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If the universe is cooling does it eventually get so cold that superconductivity get so strong it forces a Big bang event? | Gasses or plasmas can't be superconductors, and the universe is small pockets of solids and liquids in vast areas of very low density plasma and gas. The universe cannot become superconductive. |
What makes scientists so sure that life can only be sustained within the goldilocks zone? Why can't there be life that survives off of super-heated gases, and/or lives within the vacuum of space? | A big part of it is the protection offered within the goldilocks zone. Planets with active magnetic cores, for instance, create a field that protects them from their primary star. It's not just the radiation. The force is so great that it strips away at the planet. Mars shows this example well: the planet simply wasn't... |
The difference between Computer Science and Computer Engineering? | Computer science is learning about programming, algorithms, data structures, and so on. It's everything you need to know to sit down at a computer and tell it to do what you want. Computer engineering is much more on the hardware side. You will learn some amount of programming, but not as much as a CS degree most likel... |
The Israeli / Palestinian conflict. | There are some people who think that God said a certain piece of land belongs to them and that it is rightfully theirs. There are some other people who want to live on that land , and who feel that several places within that land are very important because events of serious religious or cultural significance took place... |
How and why does honey last forever? | It has so little water in it that it's massively hypertonic to any bacteria that would get into it, and they would be dehydrated by osmosis.Keep in mind, that indefinite shelf life depends on it being in a sealed container. Exposure to the moisture and contaminants in the air can allow at least the exposed portion of t... |
Why is Fission reaction so much worse than Fusion? | To understand the difference, you need to know that each atom has a certain amount of energy in it. The energy is directly related to the atomic number- the higher the atomic number, the more the energy in the atom. However, this is not a 1 to 1 relationship. If you combine or split atoms, the difference in energy betw... |
How would the polar ice caps melting affect ocean levels when they're already displacing the same amount of water they are composed of? | 1: Most of the world's ice is located on land. If it melts, the water flows into the oceans. 2: Rising temperatures cause the oceans to expand, which causes higher sea levels with the same mass of water. Not directly related to ice, but another part of why sea levels rise due to global warming. |
What are bruises and why do some people bruise easier than others? | They're like blood stains under your skin. It's internal bleeding to a light degree. Some, like me, bruise more easily because they have problems with clotting factors, so they bleed more easily in general.Yeah, basically bruises are broken capillaries . |
Why are we either left-handed or right-handed? | Why are so many of the greatest people in history left handed and so many presidents? I don't think using the left hand makes you smarter and I understand there can be advantages in sports, but how does being left handed help you in careers like politics. Doesn't make sense to me. |
How do astronomers measure the size of objects in space (i.e. galaxies, planets, stars, etc)? | * Step 1: Measure how big something appears on the sky with a telescope. * Step 2: Measure distance to object: This is done with a variety of techniques, and can be very accurate for solar system objects using radar, or rather inaccurate for galaxies by measuring their red shift. * Step 3: You can now form a right angl... |
Why can people live in Hiroshima & Nagasaki but not in Chernobyl? | The atomic bombs dropped were incredibly powerful and destructive, and they also released radiation. However the amount of radiation released by the atomic bomb was less than that at Chernobyl. While it's very hard to characterize the differences, it's generally safe to say: 1. less radiation from a-bomb.2. radiation p... |
What is the difference between analog and digital signal? | An analog signal is a signal which the information is directly conveyed in the form of the exact waveforms which make up the information being conveyed, e.g. the exact sound waves that make up your voice are transmitted over a phone line . Digital signals, on the other hand, use sampling techniques to convert an analog... |
Why do we "get used" to smells? | Vsauce did a video about this and IIRC its because that way your body can detect new smells that could indicate danger For example, you smell delicious food, it goes away after a while, then you notice that you smell burning The food scent didn't go away, it just became less relevant, and made it easier for your body t... |
If it were possible to travel faster than the speed of light, could I theoretically travel far enough away from Earth and look back to see dinosaurs roaming the earth? | You'd just have to catch up to the light reflected off earth 65 million years ago. *just* |
The Rules of Cricket. | One team bowls and fields, one team bats. If you don't successfully bat the ball, you're out. If you do, you try to change places with your teammate who is standing about 22 yards away. Every time the two of you change places, your team scores a point. You can keep changing places as many times as you're able to until ... |
Do bees know that they are going to die when they sting you? | Bees do not know. It's also a common myth that bees always die when they sting. It just so happens that the common bee evolved to fight off smaller mammals. A bee stings a mouse, it can get its stinger back out and fly off. We're just too thick skinned.Yup. But a bees affairs are always in order.A bee accumulates nothi... |
Where does the candle wax go?! | The wax is melted by the heat of the flame, soaks up the wick into the flame's base, where it vaporizes. The wax vapor then burns with the oxygen in the air. It burns cleanly, completely, into water vapor and carbon dioxide. So, yes, the wax disappears into thin air, quite literally! |
What's the deal with Bermuda Triangle? | It's real. It's triangle between three points. And for the rest it's confirmation bias and a bit of conspiracy on top of that. |
What's the difference between rap and hip hop? | To add on what was already written. Hip Hop is a culture and not just a musical form. Hip Hop is about the rhythm in more than just one way. It is broken down into four basic elements and has some *added* elements if you consider them apart of hip hop. Rap/Graffiti/DJing/Breakdancing or Bboying. Now Hip Hop was cultiva... |
Why is yawning 'contagious'? | I read some where but it's something animals and primitive humans did to show that they are tired. So when one person would yawn the whole group would yawn so everyone would go to sleep together. |
Why people are left-handed or right-handed - why don't we learn to be equally skilled with both hands? | Both hands are useful for things that don't require fine motor control. For things that do, it's much easier for the brain in general to put all the fine motor control wiring in one place. Typically, speech is controlled from the left hemisphere of the brain. Since that hemisphere controls the motor skills of the right... |
How does GitHub work? | They offer git repositories and make it easy to advertize what you're doing if you want to. They make it easy to access these repositories over the internet, and for others to do so as well. You can use it to easily set up users and give out specific permissions for these repositories. It's basically just a nice GUI to... |
Why did the bacteria and diseases of European explorers wipe out the natives of the New World and not the other way around? | I'm not sure I could explain it simply. But it wasn't a one-way street. The the New World gave the Old World syphilis. |
How is the moon tidally locked to the Earth? | The moon's rotation and orbit take the same amount of time, so it only shows one face to the planet. |
Why does Saturn have more rings than any other planet in our solar system, even though it doesn't have the most mass? | Rings come and go as objects are obliterated in orbit around planets. Saturn's rings are a temporary feature and will eventually disperse. Earth would have sported an impressive set of rings right after an enormous impact late in its formation. Some of that material eventually fell back to Earth, the rest of it collect... |
Why it is so much easier to fall asleep during the day than at night when I need to sleep. | I'm exactly the same way, and I have no idea why. I'm sure it has something to do with circadian rhythms. |
Where did all of Earth's water come from? | My youngest asked me the same question yesterday. I'm not sure how to answer, as there really isn't a proven theory, so I fell backwards onto the weather cycle didn't really answer the question, but satisfied a child's curiosity. For the moment. |
why is gold so valuable | It's nearly perfect to use as money: * malleablity means pre-coinage it could easily be divided to facilitate transactions of varying size* corrosion resistance means that gold stores value for a very long time, even in harsh conditions like under the ocean* it's very high density means it's easy to test for purity and... |
Why is it _URL_0_ and not _URL_1_ | because the administrator decided to do it that way. why? because he liked that organization better. there's no one way to do subdomains |
Why are plastic bags so noisy? | It depends on the material. The crinkly ones, like the one you get at walmart is made from HDPE material. That material rustles and makes louds noises easily. There are also bags made from LDPE and the material is naturally softer and doesn't make the loud rustling noises you hear. This type of material is more commonl... |
Where do all the bugs go during winter? | It's highly dependent on the species you're talking about. Bumblebees, for instance, die-off during the winter and only new queens survive by hibernating and begin founding a new colony come spring. Yes, even queens of established colonies die-off. Only new queens survive. Ants hibernate 3+ feet underground where the t... |
What exactly is happening when a plane "breaks the sound barrier"? | The speed of sound is the speed at which mechanical information travels through a material. A supersonic plane moves so quickly that the air molecules in front of it get practically no warning before they crash into it. This prevents air from flowing smoothly around the plane. Instead, there's a sharp transition betwee... |
the universe is 13.8 billion years old, but if time is relative does that mean it can be a different age depending on your "perspective"? | Yes. It's 13.8 billion years old in a particular frame of reference, one at which the observer is at rest to the background radiation of the universe. This is essentially a frame of reference in which the expansion of the universe is equal in all directions, and for any observer measuring from that reference, which is ... |
Why are uranium and plutonium seemingly the most common elements used in nuclear power and weaponry? What makes them so different from other elements? | Sorry, most the other answers in here are wrong. It has absolutely nothing to do with how radioactive they are. What matters is that they are both fissile, meaning they are likely to fission, or break apart when hit by a neutron. Fission is where all the energy comes from in a reactor or bomb. In addition, they release... |
Could humans effectively terraform a planet | Well anythings possible if resources, money, and politics weren't issues. The problem with terraforming is resources ARE an issue. How are we going to get water onto the planet and keep it there? That's the main issue, but other stuff goes with it. |
What causes Déjà vu, and what is it? | It's a part of your brain that didn't process what just happened as fast as the other part I believe. It's a part of your brain that didn't woah, Deja Vu man. |
Why does the placebo effect work? | There's obviously a limit, but to a certain extent, we humans have more control over our bodies than we realize-- although it takes practice to consciously realize this control. Placebos can trigger the subconscious mind to exert this control. It's why monks can set them self on fire, or some people can control their h... |
Why does February only have 28 days? | I read somewhere that it wasn't the original order of the months the way we have it now. Think of the prefixes of September, October, November, December . 7, 8, 9, 10. February was the last month and got short changed basically. I can't remember exactly where I read this, it was another reddit thread or something, but ... |
why aren't we using Thorium nuclear fuel? | It takes time to develop these technologies and make them safe and economical on the large scale. This doesn't always jive with the instant gratification of the modern world. Be patient, it'll come eventually. |
Why do higher energy waves, like gamma, UV, and X rays, cause cancer while lower energy waves like radio waves don't? | Pretty much the same reason that if I throw a bullet at you it won't kill you, but if I shoot it, it can. Even if I throw dozens of bullets at you still no real danger. Less concentrated energy generally is less destructive. |
If electricity takes the path of least resistance, then why does a lightning strike appear to be jagged, and not a straight line? | Path of least resistance does not mean the straightest path. If you apply an electrical current to a short, straight stone tube and a long, jagged piece of metal, it will use the metal because the composition of the metal resists it less. In the air, ions are the stepping stones it travels along to get to the ground, a... |
Why are spaceports/space centers located at sea level rather than at a higher altitude considering the amount of fuel needed just to clear the first few thousand feet of the Earth's atmosphere. | Also, wouldn't it be a huge pain in the neck to get the rocket parts up to a mountain-top launch pad? If I recall correctly, those parts are often brought to the launch site by barge or train . |
Why is the atom considered the smallest piece of matter, when an atom is made up of smaller protons, neutrons, and electrons, which in turn are made up of even smaller particles? | I've never heard anyone calling the atom the smallest piece of matter, except in a historical context. It is the smallest piece of an element though. Maybe that's what you heard?", 'We dont consider the atom the smallest piece of matter', "when the atom was first discovered or hypothesised, , they were assumed to be th... |
Why do airlines "overbook" flights? | it costs you $100,000 to fly an empty 747 from new york to LA. you have 300 seats that sell for $400 each. . a full flight gets you $120k in revenue, $20k in profit. you sell 300 seats. you know from history that 5% of those 300 people won't show up. so you sell an extra 15 seats for a total of 315 seats sold on a 300 ... |
- why does squinting improve eyesight? | Although tt seems that it improves eyesight temporarily, it is actually putting strain on your eyes. Our eyes are naturally created to see without doing any effort.A natural way to improve eyesight is to do eye exercises. There's a lot of them on the net. You can start here: _URL_0_ |
The Universe is expanding, but what is it expanding into? | Expanding doesn't require that there be ends or boundaries. Imagine you had an infinite line. No ends, and therefore no midpoint either. But the evenly spaced marks on the line were getting further and further apart all the time. This line is obviously expanding. But it's not expanding into anything because it already ... |
Centrifugal force: Why is it fictitious? What's the difference between an inertial and a rotating frame of reference, and how is the centrifugal force different in each? | I'm on my phone, so please forgive any spelling errors. What people generally refer to as centrifugal force is actually centripetal acceleration. Acceleration in a physics sence is a change in velocity. Velocity is comprised of speed and direction. Speed and velocity are often incorrectly interchanged. For example, if ... |
If airplane cabins are pressurized why do my ears pop? | Airplane cabins are pressurized because [air becomes 'thinner as we get higher. There is simply less oxygen in every breath we take. Pressurizing the cabin keeps the air we breathe in aircraft from becoming so thin that we get sick. This sickness is called [hypoxia]. The pressure in an aircraft is not constant. It is a... |
Why is Genghis Khan remembered as a great hero, or at least conqueror if he murdered 40m+ people? | He isn't considered great hero. Of course, he has victors justice, so he has many of his war crimes silenced about. Though, he did change the world at it is. Russia, for example, is a direct result of mongol invasion. People from Poland to Korea has Khan blood. It's pretty safe to say that victors write the history |
What is the difference between a soft taco and a burrito? | Authentic Mexican tacos are usually a small tortilla, with some kind of meat as the primary ingredient, and a small amount of other ingredients for garnish. Crispy tacos are a Tex-Mex invention. A burrito is a much larger item, with rice and beans inside. It's basically the whole meal in one.a soft taco is open like a ... |
Why is the Civil War so heavily blamed on slavery, while there were so many other reasons for the war? | All the reasons go back to slavery. In the south they teach that the war was about states rights, but it was the question of the states' rights to let people own slaves, and the states' rights to secede because they wanted the right to own slaves. |
How did neanderthals communicate ? | We don't really have a definitive answer to that, neanderthals went extinct almost forty thousand years before written language was even invented. Wikipedia has a few things on it though > There is some circumstantial evidence for thinking that Neanderthals had language with words and some kind of syntax; some of their... |
If dogs have a better sense of smell than humans, do they also have a better sense of taste? | Taste and smell are mostly related due to the proximity of the nose and mouth and the fact that they both are received by chemical receptors reacting to particulates. The throat connects the two, so when we smell something, the particles that trigger our sense of smell can also come in contact with our tastebuds. So a ... |
Why does licking lips make them more chapped? | /u/limbodog basically hit the nail on the head with removing oils from the surface of your lips. But, to add on, your saliva contains digestive enzymes. Licking your lips exposes the skin of your lips to these digestive enzymes which, although they don't remarkably damage your lip enough to be worried about, they certa... |
Why has the United States never adopted the metric system? | The United States attempted to at one point . It didn't catch on for some reason. I'm sure someone could explain it a lot better. I really wish it did stay because it is a lot better than the customary system. |
The political parties in the UK | Conservatives are generally business friendly - they support tax cuts, but want to spend less. They believe that Government shouldn't be as involved in people's everyday life, so that's why Royal Mail being sold off, and parts of the NHS. Labour was, and is supposed to be the party for the working class. Historically, ... |
If higher intelligence (like human intelligence) was so advantageous for survival in the wild, why are we the only species that have it? | It would appear that one intelligent species rises to the top and wipes out all others. At least that's how my Neanderthal friend explained it. Also, being intelligent may not be not all it is cracked up to be. Our brains are expensive in terms of calorific consumption. In the long run, it may prove better to be dumb a... |
If particles need mass to interact with gravity, and light has no mass, then how does it get trapped in a black hole? | Particles don't need mass to interact with gravity, just to bend the space around them and create it. It was not obvious that Newton's idea of gravity would apply to light , but Einstein's definitely did. |
Why don't we make a year exactly the amount of time it takes Earth to orbit the sun? | Because that will throw off how long a day is. The issue isn't how many seconds are in a year, it's how many *days* are in a year. Times units like days, months and years are based on astronomy. Units like seconds, minutes and hours are human constructs, subdivisions of the day. If we made a second longer, then what wo... |
how do we know light is massless and not just a unit too small to measure? | We don't, really. The special theory of relavity says that any massless particle must travel at the speed of light, and all of our observations are consistent with that. But since no experiment has perfect accuracy, we can't be 100% absolutely sure that the photon doesn't in fact have an extremely small mass and travel... |
Why do satellites travel in a circular orbit when leaving towards another planet why can't they go in a straight path directly towards there destination ? | You're mashing two things together in your question. Satellites orbit the Earth circularly because they are literally falling, around the Earth, endlessly. Their sideways motion is fast enough that the Earth curves away faster than they can reach the ground. But orbits are not perfect circles, they are actually ellipse... |
During WW1 trench warfare, why couldn't they land artillery shells into the trenches and blow them up? | Actually the point of those trenches are to help *defend against* said artillery - entrenchment would provide shelter against artillery fragments, and it would take a direct hit on the burrow itself to cause deep damage Which brings me to your original question about why didn't they land their rounds then? Simple answe... |
Why can't fresh water fish survive in salt water? | Basically it's the same reason why you would die of dehydration if you drank salt water instead of fresh. When you have water with differing levels of salinity and a permeable membrane separating them, then the water will exchange between them to try to reach equilibrium. If a freshwater fish were put in salt water, th... |
What is Heisenberg's uncertainty principle in layman's terms? | Heisenber's uncertainty principle sounds very simple, but it is really, really counter-intuitive to understand at first. Let's say I'm at the top of a tower and I drop a book. Without really looking, I can pretty much guess it's position after 1 second, given it's size, weight, wind speed, earth's gravity pull etc etc.... |
What is the difference between being transgender or sharing interests of the opposite gender? | Being trans has nothing to do with your interests, it's more to do with your sense of self in relation to your body. People don't transition because of interests, they transition to feel at ease with their own bodies. |
Why do hangovers get worse as you age? | Here's a Wired article about hangovers: _URL_0_ Summary of the different research referenced in the article: * It's not dehydration, salt levels in blood were virtually the same before and after dehydration * Your liver turns ethanol into a toxic chemical , which gets turned into acetate but you have to pee out, **but ... |
Why solid water is less dense than liquid water? | Water molecules are attracted to each other by hydrogen bonds - basically, there are bits of the H2O molecule that are kinda positively charged, and bits that are kinda negatively charged. The opposite charges attract each other. When water's a liquid, it's like you've got a room full of people mingling and shaking han... |
What's the difference between a sheriff's office and a police department? | A sheriff is an elected position who is accountable to the voters. A Sheriff's office usually covers the law enforcement needs for a county . A police department is put together under the authority of a city and that city's leaders. The Police Chief is a hired position that reports to the mayor . Police offices cover l... |
Why do boobs in classical artworks look so different from those sported by today's models? [NSFW] | I think that modern glamour models are chosen for their large photogenic breasts . Those old paintings feature 'ordinary' women and their boobs look pretty normal to me. Maybe people back then weren't as fixated on large breasts as they are now so having large ones wasn't a necessity in order to be the subject of a pai... |
How does Antivirus work? | It has a large database of malware that it knows about and scans your computer for files that match anything in that database. That's why you need to update it regularly. |
Why can't youtube play vertical videos in full screen mode on my mobile device? | I use Viral Video Player on Android. It will open YouTube links and it has a floating video player which you're able to resize as needed. It also plays video files and other streaming video from the Internet browser. |
How does gravity both cause things to fall towards an object, but can also cause things to orbit around an object? | The force of gravity pulls objects together, directly to the centre of each object. For example, gravity is constantly pulling the International Space Station towards the centre of the Earth. Objects orbit other objects when the force of gravity acting on them is perpendicular to the direction they're moving in. Since ... |
Is there a "maximum temperature"? | I don't have solid knowledge of the main question to answer, I think you are right but honestly I think the amount of energy required to reach that temperature would be so high it couldn't be ever achieved. I have an aswer for the PS question though, yes, the Universe is expanding faster than light. Since further part ... |
Why does my nose run when it is cold outside? | When it's really cold outside, your nose is much colder than the rest of your body. However, the air you exhale is roughly the same temperature as the rest of your body. Otherwise, your lungs would be cold also. So as you inhale, the air gets warm in your lungs, and accumulates water vapor. As you exhale, the air start... |
If you left the Earth's gravitational pull, would you see it speeding away? | If you escaped the gravity of everything in our system that may effect you, then yes, you would see it fly away. And you would never see it again because the entire system you escaped would be moving. If you were still in the orbit of the sun, you would still probably not be hit by the sun as your mass and the earth's ... |
Can someone explain Einstein's theory of relativity to me? | I don't think it's actually possible to ELI5 because it's so counter-intuitive. Light travels at a certain speed. However, it doesn't matter if you, as an observer, are traveling toward the light or away from it, it will appear to have the same speed. Someone moving through space, relative to you, is moving through bot... |
Why can animals eat raw meat without getting ill or dying while humans can't? | Most of us don't have the stomach for it. Some animal flesh can be eaten raw just fine, though . What we really can't eat is rotten meat, which some other animals can handle just fine.Humans can *potentially* eat raw meat without getting ill, it depends on the contaminants in the meat. Similarly, animals can *potential... |
How are we only just now discovering possible planets in our solar system, when we've discovered galaxies millions of lightyears away? | Stars and Galaxies are really bright. Distant planets are not. If you've even flown in an airplane at night, when you look out at the window, what do you see, the lights, or the houses they're in front of?", 'Stars give off light. It makes them easy to spot. Planets are a lot harder to notice. |
Why do we look for water and oxygen on a new planet to host life ? Couldn't it be possible to have a lifeform totally different from what we know ? | We simply don't know how to look for other forms of life. We don't know what they would need to survive, we don't know what they would excrete. So how do we look for them. |
Why have British colonies (Singapore, HK, North America) fared so much better than French (Africa) or Spanish/Portuguese (South America)? | Re-post from 8 months ago: This is one of the things that sticks with me from my university years regarding the Catholic American colonies vs. the Protestant colonies . Basically, Catholicism recognizes that everyone has a station in life and to try to climb out of your God-given place is an idea antithetical to the re... |
Why is it easier to pull than to push? | I'm not sure that pulling *is* easier than pushing. Can you clarify the context? The most power you can generate is pushing up, using your legs arms and core together . If you're pulling something with a rope over your shoulder, you're actually pushing not pulling. Dunno, this seems like a pretty subjective/context-bas... |
Jupiter - how much of it is solid planet? What is the solid part made out of? How does the gas surrounding it create gravity? | Jupiter may be about 10% rocky core but we don't have enough data to be sure. The core is surrounded by metallic liquid hydrogen at very high pressure. The pressure reduces as you approach the surface with the hydrogen progressively becoming less like a liquid and more like a gas. In these extreme conditions there's no... |
how can people take pictures of the Milky Way Galaxy. Don't we reside in the Milky Way Galaxy? | yes we do. but most pictures of the milky way don't depict the entire galaxy. and those that do, are usually extrapolated. like here_URL_3_ most the images were taken from earth. those that aren't, are *illustrations* |
why, does water expand when if freezes? | When water crystallizes, the molecules are arranged in such a way that more space is taken up than when it is in the liquid phase. That's also why ice floats. It's less dense than water. |
If we have telescopes that can see galaxies light years away, what's the reason we focus them on nearby planets to take a look at their surfaces? | Telescopes take images of far away galaxies by taking a *really* long exposure , in some cases, like the Hubble Deep Field, for weeks at a time. Bodies closer to earth move so much compared to the telescope which makes the image blurry. It's kind of like how if you take a picture of someone running 100 yards away from ... |
How do the electrons of a lightning strike know WHICH path is the "path of least resistance" ? | Watch this:_URL_0_ It travels in small hops until one of the little tendrils strikes something connected to ground. Thus it's more likely to hit something high up first than something lower to the ground.Randall Monroe did a really good write up on lighting and how it "selects" it's target. Really good read! _URL_1_ |
How does time slow down when traveling near the speed of light? | I would like to add that the reason this special relativity stuff came around was that the theory of electromagnetism was not consistent between one's point of reference while stationary and one's point of reference while moving. One might naively think that you can just subtract the velocity of the moving frame from t... |
Can terrestrial planets get as big as Jupiter? Or can they only get so big? | Check out the Youtube Channel Artifexian. Worldbuilding | Build your own Terrestrial Planet…: _URL_0_ This guy's videos should answer whatever questions you have on the subject, just gotta look through it. And he does the math to back it all up too. |
What is happening in this gif? | This looks like an upside down shot of a breaching humpback whale immediately after it has splashed back into the water. So if you imagine yourself sticking your head into the water and looking straight, so that the ocean bottom is up and the sun and sky are down, this is what you'd see right after the breach. |
Why will we never be able to travel the speed of light? | At low speeds* doubling your speed requires 4 times the energy. But as you get closer to the speed of light 4 times the energy isn't good enough. At some point 4 times the energy only gets you 1.9 times the speed. Then only 1.5 times the speed. Then only 1.1. Eventually, very close to the speed of light you have to hav... |
What creates the feeling of my ears "popping" and why does swallowing make them pop? | Your ears contain a small amount of air which needs to be at the same pressure as the environment you are in, that's why they feel strange when you descend in an aircraft, it's because the air pressure suddenly changes. To regulate this pressure your ears are linked to your nasal cavity by tubes called eustacian tubes.... |
How does a ponzi scheme work | You convince a person to invest in you/your idea/your company by offering an extremely high interest rate . You pay people back using the money given to you by other people. . Each person gets a return on their first investment, which then convinces them to invest even more. If you have enough investors paying enough m... |
The difference between diesel and petrol | The simple difference between Gasoline/Petrol and Diesel is the length of the carbon chain in the molecule. Many products are refined from crude oil. Crude oil is a mixture of a whole bunch of different type of molecules that contain hydrogen and carbon in different combinations. At a very basic level refining involves... |
If a golf ball has dimples that decrease the drag and make it fly further, then why is that same concept not applied to race cars or airplanes? | Keep in mind that this effect isn't really an improvement for shapes that are already aerodynamic. The dimples make the flow stick to the surface for longer and reduce the turbulent region behind the ball, but the flow that would have stuck to the ball anyway isn't as streamlined. A shape that *already* guided streamli... |
Why is it that so many British artists don't sound like they have an English, Scottish Etc accent, yet southern Americans have accents in country music? | Affectation. Many Americana, and country singers don't have an accent off stage It's just basica psychology of sales that you mirror the audience segment your selling to. If they have an accent, you use an accent. If they wear caps, you wear caps, If they drive trucks, you write a song about a truck. |
What would the horizon look like if the Earth was flat? | Distance that you'll be able to see would depend on your height and sharpness of your eyes, but I don't think that the horizon would look higher or lower |
Is light a wave or a particle and which one do we 'see'? | If you drop a pebble into water you see a wave made up of particles of water. So a water wave is both a wave and particles at the same time. That is the nature of waves. Extra CreditThe wave speed after you drop a pebble into water is instant and constant, just like light wave speed is instant and constant when a photo... |
Why doesn't the U.S. adopt the metric system? | Because change is difficult, even if the end state may be better. Just about everyone in the US has a huge amount of experience with the imperial system and doesn't foresee enough benefits of the metric system to offset the cost of relearning common units. |
What is the ringing in your ears? | It's called tinnitus. It happens when somebody gets damage to their hearing. There are other causes but hearing damage is the most frequent cause. There is no cure. See /r/tinnitus for more information. |
How would a solar flare, if large enough, destroy communications? | So, while you're right that solar flares are involved in the process, the real danger is from coronal mass ejections which are triggered by a flare. A CME is a large amount of hot gas in the plasma state that can be ejected from the surface of the sun during the flare. This plasma rides magnetic fields in the solar win... |
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