Subset (10)

eli5 · 25k rows

Split (1)

train · 25k rows

query stringlengths 20 300	positive listlengths 1 1	negative listlengths 1 1
Why is rain more reliably predicted than snow by meteorologists?	[ "To predict rain all you need to do is predict precipitation, but to predict snow you need to correctly predict both precipitation and temperature. It seems obvious that predicting more things simultaneously is more difficult than just one factor." ]	[ "Statistics! If you pick a proper group of a small size, and analyze them, you can logically and mathematically extrapolate to a larger population. That extrapolation is an estimate, but if the group is properly chosen and the math done correctly, it's a very accurate estimate." ]
What would happen if a nuclear bomb was detonated at the summit of Mt. Everest?	[ "Mushroom clouds are produced by dust and debris picked up by the returning shockwave of the blast, it probably wouldn't form a mushroom so much as a rising cloud on an angled surface like a mountain top." ]	[ "Media companies \"Nuking\" torrent files with data. Nuking basically means they put some kind of trojan horse in a movie/video game file, so when you download it, they can track it and report you to your ISP." ]
Does the amount of foaming of a dish soap reveal anything about its cleaning power?	[ "Not a chemist, but I recently read that detergents and foaming agents are not the same thing. The foaming agents are added, but only because most people mistakenly equate the foaminess with the amount of cleaning power remaining. I read this in a Reddit thread about why dishwasher soap doesn't foam. Answer: becaus...	[ "There are theories being explored in regards to [semen displacement](_URL_0_). It is theorized that the tip of the penis is shaped to displace the semen of the previous impregnator. Part of that theory is that men who feel their female mates have possibly been disloyal will have more vigorous and deep intercourse ...
Is boredom only present in humans, or do all animals experience it?	[ "This depends on your concept of boredom. Boredom as we know it is a construct consisting of an environmental condition (lack of stimulus) and an emotional reaction to a lack of stimulus (discomfort). If we operationalize the word \"boredom\" to mean \"discomfort caused by a lack of stimulation\", then the answer i...	[ "Please use the search function. _URL_11_ _URL_12_ _URL_13_ _URL_11_ _URL_12_ _URL_11_ _URL_12_ _URL_13_ _URL_12_ _URL_13_ _URL_13_ TL;DR: Why is a bad question with no good answer. We can't tell entirely with other animals, because we can't directly communicate though anecdotally, many seem to." ]
Is it true that the Sacred Band of Thebes was composed of male lovers?	[ "Good question! Although I do not want to discourage any further answers, you may enjoy these previous answers: [What is the consensus among historians about the Sacred Band of Thebes? Were they really 150 pairs of lovers? Or is that just a legend?](_URL_1_) and: [Did the Greeks encourage homosexuality between sold...	[ "As I've mentioned in [other threads](_URL_0_), Wessex during the period in which The Last Kingdom is set was actually studded by a fairly extensive and sophisticated network of look-out posts and signalling beacons connected with garisson forces at local burh fortifications. This network was also then extended...
Vacuum metastability event	[ "Yes. If the vacuum changes to some new, lower-energy state, then the boundary between the old and new vacuum states would propagate outwards at the speed of light. You are correct that if the vacuum state changes in a region that is causally disconnected from you, then the boundary will never reach you. This is a...	[ "An update: I proved the statement in the negative for the specific case I was interested in (for p odd). A maximal abelian subgroup of Sp is composed of matrices that stabilize some fixed Lagrangian subspace. Thus all matrices conjugate to this torus stabilize some (possibly another) Lagrangian. However there are ...
What is Anti-Design? And its importance in society?	[ "Anti-design was a reaction to modernism in the art community during the 1970s. Some artists felt that modernism and \"form follows function\" would make the world oversimplified and boring. So they made things that were outrageous and amazing. \"Importance to society\" depends on your opinion of the importance of ...	[ "The ultimate decider here is etymology. English already had a native prefix for negating the meaning of words: un-. When you unbutton a shirt you perform the opposite action of buttoning it. But English borrowed a lot of Latin words, either directly or via the French. In both of those languages there's a differ...
Why can't I just drink water and eat bread (or some such food for calories) and take in all other nutrients via vitamins or supplements and be healthy?	[ "First, you're going to be healthiest with the appropriate protein/carb/fat balance. Bread has WAY too many carbs, and it's typically not a complete protein. But assume you had a food that did have the right balance, and included complete proteins. Would that work? Probably, yes. The risk you run is that you don't ...	[ "There appears to be a large push to use medication instead. Here in Canada you can even get these prescribed by a doctor in a walk in clinic who doesn't even know you. The cost to pay mental health professionals is greater than pills. Accessing mental health services from the government clinic means going on a wai...
Is there a known shortest Eulerian path between all 50 US states using, for example, only Interstates?	[ "The map at the top of the [Interstate Highway System](_URL_0_) page is for all 48 contiguous states. Pesky Alaska and Hawaii....... :)" ]	[ "I don't know the exact answer to your question, but a related problem was actually recently solved. It is now believed that every configuration can be solved in 20 moves or less, though I'm not sure if an algorithm exists to compute the required sequence of moves. [Here's an article](_URL_0_) about it, and [Wikipe...
How are Chinese companies on eBay/Amazon able to sell cables and such for 1.50 shipped to the USA?	[ "ManiacalShen may be on to something, but it's not all a marketing gimmick by any means. It is actually quite logical, if only you have all the pieces that is. First of all, as you pointed out, the quality of the cables are usually \"garbage\" - it doesn't cost much to make crappy products. Secondly, the exchange r...	[ "You may have a flag on your account that says you qualify for the promotion while he doesn't. If you've had your account longer, have better credit/payment history, or if he's locked into another kind of contract he may get different offers. Basically the computer looks at all the accounts and says \"Accounts with...
Why do we think animals are cute?	[ "You mean \"certain\" animals, right? It's because we associate them with our own infants. Humans are behaviorally programmed to want to look after something and nurture it, with the drive being stronger in some than in others. They have a predilection to associate that care and nurturing to creatures that resemble...	[ "It is biologically engraved in us. Seeing water and fresh landscape meant survival in ancient days" ]
Why do muslims consider it a sin to draw/illustrate Muhammed, when it does not clearly say anything about it in the Quran?	[ "The Bible and the Koran are both very strict about idol worshipping -- it's actually one of the Jewish/Christian Ten Commandments and is repeated multiple times in the Koran. Muslims therefore consider it a grave sin to worship Mohammed rather than Allah, and some fear that if anyone were to make images of Mohamme...	[ "Because books were very expensive in the 18th and 19th centuries and the price of a book was out of the budget for the vast majority of people. Lending libraries existed, but you had to pay for them, too, and many could not afford it. Newspapers were inexpensive enough, and the print small enough, that more people...
Are there more photons or atoms in the universe?	[ "There are far more photons. From the cosmic microwave background alone there are a billion times more photons than atoms in the universe." ]	[ "The Bohr model can't really 'prove' Planck's black-body law. It assumes (ad-hoc) that angular momentum is quantized, without any rationale, really. (Except the one given later by de Broglie in terms of de Broglie-wavelengths) The Bohr model doesn't obey the uncertainty principle, the Schrödinger equation does. Not...
What product or commodity in today's time costs the same regardless of inflation?	[ "Hmm ... good question. Let me tell you where I think the answer lies: food. If you adjust for inflation, the prices of many basic foods is less today than it was in 1900. Take flour for example. Page 213 (document page 31) of [this U.S. Census document](_URL_1_) has the prices of many basic foodstuffs betwee...	[ "> If I know I'm going to be taxed, why go out and spend more money to be taxed less? Wouldn't it just be redundant? If you spend money, you get something for it. If you get taxed, the money is gone. If the government was gonna tax my $1 unless I spent it, I could spend it on a hot dog, and now I'm down one dollar ...
Why do I lose money that I put in a health savings account if I don't spend it all before the yearly deadline? Isn't that my money if I put it in there and no one else is contributing? Who gets it? Why is this legal? Why would anyone want an HSA?	[ "You don't lose money from an HSA. You lose it from a FSA (Flexible Spending Account), and you might want it if you have predictable expenses and want some tax-free money for them. You can't have both an HSA and an FSA." ]	[ "To construct an experiment, you have to ask a question that needs to be answered. And often that question takes the form of a hypothesis that needs to be either confirmed or refuted. The hypothesis is the question you want to ask the universe. But the universe has a habit of being kind of secretive and not very ob...
Do fat people have more blood?	[ "Yes. Fat tissue, like all tissues in the human body are made up of cells that require certain molecules (and also need to get rid of other molecules or wastes). Blood carries needed materials, like oxygen, and removes wastes, like carbon dioxide. Larger people have more blood and more blood vessels that the heart...	[ "Why would it have to be genetic? Maybe they just learned how to cope with heat when they were growing up in hot places. Anyway, there are a couple of very old biological principles about how [endothermic](_URL_0_) (\"warm-blooded\") species are expected to adapt to different climates. [Bergmann's rule](_URL_2_): t...
Why is one of my nostrils 90% blocked, even when I don't have a cold?	[ "Could be any number of things, but more likely to either be a polyp (benign growth) or septal deviation (the cartilate dividing your nostrils bending). Both of which would reduce potential air flow, giving you the blocked feeling. Blockages also make it more likely for you to develop sinus infections/make them slo...	[ "She's not, it's your brain not quite understanding what a picture is, and so attempting to trick you into thinking she's interested and wants to copulate. But seriously, it's your brain extrapolating the information it senses of a 2D object with static simulated depth, causing the depth to be calculated irrespecti...
Why is it that when we hear two different tones from the same source, we hear two notes, but when we see two different waves of light from the same source, they combine and we see only one color?	[ "You have three color receptors in your eye. Color is perceived as the relative amount of the incoming light that excites each of these receptors, which our brain interprets as a color. Your ears use a log-spiral shaped ear bone to spatially separate the different frequencies of sound. Pressure sensors made of hair...	[ "Grab a tennis ball and a lamp. Turn off every other light in the room. Hold up the tennis ball. Half is lit, half is dark. If you are looking from the side (you can see the lamp and the ball) you can see some of the dark side of the ball. The ONLY way to see nothing but lit ball is to have the lamp directly behin...
Why is the twin paradox asymmetrical?	[ "This is the whole \"paradox\" in the twin paradox. The resolution to be paradox is the fact that the motion of the twins is not symmetric. In order for the twins to meet up at the end of the experiment, at least one of them must accelerate, and therefore change inertial frames in order to turn around. In t...	[ "It tries to answer a question about mind: \"Does mind follow rules?\" and the related \"Is Artificial intelligence possible?\" While explaining this, Hofstadter references art, music and logic through the works of Escher, Bach and Godel. Another important theme is the concept of what he calls Strange loop, for...
If everyone in the world didn't go to work/school/stores for 2 weeks, could we make the Common Cold and Flu go extinct?	[ "it is unlikely, flu is a seasonal virus and the main theory as to why it changes often is because the virus is normally found in the gut of migratory birds. the virus stays there and mutates over the year and when the birds fly over, their leavings are likely to contain a new strain or similar strain." ]	[ "On ISS and Mars, the radiation level is less than half what it is in interplanetary space. In both cases you have a planet right next to you, shielding you from half the radiation. > Basically, if Earth is very good (due to the \"magnetic bubble\") being a 10/10 It's mostly the atmosphere that protects us. If Ear...
What happens to the water in your body that is not urinated or sweat out?	[ "If you've ever sat in a car for a long time with the windows up, you'll notice the windows start fogging up. You end up respirating some of that water up. Everything else would either be urinated out, sweated out, or be involved in some other biological material output (some in feces, tears, bleeding, etc)" ]	[ "Most of our blood sits in our veins. Our veins (from the heart down) have one way valves in them that prevent back flow and help blood get back to our heart without pooling at our feet. However, these valves are not present above the heart because we have gravity to pull the blood back. This means when you hang up...
When does history become History?	[ "History is just the past, so technically even news is a recount of recent historical events. But there is no cut off point when it comes to when something becomes ‘history’. It is more about the significance of the event and the staying power it has" ]	[ "Hi everyone. Since this is the kind of question that can attract non-expert responses, just a friendly reminder that all responses must comply with [sub rules](_URL_0_), and that [personal anecdotes](_URL_1_) are explicitly not permitted in /r/AskHistorians." ]
Why doesn't the President just give executive orders to further his agenda?	[ "Checks and balances exist specifically to prevent this. The Executive branch is not supposed to be able to do whatever it wants whenever it wants. The Legislative and Judicial branches are in place to stop the Executive branch from doing this. The President has to get Congress' approval, and the Supreme Court give...	[ "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." ]
10,00RTS? What are RTS's?	[ "RTs are retweets on Twitter. When you retweet something, you share someone else's tweet with your followers" ]	[ "Seems like you got your armies mixed up a little! The Roman army prior to the Marian Reforms was the army that you describe-- hastati, principes, triarii, velites, etc. Would you like to know more about that army, or about the post-Marian army?" ]
Why are digital versions of video games, movie, and music priced the same or more than the physical copies of the games, DVDs, or CDs?	[ "1) Manufacturing and distribution costs for physical games are miniscule, and are about on par with the cost of running a virtual store front. Selling your game on a platform like Steam has its own costs. 2) Items cost what they cost not because they are more or less expensive that other options, but because that ...	[ "Because taxes are complicated, and not all taxes relate to \"commerce\". For example, you pay taxes based on how much you make. But if you do something like donate to charity you have to pay less taxes. If you have an additional child you may end up paying less in taxes. If you get divorced you may have to pay les...
How does it happen that an entire volume of data can become corrupt when the writing of only a small portion of it is interrupted?	[ "In your case it seems was damaged the File Allocation Table (FAT). This file system can be read and written by a wide range of devices, but it is very fragile because of how data is arranged logically. In most cases you can fix the problem with a specialized application, like chkdsk under Windows. If you are using...	[ "Up until recently, Android devices didn't employ [TRIM] (_URL_0_), reducing performance over time as \"fresh\" blocks in the flash drive became rarer and rarer. That's one specific example of an effect that could reduce performance over time. The other posters are correct in that 95% of the time, it's because the ...
How does anti-perspirent actually stop you from sweating?	[ "It basically blocks off your sweat glands in the area you sprayed it. That doesn't stop you from sweating somewhere else though." ]	[ "Most touchscreens work using something called capacitive sensing. Basically, the touchscreen uses a conductor to detect when something is nearby. The human body is also a conductor, and therefore it can interfere with the electrical field of the touchscreen. The screen uses this to detect how a human is interactin...
Does hydrogen gas leak from plastic bottles(PET)?	[ "Liquid helium will drip straight through a PET bottle. My research advisor demonstrated this once, telling us that the PET molecules actually let things through; PET is kind of like a sieve for smaller molecules. So, if liquid helium will drip through it, I assume hydrogen will. I'd say there is a significant chan...	[ "Turns out the experiments published were less than convincing. There were quite a few blog posts and letters in Science that went back and forth over the presented data. No one, except maybe the original experimenters, really believes (yet?) that this is a new arsenic-using life form. _URL_2_ _URL_0_ _URL_1_ Some...
Are There Any Good Books About Russian Expansion East?	[ "There are of course plenty of books about this long and variegated historical process. For a general history of Russian imperial expansion, the relevant bits of Geoffrey Hosking's [Russia People and Empire, 1552-1917](_URL_1_) and Andreas Kappeler's The Russian Empire: A Multiethnic History. Two important stud...	[ "Some questions to clarify OP's premise: Did the NKVD do regular searches of civilian homes or would there have had to be suspicion of a crime? Would that suspicion need to be based on anything substantial? And what qualifies as \"forbidden Western literature\"?" ]
What is the relative speed of two photons traveling in opposite directions?	[ "If you apply the velocity addition formula, you'll find that (c+c)/(1+c^2 /c^2 ) is still c. However, it's a bit moot because you can't really consider the rest frame of a photon. Two cars going 60 mph in opposite directions are actually going 119.9999999999995 mph relative to one another." ]	[ "First of all, if you're downloading from two different sources and one of the servers has more outgoing bandwidth than the other, that may determine the outcome. However, if both remote servers are able to send you the file as fast as possible, what you're observing is totally real and it has to do with the TCP/IP...
Are there verifiable disadvantages of veganism?	[ "One interesting consideration is that it wasn't actually possible to survive as a vegan before the early part of the 20th century because one of the essential b vitamins can only be obtained naturally through animal product consumption. Many grains are now fortified with it which enables veganism. Many health detr...	[ "Do you mean besides there being almost no user base for an operating system that old? Or that it is no longer maintained by the developer of that OS, so no bug patches, security or driver updates? Or that the hardware it runs on is also likely to be ancient? Or that you won't have access to the latest API?" ]
How did Christmas become X-mas?	[ "IIRC the x is actually a Greek chi, which is the first letter in the Greek word for Christ ." ]	[ "The word comes to English from Spanish, where LL is a common letter combination. The pronunciation changed, but not the spelling." ]
What is the biggest a hurricane could get on Earth?	[ "According to wikipedia, the largest hurricane on record is actually hurricane Sandy at 945 miles (1520km) in diameter. Given the unusual events that led up to the creation of Sandy, I would say that getting larger than this would be difficult, but I'd need an actual meteorologist to confirm." ]	[ "Yes, it seems to do so every so often (on a geologic time scale) and we may be due for one in the next... ohh.. 10k-100k years. _URL_0_ That article doesn't seem too worried about it, and given how long it takes to happen they seem fairly confident that we'd be able to respond." ]
Why is Russia so (for lack of a better term) "fucked up"?	[ "Three hundred years of czarism, seventy years of totalitarian communism, ten years of unbridled capitalism, and ten years of autocratic nationalism." ]	[ "Hi, I've approved the post, but just a note to you and potential respondents: this subreddit has a 20-year rule against discussing current events, so any answers will have to cut off at 1997. If you're looking for answers that can include 1998-2012, do consider x-posting elsewhere, eg. a foreign affairs sub like /...
When and why did most U.S. politicans stop growing their facial hair?	[ "_URL_0_ study linked in other link _URL_1_ page 1136 has the key graph world war 1 and 2 had a pretty major impact on getting a generation of americans to keep a clean shaven look forced on them by the military. for this i'm assuming politicians aren't any different from the normal man. interestingly the safet...	[ "hi everyone! just a reminder to respondents to be mindful of this sub's [\"20-year rule\": no discussion of events/conditions post-1994 please](_URL_0_)! thanks! OP, if you'd like to carry on this discussion for more recent years, consider x-posting this question to /r/AskSocialScience." ]
What is the appeal of abstract art?	[ "Good question! I'll answer that with another question: what's the appeal of music? Music is also usually abstract, in the sense it doesn't try to emulate any natural sound. You hear a guitar solo, it doesn't sound like anything in the real world, but it makes you feel something. An abstract painting is the sam...	[ "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." ]
Why is Cuba letting a Russian spy ship sit in a port?	[ "Cuba and Russia are fairly friendly. I imigiane Russia asked and Cuba said yes because they are good friends. The US does not get a say in what ships sit in a Cuban port." ]	[ "Hi, I've approved the post, but just a note to you and potential respondents: this subreddit has a 20-year rule against discussing current events, so any answers will have to cut off at 1997. If you're looking for answers that can include 1998-2012, do consider x-posting elsewhere, eg. a foreign affairs sub like /...
When several countries in the EU switched to using the euro instead of their own individual forms of currency, did everyone have to buy buttons for their keyboards with the euro symbol on it?	[ "I was managing IT for a company with offices in the US, Ireland (Cork, Dublin and Limerick), Northern Ireland (Belfast) and Israel at time the Irish changed over in 2002, so I hope that is qualified enough to answer this. In short, no, you didn't need to buy a new keyboard (or a key) right away. Over time, of cour...	[ "You mean the Confederate flag? That was the flag of the states that tried to secede in the 19th century, causing the American Civil War. Because the secession had a lot to do with slavery and the southern states' desire to keep holding slaves, it's widely seen as a symbol of racism, white supremacy, and hate. Some...
Why are there two different congresses (the house and the senate) and what do they do that's different?	[ "The government has two houses of Congress, which is called bicameralism, as a compromise to large and small states. There was a very big debate in the writing of the constitution over how representation should be decided — small states wanted a level playing field, and large states wanted representation based on p...	[ "VPN creates a 'tunnel' between 2 computers. Everyone can see where the tunnel goes, but no one can look inside. TOR is a series of relay stations, where the station only know the previous and next station, so no single station knows the whole route." ]
Is sleeping 8 hours at night the same as sleeping 6 but then having a 2 hour nap? Why or why not?	[ "Sleep cycle varies so you can't really set a magic number... basically between 1-2hrs. I've heard the suggestion on naps that they should either be short enough to avoid entering deep sleep (30min) or long enough to ensure you get a full cycle (2hrs). The former helps with alertness, but doesn't reduce the amount ...	[ "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 are spam / phishing emails always so terribly written (e.g. grammar, spelling errors, etc)?	[ "I read somewhere that phishing/spam emails/online scams are intentional bad, slightly obvious. It weeds out the potentially more savvy victims that would spot a scam, making the pool of responders more likely to be less savvy/smart and more likely to fall for the scam, thereby decreasing wasted time on the scammer...	[ "The video shows every step. The fish, crab, and eels, have millions of years of evolution where finding holes in the bank to hide in resulted in fewer deaths from predation. So they seek the holes. They seek dark holes with the scent of prey. Humans come along. They imitate the dark holes with bamboo. They put ou...
Can a brain ever "forget" to wake up?	[ "As in sleep indefinitely? No. Sleep is homeostatically regulated. In other words, as you spend time awake, you build \"sleep pressure,\" which dissipates as you sleep until it is very low and you awaken. This interacts with the circadian system (24-hour rhythm) as well. The only exception I would mention is Kleine...	[ "Sounds like disassociation or something similar. If its a problem consult a psychologist." ]
Why are so many of the top WW2 fighter aces German?	[ "You might be interested in these two previous threads [Why did German aces have so many more confirmed kills than any other aces during WWII?](_URL_4_) [Why did German fighter aces in.WWII have signifcantly more confirmed kills than any other nation?](_URL_3_)" ]	[ "Not to discourage any further answers, but you find these older answers to be informative: [What would \"boot camp\" and PT have been like for Roman soldiers around the time of the Punic Wars?](_URL_0_) by /u/Celebreth [I have just joined the Roman army, what is my life going to be like now](_URL_1_)? [People from...
How come I have to pay for Foxtel and get ads, when things like youtube are free because they play ads.	[ "It used to be ad free, it was launched on that as a premise. The simplest answer I can give is profit." ]	[ "The reason they can post footage from Star Wars is [Fair Use](_URL_0_). \"Examples of fair use include commentary, criticism, news reporting, research, teaching, library archiving and scholarship\" Because they are providing commentary, criticism and arguably teaching they are allowed to use the copyrighted work...
What causes depression and how do we stop it?	[ "They don't know yet and they don't yet. They have kind of worked out brain chemicals causing it sometimes and pills to regulate the brain chemistry, but clearly it's not as easy as it sounds and it's different for different people." ]	[ "I wrote a fairly long answer to this [here](_URL_0_). It doesn't cover everything, so let me know if you have any questions!" ]
Can we build a space faring super-computer-server-farm that orbits the Earth or Moon and utilizes the low temperature and abundant solar energy?	[ "1) No. Space is only cold right up until you drift into direct sunlight and/or generate waste heat. A vacuum is a fantastic thermal insulator. 2) Depends entirely on what you wanted to actually build, but I'm sure you could get enough solar panels to do it. 3) Well solar panels are typically tuned to the visible s...	[ "Imagine you have a computer on your house. Now you want to connect that computer to your friend 100 miles away. How do you do it? You could lay a 100 mile cable, but do you have the permissions to dig up roads and pathways? You would use a company whose cables were already there, and just use that network of cab...
how is it possible for carbon-14 to be present in coal samples millions of years old?	[ "_URL_0_ \"The presence of carbon-14 in the isotopic signature of a sample of carbonaceous material possibly indicates its contamination by biogenic sources or the decay of radioactive material in surrounding geologic strata.\"" ]	[ "This had just popped up on the front page a few days ago, take a look at the explanation by [Sean Carroll](_URL_0_). He answers the question very basically there, though if you watch the entire lecture he goes into further detail." ]
Why would an individual phospholipid switch sides in a phospholipid bilayer?	[ "The two surfaces of a typical cell membrane have very different lipid compositions because they need to have different physical properties. For example the outer surface of a mammalian cell's plasma membrane has mostly charge-neutral lipids, and thus presents am inert surface to the outside world. Good for preven...	[ "_URL_0_ shows a few cycles and biochemical equilibriums of fats (names marked in BLUE). Most fats change in a long cycle of small changes into other fats untill they can change into sugar. Some change back and forth." ]
Why are parachutes used in the military round. While the ones used recreationally are rectangular?	[ "Rectangular parachutes are used by highly skilled and trained military personnel (think, special forces High Altitude Low Open jumps) These types of parachutes require more skill to operate effectively and accurately and can easily become extremely dangerous when controlled by someone with little to no training....	[ "In the good old age before Commercial Radio songs were a multiple of lengths. Take for example Meat Loaf's bat out of hell or Queen's Bohemian Rapsody which are long. Commercial Radio required adverts to be inserted at specific points as the time was \"sold\" to investors. This meant radio required songs to fit a...
What's the difference between gardening and farming?	[ "gar·den·ing noun the activity of tending and cultivating a garden, especially as a pastime. farm·ing noun the activity or business of growing crops and raising livestock Yes this is copied and pasted from Google but it sums it up quite nicely. Gardening tends to be a pasttime while farming is for growing food on a...	[ "Actual cheat codes (aka, Konami code, or GTA's system for insta-spawning cars) are put in by developers. They can be either for making game-testing easier (No-clip, invunerability/extra lives, or all-weapons), or purely for fun (Big Heads, What-If Mode, character/weapon skin replacements). These are often by butto...
What does Facebook have to gain from buying Whatsapp for $16 billion?	[ "The main benefit is Whatsapp's client base - Whatsapp has roughly 450 million users. Facebook, like many other companies, earns its revenues from ads and selling premium services, so now they'll have 450 million more clients earn money from. Also, Whatsapp, being a chat application and essentially a social network...	[ "They just changed their terms. They've done it a lot. People who don't read the terms thinks it means they can use anything you upload for anything anywhere, but it only applies to things that are uploaded publicly. Their new terms state that they're allowed to (for example) not delete your message you sent to som...
What is happening at those small points in a cup of soft drink that produce streams of bubbles?	[ "That particular spot likely has a surface irregularity or some other feature that makes [nucleation](_URL_0_) of carbon dioxide bubbles easier there than elsewhere. Nucleation of a new phase at an interface (\"heterogeneous nucleation\") is in general easier than nucleation in the bulk of the material (\"homogeneo...	[ "Worked in a bar for years. The reason why they stick is because the glasses are warm and wet. When they cool down, the trapped air in between the glasses cools and condenses. Normally, the space glasses might let in some air, but because of the water that forms a seal, no pressure is relieved. Effectively you've f...
Why do large MMO-style games make you download a client and then a huge patch? Why not have it all download at the same time?	[ "Because it is very easy to write into the code of an exe file the ability to update. It is extremely tedious to recompile code into an exe file every time an update is pushed. Especially when you consider updates that come out immediately after major patches that fix bugs. It makes no sense to release a new exe e...	[ "Imagine you want to cook some food. You reach for a recipe book. Not being very brave you go for something simple. You take the eggs and mushrooms and butter and ham out of the fridge, and you follow the instructions carefully. At the end of the process you enjoy your omelette and think \"if I ever want this omele...
Who where the 600 Ottoman defectors participating in the final siege of Constantinople, and why did they defect?	[ "I'm not familiar with the specifics of these 600 or the accuracy of the claim, but the early Ottoman forces were a bit of a hodgepodge set of troops. Far from being the \"exclusive\" entity that tribalism is often understood as, the Ottoman \"tribe\" could and did incorporate all sorts of people who were not blood...	[ "A commonly cited example is that Thomas Jefferson hosted the first Iftar (post-fast dinner during the month of Ramadan) in the White House. While the occasion may not have been an iftar in the traditional sense, during the tenure of the ambassador of Tunis at the White House, he did postpone dinner until sunset du...
how does something become radioactive?	[ "Something is radioactive when the center of its atoms doesn't like staying together. When the atom center flies apart, it releases radiation. This happens when either the things that make up the center of the atom was shoved together out of smaller bits in a way that doesn't like staying together. (Most of the s...	[ "If you're talking about FM radio as opposed to playback from your phone, I think I can help. So if you have a good enough ear to realize that a song is a half step high, you'll know that if you have two identical song files or tapes and one is played slightly faster/ pitched up higher than the other, it will be pe...
Why does a candle make smoke when blown out but not when it's lit?	[ "The smoke you see is the vaporized wax that is the actual fuel of the candle's flame." ]	[ "While there are still a lot of unpopped kernels and only a few already popped, the energy is absorbed by the unpopped kernels. It is only until a few unpopped kernels are left, that the already popped kernels start to absorb energy and get burnt. Copy pasted my top answer from: _URL_0_" ]
Does our subconscious constantly run certain "subroutines" (for lack of a better word)?	[ "Yes, it is constantly carrying out check-ups of your surrounding, and associative memory is always on the go, deducing what is happening. Type 1 process are automatic and involve no cognitive strain. You should read Daniel Kahneman's 'Thinking, fast and slow' for superb insight into all of this. You will really en...	[ "Right now it the closest we have gotten is using artificial neural networks. _URL_0_ It isn't quite as complex as mapping all of the synapses in the human brain. Basically we can make a neural network, and by feeding it a set of inputs and the correct output, we can teach it what kind of output we want in the futu...
Why is it bad to hide under an underpass during a tornado?	[ "it's a windtunnel so it can be worse under. Debris fly's in and shotguns from the change. It can also fail and collapse. Usually there will be a drainage culvert nearby with a big plastic tube that a person could get into and ride it out _URL_0_" ]	[ "This video created by Vsauce 3 (Jake Roper) does a very good job explaining this: _URL_1_ I hope this answers your question. He also did another video on a simmilar line of - could you survive: _URL_0_" ]
If the earth travels in an elliptical orbit around the sun, why aren't some seasons longer than others?	[ "It's very nearly circular, the eccentricity is about 0.0167. Distance to the Sun varies from 147 to 152 million kilometres." ]	[ "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...
Belarus' reputation as 'the last dictatorship in Europe'	[ "> To what extent can Belarus be called a true authoritarian dictatorship? About as much as Russia can be." ]	[ "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?" ]
If your brain has no pain receptors, why do brain freezes, migraines, and headaches hurt?	[ "The brain itself doesn't have any pain receptors, but it's surrounded by lots of different tissues (muscles, nerves, blood vessels, membranes, etc) that do have them. So you can still feel pain in your head, it's just not being sent directly from your brain tissue." ]	[ "I'm not sure anyone knows exactly why each genetic abnormality so commonly affect the face. It does seem that chromosomal problems almost always have extreme manifestation in the face as opposed to other areas (with exception perhaps of genitals). One SPECULATION I can give is that facial development continues wel...
Why is it that if I fall off the roof, I could be seriously hurt, but if I toss an ant off the roof, it'll be just fine?	[ "The bigger you make something, the weaker it gets, because as you increase the size, mass grows faster than strength. Say you have an ice cube that's 1 cm x 1 cm x 1 cm. That's one cubic centimeter in volume, and it has a footprint of one square centimeter. If you make this cube 10 times larger in all dimensions,...	[ "Your error is here: > As such, the train hits the fly with a massive amount of force, equal to the acceleration times the mass of the train. The force on the fly is the acceleration of the fly times the mass of the fly. The force on the train is the acceleration of the train times the mass of the train. These...
what is Modernism and what is Postmodernism	[ "Pre-modernism: We have the truth. Modernism: We can find the truth. Post-modernism: There is no truth." ]	[ "Hi there, not to discourage further comment on this topic (the origins of \"chivalry\" are interesting), but there have been quite a few threads about PTSD in the premodern world. These may be of interest for you as you wait for more comments: _URL_0_" ]
What determines the size of raindrops	[ "this has already been answered, but I just wanted to say this was such an awesome question. I love the questions that I'd never really thought about before. it's like a clarity Clarence moment for me, like 'oh, why did I never think of questioning this?'" ]	[ "[Here](_URL_0_)'s a great video by Steve Mould on Tom Scott's channel which explains it. Essentialy it's because the viscosity (thickness) of water changes at different temperatures, changing how it splashes as it's poured." ]
Why is that if you fall asleep hungry you still wake up feeling more or less fine?	[ "While you are asleep your body works to keep you alive and homeostasis up. Your blood sugar levels are tightly controlled, when it drops you start producing hormones to tell you that you are hungry and hormones to break down it's sugar and fat reserves to keep you alive. While you are asleep it's mostly growth ho...	[ "When you work out you actually tear your muscles. Once you are resting your body repairs them, and this is how you actually gain muscle mass. So naturally it needs nutrients and food to break down and convert into that new tissue. However when you just overeat without working out your body doesn't have any repair...
What is actually going on inside your body when you "get the wind knocked out of you"?	[ "Your solar plexus is a bundle of nerves. If you are hit there, the nerves are shocked for a while, and cause your diaphragm to be paralyzed. This keeps you from breathing." ]	[ "The inner ear and outer ear are seperated by a layer of issue impermeable to the outside atmosphere called the ear drum, aka tympanic membrane. When the air pressure changes by a large amount, the air in the inner ear and the air outside the ear are not at equilibrium. To re-establish that equilibrium of pressure,...
Why do professional cyclists go cycling during rest days on a tour?	[ "1. to stay loose, limber. 2. to get familiar with course and course conditions. 3. to work on team strategy for the next leg(s) Further, taking their bike out for a ride is not a lot of exertion for people at this level of fitness. It's a bit like asking why a soccer player would get out of bed and go on a walk on...	[ "Simply put, some explorers had discovered that, past the Rocky Mountains, there was a large area of fertile land that would be good for farming. Some Americans wanted to get in on the good farmland, so they traveled overland to get to it. Since railroads hadn't been built at that time, they either took a railroad ...
why there isn't any rechargeable chainsaws, weed eaters, lawnmowers etc..	[ "You mean like electrical lawn equipment? Because that already exists." ]	[ "It's way, way, WAY, too expensive. The power plant alone would probably be more expensive than the entire lifetime cost of an average bulk carrier. Not to mention the insane mess of regulation that is involved with running a nuclear reactor. Basically, big ships run on bunker fuel, and bunker fuel is ludicrously...
How was the speed of an electron traveling through a wire determined?	[ "If an electron is moving through a material under an applied voltage, and a magnetic field is applied perpendicular to its movement, it will change its path, migrating to one side of the material. As many electrons do this, the imbalance of charge towards one side will create a voltage perpendicular to both the ap...	[ "Thee same way airplanes do. They have a probe with a hole in the front of it. Air is forced into it by the movement of the helicopter or plane that pressure is read as airspeed" ]
What are the biological differences between experiencing seasonal allergies and having a cold.	[ "Having a cold is you getting attacked by a virus (and your immune system fighting it). Seasonal allergies is your immune system mistaking pollen from pants for something dangerous and attacking in the same way it would do if it was a virus. Which is why it can cause similar symptoms." ]	[ "Everything. Apart from them both being the result of field forces - forces that act at a distance - there is nothing similar about them. You are asking 'what is the difference between an antelope and a brick?'. Good as a setup for a joke - useless as a question." ]
why do news channels consider Twitter a reliable, relevant, and serious source for different things?	[ "> Twitter was just for teens and young adults When reputable sources starting using it to disseminate information, that is no longer the case. Twitter is an easy way to reach a massive number of people, be it to share a major headline, or a photo of your dinner plate." ]	[ "It's pretty simple, really: Microsoft [adopted TNR as a default system font](_URL_0_) in Windows in 1992. Windows achieved remarkable dominance — it still holds more than a 90% share of [the desktop OS market](_URL_1_) — and Microsoft Office achieved similar success in the productivity software market. So essentia...
Why do we steer vehicles from the front, but aircraft (elevators/rudder) from the rear?	[ "Forklifts are a vehicle that drive from the rear. If you've ever driven one you'll immediately realize that it totally different. They steer from the rear because it allows you to maneuver in tighter spaces and perform an almost zero radius turn. Cars don't do this because they need to operate safely at high speed...	[ "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 being near the ocean or a lake make us feel calm?	[ "Quite simply, we learn to feel calm via some combination of conditioning methods: * Classical conditioning (e.g. you've associated oceans/lakes with another 'stimulus' that naturally produces calm, like going on a vacation or spending time with a SO) * Operant conditioning (e.g. positively or negatively reinforcin...	[ "this diagram shows the illusion well, _URL_3_ Basically we all interpret cues associated with perspective. things far away get smaller so if it's big in the distance it must really be big up close. In the picture the moon is the same diameter but it's position in the scene makes the one up front looks tiny. Same...
Why do brakes on a car hardly fail and you never hear about a car accident due to a brake failure/malfunction?	[ "There's generally brakes on multiple wheels, so in order for there to be a complete brake failure there needs to be some catastrophic failure that affects all the tires at once. If there's a partial failure or one single brake fails, it is extremely obvious that your car is not braking well and most people would g...	[ "In the US, broadcast radio and television stations are required to send a station identification at the top of the hour (or close to it, at a \"natural break\" in programming). Most stations will put one of their commercial breaks at the same time. Because the cycle is regular, most stations will also tend to use ...
How are video game consoles (Xbox 360 and PS3) still relevant today when PCs "age" so fast?	[ "The quality of games on consoles tends to improve with the consoles age as people get a better feel for how to get the most out of the hardware. Because all PS3s are the same,a game released for it will have a single graphics level which the developers think it will run best at. As PCs vary lots you get games whe...	[ "The foods one I can answer. We evolved to like high caloric foods because we needed the calories when we were struggling to survive. Thus fatty or sugary foods taste good to us because it used to be great to eat them. Well now it's too easy to overindulge and weve made processed foods that have way more fat or sug...
How far would you have to fall on Mars to hurt yourself?	[ "If we believe (as I think is reasonable, at least for an estimate) that the damage caused by a fall is directly related to velocity, then the equivalent height on Mars to a drop of n meters on Earth is approximately (9.81/3.71) = 2.64 times the height on Earth. This is because falling in a vacuum over a distance h...	[ "Radiation doesn't just blast the surface with cancer rays, it also whisks away the atmosphere. Mar's atmosphere is very thin and complex life that we have on Earth cannot survive (it is called the Armstrong Limit)." ]
Physicists of reddit; Is a "hoverboard" theoretically possible? What are the physics involved? What will we need to manipulate to make it possible?	[ "A board that can hover over an arbitrary surface? probably not. You'd need some kind of antigravity. And gravity not being like electromagnetism means that we know of no way to get a repulsive gravitational effect. So, in short... not any time soon. Maybe some day in the distant future when we have an understand...	[ "Have you ever wondered what's inside your bouncy ball? Imagine it was too small to cut but you really, really wanted to know. What you might want to try is throwing it into something so hard that it breaks and you can see the smaller parts. Of course, if you only have another bouncy ball because that's the only th...
Why does big tobacco lace their product with 1,000X of chemicals	[ "They don’t lace their products with thousands of chemicals. Almost all of those chemicals are natural components of the tobacco leaf or products of its combustion. The number of chemicals is a red herring, anyway. Why should the number matter? What matters is the effects they have on the human body. And yes, in th...	[ "Boeing and Airbus sell planes to countries and airlines that do not ban smoking. It is cheaper for them to have that feature default than to make an entirely different plane for those countries." ]
Does the hubble actually take "pictures" or does it take in data and we computer generate the images?	[ "Yes and no. There are two types of cameras, film and ccd(charge-coupled device). Film cameras are the old school ones where you'd have an actual roll of film in it and to get the pictures you'd have to get the roll developed using chemical means. Ccd cameras are the modern digital kind where light hits a sensor an...	[ "It's called spectroscopy. Simply put, when light go through an element like hydrogen, the atoms will absorb different wavelength of the light. When you analyse the spectrum of light that when through hydrogen you will see a couple of black line where the wavelength were absorbed. It's a bit like the fingerprint of...
Why are the United States and Canada much more economically prosperous than the rest of the Americas? How true was this 200, 300, 400 years ago?	[ "I can't speak as for the differences over time, but take a look at this thread that covers the why question fairly thoroughly : _URL_4_ This covers much of the same ground that the other commenter bought up but has additional detail and conversation." ]	[ "Let's say you're starting a business and I loan you the money to get started. You make your payments and manage to keep the lights on. Soon, you start making a profit. I, who loaned you money, don't come demanding more money because you're making the payments on which we agreed. Your buddy Jeff has a business, to...
Would it be possible to create an entirely new organ which has a different function from ones that exist?(for a human)	[ "Depends what you mean by organ. We already have artificial \"organs\" that regulate heartbeat, deliver medicine, or suppress excessive brain activity. They are relatively simple today, but no doubt they will get more complex in the future." ]	[ "I initially was extremely sceptical, as the thread question is both wide-ranging and oddly specific. However, reading your explanatory post I got a much better idea of what it was you are looking for. You raise several valid points and I think the questions you are asking are interesting ones. But you mostly answe...
How can the 9/11 families sue Saudi Arabia? What's stopping Saudi Arabia from just completely ignoring them?	[ "They will absolutely ignore it since US courts have no jurisdiction there and rightly so. I can say with the upmost confidence that the US would do the same. Suing a country because of the actions of some of its nationals is absurd to say the least." ]	[ "In the country of Rwanda there were different groups of people. One was called the Hutus, and the other was called the Tutsis. The Hutus didn't like the Tutsis because the Tutsis had more money, and always bossed the Hutus around. Then one day the French government which was was in charge of Rwanda tried to allow ...
Why are bananas so slippery?	[ "Phloem. Pull back the yellow peel of a banana, and there they are, haunting you. They run vertically along the fruit, demanding to be removed with precision. ... We're talking about those annoying white strings on bananas, or more technically, “phloem bundles. They’re slippery." ]	[ "Because effective soaps are basic. I don't mean \"simple\", I mean they are bases on the PH scale. Bases hurt when you put them on your eyeball. Sure you could make a shampoo that is not basic, but if you want a shampoo that actually works, you need to use a base. Baby shampoos are tear-free because they are neutr...
Is there footage of the atomic bombs being detonated and exploded over Japan, or is it classified?	[ "Yes. The Hiroshima footage is not good, and in black and white. [This video](_URL_1_) features a snippet of it (the plane before and the flash of light is not in the original). [Here is the Nagasaki footage](_URL_0_) — better than the Hiroshima footage but not what you would call professional quality. In both ca...	[ "Several reasons: * Better technology. Many chambers were detected by sonar or radar. They would send a signal through the stones and listen for irregular echoes. Today's sonar and radar imaging techniques are better than they were in the past. The equipment is more sensitive, uses different frequencies, and with d...
We determine the distance of stars and galaxies via redshift. But therefore we need to know the true emmision spectrum. Which should be an unknown variable as we only see the already redshifted light. How do we determine the spectrum of an observated object?	[ "You need only know the emission spectrum of hydrogen, which is the main constituent of basically all stars. Hydrogen, and indeed all elements of the periodic table, emits light at very specific frequencies. You can detect these peaks with a spectrograph, provided you can collect enough light from a distant star. T...	[ "We don't really. Flawed models are always an option to explain weird phenomenon, and it certainly wouldn't be the first time it happened. The reason the leading theories include Dark Matter and Dark Energy is because we can't find the error. Everything we can measure in scales we have access to seem to be matching...
Why does Britain spend so much money remembering the 7/7 attack but not the more deadly Lockerbie or Omaha attacks?	[ "Honestly I'm not sure they do, do they? Yeah it's remembered, but I think it's only because it's more recent, really. It's only just writing this now looking up at the clock that's reminded me today was ten years, I've not heard anything about it yet today." ]	[ "Our telescopes can't really focus on something so small. Jupiter takes up way more space in the sky than the lunar lander does. Lunar orbiting probes [have taken pictures of the landing sites](_URL_0_) in recent years though." ]
What is the difference between permanent markers (sharpie) and wipe away markers (expo)?	[ "I'm not 100% sure, but I believe temporary markers have an additional chemical in them that keeps the ink from holding on to the surface, while permanent markers do not. The reason I think this is because if you draw a line permanent marker, then draw over it with an erasable one, it will allow both marks to be er...	[ "You could test it. E.g. cover yourself in grease and then shower 1) with water only 2) with water and the product. Compare results. That would be a (pretty crude) experiment, which is how we learn answers to those kinds of questions. Also you could compare two pieces of perishable food, one of them treated with th...
If someone was found not guilty of killing several people but later came out and admitted to the murders, why couldn’t he/she be recharged and retried?	[ "The fifth amendment says that you can't be retried for a crime again after being punished or acquitted (the legal term is \"double jeopardy\"). That said if they had decided to drop any of the original cases due to lack of evidence, there was a mistrial, or your admission involved other crimes that you weren't nec...	[ "Well for starters - it depends where you are. US Policy is you need to wait 12 months, UK/France policy is \"no if you had one since 1980\". ___ That being said - because there was a reason you got a blood transfusion. They just put a bunch of blood INTO you for some reason, why on earth would they want to take it...
Where did the original vinegar "mother" come from, if you need vinegar to make a "mother"?	[ "Vinegar is Latin for “sour wine.” All you have to do is let wine go bad under certain conditions and you’ll get a mother eventually." ]	[ "The oldest condominium (i.e. territory with a shared sovereignity or territory with several sovereignities) I know about is Andora : basically, a country ruled by two foreign princes (one spanish cardinal, one french count/king/president) for the last 7 centuries. There are others, like an island between France an...
Why can't I remember my dreams after waking up?	[ "It is actually totally normal. I think of dreaming as the brain trying on solutions to life's problems. Most tries are forgettable because they do not actually work and your brain realizes that. Occasionally, you will remember and you should pay attention to that. Some people try very hard to remember dreams and s...	[ "What you're overlooking is all of the sensory data that we intake at all times, if we set our brains to record in 100% detail in regards to sight and sound we'd have to cease other functions. Basically we don't have the RAM for that" ]
Why do humans scream when they get scared?	[ "it scares off most things that would bite us and it attracts other humans' attention, which before our culture shifted away from common interest in helping each other meant help would come quickly." ]	[ "_URL_0_ In other animals, the iris does not take up all of the opening. The sclera is still there, it's just colored the same as the iris. In humans, it is theorized that we evolved a prominent white sclera and small iris as a nonverbal communication tool, as humans are much more social creatures than most anima...
How are secret government buildings/facilities kept from beings exposed by construction workers who worked at the cites? (Secret bunkers, bases, etc)	[ "For secret bunkers and bases and whatnot, the military builds it themselves. Generally there in an Engineer Corps division of the army that is specifically for building and infrastructure." ]	[ "Most neighborhoods built after the 1950s, ie subdivisions in the suburbs, are built all at once. Meaning they will all be built within a year of each other and use 1-5 building plans. Homes built in cities or on privately owned lots outside the city limits that are not a part of a subdivision are built as the owne...
Why does your nose run when you cry?	[ "There is a small hole in the part of your eye socket near the top of your nose, it's called the tear duct. When you cry, your body is kind of cleaning your eye, and after the tears(eye cleaner, I call them that because tears have a strong chemical in them that kills germs but I can't remember it's name) they go do...	[ "To keep balance we need our arms to swing roughly in time with our legs, when at walking pace this is quite slow and easy to do, when running we need to do it quicker. By bending the arm it lets us move it forward and backward quicker so is better for running, but when walking the energy required to keep the arm b...
Why are puppy mills still legal?	[ "They're not, in a lot of places. But people still manage to make money off them. A lot of people are completely unaware of puppy mills and how they operate. A lot of people still think it's OK to buy a puppy from a pet store, because they don't know that no reputable breeder would just sell puppies to a store. S...	[ "Politics. It's an easy issue to use to paint your opponent as \"evil\" regardless of which side of the debate they are on." ]
How do the kalahari dirt circles form?	[ "_URL_0_ Carbon monoxide from an unknown source appears to be the culprit." ]	[ "To add a concrete example to what's already been stated: [The Sahara desert fertilizes the Amazon rainforest.](_URL_0_) Equatorial trade winds carry mineral dust (carbonates and oxides, mostly) from the Bodele depression in the Sahara to South America, significantly increasing the productivity of the Amazon basin....
"The human body is 70% water." - How did we find this out?	[ "We have a pretty stong understanding of anatomy and cellular biology. Its not a big guess we just actually know what we are made up of... We gained that knowledge through centuries of medical science, chemistry and biology. So put more bluntly, we measured it." ]	[ "The formula was designed to fit the data obtained from testing and experimentation. THAT is the reason the formula fits." ]
Why did the Bosnian war start?	[ "The collapse of Yugoslavia and rising ethnic tensions flamed by politicians who aimed to gain power and prestige for mostly themselves and a little bit for their nation. A really good documentary on the matter if you have an hour: _URL_0_" ]	[ "Hi, I've approved the post, but just a note to you and potential respondents: this subreddit has a 20-year rule against discussing current events, so any answers will have to cut off at 1997. If you're looking for answers that can include 1998-2012, do consider x-posting elsewhere, eg. a foreign affairs sub like /...
If the Hubble telescope can see extremely far in to deep space, why dont we use it to look at planets/galaxies closer to find life etc.	[ "Galaxies are big, planets are small. Do some simple math, a galaxy is maybe 100,000 light-years across, or more, at a billion light years away that's a ratio of 1:10,000. Now consider a planet, even a huge planet like Jupiter is only about 0.5 light-seconds in diameter. So even at 4 light-years distance, the close...	[ "Because of something called [tapetum lucidum](_URL_0_). These are structures in the eye that act sort of like a prism and reflect around so that it concentrates it within the eyes. This gives the animal better night vision. As to the second part of your question, why our eyes don't shine much with light, that's th...
How do orbiting telescopes track stars?	[ "They use [reaction wheels](_URL_0_) in most cases, which run continuously and only need some electrical power to run. The main drawback is that they wear over time and eventually fail, so engineers often put spares if missions are expected to last for long time." ]	[ "That could merely be a subjective experience, but this experience can be helped by the fact that your perception of far-off landmarks is vastly reduced. You measure movement by the movement of landmarks in relation to you, and at night you cannot see far-off landmarks. Because of this, you only see things that are...
Are there murderers, psychopaths or other behavioral deviations commonly associated with human beings among animals?	[ "What looks like horrific behavior in animals (even intelligent animals) is regarded as natural. You can observe violent, deviant behavior in the higher apes and ocean mammals, but it's given an explanation or a reason for having occurred. Even if an animal is killing out of boredom, they'll consider it natural in ...	[ "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...

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