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Since we see stars as they were some billions of years ago, if I picked out one that had already died, and travelled toward it at a reasonable speed, at some point would I see it explode? | Well, yeah. I mean...a "reasonable rate" really isn't scientific. However, assuming that you chose a star that exploded at the proper time, then yes, traveling towards that star would "speed up" (from your perspective) the explosion.
Scientists can detect the neutrino emissions from stellar supernovae a short time bef... |
why do companies need to put the ® or ™ symbols beside their product names every time it is written? | The "TM" symbol is generally used for unregistered trademarks (including those that are still in the process of being registered) and doesn't do anything significant legally when it comes to violations.
The ® symbol on the other hand is used for trademarks registered with the federal government, and does have some... |
If you were to scream in the vacuum of space, would you be able to hear your own voice through the vibrations in your head? Or would you just hear silence? | Barring the other physical consequences of being exposed to space vacuum unprotected....if you had air in your lungs to exhale and 'scream' with, the vibrations from your vocal chords would propagate through your bodily tissue/matter and you'd 'hear' it--just like you already do in an atmosphere (except you probably 'h... |
with most countries so far in debt, how does china have all this money to loan other countries like the u.s. and u.k. | That's not how sovereign debt works.
Sovereign debt exists as bonds. A country offers bonds on the market, and other countries buy them as investments. A bond is basically a contract between the bond issuer (usually a government) and the bond holder (whoever buys it) that says "The issuer agrees to pay the holder the ... |
Cats & Dogs have many nipples. What creatures have the most nipples. Why? | From _URL_0_:
"The number of nipples varies from 2 (in most primates) to 18 (in pigs)."
"The nipples and glands can occur anywhere along the two milk lines, two nearly parallel lines along the ventral aspect of the body. In general most mammals develop mammary glands in pairs along these lines, with a number approxim... |
what are current active research areas in mathematics? and what are their eli5 explanations? | Math is a huge subject, but here are a few. If you want to know more, look up the Millenium Prize problems, and if you want to read a book about the various objects that mathematicians study, a good book is Mathematics: Its Methods, Content, and Meaning.
1. Number theory. This deals with the study of the integers. For... |
I often hear that the 'victors write the history books'. How are historians equipped to cut through the supposed propaganda in order to reveal the truth? | Historians are trained to think about subjects in various ways and to question how information from the past still exists. We have excessive amounts of details on every US President, but millions of enslaved Africans and African Americans lived in the same country as these presidents with hardly any traces of their pr... |
if light is mass-less, what is keeping it from having an infinite velocity? | This is *exactly* the line of thinking which started Einstein on the path to relativity. His solution was to posit that the speed of light *is* infinite from the standpoint of the universe. This is why it is never possible to exceed, or even reach, the speed of light in a vacuum. So it’s less that the speed of light is... |
Is it true that there are sexual parts left out of published Anne Frank dairy and if so why did Anne father do that? | According to the [New York Times](_URL_2_) and the [Anne Frank House](_URL_1_) there were 5 pages that were missing when the diary was originally published. The five pages have been authenticated as a part of Anne's diary ([Anne Frank House](_URL_0_))
It seems like there were three versions. Version A is the original ... |
if we have to help animals like horses give birth, then how did they manage it themselves before humans started animal husbandry? | We don't "have to help" them, but in the case of horses, a lot of time we help in the birthing process because we're invested in the animal (emotionally or financially) and want to see the animal and it's offspring do good so we benefit from it as well. |
How did the "right side up" view of the Earth, aka North = up, become the norm for all globes and maps? | Globes have north at the top from that same convention that operates for maps; the convention is arbitrary (many early maps had east at the top, from which I believe is where the notion of 'orienting' a map stems). The choice of north at the top of the page or uppermost on a globe is not necessary in any sense - globes... |
why don't we breed elephants for their ivory to prevent the poaching of wild elephants? | Ivory is expensive, but not that expensive. The amount of time and money it would take to raise an elephant for a few pounds of ivory wouldn't be a good investment.
It's much more cost effective (albeit cruel) to let mother nature do the first part and just take the ivory after |
how does anti-venom work, and why does it require more venom to be produced (or is this a misconception)? | Anti-venom is made by injecting small amounts of the venom collected from the venomous animal into another animal. The animal's body creates antibodies(things in the blood which attack foreign things in your body that shouldn't be there) to fight off the venom. Then those venom fighting antibodies are extracted from th... |
why does my ass get sore after sitting for too long? how can i prevent it? | Your butt gets sore from sitting on it too long because your butt is designed to be muscles used for walking and running, not so much a cushion for getting compressed by supporting all your body's weight. Prevention: sit on your butt less.
**Edit:** Alternate prevention: sit on a cushion more.
**Edit 2:** [A more a... |
A flu shot is a vaccine, right? But they seem to be far less reliable than other vaccines (I know many people who get flu shots each year then get the flu). What is the reason for this, and are flu shots really that important? | > A flu shot is a vaccine, right?
Yes.
> What is the reason for this
CDC has addressed some misconceptions:
> > What about people who get a seasonal flu vaccine and still get sick with flu symptoms?
> > There are several reasons why someone might get a flu symptoms, even after they have been vaccinated agains... |
How common was illegitimate birth in medieval Western Europe? Was "bastardry" a significant social inhibitor across all levels of society? | It was quite common among the elite social classes. William the Conqueror was known in Normandy as William the Bastard because his mother was the daughter of a tanner and his father was the Duke of Normandy. His status as a bastard did not inhibit him from becoming his fathers heir to the duchy of Normandy and eventual... |
why do people in extremely poor countries have children that they will not be able to feed or adequately look after? | There's a number of reasons.
One of the biggest is simply access to birth control. We take it for granted. They either can't afford it, or it's not available in their area. So they have a lot more babies when they follow the basic instinct and drive to have sex.
A lot of those nations don't have the same level of ge... |
If energy can't be created or destroyed how much energy is there in the universe? | It is not actually necessarily true that energy can't be created or destroyed (which, in more formal language, is the statement "energy is conserved"). While we can often define something called the "total energy" for a system, in doing so we're making certain technical assumptions about it (specifically that there's a... |
Was working at Jimmy John's today when I customer came in and was severely allergic to cucumbers but could eat pickles, how's that possible? | Food allergies are often caused by an allergic response to a protein. Proteins are very large molecules made out a long chain of chemical groups called "amino acids." These chains are "crumpled up" into a 3D shape, and the exact 3D shape is what the body recognizes as an allergen. If the protein is unfolded, then the b... |
why, in old movies, do they make light fall across an actor's or an actress' eyes? | I think it's a stylistic choice of lighting, taking inspiration from the cinema noir genre. Noir lighting has strong use of light and shadows, particularly on characters' faces. They use it to draw attention to the character, and may create a sense of moodiness or unease.
[Example of noir](_URL_0_) |
game theory (relating to mathematics and john nash. not video game creation and analysis) | Game theory is a mathematical analysis of how logical players should behave in a game to maximise their expected reward bearing in mind that everyone else is trying to maximise their expected reward.
The applications in the real world can be "Where should I put my shop?" because you want to get the most customers but ... |
Does Earth's gravitational field look the same as Earth's magnetic field? | No, Earth's gravitational field is basically a [monopole](_URL_1_), pointing inwards everywhere, whereas the magnetic field is largely a [dipole](_URL_0_), sort of the shape of the surface of an apple running from pole to pole. |
How large would the biggest star known to man look in the sky if we were to orbit the star in the so called Habitable zone? | The size of a star in the sky is dependent on how hot it is burning, not how big it is. If the Earth were orbiting a red dwarf, for instance, the star would appear big in the sky simply because the habitable zone is closer in relation to the star's radius. Just for kicks, let's find out the angular size of one of the... |
Why does Hirohito seem to get a free pass among most historians when it comes to war crimes? | What "every time a thread arises on this board" are you referring to? I just ran a site:_URL_3_ search for "hirohito." Nearly all the viable top results ask some version of "Did/Why did Hirohito basically get off the hook for committing war crimes?"
**The ones I skimmed with viable answers cite multiple historians wh... |
Is it a coincidence that the two most important former Axis countries, Germany and Japan, now have one of the strongest economies in the world? If not, what is the reason that despite their losses in WWII, they managed to create a robust economy? | The fact that Japan and Germany were the major parties in WWII, means that they were powerful industrial nations, with large and educated populace. Even though WWII devastated Japan and Germany more than most other Great Powers such as USA, UK or even France, they still had a decent platform to build their nation up ag... |
Did any known rulers actually use Machiavelli's "The Prince" as a guide, or at least draw influence from it? | Heya guys, just a friendly note from your favourite Princ- er, mods here. Please remember when commenting on this post to ensure that your post adheres to both the [rules](_URL_0_) and the [standards](_URL_1_) of the subreddit. This includes the self-examination, which I'll cross-post here.
If you're choosing to answe... |
If men have XY and women have XX what would happen if scientists created a YY human or if it is impossible, why? | Well, the short answer is that the X chromosome has a lot of important genes on it that males require for living. Our system is sort of a "default female" system; meaning that we only develop into males if the proteins from the Y chromosome are present and get expressed. If there is no Y chromosome, we just continue de... |
why did hitler think blonde-haired blue-eyed people were genetically dominant when he had neither of those traits? | He thought *Aryans* were genetically dominant. The stereotypical Aryan was blonde-haired and blue-eyed, but that's just like the stereotypical Japanese person having straight jet-black hair; few people thought that you had to look like the stereotype to be Asian.
In general, the Nazi beliefs about race weren't nearly ... |
Iceland is remote and sparsely populated. Why does it have such a large medieval literary corpus? | Icelandic historian Jón Viðar Sigurðsson gives three reasons for the saga-writing of the Icelandic aristocracy:
* To create and maintain social differences between chieftains (the aristocracy) and the rest of the population.
* To compete socially with other members of the aristocracy. Books were expensive, thus a symb... |
if the notion that electrons orbit around a nucleus is a misconception, what type of motion do electrons have? do they just float in one position? | Electrons don't exist in one location until they interact with something. The location they appear at when they do interact is random, with a probablility described by an equation similar to a standing wave (like a plucked guitar string, but in three dimensions instead of one). |
When did the divergence between the people that would become Spanish and Portuguese begin in medieval Iberia? What caused the two identities to become very separate? | Followup: was there *ever* a cohesive Iberian identity?
It appears that you've had various disparate groups fighting themselves, each other, and invaders throughout the entire history of Iberia. And when you look at various movements in Catalonia, The Basque Country, Galicia, etc. it seems like Spanish identity is mor... |
In the Roman Empire, was there ever any significant debate about the moral issues with slavery? | "Abolitionist," not that I know of, and "moral" is going to be a difficult term to pin down here, but certainly ancient authors discussed the institution, whether it was good or natural or vise versa.
Now, before we start, some basics about ancient slavery, (all of which can be found in K. R. Bradley, *Slavery and So... |
Western films often purport a stark difference between Southwestern "village Indians" like the Pueblo and Yuma, and "warrior Indians" like the Apache and Comanche. Were these cultures really so distinct in lifestyle? | Your assertion that this idea is much more complicated than Hollywood portrays is absolutely correct. This idea of Navajos, Comanches, Apaches, etc. as especially violent comes out of the Indian Wars fought by the U.S. Military against these groups from the end of the Mexican-American war in 1848 up to to early 20th ce... |
Would a Roman from the 1st-2nd century AD recognize anything in the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantine) in the 11th-12th century as "Roman"? | In religion, language, and many other respects, the Byzantine Empire of the Comnenian period was very different from its Roman ancestor. It continued, however, to preserve many of the cultural traditions, some of the institutions, and one of the great cities of the Roman world.
In the second century, the Roman provin... |
Why are all the place-holder names of the incoming elements to the Periodic table all Unun-something? | They just refer to the latin names of the numbers. For example, Ununoctium (118) might be converted to english as one-one-eightium.
Linguists are welcome to correct me on the details, but the main point is that they're placeholders that refer literally to the number of the element. |
why do some websites and programs seem to not be able to process apostrophes and instead replace it with a series of nonsensical characters. for example: instead of "john's", the site would show "john’s". | Issues like this are usually due to mishandling of character encoding.
Inside computers all data is stored a series of numbers. Basically, the old way of storing text is to use exactly one byte (eight bits; each bit is a 0 or 1) for every single letter. This is what ASCII is; in ASCII the numbers from 0 to 255 each co... |
what happens in our brain, when we forget what we wanted to do while starting to do the action? | Our brain reinforces pathways we take more than once. Often what happens when we forget what we wanted to do while starting to do something is that a more reinforced brain pathway is triggered when we start the action, causing us to forget the rest once it leaves short term memory.
Sort of like the challenge of patti... |
why do led lights look jittery or like they're strobing when you look at them quickly? | They're often dimmed using PWM(pulse-width modulation) in cheap applications. Basically they're turned on and off really quickly and by changing the ratio of on time to off time you can change how bright it appears to your eyes.
The problem with this is that when they move through your vision(you turn your head or th... |
Are the hamburgers you get from traditional fast food chains like McDonald's really THAT terrible for you? | Regarding the non-decay, there's quite a good debunking here: _URL_0_
A normal burger kept in warm moist conditions will decay just like any other food.
(edit: last sentence removed because it was really just my opinion - I'm no dietician) |
Do galaxies have clearly defined borders, or do they just kind of bleed into each other? | I guess strictly speaking they don't have "clearly defined borders." It's not like there's some force holding every start within a specific hard boundary. They're just all orbiting the same gravity well, so they hold together-ish, but the edges are fuzzy because a galaxy isn't a single solid thing.
The thing is though... |
How much electricity would be created per day if every Walmart and Home Depot in America covered their roof with solar panels? | Some quick googling tells me there are roughly 9000 Wal-mart stores, with an average club size of 134,000 sq. ft. Assuming an average solar panel output of 10 W/sq. ft. and an average day of 12 hours, I get a result of 144,720,000 kW*Hrs. |
What is the white stuff inside pimples? What it's made out of, why we have it, and why does it exit in this way? | A pimple is an infection. Bacterial infections begin with a bacterial pathogen and an inflammatory response to the pathogen. For pimples, anaerobic bacteria colonize a hair follicle and consume the sebum produced by sebaceous glands. This forms lipid byproducts which irritate the surrounding area. This inflammatory rea... |
why i can't recharge normal household batteries? when they build them they charge them, so why can't i? | They don't charge them when they build them. The current is generated by a chemical reaction, and the batteries are built with the required ingredients for the chemical reaction. They don't build an empty battery and then charge it up. When you make a "battery" by sticking nails in a lemon, you don't have to charge up ... |
does a company forcing you to change your password every 6 months (for example) actually increase security? as far as i'm concerned it just causes me to forget my password. | Studies have shown that mandatory password changes actually reduce security because people tend to either use simpler passwords that are easier to remember, or they just write them down in easy to find places.
Edit: since so many people have asked.
_URL_0_
Edit: don't know how this turned into my highest karma pos... |
What was considered "junk food" in the early 1900's? | [Edit: Sorry, I've written a pretty disorganized post here, and I've played with it a bit; apologies for the messiness.]
I can answer this for Britain; other Anglophone and European countries followed some of the same patterns, but with important variations that are beyond my knowledge. This answer does require some c... |
Why is it that I can safely eat a rare steak but eating undercooked chicken, fish, or pork could land me in the hospital? | Actually fish can be eaten raw, ever heard of sushi?
Pork can also can now be eaten undercooked but it doesn't taste that much better. The main problem used to be a parasite (_URL_0_) which has been pretty much eradicated.
The only bad one is chicken, which can contain salmonella. The reason it does is because salmon... |
what is actually happening when you "charge" something that is glow in the dark? | The chemical bonds in the glowing component can temporarily store energy and then release it at a constant rate. When "charging" it, you're exposing the chemical to ultra violet light (or any wavelength of light i guess it depends), the photons excite the molecules and energy is stored. The energy is then released as t... |
How come every native religion in Europe - Norse, Slavic, Hellenic, Baltic etc - got wiped out by Christianity? Why were they all so weak? | First, it's important to recognize that in most cases it took centuries, if not a full millennium, for these traditions to be fully uprooted.
Christianity had a few things going for it as a missionary religion that the divergent local pagan traditions couldn't match: it came out of Roman late antiquity with a strong ... |
what are those swarms of bugs actually doing when they seem to just be flying around in a small area? | Could be for various reasons, depends on the situation, species, etc.
Usually it's somewhere with a damp breeze (downwind of a river or pond), and food. They see something you don't and are hanging around where the food is for them.
Another reason is a mating swarm. At certain times of the year some bugs swarm up t... |
Why Do Certain Chemicals Cause Different Individuals To Experience Similar Complex Thoughts/Hallucinations? Where Is The Information Coming From? | There might be confirmation bias going on here, just because "many report" is not necessarily indicative of the expereinces of most users. My own experience with DMT was like a kaleidoscope with no other "entities".
All brains are wired differently but pretty much all of them use the same chemical schematics to do the... |
if a flight's overbooked, why would a seated passenger be forced to leave for someone who isn't seated? wouldn't it be first come first serve? | With regards to the [recent situation involving United Airlines](_URL_0_) it wasn't that the flight was overbooked, but rather it was full and United needed to transfer four employees to another airport and therefore needed space on the plane.
They took ~~the last four passengers to book the flight~~ four passengers c... |
why are english accents used in most film/shows that are set in ancient times? | That's a pretty good guess. In some cases that's exactly why the Queen's English is used, as that dialect helps to convey the idea of monarchies. In some cases, it's simply to convey the idea that the story takes place in an exotic location, while still keeping the language intelligible.
Ultimately though, most films ... |
Are there any poisons/toxins which, if taken separately, are fatal, but if taken simultaneously, are not? | It depends on what you consider to be a poison or toxin. Hydrochloric acid and sodium hydroxide are both things you wouldn't want to ingest by themselves, but mix them in just the right quantities and you get salt water. Reactions like this are called [neutralization reactions](_URL_0_).
That said, **do not try this**... |
Is the gravitational force the only force that distorts space-time and if so, why is that ? | In the mathematical framework of general relativity, gravitational force doesn't distort spacetime, it *is* the distortion of spacetime. It isn't the case that the existence of the force does the distorting.
To use a strained analogy, the question is a little like asking 'is swimming the only way to propel yourself th... |
Why do the British isles have so many castles in comparison to the rest of Europe? | What's the source of that map? At a first glance it seems wildly inaccurate. There are way more castles in France and Austria than listed here (and that are just the places I'm familiar with).
If this is some kind of crowd-managed map, much of the difference might be due to reporting bias. |
during exams, what actually happens in your brain that causes your mind to go blank? | One possible explanation is the stress of exams makes your body go into fight or flight mode where stress hormones such as cortisol diverts glucose (energy) away from the hippocampus and thus decreasing your ability to recall memories. For our ancestors, this gave them the extra punch needed to survive, as it was more ... |
What happened to the 170 German defenders of Tsingtao who were taken as POW's and chose to remain in Japan after WW1. | A small amount of information about the lives of those German POWs who chose to remain in Japan can be found in an account by Mahon Murphy of Trinity College Dublin, "Brücken, Beethoven und Baumkuchen: German and Austro-Hungarian Prisoners of War and the Japanese Home Front," published as a chapter in Bürgschwentner, E... |
what does the phrase "twice removed" or even "removed" mean when referring to a family member? | So your father's brother's son is your first cousin. You go up one generation, then a sibling over, and down one generation. 1 = first.
Your grandfather's brother's grandson is your second cousin. Up two, a sibling over, and down two. 2 = second.
But what about your grandfather's brother's son? Up 2, sibling over, do... |
Why do antique dolls often look so creepy? Did people not experience the uncanny valley in the past? | Well, Ernst Jentsch published *Zur Psychologie des Unheimlichen* in 1906 and Sigmund Freud's *Das Unheimliche* is 1919, and both of them turn to simulacra of human beings as components of their respective understandings of "the uncanny." So while Uncanny Valley itself is a recent coinage, we can rule out the general *c... |
How has the awkwardness of puberty and early teen years been viewed at different points in history? | I'd say a good deal of the awkwardness is relatively modern. You basically didn't have teenagers at all before the 19th century. You could argue that 'adolescence' is a social construct that arose when countries started to force people over the age of 13 or so to go to school. Suddenly, the West found itself with an en... |
Why do American high schools and universities use the nomenclature "freshman, sophomore, junior, senior" instead of, e.g., 1st-year, 2nd-year, etc.? How did that develop? | A reasonable trawl through the Internet will inform you that American universities borrowed the terminology from Oxford and Cambridge, where they had come to describe different levels of "sophester" or sophist--someone who *thinks they are* wise. (Sophomore adds on either a simple Latin -or 'operator' ending, or *possi... |
if i send a letter internationally through usps, do the other countries who process and deliver the letter get a cut of the postage i pay in the us? is there any revenue sharing between the postal agencies? | The pay is portioned out by a really complex equation, which is run by a UN organization called the [Universal Postal Union](_URL_0_). Almost every country is a member of this and this organization deals with rates and lots of stuff regarding international shipping.
Their rates are currently a bit controversial, as th... |
Did Dr. Mengele actually make any significant contributions to science or medicine with his experiments on Jews in Nazi Concentration Camps? | I'm not sure who in WWII Germany generated the data but there is a wealth of design data about the limits of the human body which was instrumental in laying the groundwork for manned spaceflight. Basically it's a set of data that tells you how many G's a person can be expected to survive in addition to temperatures, pr... |
When Shakespeare's plays were first performed, was the average theater goer able to sufficiently understand the dialog to be able to follow the plot and understand the character's motivations? | This is a complicated question to answer -- I don't think it can be a simple yes or no.
There are certainly parts of Shakespeare's work that anyone would understand, then or now. Especially in the lighter comedies. When Helena says "use me but as your spaniel" in Midsummer while waggling her butt at Demetrius, everyon... |
The city of Rome had a population of over one million people at its apex, but by the year 1000 CE it had fallen to less than 20,000. Are there any surviving accounts of persons living in Rome from that period and what they thought of the massive ruins around them? | Textually, we have an incredibly rich trove of accounts of visitors to Rome. On one hand, the collection is perhaps not quite as interesting as we might want: the Venn diagram of "people who were both literate and whose writings are likely to have survived" and "people with an awareness of a basic history of the Roman ... |
Why are smaller animals generally able to survive high falls with little damage compared to humans? | You and the mouse accelerate exactly the same, at 9.8 m/s^2. Therefore, falling from the same height, you and the mouse would hit the ground at the same speed. This means the mouse caries a FAR lesser momentum than you, since momentum is the product of your mass and velocity. Since your mass is much greater, and the ve... |
After Constantinople fell, when did the Greeks stop considering themselves Roman and start considering themselves Greek? | It was really not until the founding of Greece itself in 1821, and the eventual settlement in the 1830s, that those Greeks who now lived in "Greece", called themselves "Greek". People who spoke Greek, and still lived in the Ottoman Empire (where most Greeks continued to live until post-WW1), would have continued to cal... |
why in every zombie movie has no one ever heard of zombies? it's never an issue with other horror monsters (vampires, ghosts, aliens, etc). so what makes zombies so special? | Because really the zombie plague represents an unknown pathogen that spreads rapidly. Like a pandemic. It is the visual representation of something taking hold and killing many, spreading rapidly, and breaking down modern society.
There are movies that actual deal with real illnesses and uncontrolled spread, but it's... |
Tell me about IBM's new molecule pictures. Is this what molecules actually "look" like? | The short answer is that no, this is not what they "look" like, because "look" refers to _sight_, and no visible wavelength can resolve those molecules.
However, that's not to say it's not an accurate representation of the structure of the molecule. Atomic force microscopy is analogous to a blind man running his finge... |
When dinosaur bones were initially discovered how did they put together what is now the shape of different dinosaur species? | When they were first found, people had no idea they were the skeletal remains of extinct species from 65+ million years ago. However, ancient people definitely were able to tell they were the skeletal remains of some strange animals.
In many cultures, these remains gave rise to legends like dragons - since the remain... |
How is it that such an unwieldy animal such as a horse was so effective in combat, especially when used to charge heavy infantry formations. | First I have to ask you; are you aware how large a typical war horse was? A good Destrier could average and even exceed 15 hands, other breeds similar; making an average warhorse or charger over a meter and a half in size. Asides from being incredibly close to the height of (for a good chunk of human history) an above ... |
why are tight rings so much harder to take off than they are to put on? | When you put a ring on, your joints are braced against all your other bones, giving you something solid to push the ring down against. When you go to take it off, joints have ligaments and such that allow them to stretch a bit, which makes it so that you’re basically pulling your finger off rather than the ring. |
why do older emulated games still occasionally slow down when rendering too many sprites, even though it's running on hardware thousands of times faster than what it was programmed on originally? | A lot of old games are hard-coded to expect a certain processor speed. The old console had so many updates per second and the software is using that timer to control the speed of the game.
When that software is emulated that causes a problem - modern processors are a hundred times faster and will update (and play) th... |
The Plague of Justinian (541 – 542 AD) was a pandemic that heavily afflicted the Byzantine empire during the reign of Justinan I; what measures were put in place to help those that were affected in some way by it? | They buried the dead, and prayed.
Procopius' famous description of the plague gives a sense of its magnitude and horror:
"...at first the deaths \[in Constantinople\] were a little more than the normal, then the mortality rose still higher, and afterwards the tale of dead reached five thousand each day, and again it ... |
why do older generations seemingly look older than newer generations during the same age range? | Seems to me better health practices less labor intensive jobs. Machines let us work smarter. Also I don't know anyone that actively pick axes a coal mine. Im sure people still mine with machines and unions for better working conditions. Less black lung I suppose. (Minecraft jokes aside) |
How "big" was the average Viking warrior? How would they compare to average people today? What about Roman or Spartan warriors? | [Richard Steckel, a professor at Ohio State, did a study on the height of Northern Europeans from 900-1200](_URL_0_) and found the average height for men of 68.3 inches compared to 69+ today. This same group 'shrank' to 65.8 by the 1700s.
He attributes:
* A Little Ice Age hit about 1300 AD decreasing temperature 2-... |
At the peak of slavery in the continental United States, what percentage of the population would have owned one or more slaves? | The answer to this question somewhat depends on what you mean by 'owned'. In the strict legal sense of the word, the 1860 census reported just shy of 395,000 slave owners living in the antebellum Southern United States, which represents approximately 3.2% of the population of the South in that period, or just 1.2% of t... |
how is it legal for companies to keep all of their money over seas to avoid paying taxes while their company is based in the united states? | Because that's literally what US law says.
If a foreign subsidiary has earnings, taxes are due if the company doesn't reinvest the earnings overseas. Reinvestment literally means keeping money overseas and there are a number of investment categories (notably bonds) that allow companies to park foreign earnings. |
How come we haven't seen CPUs with three or more threads per core? | Oh there are, just usually in server software. Sun has 8+ threads per core. These are a lot more beneficial in things like file servers. I had a client a few years ago running on the T2 (or T3?)?. It was running some advanced mathematical computations and they couldn't figure out why it ran incredibly slow. So much so ... |
Will we ever be able to view what happens in other planets at a surface level with a powerful enough telescope?Especially planets that are earth-like/inhabitable. | In theory, yes it's possible. But what do you mean by 'at a surface level'?
A group of astronomers recently published a [30 year roadmap for NASA missions](_URL_1_). In it, they talk about all the amazing science we think we can get in the next 30 years as long as Congress keeps funding us. (If you have time, you shou... |
am i wasting energy if the phone charger is connected to the socket but the phone is not connected? | Yes, a lot of people like to say you should unplug it because it's wasting power, but on a side note, my dad and I were skeptical of how much power it was using, so we set up a meter to it and let it just sit there for like a week, we calculated it would be like 1-2 cents for the month |
What does a chameleon's field of vision look like when it's eyes are pointing in different directions? | My brother has had vision problems all his life. His eyes work independently, i.e. he doesn't fuse the images from his eyes but, instead, has two entirely separate images. In elementary school, they asked him to look into a machine and tell them whether the ball was on or off the picnic table. He was very confused. He ... |
for a disease that cause sores (chicken pox, hfm etc), what determines where the sores pop up? | For each type of skin disease there are different patterns and different reasons for the patterns.
For viruses that infect nerve cells (like shingles, which is the chicken pox virus) the pattern comes out in [dermatomes](_URL_0_) or the pathway of the nerves that they infect.
For some infections, it depends on the ... |
What kind of sexual pleasures did Roman emperors Tiberius and Caligula engage in that made them so notorious? | Both Tiberius and Caligula were disliked by the social elite, who wrote the history books and biographies that we draw our information from. This means that our sources (and their sources!) are known to be hostile and should not be taken at face value.
The major sources for this period are Cassius Dio, Tacitus and Su... |
If the Earth was shrunken down to the size of a marble but still had the same mass, would it form a black hole? How much mass would a marble need to have to form a black hole? | We don't exactly know how big a black hole is. The math says it has zero volume (a singularity), but we don't know what happens to the physics in these situations. What we do know is, given a certain amount of mass, how big the radius is of the sphere that encompasses the region from which light can't escape.
This rad... |
What's the science behind Mozart helping babies develop and helping people study? Is it just Mozart, or all classical music? | The idea that playing Mozart to babies will make them more intelligent is a myth, or at least not scientifically accepted. It seems to stem from a study in the 90's finding college students who had recently listened to Mozart outperformed a control group on a spatial reasoning task. Media misreporting turned this into ... |
What Would Happen if The Solar storm of 1859 Happened in Modern Times? | The fear mongering in this thread is set to 11. Humans survive. We would have police, we would have firefighters. Their tools would change but they would be there. Engineers would start fixing infrastructure. Without anything else to do we would have an enormous workforce that could be dedicated to fixing the problems.... |
the suffixes after names in japanese (e.g. -chan, -kun, -san) | -chan is for when you call someone cute, or younger people.
-kun is for friends, your buddies.
-san is for adults and general people you want to adress politely
It's only used when addressing someone directly, not for yourself. It's basically just a way of indicating your relation to the person. |
how do computer extensions work? ( .exe .inf .iso .bat, etc) | For Windows, the file extensions tell the OS what type of data to expect in the file. It uses the extension to tell if the file is itself a program that it can run (.exe) or what program it should open when you double click on the file. For example if you have Microsoft Word installed, it knows to open .doc files in Wo... |
Was Trial By Combat an actual thing in Medieval Europe? If so, how did really work and how was it regarded? | I can't comment on it's frequency unfortunately because I haven't studied it in great depth but there is a very interesting account of one in Froissart's Chronicles (1322-1400) that is ample proof that it did exist.
In Froissart's account (you can read it in the Penguin edited edition if you want, I can get the page ... |
Are some languages actually "faster" than others or is it just an impression? | Great article addressing just this question:
_URL_0_
["A tradeoff is operating between a syllable-based average information density and the rate of transmission of syllables," the researchers wrote. "A dense language will make use of fewer speech chunks than a sparser language for a given amount of semantic informatio... |
Is there something inedible that is high in nutritional value, other than the fact that it's toxic? | The first thing that comes to mind is pure [Ricin](_URL_0_). Being a protein, you could very easily digest it into its component amino acids.
If it weren't for the fact that it shuts off your ribosomes and kills every cell it gets its hands on in unsettlingly small doses. |
how does a relatively small transformer fire light up almost an entire city? also, why is it blue? | Even a relatively small transformer draws a massive amount of power. The power supply is high voltage AC, which is arcing in the open air. Basically, the open air is acting as a fluorescent bulb. It's mostly light from nitrogen, which glows blue, like neon glows red.
It's not an unusual thing to have happen, but I'... |
Were the Nazis aware that their policies were driving away many of the finest scientific minds of the time? Did the Allies actively encourage the resulting immigration? Had Germany been as far 'ahead' in physics before this as it seems? Was this typical in other scientific fields as well? | Yes, the Nazis understood this. They generally did not care. The scientists they were driving away, in their minds, were not people they wanted. Either because they were in an undesirable category (Jews, Communists) or because they were, by definition, disloyal (after all, only a disloyal person would abandon one's own... |
If I were a traveller in 13th century England. What would I eat on the road and how would I find a place to sleep. | I hope you don't mind if I focus a little later? Account records for the travels of warden and other officials from Merton College, Oxford, exist from 1270, and G. H. Martin has a great article laying out the itineraries and purchases from some of the better recorded years (mostly fourteenth and fifteenth centuries).
... |
Does the size of a woman's breasts have any correlation with how much breastmilk she can produce? | No, breast milk production is regulated by hormonal processes. Milk storage within the breast between feedings is slightly correlated with size. But breast make-up is more important. How much of the breast tissue is fat vs milk producing glands etc.
_URL_0_ |
Is it possible that that big bangs are happening all the time, but REALLY far away from each other? | It is certainly possible that big bangs occur elsewhere. It would probably be incorrect, however, to say that the big bangs happen very far apart. It might be true in an abstract sense, but you need to know that the big bang is NOT a large explosion IN space, but rather a fast expansion OF space itself.
Consider th... |
Do sound canceling headphones function as hearing protection in extremely loud environments, such as near jet engines? If not, does the ambient noise 'stack' with the sound cancellation wave and cause more ear damage? | Destructive interference, such as that found in ANC earphones, ~~will~~ can, in theory, completely cancel the soundwaves it interferes with, hence "destructive". The problem with super loud noises, however, is that they are beyond the capabilities of the headphones. They simply can't reproduce the right amplitude and f... |
how does a company like mcdonald's make their food taste exactly the same on such a large scale? | Highly controlled food quality, highly controlled cooking process, highly controlled preparation.
That's one of their big selling points as a restaurant. It doesn't matter where you go... the food is the same. Not necessarily good (for you or otherwise) but its the same. A safe bet if you are new to the area. |
why does most of the body bruise when struck, but the top of the head gets a hard lump? | A bruise happens when you bleed inside your skin. If it is soft under the blood, then it will push down. As long as it is soft underneath, the blood has a place to go. So the bruise stays soft. If it is hard, because there is bone underneath, then it will push up. Skin can stretch, but only so much. So when skin can’t... |
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