post_title stringlengths 5 304 | post_text stringlengths 0 37.5k | post_scores int64 15 83.1k | comment_text stringlengths 200 9.61k | comment_score int64 10 43.3k |
|---|---|---|---|---|
ELI5: Why do the last 4 moths of the year end in ber? | Just started to think about it and I wondered if there is a reason | 31 | These months come from the Roman calendar, where they were simply numbered - septem means 7, octo means 8, novem means 9 and decem means 10. They were numbered 7 - 10 because the Roman calendar only had ten months (January and February were added later).
The exact reason the "-ber" suffix is used is unknown. There are... | 34 |
ELI5: Why is it "safe" to drink contaminated water that has been boiled, but "unsafe" to eat spoiled meat that has been cooked? The dead bacteria and viruses are still present in both cases. | 20 | The bacteria actually aren't present after boiling.
"Boiling is sufficient to kill pathogenic bacteria, viruses and protozoa."
Meat: " started to go bad, then yes, cooking it will kill the germs. However, some bacteria (like Staphylococcus) that cause food poisoning do so by the fact that they excrete toxins, which ... | 37 | |
What do people mean exactly when they say Earth's escape velocity is 7 miles per second (correct if wrong) if a helium filled balloon can lightly float away? | 26 | The escape velocity is the speed that an object has to be moving at the surface assuming no more force will be imparted. If you throw a baseball from the ground it needs to be traveling 7 miles/sec as it leaves your hand to make it to space, but you could attach a rocket to the same baseball and it could escape at 1 m... | 48 | |
What research has there been into blood clots developed from birth control, or why hasn't the problem been solved in the decades since the pill's introduction? | What could we do to help that? I was just made aware of this and it sounds alarming that no attention is being paid. | 6,957 | Estrogen is inherently procoagulable. This is unavoidable in the same way that if you are sprayed with water you will get wet. If you inject high dose estrogen into a man who is bleeding, it can help stop bleeding (and cause blood clots).
Any systemic estrogen will have a risk of causing blood clots that is related to... | 3,868 |
ELI5: Why/how does "wetting" a trampoline with water cause it to bounce you higher? | 103 | It works something like this: when you wet a trampoline, some of the water gets trapped in the mesh of the trampoline which weighs it down a little. So before you even jump on it, the trampoline is "pre-tensed". So when you jump on it, you're able to stretch it further than you would normally would be able to. Howev... | 121 | |
ELI5: What's the cause of the "Elmer Fudd" speech impediment where r's and l's come out as w's? | 16 | When you're speaking, you're not just using your vocal cords. You also use your lips, your teeth, and your tongue to pronounce words. When one of these doesn't work properly, you can't properly pronounce sounds that rely on that part of your body.
The reason L and R are often mispronounced is because they need you to... | 12 | |
ELI5: How are paralympians with neurological disabilities (e.g. Cerebral Palsy) allowed to compete against athletes who are amputees? | I'm struggling to understand how the two can compete in the same category.
I'm watching women's cycling now, and Team GBs Megan Giglia is competing against Chinese Amputees.
Even the categories [here](http://www.lbc.co.uk/paralympic-classification-what-do-the-categories-mean-58926) don't seem to agree with that.
I'... | 24 | Sometimes if say there arent that many athletes to fill up a whole race in one category, they will run similar categories together. The less affected cerebral palsy athletes can ride with the less affect amputees riders, but they're only scored in their own class. They do this at most bike races for speeding things up ... | 15 |
CMV: Greta Thunberg is a poor choice as the voice for climate change due to her age, rhetoric, and lack of academic and political experience. | To start off, she is no doubt inspiring and clearly doing good for the world. I wish her nothing but the best, and I would much rather have her than *no one* advocating for these issues.
Despite that:
- I think it’s fair to say that most, especially older, people will not listen to a teenager with no experience rega... | 32 | I have trouble understanding this view. She is not "the" voice for climate change, she is "a" voice for climate change. Political figures and scientists alike have been saying that it is an issue for 30 years so why would we not want an additional perspective voicing their thoughts? | 46 |
ELI5: Why do Verizon and AT&T both claim to have the nation's largest network? | 17 | There are different ways you can measure largest...number of customers, number of towers, square miles of coverage.
On top of that, "network" is also vague...is it phone service, internet service, 3G, 4G?
So it is is pretty easy to pick and choose a definition that could make either one the largest. In ads, you'll o... | 12 | |
[LOTR] Why does Isildur flee at Gladden Fields instead of stand and fight with his men? | He fought Sauron face to face and was a skilled and honorable warrior. Did the influence of the Ring make him cowardly? Was he being evacuated to safety Secret Service to US President style? | 18 | There's a difference between fighting in a war surrounded by men and fighting in an ambush where most of your much smaller amount of men are being killed. But the thing is, the nature of The Ring entices you to use it. And without knowledge of it's true purpose, the only thing you could really use it for is hiding.
T... | 12 |
Do engineers at CERN have to repair the Large Hadron Collider after every "explosion" that happens? [Physics] | Tried googling it but a bunch of old 2012 articles came up focusing on the "black hole" thing. But, are the explosions large enough to cause that type of damage? I get that they're not "explosions" like a bomb, but they're still particles slamming into each other at nearly the speed of light, so I would imagine some th... | 18 | The energy in an LHC collision is 13 TeV. That's a lot for particles, but it's not really a lot at all for us. 1 TeV is famously described as roughly the kinetic energy of a flying mosquito.
Besides, very fast charged particles (such as the muons and pions produced in the collisions) somewhat counterintuitively don't ... | 41 |
[startrek] when The doctor takes over Seven's body he's amazed by how good prison rations are because he's never eaten and as such has no frame reference for judging food. I would have thought the ability to tell good sensations from bad is innate, not learned? | I mean it's not like newborns need to learn that pain is bad, it's hardwired in when the brain is forming | 25 | Bad tasting food isn't really the same as pain. It's not all hardwired, or people wouldn't have different tastes.
The prison rations in particular probably weren't too actively horrible, just really bland. The Doctor, having never experienced taste before, was overwhelmed by it. | 31 |
What are philosophers experts at? | When I want to fix my plumbing I can turn to a plumber as an expert at fixing plumbing issues. When I want to have knowledge about climate change, I could turn to resources from climate scientists and learn about the relevant facts on climate. For what should people turn to philosophers for? What kind of knowledge can ... | 36 | Philosophers are often expert witnesses at courts, sit in all kinds of ethics commitees, are bioethicists at hospitals. Logic is a subfield of philosophy and logic is used in many fields. Philosophers of science sometimes work with scientists on solving problems of data classification, solving some problems of method e... | 34 |
ELI5: What prevents Tesla cars that are powered by lithium ion from exploding in a traffic wreck? | 96 | The battery is protected by an armor plate made from aluminum and/or titanium (depending on model) and divided into separate compartments. This provides decent protection against damage to the battery that could cause it to catch fire.
Battery fire is still a risk, but remember that you aren't comparing it to no risk ... | 105 | |
[The video game Surviving Mars]Is it wrong to put all of your senior citizens in a dome, quarantine it and then cut the air to free up space for useful members of society? | 15 | Depends on your definition of "wrong".
Morally and ethically, it's a mass execution. A very compelling argument would need to be made about the necessity of this action before it stops being wrong.
Practically, it's less hassle to just line them up and march them out an airlock instead of dicking around with a death... | 14 | |
[MCU] How do you lose a Chitauri Leviathan? - those giant alien space whales (spoilers) | The Chitauri invaded Earth at only one point... downtown Manhattan, New York City, 100% American soil and SHIELD jurisdiction.
From the Marvel One-Shot Item 47, we know that Chitauri technology was jealously tracked by SHIELD, as is all alien technology by the Agents of SHIELD in their pursuit of 0-8-4 codes. It is e... | 80 | Easy. You bury the facts underneath a mountain of minutiae and meaningless acronyms. SHIELD has multiple covert research bases across the globe. HYDRA, via Secretary Pierce, obfuscated the storage sites of recovered Chitauri tech so that the most valuable ends up at Sokovia. | 84 |
[Star Wars] How did the clone troopers view Jango Fett during the Clone Wars? | The clone troopers' creation was ordered by the Republic and yet there was Jango Fett - effectively their father - allying himself with the Separatists and even attacking Jedi during the battle on Geonosis.
Did they care? Did they see him as a betrayer? | 103 | This is legends but they saw him as an honorable bounty hunter and warrior who “took out dozens of Jedi” before he died. It just so happens that his client was separatist scum but that isn’t Jangos moral responsibility. | 76 |
Why can I block most of the light when I hold my hand between me and a light source, but I can't block most of the sound when I hold my hand between me and a sound source? | 25 | Diffraction. Light and sound are both waves, and all waves exhibit five common behaviours:
1) Reflection, where a wave hitting a surface is reflected back or at an angle identical to its angle of incidence,
2) Refraction, where a wave moves through an interface between two different media, and in doing so changes its... | 20 | |
Does 'mastering' fusion mean making current fusion reactor designs a lot more efficient, or is there a different design or process we are hoping to figure out? | You hear people talking about the amazing potentials if we master or 'have' easy fusion, while current designs are struggling to be positive in net energy output. Does 'having fusion' just mean making the current design a lot more efficient, or is there a specific design, process or way of approaching fusion we don't k... | 55 | The difficulty of fusion is that the constraints are pretty tight from an engineering perspective. Throughout the years the questions you ask have been driving ones: is it just a matter of getting the engineering right, scaling things up, etc.? Or are they barking up the wrong tree, is there a better approach? The answ... | 31 |
[40k] I'm a space marine and want to kill one of the traitor primarchs. What methods could damage their super-bodies? | Will my bolters even have some effect? | 36 | Go ask Guilliman if he can loan the Emperor's Sword to you. They are all daemon primarchs, and as such, immortal if you can't snuff out their soul. Which the Emperor's Sword can do.
The best you can do with mere mortal weapons is drive them back from reality to the unreality of the Warp. Now if you want to do that, yo... | 42 |
CMV: In the current state of international relations, The US nuclear arsenal is redundant and possibly detrimental to military strategy. | Strategically, logistically, and diplomatically, nuclear weapons are useless or worse. Ignoring the cost to maintain the Minuteman and similar ICBM systems and sea and air-based nuclear capabilities, there are no enemies against which we could ever feasibly use nuclear weapons, and everyone knows it. The reason is glob... | 94 | Nation states change. One minute you're a wienmar Republic, the next you're the next nazi regime. Turkey although part of NATO, is actively doing away with democracy. What happens if Iran unifies it's sphere of influence in the middle east?
The other side of war is you don't want to win 45-42, you want to win 100-0. ... | 34 |
Here in the Canadian prairies there's been some freaky summer snow storms. My question is this: why do trees collapse under the weight of snow during these early snow storms seemingly more often than they do during the long winter months? | Is it simply the extra weight of the leaves still being on the branches collecting the snow? Simple physics? Or are trees, for lack of a better term, more prepared somehow for snow in the winter? | 56 | Trees shed their leaves during fall, which serves two purposes. One, they don't lose energy or water trying to make food in the slim winter sun. And two, the leaves would otherwise hold snow and ice, which weighs them down and snaps off the branches, or even breaks the tree. When storms come early, before trees have a ... | 23 |
[TMNT] How did Master Splinter get his hands on ninja weapons and equipment in New York? | 17 | Most martial arts dojos around the country have martial arts gear and equipment. I’ve been able
to buy Gis, belts, and weapons from them.
Heck, most malls have this type of stuff. /r/mallninjashit is full of it. | 24 | |
ELI5: Why do eggs become solid when we cook them? | Why do eggs become solid when being cooked? | 19 | Eggs contain a lot of proteins. Proteins in normal states have a very precise structure and there are 4 levels of that structure. While proteins have their structure intact, they look like a ball of tangled string. If you heat up these proteins, they start to unwind, destroying this tangled webs of bonds and unwinding.... | 11 |
[Star Wars] Do lightsabers run on batteries? | Do jedi/sith have to worry about loosing a charge in the middle of a duel? | 15 | yes lightsabers do run on a type of battery.
as for running out of a charge in the middle of a fight, that's not as big a concern since they use very powerful batteries.
the lightsaber blade is actually a very tight loop, superconductors in the hilt feed the return loop back into the powersource and continue the cycl... | 23 |
ELI5: why the enigma machine used in WW2 was so hard to crack? | 17 | By modern standards, it really wasn't.
The computer they used to crack it ran at something like 25kHz, less than 1% of 1% of the phone or computer you're reading this on.
Without an electronic computer, though, running through the millions of calculations required to crack the day's code for the enigma machines wou... | 30 | |
ELI5: Does nutritional quality of veggies depend on soil quality? | I recently bought a grow your own mushroom kit. Beautiful mushrooms sprouted from a sawdust block after a week. So... mushrooms are supposed to have all sorts of good nutrients. Are they getting all of that from sawdust? Would a mushroom foraged from a rotting log in a diverse/healthy forest be "better" for you? What a... | 23 | Everything in or making up a plant has to either come from the soil or the air, so yes. If there's absolutely no magnesium in the soil the plant is growing in, there's going to be no magnesium to you when you eat it, although most plants die if they don't have at least some level of their basic nutrients.
Fun fact: th... | 16 |
ELI5: Why does my glass of tap water fill with air bubbles if it sits still overnight? | ELI5: Why does my glass of tap water fill with air bubbles if it sits still overnight? | 45 | Atmospheric gases, Ike oxygen and nitrogen, come out of the water as time passes and as the water warms up.
Your tap water isn't pure water, it's mixed with the air around it as it travels through the pipe and out the faucet. The bubbles forming are the gasses coming out of equilibrium with the water. Kind of like so... | 20 |
[Invincible] If Earth was so important to the Viltrumites, why didn't Nolan have more than one child? Heck, why did he stop at one family? | 39 | Later in the series, >!Other Vitrumites covertly come to earth and begin doing exactly that in order to build up their numbers. However, there's a huge range of outcomes in terms of how each individual Viltrumite goes about doing it. One of them gets so attached to his new wife that he refuses to take additional mat... | 49 | |
[40K] Which of the Chaos Gods best rewards their followers? | Let's face facts for a minute - humanity is screwed. We've been fighting the powers of Chaos for millennia and not once have we had any real success. They gain power from the very nature of humanity and all we've got on our side is a withered old corpse and a bunch of 'roided up boy scouts.
Now before you get all "die... | 53 | It depends largely upon what your ambitions are.
Many consider Papa Nurgle to be the "best" to his supplicants because he is the only Chaos God that appears to TRULY care about each and every single one of them (at least in his own way). The others tend to simply see each new convert as a means to some unknowable end... | 74 |
What does RNA primer have that DNA Polymerase-III doesn't that allows it to start complementary nucleotide base-pairing with the template strand of DNA? | What the textbooks say is that DNA Polymerase-III, by itself, can't begin arranging the complementary base pairs in a replicating DNA strand. What is needed first is an RNA primer, that acts to place a few nucleotides to the strand being synthesized, and THEN DNA pol-III will begin adding nucleotides to the 3' end of t... | 53 | Cells make many copies of RNA, so it doesn't need to be extremely accurate. On the other hand, mistakes in DNA are long-term, so DNA polymerase needs to have a high degree of accuracy (referred to as fidelity). When adding a base to a strand, the new base pairs with its complementary base before the polymerase catalyze... | 17 |
ELI5: 'It's not the heat, it's the humidity' | Why does the amount of humidity in the air affect comfort moreso than the temperature? | 56 | A big part of how the body regulates temperature is by sweating. This is because when water evaporates, it takes some of the heat away with it.
When there's more humidity in the air, there's less opportunity for water to evaporate, so that leads to you sweating, and it taking longer to evaporate & cool you down. ... | 92 |
ELI5: How do master keys work? | How does one key e.g. A hotel key (metal keys) have a pattern that allows them to open any door in that building? I thought keys had certain patterns and obviously keys don't shapeshift to fit each different lock pattern.
EDIT: grammar and update to say thanks for people's time to find YouTube videos etc.
Also, I'm no... | 77 | A regular lock has a set of tumblers in it, each one has a groove cut in a certain spot so that when the key is put in, the grooves line up and the lock can turn. A lock with a master key has a second set of grooves cut in it so the unique key or the master key can open it. | 69 |
ELI5: Why can't we connect multiple Bluetooth speakers to a phone and play them all? | I was thinking of WiFi and how it is possible to connect multiple devices and use the internet. Why is it not possible with Bluetooth? I mean the same song from one phone being played in multiple connected speakers.
Edit: Thanks everyone for the clarifications. | 1,017 | The bluetooth protocol doesn't have anything built into it to handle multiple devices like that.
While in theory it could handle sending a signal to multiple speakers, the most important thing when you've got that many speakers is that they are in sync with one another, and that is a significant technological problem ... | 744 |
Are landlords "bad"? | Apologies if this question is badly phrased, as I'm not sure the best way to ask this. I'll try to explain. **(EDIT: I've realized that the way I wrote this post, you could argue that this is more of a philosophical/ideological question than an economic one. Perhaps rather than arguing whether landlords are "good" or "... | 146 | There are many costs and risks associated with home ownership that people may prefer not to take on. These include risk associated with the price of the house going down, maintenance costs, and costs of buying/selling the house. Depending on the circumstances, renting rather than owning can be a great deal.
Say somebo... | 180 |
CMV: Establishments that serve alcohol should be able to refuse service to pregnant women. | Where I live it is against the law to refuse to serve a pregnant woman alcohol. It is very well-documented that alcohol consumption is detrimental to the development of fetuses. [According to the NIH, there is no safe amount of alcohol use during pregnancy.](http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/007454.htm) I... | 38 | Not all pregnant women are visibly pregnant looking and not all pregnant-looking women are pregnant. There are plenty of pregnant women who don't show for quite awhile and there are also plenty of women who are mistakenly asked if they are pregnant. Are you going to require pregnancy tests at places that serve alcohol?... | 28 |
Is bonding angle between atoms in a crystal changed significantly under mechanical strain? | For example, does slightly bending a metal bar significantly change the crystal structure? | 47 | It is difficult to have elastic strains much larger than 0.1 % in ordinary metals. Larger deformations are permanent, atoms get rearranged.
Exceptions: whisker crystals (10 % elastic elongation, yes, also the distances between atoms) and superelastic metals (a reversible phase transition). | 14 |
How do you go about reinventing yourself as a developer? | Hoping this doesn't end up being too rambling - I've been in webdev for about 4 years now. Prior to that, I did a stint working on an ML platform for a couple years, which was basically my first professional gig. What I am learning is that while it's a reasonable sector to get comfortable in, I'm bored out of my mind a... | 35 | There are other places where you can go.
Hypothetically...
Assume you move to a company that develops, say interconnect devices. Those devices will have some form of full stacking for configuration to status display to everything. But that's only one part of it. You could learn things about the device, then ask your ... | 10 |
CMV: HOAs should not have legal power to enforce rules | I should start by explaining I don't have a problem with the concept of HOAs. They are totally valid and if you find yourself living in one, it would be wise to abide by their rules for the sake of your own financial investment in your home/property.
The benefits of living in an HOA will be enough for most to follow t... | 990 | So, all HOAs own part of the property you’re buying. They all fit into your second exception.
In property law, it’s easiest to think of property rights as a bundle of sticks. As the owner of the property you can sell all the sticks, one stick or only some of the sticks. This is what the developers do, they sell you s... | 266 |
ELI5:Why do we have so many blackheads on our nose? | 27 | A blackhead is a clogged hair follicle. Oil and a skin protein called keratin combine to clog the follicle. When the combination is exposed to oxygen, it turns black.
You have a lot of oil glands on your nose because they protect your skin from the sun and other environmental hazards. Oil tends to collect on the side ... | 36 | |
When we pop a joint like a knuckle or our back, its a realeases air. Where does that air go? | 17 | It dissolves back into the fluid. When you pop your knuckles, you're decreasing the pressure enough to allow the gas to escape the solution, which creates the popping noise. When you decrease the pressure again, it dissolves again. Think of a soda can; when you open the can you decrease the pressure and the gas escapes... | 12 | |
ELI5: How is the speed of vehicles traveling on a highway monitored by aircraft? | I went on a road trip recently and on the way there were signs that say speed monitored by aircraft. How does this work? Are drones used? Some type of plane/helicopter or even a blimp? Is it more accurate/effective? | 98 | Lines are painted 1/4 mile (or possibly other distances) away from each other across the highway. A plane flies above the marked area with officers who will time cars from point a to point b. He/she will then radio down to patrol cars the location, color, and model of the car, and the calculated speed based on the time... | 77 |
ELI5: How can T.V. shows of illegal things be shown without the people being arrested? | Ex: Street outlaws
Those gang and drug documentaries
and moonshiners | 76 | I would imagine in most cases that aren't fake "reality TV shows", it's because the people being filmed would only cooperate and allow themselves to be filmed if they are ensured anonymity.
You don't roll into a gang neighborhood and start filming crimes without their cooperation - at best they all run away and at wo... | 60 |
ELI5: Why aren't Deer domesticated the way cows, sheep and pigs are? | 3,289 | They are, but their meat isn’t in as high demand and they’re more expensive and difficult to manage than cows, sheep and pigs.
Pigs are an easy one, they grow fast, do well in sheds, eat most of anything and don’t require a lot, cows and sheep are herd animals, easy to muster and relatively easy to fence while growing... | 4,707 | |
ELI5: why can't clothes dryer send the static to ground? | Lots of static electricity is created when drying your clothes. Why can't the dryer send the static to ground? | 46 | It does. The problem is that clothes don't give up their static easily. The dryer has to touch the part of the clothes where the static builds up in order to discharge it. Touching every square inch of shirt is difficult. | 44 |
Other than body language, why is having bad posture bad? | 95 | Your skeleton, joints, ligaments, muscles, tendons, fascia etc. form a complex structure that works together to bear your weight and transmit force for activities. Proper alignment transmits the forces through the structures best suited to bear them. Poor posture can result in excess force being borne by softer struc... | 58 | |
CMV: I believe we shouldn't separate the genders for anything. | I've recently read [this article](http://www.thelocal.no/20140324/norway-army-makes-men-and-women-share-rooms) about how the Norwegian military integrated its troops so that they had unisex dorms and bathrooms. The women in the military report a drop in sexual harassment. It makes sense to me that if "separate but equa... | 21 | Would you apply this to the penal system? Male and female inmates housed together as cellmates with shared showers, bathrooms, dormitories, etc.
Stronger inmates already prey on the weak ans small as it is, but with sex segregated prisons they are at least in the general area of each other. Throw male and female in... | 20 |
ELI5: Why is it that everyone always tells you to avoid looking directly into light, yet when you go for an eye test, they do nothing but shine light into your eyes for the whole half hour? | 16 | It's kind of like the difference between standing next to the melted reactor core of Chernobyl and getting an Xray. Your eyes are constantly exposed to bright, damaging light, especially UV light from the sun. A few minutes of bright light at the optometrist isn't going to contribute significantly, especially because... | 17 | |
CMV: The skin color of the Ancient Egyptians depends on which dynasty we're looking at. | I've seen a lot of debate about the skin color of Ancient Egyptians lately. Many people claim that the Egyptians were black, while others claim that they looked more like Europeans, but wouldn't that depend on the dynasty? Here's my reasoning:
If Egypt was one of the first human civilizations and humans originated in E... | 29 | You're correct in the sense it does depend on the dyansty, but you aren't correct in the fact that it slowly changed and lightened over time. The vast majority of pharoahs were of a regular north african complexion, however there were times when Egypt was invaded, notably by the Nubians, who were black. Aside from thos... | 19 |
Where does the money printed by the FED enter the economy? | Hello there awesome people of the AskEconomics subreddit.
My knowledge is rather limited on the topic (hence the question). I will try to explain how much I know (or think I know) and I hope that someone will be nice enough to correct me and maybe even provide me with the full picture of the topic.
I know that the FE... | 16 | So, the fed conducts open market operations, and with that it alters the quantity of base of money, as well as the price of money.
The base money, central bank reserves (for the most part) is what banks transfer to *each other*.
This matter for two reasons.
First, reserve requirements.
Banks loan reserves to each o... | 14 |
ELI5: Definition of a parsec for an amateur astronomer | 26 | 3.26 light-years or the distance of an object where the orbit of the Earth around the sun creates a visual **P**arallax of one **ar**c**sec**ond
Parallax is the difference in apparent position of an object viewed from two different spots like how an object shifts a bit when you look out just your left eye is just your... | 27 | |
is it a an natural human response to judge others | when people see something about others and jump to conclusions, is that a learned behavior or is it a biological response? | 24 | I’d say there’s multiple answers to this question. Judging someone based on adhering or not adhering to societal standards (how they’re dressed, how they look, how they behave to some extent, if they’re together with someone you don’t see as being fit for them, …) seem to be to be learned, while judging if someone is a... | 19 |
ELI5: How much DNA do I actually share with other humans? | I know chimps and us share 98.5% of our DNA. However, what I don't get is how much DNA I'd share with any other odd human being on the planet. Like what's the scale? How many human-human DNA differences would it take to compare to a human-chimp difference? How similar actually are people of the same ethnicity? How diff... | 45 | The question you have to ask is what do you consider to be "different"?
Your DNA is made up of chromosomes. Those chromosomes are organized into genes. Your genes are then made up of base pairs.
The base pairs are the basic informational unit of DNA - much like a bit in computer memory. Each Gene is made up thou... | 43 |
how to learn statistics if you're really, really dumb? | The question says it all. :( I have one brain cell, and I really want to finish my masters thesis using logistic regression, but I am absolutely lost and even youtube videos aren't helping me. | 40 | If you just want to finish this thesis rather than "learn statistics", and if your school has a statistics department, you could ask them for help with it. University stats departments often have programs for stats students to help other graduate students with their thesis stats. | 45 |
[Star Wars]Why no one looks for Yoda. | In Obi-Wan Series we know that the Inquisators were looking for Jedi and specifically Obi-Wan, however no one even mentions about Yoda, which is in theory one of the greatest threats to Sith. | 26 | Grand Inquisitor: "Jedi hunt themselves"
Yoda, conversely, actually did keep his head down, stay out of the way, and not get involved. He did not hunt himself, so he never showed up on the Inquisitor's radar, and they had no leads on him. | 62 |
In what way is time a dimension? Why is it called the fourth dimension? | 27 | You define something's location with coordinates. On a line, you need one number. This is one dimensional. On a sheet of paper, you need two numbers - two dimensional.
In a three dimensional world you need three numbers to define where something is. Now, what if we had things like photons that can be absorbed and emi... | 38 | |
ELI5: What would happen if someone who is obese starves back to normal weight? | 23 | Nothing good.
Fat cells act as storage for excess glucose, which can be accessed for cellular respiration.
However, the body needs a range of amino acids and vitamins to function, which are *not* stored in fat. Before you starve off the weight, your body will be reduced to cannibalizing muscle tissue for proteins, ... | 37 | |
ELI5: Why is there a calm before a storm? | So I live on the South West Coast of Ireland and tomorrow we are expecting to be hit by the tail end of Hurricane Lorenzo. If you stand outside tonight, there isn't even a puff of wind, just deathly calm. It's eerie out there. Similar to a tsunami, is it a bit like all the wind has been sucked out beforehand? | 32 | As warm, moist air is pulled into a storm system, it leaves a low-pressure vacuum in its wake. ... That descending air becomes warmer and drier which is relatively stable, and once it blankets a region, it stabilizes that air in turn. This causes the calm before a storm. | 30 |
[DC] What's does the Anti Life Equation even do? Could it beat Galactus, the Phoenix force, or the Beyonders? | 79 | The Anti-Life equation is a mathematical proof that free will is a lie, life is not worth living, and total submission to Darkseid is the closest thing to meaning a soul can actually experience.
It absolutely could. | 87 | |
ELI5: Why is it that if we wet our fingers before putting out a candle, we don't get burned, but if we grab a hot pan out of the oven with a wet oven mitt, we get burned? | 7,910 | A thin layer of water can *very* briefly protect you from hot temperatures by absorbing the energy and evaporating before the heat transfer reaches your skin. For an object with very little residual heat like a candle wick, this is sufficient.
A much more massive metal pan has vastly more heat to give, and the large ... | 6,612 | |
Why was cephalization an evolutionary advantage? Did quicker information processing between senses outweigh the chances that multiple nervous centers could be destroyed at once? | 34 | One key concept to remember in evolutionary biology: the search space for potential adaptations is effectively infinite, so you will almost never find the "best" solution for any problem. What you tend to find is the first serviceable solution, which is then improvised upon and gradually improved.
Whether or not cepha... | 15 | |
CMV: Bullies should get punished equally despite mental disabilities | As someone who goes to a special education school I see this problem all to much. Some bullies are constantly pestering a child but because they are autistic (most in the school are that btw, the rest have other mental problems) they get away with just a little warning. And while damaging someone is strictly prohibited... | 29 | >I mean (for example) if someone would break your bone or pesters you constantly with a dumb thing you said ages ago, they should get punished, right?
Pestering someone or breaking their bones are two vastly different things. At your school has someone had their bones broken by a bully, and the bully was not pun... | 16 |
Would moving your body (subtly and imperceptibly) back and forth at 99.99% the speed of light cause you to experience time any slower? Would you live longer than everyone else around you? | And if so could there be any negative side effects? E.g. your body losing its shape and form and exploding? | 20 | > Would moving your body (subtly and imperceptibly) back and forth at 99.99% the speed of light cause you to experience time any slower?
Yes, for a fraction of a nanosecond.
> Would you live longer than everyone else around you?
No, you'd die a second or two earlier than them.
So, you're vibrating with a pe... | 50 |
ELI5: Why are buildings that are big stores like Meijer, Walmart, Sam's Club, etc., are all such tall buildings if they're only operating on the ground floor? | 700 | It's not that expensive to build tall ceilings in this context.
Low ceilings with lighting and ventilation clearly visible tends to make a place feel cramped. A more open space is often perceived as more comfortable to many people | 1,073 | |
ELI5: Why do so many rappers, including the ones which are fairly tall, have "Lil" prefixed to their names? | 131 | It actually has nothing to do with size. In gang circles, "Li'l" as a prefix is intended to be like "Jr." As a suffix.
In the gang, you earn your name by putting in work. If somebody already has the name you are intended to be given, you will be "Li'l ___".
Your gang name is going to be Monster? Well since there's ... | 107 | |
[Batman] How does Batman/Bruce Wayne feel about police brutality? | Does he think its justified or does he think only he should be the one to step over the line? Would he stop a cop from beating a suspect? | 38 | Well, did that cop take down the suspect in the act of a crime; or was it just a person of interest, or a suspect that hasnt had a proper investigation?
Batman has the benefit of researching and getting the background on criminals who are active in Gotham. He can go over the line with some brutality but he already k... | 29 |
[Star Trek:TNG] How long would it take for Cmdr. Data to mine 1 bitcoin? What about the Enterprise-D? | 48 | Data has stated that he performs 60 trillion Operations Per Second.
According to Federation records, "hashes" are used to determine the mining rate of bitcoins. It takes about 2,700,000,000,000,000 hashes or 2.7 million gigahashes to mine a single Bitcoin.
A gigahash is approximately equal to 1.3 trillion operatio... | 35 | |
ELI5: How does a drug overdose kill you? | What happens in your body that might end up being lethal? | 25 | Depends on the drug. Heroin and other narcotics cause severe central nervous system depression which leads to respiratory failure (you stop breathing).
If it is something that causes stimulation to the sympathetic nervous system, like cocaine and meth, they can cause heart failure or even rhabdomyolysis, which is brea... | 38 |
Am I correct in saying that when someone drinks a large amount of water, it **all** gets absorbed into the blood and then filtered out by the kidneys? as opposed to having a direct passage from the GI tract to the bladder? (sorry may be a stupid question) | 256 | Pretty much. There is NO normal direct connection between the gut and the urinary bladder in the human adult. So when you drink water, most of it will be absorbed through the gut into the blood, and then be distributed throughout the body (not all of it just gets filtered back out right away; we lose water continually ... | 106 | |
ELI5: Who would be responsible for an accident caused by an autonomous car? | The owner of the car, or the car manufacturer, GPS manufacturer etc.? | 23 | No laws have been decided on this front yet, so nobody can answer this question with certainty. It also might end up depending on what sort of defect caused the accident - is it the owner not keeping up to date on maintenance, is it a design flaw by the manufacturer, or was it something in the GPS that went wrong, etc ... | 17 |
ELI5: Why are solar panels only like ~20% efficient (i know there's higher and lower, but why are they so inefficient, why can't they be 90% efficient for example) ? | I was looking into getting solar panels and a battery set up and its costs, and noticed that efficiency at 20% is considered high, what prevents them from being high efficiency, in the 80% or 90% range?
​
EDIT: Thank you guys so much for your answers! This is incredibly interesting! | 13,406 | Physics and cost.
The theoretical efficiency limit is 95%. This is solely determined by the temperature of the sun and the temperature of earth. Whatever you do, a higher efficiency is never possible.
However, there are a couple of limitations. First, the solar panel has to *send out* light as well: the temperature o... | 15,313 |
ELI5: Why is cancer research so expensive? | Where is all the money from fundraisers and charities going? | 16 | Cancer is not one disease, it is a huge variety of different diseases. People who study cancer and develop treatments are doctors (MD and PhD) who require a lot of expensive education. They are assisted by technicians that also have expensive educations. The lab equipment they use is very expensive. Tests of new tr... | 17 |
Eli5: Why is a hard drive so much bigger in comparison to a SD Cards or USB stick, even though the storage space is the same? | 33 | Because a mechanical hard drive needs to fit its spinning platters, optical reader assembly, and controller circuitry into its chassis.
Flash memory devices like USB sticks and SD cards have no moving parts, storing their data directly on a chip. Therefore, they can be much smaller. | 16 | |
[The Flash] generally speaking all Speedsters can do the same tricks even gruesome ones though heroes don't what unique tricks could different ones have? | Trying to figure out some "trademarks" for two different villain Speedsters and heroes all with the speed force not slowing down others type of power. | 54 | As we see in CW's The Flash, when you're dealing with the same powers (superspeed), different abilities are a result of different levels of experience, different ethics and differences in creativity.
That said you can further distinguish two speedsters by giving them weapons; give on a sword made of an unbreakable mat... | 44 |
[Matrix] Are the physical bodies of the humans better than our own? Can they physically do any of the martial arts and athletic feats in the real world that they can in the Matrix? | Surely they *know* the techniques because they've been uploaded with the info directly into their brains, but are their physical bodies capable of replicating any of the movements that they've learned in the real world?
I'm imagining something like what happened with Jamie Madrox in Marvel. He sends out a duplicate a... | 22 | Their real bodies are weaker than their digital ones for lack of exercise and, on top of that, they can't break the laws of physics.
On the muscle memory front, it's very likely that the uploaded martial arts data doesn't include accurate muscle memory for either their real or digital bodies but that it doesn't matte... | 29 |
Why were the Clone Wars not referred to as the first Galactic Civil War? | At then time when the clone wars broke out, the galaxy was more or less unified under the rule of the galactic republic. CIS forces are referred to as 'secessionists' many times, indicating their status as rebels against the central galactic government. Why then, do we not refer to the conflict as a civil war? (And for... | 32 | Because the Empire wrote the history of it, and didn't want to memorialize the Republic or its effort at all. It wanted to denigrate them. Saying that it is a Civil War would paint the Republic as a strong and competent government, which contradicts the theory that they were weak and feckless, and therefore needed to b... | 50 |
ELI5: why do some pictures online load top to bottom (line of pixels line by line) and other go from blurry to clear? | 12,161 | Because these are two different strategies to load images.
In strategy A you break down the image data into small pieces and send each piece one by one. As soon as a piece is received it shows up on your screen. Typically the pieces are sent such that the top most part of the image is sent first.
In strategy B you ... | 3,302 | |
[Star Wars] Why didnt the CIS genetically engineer a virus or bacteria specifically tailored to clone trooper DNA? | Seems like a pretty easy way to wipe out the clone army while avoiding civilian casualties. | 25 | Because Palpatine was in charge of both the Republic and the CIS, and always intended to have the Republic and its clones win.
Plus, with a bioweapon, you need an effective delivery system. Given that the clones rarely remove their armor and helmets and their suits are completely sealed to the point that they can oper... | 54 |
I believe that terrorism is still a relevant threat to America and the security measures in place are wholly necessary. CMV | One of the most common TILs on reddit is the statistic that terrorism is an insignificant threat and that I'm more likely to be killed by a policeman. My problems with this.
1. Just because the figures are low does not mean the threat is not there. Everyone loves to call the TSA theater, but would the underwear and ... | 18 | Wholly necessary? Does that mean you believe there are no possible actions that are excessive or ill-conceived?
In any case, the Shoebomber and Underwear bomber, both of them got on board the planes, and it was problems with detonation that got them. In 2010, there were two bombs on Cargo planes. They were disco... | 12 |
CMV Even if irrefutable proof of widespread corruption in the US government came to light, the American people would be unwilling and unable to effectively respond. | I post this more as a panicked cry for reassurance rather than a bout of playful combativeness. In other words, I'm assuming a grim future which I feel I should spell out:
'By the people, for the people' has become a bad joke as elected officials take bribes with impunity from private entities that either harm the com... | 410 | No one expected the Russian Revolution. No one expected the sudden end of Ceausescu's regime in Romania. Surely a band of peasants in Vietnam could never defeat a world empire?
The people don't know their own power. Yes, things are grim, and the future is uncertain. There has, however, been a massive social shift.... | 49 |
[Marvel] Why haven't the Asgardians declared Eminent domain on the infinity stones? | Surely a bunch of fecking humans can't be the best ones to keep it?
MCU. | 44 | As was previously said, having more than one Infinity Stone in a given place isn't especially smart.
First, Asgardians aren't invincible and Asgard isn't impregnable. On the off chance they *did* fail to protect their home, any enemy that conquers them would still only have a single Infinity Stone to their name. Fur... | 41 |
ELI5 why water is slippy in some situations (wet road for example) and grippy in others (licking the top of your fingers to turn the page of a book for example) ? | 99 | It’s all about relative friction. Friction will decrease slightly when you have a wet road on rubber tires vs dry road on rubber tires. Your fingers normally have oil on the surface, so water on your fingers on paper will have more friction than oil on fingers on paper.
If you had rubber fingers (or rubber gloves on),... | 122 | |
ELI5: Why is my money worth different amounts in different places? | 131 | You could be talking about 2 things here; the exchange rate or the purchasing power parity.
If you are talking about the exchange rate, the difference in worth has to do with political and economic history. The Indian Rupee (INR) was pegged to the dollar ($1=1INR) in the 1940. What that means the reserve bank on indi... | 20 | |
[Neko Atsume] Where are these cats getting all these gold and silver fish? | Also, why are they giving them to me instead of eating them, I thought cats liked fish?
 
Most importantly though, they tell me I can buy cat toys with them? Who wants to be paid in fish? Barter economies aren't that common these days. | 21 | What you have to realise is that while these are cats, they aren't exactly normal cats. Look at the rare cats. Guy Furry can cook. Bob's using a walking stick to get around. Xerxes is royalty. Some - like Guy Furry, Sassy Fran, or Kathmandu - are capable of walking around on their hind legs.
These cats are *smart*. Re... | 10 |
CMV: The tip system in the United States for delivery drivers and servers blatantly punishes empathy. For this reason, it should be abolished. | I would also agree that practically any system that punishes empathy should be abolished.
Servers and delivery drivers should be paid just like other professions. The wage should be around what an average server would make now, with the option for adjustment based on performance and higher wages at restaurants with h... | 35 | >In the current system, many do not tip at all, and others who feel empathy end up covering for it out of respect for the person serving you.
Do you have statistics for the amount of people who do not tip? It seems as though your entire argument hinges on the idea that most people do not tip, so that burden fall... | 11 |
[General Fantasy Dungeon Crawl Video Games] Why are there so many freaking dungeons? Why are they so sprawling and labyrinthine? Why are they all seemingly abandoned? | *Watsonian aside for context: I play a lot of idle dungeon crawl RPG games. Examples include Clickpocalypse 2, Idle Sword 2, Dunidle, Soda Dungeon, and others. They're games where you select your players, buy gear, upgrade gear, and sometimes deploy things like spell scrolls. What separates them from other dungeon craw... | 20 | The dungeons were created by many different cultures and species throughout the millennia.
In a few cases they were literal dungeons - underground areas designed to house criminals and political prisoners. They were created to be labyrinthine and extensive to foster a sense of hopelessness in its occupants and to p... | 16 |
[Tarzan] Why doesn't Tarzan have back problems? | He's always hunched over and walking on his hands, wouldn't this destroy your musculoskeletal system? | 28 | A lifetime of active living and constant stretching for that next vine or branch has endowed Tarzan with the sort of flexibility that would be the envy of a veteran contortionist... he walks hunched on his hands because he feels comfortable doing so, but he could bend backwards and touch his toes with his elbows, if he... | 44 |
[Star Wars] How far back does the Republic know of its own history? | I'm going through Knights of the Old Republic again and it made me wonder, does the Republic have any records of these events? What about the Mandalorian Wars or the formation of the Republic? What is the earliest event that the Republic still has records of? | 22 | Pre-Purge, the records reached back thousands of years, roughly 25 000 BBY, to the formation of the Old Republic.
Though, there are some sources that have records stretching back almost 40 000 BBY, such as the Temple of the Ancients on Lehon, which was home to the Rakata of the Infinite Empire, who are responsible for... | 14 |
ELI5:Butler's Gender Performativity | I am trying to fully understand Judith Butler's theory of gender performativity and I would like some help. | 38 | The basic (and simplified) idea is that gender--what we think of as masculine and/or feminine--is performed in the ways we act, speak, dress, move, etc. and doesn't really exist outside of that performance. We learn how to perform this way from dominant culture and conventions--what someone might (incorrectly) call "n... | 12 |
ELI5: The Mexican Drug Cartel Wars | 45 | ok, so you've decided to sell jellybeans to everyone at school. Your business is very successful, until you find out that someone else is selling jellybeans too. You have a choice, compete, or just fuck them up so they can't sell them. The teachers find out you're selling beans, so they create/enforce the rules that yo... | 50 | |
[Futurama] End of Series spoilers | Are they stuck in a loop forever after the events of "Meanwhile" or can something be done on the next time around? | 41 | Maybe the Professor is relying on the universe being probabilistic. That is, maybe he's hoping that events are random enough that things will turn out differently in a future loop, freeing the universe from repetition. | 21 |
[Star Wars] The Death Star is absolutely massive, but does it have a health club and gym? | Looking for work and I'm curious about their benefits. | 164 | Confirmed? No.
Probably? Yes.
The Death Star had over two million personnel and was designed as a mobile city of sorts. It contained recreation areas, cantinas, bars and other expensive luxuries. It'd almost certainly have a gym- or whatever qualified as a gym in the Star Wars universe. | 202 |
ELI5 why gold is referred to when we are speaking of wealth, even though platinum is rarer, less reactive and more expensive? | 24 | Gold, as a metal independent of other metals, has been known since the dawn of history, named and readily identifiable. It has a melting point when pure of about 1000°C — which is pretty high for a metal. It occurs unalloyed in nature fairly often.
Platinum was unknown as an independent metal in Western society until ... | 19 | |
ELI5: Sometimes if you drink enough water you can feel it slosh around in your stomach. Why do we feel it under certain circumstances even though there are always contents in your stomach, like stomach acid? | 56 | If you haven't consumed anything in a long time, your stomach will be mostly empty. Because it's empty, it's being sqished together tightly by the rest of your body. There isn't even a lot of acid in there or anything.
If you fill it, the walls of the stomach stretch, and more gastric juices are added. If you eat or d... | 49 | |
CMV: /r/theredpill gives vulnerable men unhealthy attitudes towards women and their 'ideology' is just a less extremist version of Elliot Rodger's beliefs. | 92 | "less extremist version of..." is a way of falling into a false equality trap; it changes what you're talking about entirely, while treating the two items compared as functionally identical.
Universal health care is a less extremist version of communism. Reading the Quran alone at home is a less extremist version of ... | 48 | |
How does the wait time paradox work? | I've read a lot of it on the internet and I found this. If a bus comes every 10 minutes (certain) then you'll on average wait 5 minutes. But if a bus comes on average every 10 minutes (uncertain) then you'll wait on average 10 minutes. How did they calculate the 10 minutes? I tried google scholar but couldnt really fin... | 51 | The waiting time paradox is a good example to show why some naive thinking and calculation can be very wrong. (Also, there is a missing part to this since strictly speaking you do *not* know that the average wait time in the uncertain case is 10 minutes, unless you have additional assumptions.)
For these two problems,... | 48 |
ELI5: why are rabies incurable | 4,097 | Rabies is caused by a virus. And viruses are treated by helping out the body's natural virus killing immune system. So without the immune system we can not fight the virus. Rabies attacks the nervous system, the brain. And due to the brain-blood barrier and a number of other things the immune system is not able to figh... | 4,285 | |
[Star Wars] How much wealth does the Jedi Order possess at the time of Episode 1? | I feel like they should be extremely wealthy. They own the main temple on Coruscant, and maintain others across the galaxy. They've been around for thousands of years, more than enough time for even the worst interest rates to make them insanely wealthy. They have the funds to buy spaceships and in the past they've ... | 22 | Their wealth isn't as huge as you'd think.
* They don't own any capital class ships, all of their travel is either done on Republic-owned vessels (see Episode I), public travel options (Episode II) or in starfighters.
* They only really maintain the Coruscant Temple, and while there are indeed others, they are mostly... | 35 |
[LOTR] I'm a mortal who lucked out and was given a trip to the Undying Lands. What awaits me there? | Assume I'm, idk, a hobbit who has born the One Ring. Or maybe I'm just a dwarf who was best buds with a Silvan prince during my lifetime in Middle Earth, and manages to hitch a ride to Valinor. What awaits me there? Do I enjoy any kind of immortality, or am I destined to just live out the rest of my mortal days in a re... | 20 | Your status as a mortal is not changed upon going to the Undying lands. If you are mortal, you will still pass away eventually.
It is the only place in the world (mostly) free from the corruption of Morgoth. So the scenery is going to be as pleasant as any you might find in Middle Earth, and probably very primitive co... | 24 |
What is at the bottom of deep fresh water lakes like the Great Lakes? | 21 | That depends on the lake.
Usually, the very bottom is bedrock, like granite or limestone or so. However, over years, this gets smoothed down by currents to form sand, which is mixed with materials that have sunk, like leaves, wood, dead animals, and human garbage, as well as various soils and sands that have washed do... | 11 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.