Subset (10)

eli5 · 25k rows

Split (1)

train · 25k rows

query stringlengths 20 300	positive listlengths 1 1	negative listlengths 1 1
When I am waiting for a solo or a melody to hit a certain note, is it because I have heard that set of notes before or is it just intrinsic?	[ "Well, yes. It's intrinsic because you've heard it all your life. Pop music is a good example, you can guess the progression of almost any western pop song because they all use similar progressions. When you grow up hearing the same basic musical structure you can subconsciously gauge the patterns in said music. ...	[ "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...
If white surfaces reflect all colors, then why don't white walls act like mirrors?	[ "White walls reflect light, but due to the roughness, the light is scattered in all directions from the wall, becoming [diffuse](_URL_0_). Mirrored surfaces have smooth surfaces that reflect light with respect to the normal of the surface making it [specular](_URL_1_)." ]	[ "Think of it like a hose... and a room made of sponge. The light bulb is a hose, spraying water (light) everywhere. The room is a sponge, absorbing the water (light) all the time. The moment you turn the light off, it's like closing the faucet to which the hose is attached. It stops spraying water (light) everywhe...
Has anyone had sex in space yet? If so, how, and why? If not, why not/is it viable?	[ "Husband and wife teams have gone into space. The odds of someone at least attempting it are pretty high. However, NASA says it's difficult to obtain an erection in zero-g because of blood flow problems. The \"Uranus Experiment\" series shows zero-g sex filmed on aircraft." ]	[ "well, since it's a syringe it has at least one open end. Let's assume a real syringe, i.e. the piston has a proper seal and would need some force to be moved. The liquid should be fine for a short while and would stay inside the syringe... however, since we have vacuum, the liquid will soon start to boil (as the l...
Why if I workout regularly and I miss a couple days i'm suddenly unfit as hell?	[ "so many variables can affect your performance. Sleep, diet, stress, etc. Depending on the type of routine you are doing you might not be giving your body enough recovery time working out every day." ]	[ "There is a big difference between those 2 things: One requires more muscle mass. More muscle mass can generate more force. When you lift a weight you can slowly activate more muscles fibres contraction generating more and more force until it is enough to start lifting the object. Running on the other hand is a ver...
When/how does science think humans started becoming timid about nakedness?	[ "Clothing and modesty isn't a universal trait. It is entirely cultural and thus comes and goes with both time and different groups. Even within larger cultures that wear clothing there are subgroups of nudist. That said, clothing has always had functional benefits. Evidence of clothing dates back tens of thousands ...	[ "Because to our primitive ancestors, different usually meant bad. That tuber smells different? Probably rotten, don't eat it. Your dog acting weird? Might have rabies, stay away. That stranger looks different than you? Probably from a rival tribe, and up to no good." ]
Why didn’t any astronomers see the meteor that went past Michigan?	[ "It is all about the size. With current technology and resources, astronomers can detect nearly all meteors that could potentially get close to earth larger than 100 meters. If it is smaller than 100 meters, like the one on michingan (around 2 meters) we have neither the technology nor the resources to see every si...	[ "Pilot unions have pushed against it. No one wants to be videotaped while at work. (Unless they are actors, I guess.)" ]
Can hydrogen bonds be seen as dipole-dipole bonds?	[ "Yes, although a hydrogen bond tends to be stronger due to the relatively poor electronegativity of hydrogen. That combined with its abundance and the fact it forms one covalent bond meant that it is useful to distinguish hydrogen bonds from normal dipole-dipole interactions." ]	[ "It sounds like you are describing a sun dog, [google image search](_URL_0_) provides a wide range of examples. In the southeastern US, I often see two small sections of the circular sun dog in the winter sky, and occasionally during the summer. Similar to [these](_URL_1_), but much less vivid, most people don't se...
How does intermittent fasting work and why so many variations?	[ "There's a lot of whacky science saying stuff like since you've not taken in any calories your body goes crazy burning fat or whatever. To be honest it works because you eat less. That is how any diet works, diets like keto or gluten free may have some science behind them but 90% of the results is simply just eatin...	[ "In every major religion I know about, people pick and choose the portions they wish to believe in. Heck, even among scientifically proven facts, people act this way -- so it's not a surprise they do so in faith-based situations." ]
Why do I see green after exposing my eyes to sunlight?	[ "Your brain will automatically adjust its perception of colours, and it can take some time for this to fade away. You can get a similar effect if you are sunbathing as your eyes will see red as the sunlight passes through your eyelids, and when you open your eyes, you'll see everything has a blue tint. There's some...	[ "Really? I’ve only ever seen people’s sclera go red." ]
What is my all carbs/protein diet doing for me?	[ "Weight gain is dependent on calories in and calories burned. It doesn't matter where you're getting those calories from, if you burn them all through activity and lifestyle, then you're not going to put on weight. Olympic Swimmer Michael Phelps ate somewhere around 2000 Calories for breakfast (remember watching a ...	[ "It minimizes the ability of your curves to cast shadows on other parts of the body, and falls off more easily into the lighting behind you. By providing fewer references, our eyes lose visual cues as to how \"wide\" the subject is. Edit: In addition, it creates an optical 'void' that appears to pull the edges in a...
How is it that I answered every single math question on my pre-ACT test, but received a 35 (the maximum is 36)?	[ "Maybe you got one wrong? I have no idea how the pre-ACT works, but normally you only get marks for correct answers so....... I dunno what else to tell ya" ]	[ "You may have a flag on your account that says you qualify for the promotion while he doesn't. If you've had your account longer, have better credit/payment history, or if he's locked into another kind of contract he may get different offers. Basically the computer looks at all the accounts and says \"Accounts with...
Why do we love someone?	[ "> they only live for their children together and when they're grown up they leave each other. Yeah, humans leave each other even before their children have grown up. Such love, truly above and beyond animals." ]	[ "I think it is hardwired into us. [Tommy Edison](_URL_0_) explains it better." ]
Would fish in an aquarium in a 0 gravity environment all swim with different orientations?	[ "if I might add a question to be answered: I'd like to know if behavioral tendencies would also play a role in their orientation? (e.g. would schooling fish all swim in the same orientation/direction in zero g?)" ]	[ "Well if it was a problem it would have been addressed. Also stuff won't fall on the floor if it moves off a shelf. It kind of floats about so less risk of impact damage. When they are back though glasses usually fall to the floor :)" ]
Old visions of the future seem to show flying cars and spaceships. Did anyone successfully predict the information revolution instead?	[ "Yes, it was predicted in some detail in 1945 by Dr. Vannevar Bush. You can read his predictions here: _URL_0_. In addition, Nikolas Tesla made some pretty good guesses about cellphones in Oct. 1909: _URL_1_." ]	[ "This Week's Rundown! /u/textandtrowel on [\"How did medieval Islamic historians write about/conceptualise the history of their religion? Please also tell me about who wrote history in the medieval Islamic world, why, and what written history was used for in medieval Islamic society.\"](_URL_0_) /u/prufrock451 on [...
why are bugs attracted to the indoors? And why do they struggle to go out the window once they’re in?	[ "There are a LOT of insects. Some are bound to get on on accident. You just don't notice all the ones outside, or even the ones that try to get in but fail" ]	[ "The outside of cells and virus cells are covered in chemicals. Different cells are covered in different chemicals. Specific chemicals stick to other specific chemicals. Other chemicals don't do anything. It can help to think of it like many different colors of velcro. Blue velcro only sticks to blue velcro, it doe...
Why can't we just eradicate mosquitoes and stop all the diseases they spread.	[ "We're working on it. Eradicating a species as invasive as the mosquito isn't exactly easy. Can't exactly just spray pesticide everywhere." ]	[ "Every time you make a copy of a cell, there is a chance for errors. For example when you photocopy a first print, it is pretty crisp and close to the original, but there are a few minor discrepencies. Now if you photocopy the copy, it gets more distorted, and so on until some letters get hard to read, it gets diff...
What is the mass of the universe and how is it calculated?	[ "The mass of the universe is only a meaningful question if you restrict it to the observable universe, or some other reasonable subset of the universe. You then have to define what you mean by mass - baryonic mass? (i.e, regular matter), matter mass? (regular matter + dark matter), total energy? (regular mater + da...	[ "Just use e=mc^2 and bear in mind that about half the energy released will be in neutrinos that don't really interact with anything, and voila." ]
Are there any books that specifically deal with how medieval cavalry was used?	[ "For Norman and Anglo-Norman cavalry warfare, I would look at R. Allen Brown's \"The Status of the Norman Knight\" and \"The Battle of Hastings\", both located within Strickland's Anglo-Norman Warfare: Studies in Late Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman Military Organization. Hell, I would just look through the entire b...	[ "Slightly off-track, but why does it have to be a movie?My aunt teaches that age-group History, and sometimes will show them a sketch-show called \"Horrible Histories\". Its a BBC comedy sketch show that is aimed towards children, has high-level professional actors in it, its very educational and its hilarious aswe...
How does heat travel? Does it need something to conduct it like sound and can it travel through vacuum?	[ "There are a few ways. Heat can be transferred through conduction quite rapidly, depending on the difference in temperatures. The objects must be in direct contact, such as metal and surrounding air. But heat can also travel in a form of light, infrared light, though vacuum. This is a much slower, ineffective proce...	[ "At least one of the following: 1) Ten times the mass (and gravity) of the Sun. 2) Six times the temperature of the core of the Sun. 3) Be a fermion without electric charge. 4) The heat of the core of the Sun combined with at least one tenth the mass of the Sun in pure helium to allow quantum tunnelling to occur w...
Is alcohol absorbed into the body the same way all other nutrients are?	[ "Things from cranberry juice are absorbed into the bloodstream, you just can't tell because they don't get you drunk! Things you eat/drink enter the bloodstream through the intestinal wall. The molecules of the things you eat and drink are absorbed directly through the cells of your intestine and enter the bloodstr...	[ "Some dumbass Pi Kappa Alpha at University of Tennessee decided that it would be a brilliant idea to pour alcohol up his ass to get really drunk. Ended up getting hospitalized and once news spread of this idiots actions the story ended up getting picked up by a lot of media outlets. Pi Kappa Alpha ended up getting ...
What is the difference between a bad headache and a migraine?	[ "I've had migranes since i started puberty. I'm an adult now and they have changed over time. I no longer get pain with my migranes in about 95% of cases. What i do get are some of the other effects of a migrane. [holes in my vision](_URL_1_) disruption to [proprioception](_URL_0_) which is the sense that keeps t...	[ "You missed an outbreak of Measles, which hasn't really existed in the United States for about 30 years." ]
What happens if I own stock in a company and that company gets sold (or bought out) by another company?	[ "It depends on the specific of the deal as announced and approved by the shareholders, but most commonly the shared will be converted to shares in the acquiring company. Sometimes they'll issue only in full shares and pay cash for fractional shares and sometimes they'll issue fractional shares. As an example, I own...	[ "Let's say you wanted to gamble at the horse track. You think Three-Legged Limpet is the horse to win on (despite having only three legs). You decide to place a $100 bet, but you don't have $100 on you now (payday isn't until tomorrow). The bookie agrees to take only $20, with the understanding that you will pay up...
What would happen, federally, if all 50 states independently legalized recreational marijuana?	[ "People would be subject to federal law when crossing state borders, potentially punishable by jail time." ]	[ "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 red and white powerpoints in a hospital	[ "The red outlets are connected to the emergency generator, and should be used for things like life-support equipment that should never lose power in a power outage. As for why they don't just hook everything up to the emergency generators, it's a matter of cost. Running everything in the hospital on emergency pow...	[ "Each pill has to be identifiable from the other, according to EU/US law. If they are using that specific cast, they use different color coding to tell one from the other" ]
Why aren't Dvorak keyboards the norm if they are so much faster? Should I be using a Dvorak layout?	[ "The only studies indicating the dvorak layout is significantly more efficient were conducted by August Dvorak himself(bias much). Independent studies show little if any benefit from the Dvorak layout. If there were huge gains to be had by switching, people likely would. Especially in industries where typing plays ...	[ "There is a major difference and that is that the program was downloaded and executed automatically when you loaded a web page. You need to download and install regular programs so is it a lot harder to convince someone do that compare to be executed automatically. The page was not necessary one that that the hacke...
How does my stomach acid not burn a hole through my body?	[ "Your stomach and (upper GI tract) is lined with mucousa that acts as a buffer to this acid. This mucose doesn't react very stongly to acid, and takes a long time to wear down. If your diet is imbalanced, though, or you have certain disorders, it can wear down quicker and you will get ulcers and such." ]	[ "IIRC from another post, intense emotion gives a sort of fight-or-flight reaction, putting your energy into vital organs, like heart, lungs, and brain. Digestion takes energy, so the body directs that energy into other more important functions." ]
Why are cables so hard to untangle yet getting them tangled is so easy?	[ "A cable can be placed into an effectively infinite number of configurations, only one of which is considered untangled. Every remaining configuration is tangled." ]	[ "Others have mentioned the circadian rhythm which is most of it, but other factor is more mundane: Confirmation Bias. When you wake up just minutes before your alarm, that's remarkable, and so you think about it and remember it. But when your alarm wakes you up, that's just another morning and there's nothing spec...
Why is the smell of decay/death not appealing to (most) humans?	[ "Evolutionary, it is one way to keep us from eating rotten flesh." ]	[ "A few reasons, first you may remember from high school chemistry the ideal gas law. PV=nRT, where P=pressure, V=volume, n= number of moles, R is a constant and T is temperature. If you spray a pressurized gas (the propellant in the can), which is typically butane or propane, as the gas comes out of the spray nozz...
Can dissolving a solid into a liquid decrease its volume?	[ "Yup! I just found a [simple experimental protocol](_URL_0_) that looks at how the volume of a solution decreases when you add sodium chloride. The key is something you mention - the interactions between water molecules change when you dissolve something in it. By adding salt, some of the distance between wate...	[ "The ground underneath the lake is already saturated, which means there's already as much water in the pores as there is room for. If you kept pouring water on the ground, it would stop instantly absorbing once the soil was saturated, and the rest would run off. In hydrology terms, we call the initial portion that ...
Where is dark matter? Is it all supposed to be far away, or is there any near our solar system?	[ "dark matter exists wherever matter exists. galaxies form inside pockets of dark matter. in fact, galaxies are not dense enough to be kept together under just the gravity of matter, so they would fly apart without it. dark matter is coursing through your body constantly. trillions of particles per second, probably....	[ "The best we could, in theory, do is a matter/antimatter engine. 71 milligrams of antimatter would be able to orbit the Space Shuttle (that is about three grains of rice). ([CITE](_URL_0_)) Unfortunately, while we do produce some antimatter on earth, we produce only a tiny fraction of even that small amount. Antima...
How Momentum is Conserved when Light Refracts	[ "When light refracts at the boundary, it also reflects. This reflected light carries momentum which then satisfies momentum conservation." ]	[ "> What part of my reasoning is wrong? The reasoning is not wrong, however you are assuming that each level has a 100% precise energy. In reality, each state has a [nonzero energy width](_URL_0_) to it. The width of the state is inversely proportional to the lifetime, so only states which never decay have infinit...
How do sports leagues with a salary cap avoid cash hand-shake deals under the table from rich owners trying to pay players without it counting towards the cap?	[ "The players still file taxes, and so these deals would have to be declared somewhere or they'd be breaking actual laws and not just league rules. You can also bet that the rest of the NBA would be furiously investigating the Kosherness of the deal when someone signs LeBron for the veteran minimum." ]	[ "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 ...
How does nuclear power work?	[ "Nuclear power plants aren't really that different from most other power plants. They're just big steam engines. Boil water to make high pressure steam, run steam through turbines to generate electricity. Done. The difference between a nuclear power plant and, say, a coal power plant is just the source of the heat....	[ "Are you talking about the [nucleon-nucleon potential](_URL_0_)? The repulsive core comes from Pauli exclusion between the quarks. If you have two nucleons very close together (less than 1 fm), you can think of the wavefunctions of the valence quarks overlapping strongly. Because quarks of the same flavor are ident...
what exactly happens when blacksmiths submerge hot metal in water?	[ "Quenching. It aligns the molecules in the piece and bestows hardness and strength. Heating and hammering shapes the piece but also makes it weaker. This addresses the weakness the piece gains from the forming process." ]	[ "A black body is an idealized perfect absorber of electromagnetic radiation. All of it, regardless of angle or wavelength. Including your wifi signal. Given that it doesn't reflect or scatter any of it, we call them black. What does it do with the radiation it has absorbed? It gets warm. Each object emits infrar...
How are bullets manufactured?	[ "Not factory, but here's a visual of the process for .45 ACP _URL_0_" ]	[ "Thank you for your submission! Unfortunately, your submission has been removed for the following reason(s): You can find the basic answer with a google / wiki search. Please start there and come back with a more specific question. If you disagree with this decision, please send a [message to the moderators.](_URL...
[NSFW maybe] how come when you tickle yourself you don't feel anything but when you masturbate its pleasurable?	[ "When you are tickled your body thinks it's being attacked, thats why you can't tickle yourself (cause what person attacks his/herself?)" ]	[ "I'm not an expert but I'm going to guess that it has a lot to do with upbringing- what you experienced as a kid in terms of culture, values, hardships, what your parents and peers were like etc. An uber religious old black man in the south is going to have a different idea of what is funny than me, a young white ...
Why did underwear become a huge standard in society? How did the notion of wearing clothes under our clothes become a huge success?	[ "I seem to remember reading that it was down to having a layer in between clothes you would wear for multiple days and those you could wash/change on a regular basis so the outer clothes stayed fresher for longer." ]	[ "Hi OP, this is a cultural question, so it would greatly assist anyone considering answering if you could specify which culture you're asking about. For example, the name of a cultural group / country / geographic region, plus a rough time period. Otherwise, this question is simply too broad, as it encompasses almo...
What determines how much money one currency is worth in another currency?	[ "The Market. And the market is all of us. Let's say we're on an actual market. Someone is selling 100 dollarydoos for 200 euros. Someone buys it, so now 1 dollarydoo = 2 euros (and 1 euro is 0.5 dollarydoo). A day later he want's to exchange his remaining euros again for dollarydoos so he's says he is selling 100 e...	[ "Strictly speaking, they can't. Such things are only possible with special treaties between 2 countries. Usually those include that the US can ask government XYZ to extradite a person. If they agree, they either bring the person to the US, or allow to US to go there and get him. If not, nothing happens, such is the...
What the hell is going on with r/thebutton?	[ "reddit made a button that each user can only push once. Each time the button gets pushed, a timer resets to 60 seconds and starts counting down. Over 500,000 users have pushed the button so far. Eventually there will be no more eligible accounts left to push the button and the timer will expire. As far as I know, ...	[ "When sorting posts by 'hot' time is taken into account when ranking them. To see the posts with the most upvotes independent of time sort by 'top'. To more directly answer your question they slowly drop down as the time factor in the equation of their rankings increases." ]
What is a PGP fingerprint and why are reporters putting it in their twitter bio?	[ "PGP is a way of having a secure way of talking to another while not seeing each other. Imagine you want to write to your aunt but want to be sure only your aunt can read the letter. So you use a special glue (public pgp key of your aunt) to close the letter, knowing only your aunt has the right chemical to undo t...	[ "the pixels in the screen are part of a grid. so are the pixels in the camera's sensor. it's very hard to get the two grids to align perfectly while taking a picure" ]
Does temperature have momentum?	[ "just a quick point, \"heat\" is often used incorrectly in everyday language and scientifically refers to a transfer of energy in a thermal manner. temperature is a (somewhat arbitrarily) defined scale used to describe the effect of the heat transferred on a substance or system. that being said, the transfer of the...	[ "The law of conservation of energy says that, in a closed system, energy is neither created nor destroyed. In your situation, the two objects are gaining kinetic energy, but they are losing gravitational potential energy. Therefore, the total energy is not changed. The law of inertia, also known as Newton's first l...
Why does Pepsi lose it's fizz/carbonation so much faster than Coke?	[ "Because the carbonation is different. Less CO2 dissolved in Pepsi than in Coke. The bottle size can play a role too, usually big bottles are less carbonated." ]	[ "We associate cold moving air with invigoration and warm still air with nappy-time. The human animal has evolved to have a preferred avoidance when possible of being really active when it's really warm. A lot of societies in warmer climates have a \"siesta\", or mid-day nap time, to dodge the hottest sun and heat....
Why do people blackout/see red when they go into a rage, and sometimes not remember much/ or any of it?	[ "Its not just confined to rage. Any emotion that causes vaso-dilation (expanding of the blood vessels) can cause this. Seeing red is caused by the blood vessels in the eye becoming so expanded the brain no longer ignores them. As for not remembering much. The brain sometimes switches off unnecessary parts of the br...	[ "Use your tongue to feel the roof of your mouth. On top of that roof (inside your head, behind your nose) are a whole bunch of blood vessels (tubes that carry blood all over the inside of your head). When you eat something cold (like ice cream...mmmmmm!) too fast, you get the roof of your mouth very cold, very fast...
How does carbonation in sodas or beer work?	[ "Beers are typically carbonated by producing a second fermentation process, after the beer is brewed, another batch of yeast and sugars are added, the yeast producing carbon dioxide as a part of their life cycle, and being put in a sealed vessel keeps the carbonation from all escaping. Sodas, and probably some beer...	[ "Here is a site that answers you perfectly: _URL_0_ What happens is that there is a small pressure differential between the edge of the station and the centre of rotation, and so the balloon will \"rise\" against that pressure differential. The same thing happens in a car as it accelerates/decelerates, or when a ca...
Russian bombers probing US defenses	[ "They are also testing response time, seeing where the intercepting planes come from, what kinds of planes intercept them, etc. It's a way of gathering intelligence and measuring capabilities." ]	[ "If your next door neighbor is trampling flowers in your backyard, and your much larger, much bigger neighbor from across the street decides to try and stop him, it's in your interest to just let him do that, whether with implicit or explicit approval. ... especially when you can't get to that corner of the backyar...
Why don't wisdom teeth come in at the same time as the rest of our adult teeth?	[ "In the past, by the time your wisdom teeth grew in, you'd likely already lost a few teeth. The missing space would be filled with the incoming teeth, and would not cause the problems we have today." ]	[ "They were, in the Old Roman calender. Then they were modified to make a more accurate, Julian Calender. Then that got changed again by the Church to create the Gregorian calender." ]
If the Earth rotates so quickly, why is it that when I jump I don't land somewhere else?	[ "You might also have asked, if the earth is rotating so quickly, why don't I feel a strong wind all the time from the direction of rotation? In either case, the answer is that you, and the air you move through, are coupled to the earth system and rotating with it. That coupling can be weakened, so as discussed belo...	[ "Our brains didn't evolve with cars in mind. They evolved with, like, being hunted by a jaguar (or whatever) in mind. So your brain doesn't know what to do with a car. It thinks hey, we're sitting, our body's not really doing anything physical, there's very little activity or stimulus... this seems like a good time...
When the Berlin wall was erected in 1961, how did families and friends who happened to live in previously unforeseen boundaries interact with each other?	[ "Strictly an anecdotal story from my wife: Her father on the West side and her Mother on the East side wanted to get married. She applied through the proper channels, even though most people told her not to do it. One day she was informed that she would be allowed to leave that evening. She packed everything she ow...	[ "A good way to track the popularity of languages in an area is seeing how many newspapers were published in that language. Newspapers are more regional than books, and require more of a core language readership to keep going, so if there's a German newspaper around in an area, there's German readers around. My libr...
Why do our bodies sometimes get sharp pains in random places for a few seconds/minutes and then go away?	[ "There are many reasons this could be happening. I the case where physiologically there is no illness taking place, sensory information going to the spinal cord and brain can be misinterpreted. In other cases the cause can be pinched nerves, random spasms of muscle fibers, muscle strains, fibromyalgia... The list g...	[ "This sounds like an extreme example of \"Tip of my Tongue\". _URL_0_ I can't really give an overly scientific answer as to what causes it (some interesting articles on that page, though), but I'd imagine that it's just a \"brain fart\", kinda like deja vu. It's a problem with long-term semantic memory recall. (Se...
The Boston Marathon bombing brothers trial is starting soon. Why does it take so long for the trials to start? It's been about 20 months since the incident.	[ "A couple reasons. In the United States, the burden of proof is on the prosecutor to show that the defendant committed the crime. This \"presumption of innocence\" makes preparing a case hard work, because to win, the prosecutor has to convince 12 regular people that, with absolutely no doubt, the defendant commit...	[ "I liked this question, I had to google it and find out myself. _URL_0_ \"According to NASA, even at this incredible speed, it still takes the solar system 230 million years to orbit the center of the Milky Way Galaxy one time.\"" ]
The origin of orange carrots. I found out that orange carrots have existed a lot less time than the purple and white ones but I got like five different stories, I want to know the real reason if there is one.	[ "They were cultivated by Dutch breeders in the 17th century, to honour William of Orange. No, really. I swear I'm not making this up." ]	[ "Are you referring to American slavery? That is normally what folks on here are referring to. Be a little more specific please; if this is about America, I can tell you that the answer is \"no\" but only because Americans certainly knew that African slaves were \"human,\" or at the very least the law recognized the...
what happened to cell phones causing brain tumors? Did cell phones change? Did we find out cell phones don't cause tumors? Or did we just stop caring?	[ "Most of the hysteria was due to ignorance. Now that people have been using cell phones for twenty years and nobody's developed ear cancer from it the hype has largely died down. Radio waves simply aren't energetic enough to cause the kind of cellular damage that leads to cancer so the fears were always mostly unfo...	[ "Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained: 1. [ELI5: how do metal detectors work? ](_URL_2_) 1. [ELI5: How do metal detectors work? ](_URL_1_) 1. [ELI5 how do metal detectors work? ](_URL_3_) 1. [ELI5: How does a metal detector work? ](_URL_5_) 1. [ELI5: How do metal detectors work? ](_URL_7_) 1. ...
How does tuberculosis make scars on lungs? Do these scars have any effect on lungs?	[ "Tuberculosis bacteria are very slow growing, but also extraordinarily tough. If you are exposed to the disease, it will often go latent and not cause disease for possibly decades. But it's still there, in your lungs, in an arms race with your immune system! Inside the lungs, tuberculosis bacteria will end up ...	[ "It depends on how close the explosion was to ground level, and how big it was, how much protective gear you are wearing, and how long you would be staying (are you coming out of hiding just to leave the area, or are you planning to live there?) TLDR: Bigger warheads, and detonations that are closer to the ground ...
When I'm playing video games, why does leaning forward make me concentrate more?	[ "You're misinterpreting. Concentrating more makes you lean forward, not the other way around. It's not just video games. It's not even just things on screens. Even when reading a book that you're holding in your lap, the same thing occurs, even though leaning forward doesn't get you a single inch closer to the book...	[ "We have evolved a specific tracking system for our eyes, [smooth pursuit](_URL_0_) for tracking moving objects. A component of smooth pursuit is feedback from the optical system to the brain, to allow it to predict the movement we are tracking. Without that feedback (that is to say, without the moving object) most...
Why sometimes coffee just makes my heart rate increase but doesn't actually make me feel any more awake.	[ "Caffeine requires more intake to feel the positive effects after regular use. Caffeine, however, always raises blood pressure. Maybe stop drinking coffee for a week and start again." ]	[ "The human brain is great at recognizing patterns and is very used to making predictions about the environment. For example, due your experience, when you're walking in the street your brain tells you \"people are walking in a certain direction and they're going to keep doing so\". When you experience something new...
If matter has antimatter, does dark matter have dark antimatter?	[ "Dark matter is something that doesn't interact electromagnetically or via the strong force so we can't see it and it's incredibly difficult to directly detect. Neutrinos are called \"hot dark matter\" because they usually move at relativistic speeds. Cold dark matter is more massive and slower. As for the actual q...	[ "Binding energy from the nuclei. Binding energy is negative. In proton-proton fusion p + p - > d + e + ν_e, the mass of the products (deuterium + electron, neutrino is basically massless) is lower than the sum of the masses of the reagents by 0.42 MeV - remember that mass equals the internal energy (that's what E=m...
what actually happens when you die from the flu?	[ "Depends. Probably the simplest thing is viral pneumonia leading to severe respiratory failure leading to death. If you have other long term illnesses these can also be triggered (e.g. someone with coronary heart disease might possibly have a heart attack due to the various stresses of being very unwell). Sourc...	[ "A bypass machine and ventilator. Along with a crap ton of blood products. And your body is packed in ice to reduce body temp so everything slows down and gives them more time. To restart you get a zap directly to the heart, and a pacemaker. Source: had heart valve replaced was \"dead\" for 18 min and had my blood...
why does the stereotypical Italian say "-a-" in-between words (e.g. "Let's-a-go!", " It's-a-me, Mario!"? I'm Italian and I've never heard anything like that, even in the most broken English spoken by other Italians.	[ "In Italian, the emphasis in each word is normally placed on the [last-but-one syllable](_URL_0_). This gives the language a very unique sound, where the pattern of emphasised and non-emphasised syllables is quite distinct. Putting the \"-a-\" between words is supposed to simulate this. If the emphasis in an Englis...	[ "Well there are lots of different types of breads within each category. But with French bread, the focus is usually on the crust, and with Italian, it's more on what's inside the crust. The most common type of italian bread will be more oblong and fatter than the most common french bread, which is baguette. Italia...
Why do some people get seasick and others do not?	[ "SciShow did an episode on motion sickness last month, you can find it [here](_URL_0_) Personally, I am not well versed enough in it to answer your question directly. Edit: Adding to the comment since I believe I have violated the rules of ELI5. My understanding is that 30% of the population is immune to motion sic...	[ "Something else to consider aside from the other good points here: Your body may be more or less hydrated on a given day. Personal hydration can affect how quickly and/or sensitive you are to a given amount of caffeine." ]
Could a taser be used as a defiblerator if nothing else was available?	[ "No. Despite what the Crank series would have you believe a defibrillator is a rather sophisticated piece of kit and it takes more than just applying a whole bunch of voltage to your chest to do you any good." ]	[ "I've actually built one for a science fair before. I used _URL_0_ as a reference guide: _URL_2_ _URL_1_ It worked, but know going in that you will not get a huge amount thrust. Your setup would probably do better, but it will still most likely not be a lot. What I ended up doing that had a more striking visual eff...
A question about the universe before the big bang. Where did the initial matter that created the big bang come from?	[ "We have plausible, but speculative, theories of the history of the universe since about 10^(-36) seconds after the big bang. There are several competing ideas about what happened before that, but there is little evidence one way or another. TL;DR: We don't know." ]	[ "Your asking essentially the chicken or the egg. Example, Did you stomach evolove first and create your brain and extremites to feed it. Or did your brain grow your stomach to power it. Har to say, as without something to feed the stomach, we would have no stomch. Without the brain to run everything, we wouldn't ha...
/r/AskHistorians, How did ancient pagan cultures view other pagan cultures' belief systems (i.e. the Romans' view of Greek gods & goddesses)?	[ "In the ancient near east/middle east in the Hebrew Bible era (say before 1000 BCE) deities were very regional and it was generally held that a certain god held dominion over a region and its people and a different god (or pantheon, like in Egypt) had dominion elsewhere. Common people generally held that a god wors...	[ "Funnily enough, we were talking about this recently. I've skimmed \"The Domestic Dog: Its Evolution, Behaviour and Interactions with People by James Serpell. As far as I can tell, in many cases dogs were given the same status as humans. And it also seems that domesticated dogs in the Bronze Age were all drawn from...
We get the internet from ISPs(Internet Service Providers). But how do they get it? (Or how does it work)?	[ "FAQ here. Yo ho ho! Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained: 1. [ELI5: Where do internet providers get their internet from and why can't we make our own? ](_URL_7_) ^(_ > 100 comments_) 1. [ELI5: Where do ISP companies get their internet from? ](_URL_7_) ^(_4 comments_) 1. [ELI5: How do internet...	[ "They don't mostly. Depends how rural they are, in the US they mostly do run electricity out to those rural houses. Not always though, many people who actually live that far our just use generators. As for sewers and water, they have wells and a septic system. My old house had those and my Mom's does too, it's not ...
Why does a warm environment make me sluggish?	[ "Its your bodies way of keeping you cool in combination with sweating. When it is hot you are more likely to be less active as your body is warm enough and doesn't need to move around, thus you feel sluggish. It's basically your bodies way of trying to keep you from over heating, the less you do the easier it is to...	[ "If it isn't already in your (or the doctor's) plan - I highly recommend asking to have your thyroid hormone levels checked. Underactive thyroids can cause so many random symptoms to appear and be different from one person to the next. Caffeine is often recommended to be reduced or eliminated if the thyroid is abno...
how do small particles actually move?	[ "There isn't a thing that is \"the particle,\" separate from the wavefunction. People often say things like \"the wavefunction gives the probability that the particle will be detected at a certain point\" but what that really means is that the wavefunction gives the probability that another wavefunction (that of th...	[ "I think people come to that interpretation due to Feynman diagrams since, in them, an antiparticle is pictorially represented as a line with an arrow going in the negative direction on the time axis. However, Feynman diagrams are in part just pictures to help one understand processes occurring and don't necessari...
If planet orbits are in the shape of an ellipse and the sun is a focus, where and what is the focus??	[ "Technically, if we treat the Earth-Sun system as the equivalent one body problem, then one focus of the ellipse is not at the center of the Sun, but slightly away from it. We usually just approximate it as being at the Sun's center because the mass of the Sun is so much larger than Earth, that the focus may as wel...	[ "Point a flashlight at the wall and turn it on. See the small circle? Now, let's say your flashlight is delivering xyz power to the wall. So xyz power is landing in that circle, right? Tilt the flashlight in any direction. The circle spreads out across the wall doesn't it? But you didn't change the batteries or any...
Someone please tell me... Why is Shark Week such a big deal?	[ "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." ]	[ "This was true all over the place. Her in South Florida, I have researched this. The terminology used was \"female impersonation.\" Between Miami and West Palm Beach there were many places where drag shows took place that from a news stand point appeared to have been popular among homosexuals. Prior to the 1950s it...
How does psychosis develop and affect the mind of the person?	[ "We really don't know, but as to a \"healthy\" mind switching the way it perceives the world quickly, just look at how psychedelic drugs are able to affect the mind (and other hallucinogens that act on totally different brain systems). Ultimately our brain is complex and generally does a good job of staying \"norma...	[ "We have evolved a specific tracking system for our eyes, [smooth pursuit](_URL_0_) for tracking moving objects. A component of smooth pursuit is feedback from the optical system to the brain, to allow it to predict the movement we are tracking. Without that feedback (that is to say, without the moving object) most...
Attempted to dissolve Ricola cough drops in 60% alcohol...	[ "It seems like the majority of each cough drop would be made of isomalt, aspartame and acesulfame-k. None of which are very soluble in ethanol. In addition, aspartame isn't very soluble in water either. So what happened was that the 60% alcohol solution dissolved what it could left the insoluble portions behind, re...	[ "Hiya. I do quite a bit of cell culture, so here goes. I would assume that the GS Supplement is causing your problem. A precipitate forming is certainly a major issue. I'm assuming that the Glutamic acid was what salted out, and is essential for Glutamine synthesis. As for the nucleotides instead of the nucleoside...
How portals are rendered in the game Portal?	[ "The art of 3D rendering is taking a set of co-ordinates in 3D space (X, Y, Z) and calculating where they should be on a 2D (X, Y) surface (the screen) from a given viewpoint (usually from the point of view of the in-game character). When this is occurring in Portal, the game engine will calculate the 2D rendering ...	[ "You can have a look at Hawking's [original paper](_URL_0_) to read some of his thoughts on this issue. In particular, he describes the way that one can picture the black hole radiation with a pair of virtual particles coming into existence, and says: > It should be emphasized that these pictures of the mechanism r...
How can someone take your card information and then try to make a purchase, without physically having your card with them?	[ "Ignoring online purchases, your biggest concern is people cloning cards. That magnetic strip on the back of the card isn't some complicated, secure thing - it really just has the number in a machine readable format. You can buy hardware for $50-100 that lets you write any number you want to a card. This is why car...	[ "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 you get a full DNA sequence from a semen sample if gametes do not contain the same DNA as somatic cells?	[ "You can get enough to get a statistical match to somatic DNA, especially if you sample more than one sperm cell. If one of the sperm cell had a rare gene the suspect did not, you know it is isn't a match. If the suspect had a rare gene, and 10 sampled cells did not, it would be a 1024 to 1 chance he was still a ma...	[ "Many missions do use multiple slingshot encounters (aka \"Gravity Assist Maneuvers\"). If I recall correctly, the Rosetta mission performed two Earth GAMs and a Mars GAM. Cassini performed two GAMs past Venus, one past Earth, and another at Jupiter. However, this takes time. In order to pull off the double-earth s...
microfiber cloths. they seem to be recommended to clean everything? what are they and why are they so amazing?	[ "1 they are cloths with a far higher surface area than more common ones 2 the surface area means holding more water and particles, so you can clean more easily. All are synthetic, and high quality ones can be squeezed almost completely dry as well. 3 no they are not the same. oh I don't know about brands 4 for most...	[ "High coercivity vs. low coercivity. You're never going to need to re-write the information on the magnetic stripe of your credit card, so its stripe has high coercivity. That means it took a lot of energy to produce, but will take a lot of energy to erase. Hotel keys need to be re-written almost daily, so their st...
How do teams qualify for Champion's League?	[ "Most leagues in Europe have automatic qualification (top 2-4 teams), other leagues need to qualify via playoffs. England (the Premier League); for instance, have 4 guaranteed spots. The other way to qualify for the Champion's League is to win the Champion's League. Chelsea won the Champion's League in 2012 so the...	[ "I've always wondered this too. I know for sure they get money from the ads on their page because of the amount of viewers coming in each day. I've also heard that its by the number of views per video or total subscribers. That I'm not to sure about tho." ]
How do dogs learn their name?	[ "Dogs, through their selective breeding over generations, are very attuned to human behavior. When you say your dog's name, you typically are looking at him with eye contact, and are following up his name with phrases like \"come here\" or \"sit\", and he is then often rewarded with a treat or a neck rub. When you ...	[ "It doesn't. Scientific studies on neuro-linguistic programming have shown it to have no effect. _URL_0_" ]
Why was the colour green associated with Austria/Germans in Austria-Hungary?	[ "The main colours of Austria would be the Babenberger \"Bindenschild\" of red-white-red and the Habsburg colours of black and yellow. Green is the colour of [Styria](_URL_0_) that ruled over the Northern part of Slovenia. Green is also the traditional colour of woodsmen and hunters, adopted by the light infantry of...	[ "Do you have sources for these statements? I am Australian and maybe a third of these statements do not accurately represent Australian culture as I know it. For example: tea culture being larger than coffee culture, courgette instead of zucchini, the use of 'trainers', and the description of our education system e...
Why are fights bench-clearing in baseball and seeming more violent in nature than in contact sports?	[ "In most contact sports, the players are wearing padding so if a fight goes down, a large part of the players is protected. It's also more difficult to swing punches when your padding restricts your range of motion. Kicking is a definite no-no because of cleats, spikes, or bladed skates. In sports such as baseball ...	[ "\"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..." ]
Trickle Down Economics	[ "\"Trickle down economics\" is a political phrase used to criticize policies that involve tax cuts or business incentives, ridiculing the idea that government spending for the benefit of the top will \"trickle down\" to the lower class. (It's pejorative, not used by people to describe their own policies.) It's not ...	[ "Actual answer: wages haven't kept up with inflation and/or worker productivity. You can find charts on Google showing the discrepancies between real worker productivity and real wages. I edited my post, Mr. Jizzler." ]
Does medical marijuana differ from "regular" marijuana, and how?	[ "What the Hell is a hash psychosis? Is that just a fancy way of saying high? But no, there's no difference aside from legally. Practically, it's the exact same stuff. Except most of it is even more potent because it's grown by growers who are more well-funded than average. There are certain strains that contain ...	[ "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" ]
When driving at night why do the headlights on other cars seem much brighter some nights & much dimmer others?	[ "Two major things: 1. Some lights are much brighter than others. Modern LED/Xenon/Halogen lights are significantly brighter than older incandescent designs. 2. Headlights are adjustable and lots of cars just don't have their headlights aligned properly so, instead of pointing at the road in front of the vehicle...	[ "Soooo many things. Temperature, current water AND salt levels in your body, your diet (not just week-to-week, but also day-to-day, and sometimes meal-to-meal), hormones, exercise, current and previous health routines, sleep patterns, and the consistency of all of these factors. If you want to start having more \"g...
How will philanthropic efforts to prevent death in overpopulated 3rd world countries benefit the global community?	[ "There is no actual evidence that exponential population growth will continue indefinitely. There is a mountain of evidence (the vast majority of the developed world) to suggest just the opposite. The most likely scenario is that if we assist enough and their situation improves and they develop as a nation their po...	[ "No one knows, though there is never a shortage of people who think they do. Thomas Malthus is arguably the most well known of that group; the scenario which you are describing was named after him: [Malthusian Catastrophe.](_URL_5_)" ]
What is the difference between genetic mosaics and chimera?	[ "Mosaics and chimeras are animals that have more than one genetically-distinct population of cells. The distinction between these two forms is quite clearly defined, although at times ignored or misused. In mosaics, the genetically different cell types all arise from a single zygote, whereas chimeras originate from...	[ "There's not, at least according to [this study](_URL_0_). The media tends to portray MtF transgender people much more than FtM transgender people, so perhaps this explains why this seems to be the case." ]
When did spaying/neutering pets begin? How big of a problem were feral cat/dog populations before hand?	[ "This is an interesting question, I look forward to reading other responses. The ASPCA write that [veterinarians have been recommending spay/neuter since the 1900s](_URL_0_). More scientific research was performed in the mid-20th century to examine effects of spay/neutering and determine best practices. Humans have...	[ "I came across this article the other day. [The Secret History of Guns](_URL_1_) Not an academic source, but interesting and eye-opening, nonetheless. > The Founding Fathers instituted gun laws so intrusive that, were they running for office today, the NRA would not endorse them. While they did not care to co...
Has the idea of life on gas planets been totally discarded?	[ "Consider that to date, we have discovered about 800 gas giant planets orbiting other stars, yet we have only put 2 probes into orbit around gas giants. There are estimated to be in excess of 100 billion planets in our galaxy. It'd be extremely short-sighted of any scientist to dismiss the notion that life could ev...	[ "We can, and to an increasing extent, _are_ doing so. Search for 'biogas'." ]
Can y'all explain the Civil War to me in terms that are apolitical?	[ "There are three general stages of understanding when it comes to the Civil War: Stage 1: It was about slavery Stage 2: It was about a whole host of issues such as states rights, social structure, trade policy, slavery, agriculture versus urbanization, etc Stage 3: The only disagreement so large and contentious th...	[ "The left usually is for high taxes to redistribute wealth, expensive social welfare programs, and big government spending The right is usually for lower taxes, less social welfare programs, and more moderate government spending" ]
What is it about some materials, such as wool, that traps heat very well?	[ "Different materials absorb and emit heat at different rates. This property is called thermal conductivity, similar (metaphoricly, not scientifically) to electrical conductivity. Things that have low thermal conductivity take a long time to absorb heat, so a hot thing surrounded by material with low thermal condu...	[ "Have you ever broken a glass and you get those tiny (almost microscopic) shards of glass under your skin? You can feel that they are there, and it is a mix of itchy and maybe some slight discomfort? Same thing for the insulation. It has tiny shards of glass in it." ]
Why when we workout too hard we feel dizzy?	[ "The blood is being redirected into the muscles, leaving less for the head. Additionally, using lots of blood oxygen up at once will require the bloodstream to recover said oxygen. Someone smarter, please correct me, I'm likely wrong." ]	[ "Our brains didn't evolve with cars in mind. They evolved with, like, being hunted by a jaguar (or whatever) in mind. So your brain doesn't know what to do with a car. It thinks hey, we're sitting, our body's not really doing anything physical, there's very little activity or stimulus... this seems like a good time...
If I eat nothing but junk do I feel noticeably less energetic the next day, and if not, how long would it take?	[ "Go watch the movie Supersize Me and report back your findings." ]	[ "Type 1 diabetic here, that much sugar in your blood is very hard on your organs. Imagine pipes with flowing water. Now pour as much sugar possible until it becomes a slosh :-P I mean, your blood isn't a slosh, but it's too saturated and organs like your kidneys that help filter blood have to work extra hard, hence...
How did Navy Ships aim, and hit their targets during ww2?	[ "They used mechanical computers. These were clockwork devices that computed the proper angle for the guns based on range estimates provided to fire control, and used inputs from sensors that determined the speed of the target and the firing ship, air pressure, etc. _URL_0_" ]	[ "While not a scientific answer to your question at all, I want to suggest the excellent movie [Before the Fall](_URL_5_) (German Titel: Napola – Elite für den Führer) to anyone interested in this topic, which is a story about pupils in an elite high school in the German Reich." ]
How does a space telescope judge distance?	[ "Parallax is the most common type for near-ish objects. Put something in front of you. Look at it with only one eye open, then the other. You notice how you can use those two slightly different images to judge the distance? That's *basically* how we do it for nearby objects too. We can look at a star from one ...	[ "Here's a link to the Hubble website (that another poster plagiarised from) that gives some explanation: _URL_0_" ]
Plants make oxygen even though they use it during cellular respiration?	[ "A plant's job is to make cellulose, the fibre that makes up plant stems, leaves and roots. Cellulose is just sugar molecules linked together. Sugar contains 6 carbons, 6 oxygens and 12 hydrogens. The raw materials are CO₂ and water, H₂O. Now, if we do the maths, we need 6 waters to get the 12 hydrogens, and 6 CO₂s...	[ "You're right to be confused. It is 100% wrong as depicted in the movie, and a lot of people of wondered about why they made such a grave error considering the rest of the movie was somewhat realistic. It is likely that the reason this happens in the movie is that it makes things more dramatic. Artistic license i...
Would someone whose eyesight is not good enough to see something far away be able to see the same thing if there was a photo taken of it at the same distance?	[ "Yes, they would because the picture is much closer than the actual thing. However, if the old person took the photo they might have a hard time focusing, since they can't see what they are focusing on." ]	[ "How can [this](_URL_1_) and [this](_URL_0_) have different amounts of information on it if both are just pages? If you can find a way to make smaller 'marks' on a medium and read them again later you can fit more of them in the same space. At some point you can't make your handwriting smaller because otherwise yo...
What were Nazi Germany's plans for after the wars?	[ "There was a Generalplan Ost developed just before Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union. The immediate plan was to starve 30 million people during Barbarossa by sealing off the cities workout food and then to completely destroy these cities. The resultat would have been far less people to feed during the war and ...	[ "Do other EU countries charge road tax to German nationals when they are visiting and using (up) the roads?" ]
What is file compression and how does it work?	[ "Every computer file is made up of just 1s and 0s ... It's binary. Binary has some really long strings, if you broke even a small text file down you could have a thousand 1s and 0s Well, in this string of 1000, you're bound to get patterns ... Ten 0s in a row, or 101010 for a few dozen characters in a row. Patterns...	[ "_URL_0_ The wikipedia article is excellent and better than any of the answers in here so far. If you have specific parts you don't understand, ask away and I can help explain them to you." ]
What is "breatharianism"? How does it work? Is there any science behind it?	[ "> I'm trying to wrap my head around the fact that this is actually a thing and I'm stuck. She's a whackjob. > Is there science behind this? No. > Is this gobbledygook garbage? Yes. > How does this work? It doesn't She either starts eating and drinking or she'll die. [For real.](_URL_0_)" ]	[ "> how it really amounts to a bunch of bologna I don't have an answer, but I do need to point out that bologna = lunch meat. Baloney = nonsense." ]
Will Splenda give me cancer?	[ "Here is what the [Mayo Clinic](_URL_0_) has to say. I trust them. > But according to the National Cancer Institute and other health agencies, there's no sound scientific evidence that any of the artificial sweeteners approved for use in the United States cause cancer or other serious health problems. If you're re...	[ "Nutritional labels are for this that the body metabolizes. The body doesn't metabolize aspartame. Nor does it yellow #5." ]
How do animal species near extinction make comebacks, like the rhinos making 1000% increase?	[ "By reproducing with as many males as possible any potentially deleterious mutations will be diluted in the next generations and there will be a large and varied gene pool. Additionally with human intervention it isn’t really that hard to achieve such an increase. When population levels are so low (like they are fo...	[ "Wildlife photographer here. They do it with long lenses, and weeks of squatting in cold, damp nature blinds, waiting for the right scene to happen in front of them. I cruise around Yellowstone for days at a time with a 600mm lens looking for critters. Or if you happen to be Walt Disney, you cheat. For the 1958 wil...
How are companies like Uber and AirBnB among the most valuable private tech companies if they don't own much in the way of property (cars, houses, etc)?	[ "If every single employee except one left, every piece of real estate, equipment, vehicles, etc., and every bit of inventory of Coke were wiped out tomorrow, how much would the company be worth? Answer: probably well over $1 billion. Coke in this example would still all of their contracts, all of their IP and trad...	[ "Each culture has an 'in' to a particular business in each area. So, one Korean family will come and open a dry cleaning business. When their cousins come, they will tell them the tricks of the trade and the regulations and have the business model set, so their cousins open up another cleaning business one town ove...
What is the current state of light based computing? What are the problems holding us back?	[ "A couple of critical issues with optical computing that rarely get mentioned: 1. Photons are huge compared to electrons, and generally the devices that manipulate them are bigger than the photons themselves. A MOSFET for manipulating electrons can have a gate dimension of 0.5 nm and still be much bigger than the e...	[ "Here are a couple threads on the subject of thorium reactors: * [Why aren't we using thorium reactors now?](_URL_1_) * [Why don't we have Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors? ](_URL_5_) * [Why are we not using Thorium Reactors yet?](_URL_3_) * [I've heard all about the positives of thorium nuclear energy, but does an...
How did Minecraft get so big?	[ "Minecraft got big due to a cult following in the early days, which bought it into the mainstream media, in which it was relentlessly praised for its child - friendliness and creative aspects. The game had a long incubation period before it blew up, in which it experienced so many brilliant updates that polished th...	[ "Servers - lots and lots of servers. As an example here's a link to some images of [google data centres](_URL_0_)" ]

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