Split (2)

train · 226k rows

question stringlengths 3 301	answer stringlengths 9 26.1k	context list
what does aspirin do that helps prevent heart attacks, stroke and now cancer?	For the heart attacks and stroke risks: aspirin thins out your blood, lowering the stress on the veins and arteries.	[ "Aspirin is used in the treatment of a number of conditions, including fever, pain, rheumatic fever, and inflammatory conditions, such as rheumatoid arthritis, pericarditis, and Kawasaki disease. Lower doses of aspirin have also been shown to reduce the risk of death from a heart attack, or the risk of stroke in pe...
Is it possible for a planet to have no night time?	One way I can think of for a planet to not experience any nighttime is for it to be located at [L1](_URL_0_) between two stars. However, either forming the planet at L1, or forming it elsewhere and then somehow moving it to L1 would be unphysical. Also, (assuming you got a planet there) it would be a very unstable conf...	[ "All the Kepler circumbinary planets are either close to or actually in the habitable zone. None of them are terrestrial planets, but large moons of such planets could be habitable. Because of the stellar binarity, the insolation received by the planet will likely be time-varying in a way quite unlike the regular s...
Would we be able to sequence DNA that's been fossilized, or preserved in amber? Or is it too degraded to even see?	DNA degrades pretty fast, as geologic time scales go. New(ish) techniques have allowed sequencing of DNA from relatively young fossils, but the oldest DNA to have been sequenced so far is that of a horse from about 700,000 years ago, and that only worked because the horse had been preserved in permafrost; no tropical D...	[ "Several chapters deal with the genetic material itself and how to obtain it, along with the difficulties of recovering viable DNA samples from mummified or fossilized remains. Due to the actions of nucleases after cell death, most DNA of extinct species is fragmented into small pieces that have to be reconstructed...
does the brain stem ever learn anything new?	Hmm good question. The short answer is not really. At the most basic level, the brain stem is a way for the nerves of the body (PNS) to communicate with the brain and a way to regulate autonomic functions without active thought (imagine how much of a pain in the ass it would be to have to think about breathing 24/7.) S...	[ "Eriksson was a frequently cited scientist who made ground-breaking research on the neurogenesis in hippocampus in the adult human brain. He showed that new brain cells are created throughout the whole human lifespan, and that the integration of the new brain cells to the brain depended on the stimuli that the envi...
why is gasoline always priced to .009?	> The extra "tenths" is a very old tradition that's never gone away. In 1935, a Reno Nevada newspaper wrote about "selling third grade gasoline at eight and nine-tenths cents a gallon." > In those times, a penny had considerable value. To raise the price of gasoline from 8 to 9 cents would be more than a 12 percent...	[ "The price of natural gas varies greatly depending on location and type of consumer. In 2007, a price of $7 per 1000 cubic feet () was typical in the United States. The typical caloric value of natural gas is roughly 1,000 BTU per cubic foot, depending on gas composition. This corresponds to around $7 per million B...
Is there a genetic link between cleft palate and torus palatinus?	The soft and hard palate are both formed during foetal development (vs embryonic). There is a high likelihood that there is a minor genetic defect since both abnormalities to the palate, with similar point in gestation, have manifested themselves in siblings. Here is an excellent website explaining the development of t...	[ "A cleft palate is one of the most common causes of VPI. Cleft palate is an anatomical abnormality that occurs in utero and is present at birth. This malformation can affect the lip and palate, or the palate only. A cleft palate can affect the mobility of the velopharyngeal valve, thereby resulting in VPI.\n", "M...
Are matter and antimatter symmetrical.	Now that is an interesting question. As you've phrased it, the answer is yes: our universe would work the same if it were made of antimatter, and the physical laws we would discover would be the same. However, there are a couple of laws that, although their general forms would be the same, would have the sign of a fun...	[ "BULLET::::- Measurement of the magnetic moment of antiprotons provides further evidence for CPT symmetry, the hypothesis that matter and antimatter behave identical when time and space are reversed at the same time.\n", "When antimatter was first discovered in 1932, physicists wondered about how it would react t...
If Germany and Japan were not allowed to have armies and were defended by the US after World War 2, why wasn't Italy in the same situation?	There were limitations placed upon both the size, deployment, and structures of the Italian military in the [1947 Peace Treaty- Warning PDF](_URL_1_). Part IV of the Treaty demanded that Italy defortify its frontiers with France and Yugoslavia and deploy no weapons that could reach into these areas. Italian islands lik...	[ "With the European powers focused on the war in Europe, Japan sought to acquire their colonies. In 1940 Japan responded to the German invasion of France by occupying French Indochina. The Vichy France regime, a \"de facto\" ally of Germany, accepted the takeover. The allied forces did not respond with war. However,...
how can devices such as google home and amazon echo understand your voice while loud music is playing in the background?	Background music adds complications to all signal processing, including for Google Home and Amazon Echo. Both of these devices have an always on functionality, meaning they are always listening. They are always listening for a distinct and very specific signal to be played (ie. your voice saying 'OK Google' or 'Alexa')...	[ "Echo devices offer weather from AccuWeather and news from a variety of sources, including local radio stations, BBC, NPR, and ESPN from TuneIn. Echo can play music from the owner's Amazon Music accounts and has built-in support for other streaming music services like Apple Music, iHeartRadio, Pandora, Sirius XM, a...
what happens to a body when mixed with molten steel?	Molten steel is at least 1370 degrees celcius. Crematoriums operate at a maximum of 980 degrees celcius. The body is basically cremated. Burnt into ash.	[ "The steel melt is produced in an oxygen top blowing process in the converter, and undergoes an alloy treatment in the secondary metallurgy phase. The product is aluminium-killed steel, with high tensile strength achieved by the composition with manganese, chromium and silicon.\n", "Molten steel is also less flui...
why do artists and painters in movies always hold out their pen and focus on it?	They're using the pen/brush handle/thumb as a reference for judging the size of an object, keeping it at arms length every time gives you a constant good-enough-for-art measurement.	[ "In an article for 'W' magazine, Dafoe further stated, \"I painted in a movie called \"To Live and Die in L.A.\", but it wasn't about painting--it was more about counterfeiting and killing people. In playing Vincent van Gogh, painting was the key to the character. I had to know what I was doing. The director, Julia...
what causes veins in the arms and hands to bulge sometimes, in addition to a feeling of "fullness" or pressure without physical activity?	One of the main functions of veins is to serve as a reservoir for extra blood. If you had just enough oxygenated blood in your arteries for when you are at rest, then you would have a big problem as soon as you were active. So, your veins are like balloons that can expand when needed to hold extra blood. When you work ...	[ "Superficial veins are important physiologically for cooling of the body. When the body is too hot the body shunts blood from the deep veins to the superficial veins, to facilitate heat transfer to the surroundings. Superficial veins can be seen under the skin. Those below the level of the heart tend to bulge out. ...
How were wounded soldiers treated during battle in formation-heavy armies (Roman legion, phalanx, Napoleonic line infantry, etc)?	John Keegan wrote a very enlightening analysis of what happened during battles. It's called [The Face of Battle](_URL_0_). If you get the chance to read it, I highly recommend it. It gives a lot of insight into the factors that make up the actual battles, like fear, fatigue, terrain, weapons, formations, etc. He ...	[ "Procedures, medical techniques, and medical problems for both sides were virtually identical. Commanders discouraged soldiers from leaving the battle lines to escort wounded back to the rear, but such practice was common, especially in less-disciplined units. The established technique for casualty evacuation was t...
what has the mri scan done to help us understand the role of the brain?	It helped us map out which areas of the brain are activated under different situations, using contextual or sensory testing, such as exposing a person to visual, auditive, olfactory, etc... inputs, and watching which 'compartment' of the brain showed increased activity. Researchers also draw conclusions from similariti...	[ "Structural Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) can be used to identify the structural composition of the brain. Particularly in the context of neurogenomics, MRI has played an extensive role in the study of Alzheimer's disease(AD) over the past four decades. It was initially used to rule out other causes of dementia,...
What films, if any, most accurately portray a pre-WWI battle, especially hand-to-hand fighting?	For a few reasons, you're probably never going to see it because (as /u/EyeStache pointed out) we don't know how they fought since none of the sources explicitly tell us (they assume the audience knew) but I feel modern audience has been so conditioned to view ancient/medieval battle in a certain way. No director wil...	[ "The action scenes were filmed near Hollywood. Emory selected an area where the terrain mimicked the European battlegrounds of World War I. To make the battle scenes more realistic, Emory used High Explosives, fake Gas Shells and mines. Many of the local residents began to think the Japanese had started to invade C...
how exactly does more money translate to winning court cases more often? is it purchasing smarter lawers or just manpower to go through documents?	More manpower to go through documents and do legal research More talented/experienced trial attorney's More money to hire experts at trial More money to file appeals, continuances and delay tactics	[ "Overcoming these problems can be made more difficult because of the large number of cases available. The number of legal cases available via electronic means is constantly increasing (in 2003, US appellate courts handed down approximately 500 new cases per day), meaning that an accurate legal information retrieval...
how can a password not containing numbers or special characters be considered weak?	Unless you're using a randomly generated chain of letters, most password cracking software have functions built in to use the most commonly used words in passwords. If you set a limit to the length of the password (say 20 characters), you go from very predictable, and easily brute-forcible using numbers, to somewhat p...	[ "The full strength associated with using the entire ASCII character set (numerals, mixed case letters and special characters) is only achieved if each possible password is equally likely. This seems to suggest that all passwords must contain characters from each of several character classes, perhaps upper and lower...
How was the Soviet invasion of Poland justified in the Soviet public?	Just 20 years earlier, the 'corpse of Poland' was supposed to be the road to global revolution. The defeat of the Soviet army at Warsaw in 1920 was a major setback to international socialism. Also the territories Poland took in that war, while historically a part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, were populated la...	[ "Historical evidence released under Russian President Boris Yeltsin indicates that the Soviet Union did not plan to invade Poland. In fact, Jaruzelski actually tried to persuade the Soviets to invade in order to support martial law, only to be sternly turned down. This left the Solidarity \"problem\" to be sorted o...
how do broken bones knit when they aren’t completely immobile?	A lot of things actually heal better this way. For example, in hip fractures, the fixation depends on the bones being slightly mobile (look up a dynamic hip screw) as this reinforces repairs along areas of stress, making the overall repaired bone stronger. Initially a haematoma will form around the site. Then fibrous...	[ "Open reduction with direct skeletal fixation allows the bones to be directly mandibulated through an incision so that the fractured ends meet, then they can be secured together either rigidly (with screws or plates and screws) or non-rigidly (with transosseous wires). There are a multitude of various plate and scr...
why do bass sounds seem to travel better through walls, when high pitched sounds usually carry better over distance?	There are two effects at work. The first is the physics of it. Any material will attenuate different frequencies at differing levels. For most solid materials, low frequencies will be slightly attenuated and high frequencies massively attenuated. Through free space, both attenuate over distance but by relatively si...	[ "Large bass speakers often take advantage of the surroundings as part of the horn. For example, they can be put in the corners of a room, so the walls act as part of the horn. Even outdoors, the ground can form part of the horn surface, and thus a partial horn can help provide a good impedance match to ground, or o...
Are shades of grey actually colors that we just cannot see that part of the spectrum for?	Shades of gray is a matter of intensity, not wavelength. White light (which is when our Red, green, blue receptors are equally stimulated), can appear anywhere from black to any shade of grey, based on how much light you are receiving. While the minds can be very complex, seeing multiple colors as grey or red / gree...	[ "There are many color perceptions that by definition cannot be pure spectral colors due to [[Saturation (color theory)\|desaturation]] or because they are [[purple]]s (mixtures of red and violet light, from opposite ends of the spectrum). Some examples of necessarily non-spectral colors are the achromatic colors (bl...
How common/effective was guerrilla warfare in WWII?	TL;DR: Very common, and in MANY cases, EXTREMELY effective! There were resistance movements in Greece, Yugoslavia, France, China, Indochina, Poland, Czechoslovakia, the occupied territories in the Soviet Union, Denmark, Norway, Italy, Albania, the Philippines, Indonesia; those are the ones that come to mind at the mom...	[ "After the official end of the war, guerrilla warfare was waged on an irregular basis by the Spanish Maquis well into the 1950s, gradually reduced by military defeats and scant support from the exhausted population. In 1944, a group of republican veterans, who also fought in the French resistance against the Nazis,...
Does fasting make people more famine resistant?	This Radiolab segment discusses the improvement of your resistance from disease if your father or grandfather is in a fasted state when they develop sperm. _URL_0_	[ "Fasting is often used as a tool to make a political statement, to protest, or to bring awareness to a cause. A hunger strike is a method of non-violent resistance in which participants fast as an act of political protest, or to provoke feelings of guilt, or to achieve a goal such as a policy change. A \"spiritual ...
What precisely was a "fashionable regiment?"	The fashionable part was more for officers than the actual soldiers. Finding a good regiment or unit usually had to do with the location of their deployment, the favor of the commanding officer with the higher ups, the amount of action they saw, and sometimes where they had been mustered or who was in them. This was t...	[ "Whether for reasons of appearance or reputation, grenadiers tended to be the showpiece troops of their respective armies. In the Spanish Army of the early 19th century, for example, grenadier companies were excused routine duties such as town patrols but were expected to provide guards at the headquarters and resi...
how does someone who knows absolutely nothing about cars go about choosing a secondhand car?	Give each of the following traits a 1-5 score based on how important they are to you: Performance (in the sporty sense of the word), fuel economy, storage and carrying space, roominess, and reliability. Be realistic, if you want a car that is all 5's, you are going to spend a lot. Also write down your price range, an...	[ "Cars also make a difference, and a player must choose their ride wisely. Options include the SUV, Used Car, Bucket, or even no car at all. Choosing no car is risky because public transportation is unreliable and one needs a car to get around in Downtown.\n", "To illustrate this, consider a simple decision about ...
the difference between homo sapiens and homo sapiens sapiens?	Homo Sapiens is what species we are. Homo Sapiens Sapiens is a subspecies - it's used to mean "anatomically modern Homo sapiens", ie people who's bodies look like ours. The subspecies H. Sapiens Sapiens, ie us, differentiates us from H. Sapiens Idaltu, arguably our direct ancestor. Note that in this hierarchy, Ne...	[ "The question depends on the definition of \"Homo sapiens\" as a chronospecies, which has also been in flux throughout the 20th century. Authorities preferring classification of Neanderthals as subspecies have introduced the subspecies name \"Homo sapiens sapiens\" for the anatomically modern Cro-Magnon population ...
Franco-Prussian War, any experts around?	/r/Genealogy might be useful for you?	[ "The Franco-Prussian War was a conflict between France and Prussia, while Prussia was backed up by the North German Confederation, of which it was a member, and the South German states of Baden, Württemberg and Bavaria. The complete Prussian and German victory brought about the final unification of Germany under Ki...
given the gigantic size of its military, why can't the us impose its will on every country?	While we could do that to every country individually. We would piss off the world more then we already do. And we cant face the entire world.	[ "Great powers seek to maximize their share of the world's wealth because economic strength is the foundation of military strength. Great powers seek to prevent rival powers from dominating wealth-producing regions of the world. The United States, for example, sought to prevent the Soviet Union from dominating Weste...
if the average human hearing is 20hz to 20khz, why do they sell headphones with higher ranges, like 30khz?	To get better results at 20KHz. The rules on this subreddit are forcing me to elaborate, but this is the simplest answer. Speakers with a 'response' from 20Hz to 20kHz cannot have a nice linear response (same output power for same input level, which is what you want for accurate reproduction of sound) across that range...	[ "The human auditory system is sensitive to frequencies from about 20 Hz to a maximum of around 20,000 Hz, although the upper hearing limit decreases with age. Within this range, the human ear is most sensitive between 2 and 5 kHz, largely due to the resonance of the ear canal and the transfer function of the ossicl...
why are other video hosting sites not as used/popular as youtube?	Here is a [video](_URL_0_) that goes into the problems start up video sharing websites run into. Their audiences end up being the very same people that drive everyone else away.	[ "Video hosting services are platforms which allow users to upload, share videos or live stream their own videos to the Internet. These can either be for the general public to watch, or particular users on a shared network. The most popular video hosting website is YouTube, with 1.8 billion logged-in users per month...
How do lakes deep underground maintain an ecosystem with no energy input from the Sun?	Underground aquifers could support primitive microbial life-forms if they were adapted to living off the minerals, and hydrogen seeping into the water from the surrounding rock. They may also adapt similarly to deep sea life that lives off of/near hydrothermal vents if they're present in the underground aquifer	[ "The presence of water on the surface or underground is necessary and the local or regional management of this essential resource is strategic, but not sufficient to create such areas: continuous human work and know-how (a technical and social culture) are essential to maintain such ecosystems..\n", "Deep waters ...
Why is it in the overwhelming majority of societies in history, that gender roles remain consistent?	hi! it might be worth x-posting this question to /r/AskAnthropology or /r/AskSocialScience	[ "Socially constructed gender roles are prescribed as ideal or proper behaviors for specific categories of male and female. Societies have socially constructed women's roles because women are primarily financially dependent on men as is defined through a 'sexual contract', thus deeming them a \"private responsibilit...
what is the 'school smell'?	Different schools will smell differently. You are talking about buildings and rooms filled with people all using different scents in their soaps and hygiene products (and some without), books, cleaning supplies, foods, and environmental factors that all combine to create the smell you know as school.	[ "\"Smells Like Teen Spirit\" uses a \"somewhat conventional formal structure\" consisting of four-, eight-, and twelve-bar sections, including an eight-bar verse, an eight-bar pre-chorus, and a twelve-bar chorus. Musicologist Graeme Downes, who led the band the Verlaines, says that \"Smells Like Teen Spirit\" illus...
how are people with split personality disorder diagnosed?	There is also some really compelling evidence that the entire idea of "other personalities" isn't really a thing, that American psychologists who really wanted it to be real were inadvertently encouraging their patients to demonstrate that sort of behavior through positive reinforcement. Saying "Tell me about your othe...	[ "Louis Vivet (also Louis Vivé or Vive) was one of the first mental health patients to be diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder, colloquially known as \"multiple [or] split personalities.\" Within one year of his diagnosis, the term \"multiple personality\" appeared in psychological literature in direct refe...
Why were the U.S. Army so ill-trained and ill-equipped when they entered WWI?	Not an expert on the topic, but here's my take, and anyone who knows more can correct me if I am mistake. First, the U.S. wasn't in the business of having a standing army up at all times at this point in history. Most soldiers were drafted in order to fight in specific cases. This makes sense considering how logistica...	[ "Although American units were usually able to replenish their numbers quickly, the replacements rarely had sufficient tactical training. Many junior officers were short on tactical and leadership abilities. Some tankers were shipped to Europe without having so much as driven a car before; some tank commanders were ...
Did early humans have any predators?	Many. Remember that it wasn't until fairly recently in the timeframe of modern human evolution that most large megafauna died off (well, was wiped out by humans anyway), so for most of that time humans coexisted with a panoply of large predators that did indeed prey on them. Big cats including now extinct saber toothe...	[ "\"Predation\" (the eating of one living creature by another for nutrition) predates the rise of commonly recognized carnivores by hundreds of millions (perhaps billions) of years. The earliest predators were microbial organisms, which engulfed or grazed on others. Because the fossil record is poor, these first pre...
The personal life of women (circa 1050)	It would be useful to specify a location as well. Since you said "medieval," I'm assuming you're looking for European answers, right?	[ "Women in the Middle Ages participated in many healing techniques and capacities. According to historical documents, small numbers of women occupied almost all ranks of medical personnel during the period. They worked as herbalists, midwives, surgeons, barber-surgeons, nurses, and traditional empirics. Women treate...
why is the highest tax bracket only about $450,000? why not have higher tax brackets at incomes of $1 million, $5 million, $10 million, etc.?	If you have that much money, it's easy to [minimize your effective tax rate](_URL_1_) (charities, retirement plans, investments, etc). The top tax bracket was as high as 94% in [1944](_URL_0_). As for why it's not very high now, look at the series of laws in that table. Rich people are able to lobby for tax changes,...	[ "For example, suppose there are tax brackets of 10%, 20%, and 30%, where the 10% rate applies to income from $1 to $10,000; the 20% rate applies to income from $10,001 to $20,000; and the 30% rate applies to all income above $20,000. In that case the tax on $20,000 of income (computed by adding up tax in each brack...
why can't dopamine be manufactured?	While we can create dopamine, there's no way to enjoy the dopamine without injecting it into our brain. It's much simpler to just take another drug that causes dopamine production.	[ "The direct precursor of dopamine, -DOPA, can be synthesized indirectly from the essential amino acid phenylalanine or directly from the non-essential amino acid tyrosine. These amino acids are found in nearly every protein and so are readily available in food, with tyrosine being the most common. Although dopamine...
what is a dna schedule and how does it prove when human life begins?	It's not a term that exists. Huckabee made it up. The question of when human life begins will always be a philosophical one. Science can't "prove" anything here. A new, genetically distinct organism is created at fertilization. So you could argue "life" begins there. But at that stage several eggs are fertilized and ...	[ "Expression of genetic code in all life forms consists of two major processes, synthesis of copies of the genetic code recorded in DNA into the form of mRNA (transcription), and protein synthesis itself (translation), whereby the code copies in mRNA are decoded into amino acid sequences of the respective proteins. ...
why was/is there such an incredible fear of communism?	Note: I am not a history or a sociology major or anything that could be classified as 'a professional' on this subject. I've just had alot of history classes and read alot. Im going to try and cover Communism as a concept and as a history topic. * Communism == USSR Remember that Communism, or Marxism-Leninism a...	[ "The widespread fear of Communism became even more acute after the Soviets' detonation of an atomic bomb in 1949 and discovery of Soviet espionage. Ambitious politicians, including Richard Nixon and Joseph McCarthy, made names for themselves by exposing or threatening to expose Communists within the Truman administ...
How do you regulate calcium if you don't have a thyroid?	Calcitonin is actually not that important in normal calcium homeostasis - it's primarily regulated by parathyroid hormone. The parathyroid glands receive feedback from both vitamin D and serum calcium levels to modulate secretion of PTH, which increases vitamin D conversion to its active form in the kidneys while also...	[ "In normal calcium regulation, a decrease in plasma calcium levels causes the parathyroid glands to secrete parathyroid hormone (PTH), which regulates the activation of Vitamin D in the kidney. These two compounds act to increase blood calcium levels by increasing absorption of dietary calcium from the intestine, i...
when i close my eyes and blow my nose, i feel an air bubble in the inner corner of my eye. why?	Your tear duct (nasolacrimal duct) is connected to your sinuses. There's a flap that's supposed to keep the two separate, but in some people, it doesn't quite seal. You're trying to blow air through your nose, but because of the pressure, some of the air leaks through your tear duct. If you're bored, search the inte...	[ "A gas bubble may be placed inside the eye, to keep the retina in place. If a gas bubble is used, sometimes a certain head positioning (\"posturing\") has to be maintained, such as face down or sleeping on the right or left side. The gas bubble will dissolve over time, but this takes several weeks. Flying should be...
what happens to caterpillars who haven't stored the usual amount of calories when they try to turn into butterflies?	There are two hormones governing moulting and metamorphosis in insects. Ecdysone is a fat soluble hormone and increases towards the end of each instar (it accumulates in body fat). Once a threshold is crossed, a moult is triggered. Ecdysone levels drop immediately after the moult, then slowly build up again towards the...	[ "Caterpillars are very fast eaters; they will spend their time eating or resting before they resume their eating again. Once a sufficient size has been attained, they will attach themselves to any available structure with their silky threads. They will then stay still until they become pupae. This will take about a...
Question about shuffling a new deck of cards.	Seven shuffles. _URL_0_	[ "In 1878, Henry Ash proposed an apparatus to shuffle cards. His device was a box with an open top where the operator would place the deck. The operator would then slightly shake the box to make the cards fall through a comb at the bottom of the box. About half of the cards would fall into the lower compartment whil...
What is the consensus of the theory that Marcus Brutus is the illegitimate son of Julius Caesar?	Very unlikely is the consensus since Caeser is only around 15 years older then Brutus which would have made him very young to be fathering children. Caesars affair with Servilla most likely started around 77bce after the death of her first husband.	[ "BULLET::::- Marcus Junius Brutus (born 85 BC): The historian Plutarch notes that Caesar believed Brutus to have been his illegitimate son, as his mother Servilia had been Caesar's lover during their youth. Caesar would have been 15 years old when Brutus was born.\n", "Brutus, along with many other co-conspirator...
how can steam charge for mods? haven't mod communities been permitted by developers because they don't profit off the content?	So as a mod maker, you can make the mod free. Now that you can charge for it, steam takes a big chunk of the money. Probably most of it will go to the original content creators to prevent this very thing from becoming a legal issue.	[ "There are also free content delivery tools available that make playing mods easier. They help manage downloads, updates, and mod installation in order to allow people who are less technically literate to play. Steam's \"Workshop\" service, for example, allows a user to easily download and install mods in supported...
the appeal and glamor of ivy league schools	Hello, I went to an Ivy so I can offer a few anecdotal points. First, you must understand that there are, broadly speaking, two main academic pursuits, which I would categorize as: * Hard sciences/engineering * Soft sciences/business and of course some subjects in between. However these two are the most common. Now, ...	[ "The Ivy League schools are highly selective, with acceptance rates since 2018 being 10% or less at each of the universities. Admitted students come from around the world, although students from New England and the Northeastern United States make up a significant proportion of students. In 2018, seven of the eight ...
If Arab and Middle Eastern countries did not recognize or support the state of Isreal, why did they allow much of their Jewish populations to emirgrate there from the late 40's to early 70's?	It's important to contemplate what else was happening during this time. A lot of the countries involved were fighting against old colonial powers and remnants of imperialism, we have the Suez crisis in Egypt, intensifying Cold War in the region, tensions between Soviet aligned forces, US-leanings and the non-aligned mo...	[ "Scholars of the Middle East, including New Historian Benny Morris, have argued that the one-state solution is not viable because of Arab unwillingness to accept a Jewish national presence in the Middle East. Morris has dismissed claims that a binational state would be a secular democratic state and argues it would...
Are the relativistic time differences between clocks on the Earth and the clocks in GPS satellites, due to the reduced gravity 12,500 miles up or the speed at which the satellites travel or both?	The velocity causes the clocks to fall behind by 7 microseconds per day. The lower gravity causes them to go faster by 45 microseconds per day. Net result is that they go about 38 microseconds per day faster than clocks on the surface. So the gravity has a bigger effect and also the two effects are in opposite directio...	[ "The effect of gravitational frequency shift on the GPS due to general relativity is that a clock closer to a massive object will be slower than a clock farther away. Applied to the GPS, the receivers are much closer to Earth than the satellites, causing the GPS clocks to be faster by a factor of 5×10^(−10), or abo...
William III of England (or Holland, take your pick) was installed by a foreign power. How did this happen and what were the consequences?	Tiny correction: William III was stadholder of the Netherlands, not just Holland, and he installed himself with a bit of help from Parliament. Two years ago [Scott Sowerby held an AMA](_URL_0_) on England in the seventeenth century, including a lot of questions on the nature of the event you're describing, the so-c...	[ "As stadtholder of Holland, William was de facto ruler of the Dutch Republic; the coalition he built after 1678 to defend it against French expansion was threatened by an Anglo-French alliance. With political support from allies in England, Scotland and Europe, a fleet of 463 ships landed William and 14,000 men in ...
e: keynesian economics	This is a relatively complicated concept, and your inquiry is rather open-ended, but I'll do by ELI5 best: Keynesian economics is a theory of economics conceived (at least, among others) by John Maynard Keynes in 1936, in the book The General Theory of Eployment, Interest and Money. To a large extent, his theory wa...	[ "New Keynesian economics is a school of contemporary macroeconomics that strives to provide microeconomic foundations for Keynesian economics. It developed partly as a response to criticisms of Keynesian macroeconomics by adherents of new classical macroeconomics.\n", "Post-Keynesian economics is a school of econ...
How were 15h century halberdiers typically equipped?	Fellow 15th century reenactor here, here's my main advice: have a more specified goal. The 15th century is a large time period with lots of changes. Not only that, but the definition of "Halberdier" will change depending on where you are. A halberd could be the traditional image of halberds we have in X place, but go ...	[ "The Halberdiers are commanded by an officer called a 'Captain-Commandant' — a rank derived from the Corps's purported origins as the \"Earl Of Essex's Honourable Company Of Free Halberdiers\" during the reign of Elizabeth I (the halberd being a popular heavy infantry weapon of the time). The rank is analogous with...
if i hold a green light and i go into a dark i would see everything in that room not only green things(i.e things that reflect green color)?	Coloured objects work by absorbing all light to different levels. This is not quite as simple as 'red colours absorb EVERYTHING but red', the outgoing spectrum has significantly more red than other things, but it doesn't absorb ALL of the other light. That way you can dimly see non green things with your green light.	[ "Green Room: The Green Room is similar in size and decoration to the parallel white room, except for the color of the tapestry that is green, and has a mirror over the fireplace. The social function of the room is for the poorest people of the city, or students from the nearby university to meet. Students knew that...
What is a chance of a number to be prime?	If you randomly pick a number between 1 and N, then the chances for it to be prime are approximately 1/log(N). This is the [Prime Number Theorem](_URL_0_), one of the most important results in Number Theory and is kinda like a Riemann Hypothesis-Lite.	[ "There are infinitely many primes, as demonstrated by Euclid around 300 BC. No known simple formula separates prime numbers from composite numbers. However, the distribution of primes within the natural numbers in the large can be statistically modelled. The first result in that direction is the prime number theore...
after wwi and wwii, why doesn't america hate germany?	After WWII, Germany was completely destroyed and remade as the Allies saw fit, it was almost a completely different country than pre-war Germany. Plus, Germany was an essential ally during the Cold War, which made it easier to forgive them.	[ "Most of the US thought also that the country should have stayed out of the First World War and that the Nazis were, regardless of what they did in Germany or even Europe, no threat to the US. Many Americans even sympathized with Germany, as many had ancestry from there, and the latter both was strongly anticommuni...
how is it possible that animals can fit so much complexity into such tiny brains?	Because nature creates bajillions of them, each of them a little different from the other, and lets them run wild. The survivors get to breed. With our technology we don't tend to create bajillions of experiments running in parallel.	[ "Some animal phyla have gone through major brain enlargement through evolution (e.g. vertebrates and cephalopods both contain many lineages in which brains have grown through evolution) but most animal groups are composed only of species with extremely small brains. Some scientists argue that this difference is due...
Did the Romans Commemorate their dead in yearly ceremonies?	Keep in mind you're asking about a time period of 1-2,000 years. The closest I can give you resides in the triumphal arches erected to celebrate victories. Whereas it's not a remembrance of the dead as we think about it, it is a remembrance to the victorious wars the Romans engaged in. Otherwise the closest would b...	[ "In February, the last month of the original Roman calendar when March 1 was New Year's Day, the dead were honored at a nine-day festival called the Parentalia, followed by the Feralia on February 21, when the potentially malign spirits of the dead were propitiated. During the Parentalia, families gathered at cemet...
Has there been a case of a soldier in WW2 being killed by ordnance from WW1?	I have not heard a case of a soldier on land being killed by ordnance from WW1, but I have heard of cases in which sailors have died on ships that hit naval mines laid during WW1. I have a link saved somewhere since I used the source on a recent term paper. I'll find it and post it when I return home from work Edit:...	[ "BULLET::::- Soldiers Thomas Enright, James Bethel Gresham, and Merle Hay of the 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division of the United States Army became the first official American military casualties of World War One. All three were killed in action during a German attack near Artois, France.\n", "BULLET:...
how do banks make profit from "free" products?	they make money using your money to loan out to others. you deposit $1000. the bank isn't just sitting on it. they're using that $800-900 of that money pooled with other people's checking account money to make loans for people's mortgages, personal loans, business loans. etc	[ "The company sells its production, works, services and production waste at prices and tariffs established on the basis of supply and demand, and in the cases stipulated by the normative acts - at prices and tariffs regulated by the state. The enterprise's profit (loss) is determined in the manner prescribed by law....
why do we have different lotions and creams for out face and body? isn't it the exact same skin? (for example when you have a dry skin)	No. Some skin is thicker. The soles of your feet for example are much thicker than your eyelids. That's one difference at least.	[ "A lotion is a low-viscosity topical preparation intended for application to the skin. By contrast, creams and gels have higher viscosity, typically due to lower water content. Lotions are applied to external skin with bare hands, a brush, a clean cloth, or cotton wool. \n", "Dermatologists can prescribe lotions ...
What were the training regimes for heavy cavalry in the Napoleonic era?	> Cuirassiers are of greater use than all other cavalry. This arm...needs to be well instructed. It is in the heavy cavalry that the science of the mounted man should be carried to the highest degree. -Napoleon "Heavy Cavalry" probably denotes multiple types and styles of units during this period. Heavy Calvary i...	[ "At the start of the French Revolutionary Wars, the \"heavy\" cavalry were equivalent to dragoons or \"medium\" cavalry in the French and other armies. They consisted of three regiments of Household Cavalry, seven regiments of Dragoon Guards and six regiments of Dragoons. The Dragoon Guards had been regiments of he...
how does the male body (idk if females experience this too) reach post nut clarity?	I don't have the answer. It's neurochemical stuff. But way to go asking the question like you're five! That shows commitment to the sub.	[ "Once a female is located, the male latches onto her with his otherwise useless teeth. Through enzymatic processes, the tissues of the male gradually begin to coalesce with the tissues of the female, resulting in a permanent attachment and a shared circulatory system, forming a hermaphroditic chimera. The developme...
what is "starvation mode", in terms of dieting?	It's a largely debunked idea based on a few poorly designed studies decades ago. The idea is that if your body is deprived of calories for too long, it will start hoarding what calories it does have, thus increasing stored fat. The main reason most people advocate not eating too little has more to do with sustainabil...	[ "Equivalent or closely related terms include famine response, starvation mode, famine mode, starvation resistance, starvation tolerance, adapted starvation, adaptive thermogenesis, fat adaptation, and metabolic adaptation.\n", "Starvation is an imbalance between energy intake and energy expenditure. The body expe...
could my immune system hypothetically "run out of storage space" for new diseases and thus be unable to become immune to any new ones?	No, your immune system forgets bacterias and viruses over time. That's why a vaccine will eventually not work anymore. But your body remember most bacterias and viruses for years. So no worries.	[ "Note that the innate and acquired portions of the immune system work together, not in spite of each other. The acquired arm, B, and T cells couldn't function without the innate system' input. T cells are useless without antigen-presenting cells to activate them, and B cells are crippled without T cell help. On the...
New Orleans was a French possession for only about 45 years and had a very small population for most of that time. How did French influence manage to remain so strong there?	I'm assuming that you mean the French influence is strong in New Orleans as compared to other territories of French Louisiana added to the United States in the Louisiana purchase? Obviously, the French influence in New Orleans pales in comparison to that in Quebec. So taking the question as why is the French influence...	[ "French colonists founded the city of New Orleans in 1718, traveling from Mobile, Alabama to the Mississippi River. Because the area was a major hub for the slave trade, there was an increase of African slaves from 300 to 1,000 between the years of 1726 to 1732. By 1800, the population of the city included Anglo-Am...
WW2 Tanks - British/Soviet Commander Hatch machineguns?	There were two official types of roof mounted AA machineguns for Soviet WWII era vehicles: the 7.62 mm DT in a P-40 mount and the 12.7 mm DShK. The [P-40 mount](_URL_3_) was developed before the war, in 1937, with an improved version built in 1938. This mount was installed on a wide variety of vehicles, including BT, ...	[ "The Tank, Infantry, Mk IV (A22) Churchill was a British heavy infantry tank used in the Second World War, best known for its heavy armour, large longitudinal chassis with all-around tracks with multiple bogies, its ability to climb steep slopes, and its use as the basis of many specialist vehicles. It was one of t...
How did professions that used lots of paper, like bankers and lawyers, preserve the hundreds of pages of documents in the 19th Century?	This has always been a problem and fire was a common enemy. You don't even have to go back as far as the 1800's. You can read about [The 1973 Fire, National Personnel Records Center](_URL_0_) to get a basic idea of what kind of loss could occur and how they might go about reconstructing as much of that data as possible...	[ "The growth of business during the industrial revolution created the need for a more efficient means of transcription than hand copying. Carbon paper was first used in the early 19th century. By the late 1840s copying presses were used to copy outgoing correspondence. One by one, other methods appeared. These inclu...
Help me understand why my speed of light loophole is probably wrong.	> If gravitational attraction leads to constant acceleration, why can't two objects with mass be placed far enough apart in a sufficiently empty universe to accelerate towards each other and eventually reach the speed of light. Because the acceleration becomes less and less, the closer you get to the speed of light. ...	[ "If we repeat the exercise with light signals sent around the other side of the hole, the resulting anisotropy in the speed of light will now act in the opposite direction, and B will appear to be \"uphill\" of A.\n", "Some physicists have claimed that it is possible for spin-zero particles to travel faster than ...
Did the dinosaur-apocalypse meteor's impact change the Earth's orbit or rotation?	Slightly. Every collision results in the transfer of linear and angular momentum. But the mass of the impactor was so small in relation to the Earth that if it happened, it would be difficult, but not impossible, to measure the affect.	[ "The collision released about 100 million times more energy than the more recent Chicxulub impact that is believed to have caused the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs. It was enough to vaporize some of the Earth's outer layers and melt both bodies. A portion of the mantle material was ejected into orbit around...
Is one side of the brain emotional/creative while the other side is logical/factual?	Things such as logical or creative can be complex behaviors and are not limited to a single area in the brain. There are some aspects of brain function that are lateralized (e.g., language on the left and visuospatial on the right), but even these are not only done on one side of the brain and are not the same for all...	[ "In \"The Divided Brain\", McGilchrist digests study after study, replacing the popular and superficial notion of the hemispheres as respectively logical and creative in nature with the idea that they pay attention in fundamentally different ways, the left being detail-oriented, the right being whole-oriented. Thes...
What keeps food from ‘going down the wrong pipe’ and doesn’t when said event occurs?	Swallowing is a pretty complex process that takes place in three different stages. Esophageal stage isn't as important to your question. The oral phase is important in food bolus preparation for pharyngeal transit. Without the phase, food going down the wrong tube is more likely but not a given. The pharyngeal phase...	[ "There's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip is a very old proverb, similar in meaning to \"don't count your chickens before they hatch\". It implies that even when a good outcome or conclusion seems certain, things can still go wrong.\n", "The five-second rule, sometimes also the three-second rule, is a weste...
how old black and white photos, that pre-date colored photography, can accurately have color added into them.	I don't do recolors, but to my knowledge when one is doing a recolor, he/she guesses approximately what the colors would be. There's no real science behind it. Hope that helps. If anyone has more knowledge, please chime in.	[ "Color photography is almost as old as black-and-white, with early experiments including John Herschel's Anthotype prints in 1842, the pioneering work of Louis Ducos du Hauron in the 1860s, and the Lippmann process unveiled in 1891, but for many years color photography remained little more than a laboratory curiosi...
what is penicillin? and how do we get it from mold to curing things?	It's a chemical that forms in the namesake fungus. A scientist noticed by serendipity that a sample of the fungus prevented bacterial growths.	[ "The discovery of penicillin ushered in a new age of antibiotics derived from microorganisms. Penicillin is an antibiotic isolated from growing \"Penicillium\" mold in a fermenter. The mold is grown in a liquid culture containing sugar and other nutrients including a source of nitrogen. As the mold grows, it uses u...
why are you not guaranteed a trial by a jury of your peers in the us?	The Supreme Court decided that "petty crimes" that have a punishment of less than 6 months in prison or only result in a fine do not require a jury. _URL_0_	[ "Clay Conrad has stated that libertarian-minded voir dire members can and should increase their odds of getting on a jury by telling the prosecutors what they want to hear, without actually lying. Jurors who lie to get on a jury can be charged with such offenses as contempt of court and obstruction of justice. Back...
Did 'Bloody' Mary Tudor deserve her title?	I think it's fair to say she wasn't significantly worse than her contemporaries, even her lauded successor, Elizabeth I; it was a period where religion and politics were deeply intertwined, and warfare was constant across Europe. It's worth nothing that she killed fewer people over the course of her reign (283 is the ...	[ "Mary I (18 February 1516 – 17 November 1558), also known as Mary Tudor, was the Queen of England and Ireland from July 1553 until her death. She is best known for her aggressive attempt to reverse the English Reformation, which had begun during the reign of her father, Henry VIII. The executions that marked her pu...
Why does a silencer reduce the bullets velocity?	Most modern silencers, more correctly known as "suppressors," in fact do not affect a bullet's velocity in any significant way. Early suppressors contained a rubber gasket (called a wipe if memory serves) that would briefly be in contact with the bullet, and the idea is that the resulting friction would slow the ~~gu...	[ "Silencers reduce firing recoil significantly, primarily by diverting and trapping the propellant gas. The gas generally has much less mass than the projectile, but it exits the muzzle at multiples of the projectile velocity, so reducing the speed and quantity of the gas expelled can significantly reduce the total ...
what is it that can make similar guns from different brands sound different when firing the same cartridge?	Barrel length affects the amount of propellant that is burned. Shorter barrel means louder blast. Muzzle brakes/compensators/flash hiders on ends of barrels affects how the burned propellant is directed, which can change how the shot sounds.	[ "Multiple discharges of one or more firearms are referred to as gunfire. The word can connote either the sound of a gun firing, the projectiles that were fired, or both. For example, the statement \"gunfire came from the next street\" could either mean the sound of discharge, or it could mean the bullets that were ...
why is iran having nuclear capabilities such a big concern when the u.s. and plenty of other countries already do?	There is no nuclear weapons program in Iran, according even to Israel and the US: **The United States, European allies and even Israel generally agree on three things about Iran's nuclear program: Tehran does not have a bomb, has not decided to build one, and is probably years away from having a deliverable nuclear wa...	[ "BULLET::::- A potential reason behind U.S. resistance to an Iranian nuclear program lies in Middle Eastern geopolitics. In essence, the US feels that it must guard against even the possibility of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapons capability. Some nuclear technology is dual-use; i.e. it can be used for peaceful ener...
Because of the time it takes for the light of distant stars to reach us, how different would the sky have looked hundreds of years in the past?	There are very few stars that will change on such short time scales. One example is Eta Carinae. It used to be one of the brightest stars in the sky, but "burped" a hundred years ago or so, and is now obscured by its own dust cloud. Also, the time that light takes to reach us plays no part whatsoever into how many st...	[ "When one looks out into the night sky, distances also correspond to time into the past. A galaxy measured at ten billion light years in distance appears to us as it was ten billion years ago, because the light has taken that long to travel to the observer. If one were to look at a galaxy ten billion light years aw...
Japan and USSR during 1938-1939. Were the USSR's armies actually superior to those of Japan? In what ways?	The Red Army was superior to the Kwantung Army in three main ways, all of which feed into each other. They had a superior doctrine, were superior technologically, and were superior numerically. The last two were both dictated by, and enabled the first. The Red Army in the region, under Georgy Zhukov, used the ideas of...	[ "Organizationally, although Soviet forces in the Far East on paper amounted to some 32 division-equivalents by December 1941, they were regarded as only barely sufficient for defensive operations. Compared to a typical Japanese division, pre-war Red Army units possessed slightly less manpower, but had greater acces...
Many questions about recent /r/science posts about our universe being inside a black hole.	1) Not very. It's mostly just that one guy working on it. It's a cool story, so they picked up on it. 2) The arrow of time markers shouldn't be viewed as something causative: time doesn't advance because of entropy increasing or the universe expanding. Rather, they're ways to figure out which way is which. It's simila...	[ "What was formerly believed to be a supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way is revealed to be an artificial construct, known as the Void. Inside, there is a strange universe where the laws of physics are very different from those we know. It is slowly consuming the other stars of the galactic core—on...
why technology "freezes"	It doesn't unless your in the arctic. Sometimes things lock up, due to software conflicts.	[ "In software engineering, a freeze is a point in time in the development process after which the rules for making changes to the source code or related resources become more strict, or the period during which those rules are applied. A freeze helps move the project forward towards a release or the end of an iterati...
how did apex predators that existed millions of years ago go extinct? (i.e terror birds, megalodon, levyatan)	It's hard to pinpoint the exact causes ~~of~~ for most prehistoric animals and plants, beyond trying to extrapolate data from the scarce info we have. We can look at extinction events nowadays for clues though. Overfeeding and loss of habitat from environmental changes are the two biggest causes.	[ "Apex predators are thought to have existed since at least the Cambrian period, around 500 million years ago. Extinct species cannot be directly determined to be apex predators as their behaviour cannot be observed, and clues to ecological relationships, such as bite marks on bones or shells, do not form a complete...
In America during World War II, what would happen if a man was drafted, and it turns out he wouldn't have made a good soldier?	In a draft, it's not like you get handed a uniform. It means you report for selection. People are turned down for all sorts of reasons, even in a draft. Poor vision, diabetes, epilepsy, heart problems, hearing problems, mental illness, being too short, or not strong enough to keep up. There are written tests, medical t...	[ "The number of men who actively sought to evade the World War II draft in Canada is not known. Military historian Jack Granatstein says the evasion was \"widespread\". In addition, in 1944 alone approximately 60,000 draftees were serving only as NRMA men, committed to border defense but not to fighting abroad.\n", ...
Are the steroids that cause people to gain weight in medication the same as the steroids people use to build muscle?	The term steroid refers to molecules that have a similar 4 ring, 17 carbon base skeleton. Additions to this skeleton are what make each steroid different, but still belong to the same family. So the type of "weight gaining" steroid that most people are on would be something like prednisone. The weight gain is a side e...	[ "Anabolic steroids are artificially produced hormones called androgens, which are essentially male-type sex hormones in the body. The most powerful of the androgens is testosterone. Another group of steroids are steroidal supplements, a weaker form of androgens. Steroids and supplements are controversial when used ...
Do we have any idea how gender egalitarian Teryan early pre-Christian pagan England was? And how much the introduction of Christianity change to that?	When you say "early pre-Christian pagan England", are you referring to: pre-Roman pagan southern Britain (ie BC); the early Roman period in southern Britain (pre-Christian pagan, so maybe the 2nd century AD); or the early Anglo-Saxon period prior to Christianisation (so about 500-600AD)? (Also, I confess I don't at a...	[ "Developing from the earlier Iron Age religion of continental northern Europe, it was introduced to Britain following the Anglo-Saxon migration in the mid 5th century, and remained the dominant belief system in England until the Christianisation of its kingdoms between the 7th and 8th centuries, with some aspects g...
why do people choose to live in high crime areas (e.g. compton, ca and south side, chicago)	High crime and low rent/property value go hand in hand. People live there because they can't afford to live anywhere else.	[ "The popularity of the neighborhood has costs. Older, lifelong residents often clash with the values of the young urban professionals and students moving in. Also, parking in the South Side is among the tightest in the city, as narrow streets and high density of buildings leave little empty street space. Nuisance c...
what causes airplane turbulence in a completely clear sky?	Turbulence is caused when different currents of air mix, causing pressure differences in the air and thus affecting flight through it. This doesn't always form clouds or other detectable formation, called clear air turbulence.	[ "Wake turbulence is another type of clear-air turbulence, but in this case the causes are quite different from those set out above. In the case of wake turbulence, the rotating vortex-pair created by the wings of a large aircraft as it travels lingers for a significant amount of time after the passage of the aircra...
why do some people (like myself) have big booming voices and have difficulty speaking at an inside voice, but some people have really soft voices and struggle to speak up?	Genetics. I think this question is similar to the question 'why am I blonde and my sibling is brunette?' Or 'why am I taller than my siblings?'. It's all in the genes. That being said, you can teach yourself to speak softly/loudly. It takes practice like everything else but it can be done.	[ "Creaky voice is prevalent as a peer-group affectation among young women in the United States. For example, researcher Ikuko Patricia Yuasa suggests that the tendency is a product of young women trying to infuse their speech with gravitas by means of reaching for the male register and found that \"college-age Ameri...
-why were fifa execs arrested, and what did the usa have to do with it?	We don't know yet. Even FIFA don't know yet. They've issued a press statement saying they are "seeking clarification". We also don't know who's been arrested - only one of the six men has been named, and he's a FIFA official from the Cayman Islands. The FBI are due to give a press conference at 3.30pm BST. No doubt ...	[ "On 27 May 2015, the United States Department of Justice unsealed an indictment following the arrest of several past and present FIFA officials. It stated that \"a high-ranking FIFA official\" caused payments totalling US $10 million to be paid to bank accounts in the name of CONCACAF and Caribbean Football Union c...
how hard is it to quit smoking?	Because it contains a drug and drug addiction is very hard to overcome. Even with willpower it's hard to overcome. Same with any addiction. I've never smoked so never been addicted to nicotine. But I have been addicted to medicine. I won't say "drugs" because of what that appears. I never abused my medicine but I sure ...	[ "BULLET::::- \"From April 2009 to April 2011 (a prospectus)\" Front (Smoking damages your health. Once you start smoking, it is very difficult to quit) Back (It is illegal to sell cigarettes to people under 19! It hurts your children's health)\n", "The Easy Way to Stop Smoking is a self-help book written by Briti...
What are some other theories of gravity?	There are plenty. It's very easy to construct a new theory of gravity - just put in some new ingredients and decide how those ingredients behave, and how they interact with the gravitational field. The real question isn't whether you can do it, it's a) whether you can make it fit with observations, and b) whether it's ...	[ "Gravity is most accurately described by the general theory of relativity (proposed by Albert Einstein in 1915) which describes gravity not as a force, but as a consequence of the curvature of spacetime caused by the uneven distribution of mass. The most extreme example of this curvature of spacetime is a black hol...
how/why does 'ghost pepper' cause vomiting, rectal bleeding, sweating?	I'm assuming the chemicals in the pepper cause a great deal of irritation to human tissues. Regular hot peppers cause similar irritation, but not to the same degree. At a certain point hot peppers are no longer foodstuffs and are just health hazards.	[ "In CBS's \"The Mentalist\" episode \"Red Scare\" (Season 2, episode 5, 2009), Patrick Jane realises that Pepper's ghost was used in an attempt to scare one of the characters, an architect, from an old house he was developing.\n", "The makers of Skunklock compare the effects to those of pepper spray, but note tha...
Where do stereotypical "redneck" names like Bubba, Skeeter, or Cletus come from?	LIke many Colloquial things, the etemology of these names is tough to trace because their use is rarely documented very well. The etemology of the word bubba has [reportedly](_URL_3_) traced to the german word "Bube." (meaning boy), or a similar sounding Gullah Word [BuhBuh](_URL_0_) meaning brother. - See also [...	[ "Because of its association with the southern part of the United States, \"Bubba\" is also often used outside the South as a pejorative to mean a person of low economic status and limited education. \"Bubba\" may also be taken to mean one who is a \"good ol' boy\". In the US Army and Marines, \"Bubba\" can mean a l...
How accurate, topographically speaking, was the Chernobyl level in CoD 4?	I don't know about topography, but the way the game is styled is fairly accurate. Pripyat has been abandoned since the Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster, so everything has been left for mother nature to control. But the ferris wheel is actually real and is still in Pripyat and some of the more famous building are also w...	[ "Unfortunately, hydrological and geological conditions in Chernobyl area promoted rapid radionuclide migration to subsurface water network. These factors include flat terrain, abundant precipitation and highly permeable sandy sediments Main natural factors of nuclides migration in the region can be divided into fou...
If you had a properly sized lens completely free of any imperfection, could you build a magnifying glass that could see atoms?	No, because the wavelength of (visible) light is longer than the distances between atoms, so they cannot be distinguished are the therefore non-resolvable. 1000x magnification is about as far as light can go, which allows you to see bacteria, but not viruses. Electron microscopes are instead used because the waveleng...	[ "Lower size sensors also allow for the use of a wider range of lenses, since some types of optical impurities (specifically vignetting) are most visible around the edge of the lens. By only using the center of the lens, these impurities are not noticed. In practice, this allows for the use of lower cost glass witho...
why do all space launch pictures make the space ship look like it’s going in a full circle?	The rocket doesn't go straight up to exit the atmosphere, it has to curve to conserve energy and reach the desired altitude. So the trail from the rocket explosion is really curved, because its trajectory was curved.	[ "The section of spaceship that appears in the park scenes was created using scaffolding covered with plastic sheets. The lighting of these scenes was intended to pastiche \"Close Encounters of the Third Kind\". The special effects shots of the ship in flight were recycled from the TV series \"\". Due to the variety...
why have many pathogens evolved to be deadly if this constrains their ability to spread?	We are not the natural host animal for many pathogens. The best way to find the host organism is to ask...which animal does it hurt the least but still grow in? The really deadly ones are usually not regular human diseases....HIV has only been in us for 70-80 years. Ebola is usually in small forest animals.	[ "While there might be pathogens that can infect other hosts and cause disease, the inability to pervade, or spread, throughout the infected host species indicates that the pathogen is not adapted to that host species. In this case, the ability or lack thereof of a pathogen to adapt to its host environment is an ind...
why does a person's body stop the force of a grenade when the force is strong enough to break through walls?	Hand grenades aren't anywhere NEAR as powerful as shown in the movies, and they are specifically not an explosive-damage weapon, they are a shrapnel weapon.	[ "The grenade has a lethal radius of , an injury radius of , but beyond radius the risk of injury is minimal. An untrained soldier could normally throw the grenade , making it safe to use as on offensive grenade, as well as a defensive grenade.\n", "Throwing a grenade upstairs is dangerous, due to the risk of it f...

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