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What would happen to atmosphere if there wasn't any sunlight? Let's say sun is replaced by a cold sphere of the same mass. | > What I'm thinking is this - if the sun's rays weren't there, how would this total amount of energy be replenished? It wouldn't. The planet would become increasingly colder. You can think of heat as free energy floating around, which we normally take as an average. Molecules high in the atmosphere can actually be incr... |
If LASIK eye surgery is proven to correct eyesight, why hasn't it caught on and put the glasses/contact industry out of business? | 1. it is far more expensive than glasses 2. children are rarely good candidates and lots of them need glasses 3. they slice your eye open with a scalpel. 4. then they shoot lasers into your eyes. 5. some people like wearing glasses 6. it cannot correct all vison problems 7. while it improves sight in general many patie... |
what do the numbers in blood pressure mean? | When you pump up a blood pressure cuff all the way, the brachial artery is completely clamped shut: no blood is flowing and there is no sound. As you start to lower the cuff pressure, it eventually gets to a point where your left ventricle's heart beat is strong enough to push the artery open and let a rush of blood th... |
Why do eggs harden when heated? | Eggs are made largely of proteins, which are very large, complicated molecules. The protein that makes up most of the egg's white is albumin, which looks [something like this]. Proteins normally have a well-defined, somewhat rigid shape, but when heated up, they get all messed up - they lose their structure, and all th... |
How do 'quick change' artists do it? | Watch [this act]. It's a reasonable interpretation. Without wishing to seem crude, the easiest way to see how it's done is to look at the size of her boobs at the start and end of the act. There's nothing more too it than multi-layered clothing. EDIT: It's the wrong link, but I'm leaving it in as I think it's a better ... |
Why when hyper-ventilating does it help to breath in a bag? | When you're hyperventilating you're essentially blowing off too much CO2, leading to respiratory alkalosis, which means your blood's pH is too high , which in turn has all sorts of negative effects since you need a very specific pH range for a lot of very important proteins and enzymes to function properly. Breathing i... |
What causes photos of screens to look so bad? | It's called the moire effect. Cameras have pixels, and those pixels are arranged in symmetric rectangular grids. Displays have pixels, also arranged in symmetric grids. When those grids perfectly align, the image is fine. However, if the grid is off a little then camera pixel A sees display pixel A and a little bit of ... |
Can someone legally arrest a cop? Why/Why not? | I would not advice it. Cops are like brothers in any part of the world, the situation will get framed differently and you will be bullied. Best way to go about is a less direct approach and let the police arrest the police officer. |
How do some flowers close tightly at night? Why do they do this? | I know that some flowers do it to trap small pollinating insects inside overnight to ensure good pollen distribution. Idk if this holds true for all flowers that close at night. |
Why is it harder to control your bladder than your bowels? | Urine is produced constantly and in greater amounts than faeces. Plus it's a liquid, and the muscles that are supposed to control it get weaker, like any muscle as you age. The shape of the colon means that there's more room for poop to build up, so it's less urgent than your bladder, if it's full, its coming out. Ther... |
why is Ford's stock (~$30) significantly cheaper than Nissan's stock (~$1,100)? | Prices of individual shares are not as relevant as the overall market cap of the company. Share prices can be driven downward by having stock splits, which most companies do when the per share price becomes highThe price of Nissan is ~$18.50. What you are looking at is the price of Nissan in Japanese yen. I think that ... |
What do people mean when they say a console has a different architecture than another console? | If you're doing computer science, you probably have some awareness that certain computer components go together, while others don't. For example, Intel processors have to go in a motherboard with a compatible socket and chipset, as do AMD processors. These different 'architectures' also deal execute different instructi... |
Attachment Parenting and the theories around it. | What about it seems creepy. It all seems natural to me. Historically we've almost always slept with, carried, and breastfed our babies. It seems obvious that concentrating on nurturing a child would have positive outcomes. On the other side it can be taken too far. If a mother is forcing a 7 year old to breastfeed or c... |
Why is Cyprus still split into north and south? | Cyprus has been divided since 1974 when Turkey invaded the north. The island was partitioned with the northern third inhabited by Turkish Cypriots and the southern two-thirds by Greek Cypriots. The two groups want independence more than to live together. |
why are movies still released in theaters? | Because going to the theater is an experience. You go with a group of people, you are watching a screen much larger than you could ever own with a sound system far superior to what you could ever own. Yes you can watch the movie online in your home, or buy it on Blueray or via your cable but you cannot replicate the mo... |
Why do kids that come from poor back grounds have kids earlier in life on average? | Ain't nobody got time for kids when starting a career. Poor people tend to have jobs instead of careers. That and we like to fuck a lot.Sex is one of the few free joys in life. Poor people tend to flock to it early. On top of that less guidance sometimes, and worse education of the consequences. |
what are those lines and bumps on hard palate(roof of the mouth)? | Googled your exact title, first result is a wiki article: > On the anterior portion of the roof of the hard palate are the rugae, irregular ridges in the mucous membrane that help facilitate the movement of food backwards towards the pharynx. |
Why Dick Cheney is a "war criminal", and worse than other Bush-admin politicians who also pushed for war. | People consider Dick Cheney a war criminal, because there was no evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. This was the whole basis for entering and bombing Iraq. Also, Dick Cheney was the Chair and CEO of [Halliburton] which is the largest US military defense contractor. No conflict of interest there |
Why do our eyes get crusty in the morning? | Tear ducts produce tears regularly to clean and lubricate the eyes. Overnight, this often builds up and dries leaving you with crusty eyes.You tear during the night but you're not blinking. Blinking helps spread tears over the ocular surface and helps guide excess tears to the puncta for drainage. Without blinking, the... |
why are Android application updates as big as the size of the app, while on Windows/steam they are very small? | Android apps are packaged and treated as a single unit whereas on steam it is installed as a series of files. So on one hand you replace the whole unit , on the other you can replace individual files.In the case of PUBG , all the code and assets are compiled into a binary blob against which you can't apply patches , yo... |
How do we know how fast the sea level rose 2000 years ago? | Here is the blog of one of the scientists in the study. _URL_1_ On the second page, you'll see they talk about drill cores of coastal sediments, and here is an article talking about how that is done: _URL_0_ The new paper uses statistical modelling techniques to use a wide variety of data points from those drill cores ... |
Why does cling film sometimes stick to the plate, bowl etc. and other times don't? | Static electricity. That's the cling in cling wrap. Remove all the electrons from it and it looses that magic. Learned this from Mr. Wizard. The OG science guy. |
Why is the major axis of paper/text documents vertical, while the major axis of human vision is horizontal? | Because written lines that are too long make text hard to read. The longer the line, the easier it is for you to lose track of where you are when you have to wrap back to the other side to continue a sentence. You'll tend to accidentally start re-reading the same line, or skip over the next line, more frequently the lo... |
How can I go back and forth between posts and listing of posts without losing the upvotes I already made to other posts? | > I read a post, then use the back arrow to go to the list of other posts. Upvotes that I gave no longer show They no longer show up in your browser because the browser is loading the page from its internal cache when you hit the back button. But the votes **are** there, and if you refresh the page to get a fresh copy ... |
Where do you find the number for pay phones? Like in movies a boss would call the exact phone you’re walking by on the street. | At one point in time, pay phones had a little strip above the keypad which had its phone number. That’s just my memory of them from childhood. I don’t know that I’ve touched one as an adult. As for someone just magically knowing the number of the phone you’re walking by; probably the same way they know where you are, m... |
What exactly do vitamins do? | Vitamins are chemicals and your body runs in a multitude of chemical processes. Aside from the proteins and fats you get from food, vitamins are the chemicals that are necessary for other chemical processes to occur. Being different chemicals, the different vitamins do different things. They sometimes rely on the prese... |
what are all the clowns? | Random strangers who are trying to amuse themselves and get attention by creeping out other random strangers. It happens every few years. One guy does it, it gets such a reaction and press coverage that other people just hop on the bandwagon. All they want is for people to talk about them and give them attention . |
What is arbitrage and how do arbitrageurs make money? | an arbitrage opportunity is one in which an investor can make a risk-less profit by exploiting price differences in different markets for identical goods. widgets go for $1 in abcville and for $2 in xyzville. you go and buy 100 widgets in abcville for $100 and *immediately* go and sell in xyzville for $200 and secure a... |
Why are the connections for the vent in a clothes dryer so frustrating and seemingly inefficient? | You are tackling this as a novice. The experienced people have done it scores of times and it is much easier for them. But I agree with you. Purchasers of appliances should know before had just how difficult installation is. But we do not see that information presented to us. A lot of electronic equipment has become mu... |
Why (on imdb) does it have some cast members roles as their role, then as their name in brackets? | > Chloë Grace Moretz\t \tCammie First entry = her name as listed on IMDB. Second entry = her role Third entry = how she was credited in the movie. Notice how the first entry and third entry are different - the first has ë, not e. Sometimes the change is more drastic, depending on how that person was credited in that mo... |
How can getting sun burnt cause skin cancer? | Generally skin cancer is caused by exposure to ultraviolet radiation, a high-energy but invisible type of light. UV radiation can penetrate your cells and cause direct damage to your DNA, and occasionally the damage will cause cancer cells to form. Ironically, UV radiation exposure is required for our skin to produce v... |
Why is there such a strong assumption online that Sweden has been culturally destroyed by immigration? | The country is accepting more refugees *per capita* than others, so it really is changing the nature of the population more rapidly than the newcomers can be assimilated. And their culture is very different indeed. Some Swedes do think it's going to wreck their country. |
Why is gun control such a controversial topic in the USA when the rest of the world sees it as a no-brainer? | It is because the 2nd amendment to our constitution says that it is the right of the people to keep and bear arms. The controversy is in the exact wording of the amendment. Gun control activists think that it only applies to state militias, while gun groups say it is an individual right. The supreme court has upheld th... |
How are address numbers of businesses and houses determined? | You mean the house numbers? It depends on the country. Standard practice in the US, for example, is that blocks are numbered from one end of the road to the other, and houses within the individual blocks are numbered sequentially; so a house number like 2404 means "block 24, house 4". Odd-numbered houses are on one sid... |
Why does a song sound different when you hear it on the radio compared to listening it on e.g. a CD on the same speakers? | It's mostly dynamic range . We measure changes in volume in dB. Our ears have a dynamic range of about 120-130 dB, so we can hear the difference between loud and soft pretty well. Commercial CDs have a dynamic range of 96dB, which is close enough to the human hearing to be comfortable. Now FM radio has a very limited d... |
Why isn't an asteroid wobbly like jello? | I just saw a talk by Neil Degrasse Tyson on this issue. Asteroids are non-Newtonian solids. The may very well behave like jello. They might be a hard, solid rock, but they may also be a collection of small rocks that are held together by its own weak gravity. We simply don't know with any given asteroid. |
why is it it so hard to create a weapons system that can intercept an inter continental ballistic nuclear missile? | Note the full meaning of "ICBM": it means that the missile has an initial boost phase where it fires rocket motors, during which the missile is over friendly territory. This phase lasts only a short period of time; far too little to allow a conventional missile to get to it from friendly territory. After that phase the... |
What safety measures are on gas tanks to prevent them exploding when a car is on fire? | Usually seal them so oxygen cannot get to the gas and contribute. On a science note, gasoline vapor is explosive and flammable, not so much liquid gasoline. So as long as the gas is condensed into a liquid and kept contained, it's quite safe. Which is also why you should never take the nozzle out of the tank if there i... |
FGM, how/why does it kill a woman's sex drive? | I'll assume you're a guy & you 've played with your penis before. You know how that spot at the head of your penis the the most sensitive? You 've got that "**OH YEAH!!**" spot and the rest is just "*that's nice *"? For the female, the clitoris is their "**OH YEAH!**" spot. If you damage or remove it, it's a lot harder... |
What is the economic explanation to why the government cant run the economy? | Hey, welcome to socialism. Really, it depends on what you mean by "better". Less regulated industries are often more efficient and produce more wealth period. More regulated industries are less efficient and produce less wealth, but distribute it more evenly and without exploiting workers. Healthcare is something of an... |
why are most people left or right handed? What stops us from all being ambidextrous? | All of these responses are terrible. They are all guesses, none of them explain why a toddler shows a preference, or why ambisinister is also a thing. However, this question has been asked several times before : _URL_0_ _URL_1_ _URL_2_ _URL_3_', "while not conclusive, the best theory for which theres scientific evidenc... |
Why is everything that touches raw meat contaminated, but the cooking utensil I'm using is okay to use from start to finish? | I always assume that cooking utensils AREN'T safe to use from start to finish. About 2/3rds of the way through cooking, I usually switch to a new spatula. Maybe I'm just paranoid, but I've done that for probably 20 years. Not sure it's really necessary, but as long as I'm going to running the dishwasher before the next... |
Why do some online magazines/articles not have the date? Why do some of them hide it? | I feel that the suggestion you provided is already a good answer but I will just say that not including a date also allows them to repost it to the top of their feeds without looking like they are reposting. |
Why do dogs lick humans? | I'm fairly certain they are interested in the salt buildup on your skin. If you get them a salt rock they'll lick once or twice instead of constantly. |
Why when we photograph the sky from earth do we see millions of stars that are lightyears away but every picture I have seen taken by astronauts in space the sky is black and starless? | It's purely incidental. You can find plenty of photos taken by astronauts where the stars are quite visible. You just don't see very many, because most photos are taken while a well-lit object is in the foreground of the shot, like the Earth, a spacewalking astronaut, or a piece of the ISS. Under these conditions, taki... |
Proscriptions of the Butlerian Jihad | For spaceships, people used Navigators to do the calculations. No computer required. The rest are just simple technologies without any sort of AI whatsoever. As far as I know, the Jihad only ended in the ban of artificial intelligence, but some places took it a lot further to the point of banning most technology.All of... |
Why do some communities Trick-or-Treat on the day before Halloween? | For safety mostly. If you get a lot of people to Trick-or-Treat the day before you end splitting the number of people up over two days instead of everyone trying to do it all at once. Also, it allows parent's to take really young kids out without having to worry about asshole teenagers because most of them will be out ... |
standard deviation -- I've read so many things online but still can't fully wrap my head around it. HELP! | So, if you have a bunch of numbers, you have a concept called the mean - that's when you add up all the numbers, and divide by how many there are. Like if I got a 6, a 9, and a 10 from three judges, my mean score was 8.33. There's also a concept called deviation, the deviation of each number is how different it is from... |
What's the difference in lifestyle between someone who is 'monetarily rich' and someone who is 'asset rich'? | If I inherit a huge house, I may be really rich in assets, but I'd still have no money to spend cos this is an illequid asset, meaning that it would take me a while to find a buyer and get a good price. If I inherit a bunch of stocks or gold etc, I can sell them slowly . This would allow me to improve my standard of li... |
Why can't I use one credit card to pay off another? | You can. Credit card companies assess a fee for paying off other credit cards. If the fee is less than your total savings from going from a higher-interest card to a lower-interest card, it might make sense to do this. You cannot use one credit card to make the payment on another credit card, though. That's called "rob... |
Working class opposition to unions. | In many cases it simply comes down to fear. For example, my father's place of employment tried to unionize. Management started rumors that they wouldn't be able to afford it if a union came in and would have to shut the sawmill down. |
why cant i feel all the processes occuring within my body? | You *are* feeling them. You're just used to how they feel. I guarantee if they suddenly stopped, you'd feel the difference. [_URL_0_] |
What differentiates the low-tier pizza chains (Papa Johns, Dominos, Little Caesars, Pizza Hut, etc.) | - They all have different recipes and do not use the same identical ingredients. You could probably identify each one in a blind taste-test, in comparison to other products. - Little Caesar's is known as the cheap brand and doesn't deliver. - Pizza Hut started off as a sit-down restaurant/buffet, but has since shifted ... |
If fast and slow metabolisms don't really exist, how can some people eat all day and not get fat? | Fast and slow metabolisms do really exist. Everyone is on a spectrum that changes as you age, get ill, etc so there is not just fast and slow but there are difference in peoples metabolisms.There was a study done on this where the participants were all fairly thin people and the study put them on a high calorie diet an... |
What exactly does the queen of England do? If they have a PM does the royal family actually run any part of the kingdom? | The Queen must give legislation "royal assent" before it becomes law, just like the US President. The difference is that nowadays it's only a formality and she dare not withhold assent. Where she does have some vestige of power is when it's time to choose a new prime minister . If the numbers are very close in the hous... |
How does scaling to 1440p work?(upscaling/downscaling from 1080p/4K) | If downscaling, you take every 4th pixel to get from 4k to 1080p. If upscaling you make up pixels to go between the existing pixels. This is done typically by averaging the nearby pixels. Obviously 1440 isn't a perfect fraction of 4k, so the math is a little more complicated, but the process is the same.Interpolation v... |
Why do we (humans) need our food clean and cooked while animals can just eat their food raw and not get sick? | You can eat raw food, but it has to be right after the kill, otherwise bacteria begins to spoil it quicklyAnimals have stomachs that process food differently than humans. They are meant to be able to break down a lot more things. |
Why is contact lens solution so friggin' expensive? | It's a sterile product that people are putting in their eyes. Lots of liability if someone gets an infection.Because people need it and will buy it at any price. Like gas. |
Why are the mp3 versions of an album sometimes more expensive than the actual physical copy? | The physical copy take up physical space, so retailers will often discount it more heavily in order to get rid of them. MP3 albums don't have that issue. |
Why are Lollipops called Lollipops? | In some old dialects, "pop" means "to slap". And "lolly" means "tongue". So, essentially, "slap the sweet on your tongue". It's not entirely certain if this is the real origin or not, but it seems highly probable, given that a sweet on a stick lets you do exactly that. |
Why do gymnasts peak in their teens? | Female gymnasts do, not males. It's because when girls go through puberty, they tend to get taller, grow breasts, get bigger hips, and gain fat . And all of this happens without really adding much muscle strength. So you might find a 17 year old girl with a boyish physique, who turns into a 22 year old woman with boobs... |
Mao's infamously catastrophic "Great Leap Forward" | I'm not a student of communism or Marxism or any of the flavors of communism that emerged in the first half of the 20th century. But what I can tell you is this. When Mao came to power in China, he had big plans to change his country. For all of it's history, China was an agrarian nation, or farmers my ELI5 friend. Mao... |
How planes such as the BF109 could shoot through the propeller | The guns firing mechanism is linked to the engine. It only fires at a time when the prop isn't in front of the barrel of the gun. |
Why our federal court system handles NFL punishments? | * NFL players have contracts, covering, among other things, discipline* Brady has a dispute over his contract, whether it's valid, and whether it was followed* Handling contract disputes is one of the main things courts do* High-value lawsuits between citizens of different states go to federal court |
How did infantry equipped with muskets deal with the loud sound of a musket during a battle. | Same way we did in Afghanistan: They sustained hearing damage. In the heat of combat you don't really realize how bad it hurts your ears. We never wore ear protection in country because it was uncomfortable and made you less situationally-aware.Infantry formations in the musket and front-loading rifle era fired in voll... |
What is happening when someone "loses their voice"? | Their vocal cords have been damaged so don't function properly. Not being able to talk is probably also a function of the body to stop further damage and allow your vocal cords to rest/recover. |
Why do your fingers "prune up" when in the water for a while? | Actually, I read about this. People with damaged nervous systems don't prune up so it's not just a physical reaction to absorbing water. It's supposed to make it easier for your hands to grip things while wet. |
Why do organizations still use 'Use it or Lose it' budgets? | Simply, this is the easiest method of deciding budget for each year for large organizations. Hypothetically yes you can send a representative out to each department to gauge their expenses however to buy qualified persons who has expertise in finances are expensive. So most large organizations use this to "cover their ... |
Why online translators are so terrible at translating | I speak 4 languages fluently and am pretty good at 2 more. Does this mean I never make mistakes translating from one to another? Quite the opposite, each language has its own specific grammar and syntax and they don't always overlap 100%. Now English isn't my first language but this probably looks fine to read and unde... |
Why does time seem to go by faster when you are drunk? | Time flies by when you're having fun. And don't forget: Having fun isn't hard when you have a library card. |
Rock climbers, how do camming devices work? | they redirect force to increase friction due to their shape. you compress one and shove it in a crack - when you try to pull it out, the pulling force cause the cams to press outward against the sides of the crack. The more weight you put on it, the harder it tries to stay putThe .pdf guides [here] may be helpfulBasica... |
Why are there no top caucasian sprinters in running but many in swimming? | You have labeled this as biology but there is a strong non-biological factor within your question that moves into some potentially controversial territory. I will let someone else address why Caucasians don't seem to dominate sprinting or any race wide genetic factors that could be at play . In order to be a top level ... |
Why is the crust of a hearty hunk of bread considered the most nutritious part, when the inside is composed of the same ingredients? | For the most part, this is just a widely perpetuated myth. It's mostly just something parents tell their children so the kids will eat the crust because children are notoriously picky eaters. There's some *minor* evidence that there's a few exotic nutrients that are more prevalent in the crust but it's a recent study &... |
If every country in the world has massive debt ranging from multi billions to trillions of dollars and it is still growing each year, how can any country expect to ever pay it off? | No country is expected to pay off their full debt at once. Little parts of that debt come due every day and as long as governments are able to honour the parts of debt that come due + pay interest for all the rest, it's all good. Greece's big problem is that things put them in a situation where they couldn't keep up wi... |
why does experiencing one or more pregnancies seem to lead to long term struggles with body weight for women ? | I am sure a real doctor will come and correct my language, but to put it simply, hormonal and muscular changes in the body and a lifestyle change generally, all lead to weight gain. After giving birth is is not unusual for the stomach muscles, especially on small women, to be trashed. This means that they look tubby ev... |
Why Napster got sued but UTorrent and others are still fine? | Napster was one centrally located server whereas utorrent is just an application that you use to connect to any of the millions of torrent tracker servers out there. It's as if there are millions of Napsters out there now instead of just the one. And those DO get shut down, it's just that there's so many of them and wh... |
What's so special about syrup from maple trees? why aren't other trees used? | You mean you've never had Eucalyptas syrup? It's awesome, but only if you want your pancakes to taste like shit. |
How do companies use derivatives to hedge risk? | The simplest, and oldest derivatives are food futures, as they allowed farmers to hedge the risk of bad years by selling large portions of their crop before it existed. In this case you have a farmer transferring a large amount of their future risk of crop failure to a third party, and generally paying a large premium ... |
Why are some YouTube videos not available in certain countries? | Because the copyright holder told YouTube not to show the content in those countries. Most of the time, it's because they don't have the rights to show it in those other countries. Back before the Internet, distributing music and movies to people took a lot of infrastructure- you had to have the contacts and contracts ... |
Why isn't this Troll Science comic correct? (link inside) | Okay. The picture is misleading. When you subtract the corners of square the perimeter is indeed still 4. And when you continue to subtract the perimeter is indeed still 4. But the problem is with the big sides that still remain. The rate at which the bigger sides get smaller is not fast enough to make a smooth curve a... |
What's happening when my brain enters 'auto-pilot' | Its basically due to your body not reviving any stimulus that it perceives as vital/important so your mind processes it, but deletes it immediately, this is very common when performing autonomous skills, which are skills you have mastered and are able to do with very little conscious thought or during tasks you find bo... |
why are stormclouds gray when normal clouds are white? | Yes, but the reason why it is darker is due to there being larger sized particles in the clouds. As they are getting closer to what we know as rain. This absorbs light differently light differently, thus making the cloud appear darker.It is just water particles, but stormclouds are thicker, and they completely block ou... |
How do social media notifications work for Public Figures and Celebrities? | I know a couple of DJs and they both have their "public" account which is managed by someone other than then, and a personal account that they use themselves. Edit: just to clarify, the 2 accounts aren't really any different , I mean that they use one for their personal use and the other is used purely for marketing pu... |
Why are investors will to invest in the Japanese economy where they receive a negative rate of interest? | Many of these investors are people who are dependent on a Japanese government that is not bankrupt. ie: military contractors, private prisons, etc. The amount of money they make from the government dwarfs what they typically pay in interest. |
What is the difference between a "crew cut", "taper cut" and a "fade"? | A crew cut has shortly cropped hair of the same length all over the scalp. With a 'fade' the hair's length shortens from the top to to bottom of the temples until the head is bald. |
When your tv doesn't catch a signal, what are those black and white 'dots' that you see quickly moving in the screen? | [TV Static on Wikipedia] Simmered down, it's basically all the random signals traveling through the air that the antenna or electronics are picking up, when there's not an actual TV station on that channel. It's random noise that the TV is still trying to interpret into a picture", 'About 1% is radiation from the big b... |
why does uncovering blankets from your feet cool you off so quickly? | Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained: 1. [ELI5: Why do my feet get cold and sweaty when I don't wear socks and have them underneath the blanket? ]1. [ELI5: Why does putting socks, which cover around 5% of my body, make me feel significantly warmer? ]1. [ELI5: Why does sticking one foot out of the ... |
[Culture] How did the colonization of Africa make them more vulnerable for HIV and AIDS? | The creation of arbitrary borders set during colonization hindered traditional movements of people, including their access to food, water, and fertile land. This has something to do with the rise of a number of diseases I can speak to a specific example in Burkina Faso as I worked on a non-profit water project there: T... |
Why our bones stop growing after closing of "growth plates", but recovers and can be even lengthen when they are broken? | Bones don't stop growing. There's a constant cycle of reabsorption of bone tissue and growth of new bone. This is what allows bones to repair damage done and stay strong. Different bones have these cycles happening at different speeds. Femurs, for example, have slow rates of reabsorption and growth while mandibles have... |
Why is circumcision so common in the US, and to a lesser extent, Canada, but is rare or nonexistent in the rest of the Western world and everywhere except the Middle East? | Judaism and Islam are two religions that mandate circumcision. In the US and Canada, circumcision was popularized in the 1800s by John Harvey Kellogg, who believed that it prevented little boys from masturbating , and so as a result, many children who have no Jewish or Muslim background are circumcised. The anti-mastur... |
Why do people keep their accent years after they've learned a new language? | Language learning is quite difficult. When we're young, we're wired to be able to pick up new words and sounds fairly easily, but we lose this ability over time. A baby learns language by repeating the sounds of the people around it, and this gets internalized as the "right" way to make a sound. When we learn a new lan... |
The invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq | Soviet comrades invade Afghanistan. We invade to fight Soviets.Afghans are like wtf.jpegTaliban fights Soviets too; funded by us.Taliban decide they don't like us there either.We overstay our welcome.Then Bush did 9/11. We invade Iraq because wmd's. Surprise surprise no wmd's. Mfw Vietnam flashbacks start.We increase p... |
Why are peanut allergies one of the most common? Why not any others? | I find that hard to believe, to be honest. Do you have any data for this? I found something completely different. [AAAAI data] I'm guessing your question revolves around the fact that you hear a lot more about peanut allergy, because that happens to be a violent one. Most of the allergies, which can range from somethin... |
Why do movie studios care if I pay for Netflix and use a VPN to change my location? They are getting paid either way. | The problem is that when Sony released a movie in Australia, it formed a contract with a studio in Australia to do that. So that studio owns the right to distribute that movie in Australia. If you use Netflix and a VPN to access the U.S. version of Netflix, you're cutting out the Australian company that actually owns t... |
how do mobile phone/ any battery work | It's a chemical reaction that's basically reversible. Add electricity, and the chemicals enter a state that we call "charged," where they can react and, in the process, generate electricity. Add a demand for electricity, and the reaction begins, releasing that electricity. |
Why we can't clone a dinosaur | Any DNA that's found would have degraded to the point that it wouldn't be possible to start. Although, crocodiles haven't changed much, so cloning a crocodile would be about as close as we could get to that.The DNA has decayed. The fossils are too old. Cloning wooly mammoths, saber tooth tigers, etc. might be feasible. |
When you delete a picture or empty the trash on your computer, where do the files go? | The space the files occupy is simply marked as being available again, and if you put new files on your computer, it may writing over that space. The files aren't actually removed until they're written over by new files. This is how programs that recover files that were deleted work , and why law enforcement wants to ta... |
Why does Kazakhstan play in european football championship qualifiers when it's not a part of Europe? | While the exact border between Asia and Europe is not universally agreed upon, the Ural River is commonly used for that border. Parts of Kazakhstan lie west of the Ural River, and thus are in Europe. |
How do watch batteries last so long when they are powering a tiny motor 24/7? | Your typical watch uses electricity for keeping time with quartz and moving the hands. Both require very little electricity. The motor for moving the hands is very very very very weak. Usually motors are built to do really intensive work like lifting a heavy items. The motor in the watch isn't going to lift a piece of ... |
When I drive my car in reverse, why does the engine(transmission??) make this high pitched sound? | When you reverse you use a different type of gear- a *spur* gear.A helical gear has teeth cut at an angle to the face of the gear, which makes for a smooth ride/sound.A *spur* gear has straight teeth. Each time a tooth engages on a spur gear, the teeth collide instead of gently sliding into contact as they do on helica... |
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