Subset (10)

eli5 · 25k rows

Split (1)

train · 25k rows

query stringlengths 20 300	positive listlengths 1 1	negative listlengths 1 1
Does royal jelly affect human DNA?	[ "You guys need to cool it on the un-research knee-jerk answers. Just because you think it's ridiculous doesn't mean it hasn't been tested. So provide a citation to reinforce your skepticism, and maybe you'll learn that your skepticism was unfounded. That's what I learned when I read this paper where [Royal Jelly in...	[ "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...
Why is a white person claiming to be black different from a man claiming to be a woman?	[ "There are recognizable mental differences between men and women. Gender dysphoria is a recognized medical condition where someone's brain looks like one gender, but the parts say another. There are no recognized mental differences between races. \"Race\" by itself is a made up construct with no grounding in biolog...	[ "It's all about relativity. If the Hulk ran for a quarter mile, he'd only appear to be moving a few dozen widths of his body size. If a dragonfly then traveled the same distance and speed, it'd appear to be moving thousands of widths of its body size. So they cover the same distance but relative to their body size ...
What happens when you drink so much you black out?	[ "can someone answer why during mid blackout, you still can form SOME memories? i havent been blacked out since i was 17. i remember waking up knowing i was in deep shit and grounded, but nothing else." ]	[ "I read a great article on that a while back. I'm trying to find it again... Basically, during the night you wake up (or semi conscious) for seconds - minutes between cycles, but you have no memory of it in the morning. As the night passes, those moments come more often. So in the morning, say you start one of thos...
Are electric heaters 100% efficient? And if not where does the wasted energy go?	[ "Normally, a machine's efficiency is a measure of how much useful work the machine performs and \"waste\" is the energy lost to heat in the process. But a heater's work is heating. I suppose you consider it maximally efficient, since so much of its energy is devoted to its function, or maximally inefficient since...	[ "> So, my question is: Shouldn't they produce EM waves because of that? And of what order would be frequency of those EM waves (the frequency in which they suffer these collisions)? Forget about the DC current and the average drift of the electrons. Even when no net current is flowing, the electrons are bouncing ar...
Why do dog's cock their heads when you ask a question?	[ "From what I've seen with my dog, it has more to do with the sound of your voice, not the fact that it's an actual question." ]	[ "Most games like this use a light gun (_URL_0_) with a diode which receives light from the display to sense where the gun is pointed. Essentially, when you pull the trigger the screen goes black for a moment except the areas with ducks in them, which turn white. If the diode in the gun is aimed at the white light, ...
WW1 - Are there any accounts, or did it happen, in fact, where the two opposing armies trenches met.	[ "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 ...	[ "Either the border stays where it is, or the countries or states involved negotiate land swaps so that the border can be corrected. [Here](_URL_0_) you see the French-German border along the Rhine river, but at a couple of points it cuts across land where the river has silted up slightly, a process I imagine was ac...
How does a private company like Kaufman studios permanently close down a public street?	[ "[They pay the city a lot of money to lease that street](_URL_0_)." ]	[ "_URL_0_ The short version is they were recorded during a sting operation in which police were informed of the show's activities. You have no expectation of privacy during the commission of a crime in most jurisdictions. Local law varies, though." ]
why are natural modulation transfer functions usually low-pass?	[ "The most fundamental reason for this is inertia. Let's take an example from acoustics. The walls of an acoustic chamber will be largely stationary - that is, they will have high amplitude of motion at zero frequency component. Let's consider now, that everything creeps, slowly. The walls slowly settle under gravi...	[ "_URL_0_ It would be related to the Kolmogorov length scale. Basically, the point at which viscosity diffuses the flame front faster than combustion can occur. For laminar flames, very small indeed." ]
Elephant brains are much bigger than human brains, but elephants are not much smarter than humans. What is the rest of the elephant brain doing?	[ "Nice question! As Geothst mentioned, what matters is not the size, but rather the number of neurons. Even more important is how neurons are distributed: the region of the brain that makes us \"smart\" is the cerebral cortex, so it's important to have as many cortical neurons as possible. There is a very fascinati...	[ "If you're thinking about words, voices or text the answer is: yes. We do some of the processing of these things in working memory, and more specifically the \"phonological loop\". However, \"thinking\" or \"thoughts\" are not defined as words, images or whatever else. It's not well understand exactly what we proce...
Why does milk "cure" the heat of spicy foods better than other drinks?	[ "[Scoville Heat Scale explained with DBZ!](_URL_0_) Dairy products (e.g. Milk, Yogurt etc.) contain a substance called \"casein\", which has a detergent effect on the chile's capsaicin. CAPSAICIN is the substance in chile peppers that gives them their spiciness." ]	[ "It is supposed to be a natural reaction that our ancestors used to survive. It would keep them away from the nests of dangerous insects such as termites. It was the body's way of trying to avoid the danger and keep alive. If you believe in evolution you could say that it is part of evolution." ]
Why do we cook lobster alive?	[ "It's easier to boil them alive, since they spoil really fast (they're literally bottom-feeders, and chefs and fishermen often call them “bugs.”) You can absolutely kill them first, but you have to be quick to the pot." ]	[ "To get your attention. Although a law was passed a while ago regarding this topic. _URL_0_" ]
Earthquake Megathread	[ "Has the number of 7+ earthquakes since 2004 been higher than expected? Or do we just have more active seismic monitoring now? Or more news coverage?" ]	[ "I'm shitting my pants afraid that someone says \"well, actually it is still very possible as data from a research published yesterday reveals that blablablabla and scientists are now able to confirm that shit is indeed going down.\"" ]
Are there simple tests for vaccination status?	[ "Yes, it's called [antibody titer testing](_URL_0_) and it detects the level of a specific antibody. Some colleges may ask for titers before admission." ]	[ "Maybe check this out. _URL_0_ Asks you a bunch of questions about your opinions on things then tells you who to vote for." ]
Have we always had names?	[ "I believe that for all of recorded history, people have had names. Early on, names were too short to be unique, especially in larger villages, so to specify between two Toms, people would say \"Tom, Anders' son\" or \"Tom the Baker\" and those turned into Tom Anderson and Tom Baker as time went on." ]	[ "I think it is hardwired into us. [Tommy Edison](_URL_0_) explains it better." ]
Why are some noble gasses electronegative if they don't react with other atoms?	[ "Some of them do react with other elements such as oxygen or fluorine. These compounds are very unstable as noble gases generally don't react because they have a full valence shell. The electronegativity has just been measured from the few covalent bonds we have been able to measure." ]	[ "Yes, you would still feel it. For example, if you apply a force perpendicular to the surface of the frictionless object with your finger, then the object would exert an equal and opposite force on your finger. This is the so called normal force, which prevents your finger from penetrating the object." ]
Why does a country like pakistan have nuclear weapons but a country like japan doesnt?	[ "Well any country can have nuclear weapons. Hell, if you can get your hands on the materials and tools required, you can find blueprints online and build one yourself. Japan doesn't have any because they don't want any." ]	[ "The geography is important. With the exception of Johannesburg, all of these cities were in a position to become logical naval trade hubs for regional distribution. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries the UK was the dominant naval power in the world, and so it was in the strategic interest of the UK to build up...
Is an electron or an elementary particle both a wave and a particle at the same time?	[ "The short answer is yes. However, a better way to think of it is that electrons are neither particles nor waves. They are objects completely unlike anything we encounter in the macroscopic world that sometimes look like particles and sometimes look like waves." ]	[ "Yes, multiparticle entanglement is possible. The simplest examples are the [GHZ states](_URL_0_). Let us consider objects that can be in one of two individual states, which I will label \"+\" and \"-\". We can construct a state that is a 50-50 mixture of the state in which all the individual objects are in the ind...
how do surgeons make incisions without cutting nerves?	[ "They study for years to make sure they know where the major nerves are. Some minor nerves do get cut - and to some extent they can regenerate, though slowly. The one cut when I had surgery under my jaw took 20 years or so to reconnect!" ]	[ "I'm not sure about this but remember reading it somewhere : There isn't a single big blood vessel that goes thought the whole body, instead there are lot of vessels and different paths, so when somewhere is amputated another path takes over." ]
What do plants use to fight off infections?	[ "Plants usually respond by cell apoptosis and walling-off the infected area, but can also respond by creating [antimicrobial](_URL_1_) compounds or by thickening their cell walls. Since plants don't have white blood cells, all of their cells have [recognition binding sites](_URL_0_) for specific diseases wired into...	[ "it's a computer model, meant to simulate the feedback mechanisms of life on a planet orbiting a star that is getting hotter. There are black and white daisies. the black ones absorb light and heat the planet, white ones do the opposite. The competition between black and white daisy populations, with their succes...
What causes these abnormal growths on this cow? [pic inside]	[ "This is a specific type of cow, from the subspecies Bos primigenius indicus, or humped cattle as opposed to the more common \"taurine\" cattle subspecies in the west Bos primigenius taurus. Those humps are not abnormal growths, but are natural areas of fat storage for the animal, similar to what a camels humps...	[ "> Also, how do morbidly obese females not get estrogen-related cancers faster than normal? Anyone morbidly obese is at a greater risk of certain types of cancers. But at a greatest risk doesn't mean 'you will definitely totally get this within half a year'. So, they are at a greater risk, but that doesn't necess...
What the hell is Wall Street? What happens there, why does it command so much economic influence, and why do people who work there get paid so much?	[ "\"Wall Street\" is just a euphemism for the major financial firms of New York City, many of which are located on an actual street called Wall Street." ]	[ "Ask Reddit is for personal opinions, stories, and the like. Essentially subjective answers to questions without hard answers. Something like \"whats your favorite food\" is a good post there ELI5 is for getting a simplified answer or explanation to a question that you don't understand. A good thread here would som...
Do other languages have a preferred way to order adjectives?	[ "French is fun, because adjectives have both an order as well as a location (before and after the noun). If a word is short or has one of the qualities beauty-age-goodness-size, it goes in front of the noun, otherwise it goes after the noun. As for multi-adjective ordering, the more \"relevant\" an adjective is...	[ "It has to do with the days of the typewriter. If you've seen how a typewriter works, it is better if the letters that are being typed are not mechanically next to each other in the machine. So the layout was done so that the common letter combinations used in words weren't adjacent in the mechanism." ]
Am I made out of the reconstituted remains of microwave burritos?	[ "Everything you ate,drank and breathed. I doubt there's any cell in your body that was around when you were born. [This NY times article](_URL_0_) is all I could find offhand, but it does point to some research." ]	[ "You forget stuff all the time. What did you have for lunch on the first day of the third grade?" ]
Why are viruses non-living when they are not in the lytic cycle and attached to a living host?	[ "The whole notion of \"alive vs not\" goes back to times when people thought that there is something special about being alive, and before we understood that it's all just chemistry. Now we understand that there is a lot of gray area between the two, and people waste a lot of time having pointless discussions about...	[ "If I understood you correctly: You had some file (avi mov) and opened it in the program. Then you have deleted the file while the program was opened and the player is still playing the movie, right? On linux system, the unlink function deletes the file from directory entry but not the file itself. It decreases the...
what is the deal with games over 60 fps? Is there a difference between 60 and 300 fps. And what does interlacing and tearing have to do with this?	[ "The best way to explain the deal about FPS is to have a look at it and see the differences using your own eyes. Here is a good page that compares the effects of higher frame rates: _URL_0_" ]	[ "The simplest analogy for programming is a spoken language. Take this sentence for example: \"You, take this bag to the store\" There are different parts of the sentence that give you information. \"You\" establishes who is being addressed, \"take\" is your action, and establishes the action being performed. \"bag\...
What happens if Kim Jung Un dies? Who takes over and is there ever a chance the government will change with a new leader?	[ "The most likely event is another member of the Kim family takes over. Right now it looks like his younger sister Kim Yo-jong is the leading candidate. It's unlikely that you'd see ~~manager~~ major changes if it were to happen, and even if you saw changes it would likely be via some sort of military coup that inst...	[ "Like many things in history, this is the subject of interpretation. Many dynasties in history have had a similar destiny, being puppets and legitimizers of true rulers. However, the Abbasids didn't give up so easily. Caliph an-Nāṣir made a final attempt to restore the Caliphate to its original power: the Ayyubids ...
how a < $10 buffet is even possible in 2017?! How much profit is made per person?	[ "In running a restaurant, a large part of the costs are labor and space. A buffet uses much less labor by not waiting tables, and by cooking food in huge batches. And it uses less space because customers come and go more quickly, so fewer tables serve more people." ]	[ "[This](_URL_0_) article might help you see how the prices can be so low. If you compare to, say, Walmart, Walmart has to pay for the physical space of their stores and all the employees working in the front of the stores. Like Amazon, they also pay for their website and their warehouses. But Amazon lacks the costs...
What is Pope Francis' position on Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden in light of his recent statement regarding evolution?	[ "Basically, god planned out the evolutionary process and was responsible for the original \"spark\" of life. And then God sat back and watched as evolution progressed until we got to great apes, then, he took one of these apes, uplifted him, endowed him with a soul and set him up in the Garden of Eden as the first ...	[ "How would we know what an \"average citizen\" thought? Every text we have is produced by the elite class. Whether people lost friends or family is impossible to know in the specifics. We do know that military disaster did not affect the political careers of the generals involved. Rosenstein in Imperatores Victi ...
Why do objects like wheels appear to spin backwards as they speed up?	[ "It is a light phenomenon, not a brain phenomenon. It happens in movies because of the frame rate of the video (rapid series of photos) being taken. If the spokes move at the same rate as the frame rate then the wheels won't look like they are turning at all because every time you take a photo the wheels have rotat...	[ "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....
Thursday Reading & Research \| July 05, 2018	[ "Just asked this in the other sticky, but maybe this is the better place for it: Does anyone have any good book recommendations about the Nigerian Civil War or about Biafra as a country?" ]	[ "Hello. Perhaps [this](_URL_1_), [this](_URL_2_), and [this](_URL_0_) thread might help get you started. [Here](_URL_0_) is a thread analyzing a misleading meme that was highly upvoted in the Donald Trump subreddit." ]
Why is it that some musical notes seem to compliment each other while others clash?	[ "They interact at a wave level. One octave is an exact doubling of frequency, so the waves line up perfectly. For different intervals, the waves fit together with different ratios. When you pluck a string, it makes a [harmonic series](_URL_0_) of frequencies at the same time. The first harmonic is exactly one octav...	[ "Many frequencies all sum to one wave through constructive and destructive interference. Think about the wave in air; the air can only be one pressure at a time, so no matter how complex the sound it results in just one waveform." ]
What is the difference between fuel grades at gas station pumps? What do the more expensive ones provide?	[ "Higher grades of gas have a higher octane rating, which is important because octane is less volatile than cetane (which means it won't ignite when compressed more). High compression engines or forced induction (which both usually mean higher performance engines) require higher octane ratings to prevent the fuel ig...	[ "If somebody hacks your credit card & runs up charges, calling the card issuer & telling them will allow you to simply NOT pay for those fraudulent charges. If somebody hacks your debit card, that money is already out of your bank account and you have to fight to get your money BACK. Given that little tidbit, I'm ...
How much water vapour needs to collect in one place before it is visible as a cloud?	[ "In order for a cloud to become visible, you actually need liquid water droplets, not water vapor. The droplets have to reach a size approximately equal to the wavelengths of visible light. Once they reach that size regime, they scatter light through Mie scattering. Mie scattering scatters all wavelengths approxima...	[ "it never \"takes\" hot or cold air. what it takes is \"dryer\" air. when you use cold air either the humidity difference was VERY small or your AC compressor is kicking on to \"dry\" the air your using. this is why older cars without AC have \"really\" hot heaters. the other way to get the effect is with heat. Not...
Why is it so easy for us to electronically capture and send the sense of sight (via pictures/video), but sharing the sense of smell/touch/taste is impossible?	[ "Light is relatively easy to capture and reproduce; the information it conveys when arranged in a particular fashion is mostly static. Smell, touch and taste all require far more complex interactions involving not just light but complicated chemical reactions which depend on huge amounts of factors almost impossibl...	[ "Basically, you have to be weaker if you want the kind of fine muscle control we have. Chimps and gorillas physically could not do the kinds of things we can do with our hands - sculpture, art, writing, etc. - because of the way their muscles are attached to their bones. They have better leverage because their an...
what is the difference between Art and design?	[ "Design is aimed at solving a problem e.g making complex things easy to use, ergomics, accessibility, promoting something etc. Art isn't aimed at solving anything per se - it's meant to be evocative. Design often borrows from art to do its job effectively in many cases - but it doesn't have to." ]	[ "Salt & Pepper season our food. They make it taste better. Spices & Herbs flavor our food. They make it taste different. Season everything. source: Chef." ]
How did gravity in our universe start to take effect?	[ "> From what I understand, the Big Bang was basically a really big explosion that originated from a single point. Nope. We really should rename it but it was the rapid stretching of space itself that occurred throughout all space. From the moment time was greater than zero the universe has been assumed to be infin...	[ "Put a slinky in a long glass tube and fix one end of the slinky to one end of the tube. Now lay the tube on your desk. The slinky is all curled up . Next, stand the tube upright. One end of the slinky is fixed to the top of the tube and the bottom of the slinky dangles down. What if you held the tube at an angle.....
Which pope would be considered to be the 'most accomplished'?	[ "[Innocent III](_URL_0_) seems to be who you're looking for. Often considered to represent the height of the medieval papacy, he was one of the most powerful men in Europe during his time, if not the most powerful. He was responsible for enacting wide-spread reform throughout the Church and convened the Fourth Late...	[ "Followup question, how accurate is the Penn and Teller episode of \"Bullshit!\" on the Dalai Lama where this claim is repeated?" ]
why don't we use popular vote when electing the president?	[ "Short answer: it's always been that way. And to change it is hard because it's in the constitution so it would take an amendment to change it. Back in the olden days, a direct count was impossible so you needed it. Also, your point of smaller states having a bigger say is true, but it might be a feature rather th...	[ "This CGP Grey video does a really good job of explaining it all. _URL_3_" ]
How did Germany hide the production and recruitment of such a large army during the interwar period between WW1 and WW2	[ "They didn't really make much of an effort to hide it, Hitler simply kept pushing the boundaries of the Versailles Agreement in order to test the resolve of the Allies to reinforce it. The truth was they were so afraid of another Great War that they let him get away with a lot before they finally said enough was en...	[ "Forests and such were really 'no man's land' areas for Romans. Brigands and bandits could shelter themselves in relative impunity - where the forest began \"demarcated the limits of Roman authority\", and past that point it was every man for himself. Further, \"along with partisan tactics, bandits also used the cl...
How does électrocution work if electricity is just a bunch or electrons and why does our body shake when exposed to electricity.	[ "Our nervous system is electrically activated. Our bodies work fairly well as a replacement for electrical wire. When electricity passes through you, it activates your nerves/muscles as each pulse of it passes from the source to the destination." ]	[ "Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained: 1. [ELI5: How did we figure out how many protons each element has? ](_URL_0_) 1. [ELI5: How did scientists figure out how many protons are in an atom? Or, even, what an atom is made of? ](_URL_1_)" ]
Why does a galaxy not form clusters of stars similar to planets?	[ "Galaxies do form [star clusters!](_URL_2_) There are two main types, open (like the [Pleiades](_URL_0_)) and globular (like [M 68](_URL_1_)). However, these are on much smaller scales compared to the spiral arm." ]	[ "i don't think you realize how sparse and large the gas is in these clouds is. take the orion nebula for example. it has a radius of about 12 light years and contains about 2000 solar mass. this gives an average density of 6.9 x10^-19 kg/ m^3 . the density of our atmosphere at sea level for reference is about 1.2 k...
Does it snow more in the Northern hemisphere than the Southern hemisphere? How does the average climate in the north differ from the south?	[ "Yes. 68% of the Earth's landmass is in the Northern Hemisphere, and there's a lot of landmass inside the Arctic Circle, whereas the South Pole is surrounded by ocean water. Now water has a high specific heat, which means it's harder to heat but also cool it down. It means more stable temperatures, so that ocean s...	[ "Sweating depends on the number of active sweat glands you have, fit people don't necessarily sweat less than fat people but normally fat acts as an insulator which keeps the body hot. ELI5: fat acts as a blanket covering you all the time. Fit people have a thin blanket and fat people have a thicker blanket" ]
What happens if you repeatedly melt glass?	[ "Glass is already tremendously brittle. But to respond to the substance of your question: glass doesn't have a memory. It doesn't remember that it's been melted 50 times before in the last 24 hours instead of 1 time. So the parameters that affect the properties of glass are simply those of the most recent melt/soli...	[ "It's called cold welding: _URL_0_ It often doesn't work because most materials have a layer of oxide on their surface which prevents this." ]
Why did disco suddenly "die" in America?	[ "The truth? It was hated Because it was both black and gay. It went underground and became house music in the same city that declared it dead: chicago." ]	[ "Back then people still needed jobs, now they dont and can practice harder for longer. And science helps by showing then methods on improving motions. You cam find cool videos on youtube" ]
Some ants cultivate fungus for food and use pieces to start new gardens. Do their cultivated fungus have evolutionary differences to their wild counterparts?	[ "Technically it's not speculation to point out that quarantine procedures for animals like ants are not as strict when it comes to things that are not pathogenic to them. So, it makes sense that there would be a lot of gene-flow between wild and \"domesticated\" strains, especially in the immediate surroundings. T...	[ "The historians I've worked with relied on a lot of Geertz's work to explain the history of insular Southeast Asia, as well as other anthropologists. Perhaps one of the largest and first being Edmund Leach and his study Political Systems of Highland Burma: A Study of Kachin Social Structure, which helped explain ...
Why am I able to focus longer and generally work a lot better at cooler temperatures (~18-20 C)?	[ "This is a behavioral outcome influenced by a multitude of factors with the vast amount of it being attributed to genetics and your environment when growing up. Examples of other people that work much better in the cold are Scandinavians vs Latin Americans who are typically better adjusted for the heat. From what ...	[ "Two social psychological concepts come to mind here. State dependent memory encoding and Erickson Arousal theory of learning. State dependent learning states that what ever state of mind you are in during encoding is the state of mind where recall would be optimal. Erickson arousal theory states that learning is m...
What is a marginal tax rate and how does it work?	[ "Marginal means it applies to the last dollar earned. A marginal tax rate applies to the last dollars earned, not every dollar earned. Everybody pays the same on the same dollar of income, no matter the total. Whether you make $50k or $500k, you pay the same tax on the first $50k of income. Later dollars earned are...	[ "This CGP Grey video does a really good job of explaining it all. _URL_3_" ]
Can light be classified as something other than particle or wave?	[ "The term [wavicle](_URL_0_) is sometimes used, though it's not super popular. > I was just curious, is there any reason that the scientific community couldn't classify these in-between things as their own... thing? The main reason there's no strong reason for an \"in-between\" name is that ALL particles are wavi...	[ "It can and does. Check out the double-slit experiment. _URL_0_" ]
Why is it that when I'm pooping I pee first (seemingly all of the urine in my bladder), then after I poop more urine comes out?	[ "The poop inside you pushes against your bladder holding some of it in." ]	[ "It has to do with the time it takes for a person to feel the effects of the drink they took. If you do a shot of liquor typically it takes 10-15 minutes for you to feel the effects. If you follow up a stiff drink with lighter fare like beer, when the effects kick in youll still be on track. However if you drink a ...
How can spiders tell the difference between vibrations on their webs caused by trapped struggling insects and those caused by random airflow?	[ "Because wind simply pushes the web as a whole, rather than in one particular spot. Thus, wind doesn’t make an impression on the web it rather pushes it. On the contrary, a bug steps on the web and it makes an impression (thus generating a specific vibration) so the spider can easily detect it." ]	[ "You'd be surprised at how good these animals are at knowing when they are close to a meal. Don't forget that things like mosquitos (and their ilk) have the advantage of millions upon millions of years of evolutionary selective pressure that have made them into blood sucking machines. They are extremely good at det...
Why does the brain surface fold?	[ "The Cerebral Cortex is the highest area of your brain, and where all of your consciousness is found. Any higher complex conscious thoughts, and any conscious perceptions, thoughts, or actions all occur in/originate from the Cerebral cortex. Obviously this requires a lot of neurons, and these neurons are all found ...	[ "The full answer to your question depends on some pretty heavy math, which I'll be the first to admit I don't completely grasp, but in a nutshell it comes down to the idea that we can measure the large scale curvature of the universe using the data about the Cosmic Microwave Background recently provided by the [WMA...
If humans suddenly disappeared from Earth, how long would it take before air pollution was eliminated?	[ "You also have to take into account industrial processes that will continue for a little while without human supervision, and that might cause even more pollution because no one is there when the alarms sound. If there is a serious chemical leak, consequences could be severe." ]	[ "It varies, but not much individually. The problem is when everyone does it. It's kind of like why you're taught not to pick a flower from a garden when growing up. You alone, picking one flower, is not going to be noticed, it's not going to affect the plant or garden overall, but if everyone picks just 1, very s...
Does eating hot food affect how much energy we get from the food?	[ "A hot plate of food does in fact have more energy (technically), but it has the same amount of \"food energy\". Food energy is the energy stored in chemical bonds within your meal, which is where the energy you body uses comes from. Check out [this](_URL_0_) thread! Richard Wrangham has written a lot of current ...	[ "Birds, believe it or not, cannot taste the spices in chilli peppers, and so they eat the chilis happily while most animals leave them. Birds travel much further distances than most animals, so when they poop out the seeds the plant can spread over much greater distances. So, basically, peppers evolved to taste goo...
When/How was it discovered that "space" was a vacuum?	[ "The Michelson-Morley experiment in 1887 was a large factor behind dispelling the notion that space consists of a medium, or 'aether' which we travel through, and is in fact vacuous. It's not _strictly_ what you're talking about, but it's a definite watershed in the history of science which had very interesting co...	[ "Many people posting here haven't actually taken a nerf gun apart and looked at it and are speculating that spring loaded guns could shoot fine in a vaccum. Well, here's a picture of a [maverick](_URL_4_) being taken apart for modding. You can see the spring is pushing on a piston-cylinder assembly. The nozzle on t...
When lightning strikes the water, what stops all the sea life from dying?	[ "[_URL_0_](_URL_0_) the link is an answer from Quora. my initial thought is: 1. a lightning strike will dissipate over distance due to water conductance. as the ocean has high salinity, it has many pathways in all directions to travel so can get dissipated quickly (relatively). 2. most marine life doesn't live nea...	[ "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...
Theory Thursday \| Academic/Professional History Free-for-All	[ "I'm in the process of trying to slightly alter what my thesis is going to be focusing on, and by that I mean making it more narrow and direct. A byproduct of that is I now am able to incorporate some theory into my work, namely relating to Soviet nationality policy. As I loathe theory, both reading and utilising i...	[ "Just to clarify what namer98 told us mods when asking if it was okay to post this: All questions need to be submitted to Professor Sarna by email before the AMA. It is not \"live\" like the AMAs we host here in AskHistorians. So, please go to that r/Judaism thread to post your questions before the time of ...
How can someone "seize" a bitcoin?	[ "Anyone who has the private key of a bitcoin's owning wallet can sign a transaction giving the coin to a wallet of their choice. Governments have significant legal powers to make people disclose their keys (sometimes termed [rubber-hose cryptanalysis](_URL_0_)) so they can seize the contents." ]	[ "If you don't have even a 5 year olds level of understanding then why do you want to get into it? If you are actually interested then I can explain some of it, but you won't make money, trust me." ]
Why do so many people think they drive better while drunk?	[ "Because they're idiots attempting to justify driving drunk. The most common excuse that I've heard is \"I pay more attention when I'm drunk because I know I'm drunk.\" And that's a bullshit excuse that has no basis in reality. Ultimately, it's about wanting to party and then get home conveniently, instead of plann...	[ "\"Just about everyone here\" Where is \"here\" for you? It sounds like your question's premise is based on a small sample set based on personal observation. Before your question is addressed, you should be making sure the premise is valid..." ]
Why do softwares who doesn't seem to have anything to do with security (VLC as an example) need some security updates?	[ "There's still the security of the app. VLC can listen remote connections - and if programming errors allow a connection to maliciously circumvent its logic a user could control / see your application it's a 'security' thing. It's also possible - but increasingly rare due to improved OS security - through a combin...	[ "You touch people everyday. Strangers are allowed to tap you on the shoulder. We also expect that people will get into fights. Rape is much more socially unexpected. Strangers cannot touch you sexually. Most rapists were trusted by their victims. Being raped in an alley by strangers is the minority. So its like thr...
How does a cellphone vibrate?	[ "> but why/how does this make a phone vibrate. Because the momentum of the lopsided weight pulls in a varying direction. Try grabbing some weight on a flexible string or rope and spinning it. Notice how it pulls on your hand in various ways?" ]	[ "Because you sleep in weird positions and your muscles can't properly relax, or it's too cold and your body won't bother shivering, but the muscle still has to warm itself up,so it stays active and pulsates,and eventually it gets stuck" ]
Do animals know when to stop eating or eat less since their prey can't reproduce quick enough?	[ "Starvation culls predator numbers when prey are in decline, when there is a glut of food then the population increases with it, when the prey are scarce the predators decline. There was a study done on rabbits and foxes and the population numbers of both fluctuate in very similar trends over time, with the prey n...	[ "Part of the presence of pain is its purpose. Your nervous system continues to remind your brain the pain you've experienced so you know to protect it. For us, that means going to a doctor for a broken finger. But in nature, that means \"I need to guard this finger until it heals, or else I may die. If I try to ...
How come the wind keeps putting out my lighter, but does nothing to the cigarette once it's lit?	[ "For a few reasons. 1. Solid verse gaseous/liquid fuel. The fuel from your lighter is easily blown and dispersed, which greatly affects its ability to burn. Your cigarette is a solid fuel, and isn't blown away . 2. Flame verse ember. Flames are sensitive to wind, they're easily extinguished. A match is harder to pu...	[ "Your field of vision is shaped like a cone, which gets wider the farther away something is. The higher you are, the bigger the area of 'ground ' you see is, so the farther it has to move to be noticeable. Close to the ground, the movement is much more dramatic, so your brain interprets it as a higher speed. It's ...
95% of the moving truck vehicles for families I see are Uhauls. How did one company create such a monopoly over the moving business?	[ "One of the innovative things U-Haul did was franchise via gas stations. Existing infrastructure for fuel, office and garage space made the barriers to entry of a new franchisee really low. And there needs to be gas stations located strategically, so you get the coverage. Also, the one-way rental is pretty huge, n...	[ "It puts the brand/product in your head. So if you find yourself thinking, \"what kind of chips should I buy?\", then lots of people's thoughts will go directly to Doritos, especially if they just saw a memorable Doritos commercial." ]
What are those drops of water you feel land on you out of nowhere sometimes?	[ "Maybe a silly question but do you actually see wetness when it happens? It might just be a type of physical nerve sensation." ]	[ "When you look at a single small light spot in the dark, does it have an [Airy Disk](_URL_0_) pattern? If so, it means your eyes are optically really good! The airy disk pattern shows up when a lens such as the eye focuses a single light source down to a spot. Because a limited column of light enters your eye, it c...
How does cuteness work in humans? Why are people often more willing to protect cuter animals?	[ "There's a relevant ted talk by daniel dennett that says essentially \"cuteness is what we find cute, and cute is the quality of being something we want to help, like a baby. People who didn't find babies cute had their babies die so here we are\"" ]	[ "It goes back to what you said. We detect changes in temperature, but not temperature itself. Feeling warm is nice because it takes us from being cold to being warm. However, feeling warm isn't nice when you are overheated; being in front of an air conditioner would. It's all about what maintains homeostasis at the...
How do tv networks know how many people watched or tuned in for their show and based on it does tv rating?	[ "There's a company called Nielsen that forms those numbers. What they do is they find families that fit different profiles and send them a box that connects to their TV. This box records what that family is watching and how long they watch it. Then they collect the data and make statistics. So if 10% of their famil...	[ "Simpler explanation: I write you a letter that says \"This letter was sent from < my address > on < date > and < time > . Please send me a letter back as soon as you get this, with the exact time and date you received this. You follow the instruction and send the second letter back to me. When I get your letter, I...
why do banks need Mastercard or Visa? Why can't they make their own cards?	[ "Imagine that you run a store. Would you want to deal with dealing with two or three credit card companies, or seven thousand banks? You don't have time to set up payment arrangements with thousands of banks. So you know what? You deal with companies that do. Companies like Mastercard and Visa." ]	[ "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...
How do magnets work?	[ "If magnets are magic, is gravity magic too? Fundamental forces, yo. They run the universe." ]	[ "\"magic\". This question is repeatedly asked. You need to ask more specific questions as there are a lot of things to answer." ]
If I only had a clothes dryer, how long would it take to cook a 13lb turkey?	[ "This is the sort of question that is better suited for /r/theydidthemath." ]	[ "The biggest dependent here is how humid it is outside, if you are in Georgia where the air is really humid. You are just opening the window to more humidity. If you are in Arizona, it will dry out quickly." ]
How do we determine how much force we have to use when we throw a ball towards an object or another person?	[ "Muscle memory and learning. You don't instinctively know exactly how to throw a baseball to get it on target as a toddler. You can get it in the general direction, but only through practice and the brain having an opportunity to learn through experience do you become capable of throwing a ball accurately" ]	[ "Basically, you have to be weaker if you want the kind of fine muscle control we have. Chimps and gorillas physically could not do the kinds of things we can do with our hands - sculpture, art, writing, etc. - because of the way their muscles are attached to their bones. They have better leverage because their an...
Do dogs taste things the same way we do?	[ "No. Dogs have a stunningly sensitive sense of smell, which means they perceive tastes as very very distinct aromas." ]	[ "The genetic explanation (very, very unlikely): The part of your DNA that lets your tongue cells build receptors (sensors) that detect bitterness broke after you and your brother split from being one entity into two. You have a mutation in your DNA that he does not. The physical explanation (most likely): You had t...
Why don't surface waves move at the speed of sound in water?	[ "If you drop a pebble in water, you do get waves that move at the speed of sound. Those waves are compression waves you won't see, but you could hear if you were underwater. The waves you see, the ripples, are called capillary waves. Whenever you see a wave, you need to understand that there is a displacement and a...	[ "Hit a tennis ball with a tennis racket There's no pressure opposite the racket (on the side of the ball not getting hit by the racket), however the ball gets compressed It's the same idea with a fluid. A fluid has inertia and drag. A shock wave is \"hitting\" the fluid and causing a localized increase of pressure"...
Why don't I see bacteria with an electron-beam microscope?	[ "\"so there must be a lot of bacteria and mould spores on the surface of the samples\" i'd certainly hope not. not only does a clean room have a rating based on the particulate count, but the surface of a semiconductor is not exactly a great place to live....there's no carbohydrates nor moisture. further, chips are...	[ "Whenever you hear that something kills cancer in research / in a petri dish... just remember that a gun kills cancer in a petri dish, too. Often times the most promising ground-breaking research doesn't pan out farther down the line when they start trying to apply it to full grown humans. Maybe it breaks down in ...
Why are multiple car dealerships all clumped together next to each other?	[ "You know, I never knew the exact reason behind it until I saw this video: _URL_0_ He explains why you see no gas stations and then 2 next to each other. Video is only 4 minutes long btw." ]	[ "Different gasoline taxes. Different distances between the nearest refinery. Different blend requirements for the gasoline(California). Different requirements on who's allowed to pump gasoline into a car(Oregon/New Jersey). Different minimum wages. Different property values for a gas station sized plot of land. Dif...
Why do fit people not sweat as much as people out of shape?	[ "Sweating depends on the number of active sweat glands you have, fit people don't necessarily sweat less than fat people but normally fat acts as an insulator which keeps the body hot. ELI5: fat acts as a blanket covering you all the time. Fit people have a thin blanket and fat people have a thicker blanket" ]	[ "It is a matter of heat transfer. Specifically the heat transfer coefficient. Compare the coefficients of the two and you will see that your body (mostly fluid water) transfers heat energy more effectively through fluid rather than air." ]
How common were body modifications (i.e. Piercing and tattoos) in medieval Europe?	[ "As a followup question, what \"image\" did they project? By this I mean, was it like a sign of nobility? Was it to show loyalty to a particular faction/religion/craft? Was it considered low class or as brands for criminals? Thank you. Cool question OP." ]	[ "As a reminder, [top-level answers](_URL_0_) in this community need to be \"comprehensive and imformative.\" Single-links to Wikipedia and unsourced opinions do not clear that bar. This question already rests on a part of history hamstrung by the fuzzy diagnostics of diseases in the past and an almost unavoidable b...
If muscles are a don't use them and you'll lose them sort of thing, why can babies lift their heads and move after months of lying on their back as newborns?	[ "Because they are using them, they are very undeveloped and then they spend months moving around in different ways slowly strengthening their muscles until they can hold up their heads and eventually sit up, crawl, stand and walk." ]	[ "This question gets asked fairly frequently, so I'll leave it to you to search and find longer, better answers, but the short version is that language is stored in a different part of the brain than episodic memories. Physical skills are stored in yet another part. Deeper, older memories are stored in a slightly di...
What the passenger of rally cars do and why?	[ "He does what \"the_donut_guy\" said as well as maintains contact with the repair team, knows what will need to be repaired or replaced at the next pit stop, monitors fuel. Monitors timing and other drivers on the course. Most importantly helps flip the car back over when that happens." ]	[ "Well, first off, those people agree to it. I'm sure there is a nice, thick contract they sign before they ever make it on the show. Secondly, it is much less dangerous than it appears to be. You don't see them, but there are medical personnel available 24/7 to the contestants of those shows in case anyone gets int...
WakeUpNow(legitimate business or scam?)	[ "> To join you have to pay a fee Scam." ]	[ "Many of the products sold through infomercials, especially information products, are not actually created until an order is placed. So, you may order a DVD set today but the next batch of orders are not created until the next week. It's a sort of 'standard' that the price of shipping should cover the entire cost o...
I understand land snakes but how do sea snakes manage to maneuver themselves through water, what are they pushing away from?	[ "The water, same as everything else that swims. Snakes are pretty well built for swimming. Their entire body is basically one big fin. Sea snakes especially are usually flatter than their land-dwelling cousins to maximize their swimming efficiency." ]	[ "Great Britain is isolated from mainland Europe by the English Channel. This gave them a great natural defense, and encouraged the maintenance of a strong navy. When shipbuilding technology advanced to the point that ships could travel thousands of miles reliably Britain was perfectly suited to take advantage. They...
Why has no-one sued the NSA yet?	[ "They have been sued by a coalition headed by the EFF which includes Acorn Active Media, the Charity and Security Network, the National Lawyers Guild, Patient Privacy Rights and The Shalom Center. They are also being sued by the NRA." ]	[ "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." ]
why does someone's voice sound so differently when they listen to themselves on a recording?	[ "Your skull and flesh muffle but amplify your voice so instead of hearing the vibrations in the air (like you or a computer would normally hear), you hear the internal echo (which is often lower and louder)." ]	[ "There is nothing special about your camera or camera phone that would let it correct such distortion. Even if it had a distortion correction system, it would be calibrated for the distortion produced by its lens -- it wouldn't detect distortion in the image automatically. What I think is going on here is that the...
How do massive sites like Google and Amazon keep close to 100% uptime? Aren't they a big target for things like DDoS attacks?	[ "Amazon's servers are built to withstand Black Friday and Cyber Monday, which are self-imposed DDoS attacks." ]	[ "From the exact same XKCD article that you linked: > (Climates can be hard to predict—for example, in our world, Somalia and French Guiana both sit on the equator, at the eastern coast of a continent, and seem like they should both receive a tropical sea breeze. But coastal French Guiana is dense rain forest while...
Why the body temperature of chickens is so close to the temperature of denaturation of proteins?	[ "Generally speaking, proteins perform optimally at the native body temperature of the organism. I higher temperature means the proteins usually have evolved to function best at that temperature. For extreme examples, you can look to thermophiles. Do you know about PCR and the Taq polymerase enzyme. This comes from ...	[ "Your skin can react to a stimulus. It adds more pigments to protect you. Your hair is mostly dead cells and thus cannot react, so it gets bleached in the sun just like paint or plastic." ]
The plot to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas	[ "Hunter S Thompson (Raoul Duke) is a journalist who is sent to Las Vegas to write about a motorcycle race that is taking place out in the desert. He brings along his friend and lawyer Oscar (Dr. Gonzo). Both of them have a penchant for an assortment of drugs. They get a hotel room there, hang out, take in Vegas, do...	[ "They live in a post scarcity world. Basically they have an unlimited supply of food, energy, etc so no one has to work but they do what they truly want to. It really helps if you don't think about it." ]
Why is there still a debate about minimum wage when every macroeconomic textbook I have read, class I have taken, and professor I have had has reiterated the same point that most economists do not support the minimum wage?	[ "Because most economists are looking purely at the economic benefit of the minimum wage and ignoring any social costs. The market functioning as predicted by most macroeconomic models is dependent on their being a large number of both employers and employees and workers being able to move freely. In reality, there ...	[ "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...
Why is braille written the way it is and not like this?	[ "The six dot combo is all you need to recreate the alphabet. Start making letters wider like your A or a W, and it actually gets harder to read. Now a person has to figure out if that dot is part of a trailing V, or a W. Knowledge of spelling should help, but most people have crappy spelling. Fun hobby. Look at bra...	[ "In general when planning new communities, they leave gaps in the numbers if there is a possibility of new houses being constructed between existing houses later on. If you have 100 right next to 102, and there are a few acres for new development between them, then you have to add 100a, 100b, and so on, which is me...
Why does our brain make up random memories that never existed?	[ "Memory formation is some weird voodoo. Basically all it takes for something like that to happen is that you had some kind of association with the one actress while you were watching the flick, or while you thought about it later or any number of other things. All it took was that you for some reason associated t...	[ "Imagine you're trying to find a coffee shop in a city. If you've been there recently, it should be pretty easy to find. If it's been 10 years since you've been to the coffee shop or the city, it might take you a LONG time to find. It also might take long to find if you've been to other, similar coffee shops in the...
Why people think gentrification of an urban area is a bad thing	[ "Basically people think it's bad because as a low income area becomes \"gentrified\" More higher end shops and stores and people move in driving the prices and costs up (rent etc) forcing the people who lived there already out because they can no longer afford it." ]	[ "This is more of an opinion or discussion question than a concept you're looking to have explained. Not really a topic for ELI5. Maybe /r/askreddit" ]
Can a particle be entangled to two other particles?	[ "Yes, multiparticle entanglement is possible. The simplest examples are the [GHZ states](_URL_0_). Let us consider objects that can be in one of two individual states, which I will label \"+\" and \"-\". We can construct a state that is a 50-50 mixture of the state in which all the individual objects are in the ind...	[ "If you know the full Hamiltonian for your system and the initial state, you in principle know how the system will evolve for all time. The time evolution is governed by the [time-dependent Schrodinger equation](_URL_0_). However you don't necessarily know what the results of measurements will be. For example, if y...
Why is water so loud?	[ "Mostly because water is very heavy. A single cubic meter weighs a ton. (A single pint weights a pound.) So when you drop a lot of it, it hits pretty hard." ]	[ "Basically you are hearing the muscular waves or [peristalisis](_URL_1_). More detailed explanation here at [Discovery Health](_URL_0_)." ]
Why does reading the same word repeatedly sometimes make it look like it's spelled wrong and I have to double check it even though I know it's right	[ "It's called [semantic satiation](_URL_2_), but that doesn't answer the 'why'. According to Wikipedia: > An explanation for the phenomenon is that, in the [cortex](_URL_3_), verbal repetition repeatedly arouses a specific neural pattern that corresponds to the meaning of the word. Rapid repetition makes both the [...	[ "Your eye sensors tire after a short while viewing a static image. In this example they're giving you a fixed point to focus on so that the image stays positioned in the same place on your retina. Notice how her lips are green in the negative. Staring at that wears our your green sensor there. Then, when you switch...
How do magnets work?	[ "Richard Feyman, celebrated physicist, has an excellent way of ~~not~~ explaining how magnets work to a layperson, which might make you reflect on your question more deeply than initially thought: _URL_0_" ]	[ "\"magic\". This question is repeatedly asked. You need to ask more specific questions as there are a lot of things to answer." ]
Anode and Cathode in Voltaic Cell and Electrolytic Cell?	[ "When electricity was first discovered, they didn't know it was carried by electrons. So, they arbitrarily labelled the source of current flow as positive. Later on, as we learned more about atomic structure and electrons we learned that they actually hold a negative charge. This dichotomy caused me great difficul...	[ "The entire case on your battery is a ground/negative. Only the top is a positive terminal. The contact on your mod only touches the positive terminal. A coin can bridge between the positive and the case." ]
Why are some months longer than others?	[ "Because there isn't a neat way to divide 365 days into 12 equal units. You can thank the traditions of the Ancient Romans for the solution." ]	[ "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." ]
How were Female rulers Like Catherine the Great and Queen Victoria seen as capable of ruling when women in those days were thought of as lesser than men.	[ "Hi, check out these answers by /u/sunagainstgold * [If women were traditionally treated as second class citizens in Europe from the 16th-19th centuries, how was it possible that sometimes women held important positions in the government?](_URL_2_) * [Why was it acceptable for a woman to be a ruling Queen of Engla...	[ "Sorry, we don't allow [\"example seeking\" questions](_URL_0_). It's not that your question was bad; it's that these kinds of questions tend to produce threads that are collections of disjointed, partial, inadequate responses. If you have a question about a specific historical event, period, or person, feel free t...
The difference between 4K and 1080p	[ "It's all about pixel density and the pixelated look of the picture on the screen. In a 1080p tv/monitor, you have 1920x1080 pixels on the screen. This means that there are less pixels than a 4k display, so things look more pixelated and jagged as a result. In a 4k tv/monitor, you have 3840x2160 pixels, much more t...	[ "Are you watching blu ray? Is it a good transfer? (Example: despite being made in the early 80's Blade Runner Ultimate Director's cut blu-ray is one of the best you can buy) How good is your blu ray player? Is it a ps3? All of these factors contribute to what you determine as a home viewing experience being inferio...
Are there any scientific reasons why male humans are attracted to breasts?	[ "You will find that attitudes towards breasts in the western world are quite different from those in other cultures. Our own cultural history surrounding sexuality has pushed us to react differently to them. Many other cultures would consider such an attraction child-like. When discussing human behavior you must ne...	[ "Nostalgia, too ~ a lot of older guys that now have lots of money are reliving their youth - they either had one when they were young & want another, or wanted one when they were young and can now afford to pay the big bucks to get one." ]
How are meteorologists able to determine the weather and temperature days ahead of time to the point they know what degree the temperature will be on a given day?	[ "It's a triumph of supercomputing. The ability to do weather forecasting with pretty good accuracy has extended to about a 7 day window due to the use of incredibly fast computers and a tremendous number of meteorological sensors. Weather is determined by lots of variables but those variables are pretty well unders...	[ "A long time ago in places like Greece, Rome and even before that in really, really long ago places like Sumeria, and Egypt people made up stories about the stars/planets and the pictures they thought groups of stars made. These stories were usually about beings they considered to be gods or demigods (the word demi...
What allows wounds in the mouth to heal much faster than the rest of the body?	[ "A much better vascular supply than much of the rest of the body. The fact that the area is also continually moist may also play a role, but blood supply is really what it's all about. A better vascular supply also decreases risk of infection, which is why injuries to the mouth and face are less likely to get infec...	[ "Surface area difference of food to taste buds/nasal passages. Sipping a drink versus chugging a drink makes for very different tasting experiences." ]

Subsets and Splits

No community queries yet

The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.