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[Ad Astra]: A few questions? | I have a few questions about Ad Astra:
* It only took roy 79 days to reach neptune from Mars. How did he lose his mind with only 79 days of isolation when he had lots of entertainment on board? Doesn't psychological effects start popping up only in solitary confinement and that too after a much longer time?
* Why d... | 69 | 1) he had a lot of shit on his mind. He sort of just killed 3 people on accident and he was left alone with his thoughts while being stuck in the same place they died. He also learned that the government was turning on him after his life long service and that his father had killed a bunch of people on his mission.
2) ... | 31 |
ELI5: Why do only some displays display HDR? Isn't a display just a series of pixels that display different color values? What makes an HDR display different? | To clarify, if my normal LCD display does not display HDR, what makes it different, hardware wise, from an HDR compatible one? I understand the HDR process when taking a picture, and the layering of differently exposed images, but then how can I view the HDR image on my non-HDR phone? | 17 | An HDR screen is a different concept to taking HDR photos. Although both relate to using a wider range of colours.
A non-HDR screen only has 256 different levels of red, green and blue. So there's only a certain range of colours and brightness it can display.
HDR screens increase this so there is a wider range of col... | 14 |
[MCU] I am a leader of a smaller space realm and am planning some old fashioned conquest. Should I hire some "super" beings to fight the inevitable hero, or are superheroes rare enough I can cut that from the budget? | Beings of exceptional power are really expensive and keep trying to overthrow me. However, a single superhero can wipe out large parts of my fleet/ army on their own. Would I be better off trying my luck and hoping the heroes are away, or do I expect a hero to show up every time? I heard a rumor of a woman who can dest... | 51 | The best option to me would be to favor a strong military, specifically looking to have a strong Space Navy that can support ground incursions with superior firepower, excellent dogfighters, and quick troop transports.
Heroes have one major flaw across all units, and that is they can only be in one space at a time. A... | 38 |
[Percy Jackson] what powers would Hera children have? | 24 | Hera is always coming up with plots and shit, her kids would probably good at scheming, and setting up plans. Not battle plans exactly but like traps and stuff. Like what she did to Hercules a shit ton.
She is also the goddess of marriage and children so they would probably be really good with kids and have strong r... | 32 | |
[Star Wars] Why do major events seem to start on Tatooine? Is Tatooine somehow connected to the force in some special way? | Anakin was born there, The jedi are drawn to the planet by a defective hyperdrive, they land and meet Anakin which sets the prophecy in motion. He returns there to save his mother which is a pivotal turning point in his path to the dark side. Luke is born, and he is taken to Tatooine where he will grow up. He then meet... | 201 | It's all really just a chain of events that begins with Anakin's birth. At least, if you believe the prophecy and all that. The Chosen One was born there, so of course he had to be found; he couldn't well be chosen if he lived in obscurity as a slave, now could he? Everything else after that is because of Anakin. If An... | 176 |
ELI5: How Do The Mega Rich Like Bill Gates Have Free Access To Their Own Money If It's Mostly In Investments And Stocks? | I've seen a lot of information saying things like "Bill Gates and people that rich have most of their wealth tied up in stocks and their investments, they usually have very little cash-on-hand or in their bank." If that's the case, I'm to believe Bill Gates has to start selling his assets before he can just go buy a ca... | 81 | Having most of your money in investments and stocks is not the same as having all of your money in it. Gates is worth 91 billion dollars, so even if he had only 5% of his money as cash on hand he would still have 4.5 billion dollars available to him for purchases. | 160 |
What are some examples of two philosophers arriving at the same conclusions based on different methods, arguments, premises and means? | I've always found this idea interesting, that two people can agree on the same conclusion yet arrive at the said conclusion by completely different means. Moreover, not only can the conclusions be the same despite different premises, but at times the interpretation of the conclusion, that is to say, the significance o... | 30 | Schopenhauer showed that the whole world was essentially one through Kantian (and Western Philosophy) means independently of how Eastern Thought arrived at the solution.
It is a clever little argument saying that if there is a phenomenal (world of appearances) and noumenal (world as it is) realm, and there exist diff... | 17 |
CMV: Art can not be 'objectively bad' because it's quality is purely subjective. | I will define art as any presentation of media that is presented for others to experience. It can be visual, like a painting or photograph, or audio like music or sound effects, written like a story or played like a children's game, or any combination of the above like a movie. Art is anything that is created and exper... | 15 | >Art is never 'objectively bad' because any values you assign to judge it by are completely attributed to your subjectivity.
Art can, and frequently does, assign those values to itself, either within its own structure and presentation or through reference to/proximity with other works. If it is a failure to meet th... | 13 |
What makes someone "photogenic" regardless of their physical appearance (as seen with eyes vs. photo). | I have seen people who are very attractive in person but are not photogenic. Also I have seen people who are photogenic and not attractive in person. What is the reasoning behind this? | 40 | It has a lot to do with distance relationships, especially in the midface. Professional models usually have nearly perfect proportions regarding the space between the eyes, the equal thirds rule of upper, middle, and lower face, short philtrum length, projection of the chin, etc. Most cameras are cheap and the lens dis... | 17 |
[Blair Witch] Between the various pieces of Blair Witch media, a not insignificant number of people had gone missing. Suppose a formal investigation was launched into the woods. What would it take for them to come back alive or with tangible results? | 123 | A formal investigation was launched after the first three kids went missing.
Except according to the maps of the woods, the teenagers should have gotten out a long time after following the river. And when search teams were sent out, one specifically noted that they should have come across Heather and Mike multiple ti... | 72 | |
[MtG] How significant are we, the players, as planeswalkers, to the "main npc" walkers? What is our role in the story? | 43 | Depends on the format. We have no role in the story, we are just random planeswalkers. If you are playing Legacy or Vintage, you are likely several leagues above the main npc walkers in power. You are powerful enough to give Nicol Bolas pause, and to make him wonder why he's never heard of you. If you are playing S... | 24 | |
What does it take to develop a vaccine, and why does it take so long? | My basic understanding is that a vaccine contains a weakened or dead version of the virus in question, which can be injected into the body so the immune system can develop antibodies without risk of infection. The vaccine acts as a practice run of sorts.
What exactly is it that stops us from just getting a sample of t... | 5,693 | Safety is important—you have to be sure that you’re not infecting anyone with the virus or causing some other off-target effect, especially with live-attenuated vaccines. This leads to another issue:
Some viruses are not really good targets for vaccines because they are too variable and mutate too quickly. This is the... | 3,253 |
ELI5: Why can you test a nuke underground but on the surface it would be devastating? | If a nuke would explode on the surface of the earth it would be super devastating for the nature, for humanity etc. but underground its ok and nothing happened like earthquakes, the radioactivity?? Why? | 15 | When a nuke explodes underground, the mass of the ground absorbs most of the impact, and radioactive remains mostly stay in the crater. It's not powerful enough to create an actual earthquake, though the seismic wave can be registered.
When it explodes on the surface or in air, the shockwave (hot compressed air) is fr... | 25 |
ELI5: What makes "Sushi Grade Fish" safe for consumption as apposed to normal raw fish? | I've recently gotten into cooking and making meals, and I quite like sushi, so it'd be nice to know what exactly distinguishes the two from each other. I'm not asking how do I get sushi grade fish, I will only eat raw it if I'm informed the fish is Sushi Grade. I'm more asking how the science, biology, chemistry, etc. ... | 45 | Sushi is made from salt water fish (ocean fish) vs fresh water fish (river or lake fish). Ocean fish naturally has less parasites and bacterial content so it's safer to eat raw. Fresh water fish needs to be cooked.
Fish like Tuna is fresh caught, bled immediately, and chilled to make it safe to eat. Tuna and other fis... | 36 |
ELI5: Why can't I use multiple connections simultaneously to speed up my internet access? | e.g. If I'm connected to broadband/cable but am near a wifi hotspot at the same time. | 56 | You can, but you need some advanced gear to pull it off. This is called Internet Bonding - Or aggregation. You need a routing device that will pickup both signals and them bond them together. This type of device is fairly expensive, and you are not likely to get the results you are looking to achieve. It doesn't join t... | 34 |
ELI5 if a chameleon dies, does it keep it's current color, and why? | Let's say it blends in with a tree and it dies spontaniously. Will it change back (to green?) or will it just stay the way it is?
Edit:
I wasn't really sure if I'd understand answers from /r/askscience, so I chose to post here, hope you don't mind.
Although there were a lot of different answers, I could make up my mi... | 946 | Chameleons change their skin color using neural impulses. It's convenient to think of a chameleon changing its color to lifting your arm above your head.
When a person dies, that lifted arm will fall to their side as the neural signals telling those muscles to lift that arm up turn off. When a chameleon dies, it stops... | 1,267 |
ELI5: Why does Earth have a supercontinent cycle? | Every 200 million years or so, a supercontinent is formed composed of all of the continents of the world. About 255 million years ago, it was called Pangaea. It looked really cool, it had enormous inland lakes and every continent was mashed together. There were only 3 oceans from the looks of it at that time.
In arou... | 33 | The tectonic plates are basically constantly moving. Whatever is on them will move with them, so eventually, all the land that is present will have moved, with the plates, to where the plates are meeting.
>why do the tectonic plates move specifically towards the prime meridian and equator of the Earth as opposed to... | 12 |
Why does failing to fully drain a laptop battery "condition" it to having a smaller lifespan? | 18 | Are you sure you're not confusing lithium ion (laptop) batteries with nickel metal hydride or nickel-cadmium batteries? Voltage depression (sometimes erroneously called a memory effect) from partial depletion is not really a concern with lithium ion batteries, though it was with NiMH and *especially* NiCd batteries. Dr... | 23 | |
How durable was baby Superman? | If the Kents hadn't found baby Kal-El in that corn field, how long would he have lasted? This is assuming his craft didn't have a sustenance system of some kind. | 17 | Indefinitely. Baby Superman had, more or less, access to every power Superman currently has. There may have been a period of charging the solar battery, so to speak, but for the most part he had access to all the powers we know him to have and then some. His actual powers developed quite early and he began repressing t... | 27 |
[Harry Potter] Where do the dementors come from? Did people made them or were they born? | I know they are kinda immortal since they can't be destroyed, but where do they come from? | 33 | They come from a species which feeds off of emotions. That's a dementor, with their focus being happiness.
They can die, but only if there is no happiness for them to consume. As happiness is a renewable 'resource', there is no fear for dementors. If you remove a dementor from society, it will starve and die.
It i... | 22 |
ELI5: What is AC grounding as opposed to DC grounding? | 38 | They aren't any different. In both cases you're just establishing a common point to reference voltages against
For AC your signal will vary between above and below ground regularly. For DC your signal will either be above or below ground and stay there | 19 | |
ELI5: When and how did the relationship between England and America repair following the Revolutionary War? | 52 | Both the US and England were huge trade partners. Just because the US was no longer under British rule didn't mean that they weren't still a huge source of lumber and other raw materials. Throughout the 19th century, relations slowly improved as the US continued to trade with England. It wasn't until World War One that... | 22 | |
If we know what kind of bacteria causes the majority of cavities, why don't we just make an antibiotic that targets them and distribute it like a vaccine at a doctor's office? | 58 | Antibiotics that target a specific bacterium are tricky. There are a small handful that have been demonstrated, but very few, and only for research purposes. Even then, it's more of a "kills bacteria x very efficiently, while y and z will mostly survive" deal.
The reason is, simply, how targeting can be done. You basi... | 63 | |
When I pour a glass of water really full, it can fill above the rim of the glass, would this happen on a planet with a much stronger or lighter, gravitational force? | I believe the water goes above the rim due to surface tension, but could this happen with different forces of gravity?? | 33 | Yes, it is surface tension that allows the effect. The surface tension of the liquid competes with gravity for how much you can overfill, so by increasing gravity (or using a liquid like alcohol with less surface tension) the overfill will be less. Similarly if you had less gravity or were using something like liquid g... | 16 |
[Thor] Does Mjölnir work in other universes? | Would Thor be able to use the hammer in an Odinless, or Asgardless, universe? Or what happens if that universe has different rules regarding who is "worthy". Ex: Thor travels from a healthy 616 to such a universe. | 44 | The enchantment is on Mjölnir itself; hopping universes does nothing to change or weaken its magic in any way. The new universe's "rules" will likewise be irrelevant; Mjölnir itself (or, rather, the magic cast on it) still makes the decision on who is and isn't worthy to wield it. | 30 |
CMV: Prince Hans is the true hero of Frozen and would have made a better ruler for Arendelle than Elsa | There are two ideas that I was left with after watching Frozen for the first time and they were only solidified after a recent rewatching:
1.Prince Hans is the Hero of the Story.
2.Prince Hans would have made a great king for Arendelle or at least a better ruler than Elsa.
Number one is easy. Even though he's the '... | 15 | > He has an idea of how to play the Game of Thrones
Do you think the Lannisters are good rulers because they know how to play the Game of Thrones? Hans is not even good at getting and keeping power, seeing as how he's deported in the end.
So he's pretty much a less-competent version of the Lannisters. Not exactly... | 10 |
ELI5 when viewing a sheet of transparent glass or a mirror from it's side profile, why does it appear green in colour? | 19 | The iron oxide that gives glass the green tint isn't there on accident, it's added to make the glass easier to melt in large batches.
Glass melting furnaces produce almost all of their heat in the form of infrared light. This is a problem when you want to heat up something transparent, because the infrared light will... | 18 | |
CMV: It is socially acceptable to go to a dog park without a dog | I love dogs, but I’ve never had my own. Growing up my parents’ busy schedules and my father’s allergies always interfered with us getting a dog. To this day, I feel like I’ve been deprived of something that gives me so much joy, making it even more special when I meet a dog. I’ll point out every cute dog walking down t... | 23 | I've had the joy of living near a park that isn't specifically a dog park but that is nevertheless frequently used as such. If you have easy access to such a park, I'd highly recommend it! Nobody can get mad at you for visiting without a dog when it's just a regular park that people visit.
When it comes to fenced dog ... | 10 |
[MCU] Would Stormbreaker be more powerful if it had a Uru handle? | 44 | It would probably not make any meaningful difference. The fact that it cut through the infinity gauntlet blast as is means it must be pretty top notch powerful.
After the head of Stormbreaker was forged, Eitry was rushing around trying to find the handle. Which tells us two things -
1. It did not need any spe... | 50 | |
ELI5: how do fleas jump so high for their body size? | 15 | As something gets larger, it's weight goes up proportional to it's volume, and it's strength goes up proportional to the cross sectional area of it's muscles. Volume scales as the third power, area scales as the second power.
So, very large things are much weaker for their size as compared with very small things.
O... | 14 | |
[Batman] I'm an honest Gotham public defender, bound by law to give my clients the best legal council I can. What tactics can I use to counter the absolute deluge of vigilante-acquired evidence and illegal arrests that have been appearing in our courts? | 216 | Lawyer here. Most of the answers get some things right but don't paint the whole picture. The police have procedures they need to follow when they collect evidence (warrants, chain of custody, etc). Even subsequent evidence discovered as a result of bad evidence is excluded (fruit of the poison tree)
Private individua... | 192 | |
CMV: People who drive with dogs in their lap should be ticketed. | If you drive with a dog on your lap, you are putting other drivers in the area in danger. The animal **is** distracting you, and could possibly cause an accident. Additionally, the dog could get hurt because of you not securing it at all.
I think that people who drive with dogs in their lap or on their shoulder should... | 180 | The regulations in Europe don’t allow for this. Dogs have to be in the trunk (when hatchback) or the back seat properly latched to the seats and sometimes with a mesh screen to avoid them from jumping to the front seats. | 29 |
Eli5: how are ICBM tested for their range without causing false alarms? | Say the usa and soviet union in cold war. History has records of incidents were dalse alarms (including one from the sun) almost started nuclear armageddon.
How did they keep testing missiles (ICBM) with longer and longer ranges without it being detected as a real missle?
Not to mention there are still states that ar... | 21 | Communication
Every missile test and rocket launch is publicized with a listed trajectory and launch window because they all look like real missiles because they are!
If the US wants to test a Trident missile out they'll put out a public statement saying what they're launching, when they're launching, what is it's en... | 22 |
ELI5: Why do most cars default to not circulating the air in the car instead of circulating it? For climate purposes it seems like circulating the air in the car would be better for constant temperature and humidity. | 23 | Humidity goes up with a bunch of warm bodies exhaling next to cold glass. Your cars defroster might not be able to defrost the windows even on max high settings unless you get the moisture out. This is why the ac will turn on automatically when using the defrost.
Also, fresh air to breath is nice when in a full car. | 10 | |
[ASoIaF] How good was Kevan Lannister as Hand of the King? | 16 | He was able to placate the Tyrells by naming Lords Tyrell, Rowan, and Tarly to the Small Council, and he appeased the Faith by having Cersei perform the walk of shame, temporarily stabilizing the tensions in the capital. He is the first to take the threat of Aegon, Connington, and the Golden Company seriously, orderin... | 29 | |
[Pokemon] Why are all gym members blind to the type strength matrix, and pointlessly specialize their teams? | 37 | In league competition, the gym challenge is a time-honored tradition of recognising excellence in trainers. Specialised gym types are designed to be a test of type-specific knowledge and skill. To face a league-sanctioned Gym Leader and conquer them is to demonstrate mastery of their type. Secondarily, specialised gym ... | 79 | |
[MCU] why is Rhodey/War Machine so underwhelming or depicted as such among Iron Man and the other Avengers? | 15 | Because up until later events, he wasn't an official Avenger. He was an air force colonel in one of Stark's suits, mostly doing military missions, not doing "superhero stuff." It's shown in the party scene of AoU that he doesn't have the insane stories to tell that the Avengers have accumulated in their globe-trotting ... | 40 | |
[The Ring] What Would Happen If You Only Watched A Portion Of The Video, But Never The Full Video? | 28 | Samara or Sadako isn't cursed to follow some rules around the video tape. The tape is her own creation as a way to torment people and spread her story. It's entirely up to Samara/Sadako what she want's to do with you if you only watch the beginning of her video. | 43 | |
ELI5: How does two or three feet of rainfall result in flooding so severe people are stranded on their roofs? | 17 | 3 feet of rainfall 'over hundreds of square miles and varying terrain'
All the water will collect in low areas making giant puddles basically. The same way you get puddles in the road. There might have only been 2 inches of rain, bjt you can step in a puddle 5 inches deep. | 26 | |
What does Foucault mean by 'discourse'? | 15 | In short, Foucault's view of discourse mostly centers around the relationship between power and knowledge. His concern wasn't really "what *is* said"/"what is true?" but *"*what *can* we say?" or "which truth is relevant in this context?" Put another way, the question can be phrased as "what is it possible to say/know?... | 16 | |
ELI5: How can someone be absolutely sure that a number is irrational, not a fraction with obscenely massive numerator & denominator? | Like pi or e. Could they actually be rational numbers with an extremely large denominators (something as large as Graham's number)? | 19 | The definition of an irational number is that it CAN NOT be written as, p/q, where p, q are integers and q != 0.
It is possible to prove this for numbers. For example we can use a proof by contradiction to proove that sqrt(2) is irrational.
Proof that sqrt(2) is irrational:
Assume that sqrt(2) is rational. By defin... | 58 |
[Marvel Comics] Who is the smartest human on Marvel 616's Earth? | No Omniscience. | 67 | Reed Richards is the smartest by feats and can literally stretch his mind as needed to increase his intelligence. Valeria Richards is allegedly smarter, but she tends more towards knowledge then actual learning and figuring things out. | 76 |
ELI5: What is google bombing? | 16 | Google isn't "smart", it just guesses what words mean by how often they're related to other words.
Google bombing is the practice of constantly linking to something with unexpected words, convincing Google that the two things are related. Let's say you get a bunch of people to post links to Johnny Depp's Wikipedia pa... | 15 | |
ELI5: Why do most big trucks adamantly say "NOT FOR HIRE" (box trucks, U-haul, big rigs etc). Who are these lawless people in the streets attempting to rent trucks at whim? | 24 | DOT regulations have very different requirements for a private vehicle and a for hire vehicle when you get to medium duty and heavy duty vehicles. They are required to display either the commercial DOT licence number, or a large not for hire sign. | 16 | |
ELI5: Why are digital versions of video games, movie, and music priced the same or more than the physical copies of the games, DVDs, or CDs? | Why are digital versions of video games, movie, and music priced the same or more than the physical copies of the games, DVDs, or CDs? I know there are some exception, but digital copies should be much cheaper. Companies don't have to pay for distribution across the world like with physical copies of merchandise beca... | 15 | 1) Manufacturing and distribution costs for physical games are miniscule, and are about on par with the cost of running a virtual store front. Selling your game on a platform like Steam has its own costs.
2) Items cost what they cost not because they are more or less expensive that other options, but because that is w... | 16 |
CMV: All countries should adopt Northern European values, politics, and culture; diversity should be restricted to harmless things like music and native costumes. | 142 | There are plenty of enlightened liberal democracies throughout the world.
The Nordic countries operate a little smoother than their peers not simply due to values or culture. They have the advantages of a small homogenous population (so consensus is easy, scale isn't a problem), a lot of historical wealth & inf... | 452 | |
[Hellsing] Were Alucard and Seras the only ttrue vampires in canon? | We see multiple vampires in the show, but most of them seem to just be super human in nature. Even Walter who gave Alucard one of his tougher fights was just a more powerful version of himself by being a vampire. He only had such a good showing because of his raw skill with his deadly dental floss.
​
Im ... | 19 | we see 3(4 if you count Minas corpse) other true vampires in the series, the priest at the start(he states he dident want seras to turn into a vampire from him, which is impossible for artificial vampires to spread the curse so hes definitely not a millenia vampire) and the couple seras snipes, its implied there far ... | 15 |
Can someone please answer an evolution question? | I heard from a Christian teacher at my school that evolution is impossible because mutations can only result in a loss of complexity in an organism. They told me that new genetic information cannot be introduced, that only old information can be manipulated (either by being lost or changed into a different base pair, l... | 73 | That's not true, it's possible for mutations to cause genes or chromosomes to duplicate, allowing addition of information.
Your teacher most likely cannot explain the results of the E. coli long term evolution experiment. | 126 |
[Fallout/Wall-E] On average whom is healthier, the average human from the Wasteland, or the average human from the Axiom? | 41 | That all depends on exactly what metric you use to measure health.
People from Axiom healthier in terms of infectious diseases, cancers, lacerations, gunshots, mutations, vitamin deficiencies, and malnutrition.
Wastelanders would be healthier when looking at BMI, strength, and cardio ability. | 91 | |
[Harry Potter] Why is Voldemort’s name a taboo but not Grinderwald’s? Aren’t their crimes roughly the same? | 29 | Grindlewald's aims and ambitions were quite mundane, just grand in scale. He wanted Wizards to rule over Muggles, and that was pretty much it. Any violence against other Wizards was in a simple "if you're not with me, you're against me" sensibility. He was defeated in a rather specular duel, but a duel none the less, ... | 61 | |
CMV: ‘Cultural appropriation’ is a term pushed by those who have no understanding of how human cultures develop. | TL;DR is included at the bottom for those who want it.
I study anthropology. A big part of our field is looking at how cultures merge, fracture, and shift. Cultures have meshed their practices for thousands of years. More often than not, advocates against ‘cultural appropriation’ are complaining about the normal c... | 1,845 | It's one of those concepts that had a reasonable original meaning then got out of hand. The easiest go-to example is that cultural appropriation isn't Elvis playing rock music. It's Elvis being treated like he invented rock music. The problem isn't merely using ideas from other cultures; it's the broader cultural attit... | 1,212 |
[Star Wars] Why was Darth Sidious capable of killing the 3 Jedis that accompanied Mace Windu so quickly and effortlessly? | The three Jedis being Kit Fisto, Saesee Tiin and Agen Kolar.
You'd think they'd be able to put up a better fight...or at least send Windu in alone and then the other 3 could have handled Anakin. | 202 | Firstly, Sidious was an exceptionally skilled duelist. In addition, his style was quite unorthodox, combining elements from multiple forms (such as the acrobatics of Ataru, the aggression of Juyo, the thrusts and stabs of Makashi, etc), which meant it was very difficult to defend against.
Secondly, Sidious caught t... | 197 |
ELI5: Why are hamburgers generally thought of as unhealty? They contain everything on the food pyramid, grains (bun), veggies (lettuce), fruit (tomatoes), dairy (cheese), and meat (beef patty). | 188 | It's not balanced. A properly "balanced" hamburger would probably have half the bun, a quarter of the meat, five times as much veggies, and like barely any cheese at all. There's also no fruit, so you're missing those. | 188 | |
[MCU] In Endgame, Thanos said that after he did the Snap, the Infinity Stones served as "nothing but temptation". What did he mean by that? | 66 | Two things:
One, if the Stones existed, someone would try to take them and use them, either to undo the Snap, or to achieve some other goal. Thanos didn't want that to happen.
Two, Thanos had achieved, in his own mind, universal perfection, but he realized that great men have trouble when there are no more great thin... | 153 | |
ELI5: Why is a vacuum the fastest substance for light to travel through? | Just like some mediums can increase speed of transfer (e.g conducting metals > vacuum for heat) | 265 | Heat and sound travel better through some materials because their travel is dependent on atoms of matter bumping into each other to transfer their energy (heat through conduction at least). Basically, they need a medium to hitch themselves to in order to travel, and generally the more medium available to them, the bett... | 203 |
ELI5: How a manual transmission car gets better gas mileage than an automatic. | So I'm about to get a manual car because I think it would be fun to learn to drive. And everyone keeps telling me that it's gonna be a little better on gas. I understand how cars work but I can't grasp why this would be true. | 26 | 1. Weight - Manual transmissions are 30-50 lb lighter than automatics, so that's weight you don't have to accelerate or lug up a hill.
2. Transmission efficiency - Automatic transmissions require hydraulic pressure to work, so there are pumps inside, and some engine power is wasted to run those pumps.
Automatics ar... | 14 |
[Star Wars] With all the technological advancement, why did Darth Vader's armor have to be so heavy? | A lot of people in the Star Wars Universe have prosthetic limbs, but they are light, strong and efficient (Darth Maul's legs for example).
If time was short and a new suit was made hastily to save Anakin, I understand, why couldn't a new armor be designed for Darth Vader afterwards? | 70 | A suit of armor that included three mechanical limbs, could protect against the vacuum of space, was able to take a blow from a lightsaber on the shoulder plate and featured enough life support to keep a piece of walking bacon alive for decades.
/u/LazyPalpatine spared no expense on the suit, if anything was wrong wit... | 150 |
Cmv: natural vs man-made is a false distinction, given that human beings, being animals, are part of nature | There's no basis for excluding us or what we create (buildings, cars, roads planes) from the definition of natural. We don't do the same for dams or anthills built by beavers and ants - we recognise these structures as being natural, and while they are massively different in scale and impact to what humans create, scal... | 43 | Yeah but that's unhelpful. People divide "natural" and "man-made" because they want something that's not human-manipulated, forged, or intentionally genetically altered. They might need to reconsider the term being used, but what they actually imply is NOT a false distinction. | 35 |
[Matrix] When Morpheus was captured by the agents, why didn't they just disrupt his signal and wake him up like they did when they found Neo? | It's not like they had to go find him, he was on the ship. It seems a lot easier than mounting a massive and dangerous rescue mission. | 27 | Because he's not a copper-top like Neo was; Morpheus was already woken from the Matrix before so the code he's using to access the Matrix was fundamentally different than a standard resident of the system.
Also, they'd need the red pill to inject the code necessary to get Morpheus out as well as a mirror to serve as a... | 22 |
Setting aside absorption and swallowing, would swimming in a pool of alcohol be considerably more or less difficult? | 484 | The density of pure ethanol is about 800 kg / m^3 , compared to 1000 for water. Humans are close to water in density.
So from a buoyancy perspective, swimming in ethanol would be like swimming with a lead weight 1/5th of your own weight. You'd find it difficult at best to not sink unless you wore a buoyancy aid. | 638 | |
How is it possible for humans living in the ISS (International Space Station) to differentiate night from day? Is the ISS trajectory/speed synced with the earth's orbit? Do we even talk about day and night? Work time and nighttime? | Since humans biological clock doesn't detect night from day anymore? What happens? | 306 | People keep track of how long they've been awake, and go to sleep at necessary times. The station orbits once every 90 minutes or so, and astronauts see a sunrise and sunset during each of those periods. It's similar to how people work in a nuclear submarine, or polar research station, or anywhere else where the day/ni... | 157 |
Formerly jaded engineer feeling the tug of learning... | Quick history: I grew up in the US and was pretty decent at math and science in high school, but not disciplined enough to be great (top 5% but not top 1%). I did get into programming though because I liked video games. I had a decent academic strategy, some smarts, and some luck, so I still got into an ivy leagu... | 58 | I think one thing to keep in mind is that your interests while academic in nature they appear to be spread widely - language, philosophy etc. A PhD in its nature is extremely focused, you will be the world expert in one thing but the scope of that will be very narrow. That will guide the rest of your career - while it ... | 58 |
[Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy] Since Zaphod has two heads, does he need two babel fishes? | 193 | The fish feeds off of the audio into brain waves understandable to everybody and transmits it down the ear canal to the brain. He have seen Zaphod's heads act independently from each other, even going as far as arguing with each other. We have also seen that just being in close proximity of a Babel fish doesn't mean yo... | 117 | |
How do tattoos stay in skin? | If your skin cells are continuously dividing, dying, and being sloughed off, how does the ink stay there? Furthermore, if the ECM is continuously recycled - I don't understand how they're so permanant. | 116 | The outer epidermal layer of skin is getting sloughed off. Ink pigment lies deeper in the dermis, and is composed of particles that are too large to be processed away by your lymph system. This is why laser removal works, because the powerful blasts of light break up the pigments into smaller pieces that can be process... | 69 |
Does "letting the flavors blend" actually work? And if so, what's going on? | Lots of recipes for salads, coleslaw, or soups say to leave it in the fridge for a few hours so that "the flavors can blend together". But surely, between my mixing and the turbulent blending of the air before reaching my nose, everything I can taste/smell should be blended already, even if I eat it right away.
Are p... | 37 | think of it more as infusing than blending. If you drank tea a few seconds after adding water, it would be very, very weak and the longer you let it sit it gets stronger. With something like salad dressing, it takes a bit of time for the flavour of herbs and spices to infuse through the oil. | 11 |
[Star Wars/Rogue One] Why did the Empire blow up their own facility at the end of the movie? | 364 | A few reasons. 1 was they knew scariff housed all their secret projects and information about them. Destroying the facility meant the rebels wouldn't be able to steal anything from the facility. 2 is that krenik was in charge down there and considered a traitor for a series of failures on his part. Rather than trying t... | 417 | |
[Star Wars] How did Luke know removing Vader's helmet would kill him? | In Return of The Jedi, after defeating the Emperor, Vader asks Luke for help in removing his mask, to which Luke responds "But you'll die." How does he know this? I'd imagine the details on Darth Vader's suit aren't common knowledge, even for a hero of the Rebellion. Or is the fact that Vader's suit is mobile life supp... | 225 | If you saw someone run around in a hermetically sealed suit all day you would be worried too if they suddenly wanted you to take it off.
Especially since Luke can feel through the Force that Vader is dying. | 445 |
[MCU] Does Tony keep Arc reactors in all his suits all the time? | Or did he just put one in the mark II as part of prepping it for Rhodes to take? | 17 | I would imagine he has a ton of them. Like the suits they are continually improved and fine tuned for specialized power needs
Also, he made the first on in a cave yea? Doesn't sound like it needed unique components he couldn't track down back home. | 15 |
[Star Trek] What does 'Vulcan' mean to the Vulcans? What is the Vulcan name for themselves and their planet, and how do they feel about being known by a name from Terran mythology? | I mean, take Spock. Does Spock speak English and call himself a Vulcan, or does he use the universal translator which just translates the name of his planet into "Vulcan" in English? Is "Vulcan" the official name for his planet Federation-wide? When he introduces himself to an alien whose species never encountered Vu... | 34 | It has to be a mix of universal translators and humans habits of making up names for things other than the actual names.
What do you call this country?
*Nippon*
Im sorry? Did you say Japan?
*No... Nippon*
Well Japan sounds better, youre Japan now | 61 |
ELI5- how do the giant coils on power lines not electrocute things or catch stuff on fire when it’s raining even when you hear the static of the electricity? | 20 | 1) Rain is not continuous. The drops are separated by a lot of air.
2) Water isn't quite as good a conductor as people think it is. Pure water is in fact a decent insulator. It is the dissolved minerals in the water that make it conductive.
3) They design the insulators such that they look a little bit like an ups... | 66 | |
How do Magic Eye pictures work? | 35 | It has to do with how your eyes focus. To understand, start by holding one finger right in front of your face, at eye level. Hold your other hand at arms' length behind it. When you focus on the finger in front of your face, you will notice that you see double of the hand far away. Similarly, when you focus on the hand... | 12 | |
eli5: Why are sidewalks made with cracks in them while roads are one flat piece with no breaks | 707 | Sidewalks with "tiles" are usually made out of concrete, which is very brittle and cracks easily. The tiles allow a convenient place for the sidewalk to flex or crack without impacting the walking surface. Roads are usually made out of asphalt, which is more flexible. Sidewalks made out of asphalt don't usually have... | 827 | |
[chemistry][nuclear physics] if the island of stability does exist, do we have any way of estimating what the behavior/properties of those elements will be like? | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_of_stability | 16 | Yes, we can apply theories of nuclear structure to predict their properties, but we are extrapolating into a region of the chart of nuclides that we don't really understand yet. We need experiments to verify whether or not the predictions are correct. The kinds of theories that we use to study very heavy nuclei rely on... | 10 |
[Watchmen] Why was Ozymandias so much stronger than the others? | The human watchmen: Rorschach, nite owl, the comedian, and silk specter all seemed to be of similar strength and skill. So why was Ozy different? Sure he was smarter than them all, but Nite owl seemed to be quite a bit smarter than the others, namely the comedian, aswell but stood no better a chance. So why could he ma... | 49 | Are we talking Movie Watchmen, or Graphic Novel Watchmen?
As far as the Graphic Novel goes... Ozymandias was a master martial artist and had a distinct advantage in Skill over the others. He als had the advantage of knowing how they fought, how they balanced, how they moved, etc. He was basically able to accurately pr... | 71 |
[DC] You are granted the powers of the Flash. What shoes on the market right now would last you the longest before disintegrating? | 43 | Any shoe that would normally last the longest under normal running conditions. Protection of his clothing, body, anyone he picks up and rescues, etc are part of the Flash's powers.
Now, whether shoes would wear at all is an open question. They might wear down at the normal rate or they might not wear at all. If the F... | 43 | |
[Warcraft]Why did Arthas cull the population of Strathlome? Wouldn't the Scourge just bring back everyone as Undead anyway? | I get that Arthas went a bit loopy in his quest for vengeance/stopping the plague but unless he turned everyone into unusable red mush wouldn't it have been trivial for the Scourge to raise them back up?
Also Strathlome did eventually end up in the hands of the Scourge, did Uther or Jaina ever comment on Arthas being... | 16 | At the time, he didn't know that the scourge would eventually sweep over the land and start raising corpses. He just knew that eating the grain = death and zombies. And he also knew that Stratholme had been fully saturated with it, to the point of watching people eating bread made just that morning. He could not preven... | 21 |
CMV: Supporting an assault weapons ban is intellectually dishonest. | I want to start off by saying that I'm not against all forms of gun control. I think strengthening background checks, preventing guns from entering the hands of the mentally unstable, and closing the gun show loophole are all great ideas with no downside to society.
However, if you support an all out ban on assault we... | 124 | If you believe that all guns should be banned, then banning assault weapons is entirely coherent with that. There is no intellectual dishonesty, one follows logically from the other.
The arguments in favour of continuing gun use are particularly weak when applied to assault weapons, which makes banning them a more ach... | 108 |
[Star Wars] I remember reading in a novel that a lot of the members of the Imperial Navy thought the Death Star was an expensive boondoggle and that the money and resources poured into it could be used to construct Imperial Star Destroyers. How many Star Destroyers is the Death Star worth? | 54 | They spent upwards of a trillion credits on the first Death Star, but an exact cost hasn't been given. An Imperial-1 class Star Destroyer, like the *Devastator* that chases down the *Tantive IV* over Tatooine at the beginning of ANH, costs about 150 million credits.
150 million goes into 1 trillion 6,666 and change ti... | 52 | |
ELI5: Why is it that beef is relatively cheap but leather is so expensive? | 19 | Leather requires more treatment and preparation, even more so when made into a garment of some sort. And cow skin is more likely to be damaged than meat during the course of the cow's life, due to fences, predators, fighting etc. | 14 | |
ELI5: Is water at the bottom of the ocean more dense then the water at the top due to the pressure? | ... | 17 | Water is *nearly* incompressible. However, the water at the bottom if the ocean *is* slightly denser but it is almost entirely due to temperature and salinity, not pressure. Cold water is denser than warm water.
A more detailed answer would not be for ELI5. | 27 |
CMV: Raising Income Taxes in the US is a Heavily Misguided Way of "Getting the Wealthy To Pay Their Fair Share", Corporate Tax is a Much Better Alternative | 1. My main problem is not with the purpose of the income tax, but rather **how overwhelming the tax burden lies on the middle and upper middle class relative to that of corporations.** Effective tax rates as of right now in the United States would have typical corporations paying around the low 20's%; loopholes in the ... | 66 | "Overwhelming the tax lies on the middle class"
Uhhh no
70% of all taxes come from like 5-10% of Americans
So going after the rich is currently what generated most revenue, going after corporations also go after the employees and the purchasers of the product
A tax on Walmart is a increase in the costs of walmar... | 24 |
ELI5: How do illegal immigrants apply for welfare if they dont have any social security card or formal identification? | I hear a lot of talk in the American debates about illegal immigration constantly and how they are using welfare. How is this possible if they dont even have the right credentials to sign up for welfare? I cant even get my new drivers license without several forms of ID. | 88 | Under circumstances where you are eligible for such a program, there are usually alternatives to a Social Security Number. For example, illegal aliens can legally receive the child tax credit for their dependents, and can file their tax returns using an IRS-provided International Taxpayer Identification Number instead ... | 15 |
ELI5: Why do frozen things stick to wet things, such as my tongue to a frozen pole, or my wet fingers to a ice cube. | 17 | Because the frozen thing is cold enough that it freezes some of the moisture on your tongue/finger. That newly frozen ice forms around the texture on your tongue/finger and basically grips it. So if you want to pull away, you need to either pull the ice apart, or pull the ice away from your tongue/finger. And it can ta... | 10 | |
[Transmetropolitan] With the makers it is possible for for any matter to be turned into basically any other substance or object. How is there still poverty and need? | The makers in Transmetropolitan use "base material" (which I'm assuming is just a highly dense cube of some matter) to make almost anything conceivable.
Yet it's also shown that they do not need this base material, people can (and do) scavenge trash to fuel their makers. It's said that most middle-class families have... | 16 | Post-scarcity technology doesn't change human nature, and it's still human nature to muddle through rather than make perfect decisions. Lots of people are still selfish, or crazy, or transitioning into an alien species.
To truly eliminate suffering, you'd need to remove the human capacity to suffer. And if we're all ... | 10 |
It seems like a common perception that sociology doesn't produce theoretical "advancements" in comparison to economics. Is this view unfounded? What would be your best examples against it? | To clarify: economists can often point to applicable models typically accepted as "true" by the majority of the profession, such as comparative advantage or the Solow-Swann growth model. The assumptions of these models are typically rigorously stated and then often reviewed and updated, such as the discarding of the Ha... | 38 | One recent advancement is the idea of neighborhood effects—the idea that effects of the neighborhood independent of the family and the region, and just moving people across the city could have important effect on life outcomes. It is most famously associated with people like Robert Sampson (lots of other have also work... | 34 |
[AtLA/Korra] What Would Happen if an Avatar Got Pregnant? | Pretty much what it sounds like- how would the Avatar state affect baby making? What would happen to the child? Would he have access to the spiritual memory? The extra bending? The inner balance? | 15 | Well going off the fact that Aang in-canon had 3 kids... Nothing abnormal. Kaya, Bumi, and Tenzin (Aang's children who show up in the Korra series) all were 'normal' as far as an avatar's child could be. | 43 |
ELI5: How does suturing veins prevent blood from leaking out? | As the title stated, how does suturing veins prevent blood from leaking out? Wouldn't the gaps between the sutures and holes from sutures cause continuous or more bleeding? | 23 | Blood has its own built in plugging mechanism.
They’re called platelets, they constantly circle around the blood stream, and when the interact with a cut/hole/damage to the blood vessel they start to clump/tangle up with other platelets, causing a clog that seals the damage and stops the bleeding.
So when you suture ... | 31 |
How long it will take Voyager to get to Ninth Planet? | Eventually is there any possibility to shoot probe like Voyager in future?
EDIT: I know the meeting of probe and hypothetical Planet IX is pretty much impossible but I just wanted to know how long it's gonna take for eventual new probe to reach orbit and/or planet. If it really exists.
Just a random question that ca... | 3,547 | Presently, this planet is hypothetical. There have not been direct observations of this object - it's existence has been inferred from the orbits of smaller bodies in the outer solar system (i.e. they move as though their orbits are being perturbed by a large distant body).
With that out of the way, the media says th... | 2,718 |
[Pokemon] Why can't I just pick up pokeballs that failed to catch a pokemon and reuse them? What happens to the failed pokeballs? | 109 | When the Pokémon escapes, you see what happens to them. They explode. Whatever the binding mechanism is that allows you to stuff, say, a 30-foot-long snake made out of granite into a hollow baseball just fails and the ball falls apart/disintegrates. | 76 | |
CMV:Free speech covers hate speech. | The definition for hate speech being speech that offends, threatens or insults groups based on race, color, religion...
the only word in there that bothers me a little is "threatens". i think you cross a line from hate speech into inciting violence, which i don't think is covered by free public speech, when you make a... | 44 | Just because a threat is not explicit or outright, doesn't necessarily make it less threatening or credible.
Imagine that a gangster shows up at your restaurant and says "You have a nice restaurant, it would be a shame if it burned down".
It's pretty obvious that their intent is to threaten, that this is the equival... | 11 |
[Harry Potter] Goblet of Fire; Stumping the Age Line | Ok; so I've been trying to think of way to get around the age line that Dumbledore set up. Now, it was possible for someone else to submit Harry's name (Barry Crouch Jr). Would that have been possible for anyone over the age of seventeen to do for anyone else? Like could Angelina have submitted George and Fred's name ... | 16 | I've heard of various ideas. That's one of the common ones. Another simple one is to levitate it over. I've also heard of just tossing it in or using a fishing pole.
Ultimately, we don't know. Dumbledore never gave the details of how the age line works. We know Barty Crouch Jr. managed to break it, but he also convinc... | 12 |
[DC] What circumstances would lead to no hero helping a city? | In the event that someone died such as Batman or Superman, there is normally someone to take their place and help the city in their absence. So in the event that no one in the city is capable of helping, what would prevent another hero from helping?
| 23 | 1. A business tycoon (Lex Luthor) or a political leader (Amanda Waller) manipulates the law into allowing no heroes in that state.
2. There simply are no heroes in that area.
3. Superhumans or Metahumans in that city are all villains or doesn't want the hero lifestyle and chooses to be in civilian life.
4. A hero ca... | 26 |
[Mad Max] What were they using Max's blood for in the beginning of the movie? | I can't think of a reason. They had water and food. The ones hooked up to the prisoners weren't injured or bleeding at all. The only reason I can think of is that it was some superstition.
Also, why did he have to be brought on the car? Was it that important to not get unhooked? | 18 | They laid they explanation out in the voiceover explaining the war and nuclear fallout. This fallout causes a large portion of the population to have a "halflife". these damaged people are also the same people that made up the army of the white painted dudes. They all had some weird tumors as well to visual show this i... | 27 |
[Marvel/DC] Where would some of DC's favorite superheroes stand on the whole registration thing? | 47 | Remember how Thor was absent for the Civil War arc? There's a good reason for that.
Superman would be against it, as he would likely see no value in it. If he needs to unmask anybody, he can do it (or use his X-ray vision, drop a few hints, and threaten to do it). If they're too powerful for Superman to unmask, then t... | 63 | |
CMV: The World Would be Better off if all of it were Westernized. | To an extent it already is and already has become better off. Globalization, Capitalism, and The Enlightenment have basically spread to every corner of the world. Instant communication, incredibly quick travel, insane medical breakthroughs, and a trend of exponential technological advancement on the whole are al really... | 57 | This is a problem that comes from dealing with a sample size of 1 - you can't dissociate concepts or control for any variables.
You say the world should be 'westernized', but what does that mean? Technology and freedom are certainly good, but is it possible to have them without McDonalds and Monday Night Football? Fr... | 29 |
[MCU] Why didn’t Loki as Odin in Thor 2 want two infinities stones (Space and Reality) in his possession? | 87 | He'd already got everything he wanted.
He was the beloved king of Asgard, his goal throughout the whole series. As far as we could see, he was perfectly happy to sit on his throne eating grapes and memorializing himself for the rest of his life.
If you don't *want* to warp space or reshape reality, the infinity gems ... | 128 | |
How are programs actually encoded into an FPGA? | I understand the principle of constructing a web of logic gates to perform a particular function (process a data stream, do a math computation, etc.). However, I do not understand how my specification for a set of gates is converted into actual hardware. | 35 | The key component is called a LUT or look-up-table. This is a small circuit that has 5 inputs and can be programmed to generate different outputs for each of the 32 possible combinations of the 5 inputs.
What kind of device/circuit has that capability? A RAM. A LUT is basically a 32-bit bit-addressable RAM.
In addit... | 16 |
[Star Wars] Suppose that I am a Jedi Master with cybernetic implants, and I die and become one with the force. Do the cybernetics disappear with me? Or drop to the ground? | Asking for a friend. | 16 | Your force ghost appears as you saw yourself.
So if the impla take where alien to you they would not appear, if they where part of you they would.
As for the actual tech, it likely vanishes with the body, assuming it's actually part of the body.
The force doesn't seem to distinguish between organics and non-organics... | 16 |
Why does fat/oil jump and spit when heated? | I'm talking about when you're frying something like bacon, and the oil comes out of the meat, but then why does it jump around the pan? | 31 | Pure fat or oil doesn't jump when heated. However, in most real world cases there is a combination of fat/oil and water being heated. Since water is denser than oil, it will sink to the bottom. A small pockets of water get trapped under the oil they heat up and eventually turn to steam, or they heat up quickly and flas... | 47 |
[Star Wars] If Aanakin lived at the end of RotJ, re-embraced the light side of the Force, and had access to any technology, how well could his body be healed? | 58 | Improvements would more or less just be incremental. The SW universe doesn't have the tech to do things like clone and force-grow replacement parts on a casual level, so cybernetics is still the way to go. The state of the art has advanced from the Clone Wars days, as seen in the sort of casual/transhumanist cyber-enha... | 60 |
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