCanadianDoctor's answer is the biological approach. Using the behavioral/learning approach, I would say it was because when you learned that word, you learned it by forming a connection between the (echoic) sound and t...	[ "Simply put for the same reason drinking water when you're not thirsty isn't as refreshing as when you're REALLY thirsty. Anticipating the bodies' needs doesn't trigger the same reward responses in the brain as fulfilling a need that is already present. Your muscles don't NEED to stretch right now, so you can't ant...
Why does English seem to be the only European-based language that does not use diacritics on its letters? That is, umlauts, accents, etc.	[ "I don't think Dutch uses many diacritics either, and it's a close relative of English historically." ]	[ "Frankfurt is a big rich city, so you're seeing the best the roads get. I'm in the UK and we have plenty of potholes. I know some of the guys who work on testing the road materials used in the US, and the testing is second to none. In America there are strict rules on the quality and testing of road materials to ...
How did stock rates suddenly fall in the Wall Street Crash? How did billions of dollars disappear?	[ "People buy stocks because they think they will be worth more in the near future. People sell stocks because they think the opposite, they want to get rid of them, that they will be worth less than that they now are. Imagine that some news comes out that indicates stocks will definitely be worth a lot less than the...	[ "If you have a spare afternoon or two I'd check out these two Khan Academy playlists on the [Credit Crisis](_URL_2_) and the [Paulson Bailout](_URL_0_), and if you want to learn more about how banks work check out this [Banking and Money](_URL_1_) playlist as well; there's a few others on finance and credit as well...
Why has genetically modified food such a bad reputation?	[ "People generally assume \"it's not natural, that means it's bad for you\". Never mind the fact that half the fruits and vegetables we eat already were man-made via selective breeding and such." ]	[ "You know how people thought there's some angry god that throws lightning bolts when you do or don't do something? Well people are afraid of things they don't understand." ]
How do we use our legs to walk?	[ "Falling with Style. With much practice, our eyes and inner-ears work together to provide the brain with information. We aren't aware that this is going on, but fun house spinning tunnels mess with our eyes and spinning around really fast messes with our inner ears, both making walking difficult. We don't \"think a...	[ "Like this! Oh, sorry. Forgot you weren't a real 5-year-old." ]
Alexander just died, he left me in charge, how am I supposed to hold this empire together?	[ "1. Appease the priests. You aren't going nowhere without Amun-Ra behind you. 2. Make offerings to the Gods, I get the vibe you are a bit of a Horus person, so go with that. 3. Kill all the rebels in the flashiest way possible. Tying their king to the front of a ship is a fun one, Thutmoses did that to the Nubians ...	[ "Read. Read this subreddit. Read this subreddit's [Popular Questions](_URL_1_). Read some of [this subreddit's recommended books about history](_URL_2_). Read some of [this subreddit's recommended academic resources](_URL_0_). Read. That should keep you occupied for a year or five. And, it'll get you started!" ]
American Historians-- What are some good reads regarding Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton's conflicting ideas of who should govern?	[ "[William Chrystal](_URL_0_) has made it his late-in-life calling to advance the case of Alexander Hamilton. He maintains that we know so little of Hamilton's legacy as a founding father because he died early and Jefferson and his followers had control of shaping the perception of that early period (and Hamilton, w...	[ "I'd like to help, and I'm sure I could come up with something, but I'm not sure I fully understand what you're looking for. Are you looking for a book, journal article(s), or something else? And, are you looking for information on one event in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or an overview of it? I can say defin...
Could I scoop some cloud into a cup and have a drink?	[ "I wouldn't suggest using a cup but [harvesting water from clouds is totally possible.](_URL_0_) Remember that fog is nothing more than a low hanging clouds so you can try this at home. If you're dead set on using a cup you'll have to wait for a cloudologist." ]	[ "It's the [water cycle](_URL_0_) There is a limited amount of water on Earth but it's a pretty neat cycle where the water coming from waterfalls end up in rivers / the ground then joins the oceans, evaporates, goes up the sky, ends up raining down on mountains at cold temperature where they form snow / ice then mel...
When running a water tap into a bowl, does "new" water make it to the bottom of the bowl, or does it just quickly overflow?	[ "I made a science: I took a 3 1/2 quart steel bowl and filled it with water in my kitchen sink with the faucet on max, producing a flow comparable to the average kitchen sink I have seen. After the bowl was full, with the water pouring roughly into the center, I squirted red food coloring into the outflow. I was ea...	[ "There's fluid within tiny tubes in your ears, and these tubes have hairs on them. Your brain pays attention to these hairs and how the fluid moves them in order to figure out where you are in space and how you're moving, but it also uses what your eyes see. Normally, your eyes and ears tell your brain the same thi...
Does having a ring around a planet affect the planet's atmosphere at all? Does it have any effect on anything?	[ "Having a ring system can impact a planet's seasons. Winters will be colder because the rings will blot out more light from the sun, while reflecting more light on the opposite hemisphere making summers warmer. Phil Plait (the \"Bad Astronomer\") did a [thorough article](_URL_0_) examining the consequences of Eart...	[ "Gravitationally not really, since Mercury is pretty small and pretty far away (the far away part being most important). Doing some back of the envelope calculations, the gravitational acceleration of Mercury at Earth's average distance from it is about 10^-10 g. That's one ten-billionth of the acceleration from ...
A lot of toddlers have a physical reaction to eating something they really enjoy (usually a little dance of some sort) Why do we stop doing this as grown ups?	[ "Things aren't as exciting as you get older. It's natural to quit being so excited over something when you experience it over and over again." ]	[ "We move our heads as a signal of recognizing and following a musical pattern, aka rhythm. If you listen to most music you will be able to bob your head along since (most often than not) music follows a single tempo, and can just be broken down into multiple beat intervals. This is the way a metronome works. If you...
Why does rubbing your stomach ease a stomach ache?	[ "Its because your stomach is full of gas and poop, when you press on it you are dispersing them" ]	[ "Most cells (technically, most \"batteries\" are actually just one power cell, not a battery of cells, but never mind that) are strips of metal with a chemical paste between them, rolled up into the familiar shape. The electrical capability of the battery depends on the chemical reaction between the paste and those...
How does rolling a cigarette tighter/looser change the taste, and why?	[ "It changes the amount of air you inhale - the the ratio of smoke to air changes depending on how it's rolled. Air can make things taste nicer, as it changes how long flavour is in touch with your mouth." ]	[ "From a distance you're only viewing the largest features of the smoke cloud. Up close, you're viewing much smaller, faster moving features of that cloud. Due to the fractal nature of such an object these features are different sized but similar looking. Next time approach the cloud but be mindful to focus only on ...
Why does some carpet change shade depending on what direction you run it?	[ "The angle of the pile reflects the light in different directions. Bent towards you, it's darker because you see the tops of the pile. Bent away you see the sides. Well trained carpet shampoo or car detailers do the same thing with their final pass of the extractor, to create a \"just cleaned\" appearance. _URL_0...	[ "Wow, lots of grammar nazis here. For lack of better words myself I'll leave this here for them: _URL_0_ There's a discusson on this here: _URL_1_ ...but I've also heard it is because your blood is flowing away from the cold areas, which exposes your nerves to the skin. Don't know about that now that I read that ot...
How come whenever I double click a word on my computer it always selects the space as well?	[ "This is by design. If you select a word from the middle of a sentence, copy it, and then paste it in to another sentence, you want the trailing space on the clipboard because otherwise you would have to take additional steps to insert separating spaces after the paste. If you cut the selected text, then you most ...	[ "It's a spasm of the diaphragm (the muscle that makes your lungs work). Your body doesn't do it intentionally, it's just a mistake." ]
how is there enough cows to make enough beef in the world to supply restaurants/fast food chains?	[ "Farming, intensive breeding, and the fact that one cow can product hundreds of cuts of meat (at minimum). Cows are like a ton, a normal steak is about 600 grams ish. There are plenty of cows" ]	[ "Go to a new area of Australia (or wherever). Comb one acre very carefully, cataloging every species. Figure out how many new species there are. Do this in a few different places, figure out about how many new species there are in general, and extrapolate." ]
What is this skin disease?	[ "This is [Mycosis Fungoides](_URL_0_), a type of t-cell lymphoma (cancer)." ]	[ "Hi, this post violates our [policy on medical advice](_URL_0_). We do not allow any personal medical information to be posted here, and we can't offer any health advice. If you have concerns about your health you need to speak to a doctor." ]
Why can't we just take alcohol dehydrogenase in some form to quickly eliminate drunkeness?	[ "It's an enzyme, so it can't be given orally, but has to be given intravenously, because your stomach acids would immediately denature the enzyme, rendering it useless. So tablets are out of the question. But more importantly, in order to get FDA approval, we'd need a consistent product, preferably synthesized. It...	[ "The pools would have to be huge in order to have a useful output. In theory you could scale up the technology, but like solar power plants, a very large amount of surface area would be required to input enough energy into the system. In short, it is cheaper and easier to use traditional desalination plants." ]
Is William Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich dated?	[ "I will leave historical judgment to my betters, but should point out that Shirer lived in Germany during the war, and even though there's relatively little personal narrative, the whole thing has a pungent aura of first-person observation. I am glad to have read it. His hatred of Goering is distracting, though. Sh...	[ "Hi, while you're waiting for a direct reply here, you might be interested in this answer to a similar question * /u/Shashank1000 in [How did the Education System (primary, secondary, tertiary and vocational) in the USSR compare to the education offered in western countries like Britain and America during a similar...
What happened to the rest of the hair on our body?	[ "Various theories abound. One is that it just came along with other advantages (rather like those Russian domesticated foxes with white blazes on their snouts coming along with increased docility). Another is that we did better without hair because less hairy people had fewer parasites. Another is that all of the r...	[ "Every \"why haven't we evolved X\" question boils down to this. Evolution isn't about what's best, but about what's good enough. What we have works, so we keep it. If there was a significant pressure on our early ancestors for this, and they were lucky, and they had a lot of generations to try out tactics against ...
How would a compressional wave in a fluid interact with a toroidal vortex?	[ "Here's the paper you'll want to read: _URL_0_ There's more papers out there; \"shock-vortex interaction\" seems to be the keyword. tl;dr: For a strong enough vortex, the wave may be partially reflected." ]	[ "Quoting [Wikipedia](_URL_0_) (a bit naughty, but it's a nice way to express what I think): > The proposed theory is inconsistent with quantum mechanics and critics have ruled it out on those grounds. Which is essentially saying what you pointed out, yes. If what they're doing is as easy as it sounds - just runnin...
how glass and paper products are somehow better for the environment than plastic?	[ "Glass can be easily recycled and so can paper. Paper also biodegrades readily, both are better long term than plastic/fossil fuel products including transport and production emissions. Plastic is just cheaper." ]	[ "Ah this is one of the main questions in the entire field of psychological perception. There are multiple fields discussing it. What you are speaking of specifically are called \"Affordances\" and the field of \"ecological perception\" does quite a good job at describing what you are asking. I suggest reading about...
When producers say, let's say, an episode of the Sopranos cost 2 million dollars, what do they mean?	[ "Actors, Directors, Editors, Janitorial Staff, paying for stage time, cameras, effects etc. So many people are involved who arent cheap to pay and then you have lots of expensive equipment that it all adds up very quickly. I mean the three main actors on the Big Bang Theory each make 1 million dollars an episode." ...	[ "Can you screenshot some examples? That would be very helpful. The most likely answer is that those shows haven't been remastered and are instead using VHS transfers. Most TV shows were on 35mm film just until a few years ago. 35mm film rivals 4K in terms of quality. Look up \"Seinfeld Answering Machine\" on YouT...
What Russia is going through right now.	[ "Basically, the man (Putin) who used to run the KGB when Russia was the USSR, still has ties to the underworld of Russia. He has rigged elections to keep himself in power. He was president for two terms, which is the longest he could be, then elected in a puppet (Medvedev), who in turn made Putin prime minister. No...	[ "People could live without too much trouble in the Chernobyl area, just as plants can. The higher level of radiation means there's a higher chance of dying of cancer; not drastically higher, but enough that nobody wants to live there." ]
I've been loyal to my NY Resolution of exercising more an eating healthier, I have lost about 1/2 a stone since the beginning of the year but when I look in the mirror I can't tell much difference, why could this be?	[ "How much of a % of your weight is that? I gained about a stone over the last year and noticed a huge difference, but it was almost a 1% increase. If you are going from 300lbs to 293 that may not be enough for you to notice yet. Edit to add: Take a picture of yourself today, then look at it when you lose another ha...	[ "In principle, if you had a large enough mirror placed half a light year away from Earth, yes, you could see a year into the past on Earth. Place it ten light years away and you can see 20 years ago on Earth, and so on. Note that you can never see farther back in time than the mirror's launch date from Earth, becau...
How do we know that a black dwarf star exists if it's never been seen before?	[ "It's thought that they don't exist yet, because there hasn't been enough time for white dwarves to cool. Because white dwarves are radiating away all this energy, it is thought that eventually it will cool through this process. If that is wrong, astronomers in a trillion years can find out." ]	[ "Through exposure. Put a camera in a dark room and take a long exposure picture. They do the same thing for seeing things far away in space. The reason it takes satellites so long to get a picture is because they have been taking a long exposure shot the entire time." ]
I thought that you can't use recordings as admissible evidence if both parties don't know it's being done, but I always hear of people recording stuff to use as future evidence if needed. How would it then be admissible?	[ "Not every place has the same laws regarding recording. My state allows recordings as long as one party knows. In some places recordings aren't allowed for criminal prosecution, but may be used for civil trials. Maybe the penalty for a recording is worth getting that other person in trouble. Even if I can't use ...	[ "Imagine you are made of genetic soup. Some people have ingredients that just don't go well together and make the soup taste bad. But that's ok, because when you have a kid, we just take some of my soup and some of my wife's soup and pour it in together. So even though my soup has some bad ingredients, her ingredie...
What happens to space when matter is in it?	[ "Massenergy curves spacetime resulting is gravitation. Spacetime is the geometry, massenergy what populates it. However, even when \"empty,\" spacetime is filled with the ground states of the quantum fields which has an energy all of its own--so space is never truly empty." ]	[ "basically you have a goo kinda like gum and it makes little voids that create a vaccuum when they're pulled apart, resisting being pulled apart. its just mini- vacuum balls that get stronger as you pull (until they pop)" ]
Romney vs Obama's education plan	[ "Basically, Obama says that higher education (college) should be a right. People should all be able to go to college with help from scholarships, loans, or grants. Romney thinks that it should be reserved for those who can afford it. The government should not help students go to college by having low-interest loan...	[ "I believe the [Stanford University Orbis project](_URL_0_) has a pretty good reputation on this sub. I've seen it alluded to several times without it's accuracy being contested. I would imagine it contains a degree of speculation and estimation but I'm not sure exactly how much." ]
Why is it taking them so long to come out with the oculus rift consumer version, when they developed it nearly a year ago, and came out with the development kits nearly two years before that?	[ "My thoughts are because it is supposed to be a game changer(literally) and to release anything sub par could potentially hurt the concept and make it take even longer for people to get interested in it again, I for one would be extremely disappointed if it was clunky and didn't work as good as I'm imagining it wil...	[ "The velocity addition formula isn't relevant. What reconciles this is that time dilation of the traveler in the Earth's reference frame manifests as [length contraction](_URL_0_) in the traveler's frame. So in that frame, the traveler won't see themselves covering 0.86 light year in 6 months. Rather, they see them...
Why do old broken bones and injuries hurt when there are extreme highs or lows in the weather.	[ "Weather is caused by pressure differences. Like when you see on the weather channel the (H) and (L) converging. [here](_URL_0_) you can see a great visualization of that. All our joints have fluid in them (Like oiling your gears) and we're used to the fluid expanding and contracting normally under different atmosp...	[ "Now I am by no means a biologist, so I know I’m not answering or explaining but I can share a little of my own experience. I work free lance in the film industry so I will work long days weeks and hours for a period of time and then be unemployed while I try to arrange the next project. At the end of every shoot, ...
What determines if a musician is better than another?	[ "Subjective, but stuff like the way their music is structured and played plays a part. You really can't know unless you deconstruct the song to the point where it isn't enjoyable anymore." ]	[ "Doctors know which antibiotics to prescribe because medical lab specialists perform a series of tests (eg. a serology test checks the patient's blood for antibodies against a specific strain of pathogen). Lab workers use complex but linear test schematics to narrow down what the infection could be. These tests are...
When you stop smelling something after you have been around the smell for a while, what's happening physically?	[ "The neurotransmitter in the synapse is not being recycled fast enough so they cannot fire any more and the impulse is not transmitted to the brain." ]	[ "“Semantic satiation” is the phrase used to describe this. Basically, your brain becomes somewhat fatigued and numbed to the sound and the repition and over time as it tapers in neural response. This practice is actually described to combat speech anxiety where the repition of phrases decrease any associated fears ...
Is it by coincidence that we consider North as "up" on maps and globes?	[ "Jerry Brotton wrote an interesting book called A History of the World in 12 Maps that does cover this specific topic in terms of map orientation. Unfortuantely, I am out of town, and don't have access to my library to provide you the relevant passages. I will check back on this thread next week when I get home t...	[ "This question is pretty tough to imagine. Here's something that might help: Imagine you live on a [Möbius strip](_URL_0_). You're facing straight down at all times. You leave a ghost image of yourself as you go around the strip. Travel fully around and you get back to where you started, still looking the same way....
Do other higher order animals know humans are at the top of the food-chain?	[ "The 5\" grass hopper that jumped on me at work and made me flinch like a sissy and scream \"fuck!\" certainly doesn't, and probly wont believe it if you told him." ]	[ "A follow up question: Is it possible that they are potentially as smart as we are, but the lack of hands, appropriate communication (etc.) limits their ability to develop their potential?" ]
Why does rain water fall as a intricate snowflake, rather than small balls of ice?	[ "The cloud is generally saturated with supercooled water. Ice crystals nucleate and grow, and when they aggregate into heavy enough particles they fall as snow. The crystal structure leads to hexagonal patterns, but you can get all sorts of dimensions (long prisms, thin plates, etc.). Hail is generally produced whe...	[ "Seasons are the result of the tilt of the Earth. Earth spins on a slight angle compared to the circle of its orbit around the Sun. This means that at different times of year, the poles are pointed towards or away from the Sun. This affects how much daylight the poles get, with the impact decreasing as you get towa...
Is there an evolutionary purpose for our eye brows?	[ "Not exactly science, but common sense: when raining or very sweaty, eyebrows prevent most of the water/sweat from getting into your eyes. This is useful enough so that when working out people wear headbands for extra protection. Also given that they're pretty visible there could be some form of sexual selection in...	[ "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...
How did Native Americans living in areas affected by extreme weather (such as the great plains or southeast coast) deal with things like tornadoes and hurricanes?	[ "[Might find what you're looking for in some of these threads](_URL_0_)" ]	[ "Yes, entire villages were struck so hard that they were abandoned. In Sweden, there's a specific name for villages that were abandoned - \"böle\" was added to the name of the village when it was re-populated again. It might not have been entirely eradicated, but enough so that people could move in from the outside...
Is there a beats per minute maximum where it becomes a hum? At what point does the ear not hear it individually	[ "This is actually a biomedical question (more specifically, psychoacoustics) and can be rephrased, how short of an interval between sounds can a human detect? The answer is roughly 50ms, which in the context of a \"hum\" is 20Hz and is commonly cited as the lower bound of human hearing. Assuming quarter notes are...	[ "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." ]
In 1861, some M. G. Dupuis and others possibly offered to volunteer for the Union army. What was the offer specifically, and were there other individuals who wished to leave Europe to join the Union?	[ "> Were there other offers of European volunteers at the start of the war? I can't speak to Dupuis, but for others, [this might be of interest!](_URL_0_)" ]	[ "> Please DO NOT COMMENT about the TV series Damn you, OP! We used to think the universe was timeless and static. However, we began to think that galaxies were all moving away from each other. Georges Lemaitre, a Belgian physicist, posited in 1927 that, if you went far enough back in time, the whole universe would ...
Does a current across a straight conductive path only produce a magnetic B field, or does it also produce an H field?	[ "the magnetic field (B) and the auxiliary magnetic field (H) are related by the permeability(mu). B=mu*H _URL_0_" ]	[ "M is called the bilabial nasal, meaning that it is produced by letting air flow out of the nose. It is also a voiced consonant, meaning that the vocal cords vibrate during its production. P is the voiceless bilabial stop. Air does not flow out through the nose and the vocal cords do not vibrate during its producti...
How fast am I going in comparison to the universe?	[ "You're going .99c, 1 mile per hour, and are also stationary. All of the above, and more. The problem is \"space\" doesn't have a rest frame. Velocity only makes sense in comparison to some other object. We forget this, or never learn it, because almost always in our daily lives, when we measure speed there is a...	[ "No you would not feel any resistance. This phenomenon is common in sail boating while running down wind. Autos are usually running faster than the wind so usually you feel the resistance but if you match the speed of the car to the speed of the wind there will be no resistance to feel. When you think about it this...
How exactly does anorexia lead to infertility especially for women?	[ "To menstruate, women need a certain percentage of body fat. If that body fat is not present, the body will not menstruate and the woman will be (temporarily) infertile. When someone's body weight is dangerously low, the body will try and shut down as many non-essential functions to keep on surviving. The endocrine...	[ "Models are not about being attractive to the opposite sex...they are about making clothing look good. It is easier to make clothing look good on a thin frame." ]
Is Dark Energy really real?	[ "Dark energy is the name for what causes the universe to be expanding at an accelerating rate. Whether the dark energy arises from a fundamental cosmological constant or from a dynamical process is unknown; but the accelerating expansion of the universe is a very robust measurement, so yes, we know it's there." ]	[ "Congrats, you've stumbled upon a major open question in astrophysics." ]
Do meteoroids always impact the atmosphere at high speed? Is it possible for one to "fall" to Earth mostly intact without burning up?	[ "Not really. Stuff in space is moving fast... Really fast actually. Especially next to planetary bodies like earth. The ISS, for example, goes all the way around the earth in 90 minutes. If the ISS were to race a bullet from one end of a football field to the other, it would beat it before the bullet reached the 0 ...	[ "Same reason why the planets are in a relatively horizontal plane around the sun. Angular momentum is conserved, so as orbiting materials collide, they eventually settle into a disk. What conservation of angular momentum means, is that the total sum of each particles momentum, must but equal to their ending momentu...
What would happen if I put a burning matchstick in the petrol tank of a bike/car?	[ "Most likely, nothing. The inside of the tank is full of gasoline fumes, sure, but that's mostly what's in there. There's not enough oxygen inside the tank to support a quick flash, much less a full-on explosion. Now, if the tank was completely empty of liquid and only had fumes in there and there had been time for...	[ "The amount of oxygen the pit (seed) gets affects the prosperity of the plant. When you put it in water, you don't fully submerge it, only partially by holding it up with toothpicks, so the seed is getting oxygen. When you put it in waterlogged soil, the water fills in all the empty pore space, leaving no room for ...
How do companies that operate as basically monopolies not get into trouble in the US?	[ "it is not a crime to be a monopoly. it is a problem if you actively prevent a fair market. In your example, the simple fact is that broadband service has enormous startup and fixed costs. its rarely practical to bury two fiber networks and split the revenue. The fact that it doesn't make financial sense to challe...	[ "By using advertising disclaimers like \"limited quantities\" or \"while supplies last\", which in many states exempts those items from raincheck laws." ]
Is '4K resolution' the theoretical maximum fidelity achievable with 35mm film scanning, or will advances in scanning technology improve on this in the future?	[ "I would think the ultimate limitation is the grain size of the crystals in the film. Table 2 in this PDF gives sizes and scanning technology: _URL_0_" ]	[ "401K refers to a section of the USA tax code that allows employees to reserve a portion of their yearly income and put it into a retirement account (referred to simply as a 401K). The money that you put into your 401K is pre-tax. Example: You make $20,000 in 2014. You have $2000 of that put into your 401K. Come ne...
Why does glass get so hot when it doesn't absorb any light?	[ "It does absorb light. Some of the visible light is absorbed, but not a lot, so it isn't all that noticeable. To us it looks transparent. But ordinary plate glass isn't that great at transmitting UV light and InfraRed light. Some gets reflected, some gets absorbed. The light that is internally reflected and the l...	[ "Do you have a fly screen over the window? If so what you are observing is a [Moiré pattern](_URL_0_) being projected onto the window. Essentially the light is passing through the screen and the light waves get split up and then interact with each other causing spots of superposition where some regions are darker a...
I only speak English. What is the furthest I could go back in time and still be able to communicate with other English speakers, and where would I have to be?	[ "Not to discourage answers, but this question has been asked [alot](_URL_4_) [Here's the FAQ section on the English language](_URL_0_) and [here's the FAQ on how far back you could go and still communicate](_URL_3_) * [How far do I have to go before I can no longer have a conversation with someone and udnerstand th...	[ "> Suppose you're traveling in a train moving the speed of light (theoretically) You cannot travel the speed of light, even theoretically. Instead, say that you're on a train moving 99% the speed of light, and your throw a tennis ball in front of you at 99% the speed of light (you've got a hell of a throwing arm). ...
If it were possible to stably break an atom apart into its fundamental parts, could we hypothetically put the existing particles back together into new atoms?	[ "This happens naturally on Earth , Lead is the final/stable [\"Daughter of Decay\"](_URL_0_) of Uranium." ]	[ "Imagine you grew up flying in a plane. The ground looks like different colors. There's a green area over here, and a brown area over there. When you land for the first time, you're surprised that the green area is actually made up of large trees, and the brown area is made of rocks and shrubs. There are thousands ...
Why do different colors evoke certain emotions in people? (e.g. red and anger, yellow and hunger)	[ "They don't, by-and-large. It's a cultural myth that colors alter moods or cognitive function in any meaningful way outside of the placebo effect. Red is \"anger and hate\" in the USA (due to anti-communist propaganda, most likely), \"joy and luck\" in China, \"love and passion\" in Russia (and many cultures that ...	[ "Analog TVs had a circuit called the [\"color killer\"](_URL_0_). It was designed to eliminate any color from the screen when B+W programming was being received. The B+W signal did not have a [color burst](_URL_1_) reference signal, and it is the absence of this color burst which triggers the color killer. Static m...
Why is canned dog food labeled as "not fit for human consumption" if it contains standard human-friendly ingredients like chicken, lamb, rice etc?	[ "Because it is not inspected in the same way and to the same level of hygiene as human food. The disclaimer lets you know that the FDA doesn't stand behind the food and if you ate it and got sick you would find it very hard to litigate." ]	[ "Because the legal definitions of marriage have always said 'man and woman' instead of just 'two people'. Whether it was deliberately worded that way to exclude same-sex marriage, or just an accident borne out of innocent assumptions, that's how the laws were drawn up so that's how marriage was legally defined." ...
Why aren't Libertarians invited to participate in Presidential debates?	[ "Because the debates are sponsored and produced by the Commision on Presidential Debates, which is co-chaired by a prominent Democrat and a prominent Republican, and requires candidates to poll at or above 15% support to join the debates. The CPD was founded in 1987 by the Democratic and Republican parties to take ...	[ "Costs money to build and maintain the facilities, some countries don't feel like taking on the burden of that cost." ]
Does the mass of a tree equal the mass of the soil it displaced as it grew?	[ "Very little mass in a tree comes from the soil. Most is cellulose manufactured from atmospheric carbon dioxide and water. Trees are made of air." ]	[ "You've discovered [the twin paradox](_URL_0_). The answer is that you can't have the spaceships \"suddenly\" be at rest with each other. Either one or both must undergo acceleration. In the case of one spaceship accelerating and becoming at rest with the other, the accelerating spaceship has its time dilated. If t...
Why is there Kilometer,Kilobyte,Kilogram and more but no Megameter or Gigameter? And if they exist why are they almoust never used?	[ "A Mg (megagram) is usually referred to as a metric Ton which is why nobody says Megagram. As for meters, the only people who really need to use units of distance larger than 1000s of Km tend to be astronomers who insist on using many tedious non-SI units like ergs and arc-seconds (parsecs). For long distances, lig...	[ "1. It's called the United Mexican States, not the USoM. 2. Each country uses its official name on their own maps, and don't care about others. On a US map, it uses its full name, but notice how it's not, say, \"Republic of the Philippines\". Here, it's just \"Philippines\". In the Philippines, the Tagalog maps wil...
Would the no man's land from the Western front of WW1 be visible from space?	[ "Likely. People can make out items in the 10-50m range from the ISS. That means the individual trenches probably wouldn't be visible. The were generally only a few meters wide. But the combination of multiple allied trenches, no man's land, and then multiple German trenches generally reached a width of several kil...	[ "Since the question has already been answered, I'm just going to throw in a plug for my favourite app for answering these kinds of questions, [Google Sky Map](_URL_0_). Just point it at whatever is confusing you, and it tells you what and where everything is." ]
Why do we have a space station when we could have a moon base?	[ "There are some great images from XKCD's What If blog that I'm gonna shameless steal from: [This is probably what you imagine when you think of space](_URL_1_) But in truth, it actually looks [more like this](_URL_0_) The international space station is 400km away from earth, that's about forty times higher than the...	[ "That has been done by Congress. The US officially switched in the 1970s. It did not stick. Those industries like the Sciences where it is much more useful switched, but general society where there is virtually no difference in the usages as we do not need to be that accurate in things there is not enough of a bene...
Skyrim got a revamped version. It is the same game but with better graphics. One of the new features is the 64 bit engine. What did the programmers have to do? Rewrite the whole game? What is the difference between 32 bit and 64 bit from that perspective?	[ "It should also be noted that most game studios use revisions of the same engine for multiple games. [Creation Engine](_URL_0_) was used for Skyrim and Fallout 4, so any improvements they made for Fallout 4 were certainly rolled into Skyrim SE." ]	[ "To explore what cache verification does, it's important to be passingly familiar with a particular concept in computer science: that of the checksum. A file's checksum, briefly, is a small piece of data that a computer can create by looking at the ones and zeroes that make it up. A checksum, then, is sort of lik...
How does volcanic lightning happen?	[ "Lightning occurs when you build up large charges. In storm clouds that happens due to the ice particles in a tall thunderhead transferring charges as they collide and building up strongly charged areas within the cloud. We know charge separation occurs, we're not entirely sure what the process is. The actual light...	[ "Without additional and extensive tests and research, your question is premature. What we know so far is that through [multiple discovery](_URL_1_), two different inventors independently created a device that can create thrust directly from electricity, without the need of a heat exhaust like a jet or rocket engine...
Why did the Dutch golden age end?	[ "The main, overarching reason was that the Netherlands were just too small. They tried quite hard, and for a while, quite successfully, to be a great naval and colonial power, but England and France and Spain had just too many men and resources for them to compete with. Eventually, They were forced from N. America....	[ "This is like asking \"why does a fire burn itself out - what's the point of using up all the fuel if it can't sustain itself?\"." ]
Why is the WBC not labeled as a hate group by the US Government?	[ "The US doesn't label groups as \"hate groups\", because there are no laws against hate speech in the US. Of course, there are laws against using speech to threaten others, or to incite people to violence, but the US takes freedom of speech quite seriously, and merely saying things like, \"I hate < race/religion/n...	[ "Basically, the Cult of Hubbard rakes in enough money to have really good lawyers. South Park did an extremely accurate portrayal in the episode \"Tom Cruise Won't Come out of the Closet\"" ]
Why is it the North Africa is usually theorized as part of the Arab world/Middle East rather than the actual African continent???	[ "/u/Commustar answered [How valuable is the distinction between North Africa and sub Saharan Africa?](_URL_1_). They actually point out that Africanist Archaeologists (archaeologists specializing in Africa) don't use this distinction. You'll probably also like the [FAQ on ancient Trans-Saharan contact](_URL_0_)." ]	[ "They're not. Persian cats and Maine coon cats are breeds - all of them are Felis catus. Asian people and Caucasian people are races - all of them are Homo sapiens sapiens." ]
Why has no country yet extradited Polanski to the US if he is so easy to find and a convicted fugitive?	[ "Polanski is a French citizen. France (like many nations) won't extradite its own citizens to face foreign charges. That policy is very common and dates back to Greek and Roman laws (upon which most European legal systems are based). He's cautious in his foreign travel not to travel to nations that would extradite ...	[ "> But, why doesn't Mercury just crash into the sun and why doesn't Pluto just \"escape\" the Solar systems with it being so far away? Because the planets are all moving sideways, which causes them to fall toward the sun, but always miss. That's really all an orbit is. It's actually quite difficult to get an object...
How acupuncture needles "cure illnesses" and why it is mostly found practiced by Eastern doctors	[ "I have no source for this, but I remember reading that acupuncture stimulates your nerve cells, making them feel pain I guess, which causes them to send the signal \"help, we've been hurt\" to your body which responds by sending your immune and repair system to action stations in that part of your body, which appa...	[ "Reading that page hurt my head so very very much. There is so much shit and garbage on that page it is ridiculous. No, these people are completely nuts. And for any of the points they did make that are valid - experiments performed after the results they discuss have disproven the original results - or the origi...
How does Microsoft and Sony compete with similar specs?	[ "They both have a similar release date in mind since you don't want to come out too far after your competition and 3rd party developers want to know when to start making higher end games. As well they have similar price points in mind as you don't want to be way more expensive then the competition. So when you comb...	[ "I thought it was explained pretty well by this old tek syndicate video _URL_1_ Definitely worth a watch!" ]
When a singer / rapper has more 'bars' than someone else.	[ "\"Bars\" is a quantitative and qualititative term, signifying either the measure of an individual line (that's a bar) or emphasized for how damn hot it was (that's a bar)." ]	[ "Each builder is going to do what they want. Google pictures of Beijing some time, they have entire large blocks of buildings the same style and height. They also are far more regulated about how they build. I imagine in a more free market economy, each builder wants their building to be \"their building\" and not ...
During 100 Years War, why didn't the English recruit soldiers from territories they controlled in France?	[ "I'm not qualified to comment on the first part of your question, but numerous Gascons fought for the King of England (who was also the Duke of Gascony) throughout the Hundred Years War. They may not have been present in large numbers on every campaign, but this had to do with the need to maintain garrisons in Gasc...	[ "[Clause 168](_URL_0_) of the Latin Rule, the laws of the Templars, forbids retreat: > And if it happens that the Christians are defeated, from which God save them, no brother should leave the field to return to the garrison, while there is a piebald banner [i.e. the black-and-white banner of the Templars] raised ...
What happens to expired pills?	[ "Regarding expired medications that are still in the pharmacy: there are return services that will return medications back to the manufacturer for a credit or incinerate the drugs. An example of a company that manages these returns is Guaranteed Returns (_URL_0_). If you click the link, you will see a figure explai...	[ "The chemicals of life only work well in very specific environments. If a chemical is forced too far outside of the environment it is meant to work in, they can break apart. The main chemical in bleach has the same effect on many of the chemicals of life as extreme heat, causing many of them to break down. This kil...
How are courtroom shows like Judge Judy able to arbitrate cases such as assault and people pulling guns on each other?	[ "The things you see on that show are civil disputes, not criminal charges. Judge Judy cannot throw a person in prison, only decide what fines or reparations are necessary, if any." ]	[ "There are several staging areas in studio 8H in Rockefeller center, most of the time the audience isn't straight on, meaning the soundstage isn't directly in front of them. So the only way they can watch many sketches is on the TV(s) mounted on the walls and rails. Other times when the cut happens for the joke for...
How does the ISS stay operational with all the Space Debris around?	[ "The ISS is in a pretty low orbit where things are still affected by the atmosphere quite significantly. That’s why the ISS needs a speed push from time to time to stay up. But debris slows down and falls into the atmosphere. So that low orbit cleans itself pretty much. Debris is a much bigger problem in higher orb...	[ "Very careful simulation based on testing data. Engineers have experimentally gathered data about all the different materials used to make the telescope. This data includes failure points given applied loads, vibrational frequencies, etc. They can use this along with a computational model of the sattelite to predic...
In movies, characters who are shot and losing blood are often urged to stay awake. Does trying to maintain consciousness really improve the chances of survival in such a situation?	[ "The most important aspect of being awake is that consciousness and even reception of pain/fear can create epinepherine, which is a natural way for your body to increase your blood pressure (by increasing work of the heart, or decreasing diameter of blood vessels, for example). When someone becomes unconscious, de...	[ "Captains deliberately going down with their ship is rare. There is a big difference of \"go down with the ship\" and \"being the last man to leave\". The first is more a military thing, based on honor. Some Japanese captains did this in World War 2. Last man to leave is entirely practical, to show that the captai...
if mercury is the closet planet to the sun, Why is it so cold at night? Wouldnt the molecules move faster all around.	[ "Its so cold at night since it has basically no atmosphere, without an atmosphere there is nothing to keep the heat from the sun close to the planet (atmospheres do that in a few ways)." ]	[ "Space blanket's work by providing a reflective surface. A fair amount of heat that escapes ones body is due to radiative processes (as opposed to conduction [touching], or convection [breeze]). By wrapping you in the mylar blanket, any heat that is radiated from your body just bounces back! In the meantime, it als...
Why didn't the Germans use the Maginot line in their defense of Germany?	[ "I assume you're meaning in the defence of Germany post D-Day. It's actually very simple. The Maginot Line was a superb set of defensive fortifications, set up opposite Germany. The Line was composed of various lines of fallback positions, and it was done in a very specific order to defend from an attack from Germa...	[ "We don't currently have the tools to talk about the moment of the big bang. But we can talk about things in terms of a limiting procedure. It turns out that, as far back as we can safely calculate things (which is quite close to the big bang), the Universe was never within its own Schwarzschild radius. In other ...
When a team 'loses' a draft pick, what happens to the lost pick?	[ "To make it easy, let's say they win the Super Bowl and lose a 3rd round draft pick. If Tomlin hadn't stepped on the field, they would've had the 96th slot. Suppose the Jags finish last in the league and get the 1st overall pick. Their 4th round pick would now move up one slot, so they would have the 96th overall s...	[ "A) Endeavor is being moved to Los Angeles to be put on display in a museum. B) The space shuttles are pretty much flying bricks. They're meant to fall out of the sky allowing some degree of control. Their wings cannot provide the needed lift, and the engines aren't designed for forward movement through the atmosph...
Why is it so difficult to cure cancer?	[ "Normally linking to a comic would be a bad thing in ask science, but I think they really hit the nail on the head scientifically: [Ph.D. Comic on cancer](_URL_0_)" ]	[ "Can you please define for the court when a crime is \"obvious\"? When is the evidence \"clear\"? Why do you point out a first degree murder and claim that this is something more 'obvious' and 'clear' than say, fraud or kidnapping? It takes a long time because it is a very serious accusation and in order to ensure ...
In age-organized systems of male/male sexual relationships like Greek paiderastia and Japanese shudō, how did the relationship end when the eromenos or wakashū came of age?	[ "As an additional question: How would these relationships start? Would there be a sort of match making service via a third party or through the parents of the eromenos/wakashu?" ]	[ "Spaghettification is more a black hole thing, I'm not aware of it being used to apply to non-black hole cases. As to the planet being torn apart, the distance one body has to be from a larger one and NOT have this happen is called the Roche limit. For the sun, that body has to be within a couple radii. The distanc...
Why is Greenland called an island, whilst Australia isn't?	[ "Also, Greenland [is an archipelago](_URL_1_). But if the ice was gone for thousands of years, it would sponge back up and become an island again." ]	[ "Could you please cite the article or paper you read? I'm Icelandic and I had no idea about this and am interested to learn." ]
How does money laundering work?	[ "How: You make a lemonade stand. You sell lemonade for $1 per cup. But say you also sell drugs on the streets at night and you made $100 there. You then put the $100 in the lemonade stand and tell the government you sold 100 cups of lemonade. Now the money is cleaned. Why: You do it so that you can have it in your ...	[ "Here is a great video explaining it. _URL_0_" ]
Why haven't jelly fished taken over the world?	[ "Turtles... Turtles keep the jellyfish population in check. If there were more Jellyfish more species would evolve to eat them." ]	[ "Not enough energy to. It's like lighting a match in a snow storm and expecting it to melt everything. Sure, the match is hot, but theres a lot more cold than there is hot." ]
What was the Soviet Union's equivalent of Operation Paperclip? Who did they pick up?	[ "An excellent book on this topic is Red Moon Rising, by Matthew Brzezinski, which goes into the history behind the Soviet and US rocket programs immediately following the war. I would answer your question more in depth, however I'm at work right now and the book is at home. I'll come back to it tonight when I get ...	[ "There is an australian film called Beneath Hill 60 which I liked (_URL_3_). The movie itself is based on the writings of an actual person Oliver Woodward who was an engineer in Ypres I believe? (_URL_4_) I would also hope that as an Australian film it would a tad less Hollywoodetized, actual historians who have ...
how do archeologist decipher languages that have been dead for hundreds or thousands of years?	[ "It's tough to do that. What is required is a reference. For hiroglyphics in Egypt for example that reference was the Rosetta stone. On it the same text was written in hiroglyphics, greek and babylonian (I guess...) So they could work from there. If there is no reference whatsoever and it's not a 'root language' fr...	[ "Imagine you're solving a crossword and you don't know an answer for a certain question about some wild herb that grows in South America. You call your friend who is great at biology, but he only speaks Chinese. So you translate the question to Chinese, he thinks a little and gives you the answer in Chinese. Then...
If the big bang started as a near infinite density, how would anything escape its gravity?	[ "You're looking at it like it is some kind of object in space, but it was the expansion of space itself. There is nothing to escape from." ]	[ "It isn't expanding into anything. Imagine an infinite loaf of raisin bread rising as it bakes. Each raisin in the loaf will be further away from every other raisin, since the loaf is expanding and the distance between all of the raisins is growing." ]
Has the UN ever forced the USA to do something it opposed?	[ "No, the UN really is not or ever been capable of forcing the USA to do anything. There are two main parts to the UN: the General Assembly, and the Security Council. The General Assembly is not capable of creating binding resolutions, meaning the General Assembly could never force the USA or any other country to do...	[ "A developer buys a big piece of land, divides it up into lots, and builds a bunch of houses to sell to people. The developer sets up an HOA with some basic rules about how the neighborhood will work. In the contract the developer writes up to sell a house, the person buying the house must join the HOA. Also, the c...
Why did super gluing a cotton thread to a popsicle stick light my coffee table on fire tonight?	[ "It's the cotton. Super Glue (at least some brands of it) spontaneously combust when in contact with cotton. Cottons have a lot of hydrogen and oxygen in the molecules, which react to the glue easily. That creates a lot of heat, and fire." ]	[ "Let's take plan old white glue for an example. It is a bunch of sticky stuff in water. When the water evaporates, the stuff that's left behind is frozen into place. When it's in the bottle, there's nowhere for the water vapor to evaporate to, so it stays wet and sticky." ]

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