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What is the oldest known human structure? | Before about 10,000 years ago the evidence for human-built structures is very scarce. But that's not because people weren't building things, it's because they were building them exclusively out of fragile organic materials like wood and so, unlike stone, clay or mud brick structures, they aren't going to survive for archaeologists to dig up. There are some exceptions: [Mezhirich](_URL_1_) in Ukraine has spectacular 15,000 year old huts made out of hundreds and hundreds of mammoth jaw bones ([what they look like now](_URL_0_), [what they might have looked like standing](_URL_2_)). Earlier than that though we can infer the presence of structures from things like postholes (where someone in the past dug or planted a wooden stake into the ground, leaving behind a hole that's visible as different-coloured soil) or patterns of debris on the ground. Sometimes it's not clear exactly what we're looking at when the traces left behind are so ephemeral, and the early you get the more contentious it gets to say they're 'structures'. The oldest type of structure that's reasonably well accepted are simple windbreaks or lean-tos. People made them to shield their temporary, open-air campsites from the elements as early as 300,000 years ago. | [
"The oldest complete human skeleton (renamed \"Amsicora\") was found in 2011 in the territory of Arbus, it dates back to about 9,000 years ago, the period of transition between the Mesolithic and the Neolithic.\n",
"The oldest extant structure is the Jambhala Lhakhang which was originally built under Ralpacan. It... |
how can we use telescopes to see into the far reaches of space, generating massive resolution images, yet we have to send a spacecraft like dawn to see a white spot on ceres? | The things that we can see far away are **very** big and **very** bright.
You can easily see a billion burning candles arranged on a hilltop miles away in a pitch-black night (seeing another galaxy filled with billions of stars), but good luck seeing a discolored spot on a grain of sand 10 feet away by the light of a single candle at night (Ceres illuminated by the light of the sun). | [
"The space telescopes were to observe in the infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum. As well as studying extrasolar planets, the telescopes would probably have been useful for general purpose imaging, producing very high resolution (i.e. milliarcsecond) infrared images, allowing detailed study of a variety o... |
Is it possible to observe the process of a star becoming a black hole? | You're most likely to see a regular supernova and that's it. Black holes are not visible so without any special equipment you wouldn't even know it's there when it forms only it's interactions to other objects can be detected. | [
"A black star with a radius slightly greater than the predicted event horizon for an equivalent-mass black hole will appear very dark, because almost all light produced will be drawn back to the star, and any escaping light will be severely gravitationally redshifted. It will appear almost exactly like a black hole... |
what do we know about what goes on inside of other planets in our solar system? | Not a whole lot of direct study. We can make some measurements - for example, we know their mass and size, so we can calculate their density, which tells us something about what they're made of. Saturn, for example, is very light - less dense than water - so it can't have much of a solid core, if it has one at all. Earth, on the other hand, is very dense because of our solid iron core.
Most of what we know about Earth's interior is from studying the waves from earthquakes as they pass through it. There were even a few nuclear bombs detonated to create controlled vibrations for study. But those observations aren't available on other planets, so our information about those interiors is mostly educated guesses. | [
"The image below-left features the \"inner\" planets: their orbits, orbital nodes, and the points of perihelion (green dot) and aphelion (red dot), as seen from above Earth's northern pole and Earth's ecliptic plane, which is coplanar with Earth's orbital plane. From this orientation, the planets are situated outwa... |
- where do "royals" obtain their original claim of "royalty" from? | From stabbing people with swords who disagreed. | [
"With the exceptions of the dukedoms of Cornwall and Rothesay (which can only be held by the eldest son of the Sovereign), royal dukedoms are hereditary, according to the terms of the letters patent that created them, which usually contain the standard remainder to the \"heirs male of his body\". The British monarc... |
How does the monarch butterfly change its lifespan between generations? | Several things to consider here :
* First of all, the genetic information doesn't say "that individual will live this long", it's more like the lifespan depends on many other genetic traits. That means it's not genetic information changing form a generation to another. At most, the phoenotype changes (that the expression of a gene)
* Then, the familly the monarch belongs to can adapt their developpement according to environnemental conditions (but that's in their larva stages, maybe you're talking about the adult lifespan only)
* For adults, I think it has to do with reproduction. In this familly, like in a lot of other insects famillies, adults are only made to mate and reproduce. It's highly possible that the adult mornarch is able to live a lot longer if it hasn't accomplished this mission - Lepidoterae are able to feed as adults. So I think it happens when local conditions are not met to reproduce, then they migrate, but it's just a guess I don't know the specifics for this specie.
& #x200B;
EDIT: according to wikipedia, they migrate in several generations when going north and one when going south. They do "wait" for better condition in a larva state. It's called "diapause". So the overall adult lifespan doesn't change to much like I expected. | [
"An adult butterfly emerges after about two weeks as a chrysalid, and hangs upside down until its wings are dry. Fluids are pumped into the wings, and they expand and stiffen. The monarch expands and retracts its wings, and once conditions allow, it then flies and feeds on a variety of nectar plants. During the bre... |
The "germ theory of disease" Wikipedia page suggests that germ theory had many antecedents (people talking about "pestifera semina") going back to antiquity. Why was miasma theory popular as of the 19th century? | I've been meaning to write an answer to your question since you posted it, but I didn't get around to actually writing it. Well, I hope that you're still waiting for an answer.
I have a few problems with the history-sections of that Wikipedia page. The most basic would be that it doesn't paint a good picture of the miasma theory at all, completely reducing it to "miasmatic vapors are the only thing that can make people sick", disregarding its connections to and interactions with humorism. Beyond that, it shoehorns classical and medieval ideas of contagion into the development of the germ theory, even though that is technically not correct. Secondly, the article largely disregards that, up until the 19th century, miasma theory was actually superior – logically and empirically – to germ theory.
**1. Miasmatic theory and contagion**
Even though "bad air" was the central disease-causing factor within miasma theory, it was in no way the only one. Miasmatic air alone was only thought to be the base cause of epidemic diseases. There are still more factors that played into outbreaks: most importantly, a population needed a certain "epidemic constitution" for an outbreak to occur. This "epidemic constitution" simply referred to a humoral predisposition for certain diseases. And even beyond the mere outbreak of an epidemic, humoral medicine always had some relevance in most any medical question, simply because it was the absolute foundation on which Western medicine was built – basically since Hippocrates of Kos (5/4th century BCE), and again reinforced by Galen of Pergamon (2nd century CE).
While the above may seem nitpicky, there is one thing missing in the article's description of miasma theory that is just wrong.
> Such infection was not passed between individuals but would affect individuals within the locale that gave rise to such vapors.
Contagion may have played a minor role in the context of miasma theory and humorism, but it was not disregarded. Guy de Chauliac, physician to pope Clement VI, theorized in 1348 that the Black Death could be contagious in certain cases and advised Clement to avoid sick people. All of this while still firmly believing that miasmatic vapors were the prime cause of the epidemic. And he was not the only one who tried to avoid contagion: basically everywhere the Black Death arrived, local authorities set up quarantine measures to avoid or at least minimize contagion. By the 13th century, quarantines had been used for centuries: Gall of Clermont advised Desiderius of Cahors to close certain roads to areas where an epidemic that started in Marseille had spread.
Miasma theory and contagion have historically never been seen as mutually exclusive in the context of Western European medicine. Most of the early writers the article identifies as predecessors of germ theory proposed their theories of contagion very much within the context of miasma theory. Empirical evidence that diseases can be transmitted from one person to another is not at all evidence against miasma theory. Their ideas of seeds and similar things try to grasp the concept of contagion, but were not derived from empirical data, but rather from logical thinking: it was simply unlikely that diseases just teleported from one person to another. They did not so "propose or anticipate germ theory", they tried to explain contagion within the context of miasma theory. These ideas of seeds and whatnot are attempts to integrate an unexplained empirical phenomenon into the dominant scientific paradigm of the time.
And then there is Girolamo Fracastoro. You will find him, again and again, as the first proponent of a proper germ theory. Claiming that Girolamo thought
> that epidemic diseases are caused by transferable seed-like entities,
the article basically just repeats a commonplace that is quite old and quite wrong (and look! There are no footnotes to be found for 2.5 paragraphs after that claim!). His treatise *De contagione* (1546) does claim that tiny living beings are responsible for diseases, but this becomes more of a footnote in a work that is mainly concerned with a philosophy centered around cosmic harmony. *De contagione* is only the first work in which microorganisms are said to cause illness in our modern understanding if you really, *really* want to read it that way.
**2. The superiority of miasma theory**
All of the above outlines a number of problems with the way the article portrays the development of Western medicine. But even though, how can a theory that we now know as empirically completely indefensible continue to dominate medicine for almost 1.5 millenia? Simple answer: because miasma theory was, empirically, simply superior to germ theory. Huh, what?
If you want to prove that germs actually cause diseses, you need to prove two things. First, you need proof of the actual existence of microorganisms. Second, you have to prove that these microorganisms are actually the cause of a disease.
Microorganisms were not empirically observable before the invention of adequate magnification (i.e., microscopes) around 1600. And even then, microscopes only saw wider use by the second half of the 17th century. This means that up until this point, a critical piece of empirical evidence was missing. But this only means that now people knew that microorganisms existed. If you can not prove that, say, a bacterium is causing a disease, the transmission might work just as well through some sort of "seed". Up until this point, microorganisms fit just as well into miasma theory as into germ theory, and miasma theory will win because it is a) the dominant theory and b) has a lot of additional evidence on its side.
To illustrate how miasma theory was empirically superior, let us turn to the Black Death once more. Most of the evidence people during the 14th century had access to actually fit in really well with the miasma theory: human-to-human-transmission is quite rare in most varieties of the plague. Because the fleas carrying *Yersinia pestis* were carried by rats, the disease could break out anywhere were a sufficient population of rats felt comfortable. This led to a seemingly random spread of the disease with the possibility of it happening without any noticeable human interaction. Incidentally, the kind of places rats prefer are the same places miasma theory thought of as dangerous, like wet and humid surroundings. So the spread of the plague rather supported miasma theory, you may even say it did so almost coincidentally, while germ theory appeared as almost completely counter-intuitively.
The relative success of common countermeasures against the plague also seemed to support the miasma theory: quarantines and isolation of the sick, dedicated graveyards for victims of the plagues outside of cities, protective clothing, fumigation, burning of victims' belongings, leaving a region for a supposedly healthier one with clean air. Most of these can be summarized by "try to (re-)establish sanitary conditions or else leave for somewhere with better sanitary conditions". Sensible measures no doubt, but they were largely inspired by the belief that bad air causes disease. How do you identify bad air? It stinks. And where there are unsanitary conditions, you are likely to have bad smells. And so measures against the plague that actually worked seemed to support the miasma theory, even though these measures only worked not for the reasons people thought they would.
Even if you can prove the existence of microorganisms it does not necessarily mean that they have to be the cause of diseases. By the 19th century, there were more and more people convinced that germ theory was actually superior to miasma theory. But they still had to fight with the problem that miasma theory still represented the dominant scientific consensus and that a central aspect of their theory – causation of disease by germs – was still unproven. People like Ignaz Semmelweis or John Snow, following germ theory over miasma theory, devised very effective medical measures but were shunned scientifically because they could prove just as little as the proponents of miasma theory why their measures worked. Only during the later 1800s the works of Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch showed that diseases are actually caused by the microorganisms themselves and not by bad air.
**Sources**
Ann G. Carmichael: Plague and the poor in Renaissance Florence. Cambridge 1986.
Martin Dinges/Thomas Schlich (eds.): Neue Wege in der Seuchengeschichte. Stuttgart 1995.
Rosemary Horrox: The Black Death. Manchester 1994.
Manfred Vasold: Grippe, Pest und Cholera. Eine Geschichte der Seuchen in Europa. Stuttgart 2008.
Georges Vigarello: Le propre et le sale. L'hygiène du corps depuis le Moyen Âge. Paris 1985. | [
"Germ theory's stance that the \"germ\" was the disease's \"necessary and sufficient cause\"—the single factor both required and complete to result in the disease—proved false. Germ theory gradually evolved to include other factors, whereupon germ theory resembled miasmatic theory, which had had to recognize bacter... |
What prevents the intestines from tangling themselves like my headphone cords? | Dentist here. We concentrate on the teeth, but we do study the whole body in pretty gross detail.
The short answer to your question is that the intestines are attached to several different connective tissues, particularly mesentery and omentum. Mesentery is a very stretchy connective tissue that loosely holds the intestines in place. Omentum is a fatty connective tissue that is heavily vascularized. Together, these two tissues provide the intestines with most of the support they need to prevent tangles. Unfortunately, they are both very stretchy tissues, and some lengths of the intestine do not attach to them, leading to (luckily!) rare tangles and hernia. | [
"Intestinal decompression by tube placement in a small stoma can also be used to reduce distension and pressure within the gut. The stoma may be a gastrostomy, jejunostomy, ileostomy or cecostomy, and may also be used to feed, in the case of gastrostomy and jejunostomy, or flush the intestines.\n",
"In human anat... |
antitrust lawsuits | Let's say you have two companies selling apple. Now both companies will sell apples at a good price, let's say that price is $1 an apple. If ether company was to raise their price then they'd sell less apple cause who would want to buy an apple for $1.50 if they could buy an apple for dollar.
One day the head of one company is talking to the other company and is like. "You know what... if we both sold apples for $1.50 then we'd both make more money. What if we both come to agreement and say we will not sell an apple for less then $1.50." The owner of the other company say "Why stop there let's make it $2.00"
George find out about this. George has a apple farm way, way,way out in the country but it was always too much work to bring the apple into the city to sell. To make any money he would have had to sell his apple $1.25 and no one would have wanted to buy them... But now that Apples are $2.00 it's worth his wild.
The other companies aren't happy about this. So they buy the road that George has to use to get his Apple to the city. They charge a Apple toll of $1 a apple to any apple that goes down the road... Now George can't make any money and the other companies are still making twice as much as before.
Antitrust lawsuits are all about promoting competition between companies. If a company has no competition it's often called a monopoly. If a company has a monopoly then people are forced to buy from them, and the company can charge whatever they want and people have it pay it.
AT & T bought T-Mobile not because they needed it to provide better service but to prevent them from loosing clients to T-Mobile and so they'd have more control over the market. Some people said it would be to much control and that's what the lawsuit it about. | [
"Anti-trust law is the body of laws that exist in order to prevent companies from suppressing market competition from other companies. The Sherman Antitrust Act was a landmark piece of federal legislation passed in 1890 and \"intended to prevent all contracts, combinations, and conspiracies which restrain or monopo... |
why can't we recreate dinosaurs just like in jurassic park? | To create clones you need to take the nucleus of a cell of one animal and place it in an egg without a nucleus of the same species. This is then given to the female and is grown in the normal fashion. Blood (in human's certainly) tends not have cell nuclei, hence it wouldn't be possible for humans. Even if you were able to get the cell nucleus from the blood of an animal trapped in sap for millions of years you wouldn't have an empty egg to put it in, nor would you have a mother capable of hosting it for long enough to harden and form a foetus.
In 5 year old speak - imagine you have one of those cars that you pull back, let go and they shoot off into the distance. You could take out the little motor of that car, but you'd need another little car that was almost identical to put it in to make it work. Not only that, but you'd need the exact same colour of carpet to pull it back on for it to work too.
It's been a while since I was 5. | [
"While \"Jurassic Park\" featured mostly the animatronic dinosaurs built by Stan Winston's team, \"The Lost World\" relied more on the computer-generated imagery of Industrial Light & Magic. This meant the film featured larger shots that offered plenty of space for the digital artists to add the dinosaurs. Although... |
sd cards | You are right the plastics bits and the copper contacts that make up moth of the SD card that you can see have a negligible price. They are not worth much.
The actual flash memory itself inside the card is what makes up most of the price. It consists of stuff like silicone and metals and other stuff that doesn't seem to be to expensive (there are some that uses titanium which is expensive but they only use it in minute quantities).
the trick is that when you say that your SD card stores 500GB that means that it stores (roughly) 500 billion bytes or 4 trillion bits. There has to be structure inside the SD card to store every single of these bits (actually more due to error correction etc). These structures are incredibly fine (they might be on the scale of 40 nano-meters where 1 nm is a billionth of a meter).
The trick is not the raw materials but getting the stuff in the right shape down to a scale that is a thousand time smaller than the width of a human hair. This is not easy and a lot of very expensive research had to be done to figure out how to get it right and some extremely expensive machines have to constructed and kept running to make these things.
The price for current solid state storage is actually pretty cheap if you have been around for a few years and remember how much more expensive everything used to be.
The thing that you are proposing with the harddrives is basically what a [modern SSD is](_URL_0_). the tiny black chips here contain (sort of) the same sort of things that are in your SD card.
| [
"Most SD cards ship preformatted with one or more MBR partitions, where the first or only partition contains a file system. This lets them operate like the hard disk of a personal computer. Per the SD card specification, an SD card is formatted with MBR and the following file system:\n",
"Like other types of flas... |
if a bank goes out of business and i happen to have a mortgage with said bank, what would happen? | They would sell your debt to someone else as a way of paying off their debts, and now you owe your mortgage to some other entity. | [
"The banks thereafter began to issue mortgage loans with CMHC underwriting. If the individual receiving the loan went bankrupt then the bank who gave the loan would not lose money, but instead would be reimbursed by the government. As part of CMHC lending and insurance mechanisms, low-risk borrowers would have to p... |
Are planets exclusively formed after stars from the remaining material, or are there other natural ways we've observed/theorized planet(s) forming? | Technically speaking a planet is defined as an object orbiting a star, though this gets a bit problematic when considering rogue planets that have been ejected from their stars.
The same process that leads to star formation--collapse of cloud of gas in a nebula--can sometimes fail to collect the critical mass necessary for fusion, around 13 times Jupiter's mass. The resulting planet-sized object is classified as a Y-type brown dwarf, but in many ways it resembles a gas giant. It lacks the rocky core of gas giants in our solar system, but theoretical modeling indicates that gas giant planets can sometimes form around stars without these cores, so these planets would be in many ways near-identical to those small brown dwarfs. | [
"It is not known with certainty how planets are formed. The prevailing theory is that they are formed during the collapse of a nebula into a thin disk of gas and dust. A protostar forms at the core, surrounded by a rotating protoplanetary disk. Through accretion (a process of sticky collision) dust particles in the... |
Resources for Medieval Church/Choir Music | The answer sort of depends on exactly what you're looking for. Most of the music used in video games and movies is composed recently, it's not authentic medieval music. They get the same sound by using a lot of open fourths and fifths, but real medieval music would sound horribly boring in a modern video game. If you're looking for truly medieval music, there are may books on plainchant and orgaum (look for something by Leonin or Perotin, they're fairly well known organum composers). There is also the late medieval/early renaissance *ars nova*- look for Guillaume de Machaut. You probably are looking for some later music, however. Organum has only two lines and gets very boring after about 30 seconds, unless you're into that stuff. I would suggest looking at some Renaissance composers- Johannes Ockeghem, Josquin des Prez, Orlando di Lassus, William Byrd and Palestrina. Those composers represent the full spectrum of Renaissance music, and I think you'll be happy with what you find from them.
* [This](_URL_0_) is one of Josquin's more famous pieces
* [Here](_URL_1_) is a sample of Guillaume de Machaut.
* And [Here](_URL_2_) is a Perotin organum, with the original score in the video.
As for the others, a search for di Lassus, Palestrina or Byrd should turn up some good results. As for where to find scores, [imslp](_URL_3_) is probably the best resource out there for musicians looking for free scores. Hope this was helpful. | [
"The Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music (DIAMM) is a non-profit academic service provider. It is the only complete listing of all medieval and early modern manuscripts of European polyphonic music. It is founded on a digital archive of images of European medieval and early modern polyphonic music ranging from ... |
What did the people of the Spanish peninsula look like before the Moors arrived? | Hi there! So if we're talking about what they "looked like" I'm assuming you meant in terms of their actual physical appearance. The short version is that there was an array of people and cultures in Iberia and their appearances varied accordingly. The racialist myth of "the white iberians before the moors turned up!" is just that - a myth. A very simplified one.
There aren't a LOT that talk specifically about how they looked physically. But there are some hints. For example, Abdul Rahman III, the first Caliph of Cordoba and one of the most famous Andalusi rulers of all time was born to a mother named Muzna. Maribel Fierro says that Muzna was a *rumiyya* which meant that she was a christian, most likely a northern Christian. His paternal grandmother was also the daughter of Fortun Garces, a 9th-10th century King of Navarre. And how was Abdul Rahman described? As having white skin and dark blue eyes. And he was ethnically an arab, but he obviously had some hispano-roman and probably Basque ancestry too, owing to his heritage from the Pamplona/Navarre royalty.
As a side note: I know you didn't ask this, but: Who were the people that invaded initially? "Moors" is a fairly non-descriptive and just generally not a useful term and who it refers to varies depending from person to person. Spanish people later used it to refer to Andalusis of all kinds (muslims, arabicised christians and jews) used it to refer to berbers, etc. Mostly the initial invaders early on were Berbers led by Arabs. They generally looked quite different in complexion from each other too. Berbers often rebelled and in the *Chronicle of 754* as noted by Nicola Clarke, an Andalusi Christian source, wrote that an arab cavalry unit 'recoiled instantly due to the colour of the Moors' skin' and how dark it was comparatively, indicating a fairly light complexion on the andalusi arabs' part ( no surprise there, light complexions are common in many arab cultures).
In the century immediately before the Andalusis arrived on the scene the population were largely what are called Hispano-Romans, ruled by Visigoths. Isidore of Seville, a 6th to 7th century archbishop and famous scholar of his era did write about the local peoples as well. In his *Etymologiae sive Origines* (20 books long!) he describes 3 groups he refers to as Gallaeci, Asturi and Cantabri of Iberia explicitly. The Gallaeci are said to have a light complexion, moreso than all the other Hispanian people, and are described as claiming to have Greek ancestry (and he calls them cunning as a result). He somewhat outdatedly describes the Goths as wearing pigtails a lot (contemporary sources don't back up the pigtails), and also describes them of "reddish in hair" as well as "tall and strongly built" but doesn't say much of their complexion (but they were Germanic, so take from that what you will).
They were by no means a single group of people. They were a diverse set of different cultures and these peoples' heritage was influenced by celtic, roman, greek, german, carthaginian, berber, arab, phoenician, and other sources over the years. That's why in one particular book I have, Lucy A Sponsler describes women in Hispano-Roman times as looking quite different depending on what part of Iberia they came from - "women of the north were tall with fair skin and light reddish-brown hair. In the central portion of the peninsula they were shorter and wiry, while in the south they were dark with lively eyes". Sponsler notes that subsequent invasions (by Germanic people, and then by Berbers and Arabs) only heightened this difference rather than creating it. This is a difference still observable today.
tl;dr pre-Islamic Iberian people ranged from light skin to dark skin depending on both region and ethnicity. | [
"The Moors ruled southern and eastern Spain until the 11th century \"reconquista\" (reconquest). Alicante was finally taken in 1246 by the Castilian king Alfonso X, but it passed soon and definitely to the Kingdom of Valencia in 1298 with the Catalan King James II of Aragon. It gained the status of Royal Village (\... |
the difference between poisonous and toxic things | The term poison refers to any substance that is harmful to your body if consumed. Toxin is a specific branch of poison, defining naturally created poisons. For example, many household cleaning substances are poisonous, but are artificially made and are not toxins.
Here is the Article my information came from: _URL_0_ | [
"Some poisons are also toxins, which is any poison produced by animals, vegetables or bacteria, such as the bacterial proteins that cause tetanus and botulism. A distinction between the two terms is not always observed, even among scientists. The derivative forms \"toxic\" and \"poisonous\" are synonymous. Animal p... |
If there was no oxygen and paper was heated to a super high temperature, would it melt not burn? | Yes. There couldn't be any chemical reactions, and if you reach the necessary temperature it will break down into its parts. That would happen around 250° celsius temperature. You would be left with charcoal and hydrogen gas. | [
"Because of its cryogenic nature, liquid oxygen can cause the materials it touches to become extremely brittle. Liquid oxygen is also a very powerful oxidizing agent: organic materials will burn rapidly and energetically in liquid oxygen. Further, if soaked in liquid oxygen, some materials such as coal briquettes, ... |
If I continuously shot charged particles into a black hole, what would happen over time with the buildup of charge? | Assume a nonrotating black hole.
Now start pissing electrons into it. First, it'll gain mass as the electrons cross the event horizon, with the radius of the event horizon now steadily increasing. The electrons end up smooshed together at the singularity- the crushing forces inside the black hole are irresistible. The electrons end up in the singularity, as does their charge.
Not only is there a gravitational field around the black hole, but now there's an electric field. "But wait, if nothing can escape the black hole, then how can the electric field due to the charge in the black hole be felt outside? No information is supposed to be able to get out!" you might say. And I would say, "good question." From the point of view of someone outside the black hole, the mass takes an infinite amount of time to cross the event horizon, and their last seconds of life will be unfolding in slowmo for the rest of forever. You can argue that the electric field is then seen from this point, but this isn't quite accurate. I've heard there exists a fancy proof in QFT that describes the exact mechanism that creates the electric field, but I'd be lying if I said I've seen it.
Now inside the event horizon, as the charge increases, there exists a second 'horizon.' You can think of the event horizon as the gravitational horizon, and this one as the electromagnetic horizon. It's called a Cauchy Horizon and - this is a huge simplification here - the space inside is 'normal space' like exists outside the black hole, instead of 'black hole space.' The 'black hole space' now exists in a shell between the event horizon, and the Cauchy horizon inside it.
And if you keep pumping charge into the black hole, that shell will get thinner and thinner, and eventually the horizons will meet. If this were possible, it would mean there would exist a mechanism for producing singularities that aren't hidden inside black holes. It would mean there are 'naked' singularities which could exist in the universe without the shroud of fancy horizons and 'black hole space.' If you could prove this, you would disprove the "cosmic censorship hypothesis" which says no such naked singularities exist. You would not pass go, nor would you collect $200, you would go directly to Nobel Prize.
| [
"The maximum amount of energy gain possible for a single particle via this process is 20.7%. The process obeys the laws of black hole mechanics. A consequence of these laws is that if the process is performed repeatedly, the black hole can eventually lose all of its angular momentum, becoming non-rotating, i.e. a S... |
how did futurama win 6 emmys but got canceled twice? | Being a good show doesnt mean a lot of people like it. A show may have great acting, amazing plot, good dialogue, etc., but the genre/premise/etc. may just not interest people. My father doesn't take animation seriously, he would never watch Futurama, no matter how much he would like it if he did.
There are a lot of shows people praise, but the premise of some are of just no interest to me, that doesn't mean I can't acknlowedge it's a good show.
EDIT: This is now my highest comment/post, which was unexpected. | [
"\"Futurama\" executive producer David X. Cohen referred to this episode as \"Futurama\"'s lost episode due to the delays in its initial broadcast. Fox Network decided the episode was not appropriate for its 7 p.m. time slot (due to the one use of strong language and scenes of violence, though, according to the DVD... |
why is the letter the 47 republican senators sent to iran today such a big deal? | Essentially the Republicans are telling Iran that any nuclear agreement made with the Obama administration will be deemed null and void after the next US election (presumably if the Republicans win a majority).
What is so serious is that The Republicans are trying to undermine the government in the most flagrant and nihilistic manner possible. This is unprecedented and in many countries this might have been regarded sedition or even treason. | [
"Three times elected a delegate to the Republican National Convention, Simmons gave the second to the nomination of Herbert Hoover as candidate for the President of the United States at the 1932 convention. According to a report in the \"Pittsburgh Courier\" the day after the nomination, \"his exit from the platfor... |
how do companies like gm and apple quickly pivot to making new products like masks and ventilators? | I think it’s not so much that they switch to manufacturing masks and ventilators, they just have them already and are donating them. At least for apple and other big tech companies, their factories are big clean rooms, so they have plenty of masks already. | [
"An artificial lung (AL) is a prosthetic device that provides oxygenation of blood and removal of carbon dioxide from the blood. The AL is intended to take over some of the functionality of biological lungs. It is different from a heart-lung machine in that it is external and designed to take over the functions of ... |
what would happen in the usa if someone tore a ligament (such as acl) and didn't have health insurance? | You would have to pay out of pocket. Usually if you don't have insurance, you may be able to negotiate the costs with hospital to lower the amount due.
Generally, hospitals will charge more for procedures and hospital stays if a patient's insurance company is being billed. Hospitals will never receive the full amount that is billed, so they will increase the reported price of the procedures. If you are paying cash out-of-pocket, they may give you the prorated amount that they would expect to receive from insurance companies. | [
"The Anterior Cruciate Ligament is the ligament that keeps the knee stable. Anterior Cruciate Ligament damage is a very common injury, especially among athletes. Anterior Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction (ACL) surgery is a common intervention. 1 in every 3,000 American suffers from a ruptured ACL and between 100,00... |
why do people who have sex in movies/shows smoke after it? | It's TV trope, but based on reality. Back when I was a smoker the most enjoyable cigarettes were after sex, after a good meal, and when drinking. | [
"Using pornography has also been associated with frequent sexting. Young people may view sexting as a means of verbal or emotional communication amongst each other, rather than a means of sharing sexually exposing images of themselves to others. Young people, particularly young girls, may feel pressured to send int... |
What is happening in a black hole? Do we have fusion of heavy elements? Could they eventually super nova? | To answer your last question first: no, a black hole cannot supernova. Once matter is inside its event horizon, it's in there for good. It appears, by using quantum physics to study black hole event horizons, that they can emit radiation (called Hawking radiation) which, over time—a very, very long time—can eventually carry away the black hole's energy. So, they don't so much go 'boom' as evaporate.
As for what happens as something falls into a black hole: one of the most difficult parts of talking about black holes is how careful you have to be about frames of reference. Let's suppose we have a very simple (non-rotating, uncharged) black hole and you jump into it carrying a bit of matter. Now you're wondering if you will see that bit of matter become compressed and undergo nuclear fusion as you and it fall into the black hole. In fact, it will get *stretched*, not compressed—as will you, for that matter. Gravity gets weaker the further you get away from the source, which tends to stretch out nearby objects. Essentially, your feet are falling faster than your head. This is called a "tidal force" because it's what causes tides on earth. For a black hole, because the source mass is packed into such a small space, there is a point at which the gravitational force varies *massively* even over small distances. This very powerful tidal force stretches out/rips apart even the strongest objects in a process called spaghettification. The point at which this happens depends on the size of the black hole. For supermassive black holes, it occurs after you have crossed the event horizon. For smaller black holes, spaghettification can happen even before you pass the event horizon.
Now, it's true that at the very end of your journey, relativity says that your bit of matter, along with you, are essentially compressed down a point. But at the point, there isn't really any such thing is matter any more. There are not electrons, protons, or neutrons that are being compressed together. The electron, protons, and neutrons are occupying the same place. The very idea of "atoms" doesn't make sense any more at a black hole's singularity, so there is no fusion of atoms together. Really understanding what happens to matter at this point is the realm of quantum gravity, which we don't understand yet. The important take away is the above paragraph: matter gets stretched as it falls towards a black hole's singularity, it doesn't get compressed. | [
"Steinhardt, Spergel and Jason Pollack have proposed that a small fraction of dark matter could have ultra-strong self-interactions, which would cause the particles to coalesce rapidly and collapse into seeds for early supermassive black holes.\n",
"Not all supernovae are triggered by runaway nuclear fusion. Type... |
please explain fetal alcohol syndrome (many more-specific questions herein) | Wow. Four months ago. Still, I think I can add a bit to this, and hope you will see it.
My mother has grown up with FAS. I don't expect anyone in her family would admit it, but she has the classical facial features (you are probably acquainted with these now, but if not, google fetal alcohol syndrome features or signs and look at the images). She has the odd ears, and the small head, the flat lip, the little, shifting eyes. She also has always had terrible anger management problems, is possibly bipolar, and, again unadmittedly, shows certain hard-to-define cognitive and emotive deficiencies. As in, she doesn't understand complicated things and shuts off. She is also cold, and simultaneously unable to manage everyday life without high drama over every single thing.
That said, she finished high school and worked as a secretary for thirty years. So she did function. She also drank quite a bit. She is now 86.
My grandmother got pregnant by "the wrong kind of guy" in 1926, at the age of 17. Before the shotgun wedding, which took place two months before the birth, the best I can figure is my grandma (a spoiled girl who styled herself a flapper) must have got drunk day after day, possibly attempting to abort. Or else, just being herself. So my mom has classic FAS features and personality, but her siblings don't.
Anyway. Just wanted to say, it is a broad spectrum, and some of those kids will probably do okay despite it. For some it really won't be catastrophic. | [
"Fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD) is a term that constitutes the set of conditions that can occur in a person whose mother drank alcohol during the course of pregnancy. These effects can include physical and cognitive problems. FASD patient usually has a combination of these problems. Extent of effect depend... |
what is nsa doing with my information? | Most likely, absolutely nothing. Your information is sitting on a server somewhere, and will not even be read before it gets deleted, due to there being too much to store.
However, this isn't defending the NSA's actions. Let's say a nice middle eastern man moves into the apartment next to you. The NSA has decided to investigate him. They discover he is your neighbor, and now they look at all your data to determine if you contacted him before he came into the country, whether you emailed him at all, whether or not you have any mutual friends or contacts. Such actions are insane breaches of privacy, all because some guy moved in next to you.
That is why "I don't have anything to hide, let them snoop" is a terrible defense of their actions. | [
"The Washington Post also reported that the NSA makes use of location data and advertising tracking files generated through normal internet browsing i.e. tools that enable Internet advertisers to track consumers from Google and others to get information on potential targets, to pinpoint targets for government hacki... |
How prevalent was looting by US troops during WWII? | Looting by the US military during World War II fell into several categories, which can broadly be grouped as the 'legal' and 'illegal', even if lines might have blurred at times. First and foremost it can be said that the War Department maintained an official policy, laid out and periodically refined by a series of Circulars released during the war and subsequent occupation, which defined what was not allowed to be taken, but also what was considered fair game, and even further, with the latter, actively facilitated the acquisition and transportation home of those items for the troops.
**Policy**
The policy with regards to war trophies gave troops a fair amount of latitude as long as they followed the key limitations, which can broadly be said to be those which required following the Geneva Convention, and military necessities. With regards to the former, this mainly related to the possessions of POWs, with the policy being that "*all personal effects and objects of person use - except arms, horses, military equipment, and military papers - shall remain in the possession of prisoners of war, as well as metal helmets and gas masks [until in a place where no longer needed for protection*". Any money was supposed to be accounted for, with the POW provided a receipt, and no identification documents, medals, insignia, etc. were allowed to be taken from those captured, or from the dead. These *could* be bartered for or bought, however, which was considered lawful, and similarly if found on the battlefield, such items were also fair game.
The general rule to be followed on the battlefield was that "*under no circumstances may war trophies include any item which in itself is evidence of disrespectful treatment of the enemy dead"*. As for the restrictions of military necessity, explosives were prohibited, as were *"Items of which the value as trophies [...] is outweighed by their usefulness in the service or for research or for training [...] or their value as critical scrap material".* Military property, it in theory all became property of the US government (or whichever power had defeated the enemy in that region), and as long as the value was negligible, there was no harm in allowing soldiers to requisition it themselves. The best 'finds' were military depots, where almost everything was essentially considered fair game: "a looter's heaven" was what war correspondent termed the German military supply center at Cherbourg, which provided a rich haul in both food and goods, and no soldiers owning them to complicate possession either. In an effort to dissuade looting, Gen. Bradley promised every soldier involved in the operation would be given two bottles of wine and three more of liquor, but it has by no means entirely effective in earning the patience of the troops.
**Realities**
To be sure, none of the restrictions or inducements were necessarily a deterrent. Such as with the recollection of Robert Russell, of the 84th Infantry, who remembered veterans cutting the fingers off dead Germans to remove stuck rings, or Eugene Sledge who told of 'harvesting gold teeth' from the dead Japanese, and the routine checking of packs and pockets for anything interesting to take home. Soldiers would often violate these rules, and there was very little that could be done unless caught in the act, little proof one way or the other that, say, a medal hadn't been bought from a POW. Even if caught rifling through pockets, it was easy to claim one was searching for intelligence material, an allowable goal which in reality did at times bear fruit. And of course beyond that it was not like officers - who were tasked with enforcing both the 'letter and the spirit', weren't partaking at times as well. Frank Miller, of the 36th Infantry Division, recalled coming into competition with his own captain over a camera (German Leicas were a very premium prize) that was discovered while rifling through the body of a dead German officer.
Many officers, whether they partook or not, were willing to turn a blind eye to anything not overly egregious, believing "that hat the soldiers were entitled to a tangible share in the victory." And for those who did partake it was much easier to get away with the less scrupulous looting. Officers were more likely than soldiers to be the ones sending home fancy items such as china or silverware, pilfered from the fine mansions in which they were billeted during the war and later the occupation. Although most officers were not in the ranks of such looters, those who did yield to temptation were, in the words of Raymond Gantter, "the most ruthless, avaricious looters of all" due to their position and unprecedented access.
Even civilians - friend or foe - were not necessarily safe, especially if abandoned, but once in Germany, the less restrained GIs were hardly deterred by someone being home. In his journal from the war, Charles Lindbergh observed that "our soldiers have learned that if they walk up to a German house with rifle over shoulder and demand cameras and field glasses, they are quite likely to get some". In any case though, no wine cellar in the path of the Allies - whether Tunisia, France, or Germany - was safe if stumbled upon, and such finds also represented one of the more favored type of looting, especially for combat soldiers.
On the move, with no real place to stash items, unable to carry much extra with them, and wary of what might happen to themselves if captured with German good on their person to boot (a fear they knew well given how *they* treated German prisoners found with American items on their person), food and drink was a much better 'find' in the field than something large and bulky, and could generally be justified as 'foraging', or by leaving the unwanted C/K-rations in their place as a hardly-equal recompense for the fresh eggs or meat. Although correspondents such as Homer Bigart put a positive spin on this, relating to readers that "the country seems rich in melons and vegetables, and the farmers eagerly share their bread and wine", this was hardly always the case in reality.
Don Loth, of the 12th Armored, recalled how looting was more 'redistribution' as heavy items (French or German) would be picked up in one locale, only to be dumped by the wayside at the next. During the advance through Europe, it was the men to the rear, less burdened by those limitations, who would hold onto their souvenirs, and for the combat soldiers, it was only once they moved to occupation duty that they had more opportunity to hold onto what they had found. In the 506th PIR, for instance, the Regimental HQ had the apparent motto of "You shoot 'em, We loot 'em". For the basic grunts at the front lines, small but flashy items were at a premium during the war, as a *Heer* belt-buckle or some fancy jewelry, for instance, was much easier to hold onto than a Mauser. Recalling an accordion that he had found, Jack Sacco related its quick demise in the combat zone:
> We were walking through the streets toward the city center, weighed down with our spoils, when I felt the wind of a bullet as it flew inches past my head. I instinctively fell to the ground face first. The accordion made a loud groaning sound as it landed heavily on top of me. [...]
> As far as we could figure, the woman [sniper] had gotten off two shots before being killed. The first had narrowly missed my head, and the second had mortally wounded the accordion.
As mentioned before, civilian houses which were chosen to provide billeting or command posts for officers were often the worst hit in terms of looting, those officers who did choose to loot having less oversight over their pilfering than enlisted men, and more opportunity to hold onto their loot, with access to jeeps and trucks. They were also happy to 'take those bulky items off your hands' when they knew a GI was too overloaded, such as a fine double-barreled shotgun that Raymond Gantter ruefully remembered losing to an officer who he initially through was offering too simply hold on to it for him, while Ralph Bennett recalled an incident at Berchtesgaden in the final days of the war:
> On the way down we came across a dining set all marked with an eagle sitting on a swastika between the initials “A – H.” I picked up the solid silver service and was on my way back to Göring’s house when we were stopped by a major in a command car who asked, “What have you got there, sergeant?” I told him it was a souvenir but he snapped back, “Nope, that’s loot; you know the rules – hand it over!” As Spence and I were sheepishly walking away another officer, a colonel, approached the major and did exactly the same thing. RHIP: Rank Has Its Privileges. No doubt about it.
**Prevention and Punishment**
The Army did *try* to prevent looting of civilians, especially in liberated territory such as France or the Netherlands, where the Americans were supposed to be coming in as saviors. Although at least in liberated territory serious violations of civilian property were rare and practiced by a very small minority, such acts were still enough to give the impression to many French of Belgians that Americans were uncouth conquerors themselves.
I/IV | [
"BULLET::::- During World War II, Nazi Germany engaged in looting, particularly by Nazi military units known as the Kunstschutz (\"Art Protection\"). The Soviet Army also operated official trophy brigades to loot Germany and the Eastern European countries occupied by Germany (such as Poland). In Asia, the Empire of... |
how and why we feel the emotion, "boredom" whenever we aren't doing anything? | Well I dunno about you but if I'm not on ADHD meds I feel bored damn near constantly. Like painful, unbearable boredom.
So... in light of that, I'm going to go out on a limb and say when you're sitting around doing nothing your brain is most likely not got a lot of dopamine action going on? And since most brains aren't too keen on that sort of situation, they'll likely try to bring this issue to your attention by telling you you're bored, which would seem to be brain-speak for "there ain't enough dopamine in here, do something about it". You feel a powerful urge to find something to do. If you succeed in finding something you gain a nice dopamine rush and boredom abates. If you don't succeed boredom continues until you find a way to fix the problem.
Or if you've got bad enough ADHD you just run around like a lunatic trying desperately to find anything in the world that'll make the ants-in-your-skin mind-numbing boredom stop but nothing'll work for long because lol your brain is broken. | [
"In conventional usage, boredom is an emotional and occasionally psychological state experienced when an individual is left without anything in particular to do, is not interested in his or her surroundings, or feels that a day or period is dull or tedious. It is also understood by scholars as a modern phenomenon w... |
What is the value of Monte Carlo method? Doesn't it just return the expected set of results and variance? | The point is using it to calculate something you don't know.
Say you throw an dart at a random point within a square. Inside the square you've inscribed a circle. 'Hits' are counted within the circle, misses outside it. Geometrically, the ratio of hits to throws will approach π.
So you can determine pi that way. You can even do it as an algorithm (Matlab code):
> hit=miss=0;
> for i=1:100000
> x = rand(); y = rand();
> if x\*x + y\*y < 1
> hit++;
> else
> miss++;
> end
> end
> pi = 4*hit/(hit+miss) # The factor 4 enters here as we're only testing one quadrant of the circle
Which gives about 3 digits for that number of iterations, and isn't terribly useful in practice as there are more efficient ways of calculating π. But that's not the point, the point is that you can calculate it that way, only knowing the Pythagorean theorem and random numbers. Since you know the statistics here, you _know_ the expectation value will be π/4 - _and that's the point_. You're setting up your method in such a way that the statistical expectation value is the number you're looking for, rather than what you already know.
| [
"Monte Carlo methods provide a way out of this exponential increase in computation time. As long as the function in question is reasonably well-behaved, it can be estimated by randomly selecting points in 100-dimensional space, and taking some kind of average of the function values at these points. By the central l... |
the differences and processes of rom and ram | Rom - read only memory. The chip is programmed once, usually by using a writing voltage that is high enough to “burn” the bits in.
Ram - random access memory. You can read and write to it. Writing doesn’t burn bits in, each bit is just basically a capacitor that temporarily stores a charge. | [
"Since ROM (at least in hard-wired mask form) cannot be modified, it is really only suitable for storing data which is not expected to need modification for the life of the device. To that end, ROM has been used in many computers to store look-up tables for the evaluation of mathematical and logical functions (for ... |
why do car commercial disclaimers at the end always play so fast that you can't even understand what they're saying? | Because the company is legally obliged to include the message but doesn't want to spend ad time that they pay for on legal requirement that doesn't help woth the sales. So they keep it as fast and short as possible. | [
"Some TV and radio commercials are concluded with \"fast talking\", which is barely audible or comprehensible to most. While it is this very message that states all necessary disclaimers and exceptions to the advertisement, it is often stated too fast for the viewer or listener to comprehend. This is often coupled ... |
Historical use of a "gun-blade"? | In 1838, the US Navy commissioned 150 [Elgin "Cutlass" Pistols](_URL_0_) for the South Sea Expedition. More info [here](_URL_1_)
If your uncle had 2 of those, they would be quite valuable. | [
"BULLET::::- Knife pistols with folding blades were popular in England during the mid Victorian era. These were made by Unwin and Rodgers, used black powder and were available in various small calibers. Like the modern Swiss Army knife they contained a variety of tools, from blades to corkscrews, and were often use... |
Why are some pharmaceuticals bounded to an hydrochloride and some to an hydrobromide? | There is a difference in how well the crystals form. Larger ions like larger counter-ions, typically, to make stable crystals. When making the drug you want stable crystals to recover the most product cleanly at the end of the manufacturing process. | [
"In chemistry, a hydrobromide is an acid salt resulting, or regarded as resulting, from the reaction of hydrobromic acid with an organic base (e.g. an amine). The compounds are similar to hydrochlorides.\n",
"Hydrobromic acid is mainly used for the production of inorganic bromides, especially the bromides of zinc... |
During the Medieval period, how often were nobility/knights/etc captured in battle? | Not op, follow.up questions:
How are the nobles/knights/etc generally treated when they were captured? | [
"The rest of the captured knights and soldiers were sold into slavery, and one was reportedly bought in Damascus in exchange for some sandals. The high ranking Frankish barons captured were held for ransom.\n",
"It was often claimed that the nobles faced greater risks than the ordinary soldiers as there was littl... |
radio waves allegedly detected coming from another galaxy. how long ago are they likely to be from? | Radio astronomer checking in:
Yes, radio waves travel at the speed of light (radio waves ARE light, just lower energy than visible light), so the travel time is equal to the distance in light-years. Radio waves from a galaxy 10 million lightyears away will take 10 million years to get to us, or conversely we are now observing radio waves (and other light) created 10 million years ago in that galaxy.
Radio waves from galaxies has been picked up for decades: it's completely natural (or rather, if there is any artificial radio emission, it's much much weaker than the natural emission). There's a couple of different physical processes that produce natural radio emission, so we can use measurements of radio emission in galaxies to understand what kind of physics goes on in those galaxies. For example, I work on studying magnetic fields in interstellar space by measuring radio emission that's been created/influenced by magnetic fields in our Galaxy or other nearby galaxies. | [
"In 1932, American physicist and radio engineer Karl Jansky detected radio waves coming from an unknown source in the center of our galaxy. Jansky was studying the origins of radio frequency interference for Bell Laboratories. He found \"...a steady hiss type static of unknown origin\", which eventually he conclude... |
marginal cost | There are some business costs that don't depend on how productive you are. Even if you produce absolutely nothing this year, you still have to pay for building space and air conditioning and stuff.
But there are some costs that *do* depend on how productive you are. For instance, if you're building shovels, you need a certain amount of wood and steel per shovel you make. If you make more shovels you buy more, and if you make fewer shovels you buy less.
Marginal costs are that second kind. | [
"In economics, marginal cost is the change in the total cost that arises when the quantity produced is incremented by one unit; that is, it is the cost of producing one more unit of a good. Intuitively, marginal cost at each level of production includes the cost of any additional inputs required to produce the next... |
How do we know for certain that we have found every single naturally occurring element? | Each element is identified by the number of protons in its nucleus. As protons don't occur in fractions you can determine that you have found all the elements in a series by looking for gaps. Since we have a fairly long continuous list of elements from 1 out to around 118 we know we have found all of those elements, some naturally occurring, others produced in nuclear reactions either in a lab, or in a naturally occurring nuclear reaction.
Out of the 118 known elements the naturally occurring elements are the ones that have a sufficiently long life time that significant quantities remain after the millions of years since the nova and other stellar phenomenon produced the atoms that eventually were drawn together by gravity to form the earth.
So isotopes with half lives of less than ~~hundreds of thousands~~ tens or hundreds of millions of years are not found to be naturally occurring unless they are a product of a slower decay that is still occurring.
Due to this it is improbably that there are undiscovered elements on the earth or other planets.
Areas of space that have recently had super novas, currently have black holes or other exotic stellar events could have elements that have not been discovered, but the problem would be to capture, study, and identify the elements.
There is predicted, but not yet observed, to be an island of stability (_URL_0_) in the super-heavy elements that could be discovered some where in the universe, or in a terrestrial lab. Although keep in mind stable in this context can mean an atom would survive no more than a few thousandth of a second after its creation from another nuclear process.
edit: Note that the age of the Earth is 4.5 Billion years, not the hundreds of millions I was thinking when I wrote my above sentences, so the half life of a radioactive element that is to be found on the earth needs to be higher than I had given before. For example Potassium-40 has a half life of 1.248x10^9 years and Uranium-235 has 7.038x10^8 years are both found terrestrially. | [
"The discovery of the 118 chemical elements known to exist as of 2019 is presented in chronological order. The elements are listed generally in the order in which each was first defined as the pure element, as the exact date of discovery of most elements cannot be accurately determined. There are plans to synthesis... |
Did the big bang occur in all directions? I often hear that we can only see 13.?? billion light years before we can't see anymore, but isn't there technically another 13.?? billion light years worth of material beyond the initial bang, just in the other direction? | The misunderstanding here comes from your idea of the "center" if the universe.
There isn't one. Every point in the universe appears to be moving away from every other at the same rate.
The *observable* universe " on the other hand is spherical centered on the earth, because light has only had the age of the universe to reach us we can only see the age of the universe in every direction, making a sphere (called a Hubble sphere)
If you were on any planet in the universe you would only be able to see the age of the universe away from that planet. | [
"Observations made by Edwin Hubble during the 1920s–1950s found that galaxies appeared to be moving away from each other, leading to the currently accepted Big Bang theory. This suggests that the universe began – very small and very dense – about 13.8 billion years ago, and it has expanded and (on average) become l... |
What is the history of the Smith-Mundt act? Why did congress pass a law banning domestic audiences from hearing material intended for foreign audiences? | If you are at an institution with free access to legal databases, you can get greater depth from the legislative records cited below, but here is what I could dig up from free sources:
The initial 1948 law provides that:
> [USIA publications] shall not be disseminated within the United States, its territories, or possessions, but, on request, shall be available in the English language at the agency, at all reasonable times following its release as information abroad, for examination only by representatives of the United States press associations, newspapers, magazines, radio systems, and stations, and by research students and scholars, and, on request, shall be made available for examination only to members of Congress.
The prohibition was strengthened in 1972, and here is what the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has to say about the amendment:
> Particularly enlightening are the circumstances surrounding the 1972 amendment which first made the domestic distribution ban explicit. A member of the United States Senate had requested and obtained a USIA film which he intended to broadcast to his constituents. In direct response to the proposed broadcast, the Congress amended the Act to prohibit dissemination and distribution generally and to restrict its own members' access to USIA materials to "examination only."
[*Essential Information v. USIA*, 134 F.3d 1165, 1167 (D.C. Cir. 1998)](_URL_1_) (citing Senate Report 92-754 and 1972 House Report No. 1145).
The prohibition was also strengthened in 1985, and here is what the amendment sponsor Sen. Edward Zorinsky said at the time:
> By law, the USIA cannot engage in domestic propaganda. This distinguishes us, as a free society, from the Soviet Union where domestic propaganda is a principal government activity. ... The American taxpayer certainly does not need or want his tax dollars used to support U.S. Government propaganda directed at him or her. Our amendment insures that this will not occur.
[*Gartner v. US Information Agency*, 726 F. Supp. 1183, 1186 n.2 (S.D. Iowa 1989)](_URL_0_) (quoting 131 Cong. Rec. 14945 (June 7, 1985)).
| [
"Saia v. New York, 334 U.S. 558 (1948), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that an ordinance which prohibited the use of sound amplification devices except with permission of the Chief of Police was unconstitutional on its face because it established a prior restraint on the right of fr... |
What is the status of Fredrick Jackson Turner's Frontier Thesis among historians today? Is it still used as an explanation of broader aspects of US historical trends, or closer to something that illuminates how Americans in the early 20th century thought about their own past? | After ninety-five years (or so) of two camps - the Turnerians and the anti-Turnerians - bashing one another, there was something of a collective sigh of relief when the controversy around the Turner Thesis was set aside. Even though it was largely unresolved. The situation was so desperate that one didn't even write the word "frontier" for a number of years for fear of being shown the door: the term had been used like a secret password among Turner supports to indicate one's allegiance, all the while attracting the ire of the "anti" camp.
There are two things to consider, as the dust has settled, about what Turner was saying. Both are macro models, and like all things macro, large models tend to fail when considering at least some specifics. That doesn't mean that macro models are bad. They can be useful in considering the large view of things. Similarly, just because some specifics challenge the validity of the macro model doesn't mean it is not useful as a construct.
So to the two things: the first was the Turnerian idea of successive phases of the development of the Frontier: Native Americans, trapper, sod busters, farmers/towns, etc.; the second is the idea that the North American frontier was a pressure valve that allowed democracy and American capitalism to thrive. The idea behind the latter was that as long as free land and Western opportunities were available on the frontier, Eastern inner city problems with wealth disparities could be resolved by having at least some of the poor moving West. Once the "Frontier" was closed in the early 1890s, the pressure value stopped functioning, and the resulting American experience shifted.
The first idea is rather mechanical. It's not a bad way to describe what happened from western Pennsylvania to eastern Nebraska and South Dakota - and that covers a lot, so it shouldn't be automatically dismissed as invalid. On the other hand, it fits less well with the Far West: California and the Intermountain Mining West was settled with far different patterns - often with nearly instantaneous urbanity (and typically west to east). So the mechanical idea of the frontier needs to be recognized as a model that can be useful, but with limitations.
The second idea is less mechanical and much larger in its scope, and it is, consequently, something that is more difficult to evaluate. I'm not sure how it was treated outside of Western studies - it would be great to hear someone address that. Oddly, this second aspect of Turner's Thesis had more relevance for the Atlantic coast (where the pressure valve had its effect) than it did for the American West (the source of the pressure valve), and yet, the debate that occurred was largely in Western historiography where it has been largely set aside there.
We need someone well versed in American economic history to tell us how Turner has been viewed since he was set aside my the late 1980s in Western studies. So what I have given you is more context than answer. Now we wait for someone to answer your question with the proper authority! | [
"Slatta (2001) maintains that the widespread popularization of Turner's frontier thesis influenced popular histories, motion pictures, and novels, which characterize the West in terms of individualism, frontier violence, and rough justice. Disneyland's Frontierland of the late 20th century reflected the myth of rug... |
What was the casualty rate for battles between hoplites in ancient Greece? | Back in the 80s, Peter Krentz gathered all known casualty figures from Classical Greek sources in order to establish a rough average.^1 He concluded that in battles of Greek against Greek, the winner suffered about 5% casualties, the loser about 14%. These numbers are very frequently cited in scholarship. They seem perfectly straightforward, but it's not really so obvious what they actually mean.
First, it's misleading to think of these percentages as a ballpark figure for the losses in every battle. We can only reckon casualty figures against army totals in a handful of battles. Both numbers are based on a data set of fewer than 20 entries, many of which derive from late and uncertain evidence. From these, too, Krentz has had to filter out battles against Persians and Carthaginians, for which the non-Greek casualty rate given in the sources is usually incredibly high; these data points massively distorted the average. That doesn't leave many points on the chart. Any outliers are going to have a major impact on the overall picture. For example, at the battle of Spartolos in 429 BC, the Athenians lost as many as 40% of their men to Chalkidian cavalry. You can imagine how much this pulls on an average that could elsewhere be as low as 3%. It is no solution to ignore outliers, since we don't actually have enough data points to know whether we are assessing the "normal" casualty rate accurately, or whether what we regard as outliers actually represent a whole range of engagements. Instead of simply citing the 5% and 14% rates, then, it would be more honest to say (as Krentz does) that casualties typically lay somewhere in a broad range of 3-10% for the victors and 10-20% for the defeated.
Second, scholars have not been able to agree over whether these numbers are high or low. There's a whole school of thought invested in the belief that the total casualties suffered in hoplite battles was modest, and that hoplite warfare was specifically intended to reduce the human and economic cost of war. V.D. Hanson argues that numbers like these had almost no demographic effect, and that the primacy of pitched battle in the Greek way of war prevented further casualties among non-combatants.^2 Against this, John Dayton compared the known Greek casualty figures to those from Early Modern Europe to conclude that 5%/14% is actually quite high; armies that operated in a tactically similar way might come away with just 1-3% losses in 18th-century Europe.^3 In other words, Greek hoplite battles should probably be regarded as pretty bloody. Modern scholarship has also contextualised open battle as only one form of violence within Greek warfare, with many others targeting the population at large.
Third, as Krentz himself already noted, Greek communities would have taken even 5% casualties as a heavy blow. Their armies consisted of all male citizens in arms, and every man who died would leave a hole in a group of friends, an empty seat in the Council, a farm untended, a household driven to destitution. Modern military casualties are absorbed by a professional military, and the loss affects only a few of us in wider society. The Greeks did not have the luxury of detaching themselves from the horrors of war. Even a few losses were a personal tragedy to a significant number of the population, and this could sometimes be leveraged to achieve political ends, as during the trial of the Athenian generals after the victory at Arginousai in 406 BC, when the bereaved turned up in mourning garb and swayed the vote of the Assembly. Heavy losses could result in major disruption. According to Herodotos, when 6000 Argives were slaughtered at the battle of Sepeia in 494 BC, the Argive slaves rebelled and seized control of the city (6.83.1).
Given this context, we should assume that Greek generals' priority was to keep their men alive as best they could. They were not likely to try anything risky that might go catastrophically wrong. Most of the tactics they used were tried and tested, and didn't ask much of their amateur levies. Fernando Echeverría has argued that their entire tactical system was defined by the overriding need to protect the citizen body, which was more important even than winning battles.^4
This, coupled with hoplites' total lack of training, is the main reason why we have an impression of Classical Greek battle as a pretty simple and straightforward business. Large, somewhat-organised masses of armoured men would run at each other, stabbing and shoving, hoping the other side would break first. This kind of fighting was certainly intense, especially for those in the front ranks, who 'faced the spears', as the Greeks put it (Xenophon, *Symposion* 2.13), and who could be maimed or killed any second. But we should probably not imagine it as a collective shoving match in which the enemy was physically driven from the field. References to pushing in combat are more likely to refer either to individual warriors or to the metaphorical 'push'.^5 Actual combat will have been more tentative, with lines breaking apart and rejoining, individual men psyching themselves up for another duel, and everybody generally trying really hard not to die. Losses would not have been very steep on either side. At most, this would be where the winning side incurred its 3-5% casualties - a significant share of the front rank, to be sure, but nothing like the devastating attrition you see in movies. Indeed, some battles were decided before they had really begun, when one side broke before contact, and the two hoplite formations never met.
But the battle didn't end there. Older scholars used to insist that the Greeks - who were, as you'll remember, trying to reduce the toll of war - wouldn't pursue the enemy once they started running. However, more recent work shows that this is blatantly false. The Greeks gleefully chased and slaughtered their enemies once they had stopped resisting, and in this phase of battle the casualty rate skyrocketed. It wasn't just the hoplites trying to chase their beaten enemies in heavy armour; at this point light infantry and cavalry would swoop in, scatter the enemy, herd groups into traps, ride them down, tear them up with missiles, and keep the killing going as long as they could. Our sources frequently mention that the pursuit went on until nightfall. This was when the fighting was at its most chaotic, and death was all around. According to Plato, veteran generals saw little use in fighting skill during the main engagement, but thought it invaluable when battle turned into pursuit:
> [hoplite training] will be of some use in actual battle, when it comes to fighting in line with a number of other men; but its greatest advantage will be felt when the ranks are broken, and you find you must fight man to man, either in pursuing someone who is trying to beat off your attack, or in retreating yourself and beating off the attack of another.
-- Pl. *Laches* 182a-b
The delight felt by the Greeks when their enemies ran - and I do mean delight; Xenophon once refers to the pursuit as one of the 'pleasures' of war (*Hieron* 2.15) - shows that the clumsy, awkward encounter of poorly trained hoplite masses wasn't the ultimate goal of having a battle. The goal was to break the enemy, so that they could be pursued and killed with impunity. For the same reason every Greek citizen army fought to keep its men alive, they also fought to annihilate their enemies: every fatality directly impacted the enemy community, and enough death could destablise their whole state. There was a great deal to be gained from battle if the enemy casualty rate could be made as high as possible.^6
We see the effect of the pursuit clearly reflected in the death toll of hoplite battles. At Syracuse in 415 BC, the Athenians defeated their enemies, but the Syracusan cavalry prevented them from pursuing; as a result, losses were slight on both sides (50 Athenians and about 260 Syracusans had fallen - perhaps 1% vs 2.5% respectively). At Delion in 424 BC, however, the Athenians were pursued by the Boiotian horsemen until darkness fell, and lost nearly 1000 men (some 14% of their army). At the Nemea in 394 BC, the Spartans are said to have butchered 2800 of their opponents in flight; at Kynoskephalai in 364 BC, Thessalian cavalry massacred over 3000 of the men of Alexander of Pherai. I already noted the 6000 Argives killed at Sepeia; they were not killed in the battle against the Spartans, but afterwards, when they fled into a sacred grove that the Spartan king Kleomenes proceeded to set on fire. One source claims that at the Tearless Battle of 368 BC, the Spartans killed as many as 10,000 men without losing even one of their own. Such losses would have cut swathes through the citizen body of the states involved. It is not surprising that Argos, 15 years after the defeat at Sepeia, pleaded that it had no choice but to stay neutral in the war against Persia, because it had no grown men.
---
**Notes**
1. Krentz, 'Casualties in hoplite battles', *GRBS* 26.1 (1985), 13-20.
1. Hanson repeats this point throughout his body of work, but see for example *The Other Greeks* (1995) 307-311.
2. Dayton, *The Athletes of War* (2005) 81-102.
4. Echeverría Rey, 'Taktikê technê', *Ancient Society* 41 (2011), 45-82.
5. I covered this in more detail [here](_URL_0_).
6. Konijnendijk, *Classical Greek Tactics* (2018), 188-205. | [
"The battle went on for some time and if Diodorus's brief account is accurate, took a high cost on both side before reaching a resolution. In the end the hoplites failed to break through the superior Iapygians which destroyed the combined Tarentine/Rhegian force who fled in different directions, in what Herodotus d... |
- why does water bead up where i wrote on a dirty car, and why does it take so long to disappear? | Oil from your skin and the fact that dust is abrasive when you write with your finger on dust it scratches the paint/ clear coat. | [
"Mud can pose problems for motor traffic when moisture is present, because every vehicle function that changes direction or speed relies on friction between the tires and the road surface, so a layer of mud on the surface of the road or tires can cause the vehicle to hydroplane.\n",
"Puddles commonly form during ... |
why does produce from farmer’s markets cost more than organic produce from a grocery store if the middlemen are removed? | In countries like the USA (where labor is costly), farmer's market stands are not cost-efficient. You have a whole person or two, putting in 4-6 hours of work, just to sell a couple of hundred dollars worth of produce. | [
"Additionally, organic local food tends to be more costly so this is not an appealing option to consumers who are shopping on a budget. Small-scale farmers do not receive government subsidies and are not able to support their business on prices comparable to those of industrial-scale food production, so they must s... |
As previously stated, Soldiers from ancient times were lean and fit, what were gladiators like? | I'm working on finding the source at the moment but, as far as I remember, gladiators were actually kind of flabby.
[Edit]
The Archaeological Institute of America has an article [here](_URL_0_) that covers the research from the Austrian Archaeological Institute's study of gladiator remains.
> Compared to the average inhabitant of Ephesus, gladiators ate more plants and very little animal protein. The vegetarian diet had nothing to do with poverty or animal rights. Gladiators, it seems, were fat. Consuming a lot of simple carbohydrates, such as barley, and legumes, like beans, was designed for survival in the arena. Packing in the carbs also packed on the pounds. "Gladiators needed subcutaneous fat," Grossschmidt explains. "A fat cushion protects you from cut wounds and shields nerves and blood vessels in a fight." Not only would a lean gladiator have been dead meat, he would have made for a bad show. Surface wounds "look more spectacular," says Grossschmidt. "If I get wounded but just in the fatty layer, I can fight on," he adds. "It doesn't hurt much, and it looks great for the spectators." | [
"There were many different types of gladiators in ancient Rome. Some of the first gladiators had been prisoners-of-war, and so some of the earliest types of gladiators were experienced fighters; Gauls, Samnites, and \"Thraeces\" (Thracians) used their native weapons and armor. Different gladiator types specialized ... |
How did early humans switch from hunter-gatherer to agriculture? | I actually studied this quite a bit in undergrad. The first thing to remember is that it varies by region. There are many independent origins of agriculture around the world and not all of them happened the same way. However, there are many common themes, and a major one is that it's typically not very deliberate.
To use the classic Fertile Crescent as an example, the development of agriculture in this region was precipitated by a major climate shift. Where previously the seasons had been relatively mild, winters were suddenly considerably wetter and summers were much, much hotter and drier. This contributed to a rise in the dominance of annual plants, species that live out their entire life cycle within one year, as young members of perennial species had difficulty surviving through the summers. Many of these annual species would come to dominate the early agricultural diet, grains being chief among them.
Prior to true agriculture came simple cultivation. Groups of hunter-gatherers would not plant seeds and tend them throughout the growing season, but they would return to specific wild patches and make efforts to increase the natural yield. This differential attention paid to certain wild populations based on their usefulness to humans created artificial selective pressure, driving the evolution of the various features that characterize plant domestication (and a similar principle was at work in animal domestication as well, which predated plant domestication in many areas). So they weren't really experimenting so much as returning to the best spots over and over again, gradually learning how to increase wild yield. Intentional seeding was not one of the early stages.
Over time, this just intensified. The harsh weather limited summer foraging in much of the region, encouraging storage of surplus from the milder seasons. Because storage requires a storage location, this was likely a major driver of the increase in sedentism during this period. | [
"Hunter gatherer culture developed among the early prehistoric era. Evidence traces them as far back as 2 million years ago. As primarily nomadic groups, they valued the idea of kinship; moreover, these kinship focused groups recognized status via age as they viewed their elders as the wise ones from the group. Con... |
whаt nutrіеnts dоеs саrtіlаgе nееd? | The non-essential amino acids proline and glycine are building blocks for cartilage. Your body can synthesize them, but dietary intake from gelatinous meats will likely aid in your body's ability to heal. A study was done which used radioactive dye on gelatin, which was then fed to rats with damaged connective tissue. Imaging showed that the ingested gelatin was sent to the site of the damaged tissue. | [
"An esophageal stent is a stent (tube) placed in the esophagus to keep a blocked area open so the patient can swallow soft food and liquids. Esophageal stents may be self-expandable metallic stents, or made of plastic, or silicone, and may be used in the treatment of esophageal cancer.\n",
"\"trans\",\"cis\"-2,6-... |
if orangutans share approximately 97% dna with humans, why do they look so different than humans? | The other 3%.
And really, they don't look all that different from us. Sure, if you had 100 humans and one orangutan in a room, the orangutan would stand out; but if you had 1000 animals of all types, the orangutan and the human would look practically identical. Squid, cockroaches, snakes, and hummingbirds are all much more different from humans than orangutans are. | [
"In other words, the considerable observable differences between humans and chimps may be due as much or more to genome level variation in the number, function and expression of genes rather than DNA sequence changes in shared genes. Indeed, even within humans, there has been found to be a previously unappreciated ... |
How different was the culture and language of the Scottish Highlands from that of the Lowlands? | When?
Scotti is the Latin name for the Irish, (or, alternatively, northern Irish) who frequently raided Britain. (Gael comes from Welsh Gwydel which is raider, iirc, akin to Viking meaning pirate or something along those lines)
The Gaels of the north of Ireland set up a kingdom that spread across Antrim and the west of Scotland basically. Over time, Vikings arrived into the islands of Scotland, as well as invading England, Ireland and Scotland in general.
Eventually Gaelic culture proved predominant in Pictish areas too, and the Vikings of the islands adopted it too, becoming the Hiberno-Norse. (Who would bequeath Irish culture the gallóglaigh or gallowglasses.)
After that, it was a long slow decline.
Lowlanders speak a different dialect/language that's very close to English anyway. (Lollans?) So that allowed them be culturally closer to the English than to the Gaelic. | [
"Thus, from the end of the 14th century, and certainly by the end of the 15th century, Scotland began to show a split into two cultural areasthe mainly English or Scots Lowlands, and the mainly Gaelic-speaking Highlands (which then could be thought to include Galloway and Carrick; see Galwegian Gaelic). This caused... |
$ vs. ¢ | To avoid ambiguity, although it isn't always the case that the main currency symbol goes in front. In many languages, it goes at the end regardless.
Having it in front is useful for two purposes, however. Firstly, it helps prevent people from adding digits to the front of the number (for example, turning 23.50$ into 523.50$; note that the decimal points prevents people from just adding to the *end* of the number, as well) and secondly, when reading, it provides context for the number before it appears, so a reader can immediately recognize that it is a currency amount that is about to appear. This is especially useful in English because we say "$1.25" as "a dollar twenty-five" or "one twenty-five" rather than "one point two five dollars".
But, as I said, some languages *do* have the currency symbol appear *after* the number, instead. One potential reason for this is when making a ledger. You can put the item first, then the price right-aligned, ending with the currency symbol. That way, all the currency symbols (and the decimal points) line up on the page, no matter how many digits are used for each line on the ledger. | [
"When written in English, the cent sign (¢ or c) follows the amount (with no space between), in contrast with a larger currency symbol, which is placed before the amount. For example, 2¢ and $0.02, or 2c and €0.02.\n",
"The cent may be represented by the \"cent sign\", a minuscule letter \"c\" crossed by a diagon... |
[Astronomy] Is there a correlation between galaxy age and the amount of dark matter in it? | the part of the galaxy that contains dark matter is called the "dark matter halo" and contains the majority of the mass in a standard galaxy. it is really hard to accurately weigh a galaxy and determine the amount of dark matter in it, although for the ones we have weighed, it seems like there is usually more dark matter than normal matter. although, there are galaxies with potentially [no dark matter](_URL_0_) or [99.99% dark matter](_URL_1_). these outliers are so rare to find that no correlations can really be made to age/size/location/etc..
dark matter has definitely been a huge factor in galaxy formation from the beginning though. when galaxies were first forming in the universe, the overall temperature was still too hot for normal matter to have been forming galaxies, so there must have been substantial dark matter structure present already.
so i don't think we have enough data to make any correlations between dark matter percentage and age, but in general we know that there has definitely always been dark matter in galaxies. | [
"The time following the emission of the cosmic microwave background—and before the observation of the first stars—is semi-humorously referred to by cosmologists as the Dark Age, and is a period which is under intense study by astronomers (see 21 centimeter radiation).\n",
"A later study purports to show that the ... |
what should i be looking for when i'm reading nutrition facts? | The most important fact you need to know: **Serving size**
And also the "Number of Servings" | [
"This is a list of nutrition guides. A nutrition guide is a reference that provides nutrition advice for general health, typically by dividing foods into food groups and recommending servings of each group. Nutrition guides can be presented in written or visual form, and are commonly published by government agencie... |
Is there a correlation between exposure to cold weather and getting viral/bacterial infections? | Also, the search bar on the right-hand side of the screen.
_URL_0_
_URL_5_
_URL_1_
_URL_2_
_URL_3_
_URL_4_
_URL_6_
| [
"The most common infectious causes are viral followed by bacterial. The viral infection may occur along with other symptoms of a common cold. Both viral and bacterial cases are easily spread between people. Allergies to pollen or animal hair are also a common cause. Diagnosis is often based on signs and symptoms. O... |
why/how does the gas released by freshly cut onions clear the nose and sinuses when ill? | This "gas" (actually a volatile liquid) is called syn-propanethial-S-oxide. It is an irritant that affects the mucous membranes and tear glands to secrete a lot of liquid. This liquid washes out any hardened snot that might be stuck to your mucous membranes. | [
"Eye irritation can be avoided by cutting onions under running water or submerged in a basin of water. Leaving the root end intact also reduces irritation as the onion base has a higher concentration of sulphur compounds than the rest of the bulb. Refrigerating the onions before use reduces the enzyme reaction rate... |
Does alpha decay lead to an ion being made as the atom has lost two protons and so now has two more electrons than protons? | Yes conservation of charge means that the resulting atom will be in a -2 charge state. Generally this state is not stable and the atom will interact quickly with local chemistry in some way to lose that charge. Some smaller atoms may even emit one of the electrons directly without requiring a reaction with local compounds.
So yes, but it then quickly becomes a regular atom with a normal charge. | [
"Alpha decay typically occurs in the heaviest nuclides. Theoretically, it can occur only in nuclei somewhat heavier than nickel (element 28), where the overall binding energy per nucleon is no longer a minimum and the nuclides are therefore unstable toward spontaneous fission-type processes. In practice, this mode ... |
Are there any examples of slavery supporters in the American South who changed their mind and rejected slavery (either before or after the Civil War)? | I have no doubt there will be a great deal of examples that people more familiar with american politics then myself can state but one example would be Rebecca Fleton a georgian feminist who is mostly known for being the first female senator (albeit only for one day as a publicity stunt when she filled her late husband's position and then turned it to over to the senator elect).
Her and her husband owned slaves up until the end of the civil war and she remained until the end of her days an unapolegetic racist who spoke out for lynching and against rights for blacks, who she viewed as savage threats to white woman.
However she did in her later life and in her memoirs in particular, turned against slavery as an institution and admitted it was a mistake not because of the treatment of the slaves but because she thought it corrupted the souls of the white slave owners. In particular she viewed the greatest sins of slavery to be children fathered on slaves by slave owners and then condemned to slavery by their own parent and that it was that sin against god which the south were punished for by the civil war.
So she is a case of a slave owner who later rejected slavery while never rejecting the idea of black inferiorty. | [
"As slavery disputes intensified in the 19th century, there emerged two doctrines within the Methodist Church. Churches in the South were primarily proslavery, while northern churches started antislavery movements. The apologia of the Southern churches was largely based in Old Testament scriptures, which often repr... |
Has a submarine ever sunk another submarine, in any war, ever? | More than a few times. In the Pacific theater, USN submarines sank the Japanese Ro-45 (although this claim is disputed), I-28, I-29, I-73, I-168, and I-183 as well as the *Monsun-Gruppe*'s [U-537](_URL_5_) and [U-183](_URL_8_). _URL_6_ 's [Sensuikan! page](_URL_4_) has the tabular record of movement (TROM) for each of these submarines that gives details for each sinking. British submarines managed to sink, or claim to have sunk, some 31 U-boats in both World Wars, as [seen in this list](_URL_11_). They also sank the Japanese [I-34](_URL_0_) and the Italian submarines *Michele Bianchi*, *Acciaio*, and *Pietro Micca*. The WWI submarine [U-7](_URL_2_) has the dubious distinction of being sunk by another U-boat in a case of friendly fire, but was topped by the WWII boats USS *Tang* and USS *Tullibee* which sank themselves after torpedo malfunctions caused them to circle back and sank both boats. The Japanese I-176 sank [USS *Corvina*](_URL_9_), which was the only US boat sunk by a Japanese submarine and her loss was fictionalized in the book *Run Silent, Run Deep* (still one of the best sub novel titles). _URL_7_ has a [list](_URL_3_) of Allied warships sunk by German submarines, including several Allied submarines like [HMS *Spearfish*](_URL_1_).
There were other incidents with minor navies either sinking submarines or themselves being sunk. With one exception, all of these sinkings occurred when the submarine was on the surface. WWI and II submarines were not true submarines, but rather submersibles. They spent most of their time on the surface of the ocean cruising along on their diesel or conventional engines. They used used batteries while underwater which not only could propel the submarine at slower speeds than diesels, but also had a limited running time. Submarines' defenses against attack by other submarines was much like any other threat: dive or somehow get out of the area.
The one known exception to these surface attacks is U-864, which was a Type IX U-boat used as a cargo submarine for Japan. Using ULTRA decripts, the British were able to place [HMS *Venturer*](_URL_10_) in a position to intercept. The British sub picked up the German boat on its hydrophones and tracked it in the hopes that she would surface. When she did not, *Venturer* fired a spread of eight torpedoes in a shotgun-type blast based on estimates from her hydrophone data as to where U-864 would be. One of these torpedoes managed to hit its target, and she sank to the bottom with her crew and cargo, including [considerable amounts of mercury](_URL_12_). To sink a submarine underwater during WWII required a lot of elements to work together ranging from good passive sonar work, intelligence locating the sub's position, as well as a great deal of luck. It was only in the postwar period that submarines gained the upgraded sonar suites and torpedoes that would allow them to hunt down this quarry. | [
"Another eight submarines went missing while on patrol and are presumed to have been sunk by Japanese mines, as there were no recorded Japanese anti-submarine attacks in their patrol areas. The other thirty-three lost submarines are known to have been sunk by the Japanese.\n",
"BULLET::::- On 2 May 1982 the Royal... |
If graphene is a single layer of carbon atoms, how would it conduct electricity? | It’s graphene’s structure that makes it conducive. A given carbon atom shares sigma-bonds with 3 other carbon atoms in the same layer, and pi-bonds with the adjacent layers. This pi-bond (actually pi-band) enables free electron movement, and hence electronic properties (namely conductivity).
When you get down to a single layer, the pi-bond is broken but still a surface of free electrons exists so conductivity still persists. The problem though is a surface of free electrons is difficult to maintain in a regular environment due to oxidation. As such, it has been difficult to keep testing single layer graphene.
Getting to a single layer is also quite tricky, commonly achieved in the lab by using sticky tape to peel off each layer at a time until you’re left with a single layer.
Haven’t read the paper but this might be a good start:
_URL_0_ | [
"Graphite conducts electricity, due to delocalization of the pi bond electrons above and below the planes of the carbon atoms. These electrons are free to move, so are able to conduct electricity. However, the electricity is only conducted along the plane of the layers. In diamond, all four outer electrons of each ... |
can anyone recommend me some eli5-like books on finance/money? | The dummies books are great, they have them on financing and all of those topics you talked about and they'll walk you through how to do those things.
Source: success in several investments from reading those books | [
"His intellectual legacy consists of a trio of highly influential books: Money and Its Uses in Medieval Europe (1988), a groundbreaking study of the role of coined money and credit in the working of the medieval economy; the Handbook of Medieval Exchange (1986), a reference work gathering up all of the then-known d... |
If deleted data can be retrieved, why can't we have our things in deleted state and keep much more space on hard drive disks ? | I think the thing that is confusing you is *what does it mean to be deleted*. When you delete most files on your computer, the OS simply marks those locations as "deleted". This means that future writes to disk might write to those locations. If you manage to "undelete" the content before one of these writes occurs then you will be okay, but there is no guarantee. The reason why "deleting" data in this way opens up space is because the deleted locations are now legal places for you to write more data. Keeping your data in this deleted state puts it at risk for being overwritten. | [
"When data is deleted from storage devices, the references to the data are removed from the directory structure. The space can then be used, or overwritten, with data from other files or computer functions. The deleted data itself is not immediately removed from the physical drive and often exists as a number of di... |
Each 10m underwater adds roughly 1atm in pressure. Does that change with liquids other than water? Would it be different in planets other than Earth? | Yes, that is specific to the density of water (d), the strength of gravity on the Earth (g). The pressure is g times d time the height of the column h, so if the density is twice that of water, only 5 meters would be required, and if the gravity were half as strong then 20 meters would be required. | [
"The average value of surface pressure on Earth is 985 hPa. This is in contrast to mean sea-level pressure, which involves the extrapolation of pressure to sea-level for locations above or below sea-level. The average pressure at mean sea-level (MSL) in the International Standard Atmosphere (ISA) is 1013.25 hPa, or... |
when i'm on a cell phone, and i can hear the other person crystal clear, but they say the quality is so bad on their end that they can hardly understand me, what's going on? | Cell towers have more power than a phone, so "tower to phone" is more reliable than "phone to tower". For example, if you are close to your tower and the other person is far away from their tower, they can hear you fine, but their return signal may have trouble reaching the tower. | [
"Some audio quality enhancing features, such as Voice over LTE and HD Voice have appeared and are often available on newer smartphones. Sound quality can remain a problem due to the design of the phone, the quality of the cellular network and compression algorithms used in long distance calls. Audio quality can be ... |
Did the UK ever come close to any serious food shortages in WWII? | Not really.
The Germans had a target of sinking ~300,000 tons of shipping each month in order to starve Britain, and overwhelm British/Allied ship production.
In the first 27 months of the war, Germany only hit that target 4 times. After that, when America joined the war and added their own production to the mix, they had to try and sink 700,000 tons, which they only did once for the rest of the war.
Only ~10% of convoys were ever attacked, so most got through without incident.
Rationing was definitely needed however, as whilst Britain could maintain enough food coming in to match rationing figures, it couldnt support the amount that had been coming in pre-war (especially given that trade from France and the European continent wasn't exactly booming). Pre-war was around 55 million tons of food, during the war was around 12 million. More focus was put on growing within the UK, so don't take those figures as the only food the UK had.
After 1943, the war started turning against the Germans, and with the breaking of Enigma, the Germans were often only able to sink a tenth of their shipping target. Despite this, the horifically poor state of the economy after the war as well as the costs of rebuiling, meant that rationing continued into the 1950's for some items. We didn't have much foreign currency left to but foreign food with, and years of shifting our economy to war production left a period of time when all that had to be shifted back to making things that the post-war era needed, before we could get the economy going properly again. | [
"Before the war Britain imported 70% of its food. Home agricultural production increased 35% during the war. In terms of calories, domestic output nearly doubled. Together with imports and rationing, this meant the British were well fed—they ate less meat (down 36% by 1943) and more wheat (up 81%) and potatoes (up ... |
what does the chipset on a motherboard do and how does it work? | It lets the "brain" of the motherboard - the central processing unit or CPU - talk to all the other components of the motherboard like the memory, peripherals (disk, monitor, keyboard) etc.
If the CPU is the brain of the computer then the chipset is the rest of the central nervous system. | [
"An important component of a motherboard is the microprocessor's supporting chipset, which provides the supporting interfaces between the CPU and the various buses and external components. This chipset determines, to an extent, the features and capabilities of the motherboard.\n",
"The motherboard is the main com... |
do animals feel growth pain? | [They do](_URL_0_), if they have rapid enough growth like larger dogs. Since most of our pets don't have such rapid growth (cat, birds, fish), presumably they don't feel any pain. | [
"According to the U.S. National Research Council Committee on Recognition and Alleviation of Pain in Laboratory Animals, pain is experienced by many animal species, including mammals and possibly all vertebrates.\n",
"Many animals also exhibit more complex behavioural and physiological changes indicative of the a... |
Why didn't Jordan tried to invade Israel in the 1973 war? | It was, at least in part, because the Jordanians had cooperated greatly with the Israelis under Hussein around this time.
Jordan had always been hesitant to attack Israel. In fact, during the 1967 War, the Israelis believed that the fire coming from Jordan initially was just meant to show solidarity; not to inspire further conflict. It was only when it didn't stop that the Israelis realized the Jordanians were going to get involved, but even then it appeared to be more reluctant and forced than anything else; the defense pact signed with Egypt on May 30 and the fear of being ostracized likely contributed.
Even ignoring this, Jordan also suffered from struggles with the Palestinians to a large degree. One of the largest takers of Palestinian refugees, it was constantly plagued by fedayeen who operated within its borders and outside its control to attack Israel, and it feared retaliation throughout the leadup to the 1967 war as well. This conflict, as well as the conflict between the Palestinians and Hashemites (because the Jordanians wanted Palestine for themselves, not a separate state) only lent to the internal divisions that may have led Jordan to sit it out. There are even numerous instances of attacks by the Jordanians on the Palestinian refugee camps in retaliation for fedayeen operations, and many arrests as well.
Even so, much of the cause for Jordan's failure to join is attributed to the results of the 1967 War. Morris puts it this way:
> Having been badly scorched (and deceived by Egypt) in 1967, Hussein was unwilling to plunge into a second adventure. Moreover, Jordan's relations with Egypt and Syria were badly strained: Cairo had severed diplomatic ties with Amman in March 1972; Damascus had done so in 1971. But the preparations for war required a smoothing of ruffled feathers, so in September 1973 Egypt and Syria initiated a last-minute restoration of relations with Amman.
The deception referred to is likely the deception by Egypt in saying that it was winning after Israel's first strike, which emboldened Hussein to act and attack.
Even so, the Jordanians didn't entirely "sit this one out". They may not have directly engaged in the fighting nearly as much, but they contributed to the cause. When Egypt sent out a request for weaponry, financial support, and staff, the Jordanians sent two armored brigades, with 170 tanks and 100 armored personnel carriers. Saudi Arabia sent a battalion of paratroops and a battalion of rumored personnel carriers and moved several brigades of infantry and a number of tanks to Jordan, though these did not participate in the fighting. Part of the problem was that a date for the war was not told to the contributors, so many of the resources didn't reach in time. The Jordanian forces did participate, but only in token amount, which I'll explain a little later.
Jordan, though, was playing a sort of double game. Because of Jordan's strained relations with the other Arab states, Hussein (who had met secretly with Golda Meir 8 times since she took office in 1969, 4 years prior or so) flew to Israel to meet with her again on September 25, 1973. He remarked that the Syrians had placed their troops in offensive formations, and also implied that Egypt would join, though it's not clear if Meir understood it because of how he phrased it. However, it's not apparent he knew about the date, merely that there would likely be war. He had arranged to have his son meet with the Agricultural Minister in Israel on October 7th (the day after the war began) to discuss exploiting Dead Sea minerals together: a sign of both cooperation and his ignorance of the date of impending attack.
Now, to explain the token contribution, some new facts have come to light. As one historian wrote in [this article](_URL_0_):
> For example, on October 10, 1973, four days after the war started, Jordanian Crown Prince Hassan proposed to U.S. Secretary of State Kissinger that King Hussein would update the Israelis on the deployment of his forces and their exact location - and guarantee that Jordan had no intention of having the Jordanian forces meet the Israeli forces. The king personally informed the U.S. ambassador in Amman that the participation of Jordanian soldiers in the war was just part of the facade presented to other Arab countries.
Another example is found in the article as well, according to the historian:
> Kissinger asked the Israeli ambassador in Washington, Simcha Dinitz, to keep Israel from attacking the Jordanian unit, explaining the Jordanians would not participate in the fighting and would only be stationed on the battle front. Dinitz told Kissinger Israel official refuses but that unofficially, the unit will not be attacked.
Essentially the Jordanians had a tacit understanding, largely due to U.S pressure and mutual benefit after the thrashing the Jordanians received in 1967 (and their relatively cool relations with the other Arab states) that they would not participate and would stay as neutral as possible without losing face.
Hopefully that paints the picture for you well!
Sources:
Smith, Charles D. Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict. New York: St. Martin's, 1988. Print.
Oren, Michael B. Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002. Print.
Morris, Benny. Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001. New York: Knopf, 2001. Print. | [
"Jordan had entered into a defense pact with Egypt a week before the war began; the agreement envisaged that in the event of war Jordan would not take an offensive role but would attempt to tie down Israeli forces to prevent them making territorial gains. About an hour after the Israeli air attack, the Egyptian com... |
How visually accurate are deep space telescopic images? | I want to begin by saying that that image is most definitely not a real image. It's an artist's conception.
To the naked eye, nebulae look gray. You might seen hints of faint color here and there, but it's mostly just gray. Telescopes use long exposure times and various filters to get their pictures. The light may or may not be in the visible spectrum, depending on the telescope. The light may be in the visible spectrum, but might colored differently so as to bring out various details. | [
"The problem becomes less ill-posed when binocular vision allows actual determination of relative depth by stereoscopy, but its linkage to the evaluation of distance in the other two dimensions is uncertain (see: stereoscopic depth rendition). Hence, the uncomplicated three-dimensional visual space of every-day exp... |
What is a soviet? How were they selected? | The soviets themselves were Councils, think of them as political units. You can find a brief essay by Soviet Historian Lewis Siegelbaum on them here: _URL_2_
(It's an excellent site for Soviet History in general, as a side note)
First it is important to remember that there were two Revolutions in 1917. In February, the Tsar was overthrown and replaced by the Provisional Government. It was in February that the Soviets also began to organize as a mode of democratic (at least in rhetoric, more on this in a minute) mode of rule. So, in the aftermath of February there were competing forms of government.
By the time October came around, after the July Days and other unrest and dissatisfaction with the rule of the Provisional Government, the Soviets represented an alternative for popular rule. So when Lenin said "All Power to the Soviets!" in July 1917, it was the a challenge to the Provisional Government by calling for a formal transfer of power to the (socialist dominated) Soviets. Although the soviets were city based, it is worth realizing that delegates and members from organizations like trade unions were involved - things that we don't normally associate with political positions per se. They did have basically democratic ideas - elections, representatives, delegates, and so forth.
After the Revolution, a formal structure was established that went from local on up the All-Russian Congress. It was not nearly so easy in reality, particularly in light of the fact that although this structure was established in 1918, the Russian Civil War continued on for several more years - and contained the political chaos you'd expect from such an event.
More on that here: _URL_3_
Lenin wrote:
> Democracy is the rule of the majority. As long as the will of the majority was not clear, as long as it was possible to make it out to be unclear, at least with a grain of plausibility, the people were offered a counter-revolutionary bourgeois government disguised as "democratic." But this delay could not last long. During the several months that have passed since February 27 the will of the majority of the workers and peasants, of the overwhelming majority of the country’s population, has become clear in more than a general sense. Their will has found expression in mass organisations—the Soviet’s of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies.
(_URL_0_)
The Soviet Union as a name is a little less descriptive than the full name - in russian Сою́з Сове́тских Социалисти́ческих Респу́блик (Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik) the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The idea being to unify the soviets which had been established across Russia as a single socialist/communist government. Indeed, the second and third All-Russian Congress of Soviets happened within days and then months of October respectively.
From the Third All-Russian Congress of Soviets: _URL_1_ | [
"Soviets (singular: soviet; , , literally \"council\" in English) were political organizations and governmental bodies of the late Russian Empire, primarily associated with the Russian Revolution, which gave the name to the latter states of the Soviet Russia and the Soviet Union. \n",
"\"Soviet\" is derived from ... |
can you increase the speed of sound by using different gasses? | The speed of sound is increased if the density of the gas is lower. For example, in helium, the speed of sound is 1007m/s at atmospheric pressure and 20°C, almost three times as much as in air. In a heavy gas like xenon, it's only 178 m/s.
That is because the less dense gas is easier to push, while the force created by the pressure doesn't change.
| [
"Whenever a gas is forced through a tube, the gaseous molecules are deflected by the tube’s walls. If the speed of the gas is much less than the speed of sound, the gas density will remain constant and the velocity of the flow will increase. However, as the speed of the flow approximates the speed of sound, compres... |
If someone jumped off a cliff as high as the golden gate bridge into a large lake that had a surfactant (soap I guess) poured onto it, would they survive? | Hi, grad student in physics here, I have no experience with surfactants or fluids or how they interact, but i think an elementary analysis using newton's laws will work here.
Consider the moment right before you actually hit the water, you're going at some presumably really fast speed. Then, you hit the water. Now, two objects don't exist in the same space at the same time, so therefore, the water has to move to allow you to flow into it. Say the water is, for the most part still. Well then if you're going to go into the water (and you are, thats what happens!) then your body needs to move the water out of the way.
Since your body needs to move the water out of the way, which is still, your body will need to accelerate the fluid particles by applying a force to them. What will supply this force? Your face, presumably. And that will hurt, because newton's second law tells me the water particles are all going to push back on your face, equal in magnitude and opposite in direction.
Now, the more viscous a fluid is, the harder those particles want to stick together, and by falling into the water, you're increasing the distance between certain particles (mostly in the shallow layers, i believe). So the harder the fluid wants to stick together, the harder the force your face has to apply, and consequently, the harder the water will push back on your face.
And that force will be interpreted by your body, most likely, as pain, and perhaps death.
If anyone knows a decent amount of hydrodynamics, why don't you let me know if this take on it works?
EDITED Wording, humor.
EDIT 2 Also, i sort of ignored the idea of a surfactant all together, but my understanding of them is that they specifically lower surface tension. That admittedly could have a significant effect given some fluids, but water's surface tension is fairly weak when compared to a falling human being, i think. So the surfactant won't have much effect, because it is the viscosity/density of the fluid that will determine the force your body will apply to the water to move the water out of the way.
| [
"Candlewood Lake is home to \"Chicken Rock\", a large rock from which people jump into the water. There is also a rope swing that allows people to swing out over the water. The 25-foot high rock, which projects into the lake from the shore on the Sherman side of the New Fairfield-Sherman border, is the site of freq... |
Can someone explain how those giant single celled organisms on the seafloor are possible? | The membranes are folded and the protozoa are thin, so the cross sectional of the cell would not contain a large amount of fluid. Plus, the entire structure is multi-nucleated.
That solves a number of problems right there.
I would also imagine the membrane contains a different composition of lipids than a normal plasma membrane - to make it more rigid and stable, but that's pure speculation.
Pretty cool stuff. | [
"Amongst many other living organisms, some gigantic single-celled amoebas with a size of more than , belonging to the class of xenophyophores were observed. Xenophyophores are noteworthy for their size, their extreme abundance on the seafloor and their role as hosts for a variety of organisms.\n",
"Cavalier-Smith... |
According to wikipedia "Current generations of nuclear submarines never need to be refueled throughout their 25-year lifespans" | Naval nuclear reactors use uranium that is enriched to much greater levels than what civilian commercial reactors or research reactors use. U235 levels typically vary between 20% and +95% (weapons-grade, for some subs). This greatly increases energy density of the fuel rods and allows a full lifetime without refueling, reduces the necessary reactor size and simplify operations and maintainance (refueling is a complicated and lengthy process because the reactor has to be shut down, which is not as simple as turning a key, fission products remain hot for a long time because of radioactive decay, see Fukushima and why it's still an on-going crisis.) | [
"Current generations of nuclear submarines never need to be refueled throughout their 25-year lifespans. Conversely, the limited power stored in electric batteries means that even the most advanced conventional submarine can only remain submerged for a few days at slow speed, and only a few hours at top speed, thou... |
why progress bars always hang on 99/100% | Progress bar values are basically made up by the developer. For some things they work pretty good. If you are downloading a 100MB file and have finished downloading 70MB then saying you are 70% done is pretty easy. For things like installing a game, where you have a huge number of files of different sizes it gets a little trickier, and for some things you can't really know ahead of time how long individual parts of the process will take, so you are really just guessing. This is why you will get stuck on a random number like 37% for a while, the instantly jump to 52%.
Now in all cases though, developers will often have some sort of main execution section and when they finish that they are "pretty much done". So they set the progress bar to 99% or 100% and then they "just do some cleanup". Where cleanup are some usually small tasks they need to complete to really be finished with everything. Sometimes the developer simply underestimates exactly how much stuff they need to get done with (just this one more little thing, then I'll be done...) or he has to wait on the OS for something that takes some time he didn't account for. If they were expecting the main work to take a significant amount of time, then maybe this cleanup really is 1% of the total time, but if the main work gets done fast it appears to lag here. There is also a "watch pot doesn't boil" effect since you are just waiting for that final %.
TL;DR Because the percents are made up by programmers, and programmers are bad at estimating how long things will take | [
"The original formula from his book multiple the % with 100 instead of -100. Maybe he has another book/magazine printed it incorrectly and spread out. Nowadays, many software already implemented it as -100.\n",
"The term 80/20 is only a shorthand for the general principle at work. In individual cases, the distrib... |
Why didn't Italy find Oil in Libya while it was an Italian colony. | There were some isolated discoveries during the 1920s that hinted at the possibility of oil deposits in the colony. Wells sometimes produced commercially-negligable amounts of petroleum and natural gas. An Italian geological expedition led by the explorer and geologist Ardito Desio did discover oil in the late 1930s. Despite these discoveries, there was next to no exploitation of Libya's petroleum deposits while Italy controlled the region. This was not due to lack of foresight on the part of the Italians, but a constellation of interlocking factors that prevented the region's reserves from being exploited until over a decade into the postwar era.
One of the factors inhibiting oil exploration was political. The Italian occupation of Libya prioritized its development as a settler colony for modern agriculture. This meant there was greater pressure to find and exploit aquifers rather than drill for oil. Italian colonization also prompted a fierce Libyan resistance movement and pacification campaign that reached a peak during the 1920s. The violence in the region put a damper on major geological expeditions into the interior until the 1930s. While the Italian colonial government was receptive to exploring the region for oil in the 1920s, this was not its main priority. Any thought of petroleum deposits in this period were largely hypothetical and not worth devoting scarce resources towards their exploitation.
The lateness of the geological expeditions points to another factor limiting the Italians: knowledge. The Italians only made progress on making detailed geological surveys of the interior of the country after the pacification of the Libyan population. This meant that it was only in the mid-1930s that geographers had some inkling of which regions would possibly have petroleum deposits in them. Adding to these problems, petroleum deposits in Libya require deep drilling. The state-owned oil company, AGIP, had far less experience in exploration and deep-drilling than more-established rivals like Shell or Standard Oil. Moreover, most of AGIP's activities in the Italian sphere of influence were focused more on Albania than Libya.
Nonetheless, Desio was able to persuade the AGIP to conduct a two-year reconnaissance campaign in the Libyan desert after his discovery of oil in 1938. Desio correctly predicted that the Sirte basin was he ideal spot for finding petroleum. Yet, AGIP's campaign failed for a number of reasons. Inexperience with deep drilling and exploration meant that the reconnaissance campaign was slow-moving. Harsh desert conditions also ensured that AGIP's machinery also broke down. The outbreak of the war further curtailed operations and this exploratory expedition was cut short.
Knowledge of these vast petroleum reserves would likely have made little to no difference to the course of the Second World War. Oil exploration and exploitation is time-consuming and highly technical work. The postwar Libyan oil drilling, even with Italian data, only began exploratory drilling in 1956 and it was not until the early 1960s that the region began producing oil in massive quantities. Companies like Shell or Standard Oil had far more experience than the prewar AGIP and it still took a better part of a decade to bear fruit. Even assuming that the Italians had magically intuited the correct location for Libyan oil deposits and exploited them earlier, it would have been less of a boon than it would appear at first. Not only would the Italian state have to pour more resources into AGIP, but also the country's refining capacity and tankerage. Libyan oil would still have to be shipped back to Italy, which was problematic given the Royal Navy's categorical superiority over the Regia Marina. An indigenous source of oil might have made the Italian navy more aggressive in the earlier part of the war, but it would not have rectified the serious problems in command, lack of coordination with the air force, and technical problems of its ships that hamstrung the navy in its engagements with the British. DAK might have had more sources of gasoline for its tanks in the theater, but Rommel's general indifference to logistical matters would have meant there simply would have been more jerry-cans of gasoline in DAK supply depots that were not finding their way to the front.
There really is not much to fault the Italians for in their failure to find and develop Libyan oil fields. The colonial and central government did not simply ignore evidence of oil but instead did sponsor judicious geological explorations. It did not help matters that Libya's future oil fields were in areas that needed to first be pacified. This presented a very brief window for discovery, exploration, and then exploitation. The Italians managed to pass the first hurdle, but failed never quite reached the last two. In the end, the Italians needed both proper equipment and especially time to turn the colony into an oil exporter, and these were two items that were in short supply in 1938.
*Sources*
Hallett, Don. *Petroleum Geology of Libya*. Amsterdam, Netherlands : Elsevier, 2016.
Simons, G. L. *Libya: The Struggle for Survival*. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996. | [
"In 1911, Italy declared war on the Ottoman Empire and invaded Tripolitania, Fezzan and Cyrenaica. These provinces together formed what became known as Libya. The war ended only one year later, but the occupation resulted in acts of discrimination against Libyans such as the forced deportation of Libyans to the Tre... |
About how far away are we from self-powered electronic devices that have batteries that don't need to be recharged? | A battery, by definition, converts chemical energy to electrical energy. This means that, unless chemicals are replaced, or energy is put back into the system, a battery _will_ run out.
You'll find that there are [some designs](_URL_0_) out there that already take advantage of the natural body movement to recharge the watch battery. [Solar powered watches](_URL_1_) are pretty old designs as well. | [
"These batteries could allow electric cars to travel 500 miles before recharging. Replacing the liquid electrodes could only take a few minutes while recharging batteries takes much longer. These batteries don't have the problems of short circuits and overheating. The downsides are that nanoparticles degrade quickl... |
Looking for quotes on American Revolution! Can't quite remember | Try /r/tipofmytongue also | [
"Invoking the American Revolution (it names several prominent revolutionary patriots and quotes the preamble of the Declaration of Independence), and the freeing of the slaves in the American Civil War (there is a brief lyrical and musical quotation of the spiritual \"Go Down Moses\"), as well as Lewis and Clark, t... |
Are sunsets local or global? | Sunrises and Sunsets do vary by where you are on the globe. To start off we can look into why sunsets and sunrises can be red. The blue sky is due to a phenomenon called Rayleigh Scattering. This is were light from the sun is scattered by gases in the atmosphere. These gases preferentially scatter blue light, which is where we get blue skies. During sunrise and sunset, [sunlight has to travel through more of the atmosphere as can be seen here](_URL_0_). This means that there is more scattering so most if not all of the blue light is scattered and does not reach the viewer so only light of longer wavelengths reach you. The density of the atmosphere between you and the sun at sunrise and sunset can affect how much scattering there is, so large scale weather patterns (High and Low pressure systems) can affect the color of the sky for you, but might not affect someone in another time zone.
Latitude can affect the sunrise and sunset due to the angle that the sun hits the earth at your location. This can change the direction of the sunrise and sunset as well as the amount of scattering a ray of sunlight might go through before reaching you. | [
"Sunset is a census-designated place (CDP) and affluent neighborhood in Miami-Dade County, Florida, United States. The population was 16,389 at the 2010 census. The zip-codes serving Sunset are 33173, 33183, and 33193.\n",
"Leek's \"Double Sunset\" on and around the summer solstice also attracts many tourists. Th... |
why don't we have solar powered phones? | Solar panels don't generate nearly enough power. Solar powered calculators only take a tiny amount of power compared to a phone. | [
"BULLET::::- Solar Powered: the advantage of some solar powered units is that they have much more power over their lifetime than battery powered units. This gives them the advantage of reporting their position and status much more often than battery units which need to conserve energy to extend their life. Some wir... |
How different were languages between different Native American tribes? If you could bring together an East coast and West coast tribe, would they be able to mostly understand one another? | The short answer is no.
There are dozens of major language families throughout the Americas. [Algic](_URL_0_) is the only one found on both the east and west coast of North America, and even the handful of small Algic languages in the west have been isolated from their east coast counterparts for thousands of years and would not be mutually intelligible.
In the Eastern Woodlands alone (mostly the US east of the Mississippi), there are four major language families. Algic is represented by the various Algonquian languages like Ojibwe, Shawnee, Powhatan, and Wôpanâak. Iroquoian languages are represented by Cherokee, Seneca, Mohawk, Wendat, etc. Siouan languages are represented by Catawba and a few others formerly located in Appalachia and the Ohio Valley. Muskogean languages are represented by Creek, Chickasaw, Choctaw, etc. Then we get to the various language isolates like Tunica, Calusa, Timucua, Natchez, and Yuchi that don't have obvious ties to other languages in the area (though some linguists have tried to link Tunica and Calusa together, Yuchi with the the Siouan languages, and Natchez with the Muskogean languages with limited plausibility).
Between each language family there's no hope of mutual intelligibility, except for the occasional loan word that hops from one language to another. It'd be like English and Arabic speakers trying to communicate. Even within each family, it's often like English and Spanish speakers trying to communicate. A few languages though are more closely related - Spanish and Portuguese than Spanish and English. Seneca and Cayuga, for example, are very closely related, as are Choctaw and Chickasaw. | [
"Most linguists concerned with the native languages of the Americas classify them into 150 to 180 independent language families. Some believe that two language families, Eskimo–Aleut and Na-Dené, were distinct, perhaps the results of later migrations into the New World.\n",
"As the Nisenan (like many of the Nativ... |
why do we use implants for breast enlargement instead of something biological like stomache fat? | Fat is a living tissue. Transplants of living tissue are more expensive and have higher risk of complications. Implants are biologically inert and relatively easy to implant. | [
"A breast implant is a prosthesis used to change the size, shape, and contour of a person's breast. In reconstructive plastic surgery, breast implants can be placed to restore a natural looking breast mound for post–mastectomy breast reconstruction patients or to correct congenital defects and deformities of the ch... |
i want to understand important nutrient information. | Carbohydrates are sweet and starchy things, examples are: sugar, flour, bread, rice, corn, etc.
Fats are oils and greases. If it makes your fingers a little greasy when you touch it, it's probably got a LOT of fat in it.
For weight loss, it's pretty simple. All you want to do is emphasize green vegetables and lean meats, and de-emphasize fats and carbohydrates. I don't mean cut them out completely, just try to limit them. | [
"Calculations for nutrient intake can be estimated via computerized software programs that multiply the reported frequency of each food by the amount of nutrient in a serving of that food. References databases commonly used for this purpose are listed below. Note that to estimate total nutrient intake, it is necess... |
how did the uk nhs system work, what did the recent reform bill do to the system and what are the reasons for it? | Okay. Lots of questions and I think I can answer them all relatively simply, at least I'll have a crack and see how I do. If I'm not clear, please ask me again.
> How did the UK NHS system work?
Just to be clear, the bill hasn't come in yet, so I'll answer this for right now. Right now the government gives £105 billion to ten primary care trusts (80%) and to some other strategic trusts (20%). Managers in these trusts then allocate the money to different hospitals, GP surgeries and other services based on local requirements and incentives.
> What will the recent reform bill do to the system?
It will change the way it works so that small groups of GPs (local doctors 'on the front line') will have a budget for their area and use that to commission services from hospitals and service providers on behalf of their patients. It will also allow for more charities and companies to purchase areas of the NHS and run them for profit.
> What are the reasons for it?
Depends who you ask. There's a big push for austerity and cutting out all those managers should save some money, but then all the doctors commissioning the services will need managers because they're all full time doctors. Privatising some areas and incentivising them better may make them for efficient. The Conservative government likes the idea of localism. So if one area if very well off and the main problem is cancer and another is not well off and the main problem is drugs, they don't want a detriment to the well off people.
> Why did the government implement it?
The reasons I've given above.
> Why is competition a good thing?
In theory a government body hasn't the same incentives as a private company does. If an NHS trust is losing money (which most are at the moment) a private company would find that unacceptable, whereas the NHS trusts might just ask for more grants. The idea is a private company would increase efficiency and create innovation. Whether you believe that opinion is well grounded is up to to you. It also creates less liability for the government and it takes some heat of them. If private sector workers strike it's not as bad as if public sector ones do.
I hope that makes sense and isn't too longwinded.
edit; I accidentally a word | [
"The NHS Modernisation Agency was an executive agency of the Department of Health in the United Kingdom. It was established in April 2001 to support the National Health Service in England, and its partner organisations, in the task of modernising services and improving experiences and outcomes for patients. Its fun... |
how do physicists "solve" equations? | It depends on the equation. Note that it is also important to *derive* an equation, that is to come up with one that accurately models or predicts something. The equation you posted is trivial to solve. Take a mass value and multiply it by the speed of light twice. But deriving it, coming up with it, was more difficult.
Many equations in physics are not so simple. Many are a type of "differential equation". These equations equate the rates of change of a function, constants and variables with each other. For example, you can model an oscillating spring. Its length is proportional to its acceleration, the velocity's rate of change over time. This is a differential equation. An early physics student would be tasked with finding a function that outputs a position at a given time. The equation was derived by Newton, Newton's second law. It can then have values substituted in for different situations, like a spring, and be solved.
The equation for gravity was derived by Einstein. It is a very complicted differential equation known as a field equation. It contains tensors which are a compact way of writing lots of information. It's basically a set of equations combined into one equation of tensors. It is very hard to solve. After Einstein derived it people began to try to solve it in different scenarios. The wierd affects gravity has on time is found in those solutions. The description of a black hole is found in a solution with particular values.
Note that there are two ways of solving equations like this. Analytically and numerically. An analytic solution is an exact solution written down relativley simply. You can plug the solution into the equation and get an exact equality. But not all equations can be solved analytically. Some we dont know if an analytic solution exists, others have been shown that an analytic solution certainly doesn't exist. When this happens we can turn to a numeric solution. A numeric solution gives an approximate answer. Something like, the solution is bigger than 1 but less than 2. These numeric solutions usually get more accurate with more calculations being done. This is when we turn to computers. They can calculate very fast and hone in on a very accurate approximation. From bigger than 1 but less than 2 down to 1.4999999 plus or minus a small bit. | [
"Solving a simple equation illustrates the basic structure of a structured derivation. The start of the solution is indicated by a bullet (formula_1) followed by the task we are to solve (in this case the equation formula_2).\n",
"The methods for solving equations generally depend on the type of equation, both th... |
Sound of a Baroque Era Classical Pieces sound then then versus now? | It's not that simple.
See, there was [no consensus on a pitch reference](_URL_1_) to the level of precision we discuss these days. There was [eight foot pitch](_URL_0_) and people used whistles and so on to have pitch references, but there was no standard. We start to see that kind of thing in the second half (last decades?) of the 19th century, I think.
To make matters worse, it's not like they had the same notes we have now. See, there were other tuning systems, and those yielded intervals slightly different from the ones we consider normal these days. There plenty of those discussed between the 16th and the 19th century. Did everybody tuned the same back then? No. Several alternatives were discussed in treatises and manuals, but how people tuned those would be a different situation.
Woodwind instruments were made in one piece for a while (during the so called Middle ages and the Renaissance). That means you could not adjust pitch like you can with the modern versions made in several parts.
Is all hope lost if we want to listen to the sounds of yore? Not completely. It's very common for early music specialists to not tune their instruments to A4 = 440 Hz and very common to have keyboard instruments in something other than equal temperament.
> why do we not compensate for tuning such as this for classical pieces?
Depends on who we are talking about. There was a revolution in the 20th century to try to do things the way they were done in the past, it came to be known as Historically Informed Performance (HIP). Not everybody was into that at first, but it has REALLY permeated the music world. However, there is still a difference between mainstream performance and HIP. | [
"The Baroque era was relatively tolerant of bright or extroverted tonal quality, as the surviving pipe organs of the time attest. Thus the Baroque theorist Marin Mersenne described the sound of the cornett as \"a ray of sunshine piercing the shadows\". Yet there is also evidence that the cornett was sometimes badly... |
why do nuclear explosions take the form of a shroom? | It's because of the air rise up. The center of the explosion is really hot, so the air expanses and it become lighter than the cold air above, so it starts rising. Then it drags the cold air around the explosion inside.
When the hot air gets higher, it starts to get cold, it stops rising and spread out like a mushroom while the base is dragged in and up by the cold air. | [
"There are two main considerations for the location of an explosion: height and surface composition. A nuclear weapon detonated in the air, called an air burst, produces less fallout than a comparable explosion near the ground. A nuclear explosion in which the fireball touches the ground pulls soil and other materi... |
Historically, why did England dominate Ireland and not the other way around? | I'm in a History of Ireland course right now, and we've already gone over a lot of the answer for this. England started "dominating" Ireland with the Norman Invasion. The problem with calling it a domination is that an Irish king, MacMurrough, appealed to Henry II for help with problems he was having in Ireland. He promised Henry land for anybody that helped him. Therefore, it wasn't an English domination as much as it was being asked to come in. Once they were there, the Normans were arguably the top military force in Europe at the time against Irish warriors who were still supposedly throwing sticks and stones at them. After the Normans entrenched themselves in Ireland, they simply never left and enacted policies to their own benefit since the Irish couldn't stop them. The Statutes of Kilkenny is a great example of this. These Statutes decreed that the Irish couldn't speak their native language, dress in their native dress, etc. When the Tudors came along with Henry VII, Ireland was in the position of being a buffer for England in its wars against Spain. England couldn't afford to let Ireland go because then Spain might have used the island to launch attacks onto England. So it basically comes down to the English being invited in by an Irishman, and never leaving once they found that it was beneficial to their own interests. | [
"It was not until the end of the 17th centuries that the Crown of England gained full control of Ireland by means of a series of military campaigns in the period 1534–1691. During this period, the island was progressively colonised by English and Scottish Protestant settlers. Most of the Irish remained Roman Cathol... |
difference between several types of transistors? | > What is the difference between MOSFET; PMOS, NMOS and BJT's?
FET transistors operate on electrical field, which because you're 5 we're going to just say is the same thing as voltage. Basically, with a MOSFET, it's the *voltage* between "gate" and "drain" that allows (in the case of N-channel) or chokes off (P-channel) current flowing through the transistor.
BJTs are different than FETs because they act like they're controlled by current, rather than voltage. The amount of current flowing through the "base" of a BJT mostly determines the current that ends up going through the main body of the transistor.
> What to they do?
They allow (or disallow) electrical current to flow. Really, that's it.
Now, there is more than one way to do this allowing/disallowing. But, since you're 5, we won't get into the differences between saturated switching and linear circuit architectures. | [
"Single transistors are also available in several different surface mount packages, and a number of manufacturers market surface mount packages that incorporate several 2N2222-type transistors in one package as an array of transistors. The general specifications of the various variants are similar, with the biggest... |
Was there a central minting authority responsible for standardization of Roman currency? | There were several dozen mints located around the Empire in various cities, the first and most important of these was in Rome at the temple of Juno Moneta, she was an aspect of the Goddess Juno who was credited with looking after the funds of the city and its populace. The very words 'mint' and 'money' are believed to derive from her name.
The size and material make-up of coins was stipulated by Roman Law, a coin with the Imperial/Republic stamp on it would be considered trust worthy, because that represented a promise from the Emperor/Republic that the coin was made with the correct metals. This being in the period when the transition from worth based on metal value and worth based on token value was ongoing. The Emperor/Republic did not have a total monopoly in producing currency, except from some periods when they outlawed gold and silver coins being minted by others but continued to allow them to use baser metals. If that seems odd bear in mind that here in the UK there are alternative legitimate currencies to that issued by the Bank of England, including the Bank of Scotland pound and the Bristol pound.
[Here's](_URL_0_) a coin from 46BC showing Juno Moneta 'miss Money' herself | [
"The original Roman mint network was reorganized and centralized by Emperor Diocletian () at the end of the 3rd century, parallel to the restructuring of the Roman Empire's provincial and fiscal administration. The mints were limited to one per diocese (except for a few exceptions) and placed under the dual control... |
why do we have two lungs instead of one large lung? | Redundancy.
It's an evolutionary advantage to be able to lose one lung, one hand, one kidney, one teste and still function. The energy needed to run two smaller v one large is basically the same.
You hear about people with a collapsed lung living. You don't hear about people with two collapsed lungs living. | [
"Humans have two lungs, a right lung and a left lung. They are situated within the thoracic cavity of the chest. The right lung is bigger than the left, which shares space in the chest with the heart. The lungs together weigh approximately , and the right is heavier. The lungs are part of the lower respiratory trac... |
joint cracking | While still debateded, but we do know that carbon dioxide bubbles form in the joint cavity fluid, which then as you move your joint, would sometimes collapse.
When the bubbles pop, you hear that distinctive pop noise. And bubbles don't form at a moment's notice, it takes time for the bubble to form which is why you can't repeatedly crack.
As for arthritis, they haven't found a medical connection yet. | [
"A joint is a break (fracture) of natural origin in the continuity of either a layer or body of rock that lacks any visible or measurable movement parallel to the surface (plane) of the fracture. Although they can occur singly, they most frequently occur as joint sets and systems. A \"joint set\" is a family of par... |
Hi there, could anybody help identify this WWI revolver? | I am afraid that this is going to be a very difficult one to identify, unless there are some markings on it which do not show in any of your photographs. This appears to be a double-action only revolver, with several strange aspects to it. Generally, it appears relatively crudely made, with poor finish work. This, and the upward-opening loading gate (which is relatively unusual), makes me wonder if it was not a mass-production revolver, but was one built by hand in a small workshop. The fact that the cylinder must be removed to reload would certainly make it far from optimum as a military arm. The checkering on the grips does not look military. I have reviewed all my handgun textbooks, and have not been able to find anything which looks even remotely similar. It certainly is not representative of any European nation's standard arms. I cannot figure out the purpose of the long straight piece on the frame on the right side-- is it some kind of a spring? The bottom line is that this appears to be a non-military weapon, probably of the late 19th century or early 20th century-- I would guess probably 19th century rather than 20th. At that period, small workshops specializing in the production of crude armaments were common in Belgium, the Eibar Region of Spain, and further afield in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It could have been produced almost anywhere. If there are any markings on it, (e.g. inside the grips, under the barrel, or on any of the small pieces), I'd be happy to try to see if I can identify it, but it does not look like anything produced in large quantities-- It could very well have been produced by a single workman with some basic tools. If you could get a chamber cast made and provide the measurements, figuring out the actual cartridge it was made to use might be possible. Unfortunately, your photos do not clearly show any dimensions (i.e. how big it is), or the diameter of the bore, etc., which would be needed to really identify it. It might be a nice keepsake, but I am not too familiar with British firearms laws, so I would recommend that having your local police tell you whether or not it is a prohibited weapon would be a very good idea. As I remember, if it can be used with any available ammunition, it is prohibited in the UK, even if the gun as a whole does not fire safely or consistently. Sorry to not have been of more assistance. | [
"BULLET::::- \"The Voice of the Guns\" (1917) – meant initially to honour British artillery in World War I (hence the name), later it became widely adopted by the British army as a whole. Not to be confused with the poem of the same name by Gilbert Frankau (1916). Featured prominently in the film \"Lawrence of Arab... |
how does augmented reality work? looking for more of the technical aspect. | By sampling a 3D space in the real world using an array of sampling technologies it simply places digital assets within a virtualized space of matching proportions in a convincing manner creating the illusion the object is physically present.
It's just showing the user a digital copy of the environment with assets placed within it and.setting the walls and sampled objects from the real world to be transparent allowing you to see the real world behind it through the glass eye peice the digital image is bieng projected onto | [
"Augmented reality is used to enhance natural environments or situations and offer perceptually enriched experiences. With the help of advanced AR technologies (e.g. adding computer vision, incorporating AR cameras into smartphone applications and object recognition) the information about the surrounding real world... |
What was Mexico and Canada's reaction to the American civil war? Were there any foreign volunteers or mercanaires? | **Yes, and in staggering numbers.**
You ask about mercenaries, and let me be clear: Neither the United States nor Confederate States went out to hire foreign mercenaries to fight in the American Civil War on a large scale. There are, however, ample instances in which both the U.S. and C.S. hired foreign soldiers and sailors who then fought under their respective flags. There is a distinction.
The Confederate Navy was perhaps the most notorious force in this regard. Charles M. Robinson's *Shark of the Confederacy: The Story of the CSS Alabama* explains how Confederate Secretary of the Navy Stephen Mallory faced the titanic task of building a navy in a country that had little shipbuilding capacity, few sailors and even fewer naval officers. After President Jefferson Davis rejected Mallory's request to buy ships ready for combat, Mallory switched to raider planning.
The most famous Confederate raiders were built in Great Britain, and as such the Confederacy faced huge challenges in manning and equipping these new-built ships. Because of neutrality law, these ships had to be armed and crewed in such a way that Britain could not be held responsible. (Indeed, in 1863, the Laird Rams affair brought the United States and Britain closer to war than at any time since the *Trent* Affair.)
~~Gabriel~~ Raphael Semmes, captain of the Confederate raider *Alabama*, built in 1862, was extraordinarily aggressive in recruiting foreign sailors to serve aboard the *Alabama*. "Their reasons for joining up were varied," Joseph McKenna writes in *British Ships in the Confederate Navy*, "financial gain not the least. Many were in the Naval Reserve, former Royal Navy men who had served during the late Crimean War. They were experienced sailors, battle-hardened, and not content to finish their days aboard some rust-bucket in coastal waters around Britain. They sought adventure, and in the service of the Confederate Navy, they found it."
I believe these recruited sailors are the closest thing to what you're asking about.
***
Those sailors were not, however, present in staggering numbers.
In the armies of the North and South were tens of thousands of men, new immigrants to the United States. Between 1820 and 1860, almost 4 million people immigrated to the United States, and many of them were from Europe, where antislavery sentiment was far stronger than it was in the United States. Of the approximately 2 million soldiers who enlisted for the Union during the war, almost one-third were not born in the United States. These included about 200,000 Germans, 150,000 Irish and 150,000 from British territories. [This article](_URL_6_) by a re-enactor explains things in plain English with some citations, but if you have some questions about the source (as I do — I just prefer its plain-English tone), I'll continue.
The most famous of the foreign-born units is [the Fighting Irish Brigade, formed under the influence of Thomas F. Meagher](_URL_2_). Altogether, the Irish dominated at least 20 regiments in the Union Army. Their fame somewhat overshadows the participation of other foreign-born units, even though German, Hungarian and others made up a greater percentage of the Union Army.
Germans are of particular note. The failed 1848 revolution in Germany forced many liberal Germans out of Europe and to the United States. They were anti-slavery almost to a man (and woman), participating in the fighting almost from the first day. In May 1861, with a showdown between pro-Southerners and pro-Northerners brewing in St. Louis, [the huge German community was key in keeping St. Louis in the hands of the Union Army and driving the Confederacy into the Missouri wilds](_URL_5_).
U.S. Gen. Franz Sigel, a former German military officer, became famous for issuing orders in German, having them translated into Hungarian for his officers (many of whom had fled that nascent country) and then into English and German again for his soldiers.
My favorite German of the war, however, is Carl Schurz, who [as Ted Widmer wrote in 2011](_URL_1_), was "A 19th century Zelig of sorts[.] [H]e had a knack for arriving just as trouble was erupting, and for leaving just as he was about to get caught."
Schurz was a 19-year-old student at Bonn University when the 1848 revolution struck. He was an ardent follower of the liberal revolutionaries, and when his teacher, Gottfried Kinkel, was thrown into Spandau prison for his political views, Schurz led a Mission Impossible-style rescue. "The escape was a sensation and made Schurz the most famous teenager in the world," Widmer wrote.
After the revolution failed, Schurz spent a few years in England, got married, had kids, and then in 1852 came to America, where he opened the nation's first kindergarten. He joined the Republican Party almost as soon as it got started, and Lincoln rewarded him for his support by [naming him ambassador to Spain — a shocking move, considering he was a revolutionary now in an aristocratic stronghold](_URL_4_).
In 1862, with the war ranging, Schurz returned to America to fight in the war. He was appointed a brigadier general and would go on to command a division, fighting at the Second Battle of Bull Run, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg and elsewhere. He survived the war, won election to the U.S. Senate and later became Secretary of the Interior under Rutherford B. Hayes. He died in 1906, and in 1917, the U.S. Navy renamed a captured German ship the U.S.S. Carl Schurz.
Germans and Irish weren't the only volunteers. There were participants from every country in Europe, almost. There was [the 55th New York Infantry](_URL_3_), for example. That regiment's original recruits came from French émigrés in New York City. Even by January 1862, six of the regiment's nine companies were predominantly French. As James Johnston wrote in 2012, "Some of the men were veterans, having served in the French Army in Algeria, the Crimean War and Italy. The rest were a motley international bunch, including German, Irish, Italian and Spanish immigrants, as well as a few Americans."
***
The Confederacy, with fewer immigrants, had fewer foreign fighters within its ranks, but it had them. The 10th Louisiana is one such unit. As Terry Jones [wrote in 2012 of its commander, Col. Eugene Waggaman:](_URL_0_)
> "Waggaman was a deeply religious and popular officer who commanded a motley crew of soldiers. Most of his men were from New Orleans, and they reflected that city’s cosmopolitan makeup: one company had recruits from 15 foreign countries and another was made up almost entirely of Greeks and Italians. Because many of Waggaman’s men could not speak English, the regiment used French drill commands exclusively. It was motley in other ways as well: the men of the 10th Louisiana were constant camp discipline problems and helped create the notorious reputation of the famed and feared Louisiana Tigers. It would also see its share of hard service: of the regiment’s 845 members, 205 would not survive the Civil War."
***
You'll note that I've used the word "foreign" throughout this answer, but after writing all this, I think I have to change my answer. They might have come from countries around the world, but in the end, they fought under two flags. **In the end, they were all Americans.** | [
"In May 1942, Mexico declared war on the Axis Powers during World War II, thus officially entering on the side of the Allies. As a result of this, diplomatic relations between Mexico and the UK were re-established. Mexico was one of only two Latin-American countries to send soldiers abroad to fight in World War II ... |
why do elevators decide to wait at the floors they do? | The simplest solution is to have elevators wait whereever they were called last.
Some controllers are smart enough that they can be configured to move empty elevators around to prevent having multiple elevators waiting on one floor, and to minimize the wait time on high-demand origin floors. The exact algorithm varies between manufacturer and individual installation
| [
"Elevators have a car top inspection station that allows the car to be operated by a mechanic in order to move it through the hoistway. Generally, there are three buttons: UP, RUN, and DOWN. Both the RUN and a direction button must be held to move the car in that direction, and the elevator will stop moving as soon... |
how do we not notice rubber on the roads if tires slowly wear down on them? | The tiny grains of rubber leave the road in two ways.
1. They are washed away by rainwater, ending up wherever the drains or ditches near the road lead.
2. They are carried away by the wind. Buildings right near very major roads often end up with a fine layer of rubber and dirt on them. | [
"Off-road tires used in mud or dirt feature individual knob patterns to allow the tire to bite into the surface and lever the sides of the tread to get a better grip. Given the smaller contact patch, these tires tend to wear quickly when used on asphalt (depending on type of rubber).\n",
"It is common amongst dri... |
in every crime show it's a different profession investigating and solving crimes. who actually does it in real life? | When crimes are investigated there are different professions involved.
There are your standard beat cop who is the first to respond. Then there are specialist cops called detectives who are assigned depending on the type of crime. These would be the division that deals with homicides, or in the case of SVU deal with rape and assault.
CSI is dealing with the scientists that collect and process evidence for the police department. | [
"The show takes a \"whodunit\" approach, making each case a mystery that needs to be solved. Every half-hour episode follows one case from its initial investigation until the suspect(s) conviction, acquittal, or some other legal resolution. Pathologists, medical examiners, police officers, detectives, prosecutors, ... |
How did people make coffee in the days before electricity? | Turkish coffee is made by heating a pot of water, coffee, and usually some sugar and spices until it boils and then quickly removing it from the heat source after it's begun to boil. [Here's a video.](_URL_1_)
There's also 'cowboy coffee' which is just throwing the grounds into a pot of water and boiling it together, then filtering it out. This method is somewhat common with hikers (less so now because there are portable coffee makers). [Here's another video.](_URL_0_) | [
"The history of coffee dates back to the 15th century, and possibly earlier with a number of reports and legends surrounding its first use. The native (undomesticated) origin of coffee is thought to have been Ethiopia.The earliest substantiated evidence of either coffee drinking or knowledge of the coffee tree is f... |
When astronomers say something will happen in x amount if time, to something very far away, do they mean when it will actually happen or just when the light it emits gets to us? | Usually, when talking about future events, astronomers talk about when we will observe that event. So, in your example, in our reference frame, we will observe the star's death 1,000 years from now. However, in the star's reference frame, the event happened 1,000 years ago, and for an observe who is right in the middle between the star and Earth, it is happening right now. | [
"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... |
Mechanics: Mathematically, what is the thought process behind moment of inertia and why is it used in mechanics of materials? | The "moment of inertia" is like mass, but for rotation: it describes how difficult it is to create angular acceleration by applying torque. In this case the result depends on the axis of rotation and direction of the push, not only on intrinsic features of the object as mass does.
Simplest case: if you have a heavy point mass fixed to an axis with a massless bar of length L and try to push it with a force F perpendicular to the axis (since the components toward and along the axis won't do anything) , you produce a torque of L\*F. We have F=ma, and a=L\*alpha, where alpha is the angular acceleration. Therefore your torque produced is mL^(2)alpha. If torque is like force, and angular acceleration is like acceleration, then mL^(2) must be the rotational analogue of mass. It gets its own name: "moment of inertia".
To compute the motion of inertia of some other body you don't need to really do any more physics, just keep applying the same logic: chop the object up into a bunch of tiny cubes that can be treated as point masses, and add them all up to produce the total moment of inertia for the body (around that particular axis for that particular orientation of the body). That's the integral: int(ρ(x,y,z)*r^(2) dxdydz), where r is the distance from that point in the body to the axis.
To get the full inertia tensor you just drop the assumptions about picking a particular axis, perpendicular forces, etc. and use vector algebra to handle the general case instead. A force applied in one direction doesn't necessarily produce an angular acceleration in that same direction (i.e. they're not merely proportional like F=ma), so in general you need an entire matrix to correctly relate the two. | [
"Mechanics, in the most general sense, is the study of forces and their effects on matter. Typically, engineering mechanics is used to analyze and predict the acceleration and deformation (both elastic and plastic) of objects under known forces (also called loads) or stresses. Subdisciplines of mechanics include:\n... |
why is stagnant water unsafe to swim in? | Bad things grow in stagnant water like bacteria and parasites. If you get into the water, there’s a good chance they’ll get into you... | [
"Stagnant water can be dangerous for drinking because it provides a better incubator than running water for many kinds of bacteria and parasites. Stagnant water is often contaminated with human and animal feces, particularly in deserts or other areas of low rain.\n",
"The main criticism of Drownproofing is that, ... |
how do politions who aren't in power get paid? | They are paid for public appearances, become paid lobbyists, do work like writing books or editorials in papers, work for political organizations, etc etc. There are a lot of positions in politics that don't necessarily involve public office.
Edit: In the US at least. | [
"Typically, the payer (an individual, business, or organization) makes campaign contributions to public officials, party officials, or parties themselves, and receives political or pecuniary benefit such as no-bid government contracts, influence over legislation, political appointments or nominations, special acces... |
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