Subset (10)

eli5 · 25k rows

Split (1)

train · 25k rows

query stringlengths 20 300	positive listlengths 1 1	negative listlengths 1 1
How does the brain decide what is funny and what is not?	[ "Humor is literally a shift in the frame of reference. You expect one thing, you get another. (Alternately, you don't know what to expect, and what you get is still unexpected.) Consider the knock-knock joke: When you say \"who's there?' the expectation is the name of the knocker. Instead you get something else. Wh...	[ "By response of said stimuli. When it goes too far a, say, kitten will signal it with body language and sound. And their partner will respond by licking the damaged area and going on a little less violently. If you have a kitten at home you can easily try this. If your kitten scratches or bites too hard, let out a...
How does beer become cold from the keg to the tap?	[ "The place I used to work for had long refrigerators that you put the kegs in while attached to the tap. So the beer kegs were cold to begin with." ]	[ "I ain’t no scientist but here is my two cents... Fruit is designed to ferment (rot) as part of its ability to seed. When fruit falls from a tree (or is picked) the fruit starts to ferment which releases natural sugars making it sweet and juicy - eventually you’ll see the pips, seeds or stones becoming easier to re...
What is a "keyframe" in computer animating (software)?	[ "Keyframe is a digital image processing term that's really important for video compression. Basically if your video is just 2 people sitting in a chair discussing, then one frame isn't really going to be very different from the adjacent ones. So you don't need to store all of the frames, just certain keyframes and...	[ "You are touching the surface on why hand drawn movies are so difficult to make and why the Disney productions were so loved. They reuse the still after it is drawn once. If they need another angle the original still is used for reference. These stools are larger than the frame and you can move them with the shot t...
Can rainbows originate from ice particles?	[ "It sounds like you are describing a sun dog, [google image search](_URL_0_) provides a wide range of examples. In the southeastern US, I often see two small sections of the circular sun dog in the winter sky, and occasionally during the summer. Similar to [these](_URL_1_), but much less vivid, most people don't se...	[ "Thats photoshopped just so you're aware. The actual image is this: _URL_0_ They usually form in high altitudes, normally perpendicular to the wind direction. Long story short, They form when stable moist air flows over mountains." ]
why does a "father" have to pay child support for kids that are not his?	[ "He's not, you can request a paternity test for proof. He's still stuck paying for the divorce, however. Your district may vary." ]	[ "A reasonable series of adaptations, in chronological order, all of which can be seen in various animals today: First you have broadcast spawning...eggs and sperm thrown out into the currents, mingling at will. Next, you have males that get close to females to fertilize their eggs, cloaca to cloaca so that eggs get...
When a new POTUS and his family move into the White House, how much can they change? How are the personal tastes of each president balanced with historic preservation?	[ "There is really very little history in the interior of the White House other than furnishings and other portable objects. The building was completely gutted leaving only the exterior walls during the Truman administration." ]	[ "Hello everyone, Unfortunately, we have already had to remove a number of poor quality responses in this thread, including many asking about the deleted comments, which merely compound the issue. Please, before you attempt answer the question, keep in mind [our rules](_URL_7_) concerning in-depth and comprehensive...
Historical use of a "gun-blade"?	[ "In 1838, the US Navy commissioned 150 [Elgin \"Cutlass\" Pistols](_URL_0_) for the South Sea Expedition. More info [here](_URL_1_) If your uncle had 2 of those, they would be quite valuable." ]	[ "Very poorly. Assuming you ask about the time period after we found out they were possible, before that they obviously weren't a thing, but before we found out why people died left right and centre. However, we soon found out that some combination of blood clotted, others worked fine." ]
How does a computer tell us how much battery percentage is left?	[ "They use a method called \"Coulomb counting\". Imagine you bought a wallet to store your money. You know it's empty. Now you put $100. You know, the wallet holds $100. Then you stopped by a gas station and spent $20. Now, even without looking, you know that there are currently $80 in your wallet. Coulomb counting ...	[ "Variable message display signs like this: _URL_1_ Are generally mounted on trailers and are portable so they have solar panels on top with batteries for energy storage. More permanent structures like this: _URL_0_ can either be solar powered or if they are installed in more urban areas where there's readily availa...
Did the leaders of the Soviet Union fervently believe in Marxism? Did it guide their decisions?	[ "Well the Marxist view of history shaped their world view and how they operated. This means that they saw history as a gradual progression involving several stages. Even though it might not look like it by their actions, they did try to achieve Communism by first developing Capitalism (State Capitalism) with the ho...	[ "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 does the body's blood clotting mechanism sense when you have a cut?	[ "From wikipedia article on [coagulation](_URL_0_): > When endothelium is damaged, the normally isolated, underlying collagen is exposed to circulating platelets, which bind directly to collagen with collagen-specific glycoprotein Ia/IIa surface receptors. Edit: deleted some unrelated stuff." ]	[ "The machinery that replicates your DNA, DNA Polymerase, makes one mistake out of every billion base pairs that it creates. This is after a variety of proofreading proteins have done their job. You have 6 billion base pairs, so expect 6 mistakes every time a cell divides. > Are the cells of my left arm more closel...
My country is about to have a new mobile operator, and bidders are currently embarked on a "spectrum auction". What is spectrum, and why do governments auction it?	[ "Spectrum in this context refers to the radio spectrum. That's the set of frequencies that are used to transmit information via electromagnetic waves. [here is the U.S. version](_URL_0_) Basically, to avoid interference from other users and servicers, companies need to be able to carve out a certain band of freque...	[ "Firstly, art, such as paintings or sculptures isn't worth according to time necessary to create or level of skill of the author. The worth of art is primarily derived from the story of given piece of art or story of the author. Like any other product in economics, price of art is calculated by demand and supply ra...
How is it possible that humans can share the same genes as a banana?	[ "That's possibly a bit of a myth. The fifty-fifty legend seems to have started years before the first complete banana genome, and most articles reference back one or two old claims. I'm not saying it's exactly like the persistence anti-vaxx research, but there are similarities. So. Probably, a lot of that overlap...	[ "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 do traffic lights work?	[ "They're either on a timer or on a sensor. Ever approach an intersection and see vertical and horizontal cuts in the pavement? That's where workers buried the sensors. Those work by detecting metal, not the weight of the vehicle." ]	[ "The human brain has (as I understand it- could be wrong) a bit of an autopilot function. However, with this said, if the brain detects a problem, it pops out of it. That's the reason why you start paying attention just as the guy cuts you off, from what I understand." ]
Why the US has trade relations with China (a communist country), while Cuba is still under embargo (also a communist country)	[ "Because Nixon saw that China had potential to become a very wealthy trading partner and liberalized relations (and because Nixon was a Republican, it was quite hard for conservatives, also Republicans, to argue he was wrong). Cuban relations remain chilly because Cuban anti-communists represent a very important vo...	[ "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 XXX is mostly used in relation to porn	[ "* > The adult only rating of X was never trademarked by the MPAA – filmmakers could self classify their films under the X rating. This became a problem as the video tape pornography market exploded in the 1980s exploiting the X rating with the logic that if one X is hot, then XXX must be really steamy. In Septembe...	[ "In general when planning new communities, they leave gaps in the numbers if there is a possibility of new houses being constructed between existing houses later on. If you have 100 right next to 102, and there are a few acres for new development between them, then you have to add 100a, 100b, and so on, which is me...
How do criminals crack 3-4-5 digit codes on safes,locks etc?	[ "They generally don't crack such codes. For safes and locks, they drill them open, or otherwise use physical force. For phones and computers, they tend to trick users into entering their passwords into fake sites, or just try every single password until one works (if the software will allow it). Most \"hacking\" is...	[ "My guess is that its the same way telemarketers work, they ring heaps of people and maybe only 1% of people will buy, but that 1% is enough to become rich. Since this website is a $100 subscription, all you need is 100 gullible people to scam and you're already $10,000 richer." ]
Is it possible to enter earths atmosphere (or any planet for that matter) slowly enough to avoid "burning up"?	[ "It is possible in theory to make a powered descent, basically the opposite of a launch. In fact this had to be done for the moon landings, as there wasn't an atmosphere to use for slowing down. The problem with using this strategy to land on something big like Earth is the amount of energy, or fuel, required. An...	[ "With some difficulty. This was an issue in the Apollo 11 landing. Neil Armstrong had to send a message back about slosh in the descent engine tanks, and the Apollo 12 descent stage was modified as a result. But in a launch, the tanks are tall and narrow. They start off full and there is little side to side motion ...
Why do chicks hatch? Are they all curious or angry or otherwise instinctively inclined?	[ "They hatch because their instinct tell them to break through the shell. Also, if they didn't, they'd grow too big for the shell and just break through it anyway." ]	[ "Conveniently, PBS' It's Okay to Be Smart covered exactly this [a few days ago](_URL_0_). The short answer, if you don't want to watch the video, is because scratching causes very minor pain that cancels out the itchy signal (pain neurons override pretty much everything) and also releases serotonin to help soothe...
Why does the weak force have two force mediators when the other 3 fundamental forces have one?	[ "Well actually, the weak force has three mediators (Z, W^(+), and W^(-)). And the strong force has multiple mediators as well; there are eight gluons. The number of force carrier particles is related to the symmetry group of the Lagrangian. The symmetry of the electromagnetic gauge theory (QED) is U(1) gauge in...	[ "> If they don't interact through Standard Model interactions, how can we ever directly observe them? We can observe them if that part of the Standard model is wrong. > And if we can't, how do we know that they exist? We don't know that they exist. If our everyday low-energy neutrinos are Majorana fermions, then t...
Why doesn't Japan hold a grudge against the U.S. after we nuked them?	[ "The occupation of Japan went well, the occupying forces helped dismantle the centralized power structure of Japan and helped democratize the nation. Shortly after millions of peasants became land owners and life after the war was better than it was before." ]	[ "See [this discussion](_URL_1_) and [this discussion](_URL_0_). Short answer: they understood they had a \"special\" payload (they had been training to drop unusually shaped and large bombs for some time), and the leader of the unit knew the full story (Tibbets), but most of them did not understand fully what they ...
What was the Japanese reaction to the atom bomb? Did they know right away it a was a nuclear weapon? What were the initial reports like and how did they describe it?	[ "[Here's another response I wrote awhile back on this topic](_URL_0_) — feel free to ask follow-up questions though! Short answer: 1. they knew about the idea of atomic bombs prior to Hiroshima, 2. they got their initial information about what happened to it from American announcements, 3. they sent a survey crew t...	[ "What do you define to be an average American citizen? What is their race? What is their socioeconomic status? Their religion? Political affiliation? It may be hard to generalize such an answer without being more specific." ]
I am the son of a Chinese landowner in the year 1000, how do I prepare for the imperial examination?	[ "If it's okay, I'd like to ask an add-on question: could anyone, theoretically, do the exam, or was it restricted to the middle classes? I mean, clearly a peasant would probably fail because of their poor education, but were they allowed to try?" ]	[ "Hi there, the mod team has already had to remove several responses in this thread because we do not allow [personal anecdotes](_URL_3_). While they're sometimes quite interesting, they're unverifiable, impossible to cross-reference, and not of much use without more context. [This comment](_URL_3_) explains the rea...
How does moving faster than light violate causality?	[ "Special relativity tells us, given how events appear to one observer, how they will appear to another observer, when those observers are moving relative to each other. So you can ask in special relativity what would happen if an object traveled faster than the speed of light (but still going forward in time). It t...	[ "> I don’t even know if this question makes any sense I’m just curious. It makes sense in that I understand what you're asking, but it doesn't make sense in that it's a meaningless question; it has no answer. A photon is always traveling at c in all reference frames, and to measure the passage of time, that can't b...
How standard solutions prepared in the industry?	[ "The same way you do in the lab - mix up some reagents, test for the concentration or amount, slap a label on it and seal it up for storage." ]	[ "The same way that you and I do at home. Do not use too much toothpaste, and spit if you start to build up too much drool or foam." ]
Is there such a thing as a "bad dog"? (assuming the owner is a good person)	[ "Yeah. Just like you can have human sociopaths, you can have canine sociopaths too. This is the only reason I'd ever consider buying a purebred dog; their personalities tend to be a lot more predictable." ]	[ "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...
Is bile considered an enzyme?	[ "Nope. Enzymes are made of proteins. Bile is a mixed goo of surfactants and salts... essentially your body's soap dispenser. I don't think there are any enzymes in there and it looks like the [internets agree](_URL_0_). EDIT: I guess the gallbladder is actually the soap dispenser. Bile is just the soap. Basically, ...	[ "I'm assuming you watched Cooked, right? Leavened bread uses yeast. The yeast helps to break down the harder to digest nutrients in the flour making them more easily absorbed/broken down by the body. Fermentation is amazing." ]
How do firefighters put out fire on top floors of skyscrapers?	[ "They go inside, and set up 'base camp' a few floors below the fire. Modern high-rises are designed to slow fires from spreading within them - although in the tragedy discussed in the news article the fire protection was circumvented by flammable materials (cladding and insulation, added after the building was orig...	[ "People with lots of spare cash are at historic highs. Worldwide interest rates are at historic lows. Bank accounts are not good places to store cash right now, because they effectively hemorrhage around 1-3% of your wealth every year. So rich people all over the world are desperately looking for alternative ways ...
How is a bank "too big to fail"?	[ "\"Too Big to Fail\" was term used in the 2008 financial crisis to describe banks that were so large, that their failure would have a devastating effect on the entire US economy. That is why the government bailed them out. You have to remember that the failure of one of these massive banks would affect more than ju...	[ "Think of it this way. I own a house. In this house I allow several drug dealers to ply their wares. I don't sell drugs, I don't use drugs however I do FACILITATE knowingly, the use of drugs by my direct action and I am profiting off of it. Basically that's why, they know that they where facilitating the exchange o...
How dark/bright is our full moon compared to other moons in the solar system?	[ "Compared to other moons in our solar system, our Luna is much larger than average. [Here](_URL_0_) is a pretty good reference for moon data. Using size as the metric, Titan would be the brightest if it were transplanted to Earth orbit. As to reflectivity of each moon, that could change the results of your query. B...	[ "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...
[Chemistry] What happens to Carbon Monoxide (CO) after it has been produced?	[ "Assuming it's not being manufactured for a certain process or breathed (no health effects, I swear!) carbon monoxide is just rapidly oxidized to carbon dioxide. The amount of CO is so small as compared to that of CO2 and O2 in the atmosphere that there aren't really any major reaction pathways. It is an indirect f...	[ "They die. Cancer cells need food (glucose, protein, etc) and oxygen to stay alive - these typically come from blood supply. Cancer cells have the same metabolic genes as our normal cells, maybe they play around with what fuel they use or how much oxygen they use, but the core mechanics and enzymes are the same. S...
Why do some people have anxiety disorders and others don't? / What factors create anxiety disorders?	[ "Mental disorders can happen for (edit: at least) two reasons. They can happen naturally or be created. From the natural standpoint, it's because people's brains are different. One brain might make too much of some hormone and get an anxiety disorder. Another brain doesn't make too much of the hormone. Anxiety dis...	[ "I don't so much think of it as an evolutionary thing. There's really no benefit to being confused. It comes down to computing power. Your brain just takes a minute to recall old information/piece together new information to develop an idea of where you are and how you got there. I'm currently in flight school and...
Why does turning on a second light not make a room seem twice as bright?	[ "Response of both sight and hearing is roughly logarithmic with amplitude, meaning you need 10x more to percieve it as approximately “double”. This is why sound volume is measured in decibels. I am not sure if luminosity has a logarithmic unit, though. _URL_0_" ]	[ "If you only have one eye, you're only getting one angle of vision. You need two images, taken at slightly different angles, to come up with the perception of depth." ]
- Why do captchas need to look like they're a ransom note with each letter clipped from a different magazine?	[ "It's to make them harder to interpret using optical character recognition software (OCR). You want them to be difficult enough that a computer can't easily read them. If that were to happen, there'd be no point using captchas in the first place." ]	[ "Have you ever those reCaptcha tests that ask you to select the squares with street signs in them? They are used to help teach self driving cars how to identify what is and isn't a street sign. Edit: CPG Grey does a video about it - _URL_0_" ]
Why Xbox One is technically in terms of its hardware capabilities inferior to PS Four?	[ "They could choose to match the abilities of the computer that I use to game at 4k and 60fps on ultra, but they don't for the same reason. They need to keep their cost down to keep their profits up. They only need to make it powerful enough to get people to buy it. Any more powerful is a waste. This is a compromise...	[ "Facebooked used exclusivity at first to drive demand, then learned from MySpace's mistakes. Remember how MySpace was infested with glitter and sparkle, and six billion videos that crashed your browser because some emo 15 year old thought she was original? Remember how Facebook was having none of that shit? They ...
Why are (most) Ballet Dancers flat-chested?	[ "Ballet dancer here- low body fat from diet and rigorous training definitely do play a role in it. Genetics is another factor. Also aesthetics: at my school, females with bigger chests would sometimes be mocked because their body didn't fit the \"stereotypical ballerina body\"." ]	[ "Have you ever been to a WNBA game? Its not very action packed." ]
Why do the mega-rich hoard their wealth?	[ "The biggest problem here is that your premise is wrong. Rich people invest their wealth. That means they use it to buy shares, to invest in startups, or to grow their own companies. Sure, they only do these things if they think they're likely to get more money out of it... but the money they invest is vital to e...	[ "to build publicity. reporters aren't following them all the time. in order to get reporters to show up, the person has to announce that they're going to make a major announcement that'll make news." ]
Why do car wheels look like they're spinning backwards when filmed?	[ "I LOVE YOU FOR ASKING THIS. No one has ever given me a satisfactory answer and then I always forget." ]	[ "There is a glass pane covering over the actual reflective surface. What you are seeing is the side of the sticker that is on the glass. However, because the glass is thick, there is distance between the sticker and the reflective surface, so you can see the back through the glass. Did that answer your question?" ]
why do many young children walk around in their heels raised off the ground	[ "Some people who walk barefoot walk like this. I have been taught by camp counselors to walk like this when barefoot. They aren’t experts, but it clearly lets the ankle and foot soak up shock which is otherwise painful for the heel, and hard on the knees, etc. That’s part of the reason you run on your toes, rathe...	[ "The general consensus is [attention and approval seeking](_URL_4_) or [medical issues](_URL_1_). In [domesticated animals](_URL_2_), the approval seeking is generally from the owner. Because we see this in wild animals as well, it can't just be a human-approval mechanism. The attention seeking can be extended to t...
How come I can eat salt and drink water but I can't drink salt water?	[ "Seawater is very salty. About 3.5%, which makes that pint of water you have with dinner about 17g of salt. The RDA of salt is around 6g, so in that one glass you have three days worth. When you drink it, your cells dump out water to try and balance the salt levels in your cells and your blood and you essentially d...	[ "Because the paths between your nose/mouth and stomach/lungs all intersect at one point and there's a flap that moves based on whether you want stuff to go to your stomach or lungs. You can't do both because of the nature of the flap. It's either the esophagus or the trachea." ]
why can one person in the senate stop something from being voted on?	[ "Because a majority of the Senators have given him the power to do so. Mitch McConnell is the Senate Majority Leader. As the leading Republican in the Senate, the rest of the Republican Senators have chosen him to lead them. As such, he can say \"We're just not going to even vote on this.\" It may seem ridiculo...	[ "The content of a torrent is split into blocks of a fixed size. That's the smallest unit your client can reliably download. Each block can contain one or more files (or parts of them). When you choose to skip a file, but the block containing this file also contains another file that you didn't choose to skip, the w...
Does a magnet on a fridge lose energy over time as it counteracts the force of gravity?	[ "There's a clear distinction between force and work (energy). Work is force applied over a distance. The magnet is staying in place; it's not moving around. So the magnet doesn't lose any energy due to gravity. Think of it this way: if you set an apple on a table, does the table lose energy by holding the apple u...	[ "On the magnetic stripe on the back of the key card are lots of tiny little magnets. They're so small you need a microscope to see them individually. We have the ability to change which direction the magnets in a small area point. So, at one point along the stripe the magnets might point N--S and at another spot it...
Why do some medications cause different kinds of dreams? Night terrors, hyper sexualized dreams, vivid deams etc.	[ "Some medications, such as pain killers or anti-depressants, change your brains chemical makeup. It makes some parts of your brain, brain chemicals and/or hormone levels change, increase and decrease. These things are all responsible for the way you think and feel. If a medication rises certain levels in your brain...	[ "It's your \"instinct\" getting your fight or flight response ready. Your body is anticipating an emergency and starts dilating blood vessels and increasing adrenaline so you can act faster if/when it happens. Edit: To clarify, this is not a prediction of the future, conscious or otherwise. It's your body picking u...
how can the delta IV rocket launch the Orion capsule into space but not ferry American astronauts to the ISS?	[ "Delta IV is just a rocket, a launch vehicle. It'll get to orbit and take whatever you strap to the top of it along for the ride. For manned flights you need a capsule to strap to the top which will keep people alive. That's what Orion will be. It's like the Saturn V rocket and the Apollo capsule, Saturn V could la...	[ "We definitely couldn't find Earth with the transit method Kepler uses. The area Kepler ~~is~~ was pointed at is more or less perpendicular to the plane that the planets orbit in, so from the point of view a planet discovered by Kepler, none of the planets in our system would ever transit Sol." ]
If Macs can have these small, lightweight power adapters, why do we PC laptop people have such big and heavy ones?	[ "Because reducing the size and heat output and increasing power/energy efficiency are the hard/expensive part of laptop design, and it's cheaper/easier to use more commodity power bricks (which tend to be bigger to be cooler / safer) than to push them. Most (not all, just most) commodity PC laptop makers are more ...	[ "When you drink it, the water is at the near center of your body, in your backpack it's not. There i more support at the center of your body so it feels lighter. Carrying it on your back also requires a posture that is harder to maintain and thus requires more energy and may exhaust your muscles more." ]
What is the physical difference between SATA 1/2/3? They all look exactly the same but perform very differently	[ "The differences are in the controller electronics. Faster versions use faster controllers, which are capable of sending and receiving data more quickly." ]	[ "Recently NAND manufacturers have been stacking dies to create larger chips. Sandisk have managed to [stack twenty five 8GB dies](_URL_0_) into this chip for a total of 200GB. In the past memory became larger due to the size of the transistors. This is slowing down and stacking dies is starting to take over, partl...
why do peoples voices sound completely different over the phone? But when ever someone records their voice on camera it usually sounds relitivly the same?	[ "The telephone network was built a century ago. Most of the standards for audio over that network are decades old as well. Even the new standards like 4G LTE (which has a section on audio encoding, it is still a telephony standard) are built to interface with the ancient network and older standards. Back in those d...	[ "That's not how mirrors work. When you bounce sound off a mirror, you don't bounce that sound off of the contours of the reflected image, you bounce the sound off the flat plane of the mirror. Using sonar/echolocation, a mirror sounds exactly like a pane of glass. The light that reflects off of it doesn't effect th...
Can organ recipients donate organs?	[ "Usually they only redonate an organ if the first recipient died shortly after receiving it - I don't know exact specifics, but it would be a scenario in which the organ was transplanted in a last ditch effort to keep someone alive that failed, which I think is at most a few weeks. I looked at some papers real quic...	[ "Well, there is very little data on this for obvious reasons. However the story of Genie* is one modern case of this happening. Reading about that is probably the most information you'll find on the subject. *_URL_0_" ]
What is Final Fantasy? What is the plot, and why is it so damn famous?	[ "From a historical standpoint, I believe that Final Fantasy was a last ditch effort by SquareSoft (now Square Enix) to produce a game because the company was going bankrupt. The franchise was enough to take a few steps forward early on, but really didn't explode until about FFVI, as others have said. It's famous fo...	[ "Everybody's front page is different, depending on which subreddits you subscribe to. If you never subscribe/unsubscribe manually or you view reddit without logging into an account, you will see the default subreddits. The default subreddits are determined by reddit staff (presumably based on quality & popularity)....
Are there any species that migrate East-West?	[ "Some species, such as [Bewick's swans](_URL_0_), migrate from Siberia to the UK/Europe where they over winter. However, this isn't fundamentally very different from north-to-south migration - they're still just migrating to warmer areas over winter and it's just a quirk of geography that very different climates ca...	[ "They only go home. They're one-way message carriers. You take one from where it's living and bring it elsewhere, then tie a message to it and free it, and it'll go back home. They can't be used to send a message to some arbitrary location." ]
why does it hurt when you swallow a beverage "wrong" ?	[ "When you take too big a swallow, it stretches your esophagus, causing it to spasm. This hurts." ]	[ "The forces created by a plane that is banked causes water to be pulled to the bottom of the cup. It's hard to feel this force as it's very subtle in commercial aircraft. An example is if you hold a cup of water and spin yourself around with your arm and cup extended. You will notice the water will pull to the ou...
How does shazam work? Also how can it tell me a song after merely a second of hearing it?	[ "They have a huge database of analyzed songs/tv shows/ commercials/etc., they create a spectrogram that measures frequency, BPM, and amplitude. When you use they app, your phone's microphone is recording the sound and your phone sends it to Shazam where they find its matching song and info card, and they send that ...	[ "This particular technology is called AJAX, which is more of a set-method-of-doing-things which evolved overtime. Basically it's a series of function calls that allow a Javascript script running on your browser to make a call to a website and get new information. AJAX has been around for a while, with Microsoft add...
Before 9/11 or any infamous "Islamic extremist" terrorist attacks, was there any prejudice on Muslims?	[ "Speaking only from personal experience I would say there absolutely was. I remember when I was a kid being told not to go to the \"Hadji Store\" on the corner. The family was from Pakistan. Don't know what a Hadji is, but I'm pretty sure they weren't it. The entire neighborhood didn't trust them, and they eventua...	[ "Highly unlikely. a/ if it could, they would already have noticed it. b/ a plane crash would create only a localised splash wave that would soon be absorbed by the water itself. c/ Tsunami meters dont work like seismometers, they work in a number of ways but need fairly significant readings before they start sendin...
Socialism vs. Communism	[ "communism = classless, stateless, moneyless society based on solidarity, organic organization, and equal allocation of resources. Socialism = An economic system where the means of production are owned by the workers and operated democratically. This can range from small local worker coops, to large syndicates of ...	[ "Why is it that \"hard\"? to write applications that utilize a lot of physical cpu cores properly? What's the difference between concurrency and parallelism in practice?" ]
Were there any Black (African) knights in Medieval Europe?	[ "I can't speak to actual historical examples but, in the Matter of Britain, Sir Morien was almost certainly a black African. He isn't part of Le Morte d'Arthur or anything, but there are Dutch stories about him that were passed into the sprawling Lancelot compilation in the 13th century. [Here's](_URL_2_) one trans...	[ "There were a few reasons that I know of - Making plate cover those parts while retaining mobility was actually pretty much impossible. (i'm assuming my hamstrings you mean the back of the knee joint?) - when you look at plate suits by themselves they often appear to be full of gaps, however men-at-arms wore tunics...
Why is it socially unacceptable or frowned upon to drink/eat soup out of a straw, yet using one to drink a beverage is fine?	[ "Soups are chunky bro. [At least man soups are.](_URL_0_)" ]	[ "Context is important. I'm not surprised to see a hot dog at a hot dog stand. I'd be surprised if I opened my wallet to pay for a hot dog and it only had a hot dog inside. I'm not surprised to see beach clothing at a beach, but would be concerned if I'm about to go into surgery and the surgeon shows up in a speedo....
In the same way that we make topographic maps of Earth, do/can we create gravitational maps of the galaxy?	[ "[Yes you can](_URL_0_). Gravity controls the rotation rate of the galaxy and how it varies with distance from the center. Curiously, our galaxy and every other galaxy rotates as if it were many times heavier than it appears to be... Gravity distorts light, [often rather dramatically](_URL_2_). If you can map the d...	[ "Not sure how it will help, but sometimes these things aren't obvious, eg. [Relativity gave us GPS technology](_URL_0_). Who knows what advances in technology the discovery of the Higgs Boson could be responsible for? I'd love to hear an answer from someone who knows." ]
Why are beer bellies hard?	[ "Not complete knowledge but... alcohol is processed in the liver, converted to fat and theyn processed as energy (same as fructose...) The area around the waist has your organs. The kind of fat that forms near and around organs is called visceral fat, it is more compacted and seems to be harder to get rid of an...	[ "I don't know. But I don't push my stomach out anymore, I suck it in. Haha" ]
If Reddit it open source, how come the vote fuzzing algorithms are unknown?	[ "The real Reddit servers run a slightly modified version of the Open Source version. The [Open Source version](_URL_0_) uses the following fuzzing algorithm: def fuzz_activity(count): \"\"\"Add some jitter to an activity metric to maintain privacy.\"\"\" # decay constant is e**(-x / 60) decay = math.e...	[ "I mean, if a human wanted to take a look at that data it would probably best be viewed in spreadsheet software. If it were human-accessible certain information like names and cc numbers wouldn't show up/would be encoded or otherwise inaccessible but there would be metrics like, say, your activity on the site, that...
Why are the Russians divided on Stalin's image?	[ "Well, it's also said that Stalin found Russia in birch-bark sandals and left it with nuclear weapons. He made Russia great. At great price, yes, but he did transform it into a world power. Admittedly, if you lived in the Ukraine that wasn't much solace. If you were one of those sent to Siberia or the Gulag it also...	[ "We don't, we go by the most logical and most common accounts. If there is a fight with 10 people, and 6 of them all say the same thing and the evidence backs it up, then the other 4 saying it was aliens was probably wrong." ]
What is the current state of cloning?	[ "Although there's all kinds of skepticism that it's even possible, South Korean and Russian scientists have announced plans to attempt to clone a wooly mammoth from cells that were recovered from the remains of a wooly mammoth which was encased in ice. _URL_0_" ]	[ "> What Gould the Feds to to the state? The Federal government could deploy military troops to enforce the ruling, similar to the deployment of the National Guard in desegregating schools. If push comes to shove it will end at gunpoint, one way or the other." ]
Why do metal alloys such as "Wood's metal" such lower melting points than their components?	[ "Think about how adding Sodium Chloride (table salt) lowers the freezing/melting point of water. The salt molecules interfere in the crystallization process of H2O, meaning that the temperature required for crystallization has to lowered to compensate. [Nak](_URL_0_) a Sodium Potassium alloy, has a lower melting p...	[ "The sugar in the honey is drawing the moisture out of the bread. Honey is a _URL_0_ which is a hygroscopic substance. _URL_1_ \"Hygroscopic substances include cellulose fibers (such as cotton and paper), sugar, caramel, honey, glycerol, ethanol, methanol, diesel fuel, sulfuric acid, methamphetamine, many fertiliz...
How did the cliché of getting hit by a falling piano or anvil come about?	[ "Not the exact same trope, but possibly it started with [this Buster Keaton skit from 1920](_URL_0_)." ]	[ "Interesting; also, standing ovations at performances. Just as you said, they're somewhat expected now, despite the fact that they were probably once \"special\". I once heard this discussed on NPR (I think both topics were mentioned) & I hope someone has an answer!" ]
What causes people to faint in the slingshot ride and why only affects some?	[ "As you're slingshotted upwards, the blood rushes to your feet. This results in low blood pressure to your brain, causing you to faint. Normally your body compensates for blood pooling in your legs by constricting blood vessels and increasing your heart rate. For people who already have low blood pressure, or for ...	[ "Ah yes, the old \"observing\" it changes the results thing. Here is the reality, this gets blown way out of proportion and it is not nearly as impressive or weird as it sounds. In the double split experiment they did the first experiment by running it, then looking at the results after the experiment was ran. Then...
Why does water appear blue in large quantities but snow is always white?	[ "Water is blue. It's just so faintly blue that you need to get a lot of it together before it has any apparent color at all; in small quantities, it looks transparent. Snow is white because ice crystals form surfaces that are highly reflective; they're essentially little mirrors. So the light that hits them gets ...	[ "Phil Plait and Walter Lyons can! > Assuming the video is real, I had a sneaky suspicion it had to do with the electric currents generated inside the cloud, the same currents that create lightning. Clouds can carry huge electric potentials — essentially, the ability to move charges around — and that stored energy ...
Lone pairs affect the angles of molecules, can they affect the strength of a bond?	[ "The concept of \"lone pairs\" is, on a more fundamental level, really referring to electrons in nonbonding molecular orbitals. Generally these don't directly affect bond strength very much. However, there can be indirect effects when the nonbonding orbitals hybridize with other orbitals elsewhere in the molecule. ...	[ "There is something similar called the nocebo effect: if you believe something will make you ill, it will. This is what is seen in people that get a rash from being near a Wi-Fi router - whether it's turned on or not. It's not the Wi-Fi signal that's causing the rash, it's the belief. Whether the same is true for...
why are bulls so angry?	[ "In my experience they typically aren't. Even if they fight/butt heads, it's to establish a hierarchy not out of anger. Even around humans they are very calm. I'm assuming you're asking after seeing something like the running with the bulls. I don't know for certain but my guess is those animals are out under a cer...	[ "Simplest answer I can give. The Arab world was tribal for a long time. Islam split into two general camps when one king usurped another (origins of the Shia-sunni divide). As it developed , more interpretations of Islam occurred. However only one interpretation could hold Islamic caliphate. When tribes start to co...
What is a scope creep and how can it be used (Advertising)	[ "Scope creep is a bad thing. It happens in all sorts of projects where you start out doing something specific but as time goes on people keep adding stuff that originally was not within the scope of the project to make the project bigger. You start out building a shed and end up building palace and people ask you w...	[ "Soylent Green was a movie about a wondrous food that satisfied all nutritional needs, but had a dark origin. Since then, it has become a generic term for a food so nutritionally complete you don't need to eat anything else. [This](_URL_3_) has been getting a lot of press lately." ]
Why were single shot rifles used in European Armies despite multiple shot rifles being readily available by 1875?	[ "sure, the repeating rifle was available around even the late 1700s. but, like anything. cost/complexity always becomes the main problem. so while they're available, they were expensive due to more complexity. and they weren't as reliable/easy to use etc. i mean, 100 years from now, ppl will ask why we we're still ...	[ "Your question is like: > Why do people keep telling me to take a pill my doctor prescribes when in ye olden days people didn't have access to the same pills? Clean water is way easier to get now than it was then. Since you have access to clean water you should use it. In the same way, getting a doctor to prescri...
AskScience AMA Series: We're the New Horizons team that flew past Pluto and are studying some of the oldest, farthest objects in the Solar System. Ask us anything!	[ "Based on how much we have learned about Pluto: Is there something you regret about the design of New Horizon now? Which additional instrument would have been the most useful addition?" ]	[ "[The comments on this gif](_URL_0_) explain it, specifically [this one](_URL_0_csz5f42): > It's called retinoscopy. You shine a narrow beam through the pupil and focus it on the retina. Then you move the beam up and down. If the beam moves up or down on the retina too fast or too slow compared to your own movemen...
Is it possible to transmit power in a form other than electricity?	[ "Electricity is by far the most convenient way to transmit power over long distances, and also useful because that's the form consumers usually need the power in. But there are other ways to transmit power. You could pressurize a fluid in a closed circuit that the consumer is also connected to-- the consumer would ...	[ "How can [this](_URL_1_) and [this](_URL_0_) have different amounts of information on it if both are just pages? If you can find a way to make smaller 'marks' on a medium and read them again later you can fit more of them in the same space. At some point you can't make your handwriting smaller because otherwise yo...
What did Hitler and the Nazi party want for Europe and Germany politically.	[ "Hitler really wasn't the economic genius that a lot of people somehow think he was. The German economy was already recovering by the 1933 when he came to power (the previous decade was referred to as the \"Golden Twenties\" because of the country's economic success). Instead of improving the economy, the Nazis cre...	[ "[Wikipedia](_URL_0_) has some good comments on it. I remember the notes about Napoleon from elementary school history. > There is a popular story that Napoleon changed the rule of the road in the European countries he conquered from keep-left to keep-right. Some justifications are symbolic, such as that Napoleon...
Why did the British keep granting their colonies more and more freedoms until they effectively then actually had independence?	[ "Not at all. This is kind of hard to provide an answer for because there are so many different examples of colonialism ending, but as a rule, Britain never \"wanted\" to lose its colonies per se, and it was only political and economic pressure that caused them to be given up. I was taught by [Richard Reid](_URL...	[ "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 is the new DSCOVR mission able to "orbit" around the L1 lagrangian point?	[ "Over time, yes. You can put it into a [halo orbit](_URL_0_) (lower part of the entry) around the Lagrangian point, which is still unstable and so does require some [stationkeeping](_URL_1_)." ]	[ "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." ]
hey guys, please join me in giving extra karma to people who post sources.	[ "not sure whether to upvote or downvote for not having a source... source: futuramafrymeme" ]	[ "[VLC Media Player](_URL_5_) is vastly superior to anything else. Plays basically every kind of file imaginable, runs fast, and doesn't shove an online store down your throat. Also as far as extensions for Chrome go (besides Ad Block obviously), I recommend [YouTube Options](_URL_4_), [Hover Zoom](_URL_4_) and of c...
What is Fracking, and why does it have a bad reputation?	[ "Hydraulic Fracturing (fracking) is injecting fluid into the ground at high pressure to break up rocks in natural gas formations and allow the gas to more easily flow to the wells where it is gathered. If it's done right it isn't significantly higher impact than normal oil or gas drilling. However \"doing it right\...	[ "This is a very common question. You can use search to find [all the other really good answers](_URL_0_ ). This is instant, and faster than ust typing in your question every time. It's a way of cheating elections. Read the others, and then ask a more specific question." ]
In Sweden i see the moon day and night. Since the moon is smaller than our Earth, how is it possible that the Moon is visible on the other side of Earth aswell? (Like in America)	[ "You don't see it all day and all night. On any given day, it is roughly in the same position relative to Earth (changing by only 1/28th of a rotation each day). When your location on Earth is facing the moon, you'll see it. When your location on Earth is facing away from the moon, you will not. At times whe...	[ "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...
Why do poisonous chemicals say "Do not induce vomiting"?	[ "Poisons with this warning are usually burning or corrosive chemicals. When you swallow, it can damage your throat on the way down. If you induce vomiting, it will just do double the damage on the way back up. Even to the extent of burning holes and leeching into your lungs, etc. A better method is to swallow s...	[ "You're looking at it backwards. If they didn't include the disclaimers you mention, they would have to meet the FDA's standards, like real medications must. They hope to sell you something without having to go through the rigor and expense of FDA certification." ]
Are sound waves affected by gravity?	[ "you have to understand that sound it just the propogation of vibrations in a gas or solid matter. Gases and matter can be affected by gravity. So... indirectly yes. But not in same way as light is affected by gravity." ]	[ "> I think it's just a delay in the OS's process to update the display And you are almost correct. It's not the display (which can be updated immediately), it's the OS that takes a little time trying to reconnect to the network before deciding it is really down. Your roommate doesn't know what he/she is talking abo...
How Come a Second is "9192631770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom"?	[ "> Seems rather arbitrary What we had it previously was arbitrary. It used to be defined as \"1/86,400th of a mean solar day\", which isn't specific enough to measure events on a very small scale. Defining a second as the amount of time in which 9.19 billion (±20) repetitions occur allows for much greater accuracy ...	[ "> a chain reaction that just keeps breaking up atoms Or in other words \"[atomic fission](_URL_1_)\". Most materials \"aren't very good at doing this.\" ( < -- simplified phrasing) When they wanted to make an atomic bomb, they had to figure out what kind of material would be \"good at fissioning\". (Two of the fi...
Why is it impossible for two humans to have the same fingerprint?	[ "It isn't impossible, but mainly limited by our ability to tell them apart than by the chance that someone with exactly identical fingerprints exists. However the fingerprints alone aren't what is being used to accuse someone of the crime. If they can narrow it down to 1 in 100,000 people having those prints and it...	[ "Imagine you are made of genetic soup. Some people have ingredients that just don't go well together and make the soup taste bad. But that's ok, because when you have a kid, we just take some of my soup and some of my wife's soup and pour it in together. So even though my soup has some bad ingredients, her ingredie...
Why are hardcover books so expensive?	[ "They cost slightly more to make, but the real reason is probably mostly that people will pay that much. The publishers have found that this model, releasing an expensive but nicely bound copy for a while before releasing a cheaper version, happens to be the most profitable for them. Since people will still buy the...	[ "My guess? When you're dealing with a lot of makeup, prosthesis, special effects its easier to hide flaws. You can see acne under makeup in high def, you couldn't really see that back in the day. Just a guess." ]
Why doesn't 2,4-Dimethylpentane have cis or trans isomers?	[ "You're right in your last point. There's free rotation about all the bonds in this molecule so there's no way you can configure the atoms that isn't equivalent to all the others. It is possible to make some non-equivalent isomers if you for example replace half the hydrogens with deuterium. In that case, you can ...	[ "So I'm translating a section of Persius' Satires (the first one) into Dr. Seuss styled poetry. I never knew it would be so much fun. The problem is now I try to read every single bit of text I see in Anapestic Tetrameter: Anapestic tertrameter's funny, you know 'Cause the name, by itself, its own meter will sho...
Would I still feel like I'm drowning if I was underwater and attached to an oxygenated blood supply?	[ "Your urge to breathe is caused by carbon dioxide build up. Low oxygen levels simply cause a greyout of your vision or unconsciousness in most individuals. _URL_0_ Laryngospasm would close off your lungs when water got in your mouth so you'd probably have little water in your lungs. You'd have those sensations. If...	[ "Water is a thousand times as dense as air. Pressure in a fluid is proportional to the difference in height and the density. So... Moving a thousand feet in altitude in air is the same as moving one foot in depth under water. In the end, a negligible difference. Perhaps even worse because the air pressure is lower ...
What causes full sinks/tubs to eventually form a whirlpool effect when they empty instead of just draining straight down the entire time?	[ "Conservation of angular momentum. Any initial conditions of water movement are amplified as it drains, until the velocity of two points close to each other are opposite, setting up a vortex, which is tied at the bottom to the plug hole as it drains. Direction of circulation in the vortex is therefore dependent on...	[ "Think of it this way: clothes are made of threads that are wrapped around each other in a mildly organized tangle. Imagine say, a bag with a dozen headphones that are a bit tangled. Now shake the bag violently for five minutes, sometimes pulling on headphone loops. Are they more tangled or less tangled? Most often...
Does the Sun's gravity have a significant impact on the plate tectonics of the planet Mercury?	[ "The short answer is yes. The plate tectonic activity on Mercury is caused by its proximity to the Sun. A slightly longer version. The tectonic activity of Mercury is due to tidal forces. Yes the same kind of phenomena we see on Earth that causes ocean water to rise and fall also causes this tectonic activity on M...	[ "Whether or not it was inevitable is impossible to argue, because we don't know how Japan would have turned out if Perry didn't arrive. However, the major political driving force for the revolutionaries was without a doubt caused by, directly or indirectly, western contact. The actions of the sonnō jōi movement, ...
Why do we feel entitled to free movies and music?	[ "Sounds like something that would be better for _URL_0_" ]	[ "I work for an ISP The Internet is like a series of roads. Let's say you built a road from your house to your friends. You and your friend could go real fast to each other's houses. But what if you wanted to go to some else's house? Or the mall, or school? You would have to connect your road with your towns road. ...
I understand the concept of how ray-tracing works, but what was changed to make it work in real-time on graphics cards?	[ "New algorithms simplify the computations required. Also, building GPU chips for ray tracing means the hardware is better suited for the specific tasks that ray tracing demands. We've heard for years that real-time ray tracing was decades away from being possible (or perhaps impossible), but that was assuming every...	[ "First of all, it's impossible for that train to travel at the speed of light. Let's assume instead that it's travelling just below the speed of light. Now we've sorted that out, speed is relative. What this means is that your speed relative to the train is actually not very fast at all. It will be the speed at wh...
Does a vacuum have energy?	[ "The vaccum can have an energy density. This is ultimately only meaningful in the context of gravity (since for other forces, you can add a constant to the energy density of the vacuum, and it changes none of the physics). In general relativity, vacuum energy density produces a [cosmological constant](_URL_1_), whi...	[ "Many people posting here haven't actually taken a nerf gun apart and looked at it and are speculating that spring loaded guns could shoot fine in a vaccum. Well, here's a picture of a [maverick](_URL_4_) being taken apart for modding. You can see the spring is pushing on a piston-cylinder assembly. The nozzle on t...
How does this happen? (Not sure what to ask, I don't know the technical terms)	[ "The surface of the stainless steel fridge is not smooth like a mirror. Rather, the steel has a microscopic pattern scratched into it across the surface. Each scratch acts like a tiny angled mirror, and reflects light in a certain direction. A perfect mirror would reflect the laser spot perfectly, but since the scr...	[ "Different amounts of traffic at different times. If its not too congested reddit will keep trying to serve you the page you wanted. If it is congested, it'll stop trying and give you that error page." ]
How come even though the boiling point of water is 212 F there's steam in hot tubs, hot showers, etc.?	[ "That's not steam. It's water vapor (liquid water droplets suspended in the air). Actual steam is invisible." ]	[ "Cooking meat to temp is primarily to kill off bacteria. While it does affect the result in terms of texture and taste, it doesn't change the overall structure of what you're eating. A steak is still a steak at 135° or 160° or even raw at room temp. Baking is more of a chemical process. Just getting the center of a...
What would it take for a major company like BP, Bayer, or McDonald's to disappear?	[ "A company doing \"bad\" things doesn't matter in terms of the health of the company as long as that company is still profitable. Oil companies, for the moment, are scandal-proof because we don't have any other viable options in terms of energy production. The only way BP would ever disappear is if consumers trende...	[ "Hi there -- while we've approved this question, we would like to remind potential respondents of our [current events](_URL_0_) (AKA \"20-year\") rule -- it's fine to discuss events through 1997 (inclusive) and their effects, but not events after 1997. Thanks!" ]
Did Hitler have a speech writer or speech writers? If so, who was he/were they?	[ "He wrote his own speeches. There is some difficulty in \"proving\" this as many collections of Hitler's speeches are often just excerpts of speeches rather than full text, so not all of the styles can be verified to be consistent across the board. I am told he also had a very distinct written style for his speeche...	[ "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...
If mass increases with energy, then shouldn't subatomic particles have almost infinite mass? Then why doesn't the inertial property of the particle increase and its motion stopped?	[ "Mass does not increase with energy. The concept of \"relativistic mass\" has largely been discarded because in order to get the math to work, you have to define relativistic mass so narrowly that it does not really act like a mass anymore, and leads to confusion as evidenced by your question. An object that that t...	[ "The Planck length is not an exact measure. It is just an estimation of the order of magnitude of the length scale in which quantum gravity effects are expected to be important. Its value even changes depending of the normalization (using 4πG=1 instead of G=1 leads to a different value of the Planck units). Physi...
What is the explanation for the French words for 70-99 to get their particular names?	[ "Not all of French. Particular dialects of French use a [vigesimal](_URL_0_) counting method you described. This is widely understood as a relic from Gaulish, the Celtic language spoken in the land prior to Latinization. But the vigesimal numeral system is not native to Celtic (though most Celtic languages today us...	[ "In general when planning new communities, they leave gaps in the numbers if there is a possibility of new houses being constructed between existing houses later on. If you have 100 right next to 102, and there are a few acres for new development between them, then you have to add 100a, 100b, and so on, which is me...
Why does Pluto have such an unusual orbit?	[ "It is not so unusual, Pluto is not special. There are tons of other dwarf planets out there with orbits like this. They are so far away from the sun and they are so small their orbits can be highly elliptical. Interactions with Neptun can influence them aswell. [This](_URL_0_) is what I call an unusual orbit." ]	[ "A long time ago in places like Greece, Rome and even before that in really, really long ago places like Sumeria, and Egypt people made up stories about the stars/planets and the pictures they thought groups of stars made. These stories were usually about beings they considered to be gods or demigods (the word demi...
How do polar bears hunt in the water?	[ "They don't. Seals need to come up for air and polar bears try to guess where they come up; sometimes they get lucky ([source](_URL_0_)). This is why biologists are worried about the future of polar bears with respect to climate change. Polar bears rely on sea-ice because it is literally the platform from which the...	[ "Most games like this use a light gun (_URL_0_) with a diode which receives light from the display to sense where the gun is pointed. Essentially, when you pull the trigger the screen goes black for a moment except the areas with ducks in them, which turn white. If the diode in the gun is aimed at the white light, ...
why is laundry detergent and fabric softener such a popular item to steal in order to exchange for drugs?	[ "_URL_0_ Excellent article that gives more detail: * Everyone uses it, and want to keep to one brand, so someone in better times gets used to using Tide, all of a sudden can't afford it, either steals or buys it on the black market, rather than buying something cheap. * Since everyone uses it and sales volumes are ...	[ "There is a back door into every house. People put alarms all over their house. Have a key? You can get in the front door. When you need to break in you use the back door. Now only bad people use the back doors. So when someone comes in the back door, the alarm goes off. Your crack is a bad person, technically. He ...
In the Power (kW) from Torque and RPM equation, where does the '1000' used in the derivation of '9549' come from?	[ "Since power on the left side of the equation is expressed in kW (kilowatt, 1000 W), while the righthand side has unit of W, you need the conversion-factor 1000." ]	[ "Think about things bouncing around. Imagine a box with a fan in it. Put 20 balls in ithe box. Now imagine a basket to one side just the right size for the balls. Turn on the fan. The balls jump around randomly. At some point a ball will fall into the basket. This will happen at a given rate which will depends on h...
Why do people reject political beliefs/any other belief they can't even define? Are we just all ignorant?	[ "We are bad at differentiating our disagreement with a view from our irrational dislike of such view. It takes quite a bit of attention, time and conscious effort to critically analyse a certain position and reach a conclusion following strict reasoning. We are very prone to follow our guts and believe what we're c...	[ "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...
How does the Social Security Numbering convention work in the US? SSN's are only 9-digits, how have we not run out of numbers or adopted a new system?	[ "There are 1 billion ways to arrange the 9 digits in a SSN. Eventually, we'll run out. We're not there yet (even though the government actually doesn't use all 1 billion of those numbers by convention)." ]	[ "We cannot view all the stars in the Milky Way. There is a lot of dust between us and the other side of the galaxy [as you can see here in a picture of the Milky Way from earth](_URL_0_). As such there is not a complete catalog of all the stars. Heck, if they were able to catalog 1000 per day (which would be pretty...

Subsets and Splits

No community queries yet

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