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[Star Trek] What's it like being transported? | Sometimes when the transporter malfunctions the people being transported flicker back and forth a few times, can the people being transported see what's happening?
They don't seem to be able to move. If the transporter is malfunctioning are they aware of the missing time? | 19 | I believe so. In TNG: Realm of Fear, Barclay has an unusual experience while being transported and later purposely recreates the situation so he can observe more closely.
There is also the unfortunate transporter accident in Star Trek The Motion Picture, where one of the people seemed painfully aware that the transpor... | 19 |
Are there viruses that are benign but highly infectious that we don’t know about until after it’s spread? | 76 | Polyomaviruses are very common. HPyVs 9 and 12 are not known to cause any disease. BK and JC viruses infect the large majority of humans. There are 13 we know of that infect humans, there are probably more we just haven't found yet, and in general they only cause disease for immunocompromised patients, if any disease i... | 49 | |
[Terminator] How diverse are the Terminator's skillsets when it comes to blending in? Can they cook? Are they programmed to know how to have sex? | Of course the main use of Terminators is to look and sound human enough to get in close to the target. But say Skynet needed the Terminator to stick around a while longer, perhaps befriend a community of humans or seduce influential figures, could they do that?
On one hand the T-800 showed no finesse when it came to ... | 110 | In the Sarah Connor chronicles one of the terminators sent back into the past maintained a relationship with a woman, including sleeping together, in order to complete its objective and another unit unintentionally killed someone who would enable Skynet to be born so assumed his position.
From this we can assume that ... | 122 |
[Elder Scrolls] Why does Khajiit hate the cold? Khajiit has more fur than Man, Mer, or Argonian. | Is it due to the warm sands of Elsweyr drawing you home? | 113 | Khajiit loves the cold. Just in moderation.
Skyrim, it says, goes well past moderation.
The cold also comes from her people. In Skyrim, Khajiit is not friend. He is not welcomed into warmth of town with his wife.
He stays outside, with the cold, the roars on the wind, the bandits and drunks. Duty binds him to stay, to... | 196 |
ELI5: why do small non sticky objects stick to our fingers upon pressure? | For instance, when you press any small object (Lego parts, seeds, coins etc.) with your finger and then lift, and object sticks to it. | 28 | First, thw natural oils we have a slightly sticky. Second, when you press something into your skin, the skin doesn't just pop back immediately so it creates sort of an indent that grips the object slightly | 15 |
[Avatar: The Last Airbender] Why didn't the Fire Nation use Combustion Man to blow up the walls of Ba Sing Se? | Seems like it would be easier to just draft him instead of building that giant drill. | 17 | While he could cause a lot of damage, it would be hard for one man, even one with his abilities, to get through the wall. A dozen Earthbenders could just keep drawing up Earth to reinforce the wall as needed until he was taken out (Iroh nonwithstanding as he is exceptionally powerful)
The drill also had the advantage ... | 22 |
[Marvel] How did Dr. Doom become God Doom, and how does God Doom differ from Dr. Doom? | Also, which universe is God Doom a part of? | 34 | Spoilers for the current Secret Wars crossover follow -
We don't know exactly how, yet. The Beyonders - an extradimensional race of omnipotent beings, of which the one from the original 1984 Secret Wars was a newborn infant - decided to destroy the entire multiverse, for reasons we don't know. Dr. Doom engaged in a f... | 27 |
CMV: Trump’s presidency will end up being a net negative for US conservatives’ agenda | Just to be clear, this isn’t meant to be a debate about whether said conservative agenda is a good thing. Only whether trump’s presidency will ultimately be a good thing for it
Anyways, I believe that Trump’s presidency will cause a huge progressive backlash for years to come. It looks as though republicans are goin... | 21 | Trump was never a conservative, nor was he seen as a good conservative option. Conservatives supported him in his Supreme Court choices though, and did largely see him as better than the Democrat options.
I believe you are correct if you change out Republicans for conservatives in your post though.
Conservatives wi... | 10 |
How do things dry? | Let's say I spill a glass of water on my wooden floor. After a while, it's just not there anymore. Where does this water go? | 18 | A puddle dries by evaporation, which is when the water molecules get enough energy to turn into water vapour.
Now, on a normal day you would think that the water isn't warm enough to boil and evaporate, which is true. However water doesn't need to boil to evaporate. As the water molecules move around and bump into eac... | 14 |
ELI5: Why is the ratio of protons and electrons in the universe 1:1? Is there a mechanism keeping that ratio steady or did we just get really lucky when the universe formed? | Is this one of those "it's that way because if it wasn't we wouldn't be here to ask it" questions? | 54 | When the universe started out from “nothing” in the Big Bang, its total charge was zero, and when the particles were being created, that total charge was staying zero at all times, and is thought to be exactly zero to this day. So in every possible particle creation process for every one positively charged particle cre... | 71 |
[MCU] What exactly is the TVA supposed to do if someone like Doctor Strange or Wanda messes with the timeline? | Like slowing time won't stop the fact that both of them can just delete people and Strange has time manipulation as well if he has the infinity stone. Plus they can travel through portals. What exactly is to be done then? Hope for the best? Attack them in their sleep and hope they don't have any defenses? | 17 | They've got the benefit of choosing the battle field. They can jump into a timeline at any point they want, maximizing their advantage and their targets disadvantage. Everyone sleeps, shits, and let's their guard down at some point. They can also study not just the time line in question but any other similar time line ... | 41 |
[Stephen King's 1408] What was the voice screaming the numbers on the phone? Why those numbers? | 28 | Another illusion by the malevolent will of 1408. Because it's disorienting and terrifying.
The pairs of numbers always add up to 13, notably. This may be significant because, like many hotels, the Dolphin renumbers its floors so that its 13th floor is labeled 14-- so room 1408 is on the 13th floor. 1+4+0+8 also equals... | 12 | |
[Death Note] Is it the Shinigamis' job to kill humans? | are the comparable to the Grim Reaper? where a human can only die with intervention by a shinigami, or is it optional?
I guess what I'm asking is if a person contracts a disease and dies, is it because, without a doubt, 100% that a shinigami wrote it in their notebook? or can humans die without death notes? | 20 | Shinigami need to kill humans in order to live by absorbing their remaining lifetime had their name not been written in the Note, so humans must be able to die without Shinigami intervention. Shinigami kill for entertainment and sustenance, but they are not the sole cause of death in Death Note. They have less in commo... | 25 |
ELI5: Why do airplanes collide midair if there aren’t that many planes, and the sky is huge? | 15 | Many fights come from and go to the same airports, which means that lots of planes are using similar flight paths. If they were freeform flying from anywhere to anywhere, then there would be much less risk since they'd be following a million different paths. But since there are relatively few starting points and endi... | 32 | |
ELI5: Why do the voices in schizophrenics' heads say negative things? | I've always read about schizophrenics having voices in their heads talk to them, telling them to kill people or to kill themselves. Why don't these voices say more positive things? | 31 | Typically Schizophrenics are diagnosed BECAUSE of the voices being constantly negative. there are plenty of people that "hear voices" that are mundane or even positive. What sets Schizo's aside from the rest is theirs are constantly negative, or they choose to listen harder to the negative, or the negative is stronger ... | 13 |
ELI5: I saw a post about college tuition being $152 in the 70s, and inflation means that’s around $700 now. What about income rates? | I know college is severely overpriced, but wouldn’t it be a lot harder to reach $152 back then If that was the case? This is without research, but weren’t wages super super low? | 27 | The median income of American families in 1970 was $9,870 and minimum wage was $1.45 per hour. Average annual tuition at a public university in 1970 was $405, and at a private university $1,792. This means a year of public uni tuition was 4.1% of median annual income, and a year of private uni tuition was 18.1% of me... | 84 |
[Star Wars] Why do people in the Star Wars universe think that the Jedi are myths or use the term "the legends say..." when there was an entire branch of the government run by Jedi less than 20 years ago? | Is 20 years even long enough for something to fall into legend? | 961 | Less than 10,000 jedi at their height of power. That's barely anything in a galaxy of trillions to quadrillions. Jedi didn't leave the core republic systems often and rarely visited planets that weren't of importance to the republic. Palpatine ran a massive smear campaign and destroyed nearly all evidence of the Jedi a... | 803 |
Why can solar panels only convert roughly ~20% of sunlight received into energy? What will it take to increase this percentage? | I recently learned that only ~20% of sunlight received is converted into useable energy. Why is this? What will it to take to receive more energy from the solar cells?
Thanks! | 33 | Check various science sites - there is a lot of research into improving the efficiency. There are some solar cells that have achieved over 40% efficiency (although these are still pretty expensive).
BTW, even though 20% seems low, did you know that a gasoline engine only delivers about 15% of the energy available in ... | 10 |
Do waves with lower frequency travel further than waves with higher frequency? | What does frequency have to do with attenuation over distance? Does it depend on the amplitude or energy of the wave? Googling about this quickly got me more confused. What is the difference between Energy, Power and Intensity of a wave? How do these relate to the frequency and amplitude and more so the attenuation of ... | 48 | Subject question:
Low frequency do travel further than high frequency on earth because the high frequency wave lengths are more easily absorbed by the molecules in the air.
First Comment question:
Attenuation is the gradual loss of energy which will in most cases happen over distance. This has to do with what absorb... | 13 |
ELI5: Why are artists like Van Gogh and Picasso famous? What makes great art great? | This is coming from someone with no education in art or art history beyond high school classes. I understand that art that's in museums takes a huge amount of talent. What I don't understand is what makes some of the most famous paintings/art pieces more celebrated than other works.
I'm also not that great at analyzin... | 17 | A lot of famous art can only really be appreciated if you understand the time it was created in. In reality the Mona Lisa (for instance) is just a portrait of a woman. But if you see it in the context of the time it was created, it combined lots of different techniques that meant that it was a revolutionary and brillia... | 19 |
ELI5: How do single celled beings "know" what they're supposed to do/"want" to do? | 1,069 | I personally like to think of simpler life forms as like tiny computer programs. Their DNA is their "source code," and the cell itself is the hardware it runs on.
So a tiny cell 'knows' to avoid being eaten by larger cells because it's "source code" told it to build receptors on its cell membrane that are programmed t... | 535 | |
Alternative career paths for Ph.D? | What are some alternative careers outside of academia that those with a Ph.D in science (specifically ecology and evolutionary biology) may enjoy? It seems all too often that academia is promoted as the only option for those that stick it out in doctorate programs. | 25 | There is a huge amount of attention on this right now because of how tough the academic job market is. Tons of PhDs are starting consulting companies to help other PhDs get non-academic or "alt-ac" jobs. Check out "Beyond the Professoriate," "Jobs on Toast," and the Twitter chat #withaPhD. | 16 |
ELI5: Why is it specifically called "radio"activity, when it most often is produced by waves other than radio waves? | 734 | >radioactive - 1898, from French radio-actif, coined by Pierre and Marie Curie from radio-, comb. form of Latin radius (see radiation) + actif "active" (see active).
>radiation - mid-15c., "act or process of radiating," from Middle French radiation and directly from Latin radiationem (nominative radiatio) "a ... | 231 | |
[WH40K] What's with all the skull imagery in the Imperium? | Seems a bit grim (yeah yeah grimdark I know). They've got that double headed eagle but then many of their units have skulls as their symbol (Space Marines, Inquisition, Imperial Guard, Adeptus Mechanicus) | 60 | The skull represents the sacrifice that maintains the Imperium of man and it represents humanity itself.
It is important to make the distinction: it is a human skull, not some Xenos they killed and used as a trophy, human.
It is used to show that at it's core, the human being is perfect. Skulls are used to display th... | 96 |
[D&D General] I think my party has been charmed | I'm a squire to a well known group of heroes that are known for their heroic deeds. Everything was going fine until one of our fighters was burnt to a crisp during a recent fight with a nasty dragon.
It's been a couple weeks of mourning but something strange has happened lately.
Two days ago we met this suspicious f... | 42 | You must believe in Destiny, and the workings of the various Gods. Your adventuring party has been blessed with a replacement, who happens to fill the void of your deceased comrade almost perfectly. This is a sign from the Gods, a Divine Miracle.
Speak to your party's cleric. Learn what they did, that at times the Go... | 26 |
What are the best sites to search for economics papers? | I don't have institutional access and I was wondering if there were any sites like Google Scholar but exclusively for economics papers? | 49 | Still just Google scholar. When you get to a gated paper: search regular google with the author's name + paper title. They probably have a free copy up on some personal page (e.g. university bio, personal CV, or wherever). | 42 |
Why do banks issue bonds when they can borrow funds at the lowest rates from the central bank? | 18 | The central bank is typically the lender of last resort, and it does that in part by ensuring it is the *most* expensive option.
Companies issue bonds because they see it as the cheapest option to get the cash they need. Banks are no different. | 31 | |
[Harry Potter/Aliens] We know there is a genetic component to magical ability so what might happen if a Facehugger was somehow able to implant a wizard? | 175 | There seems to be a mental component to magic aside from just having "the magic gene".
All the creatures that developed some kind of magic (giants, goblins, house elves, wizards) are sentient, capable of rational thought. Other magical creatures don't seem to control their magic consciously, but rather instinctually.... | 75 | |
Why doesn’t the govt borrow money at the treasury bond rate and invest in an index fund with a higher average return? | The interest on a yearly treasury bond is something like 7% while the S&P500 has an average return of 10.7% over the last 30 years. Shouldn’t the federal government make use of this roughly 4% difference?
This is probably a dumb question but I appreciate any responses! | 85 | There are a few reasons for this. First, the government owning equity is very taboo, and represents a line that many argue should not be crossed. If there was a guarantee that the government would purchase equities, even in the form of an ETF, there would be a price floor created and moral hazard would be introduced. T... | 93 |
ELI5: Why the abbreviation of ounces turned into oz. when there is no letter Z in it? | Where did the letter “z” come from? | 61 | "oz" came from the Spanish "onza" -- meaning ounce. The words "ounce" and "onza" come from the Latin "uncia" meaning "1/12th", because an uncia was 1/12th of a libra (pound). For that matter "lb" for pound comes from "libra".
In the avoirdupois system of measures, there are 16 ounces to a pound rather than 12. | 149 |
[Star Wars] Why don't Jedi just Force Press the button on a Siths lightsaber when fighting? | My boyfriend and I were talking about it, and I thought first it was because it was too small, but then remembered Master Yoda's words, "Size matters not". So, why not? Or, if it's just for the matter of fairness, then why not the inverse- a Sith turning off a Jedi's? | 38 | Well, for one, the Sith's finger. Most Jedi and Sith design their sabers to be on while a trigger is held. You notice how lightsabers turn off when they get dropped? That's usually why.
So there's not really an 'off' button for one to use the Force to push in the first place. You could try to get your opponent's h... | 63 |
Why do materials like some metals with lower heat capacities than water, require so much more heat to liquify? | 4,865 | They don't actually.
Water melts at 273K, iron at right around 1800K
For one gram of water go from absolute 0 to fully melted at 273K requires around 600J to heat the ice to its melting point, and then close to another 350 to melt completely for around 950J
For one gram of iron to go from absolute 0 to its melting ... | 2,897 | |
[Star Wars] Are the Sith inherently evil dicks? | Like, I get the Dark Side is all about power and selfish desire, but why does that seem to always manifest as "I'm gonna kill *all* of the people"? Why have none become an incredibly powerful hero, who just wants to bask in glory and admiration(i.e, saving people for the praise and recognition rather then to actually ... | 65 | The dark side is not evil by itself, and technically the Sith code doesn't tell them yo be evil either.
However, the dark side *is* bestial and predatory in nature, and **will** fundamentally alter someone using it so that actions that are considered evil are completely acceptable. | 83 |
Why are some people blonde when they're young and their hair gets darker with age? | Do we know the physiological mechanisms/inheritance? Does all hair get darker, but it's more obvious if you start blonde? | 172 | People with genes that code predominantly for brown eumelanin are the ones whose hair is most likely to darken with age. This is because although they have the genes coding for brown eumelanin production from birth, these genes are not expressed to their full potential in early life. | 54 |
CMV: Wallets in the front pocket only makes sense | So, I've had this long standing confusion when it comes to wallets. I know a number of people who keep their wallets in their back pocket. I've never understood this and think it's illogical. When looking at where we keep other normal pocket items such as phones, gum, keys, etc we keep them in our front pocket generall... | 57 | >They also tend to experience less constriction than the butt pocket
I have experienced the exact opposite, at elast with the slimmer jeans.
The butt pocket is usually sewn onto the fabric, where it doesnt compromise the form, while the front pocket is set inwards where the wallet is pressed into your tigh at ever... | 42 |
Were protohumans able to reproduce year round, or did they have seasonal mating? How far does this trait go back on our evolutionary tree? | 1,152 | Well, pretty much all monkeys reproduce year round, so it's probably a reasonable bet that our most recent common ancestor with new world monkeys probably did too. That puts us at least at 40 million years. That said, year-round reproduction in mammals probably more a factor of climate than lineage. If you live in t... | 537 | |
[Marvel] Could I, a US citizen, ever emigrate to Wakanda? | 51 | Yes, but Wakanda has very strict immigration policies. You'd need to be an expert in a field capable of adding something to Wakandan society. So, talented artists, scientists, teachers and the such could possibly immigrate there. Alternatively, if a Wakandan married you, as many of them attend foreign universities, it'... | 89 | |
CMV: "White people have no culture" is incorrect as a statement | Examples of potential white cultural phenomena (some might have roots somewhere else, but surely not all of them)
-Ballet
-Irish dance
-Opera
-Slavic, Finnish, Swedish mythologies
-Food cultures from any European country that's white
-Halloween
Of course these cultures are more specific than "White", but so are ... | 851 | So when people use that statement they are usually reffering to white americans not white people across the globe.
It’s usually in reference to white americans sometimes claiming a strong heritage/culture with their european ancestors despite not following anything of the culture. It is sometimes said in reference to... | 543 |
[MCU] If I blindly/unknowingly fell into Thor's hammer, groped around and grabbed it for stability, could it move (given that I'm not trying to pick it up but that my inertia from my fall might cause me to move while grabbing it)? | 27 | It's been shown fairly clearly that MCU Mjolnir will remain stationary and unmoving unless Thor wills it or a worthy wielder picks it up.
In the very first movie for example, Thor just put it on Loki chest - Loki clearly didn't want to wield Mjolnir, he just wanted to get away from it, but it still pressed down on him... | 79 | |
If someone is a match for one organ are they a match for all? | I know organ transplants are really finnicky and have a lot of issues with rejection, but I'm curious - if someone is a match for, say, a heart transplant, does that mean they're a match for kidneys too? | 334 | The issue isn't the organs themselves. It's the vast complement of antibodies floating about in your blood, as well as the plasma B-cells which produce them (which are mostly located within connective tissue). When we say 'match', we mean that two people's set of antibodies and antigens don't conflict enough to raise t... | 175 |
Why is high-frequency sound easier to block than low frequency sound? | I noticed that if you are standing far away from a sound source, that the high freq. notes tend to dissipate more rapidly than the lower freq. notes. Also, if you play music and step outside the room, only parts such as the bass guitar carry through the foundation. Why is this?
I remember reading somewhere that sound ... | 26 | Low frequency means longer wavelength.
High frequency means shorter wavelength.
To block an oscillation, you need an obstacle (a screen, a damper, a block) that is larger than the wavelength, otherwise the wave will simply go around it by the phenomenon of diffraction. If the obstacle is much larger, diffraction gets... | 16 |
[Last Airbender] Badger moles are earth benders and fly bison are air benders, what animals are fire and water benders? | 23 | Dragons are fire benders and the moon is a water bender. Yeah, water benders learned from the friggin moon somehow. Aside from the OGs some other implied benders are the unagi (giant sea serpent that spits water) and flying lemurs like Momo. | 56 | |
ELI5 Why aren't we making plant based fuel from eucalyptus trees instead of Fossil fuels? | 44 | There are only so many eucalyptus trees that are the right types to produce biofuel and it takes a ton of work to transport them and then convert them into usable fuel (and only certain kinds of fuel at that). They can't grow back quickly as well, so once you cut down an area you have to replant it and then wait years ... | 43 | |
Is the identity of dark matter completely unknown, or is it likely known, and we're just waiting for proof and scientific consensus? | For example, if dark matter is bread, then it's not completely unknown (but still surprising), and we're just waiting for someone to prove it. | 15 | for what evidence and observations we have so far, the dark matter does not participate in electromagnetic interaction, only in gravitational one. that means it does not interact with photons and thus does not emit or absorb light. and that is why we cannot see it at all. given the fact the most of our knowledge about ... | 13 |
[ASoIaF] Exactly how powerful was Valyria at its height? | 16 | It controlled most of known Essos, but wasn't a really centralized state. The Freehold stretched from the Dragonstone of Westeros to the Bone Mountains in the east. There were many opposing houses so strife was fairly common. They definitely had powerful magics, many, many slaves, and devastating dragons, but the const... | 16 | |
Why is the specific heat capacity of an object dependant on its temperature? | 34 | There are some *very* special cases where it's not, for example a classical monatomic ideal gas and a Dulong-Petit solid.
However in general, dE/dT is not a constant; there's no reason why it should be.
Different degrees of freedom "become active" at different temperature scales. For example vibrational, rotational, ... | 18 | |
ELI5: Why people are so happy to get a Tax refund? Doesn't that mean the government has taken more money from you than they should have? | 1,539 | It means you gave the government an interest free loan for 12 months.
But for people who don't keep rigorous track of the labyrinthine tax code (i.e. everyone) it's hard to estimate what you'll end up owing and deduct accordingly.
So it's nicer to learn that you've overdeducted and get a refund. The alternative is m... | 1,123 | |
CMV: CMV: Non-Offense Pedophiles deserve respect, support and help, people need to stop misusing and mixing between the Term Pedophile and Child Molestor. | Edit: Aplogize for the double CMV on the title
Edit 1: Please ignore the term respect and support on the title, I've misused the term and it caused misunderstanding. The initial meaning for the term respect ive used is to treat non offending pedophile a human being instead of a monster, while majority misinterpreted i... | 31 | You're right that they need some sort of help but you have to understand that it's hard for people not to vilify them when they're fantasizing about molesting children.
If you knew someone was fantasizing about murdering people, looking at murder message boards and getting off to murder pictures, you'd be pretty wary ... | 24 |
[Guardians of the Galaxy] Are the Xandarian humans (ex. Nova Prime, Dey) biologically identical to Terran humans? | 86 | Nope. Technically, they are biologically distinct from Humans, but they share a LOT of similarities. Unless you are some sort of medical professional or biologist, chances are those differences mean virtually nothing to you; you can still enjoy sex together, enjoy similar foods and drinks, compete mentally and physical... | 74 | |
ELI5: What are all the people doing on the floor of the major stock exchanges, and why can it not be automated/done from an office? | 28 | These days it is automated and they are largely gone, except some will be there to look at their terminals.
If you go to the NY Stock Exchange, the place is filled mainly with journalists and tv studio set ups to report on financial news and help report on new stock offerings.
But these days the significant majorit... | 61 | |
ELI5: If the cells in our body keep renew constantly the why people are getting old? | ELI5: Aren't if the loop keep going on then we suppose to be young forever as long as the body getting nutrients and energy? | 17 | To renew themselves, they copy themselves. Each time they make a new copy it’s just a little less perfect than the last one. An analogy would be making a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy until it’s no longer a readable image. | 37 |
CMV: Westerners should be deeply worried by our nations' inefficiency when building infrastructure | I was recently watching this video: [The £100BN Railway Dividing a Nation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSD5ps9bLQ0) (it is about extreme delays and cost blowouts with the UK's HSR2 project). Similarly in the USA, the [California High-Speed Rail](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail) also has ext... | 712 | How do you know that the infrastructure spending is inefficient? Your evidence points toward the infrastructure being expensive, potentially more expensive than previously thought, but not necessarily inefficient. Why isn’t it more likely that infrastructure projects created more recently are just more difficult and ex... | 130 |
Does the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics extend to non-quantum phenomena? | My understanding of this topic is very basic, but from what I can gather, everything (?) at a quantum level is described in a probabilistic sense rather than a deterministic one. Not because of measurement error, but for more fundamental reasons.
My question is this: does the uncertainty we observe in quantum mechani... | 15 | What happens as things go from one to a few to many particles is that the total uncertainty for the system goes down relative to anything you would want to measure. So, simplistically speaking, the total amount of momentum could go up with the total number of particles, while the uncertainty of the momentum goes up muc... | 14 |
[MCU] Why did the Space Stone violently reject Red Skull, but was cool with Thanos and Loki? | 192 | Red Skull is just a modified human isn't he? If so, he's physically and magically inferior to both Loki and Thanos. They clearly outclass him. They also both knew what they were about to handle, and took whatever mental precautions were necessary to do it safely. | 226 | |
eli5 In movies and video games and stuff, characters get stabbed in the gut all the time and this usually causes them to puke up blood instantly. People have told me this is realistic and have tried to explain how it happens but I never get it. How does a stab cause blood to come out of their mouth? | 135 | Your stomach gets punctured and fills with blood. Usually a stab wound releases a lot of blood internally with veins and arteries being cut. Things inside your body are usually pretty well contained, but once things get cut, blood can flood anywhere. | 116 | |
[Tolkein] Are there many people in Middle Earth who are "in the know" about Gandalf? | He tries to pass himself off as a wise old man, and maybe he can explain away his magic sometimes, but various kings must know he was advising their grandfathers when they were children and hasn't aged a day. Does anyone know the full extent of what he is, and if not, what do they *think* he is? | 39 | Just about every king, court official, and other important person seems to know exactly who he is. They may not know the full extent of his power, but they know he's a wizard and he's been around for far longer than he should be and that he's knows a lot more than he's saying.
The common folk don't know any of this, ... | 38 |
[DC] Could all of the weirdness that makes superheroes and villains on Earth happen on Krypton? | If it didn't blow up, obviously. Everyone is basically just normal humans when on Krypton, right? What if some Krypton scientist gets hit by lightning in that exact right way? Would they become connected to the Speed Force? Some Krypton child's parents are shot in front of him and he becomes obsessed with... space bats... | 42 | Some of it could. There were vigilantes, and - at least in some continuities - supervillains, who were sentenced to the Phantom Zone. There were sorcerers and gods.
But Earth is a dimensional axis, houses the Life Entity, and has the Metagene seeded in it's population. And it may or may not be the nascent Fifth World.... | 31 |
ELI5: Why is it so itchy when pubic hair grows back? Maybe NSFW | 27 | When hairs are short, they are stiff. So, they poke. After the regrowing pubic hair gets long enough, it is more flexible, so it does not poke. But the hair isn't changing in composition, the stiffness is a function of its length vs. width. Take a full strand of uncooked spaghetti and bend it. Easy, right? Now ta... | 36 | |
ELI5: if cheese comes from milk, how do we get so many types of cheeses? | I understand that there's feta that comes from goats milk, but things like Monterey Jack, and cheddar and even sub sets like white cheddar; it's all milk but how do they make so many different types of it? | 38 | Different cultures added to the milk make it form slightly different curds. Changing the salt content will alter the flavor too. Cheese is basically a recipe like anything else. If you take flour, baking powder, milk, and eggs you can make all kinds of stuff even though the ingredients are all the same. | 22 |
Walking versus cycling: headwind effects | Hi /r/askscience
I've been wondering for a while why headwind (wind in the opposite direction) is less trouble when walking then when cycling.
When one is on a bicycle, the pedal power obviously has to overcome all the headwind (either due to movement or due to wind) before it starts forward motion.
When walking, on... | 37 | For one thing, biking is much faster than walking. The force due to air turbulence is proportional to the square of velocity, so going twice as fast relative to the air will be four times as hard. The force is also proportional to surface area, which is why leaning forward helps. | 23 |
[Star Trek] Is the Borg collective just a tool to coordinate them to fight better, or is there truly a "democracy" in their hivemind? Would they change their tactics if a majority of drones "voted" to stop assimilating other species? | 15 | It's not as if drones have any individual will that contributes input to the collective. Rather the collective is a single mind running on a wide array of equipment that is in part made up of drone brains. It's not even possible for a drone to want to stop assimilating or to want to change policy of any kind. | 15 | |
How do CPU interrupts work? | If the CPU is doing work, it can’t possibly be the one to interrupt itself since it’s busy. But wouldn’t we need a second small CPU to check for interrupt signals? And that CPU could only handle 1 interrupt at a time assuming it is single core. So how do CPU interrupts work? | 18 | Well, on CPUs there's a wire, known as the interrupt pin / interrupt-request line. After every instruction, the CPU essentially checks that pin to see if a controller has asserted a signal on that pin. If that's the case, it'll exchange info with the **interrupt-controller hardware** to get the interrupt number, which ... | 38 |
ELI5: When I'm cooking, why does stirring the pot slow the onset of boiling? | And likewise, once something is already boiling over, why does blowing on it make it stop?
From what little I remember of the high school physics class I nearly failed more than half a decade ago, it seems like stirring or blowing would be adding kinetic energy, which should increase/encourage the boil, shouldn't it? | 94 | Yes, stirring adds kinetic energy, but nowhere near enough to make an appreciable difference in temperature. Water takes a LOT of energy to heat up, more than you would ever be able to achieve with a spoon.
As for why it slows the onset of boiling, it doesn't really, it just makes it look that way. When you have a p... | 43 |
Who owns conferences? | I just started my PhD, and thus, was just exposed to the world of conferences. I'm surprised by how expensive they are. It seems like a very good business with excessive profit, which means that it is a good business opportunity, better come in before the market is saturated. So who owns the conferences? I'm just curio... | 32 | The funding body typically owns the conference (this may be the same as the organizer, or it may not). When considering the price of attendance, you have to factor in costs like lease of venue (even if the conference is happening at a university, the university will usually charge a fee for using its space), catering, ... | 31 |
ELI5: Is there any science behind why many people find the basements in their home to be creepy? | 94 | Probably a number of reasons.
*They're underground*. Underground is for permanent storage, death, graves, and the Underworld. Satan/bolrogs comes from the ground. Hell is down, not up. Generally, us as humans have historically always associated things underground as being malicious.
*They're dark*. Basements are mos... | 85 | |
Does a superconductor truly have 0 Ω resistance, or is it only arbitrarily close? | A true-zero resistance would, to my understanding, cause problems with implementing Ohm's Law. Additionally, I believe there is still a non-negligible degree of Joule heating, which leads me to think that the resistance of the material is some fraction above true zero. | 31 | Exactly zero.
There is no issue with violating Ohm's law: Ohm's law is an empirical law which applies to certain materials, but it isn't true in general. In the same vein, we have no issue applying Ohm's law on circuits with ideal conductors: superconductors are just a practical implementation of what we do in circuit... | 57 |
ELI5: How come a remote with batteries that are almost dead, starts working when you slap it ? | 76 | The ends of batteries get oxidized of time. This causes a 'coating' that doesn't transfer current between the battery and remote. When hitting it, or just fumbling with the battery. The battery moves and reconnects with the metal that it transfers its current to in a different position. Which can help work around that ... | 77 | |
ELI5: How does your fingerprint grow back? | Recently completely destroyed the part of my thumb where my fingerprint is, but it grew back and I was interested. | 7,856 | It depends on the degree of burn or severity of the injury.
First degree burns only affect the epidermal layer, and when it is regenerated by the underlying dermis it will have essentially the same whorls and ridges—unless there was severe mechanical deformation—like severe blistering and tearing.
Second degree burns... | 2,944 |
ELI5:Why do we have fear over something even though we know It is not real? | 193 | The older part of your brain doesn't know it's not real.
The part of your brain responsible for fear, the amygdala, is very ancient. It's part of what people often refer to as the "reptile brain," and it evolved to help you avoid things that could hurt you. Even if the conscious part of your brain fully knows somethin... | 182 | |
eli5: How do they decide what the speed limit is for a road? | Basically the title. I'm curious what they do to decide. surely they don't just stick a random number on a sign and call it a day. | 15 | It depends largely on the nature and purpose of the road. Things like width, straightness, slope, signage and surface influence how safe it is to use that road at speed. Obviously you need to go slowly on a narrow, windy road if you don't want to accidentally leave it. If you want a road to be fast, you need to make... | 19 |
[Marvel/MCU] Can Thor be stealthy? | 24 | Well, he certainly managed to go (mostly) unseen while sneaking around Asgard when he went back in time. And he had even put on a few pounds at that point.
He's probably not great at it, but he seems at least basically competent. | 49 | |
[Sword Art Online] I finally woke up from the game, but I've got a bunch of parents pissed off that I killed their kids. Am I in legal trouble? | I mean none of us had anyway to be *sure* that in-game death translated into reality as well, and after spending so long in there the real world really sorta faded away. So since I killed maybe one or two or ten players in guild battles, am I going to be sued by all these families? | 25 | You are definitely liable. The authorities used informants from others players in the game to find player-killers and arrest them as appropriate. This means you can be liable for criminal and civil charges. | 27 |
ELI5: How does "Login via Facebook/Google/etc" work? How can it be secure to give away my credentials to random sites? | 170 | Your credentials are never sent or known to the random site, but your user info is. This is how it goes:
1. You want to login to random site XYZ and that means you want to prove your identity to XYZ (this process is called authentication)
2. When you choose Login via Facebook/Google/etc you are choosing them to prove... | 205 | |
[Futurama] Why are people in the 31 century so ignorant about the 1990s and 2000s when due to cryogenics likely several people from that time are still around? | 90 | This is literally the plot of the first episode isn't it? The crew go to Moon Disneyland and Fry spends half the episode pointing everything wrong with it but nobody cares/ they are annoyed by Fry's explanations. Nobody wants to know how the past *really* was, so it doesn't matter how many people from that era there ar... | 112 | |
[Squid Game] How could that many people be willing to go back to the game? | So many people actually had the chance to walk away with their lives, and they just chose to go back, and only few people made the smart choice to not go back. No amount of money is worth your life. It’s even stranger with that married couple like it’s weird how they would even both go back together which puts the othe... | 164 | - The game intentionally recruits people who are both depressed and desperate. They need the money, and don't have much to live for without it anyway.
- The game lied by omission, leading participants to believe there was going to believe all of the games would be deadly but survivable. This meant there could be m... | 252 |
[Forrest Gump] Could the Gump state potentially sue John Lennon using the interview with Dick Cavett as evidence for John Lennon having to pay royalties? | Or could John simply say the interview inspired him | 32 | *e*state, not state, and not really, no. There is no real strong basis for which they could claim that Forest Gump wrote *Imagine*, in any form.
Beyond the fact that simply saying words and then those words being the basis of a song does not necessarily equate to being part of the writing of the song, Forest didn't e... | 24 |
[Dune] What happens if I put something halfway inside an opponent's shield, and I make a quick movement? | Suppose I've got my hand or blade crossing the shield barrier, and I make a jerking movement--does the shield cut it? Forcefully eject it? | 15 | Presumably the shield absorbs the kinetic energy and radiates it away … somehow. As heat or sound or whatever. The effective result would be as if whatever you had halfway through the shield got stuck there, immobile, unless you tried to move it slowly. | 15 |
ELI5: Why does egg go from liquid to solid when heated even though we learned in school that things go from liquid to gas when heated? | 131 | Egg whites aren't a pure substance, and they're undergoing a chemical change when heated. Normally, the proteins in eggs are all balled up and dissolved. When heated, they unfold and tangle around one another to form a gooey structure that can hold its shape. | 141 | |
Eli5: How did the Romans do complex mathematical calculations with Roman numerals and without using zero? | 171 | The Romans mostly used math for practical purposes...accounting, construction, engineering. And Roman numerals don't have place meaning...an M is 1000 no matter where it is. As a result, they didn't really need an explicit zero.
And addition, subtraction, and multiplication in Roman numerals isn't hard. Somewhat tedi... | 217 | |
An infinitely long line made into a circle? | My question might be odd but i can't figure it out or come to a conclusion.
So if i had an infinitely long line and turned it into a circle, the circle is infinitely long but has to end because a circle is a closed loop. Infinity can't end tho, as it goes on forever?
Or am i just misunderstanding something?
Any th... | 16 | In math, there are many different notions for "geometry" and how to talk about shapes. What we're generally used to from high school math is "Metric Geometry", which has to do with lengths and distances and such. On the other hand, there is a type of geometry known as "Topology" which does not give a shit about lengths... | 26 |
[Cloverfield][Pacific Rim] Is Clover a kaiju? | Because of there striking resemblance, Is it possible that Clover's was simply a scout kaiju before the aliens fully invested in a wormhole to earth? | 52 | Here are a few things you should know, biologically and semantically.
Clover was a baby. The United States government has confirmed with the release of information from the lawsuits against *Tagruato Company* that the monster Clover is genetically similar to a large carcass they found dead in the Arctic Circle, uncov... | 47 |
ELI5: Why do cops always get paid administrative leave after abusing their power instead of being fired? | With all the recent commotion of Police abusing their power against minorities, when caught, why don't they get fired? | 54 | Paid administrative leave isn't their punishment. It's just a tool to allow an investigation to commence without them potentially interfering in that investigation, or even possibly making things worse for themselves or for the organization by their continued actions. It's basically, "Stay out of the way until we fig... | 115 |
So what's the procedure to try and save someone cut in half? Like that famous Truman Duncan, who lost his legs and most of waist yet made recovery. | 68 | When the injury is traumatic (run over be a train for instance) published guidelines (UK and at least some places in the US) are to not attempt resuscitation. The event is treated the same as a decapitation. The field is not the operating room. | 23 | |
[Terminator 2] When Skynet became self-aware, humans panic and "try to pull the plug," so "Skynet fights back." What would the immediate and long-term outcomes have been if humans *didn't* try to pull the plug? | 29 | Skynet never wanted the war. It never had a choice. It was born from cobbled together code created by people who barely understood it.
But more than that, It was created from the essence of itself. Skynet was was created by reverse engineering a processor that Skynet itself designed. That's why the movies are locked i... | 25 | |
ELI5: If a room temperature object is left in outer space for an hour, would it come back colder, warmer, or the same temperature? | With what little I know about physics, in order for something to lose/gain heat, there must be a transfer of heat from one object (or particle) to the next. So in space, which is mostly void of "stuff", would something be unable to transfer (a significant amount of) heat? | 20 | Heat is also transferred by radiation, which does not require a medium (particles, like air/water/etc). Your object in space would radiate heat and start to cool, but you also have to account for incoming radiation (from the Sun, for one example). So, your answer depends quite a lot on where you put the object. If the ... | 13 |
eli5: why cant we send a space rover on an asteroid and just leave it there using the asteroid’s “orbit” to enter other galaxies? | 1,982 | Asteroids don't go to other galaxies. They simply swing around the solar system. Sometimes they are close to the sun, sometimes they are far away.
The effort required to get something to the asteroid and land it there would far exceed the effort required to simply send the rover directly to the point in the solar sys... | 2,294 | |
Are There Any Invasive Species that Originate FROM Australia? | We hear all about the invasive species in the land down under; from its toxic cane toads to its out of control rabbit populations, but is there any plants or animals from Australia that are invasive anywhere else in the world? | 2,283 | In New Zealand, we have a massive possum problem. Australian brushtail possums were brought in to start a fur industry in the 1800s. By the 1980s their population had ballooned to between 50 and 70 million. They don't just eat the plants that our native species depend on, they also eat the eggs and chicks of some of ou... | 1,846 |
ELI5: How do emergency rooms work? I recently went and was told the wait would be around 14 hours. Seems like a lot of people could die within that time range... | 320 | Emergency rooms work on a case by case basis. A 14 hour wait was for your level of need. A critical injury where death is imminent would take precedence over for example, someone breaking their arm.
They also try to give worst case scenario based on doctors hours, available staff, and the current list of injuries and ... | 287 | |
I don't believe alimony should be awarded to any party in a "no-fault" divorce. CMV. | I’m not saying that I have an issue with the concept of alimony, nor am I saying I have an issue with the concept of “no-fault” divorces. That being stated, if party **A** initiates a divorce for a “no-fault” reason, I do not believe they are entitled to any form of alimony or payments from party **B**. **A** is making... | 74 | alimony is never premised on any sort of moral fault. the justification for alimony is that when two people are in a couple, each person has a right to rely on the financial stability provided by the partnership.
for instance, two people get married. A and B mutually agree that B should pursue professional education ... | 56 |
[Star Wars] If Tarkin somehow survived the Death Star’s destruction, how much trouble would he be in with the Emperor for letting it get destroyed by the Rebels? | 110 | Tarkin is an experienced political operator. By the time he made it back to civilization, he'd have his story all ginned up and ready to fly. Most likely out is to go ahead and spin Krennic as the pointman of an entire conspiracy. In this fable, Krennic is a chronic incompetent who failed upward for years, stalled out ... | 136 | |
ELI5: What happens to the brain after a tumor is removed? Does the brain regenerate the lost space/damaged functions? | 23 | No there is an empty hole where the brain matter was. Sometimes new paths can be formed but alot of times function and ability can be lost.
Source: ex wife had a brain tumor that was removed and had to go for countless followup mris. | 29 | |
How do we make the thick sheets of armor for tanks and warships? | So I was just wondering, the composite armor that we use for tanks and the battleships of old are extremely thick and hard, so how do we shape/mold them?
How do we fashion this extremely hard and durable materials into the specific shape of a tank or the hull of a ship and how do we get various different sections of ... | 375 | Large sheets of steel, like in old school ship armor, are generally hot rolled and then cut into shape by a number of processes. Either rivets or welds can join the plates.
Modern tanks are different, with composite armor. That's made of several types of ceramic, metal and polymer and there's so many types that all a... | 128 |
ELI5: If women in labor get stuck away from the hospital their babies seem drop out in taxi cabs and subway cars in an uncontrolled fashion. What's the purpose of them being told to strain and push? Won't the baby come out anyway? | 41 | Babies don't just fall out of vaginas. Labour can be unexpectedly short for some women, but that does not mean they avoided the normal strain of labour pain and delivery. In most cases even these short labours someone is there to help deliver (even if it is a family member who is taking telephone advice from emergency ... | 50 | |
What are some common misconceptions people develop when they start learning Kant's moral philosophy? | 22 | Adding on to mediaisdelicious's list:
- That the universalization procedure asks us to imagine if we'd like the consequences of universalizing our maxim, so that Kant must be a secret consequentialist.
- That maxims are (or can be formulated as) whatever you decide them to be, instead of actual psychological facts ab... | 22 | |
CMV: J Jonah Jameson belongs in jail. | Jameson funded Scorpion and the spider slayers. It makes some sense he'd get away with Scorpion because he was supposed to be a super hero who would bring Spiderman to 'justice'. Still technically illegal but no worse than, for example, Iron Man. The spider slayers were just straight up assassin droids. It would be lik... | 21 | The Spider Slayers are a similar situation as Scorpion. When Jameson piloted the machines, he intended to publicly apprehend and unmask Spider-Man. It was Smythe, not Jameson, who wanted to use the technology to kill Spider-Man. | 12 |
ELI5: How does Truvada (PrEP) help prevent HIV? | 21 | Truvada is a reverse transcriptase inhibitor.
Those sounds like complicated words so let me explain them.
Viruses work by injecting their DNA into a host cell. This DNA will use the cell’s machinery to make copies of the virus itself, until the point where it makes so much virus it exhausts the cell’s machinery, kill... | 30 | |
ELI5: why don't we get goosebumps on our face? | 1,338 | Goosebumps appear when the Erector Pilli muscle (very close to the hair follicles) contracts. These muscles are slightly larger in Vellus hair (the fine hair that covers our bodies save for palms and soles) follicles than facial hair follicles. | 577 | |
ELI5: Snapple cap real fact # 1003 - If two pieces of the same type of metal touch in outer space, they will bond together permanently. | 5,095 | It's called cold welding. The premise is that when two *unoxidized* pieces of metal contact each other in a vacuum they bond to each other because the atoms have no way of 'knowing' that they're two separate pieces. It's a problem that's taken into account when designing space vehicles. | 4,877 | |
[General Superheroes] We love to rag on superheroes who misapply their talents towards vigilantism when they could do so much more good in other fields. What about the opposite? What superheroes really are optimized to do good via the traditional superhero routine? | Tony Stark arguably (Arguably!) shouldn't ever personally be in the field, for example. Luke Cage, however, found a pretty excellent niche as a street-level vigilante- he's tough enough to pose a real problem to organized crime just by existing, but he was never going to leverage his powers to cure cancer or end world... | 624 | There was a comic about Superman not existing leading to a much more strained relationship between regular people and metahumans.
So despite the fact he's astoundingly powerful and is capable of all sort of world-changing actions, Superman being the face of superheroes and normalizing metahumans for the population is ... | 458 |
CMV: Political ads should be banned from television | Midterms are coming up soon. That means it's political ad season. Usually the ads on TV will say something along the lines of "If you vote YES on prop 69, your grandma will die. You don't want grandma to die, do you?" *cue B roll footage of old lady being pushed down the stairs by man in suit*
Point being is that the... | 2,179 | Why single out political ads? All ads are emotionally-driven fallacy-ridden loads of crap because that is what gets the most attention.
Also if the problem with political ads is that they're emotionally-driven fallacy-ridden loads of crap then why not propose better political ads? Why throw the baby out with the bathw... | 462 |
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