question stringlengths 3 301 | answer stringlengths 9 26.1k | context list |
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Would galaxies look the same to the naked eye as they do in images taken by Hubble? | Here are some previous threads on this topic:
[Are NASA's Hubble telescope pictures representative of what galaxies or nebula would look like to the naked eye? How much editing do these photos receive?](_URL_5_)
[If you were hypothetically between galaxies, what could you see with the naked eye?](_URL_2_)
[Are all ... | [
"NGC 5679 was imaged by Hubble in 2009, in a combination of blue, visible, infrared and Hα filters. The photograph shows that all three galaxies, especially the galaxies on the left and right, are starburst galaxies, meaning that there is currently a large amount of star formation in the galaxies. Interstellar dust... |
If E=mc², does energy have gravity? | The short answer is yes - the rise in temperature would affect the apparent gravity by a little bit. How little? Well, math!
Let's take your Neptunian planet, and raise the temperature by 300K instantly. Now the mass of Neptune is ~10^26 kg, and if we roughly assume its all hydrogen (in reality its about 80%) then usi... | [
"Energy gives rise to weight when it is trapped in a system with zero momentum, where it can be weighed. It is also equivalent to mass, and this mass is always associated with it. Mass is also equivalent to a certain amount of energy, and likewise always appears associated with it, as described in mass-energy equiv... |
Who is responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ? | There is much better historical evidence for the crucifixion of Jesus than there is for the vast majority of events of the ancient world. Whether you consider the extant evidence to be "historical proof" or not is in the eye of the beholder. FWIW, most academic historians would both object to the concept that we can be... | [
"In the three synoptic gospels, various supernatural events accompany the crucifixion, including darkness of the sky, an earthquake, and (in Matthew) the resurrection of saints. The tearing of the temple veil, upon the death of Jesus, is referenced in the synoptic. The Roman soldiers did not break Jesus' legs, as t... |
how the average person would benefit in no way, or support, repealing laws surrounding the sale of their data, yet it happens anyway? | Most people don't know or don't care.
A lot of very large, very rich corporations will benefit. Corporations fund political campaigns. So voting for something your funders want, and your voters don't care about, is a no-brainer. | [
"The motive of deleting data can be: defect product, old product, no further use of data, no legal right to retain data any longer, etc. Legal obligations can come from rules like: the right to be forgotten, the General Data Protection Regulation, etc.\n",
"Compliance in this area is becoming very difficult. Laws... |
Why wasn't a Kurdish mandate created during the aftermath of WW1? | An independent Kurdistan was actually planned for and provisions to bring it into existence were included in the Treaty of Sèvres. So while the Treaty did not immediately create an independent Kurdistan, it did provide a relatively straight forward path for Kurdistan to become independent.
Article 63 of the Treaty gav... | [
"During World War II, the power vacuum in Iraq was exploited by the Kurdish tribes and under the leadership of Mustafa Barzani a rebellion broke out in the north, effectively gaining control of Kurdish areas until 1945, when Iraqis could once again subdue the Kurds with British support. Under pressure from the Iraq... |
the difference between a deduction and an inference. | A deduction is where you take several statements or facts and say, "You said you went to medical school, work in a hospital, and you saw a person you referred to as a 'patient'. I deduce that you are a doctor." It is an educated guess, that is probably correct.
An inference is less concrete. "You said you were a docto... | [
"In the same way, generally speaking, deduction is the process of reasoning from one or more general premises to reach a logically certain conclusion. Using valid arguments, we can deduce from intuited premises.\n",
"Inferences are steps in reasoning, moving from premises to logical consequences; etymologically, ... |
why does comcast agree to broadcast commercials for competitors like dish? | It isn't Comcast that's broadcasting the commercials, it's the television networks. To demand that networks stop running ads for a competitor, Comcast risks losing that network from its channel line up, so it's not really worth the trouble (especially if it's a popular network). | [
"Super Bowl commercials are largely limited to the United States' broadcast of the game. Complaints about the inability to view the ads are prevalent in Canada, where federal \"simsub\" regulations require pay television providers to replace feeds of programs from U.S. broadcast stations with domestic feeds if they... |
How did English Recency-era fashionable women stay warm in the winter? | On the one hand, satirists of the time [liked to depict women in thin, clinging muslin gowns all year round](_URL_0_), accessorized with only a shawl or spencer (a short jacket), allegedly showing a true practice. According to these men, women did not make any alteration in their dress to accommodate the weather, and a... | [
"Young girls wore dresses with round collars and sashes. Fashionable dresses had dropped waists. Pinafores were worn for work and play. When going out, especially in the winter, girls wore lots of layers to keep warm. A warm coat was worn with kid leather gloves. Gloves were worn under a muff hand warmer, so when t... |
My history textbook briefly mentioned something very interesting... | This is in reference to the Desmond Rebellions. These were a series of rebellions in the Irish province of Munster that occurred from 1569 to 1573 and again from 1579 to 1583. It is the second rebellion that your textbook is likely referencing.
The second Desmond rebellion occurred simply because the first Desmond reb... | [
"Lord wrote, or edited and annotated 11 bestselling books on such diverse subjects as the Attack on Pearl Harbor (\"Day of Infamy\", 1957), the Battle of Midway (\"Incredible Victory\", 1967), the Battle of the Alamo (\"A Time to Stand\", 1961), the Battle of Baltimore (\"The Dawn's Early Light\", 1972), Arctic exp... |
why oil and gold control world economy | Transport is an important part of a country's economy. If all the oil were to suddenly disappear in your country, it would be a major problem.
* Food, goods, materials - they wouldn't show up in the stores
* Most people will be unable to get to work
* The army would be reduced to foot soldiers, they are suddenly weak... | [
"An EIA report stated that OPEC member nations were projected to earn a net amount of $1.251 trillion in 2008 from their oil exports. Because oil is both important and expensive, regions that had big reserves of oil had huge liquidity incomes. However, this was rarely followed by economic development. Experience sh... |
How can you proof that minus one times minus one is one? | Taken from [here](_URL_0_):
Let a and b be any two real numbers. Consider the number x defined by
x = ab + (-a)(b) + (-a)(-b)
We can write
x = ab + (-a)[ (b) + (-b) ] (factor out -a)
= ab + (-a)(0)
= ab + 0
= ab
Also,
x = [ a + (-a) ]b + (-a)(-b) (fa... | [
"Symbolically, the minus sign (\"−\") represents the subtraction operation. So the statement \"five minus three equals two\" is also written as . In elementary arithmetic, subtraction uses smaller positive numbers for all values to produce simpler solutions.\n",
"Suppose now that we are at step \"k\" and there ar... |
I want to start writing about history as a hobby. How do I not get everything wrong? | Your best bet is to pay an expert consultant.
Beyond that: it first of all depends on how in-depth you want to go with each article or video. If you just want to, say, rehearse the fact of Tokugawa's life, you can probably do a pretty good job with Wikipedia (I know, I know) and something like the Cambridge History/Ne... | [
"A Chance to Make History: What Works and What Doesn't in Providing an Excellent Education for All () is a book by Wendy Kopp, CEO and Founder of Teach For America, that was published by PublicAffairs in January 2011.\n",
"The project encourages viewers to think of editing contributions and the collections of com... |
what exactly happens when old elastic gets crusty and loose ? | This is a chemical process. To understand it you have to first understand a bit about the chemical structures that makes elastic stretchy.
All polymer plastics consist of long molecule chains. Think really really long pieces of string that get all tangled up with each other. The way they get tangled depends on the cha... | [
"A material generally deforms elastically under the influence of small forces; the material returns quickly to its original shape when the deforming force is removed. This phenomenon is called \"elastic deformation\". This behavior in materials is described by Hooke's Law. Materials behave elastically until the def... |
Why didn't Germany use submarines to alleviate the British blockade during WWI? | The German navy did attack the British fleet with submarines from time to time, but the British blockade of Germany was what's called a "distant blockade." Essentially, the main part of the British fleet was based in Scapa Flow, at the far northern end of Britain, and cruisers and smaller ships guarded the approaches a... | [
"Germany used submarines to devastating effect in World War II during the Battle of the Atlantic, attempting but ultimately failing to cut off Britain's supply routes by sinking more ships than Britain could replace. The supply lines were vital to Britain for food and industry, as well as armaments from Canada and ... |
what does paying my tv licence actually pay for these days? (uk) | The TV licence fee is a tax collected by the BBC and primarily used to fund the radio, television and online services of the BBC itself. | [
"The fee pays for five TV channels, 45 radio channels as well as TV and radio on the Internet. In Sweden, the term \"television licence\" () was replaced by the term \"television fee\" () in 1967, although Swedish people sometimes still refer to it by the former term. Upon the introduction of colour TV in Sweden in... |
What is the physical interaction taking place between a photon and an atom that causes stimulated emission? | This is classic perturbation theory problem in a first or second course on quantum mechanics.
The simple way to approach it is to think of the atom as a being immersed in an electric field which varies sinusoidally in time. This just introduces a perturbation to the Hamiltonian which is a dipole coupling between diffe... | [
"Stimulated emission occurs when an excited electron can drop by the same amount of energy as a passing photon. This causes a second photon to be emitted, closely matching the original's energy, momentum, and phase. Now there are two photons, doubling the chance that they will cause the same reaction in other atoms... |
making money on a falling stock market | I believe you're referring to "shorting" or "short selling".
Let's say that you think that a stock will drop in value. In that case, what you might do is *borrow* some stock from me, for a fee. But it's still just borrowing, and you have to give the equivalent number of shares back to me at the end of the loan perio... | [
"Also, if there is a market panic, investors may sell a particular stock or segment of stocks en masse. Faced with a wave of sell orders and needing to raise money for redemptions, the manager of an open-ended fund may be forced to sell stocks he would rather keep, and keep stocks he would rather sell, because of l... |
I understand that back carrying a sword is commonly understood as rubbish, but are there any examples in history of people doing this during war? | Unfortunately the period of time during which humans carried swords happens to cover all of human history, so my answer must necessarily be in brief.
Swords, despite the mythology that has risen around them, tended to be sidearms. Spears were often used before swords came out, and when they did come out they were typi... | [
"In between rebellions, after the disastrous Jacobite defeat at the Battle of Culloden and the overall failure of the rebellions, it became illegal to carry claybeg and targes and so many Highlanders hid these weapons in the heath. It is not an uncommon story that features a hiker finding such a blade while walking... |
would it be possible to knock an asteroid into our atmosphere, and lock it in like a satellite? | If it were in our atmosphere, air resistance would decay its orbit pretty quickly and then it would just fall to Earth.
But capturing an asteroid and inserting it into an orbit outside the atmosphere seems plausible eventually, if not practical right now. | [
"Once an asteroid is on course to encounter a planet with an atmosphere, it is in principle possible to tweak its orbit so that it intercepts the planet's atmosphere, using aerobraking to slow the asteroid at periapsis by dumping some of its kinetic energy into the atmosphere – this technique has however never been... |
Is there a distinction to be made between a German soldier in World War II and a Nazi soldier? | > Is there a distinction to be made between a German soldier in World War II and a Nazi soldier?
The argument about whether or not [these](_URL_1_) are "German" soldiers of "Nazi" soldiers is one which comes up far too often, for numerous reasons, stemming from mere pedantry to concious efforts to disconnect the Wehr... | [
"I have come to know that there is a real difference between the regular German soldier and officer and Hitler and his criminal group. For my part, I do not believe that the German soldier as such has lost his honor. The fact that certain individuals committed in war dishonorable and despicable acts reflects on the... |
what could happen if a government stopped printing money? | Rules say please don't speculate so what DEFINITELY would happen is that (I'll say U.S. currency since that's where I'm from) the dollar would become stronger over that period of time. Manufacturing costs would effect consumerism and things like taxes on imports/exports would drastically change as well.
I'm 100% posi... | [
"While use of the printing press to produce paper money was employed as virtually the sole means of state finance, manufacturing output simultaneously dropped precipitously, exacerbating the collapse of currency value. Unemployed and under-employed workers often took to the manufacture of small crafts items, often ... |
how do countries with extensive maternity/paternity leave cover those individuals' job positions until they come back to work? | They hire a temporary worker, or divide those tasks between existing employees.
Employers probably find it to be a chore, but there are lots of other chores, like vacations, benefits, and safe work environments, they there are accustomed to doing as a part of business. | [
"Another rule, the detached-worker rule, governs foreign workers who are only temporarily stationed in the United States. A worker who has been temporarily transferred to work in the United States, for a period of up to five years, will remain subject to the social security system of his/her home country. This rule... |
why do people on reddit put things like "edit: spelling mistakes" when they could have just corrected them and not told everyone about it? | [It's part of reddiquette](_URL_0_).
> **State your reason for any editing of posts.** Edited submissions are marked by an asterisk (*) at the end of the timestamp after three minutes. For example: a simple "Edit: spelling" will help explain. This avoids confusion when a post is edited after a conversation breaks off ... | [
"\"Inadvertent errors\" may be corrected, according to Article 32.5.1, but \"incorrect transliteration or latinization, or use of an inappropriate connecting vowel, are not to be considered inadvertent errors.\"\n",
"Due to the potential accumulation of parentheses in only one code line, editing and error detecti... |
Why do some sounds cause physical discomfort to our ears? Is it because they are actually damaging them? | Just a reminder that this is /r/askscience and only posts related to the science behind OP's question are appropriate. **Please do not post about what sounds you find annoying.** Additionally, unsourced speculation and guessing is not acceptable for this forum. Thanks! | [
"Despite different people having different thresholds for what noises are painful, this pain threshold had no correlation with which noises cause hearing damage. The ear can not get more resistant to noise harmfulness by training it to noise. The cochlea is partially protected by the acoustic reflex, but being freq... |
why is the united states considering getting involved in the syrian conflict? | I'm not sure the US would directly benefit.
But we have a general motivation to restrict the use of chemical weapons and we have stated that we would take some sort of action if chemical weapons were used. It seems pretty clear that's happened and so we're at a point now where we either do **something** or we basical... | [
"These events made the USA intervene quickly to calm things down between Syria and Israel because it was afraid that a Syrian-Israeli war might lead to a war between them and the Soviet Union. The intervention was successful.\n",
"The United States and other Coalition partners began combat operations in Syria on ... |
When it was discovered that Ronald Reagan sold weapons to Iran, in defiance of American Law, why wasn’t he impeached? | A number of congressional Democrats wanted to pursue impeachment, but there were several reasons why they ultimately decided against it:
**Domestic Politics:**
Politically, impeachment had the potential to backfire on the Democrats. Iran-Contra had dented Reagan's public approval, but he still retained a great deal ... | [
"In violation of an arms embargo, officials of President Ronald Reagan's administration arranged in the mid-1980s to sell armaments to Iran in an attempt to improve relations with Iran and obtain their influence in the release of hostages held in Lebanon. Oliver North of the National Security Council then diverted ... |
Did the Gestapo really say "Good luck" in english to catch spies or escaped PoWs? | It's on every year, and Gordon Jackson falls for it every. single. time. Maybe this year he won't. Maybe this year Steve McQueen will make it over the wire.
Anyway.
The film is based on the book of the same name by Paul Brickhill, who was in the camp but was too claustrophobic to be allowed in the tunnels.
Brickhi... | [
"The Gestapo executed a group of 50 of the recaptured prisoners representing almost all of the nationalities involved in the escape. Post-war investigations saw a number of those guilty of the murders tracked down, arrested and tried for their crimes.\n",
"The Gestapo executed a group of 50 of the recaptured pris... |
How did Dante Alighieri's "The Divine Comedy" change the way we view hell? How was hell viewed before its publication? | I'll be taking a good bit of this from my experience as clergy, so take what I say about contemporary views of Hell with a grain of salt, but I'm fairly convinced its a healthy(?) combination of Dante and Milton.
To answer your question about views of Hell pre-Dante it depends pretty widely on where and when you were... | [
"In the second half of the 13th century, the book was translated into Latin (as \"Liber Scale Machometi\") and Spanish (by Abraham of Toledo), and soon thereafter (in 1264 CE) into Old French. Its Islamic depictions of Hell are believed by some scholars to have been a major influence on Dante's (born 1265 CE - died... |
Could someone help me identify this tool? | We have one of these in my lab. It's for making a sharp end to a piece of tubing. Like [this](_URL_0_), but smaller and smoother.
You insert the cone into the end of the tube, pull the blade closer and spin and the blade will shave off parts of the tube to give you a bevelled end.
I can't find an example or the name... | [
"Tools are made to resemble those of a carpenter. A hammer, drill, screwdriver, a wrench, saw, mallet, and a sledgehammer are just a few of the tools used to deconstruct a level. Tools can be found within a zymbot and are used to remove the several nails, screws, bolts, etc. that hold a level together.\n",
"BULLE... |
Which States of the Union didn't join of their complete free will? | Well, since you say "complete"...western Virginia was, for the most part, not wanting to secede with the rest of Virginia in 1860. When it did go through the process of having the constitutional conventions necessary for the region to become a separate state, some counties ( mostly the eastern panhandle) were not part... | [
"In 1819 Congressman James Tallmadge Jr. of New York initiated an uproar in the South when he proposed two amendments to a bill admitting Missouri to the Union as a free state. The first barred slaves from being moved to Missouri, and the second would free all Missouri slaves born after admission to the Union at ag... |
why do guitars often get out of tune in a higher pitch? wouldn't the strings tend to get looser? | When strings stretch, they get thinner, which results in higher pitch. Be sure to properly stretch your strings after putting on a new set and you should have better pitch retention. | [
"The tuning is commonly used by metal and hard rock artists to achieve a heavier, deeper sound. Slackening regular strings on a regular guitar to a lower pitch makes bending easier. Depending on personal playing style, some guitarists find this desirable, while others switch to heavier gauge strings to avoid uninte... |
How can a molecule be polar, but hydrophobic? | I assume you are talking about polylactic acid?
Obviously the methyl groups are hydrophobic. The ester groups, while polar, don't interact so well with water (See [here](_URL_0_)). So the polymer as a whole is not hydrophilic.
As for why certain (aprotic) polar groups are not easily hydrated, the authors of the l... | [
"Hydrophobic molecules tend to be nonpolar and, thus, prefer other neutral molecules and nonpolar solvents. Because water molecules are polar, hydrophobes do not dissolve well among them. Hydrophobic molecules in water often cluster together, forming micelles. Water on hydrophobic surfaces will exhibit a high conta... |
why do we have to pee 'on' things? | It's likely from old instincts of marking territory. Not only do you want others to know you're around but you want to them to know you're big and bad, that's why dogs raise their legs to pee (male dog's), it's to show off their size and how heigh they could pee. A flat surface doesn't let us show that. | [
"Pet peeves often involve specific behaviors of someone close, such as a spouse or significant other. These behaviors may involve disrespect, manners, personal hygiene, relationships, and family issues. A key aspect of a pet peeve is that it may well seem acceptable or insignificant to others, while the person is l... |
why does the military use mostly propellar aircrafts for cargo instead of jets? | Prop-driven aircraft are generally cheaper to produce and maintain. Jets give obvious advantages for smoothness, speed, and altitude. But for a cargo plane, ability to land/take off in a shorter distance, to fly slower and at a lower altitude efficiently, and ability to do all of this with heavy load is more importan... | [
"Historically, transport airplanes have generally been specifically designed to haul either cargo, passengers, or outsize cargo. ... Military cargo aircraft, such as the C-130 and C-141, are designed to haul cargo and some vehicles –but not outsize cargo such as tanks or bridge launchers. The C-5A can carry all mil... |
How were the Triassic-Cretaceous periods able to support such large land animals versus today? Does being ~3°C-4°C degrees warmer really make that big a difference? | Neither temperature nor oxygen levels (which were actually lower than those today at various points) were the reason dinosaurs became so large. Instead, they became large because dinosaur physiology and life history was better suited to large size than mammal physiology and life history. Check out this flowchart (rel... | [
"The Late Triassic spans from 237 million to 201 million years ago. Following the bloom of the Middle Triassic, the Late Triassic featured frequent rises of temperature, as well as moderate precipitation (10-20 inches per year). The recent warming led to a boom of reptilian evolution on land as the first true dinos... |
how does a split-brain work when the corpus callosum connecting the two brain halves has been removed? | While the corpus callosum itself has been severed, both sides of the brain still have their connections to the rest of the body. As a result, activities originating in one side of the brain but not the other can't really interact, as demonstrated in [Sperry's experiments](_URL_0_), but those activities can still be car... | [
"Split-brain or callosal syndrome is a type of disconnection syndrome when the corpus callosum connecting the two hemispheres of the brain is severed to some degree. It is an association of symptoms produced by disruption of or interference with the connection between the hemispheres of the brain. The surgical oper... |
if water pressure behind household taps is continuous, why doesn't the pressure build up and up until the taps are forced off? | It's a constant pressure, but not a constantly *increasing* pressure.
Imagine that you're pushing on a locked door with some amount of force. When someone finally unlocks the door and turns the handle, it'll go flying open because of your push. But if the door is never opened, you won't cause it to burst into splint... | [
"In water supply systems, water is normally maintained at a significant pressure to enable water to flow from the tap, shower, or other fixture. Water pressure may fail or be reduced when a water main bursts, pipes freeze, or there is unexpectedly high demand on the water system (for example, when several fire hydr... |
Battleships on both sides of the war were commonly bristling with anti-aircraft weaponry, yet many fell victim to enemy aircraft anyways. So how effective was ship-based anti-aircraft weaponry really? | Some useful past discussion of this by u/When_Ducks_Attack and u/eighthgear and u/Domini_canes in _URL_0_
In that discussion, it's noted that a little over 1/3 of the enemy aircraft that attacked US warships and came into range of their anti-aircraft guns were shot down by those guns. The USN had excellent fire contro... | [
"There is a view among some military pundits that modern anti-ship weapons systems, such as torpedoes and missiles, or even ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads have made aircraft carriers and carrier groups obsolete as too vulnerable for modern combat. On the other hand, the threatening role of aircraft carrie... |
i gave two pints of blood and saline was pumped back into me. how does my body know to make extra rbcs to replace them? | When your kidneys notice that they aren't getting enough oxygen, as is the case when there aren't enough red blood cells, they produce a hormone called [erythropoetin](_URL_0_), or EPO. EPO tells your bone marrow to generate new red blood cells. When the kidneys start getting enough oxygen, they stop producing the EP... | [
"BULLET::::- after rehydration, a loop diuretic such as furosemide can be given to permit continued large volume intravenous salt and water replacement while minimizing the risk of blood volume overload and pulmonary oedema. In addition, loop diuretics tend to depress calcium reabsorption by the kidney thereby help... |
How did in the past Ukraine and Belarus become known as "Little Russia" and "White Russia", and why did those terms fall out of use? | Could you clarify your question further? For example, are you referring to English usages? Belarus means White Russia, and it is literally called White Russia in some languages. | [
"It is worth noting that the ethnonym \"Ukrainian\" for the people was not well established until the 19th century, although their land was known as \"Ukraine\" in English since before the 18th century. The land was known in the West as Ruthenia, and the people as Ruthenians (The Oxford English Dictionary traces th... |
Does counting "one-one thousand, two-one thousand..." after seeing a flash of lightning until you hear thunder actually give you a good estimate how far away you are from the flash? | Sound travels 1 mile in 4.7 seconds (or about 1 km in 2.9 seconds). We can round them up to 5 seconds and 3 seconds, responsively. If your counting of "one-one thousand, two-one thousand..." is a good approximation of a second (and that's why we add the extra "one thousand"; to force a pause in our speech of roughly t... | [
"The National Lightning Safety Institute recommends using the F-B (flash to boom) method to gauge distance to a lightning strike. The flash of a lightning strike and resulting thunder occur at roughly the same time. But light travels 300,000 kilometers in a second, almost a million times the speed of sound. Sound t... |
how did a rocket with the computing power of a calculator get people to and from the moon? | Because almost none of the mission was controlled by that computer. It had fairly simple tasks to do. Most of the mission was pre-computed, and further computing was done on the ground at Mission Control. | [
"The digital technology on Earth during the time of the Moon landings was just in its infancy. The astronauts had relied on computers to aid in the Moon missions. The Apollo Guidance Computer was on the Lunar Module and the command and service module. Many computers at the time were very large despite poor specs. F... |
how come we can't send a spaceship to other planets and back? | It's not just a matter of propulsion, it's also time, food, isolation and many other things. Also money.
We probably have the ability to send people to Mars, the problem is it would likely cost an extravagant amount of money to take a long time to send a bunch of people to their deaths. We still haven't quite figured ... | [
"Travel to other planets is accomplished by either purchasing a ticket aboard an interstellar passenger liner or by boarding a private spaceship (if a member of the party happens to own one). Ownership of a spaceship also provides the party an opportunity to earn money by trading various commodities between planets... |
how do mathematicians figure out absurd odds? | They don't really "figure them" out, instead they measure them.
Taking your example: Around 300 people in the US tend to be struck by lightning on an annual basis (according to medical treatment data), putting any given individual's chance of being struck by lightning in a given year at 1 in 1.08 million. Your odds m... | [
"Odds are a numerical expression, usually expressed as a pair of numbers, used in both gambling and statistics. In statistics, the odds for or odds of some event reflect the likelihood that the event will take place, while odds against reflect the likelihood that it will not. In gambling, the odds are the ratio of ... |
Which Roman figure is this marble bust of, it's been in my family decades.. | It certainly looks like a bust of a younger Octavian, like those found [here](_URL_1_), [here](_URL_2_), and [here](_URL_0_). But I could be wrong. | [
"The collection of 60 Ancient Roman marble sculptures is amongst the finest in any private collection in the world. The collection consists of both life size and greater than life size statues and busts that include, several of the Twelve Olympians, characters from Greek mythology, ancient Greek philosophers and an... |
Why feature of sound causes words or instruments to sound so different. | I asked an almost identical question [here](_URL_0_)
The property is due to the shapes of the waves made by different instruments/materials. The guys who replied to me explained it pretty well :) | [
"Each type of musical instrument has a characteristic sound quality that is largely independent of pitch or loudness. Some instruments have more than one timbre, e.g. the sound of a plucked violin is different from the sound of a bowed violin. Some instruments employ multiple manual or embouchure techniques to achi... |
if we are constantly intaking more calories than we can use, why aren't we all obese? | People that do this will eventual be, can I ask clarification on your question? | [
"A number of theories in evolutionary psychology that are hinged on the assumption that sheer number of calories constitute the only important bottleneck in nutrition are challenged by research on hidden hunger, types of malnutrition in which deficits of specific essential micronutrients cause diseases or even deat... |
Historically what made the Jesuits so hated but not other Catholic orders like Franciscans, Dominicans and Benedictines? | Before listing off the reasons why Jesuits were despised by their competitors and opposition, I'd like to note that going into the early seventeenth century, the Jesuits actually enjoyed a pretty respectable reputation among lay people and potential priests. The Spiritual Exercises had proven to be very popular among e... | [
"The Jesuits were an international order with an independence of action due to its special relationship as \"soldiers of the pope.\" The Portuguese expelled the Jesuits in 1759 and the French in 1764, so the Spanish crown's move against them was part of a larger assertion of regal power in Europe and their overseas... |
how does blood come back to the heart? | Put very simply.....Its a closed system. The heart pushes it in a huge loop back to itself. Valves in veins prevent it flowing backwards and or pooling. | [
"Blood flows from the heart through arteries, which branch and narrow into arterioles, and then branch further into capillaries where nutrients and wastes are exchanged. The capillaries then join and widen to become venules, which in turn widen and converge to become veins, which then return blood back to the heart... |
I saw recently we're going to be having companies mining on the moon for Helium-3. Why, what does it do? | [Fusion energy](_URL_0_). Controlled fusion hasn't been achieved yet, but we've been really close to achieving it for about 40 years, or so I've been told. | [
"\"Moon\" was screened as part of a lecture series at NASA's Space Center Houston, at the request of a professor there. \"He'd been reading online that we'd done this film about helium-3 mining and that's something that people at NASA are working on\", says Jones. \"We did a Q&A afterward. They asked me why the bas... |
Can birth defects be detected in eggs or sperm? | Generally speaking, no.
First of all, there are many things that happen after fertilization that can cause or prevent a birth defect.
Second, for many congenital disorders, it's neither sperm alone nor the egg alone that determines whether the disorder will occur; you have to know both the sperm and the egg to know w... | [
"During the development of an embryo, certain abnormalities may occur which results in certain birth defects. These abnormalities might be caused by genetics, chromosomal disorders, environmental factors, or chemicals.\n",
"In unexplained infertility abnormalities are likely to be present but not detected by curr... |
Is evolution relative to lifespan? | Evolution absolutely is relative to lifespan. Evolution is mathematical. Every generation has selective pressures act on it that affect which individuals are best able to survive and reproduce. The more generations in a given time frame, the more opportunities for selection.
Bacteria, for example, can evolve quite qui... | [
"All of the biological organisms have a limited longevity, and different species of animals and plants have different potentials of longevity. Misrepair-accumulation aging theory suggests that the potential of longevity of an organism is related to its structural complexity. Limited longevity is due to the limited ... |
When we blow air out of our mouths, to either cool down soup or fog up a mirror, are we actually "controlling" the temperature of the air coming out? | When you blow to cool things down part of the air comes from your lungs, but a greater part is pulled from the surrounding air by the vacuum you create blowing. When you blow to heat something up you get much closer and try to minimize the surrounding air.
There is a good video I will try to find asking people how muc... | [
"The cold water release method involves using slow running cold tap water, over the edge of the pressure cooker lid, being careful to avoid the steam vent or any other valves or outlets and never immersing the pressure cooker under water, otherwise steam can be ejected from under the lid, which could cause scalding... |
Why is RISUG (or Vasalgel or other similar male birth control) taking so long to be broadly available? | From Googling around, it seems that in India (where RISUG was originally developed), it's been stuck in clinical trial limbo for a number of reasons (including [difficulty in getting volunteers](_URL_1_)). Vasalgel is essentially the same treatment, but it's going through the US FDA (they [seem to still be doing precli... | [
"The Yuzpe regimen is a method of emergency contraception that uses a combination of ethinyl estradiol and levonorgestrel. It is less effective and less commonly used than a larger dose of levonorgestrel alone, a dose of ulipristal acetate, or insertion of a copper intrauterine device. It is designed to be used wit... |
why do my cats always seem required to use the litterbox immediately after i clean it? | They are marking their ownership of that box with their scent/pee/whatever. By cleaning it, you "erased" their scent from the box and therefore their ownership of that territory. | [
"Self-cleaning litter boxes employ technology that automates the litter box emptying procedure. Some models have electric combing mechanisms that automatically scoop the clumps out of the litter box into a sealed, disposable-bag-lined container after the animal has used it. These models use a pressure pad or an inf... |
how are canals finished? | From what I've seen, they basically start in the middle and work towards each end. There will be water that accumulates in the canal as they dig it. This is managed by large pumps. Once they get to the end, they will take their equipment out of the canal and work across the "dam" that separates the lake or ocean fro... | [
"BULLET::::- A canal can be created where no stream presently exists. Either the body of the canal is dug or the sides of the canal are created by making dykes or levees by piling dirt, stone, concrete or other building materials. The finished shape of the canal as seen in cross section is known as the \"canal pris... |
- what is happening when you can "feel" someone looking at you, and you get the heebie-jeebies? | Looking at you.. like this?
_URL_0_ | [
"Titchener rejected the telepathic explanation. He instead suggested that when a subject experienced the feeling that they were being watched and turned to check, a second person who already had the subject in their field of vision might notice the subject starting to turn their head, and shift their gaze to the su... |
Are modern Egyptians really related to the Egyptians of ancient times? | > In modern times however, it's known that the Dutch didn't descend from the Batavians due to many migrations throughout the ages.
How is this known? Or rather, what are you sources that the modern inhabitants of the Netherlands are genetically discontinuous with their antecedents going back to the Neolithic? Yo... | [
"Egyptian identity since the Iron Age Egyptian Empire evolved for the longest period under the influence of native Egyptian culture, religion and identity (see Ancient Egypt). The Egyptians came subsequently under the influence of brief successions of foreign rulers including Berbers, Nubians, Persians, Greeks, Rom... |
Do humans have the largest offspring in proportion to the parent? | Since you don't narrow this down to any particular taxa -
> Kiwi eggs can weigh up to one-quarter the weight of the female.
(The equivalent of a 120-pound woman having a 30-pound baby.)
> The kiwi lays the biggest egg in proportion to its size of any bird in the world,[18] so even though the kiwi is about t... | [
"Large mammals, such as primates, cattle, horses, some antelopes, giraffes, hippopotamuses, rhinoceroses, elephants, seals, whales, dolphins, and porpoises, generally are pregnant with one offspring at a time, although they may have twin or multiple births on occasion. In these large animals, the birth process is s... |
Is opening eyes underwater harmful? | [This older JAMA paper](_URL_1_) reports
> Eye examinations performed on 50 subjects immediately before and after swimming in a chlorinated pool showed that 34 subjects (68%) saw rainbows and/or halos around lights after swimming, a symptom indicating the presence of corneal edema. Forty-seven subjects (94%) had corne... | [
"The inside of the 'eye' is only about deep and is accessible to small boats as a sheltered anchorage. It is protected from strong currents and the whole structure is popular with snorkellers and scuba-divers.\n",
"Water has a higher refractive index than air – similar to that of the cornea of the eye. Light ente... |
why are there about a thousand species of spiders but only one human species? | I'm no expert, and maybe I am totally misunderstanding, but there are what I feel are "species" of humans, though I wouldn't use that term.
African, European, Asian, aboriginals, Native American, Hispanic, and I'm sure there are more... | [
"Spiders (order Araneae) are air-breathing arthropods that have eight legs and chelicerae with fangs able to inject venom. They are the largest order of arachnids and rank seventh in total species diversity among all orders of organisms. Spiders are found worldwide on every continent except for Antarctica, and have... |
how does the title of a classical music work? why are they so long? | Many musical compositions made my famous composers are given first a number based upon what kind of composition it is. For example, Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 was the ninth symphony he wrote. There are other concertos, rhapsodies, fugues and such he may have wrote, but symphonies are different just like movies are diff... | [
"The term \"classical music\" has two meanings; the broader meaning includes all Western art music from the Medieval era to the 2000s, and the specific meaning refers to the art music from the 1750s to the early 1820s—the era of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Joseph Haydn, and Ludwig van Beethoven. This section is about ... |
What color would the sky and ocean be in a planet with a red sun? | It is the atmosphere that determines the color of the sky, not the color of the sun. Gasses in the atmosphere scatter blue light more than other colors, so the sky appears blue. When the sun is setting/rising, the color is darker because the light has to go through more air. | [
"Although no images from within Jupiter's atmosphere have ever been taken, artistic representations typically assume that the planet's sky is blue, though dimmer than Earth's, because the sunlight there is on average 27 times fainter, at least in the upper reaches of the atmosphere. The planet's narrow rings might ... |
why ships are shaped like a v and not square | Yes. And many slow or towed floating platforms, like barges, have exactly that configuration. But if you want a vessel to be able to move through the water with any sort of speed, then a V shape is best for reducing drag. A ship with a square keel requires vastly more energy to push through the water than one with a V ... | [
"European, and especially English, watercraft terminology draws a strong distinction between square-rigged vessels (with square sails hung from yards mounted centrally and horizontally from masts) and fore-and-aft rigged ones (everything else). It is important to note that any other sail (such as a lug or spritsail... |
Why are Dumas' heroes called musketeers when they use a rapier, not a musket? | Answered your question in another thread but anyway:
Because Dumas modelled his main characters after, somewhat unsurprisingly, four musketeers. [Charles de Batz-Castelmore d'Artagnan](_URL_2_)(Yeah, take a wild guess at why that was shortend, quite a mouthful), [Armand d'Athos](_URL_4_), [Henri d'Aramitz](_URL_3_) an... | [
"His favored weapon is a rapier, which he also uses to often leave his distinctive mark, a Z cut with three quick strokes, on his defeated foes and other objects. He also uses other weapons, including a bullwhip and a pistol.\n",
"\"The Three Musketeers\" was loosely adapted from the novel \"The Three Musketeers\... |
why do sometimes people not realize they have been shot until someones either tells them or they see the injury for themselves? | The reason for it (yes it does happen) is a mixture of adrenaline and nerve damage. When a person has been firing a gun a lot the gun, barrel, and bullets will heat up. When this happens the bullet will cause slightly more damage upon entry than normal and can sometimes cause the nerve damage stated above. When this h... | [
"In his closing statement, the shooter said that \"going out was my first mistake, I was a naive fool that wanted to help people. The second mistake was the shooting itself. Had I not been so frightened, had I handled the situation in a psychologically and physically better way, it could have had different ending. ... |
A new historian needs help. | What kind of information fo you have? What are you supposed to be doing with it? | [
"He opined that it was necessary to study history to completely understand nationalism, socialism and democracy. Though Kurundkar was not an established historian, Kurundkar determinedly and dedicatedly worked towards finding new horizons in the study and research of history. His most important contribution as a hi... |
how do smartphone fingerprint sensors work so quickly when sensors used for visas at embassies are back-lit and take longer? | Your smartphone is reading your print vs a small library of a couple of prints you gave it. Those other computers as reading your print and have to compare it to all of the prints it has access to. So it is just as fast to read it but the database size causes it to slow down more and more the bigger the db of the compa... | [
"Other features include an earpiece with built-in notification LED, a fingerprint sensor on the phone's back side, an infrared port allowing the phone to act as a universal remote, dual SIM-card support in select versions, a USB 2.0 with Type-C interface connector, and QuickCharge support. In addition to scanning f... |
If I were in a ship traveling the speed of light and the ship had it's headlights on, would the speed of the light emitted be doubled or would the photons just "get stuck" on the ship? | This is a very common question, and the underpinning of relativity.
1) Your ship can't travel at the speed of light, but let's say it's going _very close_ to the speed of light.
2) The photons would neither get stuck nor travel at twice the speed of light -- from the ship's perspective, the light will move at the sp... | [
"From the planetary frame of reference, the ship's speed will appear to be limited by the speed of light—it can approach the speed of light, but never reach it. If a ship is using 1 \"g\" constant acceleration, it will appear to get near the speed of light in about a year, and have traveled about half a light year ... |
Do our brains process thoughts information at different speeds? If so, can we experience events at different rates? | I have the same question. Maybe our experience of time is somehow determined by what we focus on. People who give the same amount of attention to something (would need to be quantified) could have a similar subjective experience of the passage of time. I see, for instance, a time bubble created between two people watch... | [
"In the popular essay \"Brain Time\", David Eagleman explains that different types of sensory information (auditory, tactile, visual, etc.) are processed at different speeds by different neural architectures. The brain must learn how to overcome these speed disparities if it is to create a temporally unified repres... |
How famous were people like Mozart or Beethoven in their age? | Not my flaired field of study, but one I pursued earlier in my college years, so I'll try.
They were widely popular in the context of their time. Comparing it to Michael Jackson would lead in the wrong direction, though, because
a) only relatively few people had access to concerts and the social levels to actually co... | [
"Artur Schnabel (17 April 1882 – 15 August 1951) was an Austrian pianist and composer who is considered to be among the greatest and most important musicians of the 20th century. Schnabel continues to be celebrated particularly for his performances of Beethoven and Schubert. Proclaimed by the American music critic,... |
Do we know the socioeconomic layout of Ancient Rome, ie the rich suburbs, ghettos, ethnic neighborhoods, etc.? | > I know that our current Western concepts of urban layout probably don't entirely map to Ancient Rome
It's more than that, actually. It's not simply that modern urban planners lay out cities differently today, it's that cities themselves are completely different entities in the modern world. Modern cities have the b... | [
"Life in ancient Rome revolved around the city of Rome, located on seven hills. The city had a vast number of monumental structures like the Colosseum, the Forum of Trajan and the Pantheon. It had theatres, gymnasiums, marketplaces, functional sewers, bath complexes complete with libraries and shops, and fountains ... |
why can't i use my turbo tax i bought last yeae, this year? | Tax laws change every year. Thus the values calculated from last year's software won't necessarily work for this year. | [
"Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, has lobbied extensively against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) creating its own online system of tax filing. As part of an agreement with the IRS, TurboTax allows individuals making less than $66,000 a year to use a free version of TurboTax; a 2019 ProPublica investigation reveal... |
Were there any European attempts to "restart" imperialism? | France has exerted a lot of effort to maintain loose and informal control over its former colonial empire in Africa.
If you're looking for formal attempts to regain a colonial empire, the best example might be Spain. After the loss of most of Spain's American colonies, it kept up a series of raids and invasions for a... | [
"Walter Rodney, in his 1972 classic How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, proposes the idea that imperialism is a phase of capitalism \"in which Western European capitalist countries, the US, and Japan established political, economic, military and cultural hegemony over other parts of the world which were initially at ... |
Where normal citizens traveling between countries under total war? (e.g WW2) | I do know, at least, that third country nationals were able to use neutral nations as transit hubs. Many of the American officials who went to London in the early days tended to travel by clipper to Spain to avoid war risk, and from there to Britain. Americans could have just as easily transferred on through Vichy Fran... | [
"Routes had been established to places where aircraft had been unheard of before the war. Airline personnel who had never left the United States before joining the military had become veterans of long over-water flights to the remotest regions of earth. In its final full month of wartime operations (July 1945), ATC... |
why is ram hardly ever seen as 6gb,12gb or 24 etc? | Because computers, being binary machines, do math in base 2. 2, 4, 8, 16, 32... are all powers of 2. | [
"The computers shipped in November 1979, much closer to the original design date. The names originally referred to the amount of memory, 4 KB RAM in the 400 and 8 KB in the 800. By the time they were released, RAM prices had started to fall, so the machines were instead both released with 8 KB, using 4kx1 DRAMs. Fu... |
why is oskar groening a 94-year-old former bookkeeper & guard at auschwitz birkenau guilty of 300000 counts of accessory to murder in wwii but bush sr , bush jr bill clintion & obama are not prosecuted for iraq & afghanistan wars they ordered that killed millions of innocent people ? | Wars are terrible things. Civilians get killed in wars as a sad byproduct of violent attempts to resolve political differences.
But while the atrocities that went on at Auschwitz happened during a war, they were not *part* of war. The killing of civilians there was not a byproduct of political struggles, it was a dire... | [
"On 15 July 2015, he was found guilty of being an accessory to the murder of at least 300,000 Jews. Reacting to the sentence, Auschwitz survivor Kor said that she was \"disappointed\" adding: \"They are trying to teach a lesson that if you commit such a crime, you will be punished. But I do not think the court has ... |
It seems that in paintings, we only see what nobles wore during formal occasions. Do we know what they would have worn on casual occasions? | Part of the issue here is that you're looking at the formal/informal divide from a very modern viewpoint. As I explained in [this answer](_URL_5_), the twentieth century saw sportswear and "sloppy" student clothing become unremarkable everyday dress; as a result, anybody born after 1930 or so has a mindset on the subje... | [
"The king's subjects' clothes were various reductions of the royal ensemble. Court officials and members of the royal family were permitted cloth showing a design in scattered flowers; low officials were limited to two flowers; male commoners had none, though common women were permitted to crimson their feet and ha... |
Does the shape of a galaxy offer any insight on its path of motion through the universe? | No. While galaxies are certainly accelerating one way or another, the forces due to this acceleration are extremely minor compared to the forces of gravity within the galaxy. The orientation of a spiral galaxy is determined by the net angular momentum that the massive cloud of dust that became the galaxy happened to ... | [
"Since the Andromeda Galaxy is seen close to edge-on, it is difficult to study its spiral structure. Rectified images of the galaxy seem to show a fairly normal spiral galaxy, exhibiting two continuous trailing arms that are separated from each other by a minimum of about and that can be followed outward from a dis... |
What happened to the natives Columbus kidnapped and brought back to Spain from his first voyage? | As far as I remember from my history classes, they died of disease pretty quickly, I think most of them faded quickly from the historical record though. Generally speaking, natives of the Americas were not considered valuable other than as a novelty since they died so quickly when exposed to so many new (to them) infec... | [
"Christopher Columbus traded with Maya merchants off the coast of Yucatán in 1502, but never made landfall. Arriving in Yucatán during the decade following Columbus's first contact with the Maya, the first Spanish to set foot on Yucatán soil did so by chance, the survivors of a shipwreck in the Caribbean. Most of t... |
what causes an inflated balloon to rise? | The helium inside it is less dense than air, and therefore rises. It's not because its inflated, it's because its filled with helium. | [
"Near the end of its deflation, the balloon may suddenly shoot quickly in the air shortly before it drops down, due to the rubber rapidly squeezes out the remaining air inside as it reaches the inclination to return to its uninflated size.\n",
"However, balloons have a certain elasticity to them that needs to be ... |
how is the so called "nuclear option" with respect to congressional approval of supreme court nominations constitutional? why is congress allowed to set its own rules for the approval process of supreme court nominees? | Here's the relevant excerpt from the Constitution:
> **He(the President)** shall have the Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur; and he **shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint** Ambas... | [
"As a response to the continuing blocking of several of Obama's nominees, Senator Harry Reid on November 21, 2013, invoked the so-called nuclear option and changed the Senate rules, meaning that a simple majority vote would suffice for all nominees except for the Supreme Court. This significantly sped up the pace o... |
What is the gold and silver foil they put on satellites and why is it important? | Despite the common knowledge that space is "cold," it's actually difficult to get rid of heat in a vacuum. Spacecraft without a highly reflective surface tend to absorb the sun's energy and heat up to the point of failure. Putting "foil" (which is actually a more advanced insulation) around satellites makes sure they c... | [
"BULLET::::- Gold is a good reflector of electromagnetic radiation such as infrared and visible light, as well as radio waves. It is used for the protective coatings on many artificial satellites, in infrared protective faceplates in thermal-protection suits and astronauts' helmets, and in electronic warfare planes... |
Is a blank 15 minute MP3 the same size as a 15 minute MP3 of music? | With CBR encoding, yes, by definition. Bitrate is constant.
If you use VBR encoding, then the encoder would (should) be smart enough to make your silent file really really small. | [
"MP3's more fine-grained and selective quantization does prove notably superior to Layer II/MP2 at lower-bitrates, however. It is able to provide nearly equivalent audio quality to Layer II, at a 15% lower bitrate (approximately). 128 kbit/s is considered the \"sweet spot\" for MP3; meaning it provides generally ac... |
If energy is released when bonds form, and input of energy is needed for bonds to break, then why does anabolism require energy, and catabolism "give" energy? | You are right that any bonds must sit in a **local** energy minimum, where you have to put in energy to dissociate them and gain energy by binding them. Otherwise you wouldn't have a bound state.
For biological reactions, when they say "require" or "give" energy, what they are actually talking about is the energy diff... | [
"In the simplest view of a covalent bond, one or more electrons (often a pair of electrons) are drawn into the space between the two atomic nuclei. Energy is released by bond formation. This is not as a reduction in potential energy, because the attraction of the two electrons to the two protons is offset by the el... |
Did whites in the American South only discriminate against African Americans and not Africans? | Definitely no. The racism was against color. If you weren't white you weren't welcome, and if you were black, you were especially not welcome because the sign is specifically against the blacks. Many people who consider themselves Africans are black, and they were just as much discriminated for their color as African A... | [
"After 1890, the system of Jim Crow, disenfranchisement, and second class citizenship degraded the citizenship rights of African Americans, especially in the South. It was the nadir of American race relations. There were three main aspects: racial segregation – upheld by the United States Supreme Court decision in ... |
why do women’s arms angle outward from the elbow, and men’s are straight? | To fit around their hips. Otherwise they would constantly hit their arms on their hips as they walked.
Their hips are wider than the rest of their body for childbirth.
| [
"Most frequently, the groove is vertical on the anterior side but runs down laterally on the posterior side. During elbow flexion, the vertical anterior part of the trochlea keeps the upper arm and forearm aligned (when viewed in front). During elbow extension, however, the oblique posterior part makes contact with... |
Was Francisco Franco a fascist or was his ideology different enough from that of Hitler and Mussolini to be considered a distinct political philosophy? | Whilst Spain was quite close with Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany and the association with the fascist Falange, Franco's Spain wasn't really fascist. Franco himself can best be called, well, a Francoist - his main priorities were always the consolidation of his own power, from his climb to Generalisimo in the civil war ... | [
"Meanwhile fascism emerged in Spain, including its charismatic leader, José Antonio Primo de Rivera (1903-36), who believed that Italian Fascism, as personified by Mussolini, was the perfect model. After his execution by Spanish republican forces in 1936, Francisco Franco became the leader of the Falange Party, as ... |
betelgeuse blackhole? | From a gravitational perspective, at any distance except near vicinity, there's no difference between a black hole and the object it was created from.
E.g., if you could collapse the Moon into a black hole, it would make no difference for us, except we won't get any additional light on the night sky 2 weeks every mont... | [
"BULLET::::- Blackhole is two enclosed tube slides twisting and turning around each other. Riders are immersed in complete darkness as they traverse down the slide reaching high speeds. The Blackhole was acquired second hand from a defunct waterpark in Brazil and opened at the park as the second attraction in the E... |
If Nazi Germany had survived for a few more months than it did, would America have also used the Atomic Bomb on them? | Well, this is speculative. No way to know. But if we indulge in some speculation, knowing what factors went into the use of the bomb and how the top people in the US thought about it, I think the answer is "no" if we are just extending the timeline a bit but not changing any of the circumstances on the ground. Why? No ... | [
"During the German occupation of Norway in World War II, the heavy-water production plant was sabotaged by the SOE in order to prevent the Germans from making an atomic bomb. However, it was later discovered that the Germans were not as close to making an atomic bomb as had been initially feared.\n",
"“If Dr. Coh... |
how does siphoning gas from one car to another work? | Once you get enough suction to make a gas bridge through the hose, gravity causes the gas to "fall" the rest of the way into the other car's tank. Usually people will use a canister instead of their car if their car's tank is higher than the victim's car tank. | [
"A venturi can also be used to mix a liquid with a gas. If a pump forces the liquid through a tube connected to a system consisting of a venturi to increase the liquid speed (the diameter decreases), a short piece of tube with a small hole in it, and last a venturi that decreases speed (so the pipe gets wider again... |
If the planet Mercury's day is twice the length of its year, what path does the sun take through the Mercurian sky? | I wouldn't say that it's same as Earth, just longer. There would be all kinds of interesting effects.
First it's good to know about the different kinds of days there are. On Earth the different types of day are almost the same length, varying only by some minutes. But on Mercury they are vastly different. First, the s... | [
"At certain points on Mercury's surface, an observer would be able to see the Sun peek up about halfway over the horizon, then reverse and set before rising again, all within the same Mercurian day. This is because approximately four Earth days before perihelion, Mercury's angular orbital velocity equals its angula... |
How did the Nazi's - and the victorious Allies - deal with confiscated Jewish housing? | It depends on where they are from. Housing is usually plenty in rural areas so those houses are looted and deserted; while apartments in metropolitan areas are usually much more valuable. According to Livia Bitton-Jackson's memoir *My Bridges of Hope*, after being liberated from Auschwitz, she, her mother, and brother ... | [
"Jewish properties which were confiscated by the Nazis and subsequently nationalized by the Soviet installed Communist authorities in Poland as \"abandoned properties\". According to Dariusz Stola, the laws nationalizing \"abandoned property\" \"...have been imposed with, among other things, the possessions of murd... |
if heat is simply molecules and atoms moving quickly and vibrating, why does shaking water not heat it? | It does, you're just not shaking it enough to have a perceivable effect.
[[Here]](_URL_0_) is an /r/askscience post about this topic. | [
"In any vibrating structure, the strain field causes a change in the internal energy such that compressed region becomes hotter (assuming a positive coefficient of thermal expansion) and extended region becomes cooler. The mechanism responsible for thermoelastic damping is the resulting lack of thermal equilibrium ... |
why is it illegal to switch lanes in an intersection? | Because it's dangerous. Intersections are far more dangerous than non-intersections because people are crossing in front of each other. That's why we have so many accidents in intersections. So adding on lane changes you're just asking for trouble. | [
"In many jurisdictions, drivers are therefore prohibited from entering an intersection at a green light if there is no room for them to clear the intersection. If all drivers follow this rule, gridlock is impossible.\n",
"Generally, at least one direction of traffic at an intersection has the green lights (green ... |
how is carbon fibre made? | carbon fiber starts out as strands that is woven together into a fabric which is then shaped and is imbued with epoxy resin to harden it into a final product.
how its made video: _URL_0_ | [
"To produce a carbon fiber, the carbon atoms are bonded together in crystals that are more or less aligned parallel to the long axis of the fiber as the crystal alignment gives the fiber high strength-to-volume ratio (making it strong for its size). Several thousand carbon fibers are bundled together to form a tow,... |
If the world were to stop spinning all together, would we feel it? | Yes, all that ocean water moving at 1500 km/h along with the Earth would now be moving at the same speed relative to the fixed Earth. Cataclysmic tsunamis. | [
"This scenario is unique because it doesn't happen overnight, but rather over a given period of time: The Earth revolves at 1,000 miles an hour, but is gradually slowing down, yet this slowing is too slow to be noticed on human timescales. But what if it significantly slowed and eventually stopped? (The reason for ... |
how did the human genome project sequence the dna? | By stringing together lots and lots of short, overlapping snippets of DNA from many many copies of the genome. It's called "shotgun sequencing."
Imagine that you have a bag containing all the pages from a novel, but they've all been shredded into pieces, and you have to put it together. Finding all the places where t... | [
"The first full DNA genome to be sequenced was that of bacteriophage φX174 in 1977. Medical Research Council scientists deciphered the complete DNA sequence of the Epstein-Barr virus in 1984, finding it contained 172,282 nucleotides. Completion of the sequence marked a significant turning point in DNA sequencing be... |
what exactly is a commercial pilot doing in the cockpit during a flight? so many buttons, pedals, paperwork etc? | Over twenty years experience, currently flying a 737. All the buttons and switches are basically used for lights, power, pumps and engine start up procedures. Take off and landing are basically the only time I'm controlling the aircraft by hand. There is paperwork sometimes I'm evaluating a first officer, other times j... | [
"Piloting a Landmate is a unique experience, given that the craft behaves as an extension of the human body, one that just does everything its wearer is doing. There are seemingly no physical controls in the cockpit, rather control is accomplished through motion-capture technology (very similar to that used to anim... |
why do we have finger and toe nails? | Fingernails make your fingertips more sensitive by exerting counter-pressure on the pads of your finger. This makes it easier to do all kinds of fiddly little jobs.
Also, definitely for protection and they work well as tweezers as other folks have mentioned. | [
"A nail is a horn-like keratinous envelope covering the tips of the fingers and toes in most primates. Nails evolved from claws found in other animals. Fingernails and toenails are made of a tough protective protein called alpha-keratin which is found in the hooves, hair, claws and horns of vertebrates.\n",
"Racq... |
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