title list | over_18 list | post_content stringlengths 0 9.37k ⌀ | C1 list | C2 list | C3 list |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
[
"Discoveries at the LHC besides the Higgs boson?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"There's the entire heavy ion program which is used to study nuclear matter at high temperatures and densities, which melts into a fluid and is the state of matter that filled the universe in the first microsecond. Unlike HEP it's less focused on trying to find rare types of events and more about measuring the prop... | [
"Depends what you mean by discovery. ",
"Apparently mine is too narrow a definition.",
"The LHC has produced a wealth of physics results, including lots of exclusion limits on physics beyond the Standard Model and more precise measurements of many processes in particle physics. However, I believe it's quite a s... | [
"We also saw some super exotic states of matter, like pentaquark states (five quarks in a bound state, rather than the two (e.g. pions) or three (e.g. protons and neutrons) quark states we see usually. We may even have seen six quark states, but my memory is fuzzy and I'm on mobile so I don't fancy the effort of go... |
[
"What exactly is stopping us from cloning Mammoths?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Some of the difficulties are discussed ",
"here",
"."
] | [
"Well, an immediately obvious problem is the lack of available mammoth wombs around. To quote Monty Python: "
] | [
"Couldn't you use an Elephant womb?"
] |
[
"Does a person sweat when they swim?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Apparently a lot...",
"I lived with some swimmers in university. They heard of many studies where pre-post workout mass differences were 1-2Kg. Thats a fair bit of sweat. I asked them this question myself. ",
"Publication abstract:\n",
"http://journals.lww.com/acsm-msse/Citation/1994/05001/1192_Weight_Lo... | [
"\"Personal anecdotes and layman answers are not acceptable posts.\""
] | [
"\"Personal anecdotes and layman answers are not acceptable posts.\""
] |
[
"If there are diseases we can get from animals, that are harmless to them, are there disesases that we can unconciously give to animals?"
] | [
false
] | Not sure if earth sciences are the correct field to ask, but it sounds correct | [
"Rinderpest jumped species from cattle to humans in the Middle Ages and became measles. Measles then jumped from humans to dogs in the 18",
" century, becoming Canine Distemper. More recently, Canine Distemper mutated again and infected Seals in the 1980s, becoming Phocine distemper. ",
"Refs.:",
"Furuse, Y.,... | [
"Did it become milder, or was the surviving population more resistant? Maybe some of both?"
] | [
"Unconsciously? Do you mean without us knowing that we have the disease? If so, that would depend on the symptoms and the general symptom behavior of the disease. You may not know you have a disease but you still could. If not, the idea of mosquito vectored diseases involves the human transmitting the disease to mo... |
[
"What's the science behind rhythm?"
] | [
false
] | Why, when listening to a 4/4 chord progression, does the song seem to 'peak' just as the count (or 4/4 cycle) repeats? Is rhythm purely psychological, or is there a scientific reason why we love to headbang? In a similar vein, are there numbers to show the difference between 3/4 and 4/4? They feel different to the ear,... | [
"It never ceases to amaze me how diverse and complete the askscience panel is."
] | [
"It never ceases to amaze me how diverse and complete the askscience panel is."
] | [
"upvoted and saved - thank you very much."
] |
[
"When the universe expands and the galaxys move away from each other quite fast, how can it be that andromeda and milky way will collide anyways?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Both the Milky Way and Andromeda are part of the Local Group, a cluster of over fifty galaxies. The galaxies are close enough to be gravitationally bound together. As the galaxies orbit the center of gravity of the Local Group, some of them are moving toward each other because that's the path of their orbits. The ... | [
"Over large scales, dark energy is causing galaxies to move away from each other",
"They would move away from each other even without dark energy - just slower than they do."
] | [
"The universe expansion is really quite slow, except when measured at ridiculous distances. As such it is really only meaningful between ",
" of galaxies, and really not even then but only between ",
". "
] |
[
"How does the brain calculate the passing of time independent of simple estimation? Is there a biological mechanism?"
] | [
false
] | The brain must use knowledge of how long thought processes take and can estimate time passing based on tasks and such, but is there a mechanism for linking to circadian rhythms or some other biological clock. I mean on a small scale. For example, I can often predict accurate to a minute or so when 5/10/15 minutes has p... | [
"There are circuits in our brain that line neurons end to end, making small feedback loops based on the time it takes to have the signal make a full lap. Smaller loops are integral in music, rhythm, and even rhythmic movements like walking, swimming, blinking. This very strait forward process is thought to be at wo... | [
"Great answer to a great question! thanks! I have always wondered how we perceive time but never had a definite answer."
] | [
"Thanks. Neuroscience is a big interest of mine on account of free online courses and also I'm insane. ",
"It's crazy how a concept as abstract as time is so easily dealt with and, in a way, ",
" by the brain. "
] |
[
"This webpage claims to prove that Newtonian mechanics allows for indeterministic behavior. Can someone please tell me if it's correct?"
] | [
false
] | And if it isn't, what's wrong with it? | [
"I'm sorry, but you're wrong.",
"However, it first requires a small perturbing force (arbitrarily small, in any direction, to set it moving).",
"No, it doesn't. That's the whole point. If you assume that Newtonian mechanics is time reversable, then the fact that there exist solutions in which the ball stops at ... | [
"I got about halfway down the page, and I'm stopping at this line:",
"Equation (3) describes a point mass sitting at rest at the apex of the dome, whereupon at an arbitrary time ",
"No, it doesn't. In classical mechanics, no motion is spontaneous. Since the apex is an equilibrium point (albeit an unstable one),... | [
"If you assume that Newtonian mechanics is time reversable, then the fact that there exist solutions in which the ball stops at the top and remains there (however chaotic the system may be, or how sparse such solutions are) implies that there are solutions in which the ball starts at the top and spontaneously—reall... |
[
"If you fired a gun straight down off a cliff that was arbitrarily high (i.e. 1000km high), would the bullet eventually slow down to terminal velocity? How long would that take?"
] | [
false
] | I assume that if an object is falling at a speed faster than its terminal velocity, and has no force acting upon it to make it sustain that speed, that it'll slow down to the terminal velocity. If this is true, how long would it take for the bullet to reach this speed? | [
"Yes it would slow down. Terminal velocity and how long it would take to reach that velocity would be based on the ballistic coefficient of the bullet. Some bullet manufactures publish this number, some do not. Also keep in mind air resistance SQUARES as speed doubles. So the faster the bullet is moving, the faster... | [
"Thank-you. As an aside, what would make manufacturers not want to publish the ballistic coefficient number if they had it readily available?"
] | [
"After firing, gravity pulls downward, but (more than that) air resistance would be slowing it down (accelerating up). Eventually it would slow down to the point where those two were balanced. The time would partly depend on the size, shape, and surface roughness of the bullet. It would also depend on the initial v... |
[
"Why is there a need for dark energy to explain the exponential expansion of space?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"Dark energy, in its simplest form, is essentially what you are describing. The part you are missing is that, without dark energy, empty space won't just expand, something has to drive it."
] | [
"I went to a talk recently where dark energy was explained like this:",
"If you have some sphere of mass that is expanding at some rate, gravity will slow down that expansion.",
"However, if you use the same model but require that the density inside the sphere remains constant while it expands, you get accelera... | [
"You can definitely think of it that way, though there are few steps to actually get from that description to the result of accelerated expansion."
] |
[
"If you place 2 glasses of water, one 50 degrees Fahrenheit and the other 90, in a room that is 70 degrees, which will reach room temperature first and why?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Heat transfer is proportional to: ",
"Temperature gradient.",
"Thermal conductivity.",
"Area of contact. ",
"Let's assume the area of the water surface in each glass is the same. Since the temperature gradients are the same initially, it comes down to the question of whether the thermal conductivity is ... | [
"Wouldn't black body radiation also play a role in cooling the warmer glass first? Or is this effect too small to matter?"
] | [
"I did a small experiment to look into this. First I am going to put some unsupported speculation.",
"Thermal conductivity of water: by eyeballing the graph this varies by about 7% in the temperature range we're talking about. My hunch is that convection is a more important mechanism for heat transfer than direct... |
[
"Dumb question: Can we use sound waves for large scale levitation?"
] | [
false
] | I saw footage where scientists used to speakers pointed at each other and caused droplets of medicine to levitate between them. Would it be possible to use speakers beneath a car to make it levitate? | [
"1: the size of the object you can levitate is limited by the half the wavelength of the frequency you're using. In ",
"this video",
", the biggest object that can be levitated is ~7mm. In order to levitate a car, you'd need a 75hz wave. Problem one: this would be audible. Problem 2: this would be ",
" au... | [
"There is no such thing as a dumb question in science; else, where would we be today?!",
"To answer your question: yes, absolutely... at least in the future.",
"In fact, researchers have already successfully been able to levitate and manipulate suspended objects using sound waves. This science is known as Acous... | [
"It's a big leap from 10 microliter water droplets to a car. There are plenty of things that are feasible on the small scale that can't be translated up multiple orders of magnitude in terms of effect."
] |
[
"Don't planes have a GPS, if so , why can't we just look up there location when they crash, or where they were before the crashed, to see where they're at ?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"If there is an accident in the sky then the signal stops being transmitted. This is reported as \"we've lost contact\". The plane may still travel a great distance after that moment and the wreckage may be dispersed. Black boxes on planes have a local copy of that information."
] | [
"But couldn't there just be (I'm not to knowledgeable on the GPS side of things) a chip in the black box that sends out a signal showing where the plane is ? Cause the black box is hard to be destroyed , so if there was a chip that could put out a signal showing where the plane is wouldn't that work ?"
] | [
"Send a signal how? To what? You need a mechanism for doing that. It's not just a chip. Think about radio towers for example."
] |
[
"To all doctors/surgeons, how are the organs in our body held in place?"
] | [
false
] | Are they just floating around?? | [
"They are attached to the body wall through connective tissue."
] | [
"Visceral organs are enclosed in the ",
"peritoneum",
", which is a membranous sac. It has many folds (mesentery, omenta, ligaments) which attach organs to each other and the walls of the abdominal cavity. Organs are also connected by the ",
"adventitia",
", which is a layer of connective tissue that lines ... | [
"Amazing how we know the names of the connective tissues. Really makes me want to become a doctor but idk lol "
] |
[
"Isn´t dogbreeding a proof for evolution?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"Honestly, I would suggest that folks not waste their time in this debate. The Pope has flatly stated that evolution is a valid theory. So given the massive amount of material about evolution online and the Catholic Church's \"endorsement\" - anyone who still embraces the parables of a two thousand year old book re... | [
"Most people still arguing this are protestants who view the pope as a heretic."
] | [
"Creationists will tell you that it's not evolution. They'll talk about \"kinds\" rather than species. They'll say that the instructions set needed to make all those breeds have been in the dog's DNA since the first days of creation, thousands of years ago, and that you can breed dogs til kingdom come and you'll ne... |
[
"Is it possible to create something with data on in, completely shielded and send it to a remote region of space, where it would survive beyond the last star burning out and essentially exist forever?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"If anything managed to evolve in order to survive infinitely",
"Entropy doesn't decrease in a closed system. There's no way for something to live forever or a mechanism (like a computer, robot, spaceship, etc) to operate forever.",
"In addition, the universe is expanding. Say you have an exploratory robot that... | [
"So... there's truth and not-quite-truth here, because of the distinction between what an outside observer would see, and the subjective experience of the entity doing the data-processing. You can do tricks with speed of processing that lead to infinite subjective time in finite \"objective\" time."
] | [
"You said",
"If anything managed to evolve",
"I took that to mean you just wanted something that would be capable of \"finding\", and I thought a robot would probably last longer than something else (like an animal or a person).",
"We aren't sure of the nature of dark matter, but it looks like it doesn't reac... |
[
"In the documentary \"Gasland\" faucets and hoses connected to area wells are shown to be flammable. I heard this is a misrepresentation and it is an unrelated cause. Is that spin from gas companies?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Several of those scenes were filmed in Colorado, where subsequent analysis by the EPA and the state revealed the methane in the water is biogenic (i.e., from microbial decomposition of organic matter), not from gas wells. There was one result of contamination from gas production. ",
"If you are interested, a two... | [
"And it goes WAY back. The earliest reports surveying the region reported that methane was all over the area, and made it difficult to drill wells in. The wells caught fire. Known problem. ",
" known problem.",
"IIRC 2 out of the 3 cases they'd featured were ",
" known to be biogenic (natural surface) met... | [
"So... it's spin from anti-business eco-activitists, then?"
] |
[
"The Boeing 747 was tested up to Mach 0.99. Could it fly above Mach 1 is safety wasn't a factor? If so, what would happen?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Yes. If the aircraft were to enter a dive, it could pass mach 1 - ",
". It is suspected that this indeed occured during ",
"china airlines flight 006",
". The pressures and shockwaves involved could easily tear the wings off, rip up all the structural panels and cause explosive decompression. The engines... | [
"They do create shock waves. That's part of the reason turbine engines are so damn noisy. It isn't expressed as the loud sonic boom you get from a fuselage in open atmosphere though."
] | [
"If I'm going to be pedantic here, and I am. The blades themselves don't really exceed the speed of sound. Instead, it's the air travelling through the blades, which is being accelerated, because they're essentially a bunch of tiny nozzles, that is travelling greater than the speed of sound in that medium.",
"Thi... |
[
"Would it be possible to attach a probe to an asteroid, and have it return after one orbit?"
] | [
false
] | Would it be possible to send a probe with cameras and stuff into space, somehow attach it to an asteroid, and get a free ride around the solar system? The next time it passes near earth it detaches and returns. We could pick an one we know the orbit of, which returns in 5-10 years or so. Imagine the timelapse photos ... | [
"Sure, but it doesn't make sense. In order for a probe to land (gracefully) on an asteroid, it must have a speed virtually identical to the asteroid. And if you can reach that speed, you might as well skip the whole asteroid part and send it in orbit by itself."
] | [
"Yup, there's no free lunch (nor free launch)."
] | [
"If you could get into an orbit that would rendezvous with an asteroid, you'd already be in that orbit and you wouldn't get any free benefit. "
] |
[
"Thought experiment: You have 100 coins. Flip each one: if heads remove the coin, if tails add 100 more coins. Keep flipping until you have no coins. Will this process ever terminate?"
] | [
false
] | It seems like it's never technically impossible, and it's an infinite process, which makes me think it must terminate eventually, but the process gets statistically more and more difficult to complete with each flip. What happens mathematically? | [
" There is a (very slightly greater than) 50% chance this process terminates. Indeed, no matter how many coins you add because of tails, there is always at least a 50% chance the process terminates. The process terminates with probability 1 if and only if a tails results in the addition of either 0 or 1 new coins."... | [
"This is amazing. Thanks so much for your in depth response."
] | [
"I edited my response. What I wrote originally was for starting with 1 coin. If you start with ",
" coins though, the problem is not much harder since each starting coin has an independent and identically distributed \"genealogical line\". If there is positive probability that 1 coin goes extinct, there is positi... |
[
"When was the sonic boom first identified, or predicted?"
] | [
false
] | Though I know things like bullwhips and canon fire create small sonic booms, as far as I can gather the noise wasn't identified for what it was at the time. Historically (as far as I can tell) the first large object to break the sound barrier and create an identifiable sonic boom as the V-2 rocket developed during WWII... | [
"For the theory bit of your question, maybe just read ",
"this",
". Shock wave theory existed well before WWII. Shock waves aren't unique to blunt bodies; a shock wave is just a pressure disturbance that propagates faster than the local speed of sound in a given medium. Basically, they figured out shock waves a... | [
"I find that quite surprising consider that by the time Yeager broke Mach 1 in 1947 sonic booms were a known phenomenon and the V-2 had proven that self-propelled objects could break the sound barrier. I remember reading that hearing sonic booms was how many in London knew a V-2 was about to or had just struck, and... | [
"Recommend reading Chuck Yeager’s semi autobiography by Leo Janos. He talks about the theories everyone had at the time. One theory was that as speed went up that resonance could rise to infinity making the trip impossible. ",
"Plus that book is a really good read for a non-fiction book."
] |
[
"Why does the near side of the moon look so different to the far side?"
] | [
false
] | I've heard some differing opinions about why the near side is much smoother than the far side. Is there a consensus on why? | [
"The newest and most logical theory is that when the object that became the moon (a Mars sized protoplanet) smashed into the protoearth, it turned the protoearth into a big ball of lava, and formed a ring of lava around the earth. That ring became the moon. As the moon cooled, it did so much faster than the earth d... | [
"So it was tidally locked from the get-go? "
] | [
"No, but the rate at which it locks is an inverse function of distance cubed. So it would have been a fast process with the moon being so close. "
] |
[
"Does the sun have a solid(like) surface?"
] | [
false
] | This might seem like a stupid question, perhaps it is. But, let's say that hypothetically, we create a suit that allows us to 'stand' on the sun. Would you even be able to? Would it seem like a solid surface? Would it be more like quicksand, drowning you? Would you pass through the sun, until you are at the center? Is ... | [
"Before anyone goes mocking this question, it's actually very clever. Let me explain.",
"The sun is fluid, all the way through, even if that fluid is very different than any you might be used to on earth. It's a plasma, meaning that the electrons are separated from the nuclei (though the level of ionization varie... | [
"You're welcome!",
"Since we're talking about the photosphere, I want to volunteer more information which is just way too neat not to share. ",
"The photosphere looks really cool.",
" That pattern is made of 'granules' - those are the tops of convective columns carrying hot plasma like a conveyor belt to the... | [
"This is a really good answer. Thank you!"
] |
[
"How does the decibel system in water compare to in air? Do humans perceive things to be louder underwater?"
] | [
false
] | Sperm whales are known to produce sounds of over 200 dB. Is this the same thing as 200 dB in air? Would it burst my eardrums if I was close to the whale? | [
"Well one of the major differences is that because dB are defined in terms of a reference sound intensity level, some baseline value, that you always need to know what that baseline is. By the most common convention the reference values used in air is 20 uPa, and the most common convention used in water is 1 uPa, ... | [
"Probably, but without details on how it's measured it's hard to tell, dB in this context reflects the change in pressure due to the sound, but that gets measured at a point, so you need to specify a location for this sound. Usually we use 1 meter, and if we can't get to 1 meter we make adjustments based on what it... | [
"Even with the energy being lower, do you think it would be enough energy damage the hearing of a person near swimming near the whale?"
] |
[
"How large can a star become?"
] | [
false
] | How large can a star grow (if they grow in size at all) before it collapses due to its own gravity? | [
"Around ",
"150 times the mass of the Sun",
" at the current age of the universe. This is based on the amount of luminosity can be transported through the star before the radiation pressure would overcome gravity (if the radiation pressure is higher than the gravitational force then the star will undergo mass l... | [
"Sun will end fusion at the stage of producing carbon (and less of other similar mass elements like oxygen).",
"Stars living billion+ years don't go supernova.",
"Supernova explosion takes much longer than a second."
] | [
"The collapse happens in seconds, the following “explosion” as the matter bounces out again takes hours."
] |
[
"What is the mechanism for energy released by a black hole merger?"
] | [
false
] | I've heard that when two black holes merge there is an incredible amount of energy released. And that this energy which is released is often equivalent to the mass energy of a few solar masses at least, in the case of the merger first detected by LIGO. As I understand, nothing can escape from within the Event Horizon o... | [
"The energy is lost as gravitational waves. That's what LIGO detects, and then using the energy measured at the detectors and the distance to the source of the gravitational waves, they can calculate how much total energy was given off by the source. The energy does not come out of the black holes themselves, but f... | [
"\"Analysis of the signal along with the inferred redshift suggested that it was produced by the merger of two black holes with masses of 35+5\n−3 times and 30+3\n−4times the mass of the Sun (in the source frame), resulting in a post-merger black hole of 62+4\n−3 solar masses.[1]:6 The mass–energyof the missing 3.0... | [
"I read somewhere that the mass of the new black hole that was produced was significantly less than the two original masses combined, meaning they lost energy as gravitational waves. Was that wrong then?"
] |
[
"Is there an agreed-upon, independent measure of how strong a password is, regarding crackability? Every website thinks differently about how strong my passwords are. (Not sure if right subreddit but it's CS so I hope yes)"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"It depends on whether your password is ",
". ",
", then the calculation is just",
"number of characters * log base 2 (the number of possible characters that we can choose from). This gives us the workfactor for cracking a password in bits. So a 10 character long ",
" alphanumeric password would have a work... | [
"The basic question to ask is \"how many possible passwords are there\" under the rules that are required by a website. The more possible passwords, the less guessable any one password is. ",
"I know that ",
"/r/askscience",
" doesn't like comics and stuff, but the xkcd \"",
"correct horse battery staple",
... | [
"I highly recommend reading this article: ",
"http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/05/how-crackers-make-minced-meat-out-of-your-passwords/",
"That will show you exactly how crackers actually attempt to crack passwords. The strength-estimators you typically say are generally based on difficulty of brute-forcing ... |
[
"Friction and car acceleration"
] | [
false
] | The other day I was thinking of a test problem from high school physics from over 10 years ago. It was an acceleration/velocity/distance/time question that hinged on the fact that the force causing a car to accelerate is friction on the wheels in the direction of the acceleration, which is equal to mu*Fn. My question h... | [
"For static friction the friction force is ",
" to mu",
" x Fn, it is always less than that. Once the friciton force passes that limit, slip begins and the friction force will be equal to mu",
" x Fn. ",
"Edit: think about pushing a big box, the lateral force is equal to your exertion but it doesn't slip. N... | [
"aha! yes that's it. your comment made me remember the oft-overlooked (at least for me) relationship that friction is not equal to but is <= mu*Fn.",
"Thanks"
] | [
"The friction force is a result of the normal force on the tires, and during acceleration the centre of gravity of the vehicle shifts towards the rear of the vehicle (due to inertia) and changes the normal force on each tire. This works in your favour if you have a rear wheel drive vehicle, but if you have a front ... |
[
"What causes this effect? Is it chromastrobic light?"
] | [
false
] | At the link below, you can see at the 10th normal mode of an oscillating string, you get color production if the light from a projector shines on the string. Does this have to do with how the projector creates white light, as well as the frequencies of the string and refresh rate of the projector being close? Is this t... | [
"I believe it does have to do with the refresh rate on the projector. If you go frame by frame from the 8th second to the 9th second of the video, you can see that the string bounces back and forth slightly about 6 times, so its fundamental frequency is roughly 6 hz, so the 10th mode we are seeing is near to 60 hz.... | [
"Here's my best guess. I'm only a physics student: Longitudinal waves cause compression and decompression in the medium they travel through. The pressure of the air around the string will change as it oscillates. These changes in air pressure can change the light's refractive index, changing how we see it.",
"Thi... | [
"Very cool. I don't think this has to do with the refresh rate on a projector, nor do I think it's exactly the same as Paul Friedlander's chromastrobic light. Friedlander describes chromastrobic light as \"light that changes color faster than the eye can see,\" leading to his moving light sculptures to appear as th... |
[
"How is destruction of a nuclear explosion filmed?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"There was a special type of film created for the intense exposures; a type of film that only the intense radiation from a nuclear test could expose. Also the ",
"Rapatronic Camera",
" was developed for ridiculously high shutter speeds."
] | [
"There was an earlier discussion about this. Here's my response copied over:",
"I don't have a source available, but i remember reading that some cameras are shielded by huge wedged-shaped concrete blocks. The camera points sideways and a mirror allows the scene in front to be recorded. When the pressure wave rea... | [
"couldn't you just place the camera in a Faraday cage?"
] |
[
"Is the speed of light the fastest anything can move, or is that just because we can't perceive anything that would move faster?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"It's the fastest anything can move."
] | [
"Do we know why?"
] | [
"It’s a postulate of relativity, and we observe that relativity holds in every experiment we’ve done."
] |
[
"Could any planets in our solar system be extrasolar captures? How could we tell if they were?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"The tricky part of extrasolar capture is that you have conservation of energy to deal with. If a planet that wasn't orbiting the sun was on a trajectory that brought it close by, it would have enough kinetic energy to escape the sun as well. You need to add a third body to make capture work. For example, a planet ... | [
"Setting aside the obvious eccentricity/velocity arguments which were already well covered by ",
"/u/AugustusFink-nottle",
", one way of testing might be through rare earth abundance patterns. These tend to be relatively uniform for the bulk of materials within the solar system and are tied to the average compo... | [
"There is a hypothesis that this may be true of Uranus due to the odd tilt of its rotation. As far as I know, this is not the mainstream view of Uranus. But, it is a possibility.",
"https://www.quora.com/Is-it-possible-Uranus-used-to-be-a-rogue-planet"
] |
[
"Is there a limit to how fast an airplane could go for stable, long distance flights?"
] | [
false
] | Theoretically, How fast could an airplane consistently go over a long trip (thousands of miles)? The current fastest plane is a Cessna Citation X which can go a max of like 720 mph. How much faster could we safely go then that? | [
"The X-43 achieved a speed of Mach 9.6 (11.850 km/h) for a few seconds and remains as the fastest aircraft ever.",
"I can't tell for certain the fastest speed that could be achieved by a plane but I believe the limits to fly faster come from three main numbers: specific impulse (Isp), skin temperature and drag c... | [
"Turbofans propelling commercial aircraft have Isp in the orders of 10000 s - as they only carry the fuel and the oxidizer is freely available in the atmosphere.",
"Is that only because of the oxidizer, or does free reaction mass noticeably help too?"
] | [
"Hydrogen-oxygen reaction needs 8 g of oxygen for every gram of hydrogen, while kerosene-air needs 16 g of air (21% oxygen) for every gram of kerosen. So the short answer is that turbofans greatly benefit from the free air available as compared to rockets. ",
"But the complete answer should take into account the ... |
[
"Why do we sometimes hear the same repeating sound as alternating between a higher and lower note? (tick tock of a clock) (click clack of high heels)"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Sometimes, they are not the same sounds. For example, variations in the ruling of the floor or your walking style can cause the heels of your shoes to click differently.",
"As for the familiar tick-tock of a grandfather clock, that is caused by a two-step motion of the pendulum inside it."
] | [
"I know what you're talking about. A big part of it is that the mechanical elements that produce the sound is not 100% consistent. There will always be some dominant frequency that your brain is more likely to pick up on. That's where the psychology side comes in: \"more likely.\" ",
"You may have noticed that yo... | [
"There is a possibility that the two sounds are not 100% equal given many variables with say heals hitting the ground and pavement may be different. However, hearing a tick-tock is a psychological phenomenon due to grouping and attention. Humans put in accents to sounds that don't occur in the actual stimulus. ",
... |
[
"Does brushing your tongue harm your taste buds?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Dentist here.",
"To answer your question about tongue brushing and potential damage to our taste receptors. Yes and No.",
"Let's start with how it would be a Yes, and work in to the final answer of No:",
"If you are using a hard bristled toothbrush, highly corrosive toothpaste (usually whitening toothpaste o... | [
"In actuality it may improve taste perception.",
"http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.0303-6979.2004.00507.x/full",
"However, it may be different for some tastes vs. others (e.g., NaCl vs. citric).",
"1",
"2"
] | [
"Ok, that's funny. I guess I should have quoted what you said in my reply, I thought the deletes were done."
] |
[
"In the early stages of the Big Bang (Quark-lepton era) why was there slightly more matter than antimatter?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"We have some hypotheses, but we don't know.",
"One thing we do know is that matter and antimatter are not perfectly symmetric -- in collider experiments we have been able to start with equal amounts and end up with unequal amounts.",
"Problem is, all of the known symmetry-violating processes combined are not a... | [
"If you can definitively answer this, there's a Nobel Prize with your name on it.",
"The best hypothesis we have right now is merely \"something to do with the weak force\" because its the only one that ",
"treats matter and antimatter differently",
". However, the known asymmetry isn't large enough to explai... | [
"That's possible sure, but a hypothesis of \"there actually are equal amounts of matter and antimatter, it's just in an area we can't observe\" isn't falsifiable. There'd be no way to differentiate between our understanding being wrong, and our understanding being correct "
] |
[
"When an animal is eaten whole, how does it actually die? Suffocation? Digestive acid?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"It varies depending on the species and what their specific eating mechanism is. But generally speaking if the animal is swallowed whole while still alive it will suffocate first and then be broken down by the digestive system. "
] | [
"Suffocation doesn't kill you by keeping you from breathing air, it kills you by keeping you from reoxygenating your blood which starves your brain of oxygen. Fish still need oxygen, they just get it through a different process than breathing. "
] | [
"Good thing we cleared up the whole 'eat your fish and drink its bowl' thing"
] |
[
"Are neutrinos an exception to the higgs field?"
] | [
false
] | I was reading this reddit topic about the higgs boson, and i didnt understand why it stated that a neutrino doesnt care about the higgs field, as far as i know in order to have a mass you must interact with the higgs field!? Is the thread wrong or theres something i dont understand? Thread: | [
"In order to give mass to fermions, the Higgs interaction requires there to be both right-handed and left-handed versions of a particle.",
"Neutrinos are only known to interact with the weak force. The weak force only couples to left-handed fermions and right-handed antifermions.",
"As such, right-handed neutri... | [
"The post you quoted is telling you about the Standard Model as it was developed when people thought neutrinos were massless. In the SM, neutrinos do not couple directly to the Higgs. However, following the discovery of the neutrino masses, we now have a few proposed models for their mass, with all of the major one... | [
"As mofo69extreme said, neutrino mass is an emerging field of understanding. It arises as a consequence of the various observations of neutrino oscillations, such as the most recent ",
"T2K",
" run."
] |
[
"After astronauts leave Earth’s gravity, what stops them from going towards the sun? If the sub can hold planets in orbit, would it not be able to pull in smaller objects?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Yeah they’re in free fall"
] | [
"They don’t leave earths gravity. They can’t go directly towards the sun because they are going incredibly fast around the sun, it takes a lot of energy to decelerate to be able to fall in"
] | [
"So when the say ZeroG there is still some gravity taking place?"
] |
[
"When and why did the English accent in early America fade away, and the American accents come about?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"English as it was spoken during colonial times isn't the same as it is spoken now in either Britain or America. Both populations have had their pronunciation drift over time. So Americans never lost their British accent, because they never had what we would now call a British accent to begin with.",
"You can loo... | [
"That's a common factoid, but it's not really true. The first problem is that there are many dialects in the British Isles and North America that are much more conservative than either standard British English (called Received Pronunciation) or standard American English (called General American). Both standards ha... | [
"There never was a single English accent and still isn't. America was populated firstly by various English accents and then various non-English accents which grew over time regionally depending on the mix of people. Most English accents have remained relatively similar in their respective regions but again, movemen... |
[
"Biologist of Reddit, I need a word."
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"It's death in every microbiology text have laying around my apartment. "
] | [
"I looked at all my textbooks and they all say death as well. I was so sure there was a different word for it."
] | [
"Is senescence what you're looking for?"
] |
[
"In terms of physics, what is common between the same notes in different octaves?"
] | [
false
] | In terms of physics, notes are defined by their frequencies, right? The higher frequency is, the higher the note is. So if we're going through all notes, do re mi..., at some point they repeat. So why, for instance, the note "do" from the first and second octave sound, so-called, in unison, whilst they have different f... | [
"If you look at the frequency of two notes that are an octave apart, one will be twice the other. This is significant because a note is not actually a single frequency; it has a *fundamental* frequency, which is what we think of as it's frequency, but it also has a ",
"series of overtones",
". And the first ove... | [
"I wouldn't say it's entirely arbitrary. 8 notes per scale is a good number to allow for the thirds and fifths for European major chord harmonics (not that it's the only number that would work, just that that puts a few restrictions on regarding what notes are expected to be available as part of a scale.)",
"Ex... | [
"Relative pitch is logarithmic. ",
"To go up by an octave, multiply by 2. To go up by a perfect fifth, multiply by 1.5. To go up by 1 semitone, multiply by 2"
] |
[
"What causes an archaeological site to become buried, are the buildings sinking over time or the land elevation increasing?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Sedimentation mostly. Wind, rain, vegetation (and its decay) causes a build up of sand and dirt that engulfs the area, so in a sense, land elevation is increasing",
"A good modern example of this is ",
"Kolmanskop",
", which is an abandoned diamond mining hub in Namibia that is being quickly buried by the d... | [
"Not really, erosion is also at work, plus gravity compresses the layers beneath us. Sandy structures are good examples of this process happening on a human time scale, because they build up and erode quickly. For example, the Island of Nantucket is losing its northern coast to erosion, but it's gaining on its so... | [
"Good answer from ",
"/u/Critical_Liz",
",",
"I'll just add a little bit to the effect that the soil underlying any given object is far from being a static environment, but rather a constantly shifting dynamic system. This was pointed out by none other than Charles Darwin himself in one of his lesser known wo... |
[
"Why do bioluminescent organisms seem to only give off light in the yellow to green wavelength? Why are there no red or blue or violet lights produced by such organisms?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"A Google image search for \"bioluminescence\" shows lots of blue and red."
] | [
"Animals that bioluminesce usually do so for a reason. To find mates, to lure in potential prey, as a warning, and so on. Most ocean-going animals actually give off blue light. This is because, due to the properties of water, blue light is the last wavelength of light to be filtered out of water. In layman's te... | [
"Happy to help :)"
] |
[
"What would an ant do if it was stranded from its colony?"
] | [
false
] | Could it potentially join a new one? Would it try to survive on its own? | [
"Not an entomologist or student of myrmecology but it's pretty easy to deduce. It will behave in line with it's standard functions. Ant farms are sold with stranded ants, typically no queen (for pest control reasons), and behave just as a colony normally would, but simply without a way to produce a new brood.",
"... | [
"thanks for the answer. thats interesting that it would still try to run a colony. it would be interesting to test how far or how long an ant would have to be away from the home colony before it decides to try and build a new one vs. trying to find its way back home"
] | [
"Could it potentially join a new [colony]?",
"That's somewhat a linguistics issue.",
"If/when they can join, it's unclear to me if it'd be called a new/different colony or part of the same colony.",
"Some might then call it a large multi-queened colony, or a supercolony, or a megacolony - rather than a new c... |
[
"If we sent our most powerful nuke to the moon, could we see the explosion from earth with our naked eye?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"During which phase of the moon?"
] | [
"It'd be easy to see during new moon, less light to drown the flash out."
] | [
"It'd be easy to see during new moon, less light to drown the flash out."
] |
[
"If all species of insects gone extinct, what would happen? How would Earth change over time?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Such hypothetical / speculative / open-ended questions are better suited for our sister-sub ",
"/r/asksciencediscussion",
". Please post there instead."
] | [
"So, do I delete this post?"
] | [
"Already removed"
] |
[
"When I drive fast, I find that the normal bumps of the road tend to disappear in the ride quality. Why is this?"
] | [
false
] | So today I drove at 180km/h (pretty fast for an old school lexus es300) and then realized that the highway i was traveling on suddenly got a lot smoother than it normally was. My conjecture is that air underneath the car is creating lift. Is this explanation correct? | [
"TL;DR The suspension \"catches\" the bumps with transferring them to the car at high speeds.",
"When you travel slowly over a (small) bump, your front wheel is lifted up and with it the front of your car. Then it goes down again and the same happens to your back wheel/back of the car.",
"At high enough speeds ... | [
"This was on an episode of ",
"MythBusters",
".",
"Essentially you drive so fast that gravity doesn't get a chance to pull you down between bumps in the road; you just skip along the tops of them. ",
"Think of shooting a bullet vs throwing a ball, both horizontally. They both actually fall towards the groun... | [
"On the downside, the big bumps get worse."
] |
[
"If a woman got pregnant and the two choices were each other's twins then would it be possible to tell who the father is?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"only twins that came from the same egg have the same dna, if they came from two fertilised eggs they will not be the same. Also, if they have the same dna, them being twins would not help discover who the father is, it would be the same process as analysing the dna of a single child "
] | [
"Yeah sorry it seems I need to clear some thing up. I was rather tired when I typed this up. I meant if a woman had sex with twins and got pregnant from one of them would it be possible to tell."
] | [
"This has actually happened.",
" and it is impossible to tell with genetic (not fraternal) twins. "
] |
[
"Evolution question"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"Many traits are not due to pressure from natural selection, but are instead due to ",
"genetic drift",
". Essentially, in traits not under selective pressure, neutral mutations might create traits that confer no advantage or disadvantage to fitness. If there's no pressure to remove the trait or increase it, ... | [
"In addition to what you have said, it is possible for traits that do not increase fitness to become prevalent in a population through sexual selection. A peacocks feathers or a bird of paradises tail are examples of this. So if it just so happened that the gender that picks their mate likes some trait (whether i... | [
"Uh no, genetic drift ",
" that a trait will either dominate the population or be wiped out, entirely by ",
". See the Wikipedia articles ren5311 linked above."
] |
[
"How have cancer treatments actually improved?"
] | [
false
] | We see headlines all the time about positive results in studies with mice, but what has translated to usable treatments in humans? | [
"According to ",
"this",
" NIH report, the average mortality rate due to all cancers in the US has declined by about 1.2% every year for the past 24 years (1.5% annually over the last 12 up to 2014, last data reported). That means that if you were diagnosed with cancer that had a 50% survival rate at 5 years in... | [
"Immuno-oncology. They have been focusing on treatments that allow your immune system to attack tumors. The first was Yervoy, an IV antibody treatment, but now there are better antibodies (the PDL1 antibodies, like Keytruda.) Also, even better seems to be CAR-T, in which they pull T cells out of your body and en... | [
"I work in software in this field. It's promising, but still a very long ways off from becoming a standard part of cancer treatment.",
"They can take tumor samples and determine what genetic events may have lead to tumor formation",
"We can ",
" do this right now.",
"and the likelihood of drug resistance in... |
[
"Will bacteria always find a way to become resistant in the end?"
] | [
false
] | I know that through heavy use of anti-biotics certain bacteria have become resistant to them since they become resistant over time. However there was this article awhile time ago that that talked about cold plasma killing bacteria. Is it scientifically possible that this method could create plasma resistant bacteria? | [
"So, an organism can evolve to survive something that would fundamentally kill it? Like, a bacteria could adapt to survive alcohol or boiling water?",
"Well, there's already ",
"an Archaean that can survive autoclaving",
" which is done at 121ºC (above the boiling point of water at 1 ATM). It lives in hydroth... | [
"It's kind of like saying will human skin ever become resistant to bullets. I don't know too much about cold plasma, but if it perforates the membrane like alcohol does, then there's not really any individual mutation (to my knowledge) that can account for slightly higher survivability among certain bacteria within... | [
"Is it scientifically possible that this method could create plasma resistant bacteria? ",
"I assume you are referring to ",
"this",
" article, or a similar one.",
"Quote from the article:",
"Importantly we have shown that plasma is able to kill bacteria growing in biofilms in wounds, ",
"So, given this... |
[
"Could you in theory, train someone to have pseudo-synesthesia?"
] | [
false
] | Could you develop a pseudo-synesthesia in a child from a young age? For example, maybe when teaching a child colors, each color would correspond to a tone or sound. Is that something that would, in theory, be possible? Or are there too many limitations? I was just curious. | [
"What you're describing wouldn't be pseudo-synesthesia, it would just be making word or sound associations for objects. Synesthesia is when a person actually ",
" to a stimuli in a sensory modaility where they shouldn't have a sensory experience to that stimuli. "
] | [
"Some people describing the effects of psychedelics seem to be describing synestesia. If you used these too often would some of the effects stick?"
] | [
"What people experience when using psychedelics is actually better classified as a sensory hallucination. Sure, these experiences have some similarities in description to ideopathic synesthesia, but as far as what is actually going on in the brain the reason for the experiences are quite different. As for your qu... |
[
"How do computers and phones (et cetera) know the exact percentage of battery life they have remaining?"
] | [
false
] | I mean... what is being read by the hardware that tells the equipment such an exact numbers? Is the calculation purely software based or do some electronics come into play? | [
"Electrical engineer that does power management for cell phones here. You can relate remaining charge to open circuit voltage of the battery, but you can't rely solely on this for two reasons: the relationship is nonlinear and there are many valleys where OCV remains fairly constant but state of charge changes dram... | [
"Because a battery's voltage drops off as it discharges",
", by measuring the voltage of the battery, you can get a pretty good idea of what percent is left. "
] | [
"Or it can integrate the power used over time. Dunno which, if any, devices do this, but I'm pretty sure some do."
] |
[
"Does the expansion of the universe increase the travel time between the earth and another point of the universe ?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"Within our local \"gravitationally bound system\" that is not expanding along with the rest of the universe, no. To get from Earth to Jupiter, or another star in our galaxy, or a member of the \"Local Group\" like Andromeda... no.",
"But, to get to a galaxy far far away... yes. The expansion creates more spac... | [
"The equations that we use in General Relativity (Einstein's equations)[",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_field_equations",
"] tells us the relationship between the curvature of spacetime and the energy-density of the stuff in it. If you put \"black hole\" in the energy density part, you get \"curved ... | [
"Can you explain where the expansion occurs and why it doesn't occur everywhere. I had never thought about this till your answer. "
] |
[
"For an astronaut living in a low gravity environment (like on a Mars base) would swimming be as good of an exercise to maintain muscle mass as it is on Earth or would the low gravity somehow make it less strenuous?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"I believe swimming on mars would be very similar to swimming on earth if we assume that swimming is basically all happening under the surface of the water.\nWhen something is floating in water, the weight of the object is equal to the weight of the water displaced",
"mg = Mg ",
"Where m is the mass of the obje... | [
"Certainly. This would not be a cost effective way to have astronauts/Mars Explorers exercise, but as far as I know, the physics checks out."
] | [
"Yeah! I'm sure you are aware of ",
"/r/spacex",
" and what they are doing to help accomplish this. I hope to work there one day. I like your idea about measuring progress. Even without looking for specific baths/constructed water pools, progress could be measured by calculating the average distance of a popula... |
[
"Like a gravitational field, does a strong electromagnetic field also affect the flow of time?"
] | [
false
] | Does it also dilate time or work in the opposite way and speed it up? | [
"The energy in an electromagnetic field does contribute to the energy tensor which is the source of gravity. But the contribution is generally negligible, decreasing as 1/r",
" (instead of 1/r like the mass distribution) and celestial bodies being more or less electrically neutral. "
] | [
"The problem is that for something to have a large electric charge, it has to have a large number of like charges together. Since like charges repel and unlike charges attract, the formation of such a body would be energetically unfavorable."
] | [
"A ",
"magnetar",
" has a magnetic field of about 10",
" to 10",
" Tesla. These are objects with the strongest known magnetic fields, and they have a corresponding energy density of around 4 x 10",
" J/m",
". m = E/c",
", so the mass density corresponding to this field is 10000 times that of lead. As ... |
[
"With ICP (Inductively Coupled Plasma), how are you able to harness the energy if it reaches temps between 6000K - 10000K. Wouldn’t the exterior melt instantly?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"So many plasmas are very high temperature. But it's important to think about the heat capacity and total power.",
"Plasmas are very low pressure gasses typically. When you transfer 1 Joule (for example) out of them, they can drop tremendously in temperature because there simply aren't that many atoms in the plas... | [
"They use the magnetic field to contain the plasma. If you surround the exterior with a vacuum the heat (mostly) won't escape. ",
"But usually it takes energy to make the plasma, what applications are you thinking of which harness the energy?"
] | [
"The plasma \"torch\" assembly actually consists of multiple concentric quartz tubes each with their own gas feed. The outermost feed helps cool down the inner tube that contains the plasma core / induction zone.",
"The hottest part of the plasma, where the induction happens, is also relatively small and temperat... |
[
"My mom claims that margarine is \"one molecule\" away from being plastic. True or just downright crazy?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"Water is one atom away from bleach, and air is mostly made up of the same stuff as laughing gas...",
"There's a ",
"snopes article",
" on this.",
"Basically, the properties of chemicals depends so hugely on small differences within a molecule that even if margarine had a very similar to plastic, that doesn... | [
"H2O2 is not what someone means when they are colloquially referring to bleach. Sodium hypochlorite is."
] | [
"Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) is a bleach, and air is not too far off a 2:1 nitrogen:oxygen ratio (more like 3:1 or 4:1 I guess).",
"But my point is that it's silly to say those sorts of things. N2O is completely different to have molecular nitrogen and oxygen in the air, and water isn't particularly good at making y... |
[
"How do B-Cells identify viruses?"
] | [
false
] | It is clear that most pathogens are identified via specific membrane proteins on their surface, but since viruses do not have a distinct metabolism, they can't produce them before infesting a cell. So how exactly are they identified in the humoral response? | [
"This is a tricky question because B-cells actually don't identify viruses. An infected cell produces an antigen through processing and presenting it. Then CD4 of the T-helper cell will bind to that antigen presenting cell. THEN, they can either relay the message cytotoxic T cells or to B-lymphocytes (causing them ... | [
"Also there's a good animation of the process ",
"here",
"."
] | [
"B-cells actually recognize viral antigens using pathogen recognition receptors (PRRs) such as toll-like receptors (TLRs) and presents the antigen on an MHCII, but most require additional signaling from a matching CD4 T-helper in order to activate. Some B-cells can activate without T-cell signaling (T-cell independ... |
[
"Why do dogs not lose all of their hair when going through chemo treatments, but humans do?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Chemo preferentially kills rapidly dividing cells, cancer cells are fast growing but so are some normal body cells like those in the hair follicles so they are destroyed as well. Dogs' hair doesn't grow as fast as humans so it's less affected, but I doubt it is entirely unaffected."
] | [
"Most breeds of dog grow their hairs to the length of their coat and then the hairs stop growing for a while before they shed. Dogs like poodles, sheepdogs, etc. that need their hair cut are susceptible to hair loss with chemo; some agents are more likely to cause hair loss than others. In all dogs undergoing chemo... | [
"Thank you. That makes a lot of sense!"
] |
[
"What genes iterate and change the fastest? Is it the simpler, shorter DNA or the more complex?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"The short answer is that all DNA base pairs have an equal chance of mutation, so long genes are more likely to pick up a mutation somewhere along the line than short ones. They are larger targets.",
"The long answer is that DNA mutation rates can be affected by mutagens, heat shock proteins, and DNA methylation.... | [
"No, no, no. Actually, each chromosome has several \"hot spots,\" in which DNA is mutated much more quickly than the rest. As of now, we don't know why this is, but we can regularly observe it.",
"Furthermore, a mutation in a long gene has a much greater chance of being \"silent\" than a mutation in a short gene.... | [
"No DNA is simple or short. Any given gene that codes for a protein is thousands, or tens of thousands of base pairs long. Multiply that by 200 and change for the shortest known chromosome, 23Y, or the male chromosome, and you have a really big number. For even the shortest chromosome, which is probably 1/200th ... |
[
"Can you jump between cars moving at high speed?"
] | [
false
] | I've had this one rolling around in my brain for a while and thought I'd reach out as a new redditor and try my luck. Anyway, let's say I'm somehow standing on the hood of a red sports car, moving at 100mph. Moving parallel to my car is another red sports car, also moving at 100mph. Can I successfully jump from the hoo... | [
"No, most likely yon won't even be able to stand on the hood of a red sports car going 100mph. The wind will knock you over. It's equivalent to a category 2 hurricane. I am willing to bet you won't be able to stand up in the seat of a convertible going 100mph.",
"Next time when you are in a car going 100mph(no... | [
"If we ignore air resistance, and assume that the cars' trajectories are very smooth, it would probably go pretty well.",
"In reality, though, it would be fairly similar to jumping between two cars, both stationary (but shaking a lot, I suppose) in 100mph wind.",
"I wouldn't attempt it. That wind (in the actual... | [
"This is what I thought - thank you!"
] |
[
"Could salt water be chemically desalinized?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"sure, there is no reason ",
" that this couldn't be done. In fact, ",
" reactions are an example of this.",
"I don't know of any practical method for doing this, however. ",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_metathesis_reaction"
] | [
"I believe what you are talking about is called a Ligand or a molecule which will come in and bind to an ion. ",
"While there is no reason to suggest they can't exist for Sodium, there is a small problem. First of all if you want a non-polar molecule you need to eliminate or neutralize the charge for both the ... | [
"Very few large scale evaporation facilities exist, mainly because they have to be enormous to be effective. ",
"However, when they do exist, they do not remove all the water. They fill the facility with water, evap for a while, and pump/flow out a saltier brine. The salt does not stay in the building. Then, with... |
[
"If one would point the Hubble Telescope, or a similar powerful telescope to a close body such as the Moon, what would be seen?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"Can Hubble Space Telescope See Flag on the Moon?",
" ",
"the smallest feature that the Hubble Space Telescope can resolve on the Moon's surface. It is just under 100 meters."
] | [
"Thanks a lot for that, right to the point and with all the details I wanted."
] | [
"this is a signal to noise ratio (SNR) issue",
"with long exposure, the idea is that your signal will accumulate faster than your background noise eg white gets whiter and black gets blacker.",
"the increased SNR \"increased\" the resolution in that it pushed the actual resolution closer to the limit of the tel... |
[
"is there any proof of other dimensions?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"If by \"proof\" you mean physical evidence, then, no, there is not. There's only evidence for the familiar four dimensions of spacetime."
] | [
"The mathematics of high-dimensional spaces aren't just used for modelling spacetime. ",
"One really important class of applications for high-dimensional geometry and topology comes from big data analytics. Suppose you have a data set with two thousand pieces of information about each of some large number of peop... | [
"Mathematics deals with higher dimensions but that ultimately doesn't really mean it will be good at modeling reality.",
"We have self-consistent models of the universe which use higher dimensions (string-theory or M-theory) but we don't have any reason (yet) to believe they're any better than our existing models... |
[
"Venus has been described as an example of \"runaway greenhouse effect.\" Would it be possible to reverse the greenhouse effect on Venus and lower the temperature on the planet?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"It would be at least as easy as taking an ice moon of Saturn to Venus."
] | [
"I think you're drastically underestimating how hard that would be. Good luck correcting the path of that moon if your math isn't completely perfect."
] | [
"Yes, there are some interesting terraforming proposals. I read a cool one by Paul Birch, which remarkably I found on ",
"archive.org",
", where he suggests dropping one of the ice moons of Saturn on the planet to both fix the rotation problem (Venus has a very long day) and add some water. He suggests freezing... |
[
"What is the reason beavers build dams?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"They're creating a habitat. Beavers make dams across streams and small rivers in order to create a large, still pond. They then build a lodge out in the middle of the pond. Contrary to certain media portrayals, beavers don't live in or on their dam. They may not even build a dam if they find a suitable natural pon... | [
"Having water to hide in protects them from predators. They flood areas so that they can access their food sources (woody plants) from the safety of the water.",
"Of course, this is all instinctual and they will build dams even where there is already a pond. Evidence has shown that they react to the sound of ru... | [
"Beavers have teeth that grow continuously so they have to gnaw on trees to file their teeth down and keep them at a practical/comfortable length, even if they don’t end up biting the tree down and using it "
] |
[
"Do we know why our DNA is shaped as a helix? Why is it a twisted and not straight line? Are there advantages to this shape?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"In addition to the advantages, the double helix shape allows for the DNA to condense much more than a linear counterpart. Think of it as stretching out a slinky; there is a much longer string of metal than when coiled. The condensed shape in and of itself also had advantages. Endonucleases (enzymes that destroy DN... | [
"We know that DNA is a helix (well, a double helix to be more precise) because ",
"we literally took a picture of it",
" (from above, looking down on the two intertwined helices). As for why, it's the same reason a lot of macromolecules form helices; try stacking L-shaped blocks end to end into a tower. Chances... | [
"your answer is otherwise great, but I'd like to point out that the famous \"photo 51\" is ",
" a literal picture \"from above, looking down on the two intertwined helices.\" It is a diffraction pattern produced by an xray beam that was perpendicular to a large number of parallel DNA molecules. The pattern is n... |
[
"What is the true number of Covid infections in Switzerland and could there already be herd immunity?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Questions based on discussion, speculation, or opinion are better suited for ",
"r/asksciencediscussion"
] | [
"r/askscience",
" is not designed to assess personal theories and models. Questions based on discussion, speculation, or opinion are better suited for ",
"r/asksciencediscussion",
"."
] | [
"r/askscience",
" is not designed to assess personal theories and models. Questions based on discussion, speculation, or opinion are better suited for ",
"r/asksciencediscussion",
"."
] |
[
"How do they \"encrypt\" communication with satellites and rovers? What safeguards exist to keep unauthorized people from hacking their systems?"
] | [
false
] | Thanks in advance for any answers. | [
"I am currently involved in the ground segments of several exploratory deep space missions and the signals coming from/going to our probes are not encrypted in any way.\nThis is due to several factors:\n1) these missions are purely scientific and have no military component. \n2) in order to send something to the pr... | [
"Nitpick: please dont use \"encode\" when you mean \"encrypt\" (similarly \"decode\" and \"decrypt\"). They have very specific and defined meanings for two very different actions."
] | [
"Nitpick: please dont use \"encode\" when you mean \"encrypt\" (similarly \"decode\" and \"decrypt\"). They have very specific and defined meanings for two very different actions."
] |
[
"Why spinning black holes have a ringularity instead of a zero thickness disk?"
] | [
false
] | If the sole reason of postulating a ring at the center of the black hole is because point mass cannot have angular momentum then why not just have disc instead? A disc is more intuitive shape that any rotating mass would tend to form, we see it with bulging of the plantets and stars. Moreover the existence of a ring wo... | [
"... The problem is that since the singularity is, well, singular, it’s outside the domain of the theory itself to predict or describe anything about, so how can you even state that it has or doesn’t have angular momentum?",
"If we just take the schwartzchild singularity, I shouldn’t think that GR has anything to... | [
"Why spinning black holes have a ringularity instead of a zero thickness disk?",
"... a ringularity ",
" a zero-thickness disc. Sort of.",
"More accurately, it is a ",
", and not a disc. A disc is a solid shape — like a frisbee — while a ring is hollow on the interior. In other words, a ring is to a disc... | [
"I believe you are just taking issue with a minor abuse of language. \"Support\" in this context doesn't mean \"physical support\" the way that, say, a steel beam might support the weight of a bridge. It just means that mathematically a zero-volume point can't have a nonzero angular momentum because there is no m... |
[
"Could someone explain the use of the different units utilized in radiation science?"
] | [
false
] | I'm so confused with all the units used for determining radiation. Can someone please explain to me what's the difference and the USE of the the units? I've been told to speak to patients in terms of BERTs... but then.... Grays, Siverts, Curies, Bequrels, Rads... etc... Is there also a difference when describing "gener... | [
"The reason that there are so many different units is because many of them express different things. Though some of them are simply rescaled versions of others.",
"So, here goes. Radiation comes in various forms and from various sources. Turn on a lamp and you've got radiation that you can see. Leave it off and i... | [
"If I remember correctly, isn't there also a time variant complication when considering biology? ",
"For instance, 0.01 Grey imposed on a given human over a week would be much less damaging than over 5 seconds. I think it has to do with the error correcting ability of our DNA repair mechanisms - errors are easier... | [
"For the first two bullet points, we normally use the ",
"linear no-threshold model",
", which implies that 0.01 Gy given all at once, or spread in 10 sessions of 0.001 Gy over a month carry the same risk of developing a cancer.",
"There are those who believe the above model is not realistic and defend the th... |
[
"Why does the sun appear orange at sunset and sunrise but during the day appear white?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"As photons from the Sun pass through the Earth's atmosphere, they experience Rayleigh scattering, whereby low-wavelength (bluer) light is preferentially scattered compared to redder light (Rayleigh scattering depends on 1/wavelength",
"). This is why the sky appears blue during the day- since blue sunlight is sc... | [
"Also, In the atmosphere there are particles such as dust and Sahara sand that does the refraction. The sun rays reflect off of the bottom of clouds when it is low in the sky adding to the colors seen."
] | [
"It actually works opposite of this on Mars. The dust in its atmosphere scatters red light more, so the sky is red and sunsets are blue."
] |
[
"Why don't our animals get sick as often as we seem to?"
] | [
false
] | I've had a lot of pets, and never had them get a cold or flu. And yet here I am, ever year, suffering through the season's cold. So what gives with humans and getting sick? | [
"another way of putting it:",
"diseases like to spread between conspecifics (i.e. another dog is the most likely carrier of a dog pathogen). dogs don't tend to congregate in big groups where they come into contact with hundreds or thousands of other dogs. in that sense it's a matter of probability.",
"livestock... | [
"It comes down to exposure. On daily basis pets don't come into contact with as many carriers of pathogens as we do. They also don't deposit and pick up as many pathogens off of surfaces (such as door knobs). "
] | [
"Yes, there more human pathogens on a door knob than there are dog pathogens on a dead bird. Why would there be a significant number of dog pathogens on a bird?"
] |
[
"How do chemists theorize whether a chemical is combustible or not?"
] | [
false
] | Is there something specific about the chemical formula or molecular structure that causes combustion reactions with oxygen? If so, how can one tell if a substance will ignite without igniting it? I've searched this and can't find anyone who has asked this before. | [
"In terms of the thermodynamics, (ignoring the kinetics or activation energy required to initiate a reaction) deciding whether a reaction will be exothermic or not is dependent on the energies of the products and the reactants. Carbon based compounds tend to be highly combustible due to the large energy gain from c... | [
"Diamonds are combustible. Sapphires are not because the aluminum is already oxidized to its lowest energy state. Carbon atoms in cellulose are not \"loose\", indeed they are much more tightly packed together in (C6H10O5)n than CO2 in air. They combust because carbondioxide and water are both lower energy states... | [
"Well, there are two things to look at",
"Oxidation. Atoms require a positive ionic charge to ignite with oxygen. The first step is something really wanting to grab hold of that O and not let go.",
"It's energy state. Combustion happens when a sustained chemical reaction produces energy.",
"\nA good genera... |
[
"Do thermochromic leuco dyes go from transparent to translucent or transparent to opaque?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"Leuco dye just means a pigment that changes colour based on some sort of trigger.",
"Specifically for thermochromic pigments ",
"examples can be found of almost any colour transition",
".",
"In the link above there is ",
"a clear that turns opaque blue when heated",
"an opaque blue that turns clear whe... | [
"Got it.",
"Reverse thermochromic pigments",
". Colourless and heat changes to pink / green / blue / black."
] | [
"Got it.",
"Reverse thermochromic pigments",
". Colourless and heat changes to pink / green / blue / black."
] |
[
"Question about time dilatation."
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"This of course ignores the spaghettification effect of the black hole as you approach the event horizon.",
"Interestingly, if the black hole is big enough, you can safely approach the event horizon without the tidal forces being sufficient to cause you any harm. You could get well past the event horizon of the s... | [
"You're feeling around the idea of an asymptote, here. The equations describing time dilation have a form essentially the same as 1/x, as in ",
"this graph",
". As you can see, as you approach x=0, the line gets closer to the y axis. In fact, as you get closer to x=0, the line gets arbitrarily close, but it nev... | [
"(And also, this is very hypothetical, and I'm not saying anything about what amounts of time dilation any particular real life spaceship setup might be able to achieve.)",
"There is another way to do this.",
"If you lowered someone towards the event horizon of a black hole to you (the distant observer) the per... |
[
"Why do fevers cause weird, vivid dreams? What do fevers do to your brain?"
] | [
false
] | First, there was a question like this a year ago, but there were no satisfactory answers. I was hoping someone with new insight may be able to shed light on the phenomenon. Anyway, I've always had crazy dreams/nightmares when I had a fever. They were always extremely vivid and life-like (which meant that they usually t... | [
"It's a great question that's surprisingly hard to answer! Here's my best shot. Fever can be induced by chemicals called ",
". Many ",
" (immune-signalling molecules) are pyrogens. When you get an infection, your body releases more cytokines.",
"There are ",
"well established connections between cytokines a... | [
"I always assumed that the weird dreams were caused by the elevated body temperature leading to the brain chemistry not working quite as well as it does at normal temperature. Especially since it's so hard to think coherently when one has a temperature. It also seems like the higher your temperature, the less your ... | [
"Wouldn't the simple fact of elevated body temperature affect brain/neuron functioning?",
"All chemical reactions that I am aware of are effected by temperature. Some go faster when the temperature gets elevated, some go slower. Since at a fundamental level all biology reduces down to chemical reactions, it is re... |
[
"Is there anything, apart from the cost of it, preventing us from accelerating Moore's Law?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"Physical space. We reached or will reach soon the end of moore's law. You heard of 7nm CPUs, transistors in them are already very very small, small enough that it is possible to count atoms in them. Moore's law says that every two yeard density of transistors doubles. By its prediction soon we should have transist... | [
"Just to be clear, Moore's Law has to do with transistor count, not \"processing power\" directly. Transistor counts ",
" continued to increase exponentially up to the present day, and this is a big part of why we have gotten the improvements in power efficiency, cost, cache sizes, and multi-core parallelism that... | [
"Perfect answer. IMHO, the R&D budgets to push Moore's Law isn't there anymore. There was great financial rewards in getting more and more power out of a chip. In 2019, research is going more towards getting the same processing power to consumers at a lower initial cost and lower power consumption. Software ... |
[
"IAMA recent PhD graduate in Alzheimer's Drug Discovery. Listen to my thesis inside, help me get it animated, and AMA!"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"Oxidative stressors seem to play a large role in neurodegenerative diseases such as in ",
"Parkinson's Disease",
" and possibly AD as well. AD is also characterized by a degeneration of multiple brain structures that synthesize acetylcholine and ",
"norepinepherine",
". ",
"Recently, I stumbled upon a pa... | [
"I work in cancer drug discovery, and I'm very curious what the pipeline looks like for alzheimer's. Do you use cell lines for drug screening? What pathways/proteins do you target? What is the goal of the drug therapy (e.g. inhibition, anti-aggregation, anti-misfold, neuroprotection)?"
] | [
"Which target(s) do you think are the best bet for a drug therapy? If it's amyloid, do you think the drug will have to be administered preventatively rather than after symptoms appear?"
] |
[
"When standing next to a radio receiving a weak signal, why does it fade out as you walk away?"
] | [
false
] | Is your body acting as an extra antenna? | [
"Your body is interacting with the radio waves in several ways, some of which boost performance and some of which impede performance.",
"First, if you stand with the antenna between you and the source, you may be reflecting energy from the source back towards the antenna. Depending on the exact configuration, thi... | [
"We could, but it's much more predictable and effective to bounce them off a specially-made surface which is highly reflective and exactly the right shape. That's why we have ",
"dish antennas",
"."
] | [
"We could, but it's much more predictable and effective to bounce them off a specially-made surface which is highly reflective and exactly the right shape. That's why we have ",
"dish antennas",
"."
] |
[
"What exactly does it mean for a superfluid to have phase coherence?"
] | [
false
] | I have heard about phase coherence in the context of quantum optics (e.g. superradiance) but was wondering what exactly the precise meaning of phase coherence in superfluids is and how it arises. | [
"In superfluid theory and, indeed most of many-body theory, phase coherence generally means that the wave function of an individual particle is in phase with wave functions of other particles (at least on some long-range scale). This allows one to use the whole macroscopic wave function approach. ",
"For instance... | [
"Ahh that makes sense. Thank you. How exactly does one prepare the molecules to be phase coherent at higher temperatures (it appears it occurs naturally as T goes to 0 K)?"
] | [
"Yes, provided that the system is a superfluid at low temperatures you just need to cool it sufficiently to get the superfluid phase. "
] |
[
"How does the expansion of the universe affect the average distance between particles?"
] | [
false
] | I don't mean interatomic or subatomic spacing getting larger due to the expansion of the universe. I mean if you took the average distance between all particles in the universe, from the distance between two carbon atoms in a benzene ring to the distance between the benzene ring and an ion in the Sun to the distance be... | [
"Of course it does. Let's say you have two galaxies. Galaxy one contains N particles and galaxy two contains M particles. If you increase the distance between those galaxies, you're going to be increasing all of the M*N intergalactic distances, even if you don't increase the (N",
" + M",
")/2 intragalactic dist... | [
"It doesn't. On the scales of galaxy clusters and smaller, there is no expansion of the universe. The higher mass density of these smaller regions means that there's gravitation on these scales rather than expansion of the universe."
] | [
"Awesome, thanks. This sort of popped into my head randomly, this answer definitely clarified things."
] |
[
"Besides the Turing Test, is there any other checkbox that must get ticked before we can say we invented true artificial intelligence?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"This is a good question, in the sense that it can be used to clarify multiple intertwined misconceptions about AI.",
"First, ",
"?",
"In computer science, the field of AI research defines itself as the study of \"intelligent agents\": any device that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize ... | [
"That line about the pigeons is great. I've been looking for something that cuts to the core of the limits of human form for AI and robotics."
] | [
"He outlined a bit of the history and current state of the field, but he did not attribute a hard definition to artificial intelligence. If anything, he discussed more of what AI isn't than what it is. ",
"Edit: word"
] |
[
"How much damage can be caused by a single swapped pair in our DNA?"
] | [
false
] | Say a pair that is normally G - C, what would happen if it were swapped for A - T, or even just flipped to C - G? What amount of havoc could that wreak? | [
"That kind of change is called a ",
"single-nucleotide polymorphism",
", or SNP. Depending on where in the genome the change occurs, it can make quite a bit of difference in an individual.",
"Diseases caused by a SNP are Mendelian genetic disorders. ",
"Thrombophilia",
" is an example of a disease that ... | [
"Check out the amino acid chain code groups. (There is an actual name for the table and i cannot remmeber what it is buttt..) it will tell you what would happen to a specific part of the genome if certian thins were to be switched around. Most of the time though nothing becuase you body has several ways of detec... | [
"Sickle Cell anemia is another example of a disease caused by a single nucleotide change. In this case, an A is swapped for a T, and instead of the normal valine amino acid, you end up with a glutamine, causing a sticky patch on hemoglobin that ultimately leads to sickling of the red blood cells. "
] |
[
"Are there any species in which the females compete with one another over males for sex?"
] | [
false
] | It seems like a lot of species in the animal kingdom have the males compete (fight, show off, etc.) with one another for "breeding rights" with the females. Is there any species that do the opposite of this? Edit: Wow, thanks for so many responses! I think the best scientific answer is "The Bachelor" though... | [
"Female ",
"Jacanas",
" behave much like male lions. ",
"In species where both parents need to work together to raise offspring females may compete to partner desirable males, this happens in ",
"kingfishers",
" and of course in humans."
] | [
"The answer is you're both right",
"Its called sexual selection as opposed to natural selection, where both genders are seeking partners based on the most desirable traits.",
"Where there isn't much choice of selection, either by lack of partners or low social standing, the criteria for mate selection has to de... | [
"The answer is you're both right",
"Its called sexual selection as opposed to natural selection, where both genders are seeking partners based on the most desirable traits.",
"Where there isn't much choice of selection, either by lack of partners or low social standing, the criteria for mate selection has to de... |
[
"If the Big Bang theory is correct, how can we look back in time if we were once at the center of the event?"
] | [
false
] | I was reading an article today about how hubble is getting close to seeing the very beginnings of our universe very close to the big bang, and it got me thinking about how that could be possible. What I don't understand is that even if space is continuing to expand, why would we be seeing light that is so old? For inst... | [
"The big bang did NOT happen at one point in space. This is the fault in your understanding. At the instant of the big bang the universe was infinite in density AND size. Then the big bang caused this infinite space to start expanding, hence no longer infinite in density.",
"When the universe transitioned from be... | [
"This is the fault in your understanding. At the instant of the big bang the universe was infinite in density AND size.",
"This is by no means certain, even if the universe is currently infinite in extent."
] | [
"The misconception here is that the big bang occurred at a specific point, when in fact it occurred at ",
" point. The farthest we can see is the point when the universe became cool enough for electrons to bind to protons and form gas (instead of plasma), before this, the universe was opaque. This is the cosmic m... |
[
"what creates the heat in our body?"
] | [
false
] | is it just the friction of moving blood and other things constantly moving or is it the digestion of food? | [
"The major source of heat is the release of chemical energy through cellular respiration!",
"For example, glucose breaks down into carbon dioxide and water, but it also liberates heat."
] | [
"Additionally you might google for ",
"Thermoregulation",
" since different animals and organisms have quite an interesting variety of mechanisms to keep their body temperature. Especially in very hot/cold environments."
] | [
"Exactly correct.",
"However, cellular respiration is a lot of stuff. Generally heat is generated in the Krebs cycle by the proton gradient created across the mitochondrial membrane. This is regulated by signaling factors received and sent by factors in the hypothalamus.",
"Our bodies heat up due to the hypotha... |
[
"Looking for a material with unusual properties. Can anyone help?"
] | [
false
] | So I am looking for a material (preferably a plastic or a coating that can go on plastic) that will fluoresce when illuminated by a wavelength of light not produced by fluorescent light bulbs, stay luminous for a brief amount of time after the light stops shining on it, and then go back to normal. Is anyone aware of so... | [
"I'm sure somebody would custom-make it for you if you offered them huge amounts of money.",
"Before you do that try waving a UV laser pen around a flooring store and see what lights up. Maybe try some of the carpets. Fluorescent dyes are added to all kinds of things to make stuff look brighter."
] | [
"You might want something like this: ",
"http://www.thorlabs.com/newgrouppage9.cfm?objectgroup_ID=296",
"They light up under only specific wavelengths"
] | [
"try uv paint makers, they might be able to modify their paint to the wavelength you need? "
] |
[
"What's the density of this newly discovered massive black hole?"
] | [
false
] | It's been mentioned in the news that a 21 billion solar mass black hole has been discovered. According to the last point in the the density of a billion solar mass black hole would be the same as air. That really makes no sense to me. A little help science? | [
"Just because something is massive doesn't mean it's dense. ",
"Beyond that, the definition of density used in this article is the mass divided by the volume of the event horizon. There is some debate over whether this is a reasonable definition for the density of a black hole. It's turns out that this definition... | [
"To be perfectly honest, black holes don't have a density. All of the mass exists at a single point in the middle of the black hole. "
] | [
"I think you're off by a little bit.",
"Should be \n (c",
" ) / (8 pi G",
" M",
" )"
] |
[
"Does an electric current induced through a metal change the tensile strength of that metal?"
] | [
false
] | I was watching a video that talked about how the strength of a metal is based on its bonds and the arrangement of those bonds. How does a flowing current through a metal affect that tensile strength? Does it make any difference (even a negligible one), or is it completely unrelated? | [
"The current would heat the metal, which would reduce it's strength. I suppose for a metal with a low ductility transition temperature, the heating could make it ",
", or able to absorb more energy before actually breaking. "
] | [
"Others have already mentioned that you'lljust have joule heating in a typical metal, but there are some materials (mostly ceramics and I believe two known polymers, PVDF is the big one) that are ",
"piezoelectric",
". These materials aren't electrically conductive, but when subjected to an electric field exhib... | [
"As the others I'm not coming with a definite answer here, so I'm just adding to what has already been mentioned.",
"When you are running a current through a system you will change the behavior of the system. When the system sits still in its ground state (at T=0 K) it is in equilibrium (even when strained) but w... |
[
"Why is integration much more difficult than differentiation, despite them being just the inverse operations of each other?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"First we need to clear up some terminology. I think we're okay with what differentiation is, but what we mean by \"Integration\" is a bit unclear. Technically, integration is how you define the signed area under a function over an interval using Riemann sums, ie the limit of smaller and smaller rectangles. In this... | [
"Beautiful. Yeah, every time I code up an integration, I stop and think, “…is that right, it’s really that simple?” Because it’s just a sum of lots of tiny things and that’s how it gets treated. No resemblance at all to the rigmarole of figuring out how to tackle some huge nasty antiderivative in Calc II."
] | [
"Yeah, interesting how rapidly the sum of those areas can converge to the true anti derivative as the width of those Riemann rectangles decreases"
] |
[
"Are the number of electrons equal to the number of protons in the universe?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Given that those aren't the only charged particles by a long shot, it might be more interesting to ask whether the overall charge of the universe is neutral, or whether it's unbalanced, in the same way that matter/antimatter is unbalanced."
] | [
"Yes, at least within our observable universe. If it were not we would need electromagnetic corrections to general relativity in order to describe the behavior of celestial objects on large scales. Since we do not, we can conclude that there is no significant contribution from an unbalanced amount of charge (even... | [
"I can believe that charge is conserved, but do we know that it's ",
"?"
] |
[
"Why are there 144hz monitor? Where did that number come from"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"DVI was developed when 16:10 monitors were popular, especially for digital displays that actually used DVI. Since most 16:10 monitors were 1920x1200 or lower (except for 2560x1600). Therefore, 1920x1200 @ 60hz is a logical max resolution/bandwidth for single link DVI. I don't think it was a technical limitation, i... | [
"It's the highest refresh rate Dual Link DVI (connection) can support at 1920x1080.",
"Dual Link DVI can do 1920x1200 @ 120hz or 1920x1080 @ 144hz",
"To get more bandwidth, you would have to use DisplayPort 1.2 or 1.3, which I think would allow for 1080p @ 240hz in the case of 1.2"
] | [
"that doesn't really explain it. thatsS like saying \"thats all it can do because that all ",
" part can do\". the real question is why is it limited to 144hz. you'd probably have to look into the specification of the DVI protocol to find out. It likely has to do with being able to reliably output data to the... |
[
"used AAA 24 battery just hissed and rolled slightly on its own. What could have caused this?"
] | [
false
] | I had a couple of used AAA 24 batteries on my desk while browsing reddit. Suddenly, one let out a hiss, kind of like water hitting a hot frying pan. The sound lasted around .5 seconds and the battery rolled half an inch. I'm really curious as to what could have caused this...? | [
"Most consumer batteries have a tiny pressure fail-safe that will release in the event of a battery going bad and building up pressure. The hissing you heard was the battery releasing the pressure that had built up inside due to a chemical reaction. The rolling may have been caused by the escaping pressure. ",
"H... | [
"Please everyone, no more comments about possession, demonic souls, magic, farting, defending territories and aliens. They're just going to get deleted. "
] | [
"Here's a link",
" which goes straight to the time where the safety feature is explained "
] |
[
"Is Mathematica 8 worth getting?"
] | [
false
] | Yeah? I already have Mathematica 7. I'm a senior-level astronomy+physics major. | [
"There's no reason to upgrade to 8 if you already have 7. It's got some integration with Wolfram Alpha but other than that I haven't found any significant differences.",
"If you don't already have Mathematica, then what are you getting it for?"
] | [
"There are plenty of free programming languages if what you want is to program. if you don't have any problems that don't require the specific bonuses of using mathematica, then why waste the money on a license?"
] | [
"There are plenty of free programming languages if what you want is to program. if you don't have any problems that don't require the specific bonuses of using mathematica, then why waste the money on a license?"
] |
[
"Why is it when I focus on the source of a sound (e.g. looking directly at someone talking) I can hear and comprehend them better? Can hearing be \"focused\"?"
] | [
false
] | As an example, if I'm in a lecture and someone is talking while I'm not directly looking at them, this periphery noise is harder to understand than if I looked directly at them and focused my visual attention on them. Does this mean you can actually focus and pinpoint your hearing according to your visual focus? Or is ... | [
"For speech in particular, looking at the speaker allows you to lip-read to better parse the conversation. Many adults who suffer gradual hearing loss don't realize it until the hearing loss has progressed significantly because they are able to compensate by reading lips."
] | [
"It is pretty simple actually. If you look at the design of the ear it is intended to catch sound coming directly at us. Peripheral noise typically won't encompass your head so information going in only one ear provides only one stream of data and nothing to cross reference it to. Compared to directly in front of y... | [
"In addition to this, there is the ",
"cocktail party effect",
", which describes the phenomenon of suddenly \"tuning in\" to a conversation you've previously been filtering out when you hear your name spoken, for example. Someone else can probably explain this more fully, but essentially you are constantly fil... |
[
"Since Pluto's eccentric orbit crosses that of Neptune's, will there be a point where both collide?"
] | [
false
] | Reading Neil Degrasse Tyson's 'Death By Black Hole' where he mentions Pluto has an orbit much like an asteroid with an eccentric orbit, to the point that it crosses the orbit of Neptune. Is it possible that Neptune and Pluto could collide in the future? | [
"No.",
"Pluto's orbit doesn't intersect Neptune's in three dimensions, and they don't even come close. Pluto's orbit is at a considerable angle to the ecliptic (the plane that the solar system mostly lies in).",
"Additionally, Pluto's orbit is in 3:2 resonance with Neptune's, providing further protection from a... | [
"As the other comment states, Pluto travels around the sun 2 times for each 3 times Neptune does.",
"There's more to it than that, however - this resonance actually stabilizes the orbits somewhat. If an impactor were to perturb Pluto's orbit to 1.4999 times that of Neptune, the resonance will actually reestablish... | [
"What does the 3:2 resonance mean?"
] |
[
"How did someone discover that the t-rex had vision based on movement? If it is true or not how do we know either way?"
] | [
false
] | Just like the title says, how do we know what kind of vision the t-rex had. | [
"No one has ever discovered that, except maybe for Michael Crichton and Steven Spielberg. The T-Rex likely had excellent vision. Possibly even better than a hawk's.",
"http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2014/05/true-t-rex-couldnt-see-didnt-move/"
] | [
"I don't think Crichton/Spielberg actually made it up, it's a common misconception applied to predators in general which they just extended to dinosaurs. Clearly not true though, because if predators could only see moving objects, they would just run around slamming into trees and walls and rocks and stuff, so it's... | [
"In Lost world, the book, Chriton specifically says the T. rex doesn't have vision based on movement. One of the characters thinks he can hold perfectly still in front of it and gets killed."
] |
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