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Why do species like humans need to have a male and a female? Why can't we have one gender? | But some species are hermaphrodites. They only have one gender but do both roles, so they get to keep the evolutionary benefits of sex. Why don't mammals do that? |
How does an atom splitting cause an explosion? | driminicus had a great answer, but on the difference between chemical reactions and nuclear reactions . They are very different. When you cause a nuclear reaction you're actually turning some amount of mass into energy. Which according to E=mc^2 means that a TINY amount of mass creates a huge amount of energy. In a che... |
Why don't we have a cure for cancer? | and cancer isn't a foreign virus or bacteria. it's your own cells going nuts. if it's localized, u can do surgery. but if it spreads thru bloodstream, it could end up everywhere. analogy: there are 100 ppl on Earth that are homocidal killers , how do you find and remove them? if they're all localized in bufutown, nj, y... |
If every point in space is expanding in a direction opposite from all other points in space as observed by Hubble, why doesn't the universe fly apart infinitely quickly? | You're asking about [Zeno's Paradox]. It's solved with the [convergent series.] |
Why don't spiders ever get stuck in their own webs? (Do spiders ever get trapped other spider's web?) | Spiders webs themselves aren't themselves sticky. They add little globs of a glue like substance to them. Spiders can see the difference, and don't step on the glue. |
What is negative mass/energy? | The closest thing I can think of is something having negative *effective* mass in respect to certain behaviors. In college I did a research program in negative effective mass accoustic metamaterials. These materials have a structural arrangement that allows them to behave as though they have negative mass when it comes... |
how can protons remain so close together in an atom's nucleus when particles of the same charge repel one another? | It's called strong force. Think gravity, but much stronger and it only affects things that are extremely close together to begin with. Exerting enough pressure to separate them causes what we call < edit > fission < /edit > . |
Why aren't there any seat belts on buses? | The need for seatbelt arise when the deceleration is so fast and sudden that it launches you from your seat. When you're in a bus, you're driving in the largest vehicle on the road, and therefore your momentum is larger than any other vehicle you might crash into, which means that your deceleration will be slower, . Th... |
ELIA5: Heisenberg uncertainty principle | HUP says that you can not determine the velocity and position at the same time. Furthermore, the more specifically tou know the position, the less you know about its velocity. The more specific you know its velocity, the less you know about its position. The Macroscopic analogy is not very good one, since when the seed... |
Contagious yawn. How does this actually happen? (Example inside) | This article suggests that it's a function of empathy. You're more like to have a contagious yawn with someone you are close to rather than a stranger. _URL_0_ |
Why does ball sweat smell different from other sweat? | As far as i know sweat itself does not smell. Only when it get's old, the bacteria growing and multiplying in those nourishing fluids start to smell. You probably have different bacteria on your balls.Asking the tough questions that all guys think |
The difference between Communism and Socialism | Communism and socialism are not exactpy comprable things. Communism was a movement started by Karl Marx in Russia after he wrote the Communist Manifesto. It is an entire goverment policy including Social, Political, and Economic forms that all aim to move twords complete equality. Socialism on the other hand is an Econ... |
Why are there 360 degrees in a circle? | Others have already explained about its divisibility, so I'll just add that historically it's probably related to the Babylonian base-60 number system , its proximity to the number of days in a year, or both. |
What would happen if humans were to colonize a much larger planet than Earth? | We don't really know. Despite the ISS and MIR the topic of 0G living is still very open to exploration. |
Why are planets and stars only spherical and not any other shape? | Firstly they actually aren't spherical. They're oval-shaped. But you may not notice if you didn't look closely. As other have said, they're approximately spherical because gravity pulls equally well in all directions. If the sun were a cube for example, it would suggest that gravity is not pulling as hard in the direct... |
Why does seeing someone yawn give you the urge to yawn? | I'll have to find the article to back this up, but more recently, the contagiousness of yawning is believed to be a mechanism for showing empathy. In the study they also found that autistic people rarely or never yawned when they saw someone else do it. |
What is a "circle jerk" | when people get in a circle and masturbate I would assume on reddit it is a bunch of people who very much have the same view point 'getting off' on a topic |
why you have to sneeze when you have a cold | First of all, why do we cough?Coughing is a way to expel all of the flem and crap out of your throat to clear it. So you cough to clear your throat, like if you eat something and it goes down wrong, you cough. Colds just give you that flem.But why?Well, colds don't want you to breath. They want to take over your body, ... |
Why can astronomers see many distant galaxies but they don't know what's on outside of our own solar system? | Galaxies are large, bright objects, meaning that they are relatively easy to pick up with telescopes, even at absurdly large distances. The stuff in our solar system isn't bright to start with, as it depends on reflected sunlight. And that gets dimmer as the distance from the sun increases. Once you get out into the oo... |
If the Earth is rotating eastward at 465 miles per second at the equator, how is it that planes flying East get to their destination in a reasonable time? | The atmosphere moves with the earth therefore the earth's rotation doesn't affect travel time. Think about a bus moving 70 mph down the highway.. It would take you the same amount of time to walk from front to back as it would from back to front even though the bus itself is moving forward. |
What is happening when I crack my knuckles, and why does it feel so satisfying? | [Synovial joints are encapsulated]. Increasing the distance between the bones expands the volume of the joint, which contains synovial fluid. Dissolved in this fluid are gases, including nitrogen. In a similar fashion to opening a bottle of soda, decreasing the pressure of the synovial joint allows the dissolved gases ... |
How does Wifi "work" | Here is my basic version: WiFi is a radio transmission network system for computers to connect to each other via a router . 3G or 4G cell phone systems is another radio transmission network system but dedicated to voice data and internet data, early systems were almost entirely for voice. WiFi and cell phone radio syst... |
Viruses display a sort of 'intelligent' desire for survival and reproduction - even though they don't fit the traits required for a living organism, why don't we classify them as alive? | Life reproduces. A virus isn't able to reproduce. What it does is it makes a cell make copies of itself but it's the cell reproducing them, not the virus. |
Why do I always wake up minutes before my alarm clock goes off? | Many living organisms have a biological clock, which drive our circadian rhythm. Chemicals are created to wake the body up around morning and also to make the body sleepy in the evening. You wake up before your alarm clock because during this time your body is prepping you to restart your morning cycle by dumping chemi... |
If all black holes have zero volume and infinite density, how does changing its mass increase the size of its event horizon? | The event horizon is simply the point where the gravity is so strong that you can't escape the black hole. If you increase a black hole's mass, you increase the force of gravity it exerts at a certain distance. However, if you want a constant gravitational force while increasing the mass you have to increase the radius... |
Explain like I really AM five: What the hell is Pokemon about, anyway? | Huge Pokemon fan here. Pokemon are creatures found around this imaginary world. In most games, you are a young aspiring trainer, usually in a new region. You are given the assignment of capturing all these creatures and recording their data in a device called the Pokedex. Pokemon can be captured using Pokeballs and the... |
Why do humans get sick after eating raw meat but all other animals do not? | We don't. There are nutritional benefits to eating cooked food, but we can eat the raw stuff perfectly well, even if it does come with an increased risk of getting sick. Go to any sushi restaurant or decent steakhouse to see what I mean. Order your steak blue ", 'To add to the other responses, a lot of animals do get s... |
If species such as dinosaurs were around longer then humans (over 100 million years), why do they not evolve into more intellectual creatures? | Natural selection rewards changes that result in more children. For humans, being smarter meant living longer and getting more bitches, and babies. For dinosaurs, intelligence wasn't the deciding factor, it was about how fast you could move, how big you were, and how thick your skin was. |
Why do all diet soda beverages go with zero calories - and not 10-50 but with a much better taste? | Diet drinks work by replacing the sugar in a standard cola with an artificial sweetener . In either case you get the same level of sweetness, with near 0 calories. While artificial sweeteners are just as sweet, they don't taste exactly the same as sugar . The alternative is to simply decrease the sugar levels , but tha... |
If my body temperature is 98.6 degrees F., why don't I feel cold whenever the temperature outside is anything below that, for instance 95 degrees? | This is one of the more common questions on ELI5, [please check the search feature before posting!] I've removed this question. |
Why do different countries have different electrical outlets? | Different countries have different governments, and every one of them has technology advisors of some kind. Some of them preferred a solution for technical reasons, and others for commercial ones. The difference in outlet shapes also helps with different voltages, so you don't risk plugging a device that takes 110V int... |
How does a country with trillions of dollars in debt give out billions of dollars in financial aid to other countries? | If you make 40k a year, and have a 120k mortgage, no one freaks out. If you had that same mortgage and decided to give $50 to charity/church every month , no one would freak out. Why? Because that's only like 2% of your annual budget. The US government has close to a 3.5 trillion dollar budget, and gives something arou... |
Why would raising the minimum wage help? Wouldn't it just increase inflation? | Think of the converse. If you lowered minimum wage would the producers just return the savings in lower prices? if that's the case, remove the minimum wage and let prices drop to zero! |
How the expanding universe edge can travel faster than light. | In short, nothing is *moving* faster than light. It's more like additional space is *appearing between objects* at such a rate that the distance between said objects is increasing faster than light. But, in that scenario, nothing is moving. |
Why do good smells smell good and bad smells smell bad? | Ah, maybe you haven't found an answer because your question is misleading you. Lets expand it out slightly differently: *If odorant molecules are all chemical vapors that are detected by receptors and sent to the brain as nerve signals, why do we experience some as good smell and others as bad?* Now thats a much simple... |
Why do black holes emit Hawking radiation? | It's not why, it's what and how. Why questions aren't for science, that's for philosophy and religion. That nitpick out of the way .. But anyway, virtual particles pop into and out of existence constantly and then cancel each other out which means there's no net gain. It's not violating any laws because of this. One wa... |
Why does a recent discovery explain why hot water freezes faster than cold. | I thought this wasn't true, that being said checkout Evaporative cooling it is very cool :D [wiki]", 'This theory pops up every decade. Cold water freezes faster. The end. |
Why does looking into the sun/light help you to sneeze? | Me too. My old boyfriend didn't believe that the sun made me sneeze. This was pre-internet, so couldn't just look it up. One day we were playing Trivial Pursuit and there was a question about it. I felt vindicated. |
How is time an illusion? | It's not. It's part of the structure of the universe we live in, bound up with the concept of space. Hence, spacetime. It's quite as real as anything else is. |
Why do people have fingernails? | They are likely what's leftover from when our ancestors lost their claws. They could also help support the end of our fingers and make them more stiff.Our proto-primate ancestors used claws to get up and down trees, but as they got bigger, grasping branches became a more effective way of hanging on to them than simply ... |
How does quantum mechanics disprove determinism? | It doesn't disprove determinism. Some people even believe in superdeterminism . Determinism is still a philosophical issue; although there are those who argue strongly that QM is deterministic and also those who argue strongly that it is non-determinstic, it's certainly not something that science will be able to tell u... |
Why is it that cancer is not contagious? | It's a genetic abnormality which is specific to the person or in some cases family. Not like a virus although they can play a part in developing cancer. |
If nuclear waste is radioactive why don't they use it? Even if it can't maintain a reaction it must still produce a lot of heat right? | Nope. Dangerously radioactive substances don't necessarily put out any significant amount of heat. Most are just unimpressive looking liquids that happen to make your Geiger counter click a lot. |
What is causing the urge to crack my knuckles? | You are essentially popping little bubbles of gas within the joints when you crack them. In response, these bubbles will slowly fill back up again, which creates a feeling of pressure that is alleviated by the cracking. Over time you get used the feeling of the lower pressure after cracking, and the urge to crack your ... |
Why is it so much easier/faster for us to boil water than freeze it, considering the freezing point is much closer to room temperature than the boiling point? | To boil it you are adding heat, usually on an element with a high temperature and thus emitting a lot of heat. To freeze it, you have to take the heat out of the water, meaning it has to transfer to the surroundings. The colder the surroundings are, the faster it will transfer but the usual freezer isn't that cold . So... |
If Pangaea was on one side of the globe, would the Earth have had trouble spinning on its axis? | If Earth was shrunk down to the size of a billiard ball, it would be smoother than one. I'm guessing not much effect by the crust dynamics. [source]", '~~The average weight of the oceans balances out the average weight of the landmass. Moving the landmass is like shifting the weight on one side of a spinning top, but t... |
Why do bacteria and viruses kill their host? | When they do it is because they haven't had enough evolutionary time to mutate into a strain that keeps the host alive. There actually are some viruses that don't kill humans but reproduce nicely in them. And there are a lot of bacteria that actually are beneficial when they are living in the right spot in your body. |
Why does looking at a bright light help you sneeze? | I've heard that it's because your optic nerves are so close to your olfactory nerves that when you look at a bright light, the intense reaction in your optic nerves causes a reaction in the olfactory nerves, causing you to sneeze. But I'm no expert. |
When ice melts in a cup of water, the volume of the cup lessens. So why does the sea-level rise when the polar ice caps melt? | I think that it's a general 'thermal expansion' of the ocean which causes sea levels to rise. Another byproduct of this thermal expansion is the melting of the ice caps. Thermal expansion, in case you're not sure, is when molecules of water become more energetic owing to the increased temperature, moving apart from one... |
Why did the Latin language die out? | It didn't die out at all. It merely evolved, in relative isolation following the breakdown of widespread trade and communication during the late Roman Empire, into the various romance languages such as Italian, French or Spanish. Each of these languages was also influenced by the various Germanic tribes that were settl... |
If the universe is 13.8 billion years old and started from a single point, how can it be 100 billion light years in diameter? | Apparently there's no limit to how fast the universe can expand. _URL_1_", 'Okay, picture a balloon, that begins empty of air so that it essentially is a single point. Then we blow some air into it, and look at some particle sitting at the surface of the balloon. When we then continue to blow up the balloon, this parti... |
How can planes fly upside down? | By that logic a plane flying the right side up shouldn't be able to push the nose down and fly towards the ground. A plane can be orientated, with its control surfaces, to go up, down, left, right, etc. Because of this even when flying upside down you can point the nose towards the sky instead of the ground. |
If a human enters earth's atmosphere they burn up at terminal velocity. Why don't we burn up upon reaching terminal velocity when skydiving? | It really depends what method they use to reach space and reenter earth's atmosphere. The guy that recently skydived from the edge of space was fine because he was travelling with the rotation of the earth at a pretty close rate, meaning that he started from a much slower velocity. Astronauts on a rocket may be traveli... |
How the hell can hot water freeze faster than cold water? | It's called the [Mpemba Effect]. It's counterintuitive but, yes, it does happen. Nobody is absolutely certain why yet, but there some [potential explanations listed here]. |
Why do women live longer than men on average? | There are two causes of death that far outstrip any and all others by several multiples of size. Those are cardiovascular disease and cancer. Cancer is fairly gender neutral, overall. Women get breast cancer far more often than men, but women also do not get prostate cancer at all. The trend is that the male gender is ... |
When an object moves at very high speeds, its mass increases, approaching infinity. How does this not violate the Law of Conservation of Mass? | The law of conservation of mass isn't a universal law. It's only used when examining closed non-relativistic non-nuclear systems because mass is conserved in those systems. Mass is not conserved in relativistic or nuclear systems. Simple proof: a nuclear bomb converts mass into energy via E = mc^2. The universal law us... |
If light is a wave, what is its medium? | Light is not only a wave, but a series of particles called photons traveling along the wave. No medium is required for light to travel. It is a combination of electric and magnetic fields. The photon always travels at the speed of light in a straight line according to space-time. A photon doesn't need a medium because ... |
Why don't I sneeze while I'm asleep? | Sleep paralysis? That's my best guess. It's what keeps your body from trying to run when you dream about being chased. Seems like it'd take care of sneezes, too. |
Why is most of universe not absolute zero and which parts of space are at absolute zero? | There is actually a very important reason for this. The Cosmic Background radiation puts the average temperature of any random plot of outer space at a few degrees above absolute zero. When it was first noticed that the entire universe has a baseline temperature no matter where you look, scientists got really confused,... |
how can your brain tell whether a sound is coming from directly in front of you or behind you with only 2 ears? | The sound will reverberate in your skull and inner ear differently depending on the direction it comes from. I can't say specifically how, though. |
If a black hole has the same mass as the star from which it formed, why is singularity and event horizon not obsereved in the former star? | You don't observe singularity in stars, because they're still 'pushing' out from inside. That's because of the radiation generated by the fusion going on in the core. They stay at the same rough size because the force pulling them into a singular centre point is opposed by an equal and opposite force from the energy ra... |
Why does the USA still use imperial measurements and not metric? | No concerted effort to switch. The US technically switched to the metric system long ago. However, since there's been no real effort to get the population to use it barely anyone does. This contrasts with Australia which spent 18 years switching over the metric system and during that time laws were passed to ban the us... |
Why are bugs attracted to the light | There appears to be multiple theories, but I don't think we know for sure. [This] is a very good video about the topic though, you should check it out!", '+ they are attracted by warmth and warmth comes mostly with light |
The difference between volts, watts and amps | [The classic water analogy] i.e. * Voltage is analogous to difference in water pressure between two points. * Current is analogous to rate of flow of the water. * Resistance is analogous to constrictions by valves placed in a water pipe to control water flow. * Power is analogous to the rate at which work is being done... |
Why do different countries/continents use different electrical outlets? | Relevant, but doesn't answer your question: Plug Vs. Plug_URL_0_ I remember reading this humourous article a few years ago. Don't take it too seriously. Basically, we should all be using Danish plugs. |
Why are Europe and Asia considered two continents? | The idea of Europe is a social convention, they're on the same plate. Europe should be considered a subcontinent if anything. Its borders with Asia on the Ural Mountains are a poor excuse of a continental boundary as the Urals only stretch down so far south, then it becomes a topographically flat political border with ... |
Would gravity be less powerful the closer we got to the earths core, due to less mass being beneath us? | Yes, gravity would decrease because some of the Earth's mass is above you, pulling you up. However, [Newton's Law of Gravitation] states that the force of gravity is related to the two masses as well as the distance between them. As you got lower, the gravity would increase as well, as the distance between you and the ... |
Whats the difference between () [] and {} ? | Isn't there another use, when explaining the span of numbers. Ex: Range of x is vs [2, 5]. says that the numbers are not included in the range but they are for []. So for x is in the range of , brackets are for closed sets , and braces are for collections, families, LaTeX functions, and misery Parentheses contain param... |
Why do magnets always have two poles, why have I been told that it is impossible to have a magnet with 1 pole? | If you look at a picture of a magnet, such as [this] one from Wikipedia, you can see that there re lines emanating from the North side and the South side. Notice how these lines form loops . With magnetism every field line that exits one pole must enter into the opposite pole . Thus, these field lines are actually comp... |
Why can't we just make water ? | I'm assuming you mean that we should combined hydrogen and oxygen to make liquid water and it can be done but requires so much energy that the juice isn't worth the squeeze. You could get more water for less money by almost any other method. It's like trying to cook a hot pocket with a flame thrower, I mean sure you co... |
Could we do anything to survive a meteor impact like the one that killed off the dinosaurs? If so, What would we need to do? If not, why not? | No, a meteorite the size of a comet or asteroid hitting earth would be the end of life as we know it. For example a meteorite with the mass of a million tonnes hitting us at 50 km/s would hit us with an energy of 1.25 EJ , which is equivalent to a nuclear explosion of roughly 300 megatonnes. Now bear in mind that a mil... |
Why is the Mona Lisa so popular. | At this point, much of it is simply that it has become symbolic of a popular painting, it's what pops to mind when you ask someone to name a famous painting. So, it's kind of a self-fulfilling status by now. |
Why is there such focus on the exploration and urge to begin the process of colonizing the planet mars when our planet's Moon is so much closer? | More gravity and natural protections on Mars like an atmosphere with pressure and all, it has a proper day/night cycle like humans are accustomed to, and the moon's just not as interesting. |
Why do dogs like it when we pet them? | Simply because it's a interaction that has been associated and reinforced with happy emotion since its birth. Then there is the pleasurable sensation of being caressed in those hard-to-get areas. |
If nothing can escape a black hole, how can they emit radiation? | Nothing can escape a black hole viewed purely through the lens of relativity. But relativity is known to not quite work on very very small scales where quantum effects become important, and hawking radiation is a quantum mechanical phenomenon. |
Why do many languages have grammatical genders? | A helpful guideline for question number 2. First, there is no perfect way to know. However, I've been correct 9 out of 10 times with this: It developed during more sexist times. If something goes in it, on it, or through it, it's generally feminine. That's why a pen is feminine while a pencil is masculine.A table is fe... |
Why do dogs smell so bad when wet? | First of all, what actually makes something smell? Molecules have to leave the smelly objects and get to your nose through the air and that means that these molecules must be very small and volatile. That's to say they must be easily evaporated. The chemicals that make dogs smell are mostly what we call volatile organi... |
Why is it thought that if travelled faster than light, we would go back in time? | Basically, when an object moves, time will appear to pass more slowly for it. This effect increases as the object approaches the speed of light. An object moving at the speed of light would appear to be frozen in time, but to accelerate an object with mass to the speed of light is impossible because that would require ... |
Why do men have adam's apples and women don't? | Both sexes have it, it's just usually more prominent in men than women.It's actually a hormonal thing. The cartilage that's in front of your vocal chords is enlarged by testosterone in males. What's testosterone doing around male vocal chords, you ask? Well, during puberty, testosterone triggers male vocal chords to le... |
WARNING: This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm. | Almost anything can be shown to create cancer in test-tube studies. Too much of anything will cause damage to the DNA which could lead to cancers. Combine that with California's ill-thought-out law, and you have a cancer warning on practically everything.This warning pertains to the [California Proposition 65 of 1986. ... |
Theoretically Speaking, Would a planet 65 million light years away, with a strong enough telescope, be able to see dinosaurs? (X-Post from r/askscience with no answers) | Theoretically? Yes. It's pretty interesting how time and the speed of light work like that. Practically? No. Unless they possessed some form technology that allowed them to bypass the limitations that we know of lightwaves and physics. Like aradye said above me, its a matter of resolution.Yes. There have been a couple ... |
Physics tells us that energy can be neither created nor lost, so where does gravity's ability to cause motion, which requires energy, come from? | It actually has energy! Its stored un a form called Gravitational potential energy. I tried to write my own explanation but i found a better one here \r\r_URL_0_\r\rSource: A level physics student. We've done a large topic on gravitational fields lately, if you wanna know more let me know :) |
Why the asteroid belt doesn't form a planet similar to the other planets | I've been told it's because of tidal forces due to Jupiter's enormous mass. The region is too far away from Jupiter for the asteroids to be pulled into it's gravity well, but close enough to be continually disrupted with every orbit. |
What is the difference between murder, homicide, and manslaughter? | Homicide is *any* killing of another human being, justified or not. Murder is typically a killing with deliberate intent to kill, and with no legal justification for the killing. Manslaughter is a killing without legal justification, but without deliberate intent to kill. In some jurisdictions, manslaughter is the crim... |
What do gills do? Why do fish need oxygen in water but can't breathe air? | Gills remove oxygen from the water. They have a lot of layers which which water runs through and removes the oxygen from the water where it is absorbed into the blood. Out of water they can't breathe in and out because they don't have lungs and so they die from lack of oxygen. |
Camera lenses are round... Why are the pictures rectangles? | If the camera had a big enough sensor, you would indeed have a round picture. But most sensors are rectangular and only record a rectangular region of the round image provided by the lens. Lenses generally do project a round image inside the camera. Some fisheye lenses do produce a smaller projection, so that the whole... |
Why does getting too much sleep make you feel tired? | I think that there's a couple of possibilities. According to this [article], it might be due to a disruption in your circadian rhythm. People have a certain wake-sleep pattern and disruption of it can cause problems like fatigue. Another issue that I just kinda figured was that during sleep, your body excretes excessiv... |
From Earth, what will the collision between the Andromeda Galaxy and the Milky Galaxy look like? | The collision will take millions of years, and won't be very spectacular. We would not be able to see anything change. During a lifetime it would be detectable though. Most, if not all, stars will be unharmed when the collision is over. There is so much space in between each star that the galaxies don't collide in the ... |
If I wake up and fall back asleep why do I always dream in that "second sleep"? | Generally, your dreaming sleep is later in the night even if you don't wake up in the middle of the night. |
Why do you have to wait a while before cracking your knuckles a second time? | Hmm, how come i don't have to wait. I can crack my knuckles and crack them again almost instantly.Side question: Is cracking your joints detrimental to their health?You want an explanation of knuckle cracking with diagrams and references?_URL_0_ ya welcome. |
. why don't we fall out of bed when we are asleep? | Self preservation. It's also noted that when sleeping with babies in the bed you won't roll over and crush them.Doesn't work for everyone though. No babies in the bed! |
The human origins, from ape to us. What happened to other human species other than Homo Sapiens? Do all modern humans come from the same individual? | I agree with /u/panzerkampfwagen, apart from the last question. yes, we do appear to come from one individual. it's a she, and she's called the mitochondrial Eve. _URL_0_ this was first established in the 80's and confirmed as recently as last year. |
Why is life on other planets always thought to be more advanced than humans? | At the moment we consider ourselves a very advanced species however it still takes us several years to reach mars and we've only just managed to get people into space for an extended period of time. In the grand scheme of things we are primitive. Any species that has the know how to reach us is going to be pretty damn ... |
Why did the soviet union fall? | The Soviet economy collapsed. A lot of people think that happened for a couple different reasons: the workers became complacent which halted economic growth, the planned economy failed to address the needs of consumers, the oil crisis of the 1970s halted growth, too much money was spent on international defense, the li... |
The year 2038 problem. | I knew those Y2K provisions I saved would come in handy some day January 19, 2038 at 3:14:07, I'm looking at you |
Why doesn't communism work in practice? | Because people don't trust other people to not be selfish, so they are proactively selfish so that they're not the one who gets screwed over. It's essentially the Prisoner's Dilemma, and game theory says minimize your losses, not maximize your gains. |
If a normal person has 46 chromosomes, but a person with downs syndrome as 47, where did the extra one come from? | It came from an error when the sperm or egg that formed the baby was made. Normally, each sperm and egg has one copy of each chromosome , but sometimes both of the parent's copies get stuck together. This results in one gamete that is missing a chromosome and one that has one too many. |
Why can't we remember our dreams well into the day when they are so vivid just after waking up? | Dreams don't get transferred from short-term to long-term memory. The brain does this to help keep you from being confused as to what happened in a dream vs. what happens in reality. When they expire from short-term memory, they are gone, unless you think hard about them or write them down. Even then, you're rememberin... |
If planets form when mutual gravity brought dust, boulders and asteroids together, why isn't a new planet forming between Mars and Jupiter? | There's actually very little mass in the asteroid belt and except from what is in Ceres it's spread out over a very long distance. |
Why Does E=mc2? More specifically, what does the speed of light have to do with the amount of energy in a given amount of matter? | I know it's a bit lazy to just post a video link, but this one made it all clear to me. _URL_0_ |
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