Split (2)

train · 226k rows

question stringlengths 3 301	answer stringlengths 9 26.1k	context list
why do calluses, when sanded/picked, grow back as calluses and not as "fresh" skin?	Because then there would be no point in growing them. A callus is not a temporary armor for your body, is a total change of your skin. When you lift weights every day, for example, you will hurt your hands a lot. Once you get the habit, your body understands that instead of simply fixing the wound every time it happens...	[ "Biologically, calluses are formed by the accumulation of terminally undifferentiated keratinocytes in the outermost layer of skin. Though the cells of calluses are dead, they are quite resistant to mechanical and chemical insults due to extensive networks of cross-linked proteins and hydrophobic keratin intermedia...
when my dog gets into something that makes him sick, does he realize what made him sick, as it would for a human? if not, do they have any mechanism to learning what type of things are bad for them?	dogs are much much worse at realizing correlation over time. They're just not super smart, so if they eat something and get sick 5 hours later how are they supposed to know what caused it? If a dog eats something, and immediately gets sick, it knows not to eat that anymore.	[ "Symptoms are not necessarily distinguishable from other kinds of distress. A dog might stand uncomfortably and seem to be in extreme discomfort for no apparent reason. Other possible symptoms include firm distension of the abdomen, weakness, depression, difficulty breathing, hypersalivation, and retching without p...
why hasn't anyone else been to the moon? it seems like something that super rich people would do for fun, like james cameron going to the mariana trench.	If' Elon Musk has taught you nothing else, it's that getting to space is really, really hard and expensive. Getting a submersible that can withstand the depths of the ocean is small potatoes in comparison. Least of all that you're not sittin on top of a giant bomb that can go off if something goes wrong. The worst that...	[ "The Moon Men appeared in \"Jet Fuel Formula\", the first Rocky and Bullwinkle story arc, broadcast 1959-1960. In this story they come to Earth in an attempt to thwart a rush of tourists to the Moon, only to become media celebrities themselves. They initially succumb to the temptations of fame but soon tire of it. ...
Would high levels of radiation mutate animals and plant life like we see in the video game 'Fallout' and 'Metro: Last Light'? [Biology]	Increased radiation might increase numbers of mutations per generation such that animals are able to adapt and change more rapidly to environmental pressures, and a post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland could provide quite an intense selection pressure for massive adaptations. On time scales of tens of thousands to millio...	[ "Included in the game is the \"Nightmares\" campaign mode, which is a retelling of the main campaign with the plot changed to incorporate zombies and other supernatural beings. In this campaign, the lethal Virus 61-15 is released in various cities around the world, turning whoever it infects into zombies. In respon...
Is it easy to use an electron microscope?	As someone who uses electron microscopy on a day-to-day basis, the answer is no, do not buy it. It will be a white elephant. You will never figure out how to effectively operate it (like KeScoBo) said) without professional training, and you will find it extremely difficult to get anything positive from it. In addition ...	[ "Electron microscopes are used to investigate the ultrastructure of a wide range of biological and inorganic specimens including microorganisms, cells, large molecules, biopsy samples, metals, and crystals. Industrially, electron microscopes are often used for quality control and failure analysis. Modern electron m...
a car a/c blows the air into a car through a fan in the front. how does the air go out from the car?	Car cabins are generally not airtight; there are dozens of holes throughout the cabin allowing the air to escape.	[ "BULLET::::- In automobiles, a mechanical fan provides engine cooling and prevents the engine from overheating by blowing or drawing air through a coolant-filled radiator. The fan may be driven with a belt and pulley off the engine's crankshaft or an electric motor switched on or off by a thermostatic switch.\n", ...
how a bios chip works	The BIOS is just some instructions stored on a chip that's hardwired to the motherboard. It tells the system how to identify & power-up all the components & then hands control over to the boot loader. The boot loader is a simple program, usually written to the first few blocks of the first hard drive, that is r...	[ "ChIP-on-chip (also known as ChIP-chip) is a technology that combines chromatin immunoprecipitation ('ChIP') with DNA microarray (\"\"chip\"\"). Like regular ChIP, ChIP-on-chip is used to investigate interactions between proteins and DNA \"in vivo\". Specifically, it allows the identification of the cistrome, the s...
Where does the pressure that moves cerebral spinal fluid through the brain come from?	CSF is created by the choroid plexus in the ventricles. As it's created, it pushes the fluid already in the ventricles further down the path from the lateral vents to the third through the aqueduct to the fourth and out the foramina (of Luschka and Magendie). The glymphatic system is separate and seems to operate on t...	[ "The most definitive way of measuring the intracranial pressure is with transducers placed within the brain. A catheter can be surgically inserted into one of the brain's lateral ventricles and can be used to drain CSF (cerebrospinal fluid) in order to decrease ICP's. This type of drain is known as an external vent...
Does blood coagulate in some areas faster than others? Where and why?	It will coagulate fastest in areas of stasis. Since flow is lower in veins compared to arteries, you will typically see clot formation in veins. Gravity will usually cause venous poplin gin the legs, so commonly you will see clot formation there	[ "Coagulation is highly conserved throughout biology. In all mammals, coagulation involves both a cellular (platelet) and a protein (coagulation factor) component. The system in humans has been the most extensively researched and is the best understood.\n", "Mammalian blood coagulation is based on the proteolytica...
As the Earth and the Moon, and all of us really, does the moon's phase appear differently depending on where on Earth we might be standing?	Approximately, but not exactly as different observers have a slightly different point of view. See [this sketch](_URL_0_) with massively exaggerated sizes for Earth and Moon. This difference was the way the ancient Greeks measured the distance to the Moon. The observer on the top sees a slightly fuller Moon than the ob...	[ "In western culture, the \"four principal phases\" of the Moon are new moon, first quarter, full moon, and third quarter (also known as last quarter). These are the instances when the Moon's ecliptic longitude and the Sun's ecliptic longitude differ by 0°, 90°, 180°, and 270°, respectively. Each of these phases occ...
why do people that often use drugs (i’m mainly thinking cocaine here) have very little body fat?	For a lot of reasons. One might be that the drug increases their metabolism, makes them more active, or suppresses their appetite - in other words, the drug may be directly making them thinner. But there are also indirect reasons. When they're high, they might be so out of it that they're unable to cook for themselves ...	[ "Cocaine can often cause reduced food intake, many chronic users lose their appetite and can experience severe malnutrition and significant weight loss. Cocaine effects, further, are shown to be potentiated for the user when used in conjunction with new surroundings and stimuli, and otherwise novel environs.\n", ...
I heard that recently that all reading used to be done out loud and silent reading was a sign of idiocy or genius. Is there any truth to this?	It used to be the accepted view that in Greco-Roman antiquity reading was normally aloud -- I've never heard this view applied to any society in the modern era, so I'm guessing this is what your source was referring to. But it's not true for Greco-Roman antiquity either. Almost the whole of the argument that reading...	[ "Scholars assume that reading aloud (Latin \"clare legere\") was the more common practice in antiquity, and that reading silently (\"legere tacite\" or \"legere sibi\") was unusual. In his \"Confessions\", Saint Augustine remarks on Saint Ambrose's unusual habit of reading silently in the 4th century AD.\n", "Thi...
When did the Byzantines stop thinking of Islam as a heresy, and start thinking of it as a religion?	Alright, I'll give this a try, but note that this is by no means definitive and I won't even attempt to go beyond the seventh century; from the way I interpret the evidence, the situation in the first century of Islam was complicated enough, so I don't feel that my limited knowledge of the eighth century will add anyth...	[ "The Byzantine church was transformed into a mosque in the 7th century by Omar ibn al-Khattab's generals, in the early years of Rashidun rule. The mosque is still alternatively named \"al-Omari\", in honour of Omar ibn al-Khattab who was caliph during the Muslim conquest of Palestine. In 985, during Abbasid rule, A...
What effect would the removal of Central Park have on air quality in New York City?	Are we replacing the park with streets, or with pavement? The park improves air quality just by virtue of not being trafficked streets.	[ "Concentrated pollution in New York City leads to high incidence of asthma and other respiratory conditions among the city's residents. In recent years the city has focused on reducing its environmental impact. The city government is required to purchase only the most energy-efficient equipment for use in city offi...
How did the legal system in ancient Rome (the city) work?	To get the ball rolling, I'll say that I've read the book and the speeches in them are actually parts of Cicero's speech at that exact trial with some parts paraphrased and some taken out for the sake of brevity (these speeches were often times VERY long). These speeches would have contained alot of facts, though prese...	[ "The roots of the legal principles and practices of the ancient Romans may be traced to the Law of the Twelve Tables promulgated in 449 BC and to the codification of law issued by order of Emperor Justinian I around 530 AD (see Corpus Juris Civilis). Roman law as preserved in Justinian's codes continued into the By...
Does the size of a planet affect the size of its inhabitants?	We have only one sample, so there's no real way to know. Though in theory smaller planets should be generally able to support larger life on land, since gravity is lower. Also, the size of life on earth has changed dramatically over the course of history. Sample the planet now, 40 million years ago, 100 million year...	[ "Recent discoveries have uncovered planets that are thought to be similar in size or mass to Earth. \"Earth-sized\" ranges are typically defined by mass. The lower range used in many definitions of the super-Earth class is 1.9 Earth masses; likewise, sub-Earths range up to the size of Venus (~0.815 Earth masses). A...
how do supplements with b vitamins give you energy ?	One of the ways the provided supplement help increase energy is by help alleviating anemia due to B12 and folic acid deficiency (B9 vitamin). Deficiency of B12 and folic acid prevent the bone marrow from producing functional red blood cells. Less red blood cells means less ability of transporting oxygen to the tissues...	[ "Vitamin C dietary supplements are available as tablets, capsules, drink mix packets, in multi-vitamin/mineral formulations, in antioxidant formulations, and as crystalline powder. Vitamin C is also added to some fruit juices and juice drinks. Tablet and capsule content ranges from 25 mg to 1500 mg per serving. The...
What was the American (and international) reaction/response to the Tsar Bomb?	Ha! So I'm actually giving a paper on exactly this question ("'There is no Mystery about Producing a 50 Megaton Bomb': Very high-yield nuclear weapons and the Limited Test Ban Treaty,") at the [next History of Science Society annual meeting](_URL_0_), this November. (I'm also the guy who made the NUKEMAP that you took...	[ "Footage from a Soviet documentary about the Tsar Bomba is featured in \"Trinity and Beyond\", where it is referred to as the \"Russian monster bomb\". The movie states that the Tsar Bomba project broke the voluntary moratorium on nuclear tests. In fact, Soviets restarted their tests and broke the unilateral volunt...
how do penis pumps work?	It uses the vacuum to pull blood into your member, creating an erection. Usually you'd need to use a ring to keep the blood there and the little guy inflated for use.	[ "Penis pumps induce erections without the need for drugs or invasive treatments. To use a pump, the man inserts his penis into a cylinder, then pumps it to create a vacuum which draws blood into the penis, making it erect. He then slides a ring from the outside of the cylinder onto the base of the penis to hold the...
Why is entropy measured in J/K?	The units J/K come from the [original macroscopic definition](_URL_0_) as given by Clausius. It would be more natural (at least it always seemed more natural to me) to define entropy as a dimensionless quantity. There are more details in the [Wikipedia article on the Boltzmann constant](_URL_1_).	[ "More fundamentally, \"kT\" is the amount of heat required to increase the thermodynamic entropy of a system, in natural units, by one nat. therefore represents an amount of entropy per molecule, measured in natural units.\n", "The absolute value of entropy for a substance in its standard state at the reference t...
how come movies, tv shows, and video games all have different rating levels, yet music records only have explicit or non-explicit?	There's a much wider variety of questionable content that can be shown in video format than can be played in music. For example, language is a black and white category - they either cursed, or they didn't. Other categories run a spectrum. Violence, substance abuse, nudity, sexual content, etc. all run a gamut from tame...	[ "The influence of specific factors in deciding a rating varies from country to country. In countries such as the United States, films with strong sexual content tend to be restricted to older viewers, though those same films are very often considered suitable for all ages in countries such as France and Germany. In...
What was Japanese culture like prior to Chines influence?	There really is not that much known of pre-Chinese culture in Japan, simply because the earliest written records of Japan are from Chinese sources beginning in 57 CE. Known as Wa (a Japanese pronunciation of an early Chinese name for Japan), it was described by early historians as being a land of hundreds of scattered ...	[ "This early period was followed by the art styles of various Korean kingdoms and dynasties. In these periods, artists often adopted Chinese style in their artworks. However, Koreans not only adopted but also modified Chinese culture with a native preference for simple elegance, purity of nature and spontaneity. Thi...
Why do my eyes get bloodshot when I'm ultra stoned?	THC is a vasodialator meaning that it opens veins up in your eyes making them red. Only one going red may be the result of differences in blood flow in your eyes.	[ "Secondary glaucoma refers to any case in which another disease, trauma, drug or procedure causes increased eye pressure, resulting in optic nerve damage and vision loss, and may be mild or severe. It can be due to an eye injury, inflammation, a tumor, or advanced cases of cataracts or diabetes. It can also be caus...
How does a surgeon know how deep to cut a patient to avoid injury to other organs or tissue?	Even though people vary in size and age, there is still a known progression of structures when making a surgical incision (barring any past surgeries or malformations). For example, if I want to make a flank incision to get to someone's kidney, I first will cut skin, then through the subcutaneous adipose/fat (which can...	[ "Surgical intervention may be required but it depends on what organ systems are affected by the wound and the extent of the damage. It is important for care providers to thoroughly check the wound site inasmuch as a laceration of an artery often results in delayed complications sometimes leading to death. In cases ...
How did Feudalism exactly work, who actually owned the land?	Your confusion is completely justified, because your question is at the heart of the academic debate for the last 30 years of whether or not feudalism is usable as a word at all. The reason being, feudalism means so many things to so many different historians, and its application even in its most broad definition is n...	[ "In its origin, the feudal grant of land had been seen in terms of a personal bond between lord and vassal, but with time and the transformation of fiefs into hereditary holdings, the nature of the system came to be seen as a form of \"politics of land\" (an expression used by the historian Marc Bloch). The 11th ce...
how does the weight of the food you eat relate to how much weight you gain? how quickly does your body weight change?	Your weight changes instantaneously whenever stuff goes into or out of your body. Imagine a man is standing on a scale, which reads 170 pounds. He picks up a one-pound hamburger. The scale is now weighing his body plus the burger, and reads 171 pounds. He then eats the burger. The amount of matter remains the same;...	[ "While an increase in food intake is often the case after exposure, weight gain involves the body's maintenance of its metabolic setpoint as well. Given this information, it is particularly important to note that exposure during development and initial programming of these setpoints can be extremely significant thr...
what makes metal stronger than stone?	I'm no expert, but I think it has to do with the structure of the atoms in metal. The structure metal has gives ut tensile strength (the ability to bend) which stone (for the most part) doesn't have. Stone on the other hand has great compressive strength which allows it to carry really heavy weights. That's why we comb...	[ "Some metals and metal alloys possess high structural strength per unit mass, making them useful materials for carrying large loads or resisting impact damage. Metal alloys can be engineered to have high resistance to shear, torque and deformation. However the same metal can also be vulnerable to fatigue damage thr...
why is it relieving to exhale a little bit of air [at a time] while i'm holding my breath?	The feeling of needing to breathe is caused by too much carbon dioxide, not too little oxygen. This is why exhaling into someone's lungs during CPR is effective. When you exhale, you're exhaling plenty of oxygen but also carbon dioxide, and the decrease in carbon dioxide is what lets you hold your breath longer.	[ "To the young writers, she wrote, \"You must keep trying because it is as essential as drawing breath – like exhaling! All the thoughts breathed out and shaping themselves visibly after being inside the cells of the brain, and then released. If you hold your breath and do not breathe out, you will suffocate.\"\n", ...
is there a difference between a large amount of electricity moving between a thick or a thin wire, and if so, what is the difference and why does it happen?	A smaller wire has a higher resistance. The higher the resistant the higher the voltage drop, the higher the voltage drop the higher the power disapation and that means it will get hot, potentially very hot.	[ "A straight single wire has some inductance, which in our ordinary experience is intangible because it is negligibly small so it can't readily be measured at low frequencies, and its effect is not detectable. A long straight wire like an electric transmission line has substantial inductance that reduces its capacit...
is the seasoning or the noodles unhealthy in instant ramen?	It's both. The noodles are deep-fried prior to being packaged which makes them high in calories and saturated fat. The season packets use a ton of a salt because it's an easy way to enhance the flavor for cheap. Both are bad independently, so together they are worse. Don't believe the msg hype, unless you have a parti...	[ "Ramen are thin, wheat-based noodles made from wheat flour, salt, water, and \"kansui\", a form of alkaline water. The dough is risen before being rolled. They were imported from China during the Meiji period. How it made the jump from China to Japan is still under debate, but it's generally accepted that in 1910 a...
Can I get sick from a single bacteria cell? Or does it require a critical mass?	The answer to this question, like so many other biology-related questions, is: it depends. In this case, it depends on the particular species of bacteria you're talking about. Some species can cause an infection from just a couple of bacteria; others can need hundreds (or more!) in order to reliably infect a host. Sc...	[ "The cell walls of this organism lack peptidoglycans and lipopolysaccharides typically present in at least small amounts in most other Gram-negative bacteria, which is believed to contribute to its ability to resist the immune response of the host. The lack of these two materials reduces the rigidity of the cell wa...
How can the body differentiate between sodium and potassium?	That's a good question. K and Na are indeed chemically almost indistinguishable. But your doubt is misplaced - size is in fact exactly how they're distinguished in living things. To take potassium channels as an example (since I know the structure of that one offhand), it consists of four 'cubes' stacked on each othe...	[ "Sodium and potassium are very abundant in earth, both being among the ten most common elements in Earth's crust; sodium makes up approximately 2.6% of the Earth's crust measured by weight, making it the sixth most abundant element overall and the most abundant alkali metal. Potassium makes up approximately 1.5% of...
what exactly was the danger of the y2k bug - what are the consequences of a computer recognizing '2000' as '1900'?	The consequences are that a calculation involving the difference between two dates suddenly returns nonsense values. Imagine you're running a system that pays a pension for people aged 65 or over. Someone born in 1930 might have been quite happily claiming their pension as a 69 year old in 1999, but in 2000 the comput...	[ "BULLET::::- January 7: Energy companies and countries around the world report that they have passed into the year 2000 without significant problems from the \"Y2K Bug\". There was concern that the inability of some computers and embedded control systems to recognize the year 2000 could create serious problems. (DJ...
What is the history of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Golan Heights, Gaza (until 2005) etc, how did they come about and why are they such an issue of contention both internationally and domestically.	Well this subreddit has a 20-year rule on discussing history, so anything past '93 is taboo. However, a basic history can be discussed in that time frame. Israel first "got" the territories after the 1967 war, in addition to the Sinai peninsula. The Golan is somewhat different than the others, in ways I'll outline b...	[ "After Israel took control of the West Bank from Jordan and Gaza Strip from Egypt, it began to establish Israeli settlements there. These were organised into Judea and Samaria district (West Bank) and Hof Aza Regional Council (Gaza Strip) in the Southern District. Administration of the Arab population of these terr...
How is Winston Churchill viewed in the modern UK? How is he portrayed in the schools when the history of the First and Second World Wars are being taught?	A quick reminder to anyone who is thinking about answer this question: We are not interested in your personal anecdotes. We are looking for in-depth answers with a base in [accepted sources](_URL_0_). For example, some of these sources could be be modern curriculum (or other modern sources concerning how Winston C...	[ "The British statesman Winston Churchill was a prolific writer throughout his life, and many of his works were historical. His better-known historical works include: \"\", \"The World Crisis\" (a history of World War I), \"The Second World War\", and \"A History of the English-Speaking Peoples\". Churchill was awar...
how does a sacrificial anode work on a marine motor ?	A [CP](_URL_1_) is a anti-corrosion system that uses electrically active properties of alloys to create a protection against oxidation. It does that using a [Galvanic Anode](_URL_0_) a metal/alloy with negative reduction potential and more electrochemical potential. Iron gets rusty because of the electrons leaving it...	[ "Vibrators very often generate their vibrations using eccentric weights driven by a conventional electric motor, but some use electromagnet coils. Some vibrators are marketed as \"body massagers\"—although they still may be used, like the ones sold as adult sex toys, for autoeroticism. Some vibrators run on batteri...
Where can I see the entire human genome?	The poster didn't have the full sequence. The Venter group sequenced 2.91 billion base-pairs, and you can see [here](_URL_0_) a whole bookcase of books with the sequence, each chromosome being several books. And [here](_URL_1_) you can find the paper about the sequencing.	[ "BULLET::::- The human genome is the genome of Homo sapiens, which is stored on 23 chromosome pairs. Whereas a genome sequence lists the order of every DNA base in a genome, a genome map identifies the landmarks. A genome map is less detailed than a genome sequence and aids in navigating around the genome. While wo...
How do Fire Ant colonies go about splitting?	Just as a taxonomic note, the term "fire ant" refers to roughly 20 or so new world species. I assume, however, that you are specifically talking about the Red Imported Fire Ant (RIFA), Solenopsis invicta. Is that correct? If so, I can tell you of several reasons for their rampant expansion into new territories.	[ "An ant mill is an observed phenomenon in which a group of army ants, which are blind, are separated from the main foraging party, lose the pheromone track and begin to follow one another, forming a continuously rotating circle. The ants will eventually die of exhaustion. It has been reproduced in laboratories and ...
Civil War battles	“Battle Cry of Freedom” by James McPhearson covered this topic. He wrote that military training and officer thinking for the first two years of the war was based on the musket. They learned through practical experience that rifles changed the game. Muskets were highly inaccurate so their effective range was aroun...	[ "The Battles of the American Civil War were fought between April 12, 1861 and May 12–13, 1865 in 23 states (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, and West Virginia), the Di...
If I tied a pair of cannonballs to my legs and jumped from a boat over the Marianas trench, would I make it to the bottom?	I have a simplistic viewpoint of this, but I'm going to say that you'll most likely reach the bottom. Assuming you don't get eaten by sharks, caught in a fishing net, snag on some landmark partway down etc... I'm treating this as a buoyancy question. Before I give my reasons, let me just preface this with "and let m...	[ "A Cannonball, also referred to as a Bomb, is a diving style where the diver hugs their knees and attempts to enter the water with their body shaped as much like a sphere as possible. The goal is to create a large splash.\n", "BULLET::::- Wrecking Ball: Players from each team are positioned on a square platform s...
reddit, where do streams and torrents come from?	Streams come from a respective central source like youtube or the website involved in the streaming, IE there is a central source hosting the material Torrents are a different story. Torrents are decentralized controlled by the peers who are sharing them. Websites like the pirate bay are middle men who give you acces...	[ "Selecting a torrent from the search results list would take the user to another page listing the websites currently hosting the specified torrent (with which users would download files). As Torrentz used meta-search engines, users would be redirected to other torrent sites to download content (commonly KickassTorr...
difference between the idea of communism and the partucular implementation of communism that soviet union had	Karl Marx began communism when he started considering the nature of society in the industrial age. Factories require capital to construct resulting in the ownership of the factory by the rich. Factories required many workers. Each individual worker was powerless. But united together they controlled output. Factories co...	[ "According to Marxist–Leninist theory, communism in the strict sense is the final stage of evolution of a society after it has passed through the socialism stage. The Soviet Union thus cast itself as a socialist country trying to build communism, which was supposed to be a classless society.\n", "The ideology of ...
how do animals that live at the bottom of the ocean thrive near boiling hot volcanic vents?	The composition of the stuff that lives down there is also radically different from the plants and animals on the surface. Their cells have membranes that would be rock solid at room temperature, but at those hot temperatures the membranes have just the right amount of fluidity. They also have enzymes to do stuff in th...	[ "There are creatures, however, which thrive around hydrothermal vents, or geysers located on the ocean floor that expel superheated water that is rich in minerals. These organisms feed off of chemosynthetic bacteria, which use the superheated water and chemicals from the hydrothermal vents to create energy in place...
Hubble Ultra Deep Field galaxies: Are they named/studied?	They're all in a catalogue, summarised [here](_URL_0_). You can get the colour, brightness, and size/morphology listed here. We can get some useful information even from a broadband image like this. Colour tells us about the stellar population - redder means star formation stopped a long time ago and only long-lived r...	[ "The Hubble Ultra-Deep Field (HUDF) is an image of a small region of space in the constellation Fornax, containing an estimated 10,000 galaxies. The original release was combined from Hubble Space Telescope data accumulated over a period from September 24, 2003, through to January 16, 2004. Looking back approximate...
Could a long series of meteor strikes on a planet all at the same angle, tangent to the equator, effect the rotational speed of the planet?	Absolutely. Take a globe and push it in the manner that you described. It will speed up or slow down depending on the direction that you're hitting it. Now make that globe the size and mass of the Earth. Your pushes will make it speed up or slow down, but the changes would be tiny. Now make your pushes stronger and...	[ "Giant impacts have a large effect on the spin of terrestrial planets. The last few giant impacts during planetary formation tend to be the main determiner of a terrestrial planet's rotation rate. On average the spin angular velocity will be about 70% of the velocity that would cause the planet to break up and fly ...
if slander is illegal in the us, how can presidential candidates run smear campaigns or attack their opponents with blatant lies?	Slander, in most of the US, is a civil tort, and not a crime. In order to enforce it, you have to sue them, and that generally doesn't work out well for anyone in a political campaign. But beyond that, it's important to note that there is a different standard for slander and libel for people in the public eye. You hav...	[ "A smear campaign is an intentional, premeditated effort to undermine an individual's or group's reputation, credibility, and character. Like negative campaigning, most often smear campaigns target government officials, politicians, political candidates, and other public figures. However, private persons or groups ...
when i look at a wall or large blank surface, i can almost see a light "static." what causes this?	Are you talking about the tiny dots that float around frantically? [Blue Field entoptic Phenomenon](_URL_0_)	[ "Static electricity is usually caused when certain materials are rubbed against each other, like wool on plastic or the soles of shoes on carpet. The process causes electrons to be pulled from the surface of one material and relocated on the surface of the other material.\n", "When light strikes the surface of a ...
skeletal formulas of chemical compounds and how to read them.	Assuming you already know basic (high-school level) chemistry, skeletal formulas are pretty simple. Basically, because organic compounds have so many carbon and hydrogen atoms in them, we are abbreviating them to make the important structures more obvious. Every line represents a C-C bond. Each vertex represents a c...	[ "The skeletal formula is a method to draw structural formulas of organic compounds where lines represent the chemical bonds and the vertices represent implicit carbon atoms. This notation is sometimes jestingly called \"chicken wire notation\".\n", "The structural formula of a chemical compound is a graphic repre...
During medieval times, did the Egyptians know what the purpose of the pyramids were?	Not to discourage any further answers but you'll probably enjoy this older post on [Medieval descriptions of the pyramids](_URL_0_) by /u/khosikulu and /u/sunagainstgold	[ "The origins of the pyramid were forgotten during the Middle Ages. The inhabitants of Rome came to believe that it was the tomb of Remus (\"Meta Remi\") and that its counterpart near the Vatican was the tomb of Romulus, a belief recorded by Petrarch. Its true provenance was clarified by Pope Alexander VII's excavat...
scalping versus selling tickets in america?	I think it is more about the price you charge. If you sell them for face value (or just with the fees you paid added) then you are not scalping. If you sell them for MORE than you paid so that you come away with a profit, then you are scalping.	[ "Ticket scalping by ticket bots has not only be regulated in the United States, as multiple foreign countries have adopted similar legislation. Ticket scalping is illegal for all or for some types of events in the United Kingdom, Sweden, Australia, Israel and parts of Canada.\n", "Ticket scalpers (or ticket touts...
Why is it that a tone sound (or appear to sound) louder at some frequencies?	The speaker, your ears, and even the medium (ie: the air) will have what is called a frequency response function, which attenuates certain frequencies and possibly (for the speaker, not the others) amplifies other frequencies. Here's an example for some headphones I randomly pulled from the Internet: _URL_0_ (In this ...	[ "If two sounds of two different frequencies are played at the same time, two separate sounds can often be heard rather than a combination tone. The ability to hear frequencies separately is known as \"frequency resolution\" or \"frequency selectivity\". When signals are perceived as a combination tone, they are sai...
the political philosophies of jean-jacques rousseau and other "enlightenment" philosophers	There's a LOT of philosophication (YES, I AM MAKING THAT WORD HERE AND NOW) that Rousseau believed in, but the primary one is probably the Social Contract. The Social Contract idea is thus: When a group of humans get together to form a society, they do so under the form of an unwritten (at least initially) "contract"....	[ "Jean-Jacques Rousseau (, ; ; 28 June 1712 – 2 July 1778) was a Genevan philosopher, writer and composer. His political philosophy influenced the progress of the Enlightenment throughout Europe, as well as aspects of the French Revolution and the development of modern political, economic and educational thought.\n"...
How much of the sound of a person's voice physiological , and how much is learned?	The sound of your voice is always determined by the shape and size of your throat, vocal chords and oral cavities. It is however possible to manipulate these factors, which is what many "voice actors" do. You are limited by what your physiology has given you, e.g. a woman will never be able to speak with a voice as l...	[ "The perceived pitch of a person's voice is determined by a number of different factors, most importantly the fundamental frequency of the sound generated by the larynx. The fundamental frequency is influenced by the length, size, and tension of the vocal folds. This frequency averages about 125 Hz in an adult male...
Roman slaves buying their own freedom	It is true that anything the slave owned would have belonged to the master. Technically, the head of the family, the paterfamilias had the power over all the possessions of the people in his househould, under his potestas, excluding the wives' dowry (that is in a traditional manus-marriage, there were other forms...	[ "Freeing slaves could serve the pragmatic interests of the owner. The prospect of manumission worked as an incentive for slaves to be industrious and compliant. Roman slaves were paid a wage (\"peculium\"), which they could save up to buy themselves freedom. Manumission contracts found, in some abundance at Delphi ...
Once a freshwater body of water begins to freeze, assuming it is below freezing, does it freeze at a constant rate until all water is frozen or does it plateau and require colder temperatures for ice to continue to grow thicker?	A freshwater body of water exposed to subfreezing air will radiate energy from its surface layer, cooling that layer, and by convection, the whole volume until the surface water reaches 0°C (idealized pure water lake). Continued radiant cooling will cause a thin layer of ice to form. As the ice spreads across the s...	[ "The unusual density curve and lower density of ice than of water is vital to life—if water were most dense at the freezing point, then in winter the very cold water at the surface of lakes and other water bodies would sink, the lake could freeze from the bottom up, and all life in them would be killed. Furthermore...
would i gain the same amount of weight if i ate 5,000 calories one day and 1,000 the next compared to 3,000 calories both days?	Not necessarily. How many calories you can metabolize in a day is not unlimited. I assume it varies person to person but 5000 might not be enough that some goes to waste (plenty of people can metabolize a lot more than that in a day). I'm not sure how you would find out at what point your metabolism starts losing eff...	[ "A commonly asserted \"rule\" for weight gain or loss is based on the assumption that one pound of human fat tissue contains about 3,500 kilocalories (often simply called \"calories\" in the field of nutrition). Thus, eating 500 fewer calories than one needs per day should result in a loss of about a pound per week...
how can a host 'fight' or resist a parasite?	There's all sorts of ways an organism can develop to fight parasites. Sickle-cell disease is suspected to be the result of humans adapting to resist malaria. Humans lost most of their hair because it gave parasites fewer places to hide.	[ "In host-parasite interactions, the parasite organisms benefits at the expense of the host organisms. Parasites in Avida are implemented just like other self-replicating digital organisms, but they live inside hosts and execute parasitic threads using CPU cycles stolen from their hosts. Because parasites impose a c...
In the late Qing dynasty, what were their obstacles towards westernization? Why did they failed to fully commit to westernization?	I will address your initial question with some ideological context. I will also address your second question. I hope someone else can help with the other two questions you've posed! Also, I'm sorry this is a giant wall of text! Brevity is something I struggle with. In R. Keith Schoppa's book *Revolution and It's ...	[ "For about three centuries, the Qing dynasty had enforced—albeit with mixed success—a policy of segregating the non-Han peoples on the frontier from Han Chinese. By the end of the 19th century, however, China faced the prospect of being parcelled out among the Western powers and Japan, each competing for its own sp...
Some deeper questions about the double slit/quantum eraser experiment	Can you give me a link to where you describe them deleting it? I do not believe this is true and you may be misinterpreting something. This has nothing to do with whether or not somebody is observing, it has to do with whether the device is interacting with the electron to determine where it is. The interaction itself ...	[ "The double-slit experiment (and its variations) has become a classic thought experiment, for its clarity in expressing the central puzzles of quantum mechanics. Because it demonstrates the fundamental limitation of the ability of the observer to predict experimental results, Richard Feynman called it \"a phenomeno...
how do surgeons prepare for a procedure they haven't performed in a long time?	Not all doctors can/do all surgeries. For example a pediatric(child) neurosurgeon will be different from a regular neurosurgeon. In terms of cutting and suturing that's pretty standard with relatively minor changes between tissues (mostly type and size of thread). The sheer amount of practice they have going in doesn't...	[ "Before the surgery begins, the surgeon will take multiple blood test, physically examine the patient, and the surgeon will also check the past medical records of the patient to make sure it is safe to conduct the surgical procedure. On top of that, the surgeon doctor will ask about the types of medications that ha...
Why did Anne Frank share a room with the dentist?	The dentist (Mr Dussel in the published text of the diary, Fritz Pfeffer in real life...Anne gave many of the people she dealt with in hiding pseudonyms) wasn’t originally supposed to be in the annexe with them at all. & #x200B; \- The Franks went into hiding on July 6th 1942, the day after their eldest daughter Mar...	[ "Susan Ellingwood of \"The New York Times\" stated that Gillham \"does a good job\" in showing an Anne affected by survivor's guilt, but that the scenario between Anne and Otto annoyed her and \"leave the reader disappointed with this girl they once loved.\" Ultimately Ellingwood believed the readers were already w...
Do whales/cetaceans have a trachea?	Cetaceans have an anatomic structure called the "goosebeak" that is essentially an adaptation at the end of a very short trachea that connects up to the blowhole. When performing anesthesia on cetaceans, the goosebeak can be dislocated to facilitate intubation through the mouth. [Here](_URL_0_) is some good, basic inf...	[ "In amphibians, the trachea is normally extremely short, and leads directly into the lungs, without clear primary bronchi. A longer trachea is, however, found in some long-necked salamanders, and in caecilians. While there are irregular cartilagenous nodules on the amphibian trachea, these do not form the rings fou...
What causes your car to lose so much velocity when moving along a curve?	You sure it isn't just deceleration when you take your foot of the gas? Not to be condescending... Sometimes I do but generally don't keep the same speed on the curve. I let the vehicle slow down the cutting the gas	[ "When a vehicle (motor vehicle or railroad train) goes around a curve, rolling resistance usually increases. If the curve is not banked so as to exactly counter the centrifugal force with an equal and opposing centripetal force due to the banking, then there will be a net unbalanced sideways force on the vehicle.\n...
how do people become homeless as a result of large medical bills?	When you declare bankruptcy, the courts effectively conduct an orderly forced sale of all of your assets. This means you lose almost everything you have. For most this doesn't matter much since they likely have little (given that if they had a lot they could avoid the bankruptcy) There are limits, though. In [Illinois...	[ "Homelessness is a public welfare and health epidemic within the United States. Any period of homelessness is associated with adverse health consequences. These adverse health consequences are associated with poor living conditions and a lack of access to treatment facilities. Due to living in extreme poverty it is...
what are those rings on the fronts of jet engines?	so, say for example, [this picture](_URL_0_) You mean the big grey ring on the very front that goes around the fan? That's for the anti-ice system. For big commercial jet airliners, those are usually operated by bleed air. That means they pull hot air from the engine's compressor and run that hot air under the surface...	[ "Many jet engine manufacturers include white spirals in the center of their engines. While on the ground this serves as an indicator to crew that the engine is running, in the air it appears as a white circle which discourages birds from flying into the engine.\n", "These either consist of cups that swing across ...
At which altitude does the atmosphere become too thin to carry sound waves?	So this comes down to the [Knudsen number](_URL_2_), which is defined as the ratio of the "mean free path" (the average distance a molecule can travel before colliding with another molecule in the atmosphere) versus some characteristic length scale - in this case, that would be the wavelength of the sound wave. At low ...	[ "As altitude increases through the atmosphere, the first sound waves to disappear are the high pitched, high-frequency (short wavelength) ones. At a certain altitude (roughly ) even the lowest frequency tone that can be heard by a human being (around 20 Hz) no longer can be transmitted.\n", "However, there are va...
What was the minimum age for a medieval Soldier ?	So the answer to your primary question is that there were no widespread rules about minimum age of service. There may well have been local customary rules that were never written down, but we don't have access to them. It's important to remember that medieval Europe was hugely diverse in its customs and very different ...	[ "Prospective recruits had to undergo an examination. Recruits had to be 20–25 years of age, a range that was extended to 19–35 in the later 4th century. Recruits had to be physically fit and meet the traditional minimum height requirement of 6 Roman feet (5 ft 10in, 178 cm) until 367, when it was reduced to 5 Roman...
Blue whales are able to reach their colossal size because of the lesser effects of gravity underwater. How were terrestrial dinosaurs able to achieve their massive sizes despite being land-dwelling?	Hi brontuu thank you for submitting to /r/Askscience. If your post is not flaired it will not be reviewed. Please add flair to your post. Your post will be removed permanently if flair is not added within one hour. You can flair this post by replying to this message with your flair choice. It must be an ...	[ "Blue whales are difficult to weigh because of their size. They were never weighed whole, but cut into blocks across and weighed by parts. This caused a considerable loss of blood and body fluids, estimated to be about 6% of the total weight. As a whole, blue whales from the Northern Atlantic and Pacific are smalle...
How are psychological traits passed down between generations?	Okay, there are still so many unknowns about this. We haven't been able to really identify any genes that are related to intelligence or to particular preferences. Especially since a similar genotype can produce radically different phenotypes in different environments = > see _URL_1_ That being said, with some psycho...	[ "Humans have long recognized that traits of the parents are often seen in offspring. This insight led to the practical application of selective breeding of plants and animals, but did not address the central question of inheritance: how are these traits conserved between generations, and what causes variation? Seve...
For what reasons did the emperor Diocletian move the capital of the Western Roman empire from Rome to Mediolanum in 286AD?	While you wait for more targeted answers, here's some previous threads with general information on the shifting Roman capitals: * [How did Constaninople replace Rome as a capital in the Byzantine Empire?](_URL_0_) - 22 comments, over 10 months old. * The commenters in this thread focus on the disadvantages of Rome's ...	[ "In the west, Mediolanum continued to be the imperial residence until the repeated invasions by Alaric I forced the western emperor Honorius to relocate to the strongly fortified city of Ravenna in 402. Ravenna remained the western imperial capital until the loss of Italy in 476. Although Rome was reincorporated in...
how come the common cold killed so many people who probably rested in bed, but today we can still go to work and live our busy lives without even taking medicine and be perfectly fine in a few days?	I'm not aware of the common cold being a big killer, and it's actually an association of a ton of different viruses in the upper respiratory tract. Do you mean the flu? The flu still kills lots of people, upwards of half a million in a typical year, usually the very young or very old.	[ "The common cold is the most common human disease and affects people all over the globe. Adults typically have two to three infections annually, and children may have six to ten colds a year (and up to twelve colds a year for school children). Rates of symptomatic infections increase in the elderly due to declining...
how votes were tallied on a national level before computers	Many precincts still do hand counts but after polling stations close the volunteers start the process of hand counting ballots and then when they have finished counting they report their numbers to the regional election office who is responsible for tallying countywide results and reporting them to the state.	[ "However, the system was not ready for the election. Therefore, voters still voted on paper by punching a hole in one of the two candidates' photograph, number, or name. The ballots were then collected and counted at the village level, then city/regency level, province level, and finally the national level.\n", "...
What was the experience of "discovering" the great lakes like for the colonials?	Indians knew the lakes were fresh water, 200 meters above sea level, and canoed along the edges for hundreds of kilometers. The early French explorers soon knew it as well. So by the time there were colonists, the extent and character of the Great Lakes was pretty well known. [Here's more on the 17th century mapping...	[ "In 1669, the Frenchman Louis Jolliet was the first documented European to sight Lake Erie, although there is speculation that Étienne Brûlé may have come across it in 1615. Lake Erie was the last of the Great Lakes to be explored by Europeans, since the Iroquois who occupied the Niagara River area were in conflict...
how do people solve rubix cubes in < 10 seconds?	Rubik's cubes are actually solved with a formula, or simple set of rules. Once you know those rules by heart, it just becomes a matter of applying them in the most efficient way (to minimize the number of moves required) and then moving your hands very, very quickly. Those with good memories for images can actually loo...	[ "BULLET::::- Non-human solving: The fastest non-human Rubik's Cube solve was performed by the Rubik's Contraption, a robot made by Ben Katz and Jared Di Carlo. A YouTube video shows a 0.38-second solving time using an Nucleo with the min2phase algorithm.\n", "BULLET::::- Feet solving: The world record fastest Rub...
I have seen it said that Latin is a dead language, but it doesn't seem to have fallen out of actual use (between the Christian Church and study of the Classics). Where is the line drawn between a Dead Language and a Living one?	The terms used in this question are often unspecific due to the variety of contexts people will use them in. A linguistic answer would look at the problem in terms of first-language-acquisition (L1) or second-language-acquisition (L2). Both sociolinguistics and neurolinguistics can demonstrate how these are distinct ...	[ "Although Latin is an extinct language with very few contemporary fluent speakers, it remains in use in many ways. In particular, Latin has survived through Ecclesiastical Latin, the traditional language of the Roman Catholic Church and one of the official languages of the Vatican City. Although distinct from both ...
the re-lightight candle with smoke trick	It's pretty simple. The smoke is flammable, it's all the flammable gasses that would have burned if they had enough heat to ignite.	[ "Trick candles are a novelty candle often used at children's birthday parties. These candles relight themselves, using a fuse similar to those in dynamite sticks, the principle being that by igniting magnesium inserted into the wick of the candle, the paraffin vapour given off when a candle is blown out can be set ...
Is it true that after the concentration camps were liberated, gay men were not let go as homosexuality was still a crime in Germany?	As usual, /u/commiespaceinvader has written an excellent previous answer [here](_URL_0_).	[ "After the camps were liberated at the end of the Second World War, many of the prisoners imprisoned for homosexuality were re-incarcerated by the Allied-established Federal Republic of Germany. An openly homosexual man named Heinz Dörmer, for instance, served in a Nazi concentration camp and then in the jails of t...
why are there almost never any relatively successful crash landings over water? i thought planes were designed to naturally "want" to fly even when the engines are cut.	Define relatively successful. There aren't a whole lot of plane crashes to begin with, let alone ones over water. The last one I can think of was the one in the Hudson, and I'd consider that to be as successful as a crash landing can go. You're right, a plane will continue to fly without power, but it will slowly l...	[ "In the simplest explanation, the FAA concluded that after a failure of one engine the plane had inadequate power to maintain altitude during a turn (insinuating they could not dump fuel fast enough to achieve a weight to power ratio that allowed level flight). After a few miles, eventually the plane flew into the ...
Were there unifying reasons for the rises and falls of large, wealthy, diverse R & D companies like Bell Labs? Bell Labs, GE, and PARC all still exist in some form, but only GE is still a major entity and they're no longer particularly innovative.	Bell labs is still doing major innovation work as the research and development arm of Nokia. They are responsible for most of the patents surrounding 5G implementation and are leading the way in terms of network slicing and edge cloud development. This will be a giant oversimplification, but there’s a ton of great art...	[ "Bell Telephone Laboratories was created in 1925 from the consolidation of the R&D organizations of Western Electric and AT&T. Bell Labs would make significant scientific advances including: the transistor, the laser, the solar cell, the digital signal processor chip, the Unix operating system and the cellular conc...
How were early cannons and hand-cannons manufactured?	The two common technologies in Europe were casting in bronze, and forged from wrought iron. The wrought iron guns were typically made from strips of iron running along the length of the barrel being welded together, which would form the inside of the barrel. This was then reinforced by iron hoops heat shrunk onto the o...	[ "The earliest reliable evidence of hand cannons in Europe appeared in 1326 and evidence of their production can be dated as early as 1327. The first recorded use of gunpowder weapons in Europe was in 1331 when two mounted Germanic knights attacked Cividale del Friuli with gunpowder weapons of some sort. By 1338 han...
What musical instruments were there in 0CE?	[pedant] None, because there's no such date as 0 CE; 1 BCE/BC is followed by 1 CE/AD. [/pedant] To answer the spirit of your question: lots. Music itself is a [human universal](_URL_8_), and most cultures have a musical instruments of some sort. Narrowing it down would depend on what culture you're interested ...	[ "Invented in 1919 in Russia by Lev Sergeivitch Termen, the Theremin was not only the first electronic musical instrument, but also the first (and still the only) instrument played without touching it by moving the hands in the space between two antennas, one of which controls intonation and the other the volume.\n"...
Question on possible power generation using ocean waves.	Feasible, but most commercial wave power applications seem to prefer using hydraulic pressure to drive a turbine _URL_0_	[ "Wave power, which captures the energy of ocean surface waves, and tidal power, converting the energy of tides, are two forms of hydropower with future potential; however, they are not yet widely employed commercially. A demonstration project operated by the Ocean Renewable Power Company on the coast of Maine, and ...
How do metal alloys work?	(Any solid-state physicists or material scientists around? They're really better off answering this..) To give a simplified version (which is really all I'm qualified to give), an alloy is a mixture. One metal is essentially 'dissolved' in the other. It's a general property of mixtures that they don't necessarily have...	[ "In most techniques the basic materials, generally iron and/or steel, are shaped into a bar or billet first. At this stage if several metals are to be used they will be combined by welding to form the billet. In some techniques, notably the traditional folded steel blades of China, Korea, and Japan, the billet migh...
How does buoyancy work in microgravity?	Buoyancy is the volume of liquid being displaced weighs more than the object displacing it. If there is no gravity there is no weight leading to no buoyancy. In a sphere of water in zero gravity you would just drown :) unless you swim. This does not take into account the ISS is not real zero gravity but close enough	[ "Note that differences in buoyancy within a fluid can arise for reasons other than temperature variations, in which case the fluid motion is called gravitational convection (see below). However, all types of buoyant convection, including natural convection, do not occur in microgravity environments. All require the...
When they say, 70,000 Hr Life expectancy for LEDs, how did they test that?	This is done through [Accelerated Life Testing](_URL_0_) (ALT). Product development companies have ALT processes which they use to make reliable predictions about the performance of the products in timespans or environments that are unreasonable to actually test them in. The results of these tests are correlated to wha...	[ "BULLET::::- Lifetime: LEDs can have a relatively long useful life. One report estimates 35,000 to 50,000 hours of useful life, though time to complete failure may be shorter or longer. Fluorescent tubes typically are rated at about 10,000 to 25,000 hours, depending partly on the conditions of use, and incandescent...
What did white people listen to before the music revolution of jazz?	I'm assuming you're meaning white Americans in the teens? The short answer is that the popular style before jazz was ragtime, which was "black music" in origin but enjoyed by lots of people, mostly in the form of sheet music sales for home playing, which was a good business at that time. Ragtime music, just to demonstr...	[ "Following the Civil War, Black Americans, through employment as musicians playing European music in military bands, developed a new style of music called ragtime which gradually evolved into jazz. In developing this latter musical form, African Americans contributed knowledge of the sophisticated polyrhythmic stru...
how is there still snow in parking lots after weeks of 50+ degrees and rain?	Snow is a really really good insulator. The surface is melting (slowly) but it will take a long time for the above-freezing temperatures to make it all the way to the center of the piles.	[ "Snow is rare in the area, occurring once every several years. Lows in the winter occasionally dip below freezing, which may damage some desert plants such as saguaros and other cacti. In the summer (mainly July, August and early September), the North American Monsoon can hit the Phoenix area in the afternoon and e...
What factors cause cell respiration to produce less than the standard 32 ATP's from one molecule of glucose?	Depending on the textbook or other source you look at the number varies typically between 28 and 32 ATP. The low 28 takes into account the amount of energy required to move the NADH from the CAC into the mitochondria. Some also attribute varying amounts of ATP production to the proton gradient during the ETC. Nothing e...	[ "Although there is a theoretical yield of 38 ATP molecules per glucose during cellular respiration, such conditions are generally not realized because of losses such as the cost of moving pyruvate (from glycolysis), phosphate, and ADP (substrates for ATP synthesis) into the mitochondria. All are actively transporte...
Is pH and electrochemical concentration gradient the same thing?	pH is simply the minus log of the H+ concentration (activity). It gives a direct indication of H+ concentration (or more thoroughly, the H+ activity). Electrochemical concentration gradients or electrochemical potentials arise due to concentration gradients of charged species (H+, Na+, K+ etc.). They are related bu...	[ "where \"μ\" is the chemical potential of the hydrogen ion, formula_9 is its chemical potential in the chosen standard state, \"R\" is the gas constant and \"T\" is the thermodynamic temperature. Therefore, pH values on the different scales cannot be compared directly due to different solvated proton ions such as l...
If a neutron is more massive than a proton, and a proton turns into a neutron when shedding a positron, does that mean that a positron has negative mass?	The positron has the exact same mass as the electron. A free proton can’t decay into a neutron, because it would violate conservation laws. Beta^(+) decay is only possible for nuclei with A > 1. And in this case it’s not any one individual proton decaying, it’s the nucleus as a whole. Because of the nuclear bindi...	[ "The transformation of a free proton to a neutron (plus a positron and a neutrino) is energetically impossible, since a free neutron has a greater mass than a free proton. But a high-energy collision of a proton and an electron or neutrino can result in a neutron.\n", "Positron capture by neutrons in nuclei that ...
Our Solar System	Not quite, but basically yes to within a few degrees. [Wikipedia has the exact values.](_URL_0_) What about this question interests you?	[ "The Solar System is the gravitationally bound planetary system of the Sun and the objects that orbit it, either directly or indirectly. Of the objects that orbit the Sun directly, the largest are the eight planets, with the remainder being smaller objects, such as the five dwarf planets and small Solar System bodi...
why does being/getting cold sometimes prevent vomiting, even if you're actually sick (not just overheated, carsick, etc)?	My guess is this is related to the vasovagal response. ( _URL_0_ ) Essentially, in a vasovagal response, you have too much vasodilation (widening of blood vessels) which causes nausea, lightheadedness, etc. You then cause vasoconstriction with something cold and reduce the nausea, etc.	[ "Vomiting can be caused by a wide variety of conditions; it may present as a specific response to ailments like gastritis or poisoning, or as a non-specific sequela ranging from brain tumors and elevated intracranial pressure to overexposure to ionizing radiation. The feeling that one is about to vomit is called na...
how can you tell ‘something’ is benign vs malignant from a ct/mri scan?	There are clues based on how the 'thing' looks when dyed with contrast or not and doctors can tell. Often times, for things that aren't in the brain, a sample of the 'thing' is taken in a procedure called a biopsy and is confirmed through lab tests. Edit: it also depends on the kind of scan. An MRI may discover things...	[ "Appearance and location of the tumor is enough to identify it as a mammary tumor. Biopsy will give type and invasiveness of the tumor. In addition, newer studies showed that certain gene expression patterns are associated with malignant behaviour of canine mammary tumors.\n", "Many possible malignancies are disc...
How are (high-precision) elevation/hight measurements done?	Differential GPS (comparing signals nearby) can reach 1 cm accuracy, especially when measured many times. The height is relative to the [reference ellipsoid](_URL_0_), and the precise number depends a bit on the reference people use. As an example, the OPERA experiment spent a lot of time measuring the distance of the...	[ "The simplest method for measuring height is with an altimeter using air pressure to find height. When more precise measurements are needed, means like precise levels (also known as differential leveling) are used. When precise leveling, a series of measurements between two points are taken using an instrument and ...
Was it likely William Shakespeare was a real person, or an alias?	Not to discourage new replies or relevant discussion, but /u/texpeare wrote an excellent reply to this question in a previous thread, in which he addressed not only the Christopher Marlowe authorship claim, but also claims of Francis Bacon, William Stanley, and Edward de Vere. Have a look: [Is there any solid evidence ...	[ "Shakespeare scholars see no reason to suspect that the name was a pseudonym or that the actor was a front for the author: contemporary records identify Shakespeare as the writer, other playwrights such as Ben Jonson and Christopher Marlowe came from similar backgrounds, and no contemporary is known to have express...
How did these air vortices form beneath a wave?	Linked to a nice study The gist of which, As the wave breaks on itself it generates lots of turbulence which organizes itself as a vortex. The vortices get bent perpendicular to the breaking wave and stretched back round the breaking wave as it passes over head. This is a great study. Hard to sum up the research be...	[ "Other methods were proposed and discounted, including: (1) Using small droplets of seawater into the air through ocean foams. When bubbles in the foams burst, they loft small droplets of seawater. (2) Using piezoelectric transducer. This would create faraday waves at a free surface. If the waves are steep enough, ...
defamation laws and free speech, how are they different?	As the common saying goes, your freedom to swing your fist ends at my nose. You have the freedom to swing your fist however you want, but if you punch me in the face, you're responsible for the damage you do to my face. This applies to speech too. You have freedom of speech to say whatever you want, however if what you...	[ "Freedom of speech is provided for by law, but public slander based on religion, race, nationality, sexual orientation or skin color is illegal and punishable by fines and imprisonment. Citizens, therefore, are provided the right to free speech, as long as it does not endanger or demean other people. The right to p...
Why are there accretion 'disks', shouldn't they be accretion 'spheres' or 'oblates'?	Assume we have a dense cloud of evenly-distributed particles orbiting a star. Assume these particles have a non-zero total angular momentum, which defines a theoretical “equatorial plane” for the cloud. A particle whose angular momentum is equal to the total angular momentum of the cloud will orbit in the equatorial p...	[ "Accretion disks are a ubiquitous phenomenon in astrophysics; active galactic nuclei, protoplanetary disks, and gamma ray bursts all involve accretion disks. These disks very often give rise to astrophysical jets coming from the vicinity of the central object. Jets are an efficient way for the star-disk system to s...
Humans have very strangely shaped noses. What's the current research into why?	[Link](_URL_0_) to previous AskScience addressing this question. In addition there's a hypothesis that the relative prominence of the human nose is a result of our unique skull morphology. See: _URL_1_	[ "Three-dimensional reconstructions of nasal cavities and computational fluid dynamics techniques have found that Neanderthals and modern humans both adapted their noses (independently and in a convergent way) to help breathe in cold and dry conditions. The large nose seen in Neanderthals, as well as \"Homo heidelbe...
Could a single molecule of water conduct electricity?	To think about electric conduction in the usual meaning of it, you need to consider the electrodes that connect the device to the rest of the circuit. In this case, the electrodes would be so close to each other, with or without that water molecule inbetween, that electrons would be tunneling from one electrode to the...	[ "If a water-soluble electrolyte is added, the conductivity of the water rises considerably. The electrolyte disassociates into cations and anions; the anions rush towards the anode and neutralize the buildup of positively charged H there; similarly, the cations rush towards the cathode and neutralize the buildup of...

Subsets and Splits

No community queries yet

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