query stringlengths 20 300 | positive listlengths 1 1 | negative listlengths 1 1 |
|---|---|---|
Why wrestling and other contact sports use belts as championships, as opposed to medals or trophies? | [
"Wrestling doesn't, unless you're talking about WWE 'wrestling.' The other sports you listed do because it's a title you hold, as opposed to a championship you've won at a tournament/event that is played again the next year."
] | [
"This question is getting a lot of traffic after being [tweeted by @reddit](_URL_5_), so I thought I'd welcome those of you that haven't visited /r/AskHistorians before to the subreddit. Please do bear in mind that in order to keep the quality of answers here high we have [strict rules on comments](/r/AskHistorians... |
How the heck is this sentence grammatically correct? "James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher" | [
"That's missing the punctuation to make it acceptable. The sentence is: > James, while John had had \"had\", had had \"had had\"; \"had had\" had had a better effect on the teacher. In other words, James and John were debating whether \"had\" or \"had had\" was proper, and the teacher agreed with \"had had\"."
] | [
"Let's say you're a game developer, and you wanted to give out codes for people to get into the beta of your game. You decide to do this by giving access to one person to start, and then every Friday everyone in the program can invite 4 friends. So on the initial day, you only have 1 person playing. But after the 1... |
Why do palm trees bend toward the ocean? | [
"It has to do with coastal erosion. The seaward side of near-coast palms tends to erode away, and the trees gradually lean out. They always try to grow straight up. The net effect is a bowing of the trunk if the erosion is gradual, but it can be 90-degrees if the failure is rapid and the tree does not die. [90-degr... | [
"Get a protractor, tape or glue a straw to the straight edge, and tie a weighed down string to the middle. When you get on the plane, look down the straw at a star that you can easily pick out from the night sky (hope you're travelling at night!) and is viewable from both hemispheres, and mark where the string hang... |
Why was the Ice Cube announcement so important? If neutrinos have mass how does multi-messenger work with electromagnetic radiation if they don't travel the same velocity? | [
"Even with a very generous neutrino mass of ~1 eV, a neutrino with an energy of 290 TeV has a gamma factor of 3\\*10^(14), giving it a speed of 0.99999999999999999999999999999**44** times the speed of light. Over its 5.7 billion years this makes it lag 1 picosecond or 0.3 mm behind light, way too short to be notabl... | [
"E-mail works in a similar way to the post office. You write a message and hit send, it gets passed off and the address read to see where it goes. It gets sent to that location where the address gets read and sorted into the correct mail box. Multiple clients and multiple servers all over the world just like mail b... |
Do pilots passing over the North/South poles of the Earth have to account for the Earth's rotation? | [
"Not at all, it has little to nothing to do with earth's rotation because the atmosphere is bound to it. Instead the main thing the airlines have to account for is the jetstream. For example, within North America, the time needed to fly east across the continent can be decreased by about 30 minutes if an airplane c... | [
"Falling with Style. With much practice, our eyes and inner-ears work together to provide the brain with information. We aren't aware that this is going on, but fun house spinning tunnels mess with our eyes and spinning around really fast messes with our inner ears, both making walking difficult. We don't \"think a... |
Why is fusion beyond iron no longer exothermic? | [
"*(Intuitive explanation, not very rigorous.)* *(Also, yes, this is a very general reply. A more direct answer to the original question was posted by Silpion below.)* There are forces that favor fusion, such as the nuclear binding forces. There are forces that oppose it, such as the electrostatic force that repels ... | [
"> In space there isn't any matter to transfer the heat into, so where does it go? Thermal radiation. Conduction isn't the only method of heat transfer, it can leave through things like infrared radiation as well."
] |
- What is the difference between linear polarized light and circular polarized light? | [
"I think it is beast to think circular polarization as two linearly polarized light together. [Here are few good animations](_URL_0_) By combinign two linearly polarized light at 90° angles (red and green) you get circular polarized light (cyan)."
] | [
"To put it simply, Playboy and Penthouse show female nipples and genitals while Cosmo does not. While Cosmo will allude to sexual situations, Playboy/Penthouse will explicitly describe them. That is the line we have decided to draw."
] |
Is "Adam Ruins Everything's" Reanimated History really as accurate as it makes itself out to be? | [
"Could you provide a link, or perhaps a list of claims you are interested in verifying?"
] | [
"Is this a homework question? It says in our [rules](_URL_0_): Our users aren't here to do your homework for you, but they might be willing to help. Remember: AskHistorians helps those who help themselves. Don't just give us your essay/assignment topic and ask us for ideas. Do some research of your own, then come t... |
How accurate were Akira Kurasawa's films in regard to medieval Japanese life? | [
"I am more versed in older Japanese history, but I love Kurosawa's films, so I will tell you the little I know. I know the ideas present in *shichi nin no samurai* were pretty constant with historical accuracy. The costumes were pretty well done, and it was a fact that villagers would hire ronin to guard the town. ... | [
"I am by no means an expert on this topic, but I can point you towards a very good book I read a few years ago. [Arc of Justice by Kevin Boyle](_URL_0_) discusses the trial of [Ossian Sweet](_URL_1_), an African-American physician who killed a white man in self-defense in 1925 Detroit. The man was part of a white m... |
If I took a spoonful of matter from a neutron star and moved it away from the star, would it expand or stay compacted? | [
"It would explode and fly apart. It's super hot and the only reason its stuck together is the total gravity of the entire star."
] | [
"One fundamental example is the [*asymptotic freedom*](_URL_0_) of the strong force. At very short distance scales, the strong force (the force by which quarks and antiquarks and gluons interact) becomes much weaker at very short distance scales. The increasing strength of the strong force at larger distance scale... |
Why biting tin foil makes a tooth with a metal filling cringe? | [
"thinking about this makes my tooth hurt. In school i told my mom not to wrap my sandwich in tinfoil"
] | [
"Just depends on how your brain precieves (sorry for spelling) the responses from nerve endings. I personally hate being tickled and do not like the feeling."
] |
Why dont humans replace teeth more than once like animals such as sharks do? | [
"Humans, like most mammals, only have two sets of teeth through-out their lives. This trait most likely evolved in mammals (many early mammal ancestors did grow multiple sets of teeth) because of the way we learned to chew our food. To be able to do that, you need strong, durable teeth that are ankered in your jaw.... | [
"Horse meat isn't rare at all. You can get it in many parts of europe. Tastes ok too. Anyway, that's culture. The same reason we think that bacon and eggs is a breakfast food, and don't eat grasshoppers."
] |
Communications relies on massive cables spread across the oceans. How exactly are these cables installed or maintained? | [
"They use [special ships](_URL_0_) designed to carry huge lengths of cable and lay it on top of or just under the sea floor. Repair is done by cutting the cable, bringing up both ends, performing the repair, reconnecting the cable, then laying it back down."
] | [
"I've heard that there are YouTube servers in various places. Say I live in Hawaii and a video is uploaded in Chicago. The advertisement videos are already stored on the Hawaii servers, but the actual video is stored on the Chicago server and has to be downloaded after enough people view it. I might be wrong, but t... |
When and how did we lose the knowledge of how to read the Egyptian hieroglyphics | [
"Hieroglyphs were always closely related to the traditional Egyptian religion, and indeed, it was always only a small percentage of the population that could ever transcribe them, centered around the religious caste. Their use was primarily on monumental works, and the writing system itself evolved over time. When ... | [
"In a lot of cases we don't. & #x200B; In some cases we can the imprint of feathers or other surface features imbedded in mud that has turned to stone."
] |
What would happen if a fusion and fission bomb (of equal payloads) were to occur simultaneously, either close to each other or right next to each other? | [
"Fusion bombs are ignited using a fission reaction."
] | [
"there are differences in the way that the rock Sheers. Megathrust vs Strike-Slip In a Megathrust Earthquake (the sort which cause tsunamis) the fault breaks vertically and the seafloor is lifted or dropped by several feet or meters around the fault. Moving the Sea floor up or down moves the entire column of water... |
Why does time seem to move faster as we age? | [
"As a child, you are frequently exposed to new situations and stimuli, and as a result must constantly determine what an appropriate response to these situations would be. As a result, you are forced to live quite literally 'in the moment'. The amount of sensory information that your brain is processing results in ... | [
"Think of it as evolutionary to survival. If you aren't doing anything, those are the things you should catch up on so if you do have to fight for your life, your ready to go."
] |
Why are some traits dominant and others recessive? | [
"Usually dominant/recessives are due to encoding of proteins, with dominant being the ones that encode proteins and recessive being the loss of function or reduced amount of protein produced. Even in co-dominance or incomplete dominance, recessive indicates loss of functioning proteins. For example, type O blood is... | [
"Think about your own body. How does everything move? All of your joints rotate, they do not slide in a linear motion. The size of your muscle determines the amount of linear force it can generate. But this alone doesn't dictate how much strength you will have for the motion. The other factor is the lever arm: wher... |
what does it mean when mathematicians "find" a big number, like Graham's number? | [
"It means they have proved that a particular number has some property. For example, it's no secret that the following number exists... 6353526374303929879127012501290127402919200192601923419028340912401927492180129801297012912012912261202912061 We don't need to go hunting for it. It's right there. However, is it pr... | [
"They didn't just crusade in the Levant, and a lot of what they gathered was philosophically important, rather than technologically; there was quite a lot of warring in Iberia as well, and in 1085, Christians captured the city of Toledo with the contents of its famous library intact. A flurry of translation followe... |
Is there a maximum possible coefficient of friction? | [
"Not really. Friction on a microscopic scale comes from groves and valleys fitting into eachother and the repulsive effect generated by moving two atoms closer to one another than they want to be. The bigger these grooves and valleys get, the more atoms are being pressed together versus sliding parallel to one anot... | [
"It's accidental in the SM given the field content---when you write down all allowed terms in the Lagrangian for the quark sector, you can get rid of all but one unitary matrix, the CKM matrix. You can put CKM in the mass matrix so gauge interactions are diagonal (this is the 'flavor basis') or in the gauge interac... |
My primary school history book stated in on of the trivia sections, that soldiers during holidays went over to the enemy trenches to celebrate together. Was it true in any kind of form? | [
"Here's a previous thread that answers your question. _URL_0_ Here's another thread that talks about similar events. _URL_1_"
] | [
"What happens is that the ant tries to get home. The ant will look for scent trails or landmarks to get back home. If it is a worker ant, the ant has only one mission, and it can't do that mission if it is not in or near it's colony. Taking the ant from inside your house to the front lawn, the ant will probably be... |
What did the French/Parisian people actually think of the huge American expatriate community in Paris in the 1920s? | [
"Brooke L. Blower covers this in her book, *Becoming Americans in Paris: Transatlantic Politics and Culture between the World Wars*, particularly Chapter 2: Reluctant Hosts. She writes, \"In the 1920s, Parisians of various political leanings developed an acute sense that Americans had formed a vibrant and troubling... | [
"Is this a homework question? It says in our [rules](_URL_0_): Our users aren't here to do your homework for you, but they might be willing to help. Remember: AskHistorians helps those who help themselves. Don't just give us your essay/assignment topic and ask us for ideas. Do some research of your own, then come t... |
Why does plasma create light, when it is just a superheated gas? | [
"The same reason as everything else. When an object is heated, energy is added to it. Specifically this is kinetic energy of the atoms, they vibrate at higher and higher frequency. Some of this energy is transferred to the electrons in the atom, which may then become \"excited\" (jump to a higher energy level). Thi... | [
"You have to realise that wood is a material and not a compound. A compound is a molecule, such as glucose, or in the case of wood, which is mostly cellulose and lignin. These can exist in liquid form (albeit in a vacuum to avoid oxidation). Once you start heating wood up, in a vacuum, you'd eventually get a liquid... |
Why do north and south contain 5 letters and end in "th", but east and west only have four letters and end in "st"? | [
"Just a trick of evolving languages. North used to be Nord (which spread to other languages where you'd see Norte), South used to be Sud (which is still the word for South in many languages like French and Spanish) East, for English, came from the germanic aust, which meant \"toward the sun\" West hasn't changed mu... | [
"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... |
Please ELI5 how songs get stuck in our head? | [
"Tough question, might as well ask: What is love?"
] | [
"If your alarm has been the same for a long period of time, it just becomes a routine, like turning on your bathroom light when you walk in. Considering your body perfectly times heartbeats, breath, blood flow, etc, it's not that hard to believe it can time very accurately. :P It's completely subconscious."
] |
How does smoke function in a zero-g environment? | [
"We are used to seeing smoke rise up, because it is carried by convection currents. In microgravity, there would still be air currents but no set direction for the smoke to go. If the air is very still it might make a spherical cloud around the source, just like [flames on the ISS](_URL_0_)."
] | [
"Math, and the laws of Gravitation. We know that a certain amount of Mass will exert a certain amount of gravitational effect. From there we can extrapolate the Delta V for just about any target. As long as all the designers are using the same units, that is."
] |
Is the total angular momentum of all bodies in the universe conserved as a whole? | [
"Only for certain frames for which the Universe, seen at any given fixed time, has rotational invariance. Essentially you need to be comoving with the CMB. The Universe has a set of three rotational Killing vectors which give rise to the conservation of an angular momentum, but this is only the angular momentum for... | [
"Depends on the material and temperature. Sometimes the surface forms a reconstruction, as dreykevins explains. Other times the surface forms an oxide or some other surface layer, which can prevent recombination. Other times the pieces actually CAN be put back together, and this process is called \"cold welding\". ... |
How does the human digestive system separate solids from liquids? | [
"They all mix together into a liquid solution. This is broken up in the stomach and nutrients are absorbed through the small intestine (enzymes in the stomach and small intestine help with this). In the large intestine components that cannot be absorbed (e.g. cellulose) remain and the water is re-absorbed, leaving ... | [
"Visual cues, basically. Check out this [description](_URL_0_) by astronaut Scott Kelly, who spent almost a year on the ISS: > I would wake up convinced that I was upside down, because in the dark and without gravity, my inner ear took a random guess as to how my body was positioned in the small space. When I turn... |
What is the no child left behind act, and why did it garner so much hate towards standardized testing? | [
"It leaves the leaders of tomorrow behind, by making schools worry about bringing up the bottom rather than pushing the top even further."
] | [
"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."
] |
You have a deficiency of a required nutrient; can your brain utilize your conscious knowledge of nutrients in food to make you crave a certain food which you know contains such a nutrient? | [
"I would say yes. [Here's](_URL_0_) an article about Dr. Clara M. Davis, a pediatrician who did a ton of experiments where she presented a bunch of foods to infants and allowed them to pick whatever they wanted. She did find that infants did know what foods to choose, but the choices that were given were inherently... | [
"Imagine every time you eat something, a large burly man appears in front of you and dances a burlesque routine. Without fail, this goes on for several years. Soon you fail to even think that this rotund mustachioed man is anything out of the ordinary. After all, every time you even begin to take a bite of somethin... |
Could a state seperate from the rest of the United States? | [
"Yes, a state can leave. If they can either convince the other 49 states to vote them out, or if they think they can defeat the other 49 states+federal military in battle. Because of these requirements, no they can't leave."
] | [
"I have never heard of this actually occurring. Can you please provide a link to an article about such an event so that readers can answer your question better? (Remember that under [Rule 2](_URL_0_) hypotheticals aren't valid ELI5 topics.)"
] |
Will Rosetta still be orbiting Comet 67P when its coma forms? | [
"Yes. The comet will reach perihelion on August 13, 2015 and the Rosetta mission is scheduled to end in December 2015. It will be around to see all the action."
] | [
"We won’t know until we learn more about the connection and economics of the situation. We could come up with tons of scenarios, but until stuff is more released we don’t know. Hell we don’t even know if any of the companies attempting to do this type of stuff (it’s more companies than just SpaceX, SpaceX just hits... |
T.S. Elliot's "The Wasteland" | [
"This cannot be explained-like-you're-five. People have built whole *careers* in the literary arts doing nothing but studying *The Waste Land.* Doctoral theses have been written about it, and there's no sign that anybody's close to the bottom of that particular well. Sorry."
] | [
"If you like his math, there's a kind of related what-if xkcd [here](_URL_1_) about dropping a steak from high altitude."
] |
Most of us know about silk and spices being traded west along the Silk Road. What kinds of commodities went the other direction, from Europe to Asia? | [
"Here in Korea, there are examples of Roman(style) glassware (bowls and cups), along with [glass and ceramic beads](_URL_0_). Some of the beads are incredible in that the material that made them up was layered in such a way to create images of animals and faces. Most of the glassware and all of the beads were excav... | [
"The best resource maps we have are of our own Moon and of Mars, thanks to the Clementine, Lunar Prospector and Mars Odyssey missions. Here are a few abundance maps for several materials of interest on the Moon - such as: [Titanium] (_URL_1_), [Iron] (_URL_6_), [Silicon] (_URL_5_) and [Thorium] (_URL_3_). Not to me... |
How does video stabilization work? | [
"That's not video stabilization, that's camera stabilization. It is making sure the camera stays in place by using things like gyroscopes. Video stabilization stabilizes the actual video, either during recording by slightly shifting the sensor (optical IS) or after the fact (digital IS) [Tom Scott did a great vi... | [
"A combination of gyroscopes, star trackers, and in low earth orbit, GPS"
] |
Why is it that sometimes you get a shot in your upper right arm and other times in your lower left arm? | [
"Intramuscular vs Intravenous needles. Blood draws are done from a vein, and the easiest one to hit on most people is the crook of the elbow. Assuming your right handed, they'll draw from the left because some people experience discomfort and can have a hard time using the arm for a while after the draw. The vaccin... | [
"Because, if you live in the northern hemisphere, that's where the satellite is. They're in a geosynchronous orbit - which means they're above the equator and orbit the earth in 24-hours. So they stay in the same spot in the sky."
] |
The difference between Satan, Lucifer, The Devil, Beelzebub, etc... | [
"Simple answer: They are the same. Elaborate answer: they have different origins, due to different abrahamistic religions (Judaism, Chrsitianity, Islam) adopting the concept of a devil: Satan, Shatain: Arameic, Arabic Lucifer: Latin \"lightbringer\" Beelzebub: Hebrew \"Lord of the flies\""
] | [
"If this question isn't relevant, feel free to remove mods. Given the nicknames M3 Lee, M3 Stuart, M3 Grant, and M4 Sherman, why were Union and Confederate general names given to tanks, or any modern weapons for that matter?"
] |
We all know sugar is harmful and makes us fat. Why hasn't a company knocked off all popular sweet treats using stevia (or some other non-sugar sweetener)? | [
"Sugar tastes good. When faced with a choice between that which is smart and that which is pleasing, most people will spend their money on the latter. A business exists to sell people what they *want* to buy, not what some might feel they *should* buy."
] | [
"They don't roll out new products until they have all those processing plants built."
] |
Has a historical consensus been reached as to whether R. Budd Dwyer was innocent or guilty of the charges that led him to commit suicide on live TV? | [
"I know you said what happens, but I thought I’d mention this is an especially brain-searing NSFW visual. If you think you might not want to see this, do not look."
] | [
"Nope. It confirmed a prediction of the [Standard Model of Particle Physics](_URL_0_). The Standard Model doesn't say anything about supersymmetry (often abbreviated to SuSy) or the multiverse. SuSy is a hypothetical extension to the Standard Model. It's a pretty extension, but to date there is absolutely no experi... |
How does artists like Banksy make a living? | [
"I don't know about \"artists like Banksy\", but he (she?) makes a lot of money selling original copies and prints of his work for huge sums, showcasing in galleries as most artists do, and selling several books of pictures of his work. Also I think he does some commissioned works for companies and events. Despite... | [
"many political assassinations could be linked to him? Think the answer may be in the question if you control the media and the legal system you can get away with nearly anything."
] |
Why is the campaign to free Tibet so much more popular than the Tamil push for independence from the Buddhist majority in Sri Lanka that has claimed more than 100,000 lives? | [
"The kindly old man Dalai Lama is a much better PR face than Tamil Tiger suicide bombers. The fact that Tibet is fighting global economic power China instead of an island nation many people couldn't find on a map helps visibility too."
] | [
"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 ... |
Where does the wax go when you burn a candle? | [
"It burns. The wax is the fuel. The heat of the flame melts the wax, creating a pool around the base of the wick. The liquid wax soaks up the wick to the base of the flame, where it evaporates. The wax vapor then burns in the air. Edit: some of the wax overflows the edge of the pool, creating runners down the side.... | [
"No where actually, all the data is still on your hard drive. Your computer has just marked that files spot as usable space, eventually it'll get overwritten. There are special programs that can fully erase a file by writing a bunch of zeroes over it."
] |
How do people on different continents communicate through the internet? Is there a telephone line stretching across the ocean? | [
"> Is there a telephone line stretching across the ocean? Close. Undersea cables. They're quite a lot bigger than a telephone line. [Here's what they look like](_URL_1_), and [here's a map of where they all connect from/to](_URL_0_)."
] | [
"I have a related question: The vessel that eventually laid the cable was the SS Great Eastern, she had an unsuccessful attempt in 1865 but in 1866 they were able to splice the '65 cable to a new one and successfully lay the cable. How were they able to find where the cable broke and dredge it up? Wouldn't it be mi... |
Since gunpowder burns well and quickly, is it technically high in calories? | [
"This depends on your definition of high calorie content and what you are comparing it to. A calorie is 4.184J. According to Wikipedia, gunpowder contains 3 MJ/kg. For comparison animal and plant fat contains 38 MJ/kg and carbohydrates are 17 MJ/kg. Check out the table of common energy storage materials here: _URL... | [
"Games and movies often dispense with reality for the sake of storytelling. Fire and smoke look cool, and in a move or a game looking cool is way more important than accurate physics in your portrayals of fantasy space gunfights. Pew pew!"
] |
Why do companies like MasterCard and VISA advertise so much when I have no choice in using their services? | [
"They're mainly advertising to get you to use your card rather than, say, cash. Visa makes no money when you pay in cash, but they make money off the merchant every time you use your card."
] | [
"Most of the mark up is done by those who hold distribution rights within your country. Interestingly with the US minimum wage it takes about 8 min of work to earn enough to buy the song. In Australia at your minimum wage it would take you about 7 min of work to earn enough to buy the song. So they are more or les... |
(x-post from /r/fitness) What happens to your muscles after a workout if they don't get enough protein? Do they stay torn until they eventually find protein? | [
"also curious, what happens if you rework these muscles before they get a chance to rebuild?"
] | [
"Okay, so fuel has mass. The more mass you add, the more thrust you need to move it, which means bigger engines and more fuel, which means more mass... All kidding aside, at a certain point adding more fuel becomes impractical. You have to put the fuel in a container, add more structure to the ship, etc, etc. You... |
Why have cigarettes stayed just as harmful/cancerous as they were in the 1900's? | [
"They aren't. Filters have improved cigarettes, but they are still quite harmful. The harmfulness isn't from \"toxins\" that are arbitrarily added or something. Tobacco produces toxins when incinerated. If you aren't burning tobacco, you aren't smoking a cigarette, so there is no way to make them not dangerous. Vap... | [
"It takes a while to implement the changes. How would you like it if the law changed overnight and you had to pay fees/go to jail next day without having a chance to adapt yet."
] |
Growing up, I had a Commodore 64. My friend had a C-128 and my neighbor had a Vic20. What do those numbers refer to? And if we stuck with the same naming convention, what would modern computers be called? | [
"The commodore 64 and commodore 128 were named for the number of kilobytes of RAM they had. Most home computers at the time the c64 was released, including more expensive ones, had less than 64k of RAM. Commodore never failed to point this out in their advertisements. As for the VIC-20, here's what _URL_0_ has to s... | [
"You don't actually \"buy\" anything. You rent it. Much like you rent an apartment. You rent it from the ICANN for a fee. This rental, much like your apartment rental, has a time constraint to it. The root DNS servers get their information from ICANN, so when you type in your browser \"_URL_0_\" your computer goe... |
If we could send a spaceship near the speed of light to a star, that's 50 lightyears away, would it also take 50 years of "earth time" ? | [
"If an astronaut travels a distance of 50 lightyears at highly relativistic speeds, he or she would experience much less than 50 years. People on Earth would experience 50 years. This is basically how relativistic time dilation works. Remember that time is completely subjective, it depends entirely on your frame of... | [
"The astronaut, their aging, and their perception of time runs at the dilated rate. For example, if the dilation is at a factor of ten, then if ten years pass on Earth then the astronaut will only perceive the passing of one year and will only age one biological year."
] |
The Mongolian Empire stretched from the Pacific Ocean in the East all the way to Poland in Europe. Why did the Mongols never venture South into India? | [
"hi! not discouraging further discussion here, but /u/MrBigHouse provides an overview in this post from the FAQ * [Why did the Mongols bypass India?](_URL_0_)"
] | [
"Because at one time, all free pandas lived in China. Nobody else had pandas. So if you want a panda, you have to ask China - or their government. They will not sell you one of their Pandas, though. They will only rent you one (or borrow, I don't know if they take money, or how much.) And you have to agree that if ... |
How can a Federal judge in Texas rule Obamacare's individual mandate as unconstitutional when the Supreme Court decided it fell under Congress' taxing power in 2012? | [
"Before a judge makes a decision, they usually have two arguments (one from each side). Sometimes the arguments are faulty, incorrect in some precise legal way. These are the easy cases. The interesting cases, like the Obamacare case you cite, have two arguments that do not have a clear legal fault. In these cases,... | [
"The treaty you're thinking of, is the UN Outer Space Treaty, which states we can't put nukes in outer space, among a other things. The X-37B itself, is a test bed for NASA and the USAF, in hopes of a new reusable shuttle. It's also suspected of being used to spy on the capabilities of other countries' military and... |
Does being pulled equally in all directions have the same effect on the human body as no force in all directions(space)? | [
"Depends on the exact configuration. If this is true at every point on the body then yes. If you are just applying a force to the surface of the body then no. Consider having two people pull on an arm each, you'll feel it."
] | [
"\"Vacuum\" is one of those words that has no precise definition. If you mean a volume with no fermions in it, nothing would happen. It'd just be a volume with no fermions in it. If you mean a volume with no *fields* in it, then that cannot exist by definition, so the question is meaningless."
] |
At what point evolutionarily did humans need to cook the flesh of animals? | [
"Our ancestors were certainly using fire to cook animals a few hundred thousand years ago, and possibly as early as a million years ago ([source](_URL_0_)). It's not clear *why* they began cooking meat, but it almost certainly was not because eating raw flesh caused sickness; the disease-ridden nature of modern dom... | [
"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 causes the difference between a dream and a nightmare? | [
"A more appropriate question would be \"what is the difference between a bad dream and a nightmare\" - people use the terms interchangeably, but they are neurologically distinct events. Oliver Sacks touches on this in *Hallucinations*, but I dug up a couple of articles which might help answer your question - [More... | [
"Not a neurologist here, but I had read certain articles way back that explain our learning process. It was sort of like: we learn a certain thing while we are conscious, but this certain thing we learned is only stored as short term memory while we are conscious. The brain processes this information during sleep t... |
Why do phones have a limit of how much expandable storage they have? | [
"Different standards. There are three different types of SD formats, these also apply to MicroSD. SD: Up to 2 GB SDHC: Up to 32 GB SDXC: Up to 2 TB, although cards of that size don't exist yet. People have only been able to make 256 GB MicroSD cards, and those are still very expensive. So when a phone manufactur... | [
"Your question reminded me of this frikkin awesome documentary of about planned obsolescence. [Video snippet](_URL_0_), and the whole documentary, I can't find... but Im sure someone else may be able to. ELI5 version: Because companies want you to keep them in business."
] |
Fecal transplants have been shown to effectively treat C. difficile infections. Are the benefits limited only to bacterial infections or do they apply to diseases caused by other forms of microbial life such yeasts/fungii? | [
"So far it's just used in C. Difficile infections. The general principal is that c diff infection is recurrent and very difficult to get rid of since it disturbs the natural gut flora and any antibiotics only further disrupt the normal flora and allow c diff to develop resistance. Basically you restore the balance ... | [
"I believe different molds convert one chemical into another chemical. If a mold is looking for lactose, it'll be happier in milk or cheese than in bread. So, lactose-digesting molds will usually show up in dairy-based foods. Also, molds are often airborne, and are also regionally based. A bread mold in the US mig... |
Why do some poisons tell you NOT to induce vomiting? | [
"Some agents that are physically damaging to the throat will cause damage going up, added to the damage they caused going down. Vomiting is also not ideal in situations where the person could pass out (risking the airway due to continued vomiting while unconscious) or in situations where the chemical can froth up i... | [
"Likely the store was not able to sell it for a high enough price, compared to the price the distributor was willing to give for the return. It literally would cost them money to sell you the product, making it \"toxic\" As for the later call, they probably were denied the return, meaning they had to get rid of the... |
Why does different elements freeze or melt at differemt temperatures? | [
"This is determined mostly by different kinds of intermolecular bonding. Beyond a certain temperature and pressure the heat contained by the atoms becomes too low to stop them bonding to each other in various ways and the state changes."
] | [
"Just to add to the explaination already here, saying somethings \"made of atoms\" is a broader concept than I think you understand. An atom isn't a single unit like a brick or something. There are a lot of different kinds of atoms. Suggesting that because something is made of atoms therefore shouldn't they be the ... |
What causes all living things to die of old age? | [
"Once the germline is established an organism begins to die, due to the loss of cellular quality control. After you have offspring, you are no longer important (evolutionarily speaking). Your genome is also limited in the number of times it is copied, due to sequences known as telomeres. These get shorter and shor... | [
"All species have a typical \"litter size\" for when they successfully breed. It depends greatly on the amount of care the offspring require (this includes the energy put into the eggs). There is a trade-off between how many offspring you can make and the quality of those offspring [(Source)](_URL_4_) For example, ... |
Why is it that after a night of drinking, I can't sleep past 7:30 usually, however the norm seems to be that others "sleep it off"? | [
"Feels. I wake up super early then can't get back to sleep. Next time when you get up try to sit in the shower for a bit, make some food and take some multivitamins + fish oil then put some calming music on and go back to sleep for another 2-3 hours. Personally the music helps me take my mind off trying to go over ... | [
"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... |
Why haven't we seen facial hair on a president is so long? | [
"Facial hair is no longer in style in much of the professional world. Some companies even have dress codes that strictly limit it. And if there's anything a president of a first world nation wants to be seen as, it's professional."
] | [
"Greetings everyone. In the few minutes this sub has been up, it's attracting sub-standard responses. Just a reminder of a few of the rules: * no responses covering events/conditions post-1994, per this sub's \"20-year rule\" prohibiting discussion of current events * no anecdotes * no speculation OP: your question... |
Why are our teeth sensitive to cold but not heat? | [
"They are, but if you put something that hot in your mouth, you will spit it out before your teeth react to it."
] | [
"Sugars, breads, and a protein found in milks, actually kick capsaicin off of your taste buds and take its place. Since capsaicin is the tricky little bastard that makes your tongue feel like its on fire, they effectively put the fire out."
] |
How does your computer know what time it is- after being unplugged and offline? | [
"There's a battery in your computer that keeps an internal clock running."
] | [
"Randall Munroe, the artist behind _URL_0_, completed an epic and award-winning project called 'Time'. At one point in the story, he [depicted a night scene](_URL_1_). Well, his audience was geeks, so within a hour or so we had determined, by the proper motion of the stars, the location of the planets in the starfi... |
Why are election polls often inaccurate? why should or shouldnt we trust them? | [
"Polls depend on two things: asking a representative sample of people, and the people telling you the truth. Neither can be guaranteed. Early polls fail because people change their mind, they don't do what the told the pollster they would do. Late polls fail less, but it's often due to the first factor, it can be v... | [
"Your employer takes money out of your paycheck throughout the year to pay your local, state, and federal taxes. The amount they take out, however, is just an estimate how much tax you will probably owe at the end of the year. There's no way for the state, local, and federal governments to know what you actually do... |
What causes magnetism in certain metals? | [
"I don't think I can improve on [minutephysics' and Veritasium's](_URL_0_) explanation myself."
] | [
"When a lot of stuff floats around it tends to group up... as those groups form they get more and more attracted to eachother. The more stuff there is the more gets attracted (gravety). Eventually there is so much stuff that the middle gets very hot! Everything there turns into this super dense ball. it keeps pulli... |
Are there any other animals that prepare their foods [like seasoning, cooking, curing, etc]? | [
"Here is a BBC video of [Japanese Macaques washing potatoes in salt water](_URL_0_)"
] | [
"Two main ways come to mind: * Generally, this is done when you test animals on a particular cognitive ability, and you show that the animal also possess this. For example, you can use the [mirror test](_URL_0_) to see (i) at what age children develop self-awareness, and (ii) if animals are able to complete the tas... |
Why aren't viruses considered to be living? | [
"Virus' are considered non-living because they are essentially dormant whenever they're not inside a living cell. The problem with classifying them as alive is then where do we now draw the line? Are viroids alive? What about prions? Are we simply going to reduce living to mean self-replicating?"
] | [
"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... |
How gas prices are decided within the U.S. | [
"> the Middle East settles down would we expect prices return to previous levels. Yes...and no. It will never be 'cheap' again, but will settle down depending on violence in the oil producing countries, however, it's still a question of supply and demand, China and other Asian Tiger nations use more and more resou... | [
"There is a really nice series of stories from NPR's Planet Money team on this issue (not for a 5-year old though), it clears up some of the common misconceptions about which direction the effort flows (Hint: Not from the lobbyist to the politician) _URL_0_"
] |
Why are men raping so many women in India? | [
"It's not the case that the amount of rapes is increasing, it's that the amount of rapes being reported in the media has increased. A few incidents were reported in a short space of time and now a lot more are being reported. Think of it like this. Imagine you went to Starbucks and ordered a coffee with no cream o... | [
"It's just in their DNA. Even now, science can't fully explain the phenomena we call \"instincts\", even though we can see them in action, and have them ourselves."
] |
What happens if an Astronaut gets hit by flying debris on a spacewalk? | [
"Depends on the speed of the particles, but it is potentially lethal. [The ISS](_URL_0_) was hit by what is believed to be a sub-millimeter particle. It made a very visible dent in a window..."
] | [
"Depends on the material and temperature. Sometimes the surface forms a reconstruction, as dreykevins explains. Other times the surface forms an oxide or some other surface layer, which can prevent recombination. Other times the pieces actually CAN be put back together, and this process is called \"cold welding\". ... |
Why is it harder to lose weight as we age. It seems like my body is working against my efforts. | [
"As you get older, your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) decreases. Meaning you need less and less calories as you get older. So it's not necessarily more difficult to lose weight as you get older (because it still just making sure calories-in is less than calories-out), you just need to make sure you eat less... | [
"? It's not that circuits get slow, but that the requirements increase. Newer operating systems, new applications, new drivers, all (or mostly all) utilize more assets in a system. Those new assets provide richer experiences, with more color, more interoperability, better effects, especially in things like games. Y... |
How do sections of Canada have less gravity than the rest of the world? | [
"The article didn't make sense to me either, but I know you can get variations in gravity due to denseness. For instance they can detect the change in gravity when orbiting the moon when they pass over much deser materials in craters, and they can use it to map the earth because mountains have more gravitational pu... | [
"One big reason is map design. No road that goes north is straight. They are all designed to be curvy. This gives the impression that the map is larger because it takes longer to traverse."
] |
In 1867 Alaska was sold to the United States by Russia’s for $7.2 million. How was this large amount of money transferred before currency was handled as it is today? | [
"As a follow up question: what was the general impression of this purchase/sale of land by the general populations of the US and Russia, and how would that amount of money been perceived relative to Alaska’s size? (eg was Alaska considered to not be worth very much due to its inhospitable terrain and relative lack ... | [
"A woman named Frances Wright did something like what you are asking in 1824. In Memphis, TN she bought two thousand acres of land from Andrew Jackson and would buy slaves. On this land she set up a co-operative labor system where they could basically work off their price of purchase and then they would be set free... |
China is a place of many ethnicities and cultures, right? How are different dynasties able to unite China under centralized rule throughout its history yet the Roman Empire easily fragmented into nations after its fall? | [
"> China always united by several dynasties This is false, even in a limited sense of counting only \"China proper\". It was talked about [here](_URL_1_). And I've gone into a bit of detail in the /r/badhistory thread [here](_URL_0_). If you take a look at the timeline I made for that thread [here](_URL_2_) you can... | [
"I've always been fascinated by the wide variety of \"Fall of Rome\" arguments and how they're affected by historical perspective. I was wondering: **Does your historical specialty advocate a certain theory for the fall of the Roman Empire? or what's a unique argument for the fall of the Roman Empire that you've co... |
Why does looking at the horizon help against seasickness? | [
"It gives your mind a frame of reference to determine exactly what is level. When you know what \"level\" is, your brain can deal with the motions reported by your inner ear. If you're inside a closed space and the boat is rocking around a lot, your eyes are telling your brain that you are standing on level ground... | [
"This is a more scientific answer than it sounds: it's all in your head. Try having a friend hold a pen there randomly half of the time. You guess when it's there, the more you guess the closer to chance you should get."
] |
In 1864, the Confederate sub HL Hunley sank a warship. It was over 50 years until a submarine sank another warship. What were the other attempts made by subs to sink combatants in those 50 years? | [
"On the 1st of July, 1905 the Imperial Russian submarine *Keta* spotted two torpedo boats of the Imperial Japanese Navy (Japan and Russia were engaged in the Russo-Japanese War at the time) and attempted to move into firing position. However, she was spotted before she had a chance to dive properly, and broke conta... | [
"Wet nurses weren't only in existence in countries with nobility. Wet nursing was for a long time more about affluence and family wealth than noble title. In fact, the history of wet nursing can be traced back to ancient times. The United States has a history of the use of wet nurses, and many women who were alive ... |
What is the first board game, and how old was it? | [
"One of the oldest board games that is still played today is [Senet](_URL_0_), an Egyptian game revolving around dice rolls and racing that originated around 3500 BCE. [Backgammon](_URL_1_) also appeared around the same time in Iran and enjoys continued popularity to the present day. While these are the oldest game... | [
"Not a historian, just someone who likes to lurk and learn new things, but I can maybe point you to a few similar questions I’ve seen about kids and their obsessions while you wait to hear from an expert. [This post](_URL_2_) has an ancient Roman source from u/rkiga that mentions a toddler obsessed with birds. Furt... |
I get on a spaceship and travel at nearly the speed of light. When I come back to earth, I've aged less than you. But given that speed is relative, how does the universe "know" which one of us was moving quickly? | [
"The difference between the two of us is that you turned around, so you underwent acceleration, and I didn't. That is what distinguishes the two of us."
] | [
"This would not work because time dilation due to relativity is ALSO relative to a reference frame. I.e., you cannot say that one clock is meaningfully \"slow\" or \"fast\" without comparing it to a reference frame. Time dilation is no different than velocity when it comes to relativity, they are just different att... |
Does the ISS need to constantly make micro course corrections to compensate for the crew's activity in cabin to stay in orbit? | [
"1. Nothing they do can affect total torque or momentum of the station. 2. They theoretically could change internal torque distribution (eg. by running in circles) and thus cause the station to start spinning, which could increase drag, and cause some orbital changes. In fact this happens with treadmills there! 3. ... | [
"Because the velocity of the object always changes, so that it's perpendicular to the axis of centripetal acceleration. Or to put it another way: It would, if its velocity vector wasn't an exact tangent to the circle, that the object is moving around in. It has the exact speed, direction and radius to not a: Spin o... |
Will Biopsies ever go away? | [
"Difficult to say. As genotyping becomes better and our understanding of genetic mutations in conditions such as cancer develop, there may come a time when genotype could diagnose cancer rather than histological examination. However in my opinion I don't think you can replace histology. Cancer diagnosis and grading... | [
"Asking for medical advice on askscience is not allowed, as medical advice is disallowed by Reddit's terms of service. See _URL_0_ Please go to your doctor with your particular case and ask them if you should be worried."
] |
Aren't women-only companies against the law? | [
"Refusing to hire men because they are men is illegal discrimination. Jessica Chastain's company is not a \"women only\" company. As [this](_URL_0_) article makes clear, it's a company designed to make products that cater to women - films about women, starring high-profile female actresses. That's totally legal."
... | [
"This is a fascinating question! I am also curious in when and how this happened. I imagine it was state by state, so perhaps not all at once? Or was it only after the 19th amendment was passed?"
] |
Why are the names of phobia's so long and weirdly named? | [
"Phobia is a Greek word, meaning fear. Most phobia names are just [greek translation of the fear] + phobia. Arachnophobia = Arachne (Greek for 'spider') + Phobia (fear). Spiderfear. German's a similar compound language so you'll notice similar patterns in German words that end in 'schreck'."
] | [
"Marketing. It makes the reader more easily relate to them. They aren't really a group of editors and publicitsts pushing the book, it's just that one person in a small town that wrote a story."
] |
Why can't information move faster than light? | [
"Vibrations in a solid body travel at the speed of sound in this medium, which is much, much slower than c."
] | [
"It can and does. Check out the double-slit experiment. _URL_0_"
] |
Does it sound different when the air is cold? | [
"The speed of sound is dependent on temperature; _URL_0_ There are probably other effects going on too, ie it may be that your area has less wind during cold snaps because of local geography & weather patterns."
] | [
"Not noticeably, no. Bring a hot cup of coffee into the car instead, it will work much better than Metallica."
] |
Why are some pages "intentionally left blank" in some books? | [
"Look at a book from the top of the spine sometime - you will see that the paper is glued in bundles - 8 sheet/16 pages per bundle. It is very cheap to make books with these bundles, so almost all books are printed this way. This means that the final page count needs to be a multiple of 16. Some of this can be ta... | [
"For any given flight, typically 5-10% of the people with reservations won't actually fly. So instead of having empty seats and charging everyone more, the airline try to guess how many people won't show, and sell some extra tickets. When you buy one of those, you wan't get a seat assignment until you get to the ga... |
What is actually happening when an electric current flows through an a salt solution or a molten salt? | [
"The Sodium ions hold a positive charge and the Chlorine ions hold negative charge. So, because the incomplete K shell wishes to fill it's most stable form, the ions will be electrically attracted to the anode for the sodium and the cathode for the chlorine."
] | [
"I'll defer to someone with more specific expertise, but here's my take: In the case of blood separation, you're dealing with relatively large solid particles suspended (not dissolved) in a fluid. In the case of different liquid metals mixed together, it would depend on whether the metals are miscible (soluble in o... |
Theoretically, shouldn't a pyramid scheme work? | [
"Pyramid schemes are 100% effective so long as the number of people joining exceeds the number of people who are already involved. This works because you can use the joiners money to pay off the oldest members. The problem is that the number of fools (while massive) is a finite number. Eventually the scheme cannot ... | [
"Amway and cutco make you buy there products to resell them or use them as demos. These are always overpriced. So you are losing money going into the job. At any other marketing firm you get paid a salary. The person working in the mail room does not have to purchase the companies products to get paid."
] |
- why did i make $9k more in 2018 than I did 2017 but owe $900 more and am getting $600 less on my rax refund | [
"The more money you make, the more taxes you owe. That’s the simple answer. There isn’t enough information here to tell you exactly why. There Were changes to the tax laws, you could have had different withholdings, you could have had different deductions, etc."
] | [
"In a permanent-magnet DC generator, the output voltage is determined by the RPM, and the RPM is relative rotation between rotor and stator. So, if you spin the rotor at 100RPM, but spin the entire housing backwards at 200RPM, then the relative speed between the two is 100+200 = 300. And so the output voltage wil... |
Why does the carboniferous period have a mean surface temp equal or lower than today, when it had 2x the atmospheric CO2? | [
"Your statement is not correct; or rather, it's correct but misleading, because it refers to two different stages of the Carboniferous era when CO2 and temperature conditions changed dramatically. The Carboniferous period is so named because during it, a lot of CO2 was drawn out of the atmosphere and sequestered i... | [
"The Caspian Sea is in it's own drainage basin (also known as a [endorheic basin](_URL_1_)) so it is isolated from the rest of the worlds' oceans. As global sea levels rise, they won't directly effect the Caspian since it is not connected. The water levels in the Caspian vary based on the balance of rainfall and ev... |
how ants can carry objects many times their own size | [
"Because physics! Small objects are very light in comparison to big objects. Cube of wood the size of 1cm on its side weights 0.63g, while cube that is 10cm on its side weights 630g, (that's a bit over 1lb) that's 1000 times the weight! In other words: King Kong would be able to lift only a fraction of its weight,... | [
"A follow up question: Is it possible that they are potentially as smart as we are, but the lack of hands, appropriate communication (etc.) limits their ability to develop their potential?"
] |
Can Anyone explain to me how "Demon Core" work ? | [
"i was under the impression that \"demon core\" was the nickname to one specific sphere of Plutonium. _URL_0_"
] | [
"Yes. This was first [tested over the Pacific in 1962](_URL_1_) and the [EMP](_URL_0_) did some damage in Hawaii, 900 miles away. A nuke detonated in the right place could affect most of a continent. It's caused by gamma radiation from the nuke interacting with Earth's atmosphere and magnetic field."
] |
Is there a Radar equivalent of a Laser? | [
"Yes,we have masers (m=microwave),which despite the name can be also tuned for infrared and radio frequencies.funnily enough,the maser came first,the laser is just more famous since it's more ubiquitious/useful You should be able to do it for basically any wavelength,if you can find atoms with the proper energy di... | [
"VL can go right through glass, but IR can't. It all has to do with electron energy levels. If the material doesn't have electrons with energy gaps that match the energy of that type radiation, the material will be transparent to that type."
] |
Re: Isostatic adjustment of land, due to drought. Why does the weight on the lithosphere reduce at all? The weight of the liquid, terrestrial water, should simply be substituted by the increased weight of the water vapour, in the local atmosphere, shouldn't it? | [
"The problem in the Western US isn't that water that would normally be in the ground is in the local atmosphere instead, it's that the water vapor in the atmosphere (which falls as rain/snow and becomes groundwater) *isn't there in the first place*. I'm no atmospheric scientist so I couldn't say with confidence why... | [
"Because it would require work to get the liquid out of the capillary tube."
] |
How are we able to tell the difference between fake nice and genuine nice? | [
"As far as non-verbal cues, humans are embedded with a list of involuntary \"tells\".... For a single example, a genuine smile will cause crinkling of the cheeks and around the eyes, where a faked smile won't usually do so. There are also tonal differences. Faked niceness seems to almost always feature drawn out vo... | [
"Doing it too fast. Do it Very slowly, you will feel a slightly diffrent vibration in the car, this means it starts to pull on the first gear, now meet up with some gas, but keep going slowly. You can ride like this for a bit before letting go. It comes with time, just practice. There is no rush."
] |
How does bone cancer occur | [
"Bones are alive! They are indeed connected to the blood stream and actually play an important role in the development of the immune system. But they also contain living cells, wich can sadly become cancerous with various consequences."
] | [
"Most of the people with melanoma now are the ones who were out in the sun back in the 60s to 80s, before there was so much awareness of skin cancer and when being tan was quite fashionable."
] |
What are the benefit of choosing a lower mpix setting on a cameraphone? | [
"It uses less memory so you'll be able to take more pictures without backing up to a computer."
] | [
"As stated already, you always need reception, there's no way around that. To explain the lack of SIM, you need only look at the meaning of the abbreviation: **S**ubscriber **I**dentity **M**odule. A SIM is not actually required to make a phone call, it's just required to identify you and associate your phone with ... |
How have pandas been able to survive this long? | [
"They weren't mass hunted or having their habitats destroyed in the past. [](/aaa aaa aaa aaa aaa. aaa aaa aaa aaa aaa. aaa aaa aaa aaa aaa. aaa aaa aaa aaa aaa. aaa aaa aaa aaa aaa. aaa aaa aaa aaa aaa. aaa aaa aaa aaa aaa. aaa aaa aaa aaa aaa. aaa aaa aaa aaa aaa. aaa aaa aaa aaa aaa. aaa aaa aaa aaa aaa. aaa aaa... | [
"How do you know a year has passed without looking at a calendar? I imagine they sense the temperature/climate changes like anything else."
] |
How can a candy company (Jelly Belly) create flavors that taste like baby wipes, skunk smell, grass, etc., yet the major soda companies cannot create a diet soda that tastes EXACTLY like the original? | [
"You're looking at two different things - artificial flavorings & artificial sweeteners. Artificial flavors trick our nose into sensing some other food product & are relatively easy to come up with. Artificial sweeteners trick our body into sensing *sugar*, something that's fundamentally essential to animal surviva... | [
"Because the legal definition of zero calories and the scientific definition of zero calories are two different things. Diet Soda does not (scientifically) have zero calories but they have close enough to zero calories that they are legally allowed to round this amount down and say they have zero."
] |
Why don't we filter sea water to make it drinkable? | [
"[Here](_URL_0_) is a nice article about the desalination of water. Filtering of the water does not do much good since there is salt that is dissolved in the water that we need to get out. Although there is a technique called [reverse osmosis](_URL_1_) which can work for desalination. However, the main method is by... | [
"Several reasons, one, they are very expensive to build, two, the power transmission infrastructure is also very expensive to build, three, you'd still need power supply to make up for night, and times when the wind is too low/high. Four, someone will always be against any major project, and tie you up in court for... |
How blood vessels affect skin color. | [
"This is a common misconception, blood is never blue. It ranges in brightness from bright red (oxygenated) to dark red (deoxygenated)."
] | [
"Unfortunately I can't post it from my phone right now, but Radiolab covers this exact topic in their podcast titled Colors. It's an especially excellent Radiolab. Even if the question is answered in this post, it's worth checking out. Edit: [Here it is](_URL_0_)"
] |
Does any organism grow metal (or similar substances) like we grow hair, teeth, skin, etc.? | [
"Can't believe it hasn't been mentioned yet! There are a whole class of prokaryotic bacteria that have organs called magnetosomes. These bacteria make metalic crystals out of iron oxides, or similar materials, which are used to orient the bacteria in magnetic fields. They're not exactly metals in the sense of refi... | [
"Building a car is easier than *rebuilding* a car that's been obliterated in a ghastly accident. You can follow the same steps to build the new car every time and it'll work every time. Rebuilding the totaled car is a lot trickier. Each case is unique. What's damaged? How badly? What can be saved? What needs to be ... |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.