post_title stringlengths 5 304 | post_text stringlengths 0 37.5k | post_scores int64 15 83.1k | comment_text stringlengths 200 9.61k | comment_score int64 10 43.3k |
|---|---|---|---|---|
ELI5: How snails form their shells | I have a pet snail. Is its shell built by the snail as it grows and needs more space? Or does it grow like a toe nail? How is it attached?
Bonus question: how different are snails and slugs? | 249 | The shell is attached by the inner surface, and it grows a bit like a toenail. Snails and slugs are not exactly taxonomic terms, but in general they're actually pretty far apart.
Assuming you're talking about just land ones, snails are generally herbivores while slugs will eat anything. Dead animals, insects, plants,... | 110 |
[Mad Max: The Road Warrior] Where is everybody else getting their gasoline? | There’s just no way mutual scavenging is how everybody gets gas. There has to be a source of fresh gasoline somewhere in the wastelands, somewhere other than Pappagallo’s oil compound. Max has gotta be running through a tank a day because all he does is drive. Humongous and all his marauders, too, from their constant s... | 27 | Mutual scavenging isn't getting *everyone* gas. Gangs like Humungus' one kill or leave for dead the people they rob. Humungus gang has a bunch of fuel to burn driving around because they presumably do this full time, and just finished up murdering some *other* poor bastards and stealing their fuel.
Max presumably tr... | 30 |
ELI5: How does the heart make its own electricity? | 61 | The explanation by frommerman is incorrect, it is electricity and the sinoatrial node is not a cluster of nerves. The cells of the heart have the ability to pump ions across the membrane such that the inside is usually negatively charged compared to the outside. When the cell gets hit by the action potential, there ar... | 19 | |
Why do some vaccines leave scars? | I recently got my BCG vaccine as I work in a lab but when they informed me of the blistering and scaring phase I was a little perplexed.
What makes the site blister and scar only after several weeks/months? I know it’s to do with your immune system reacting but what is specifically involved / what’s the processes invo... | 170 | For the smallpox vaccination, "leaving a mark" is the sign that the vaccine worked. The vaccine requires multiple punctures giving multiple infection start sites, so it becomes very inflammatory - leaving behind the scar tissue. The TB vaccine is different, in that it is a single injection, but BCG is extremely immunog... | 96 |
[DC] How could the Joker overpower Batman? | Batman, having trained and learned many martial arts, and pushed himself to near human perfection, was overpowered by a lunatic who has only unpredictability as a serious fighting advantage. | 16 | Not just unpredictability, but his mind is as strong laterally as Batman's is deductively. The Joker would find ways to strike through every system of reality that depends on some form of logic. Language, art, sociology, economics can all be perverted and weaponized against Batman since his strength is in having such d... | 27 |
[Dune] Why is the Emperor upset at Leto's death when he planned it in the first place? | Did the Emperor only plan on the downfall of House Atreides and their failure on Arrakis, not expecting the Harkonnens to outright murder Leto? It says in the excerpt at the beginning of Book Two that the Emperor "went into such a rage as we had never before seen" upon hearing the news of Leto's death, blaming everyone... | 100 | Shadam is upset, because although he wanted to take House Atreides down as a potential rival, he also knew Duke Leto himself was personally very popular in the Landsraad. If it became publicly known he was involved with Leto’s direct murder, it might cause the other great Houses to turn against him. I’m sure he wante... | 201 |
[MCU] What is the Iron Man mk.84 or whatever made from nowadays? I ask because sometimes they withstand a lot of battle damage, and others they get ripped apart like tin. | 44 | I assume you're talking about ironman 3 when you talk about the Ines being ripped apart:
It seems like in that movie, most of the suits weren't really being destroyed so much as falling apart, which was also the first instance of them flying and assembling onto Tony on the fly; it seems that the sort of force field ho... | 33 | |
ELI5: why are most top fuel dragsters V8 why not use V10 and V12 to go faster?. | 20 | The NHRA regulations constrain the engine used to power a Top Fuel drag racing car to the basic layout found in the second generation Chrysler 426 Hemi made from 1964-71. Although the Top Fuel engine is built exclusively of specialist parts, it retains the basic configuration with two valves per cylinder activated by p... | 35 | |
ELI5 How my modded xbox 360 controller can remember what mode it was last in, even if I take the battery pack out and put it back in. Why can't an alarm clock do the same? | 16 | > Why can't an alarm clock do the same?
It is not a technical issue, it's a social and economical issue.
If you need to change the mode every time the controller has powered down, you will need to do it a couple of times a day. A couple of times per day is making it annoying enough that you want it to get away. En... | 14 | |
ELI5: If someone drilled a hole completely through the Earth (through the crust, mantle, outer and inner core), and disregarding the heat and pressure, I were to drop a object through said hole, would the object "fall" to the other side or would it stay in the middle of the Earth due to gravity? | 1,333 | It would fall to the other side of the earth, if there was no air resistance. It fall down until it reached the center, where it would be at maximum speed, then it would continue to "fall" up until until is reached the surface. At which point it would turn to fall back again.
If you also conciser air resistance it wou... | 497 | |
ELI5:If by definition an invasive species is a 'plant or animal that is not native to a specific location, and tends to spread and cause damage to the environment', then why humans aren't considered an invasive species? Do we not perfectly fit that definition as a species? | 291 | Yeah, we pretty much are, though we tend to think of "not native" as "humans brought it here and it didn't spread here on its own". You could look at things like National Parks or the Antarctic Treaties as being similar to trying to control an invasive species - "this is one of the few places that humans haven't invade... | 137 | |
[Avatar: TLA] Can a non-firebender challenge a firebender to an Agni Kai? | 33 | It would appear to be a form of ritualized combat that requires firebending, as evidenced when Azula, in her role as Fire Lord under Phoenix King Ozai, commanded Lo and Li to engage in Agni Kai. Their response was "But we're not firebenders," which seemed to indicate that Agni Kai would be impossible for them. | 69 | |
ELI5:What exactly happens in your body when you drink water? | I get solid food, but what specifically happens when water enters the stomach and then afterwards. | 152 | Your body balances the water in the blood, the cells, and the spaces in between. A small amount stays in the intestines to help digestion while most is absorbed into the body across tiny pores. When the water crosses the pores it also helps transport vital electrolytes into your body. Then the water enters the blood st... | 100 |
ELI5: Why are curved stretches of highway tilted? | 44 | This is called banking, and it's done to prevent cars from sliding off the road at high speeds.
When you're driving in a straight line, all the energy of the vehicle is aligned with the direction of travel. If you were to slam on the brakes, you'd decelerate in a straight line.
However, when you're going around a cu... | 46 | |
Was always warned to stay away from windows and off/away from electronic devices (television, computer) during a thunderstorm. How valid is this claim, and how dangerous is it really? | 157 | Mythbusters tested this. If you have Netflix then you can watch it. It's the episode "Son of a Gun" (s01e11).
The phone did allow the current to go through (if the fuse wasn't grounded) and it would have killed someone.
They also tested if someone was in the shower "as if they were standing on a drain, and the drain ... | 36 | |
[Harry Potter] Will Wizards eventually adopt muggle tech as national surveillance states increase in number? | I can imagine why wizards would not want to use 1990s tech, but in todays world when litteraly everyone has a cellphone? Where China's government can observe your every move? If wizards don't adopt muggle tech, they will be discovered. | 16 | They seem to be doing fine. While your average wizard is as dumb or dumber than their magic stick, they got staying hidden and ereasing muggle memories basically perfected.
Magic also fucks with electronics. Very simple devices like radios seem to work if powered by magic, but a wizard with a regular cellphone probabl... | 16 |
[Rick and Morty] How did Rick _____ if ________? | How did Rick fabricate the details of his backstory in season 3 if, as revealed at the end of season 5, it ended up being his real backstory? | 38 | Rick used his actual backstory to build his illusion in the Shoneys; the bug didn't see the real memory, just a brutally accurate simulation of it, up until the moment when Past Rick writes the code for the malicious upload.
As far as telling the bug it was *all* a lie, Rick is an asshole, hates authority figures, an... | 60 |
Why would there be fish in a lake not connected to anything? | There is a lake near me in an abandoned quarry. It's at the top of a hill so nothing really flows into it and there aren't any rivers flowing out of it because it's just a big hole that's been dug into the granite. I was very confused then when I got closer and saw that the lake was full of little fish. How could they ... | 31 | Well considering fish don't spontaneously appear, it's only one of two options:
1. They were put there at some point in the past
2. A source of water that contained fish was connected and allowed a small population of fish to migrate to that lake | 23 |
[Naruto] How the hell is chidori/lightning blade an assassins technology? it's way more flashy than the rasegan and it's loud as shit so loud that it's named by the loud high pitched sound it makes | "technique" | 34 | Chidori is an assassination technique in the same way old school Hashashin had a technique where they would get drugged up and charge straight at their target with a knife.
The idea is if someone charges straight at their target with no regard for their own safety, it is very difficult for their target to survive. In... | 53 |
[Star Wars: Rogue One] I just saw a blind man with a stick knock out a fully armored stormtrooper. Is their armor effective against anything? | 93 | Its designed to protect against shrapnel, as blasters that miss tend to make the wall explode.
Hard Armour is usually bad again blunt force, which is why you attack a Knight in full plate with a hammer and not a sword | 156 | |
[Star Wars] By the time Ep.IV takes place, did Darth Vader know Obi Wan had survived all this time? | After being healed up by the Emperor in Ep.III, it seems likely Vader would have known that Obi Wan was still roaming around somewhere, but is there anything to suggest Vader ever tried to find him or confirm whether he was dead or alive over the next 30 years? I guess the same question would apply to Yoda. | 42 | I think Anakin/Vader would've known if Obi Wan had died, so he had to assume he was still alive. As for seeking him out, I'd imagine after he recuperated (as best as someone dipped in lava then shoved in a mobile respirator can), the Emperor kept him too busy quashing rebellions and executing his will. That being said,... | 44 |
Many supermassive Black Holes emit relativistic jets. Would a White Hole be expected to have similar in-falling jets? | 24 | Hey, astronomer here:
I don't really think this would happen, primarily for two reasons:
1.- Jets observed from black holes are not "emissions" from the blackhole itself , blackholes' only known emission method is Hawking's radiation. Jet streams are result of gravitational interaction with the dust surrounding them ... | 27 | |
CMV: Telling People to "Just Be Yourself" With Regards to Dating is Horrible Advice. | I want to clear up some probable misconceptions that people are going to have.
I am NOT saying that it is wrong to be happy with who you are or that it is a good idea to take on a false/deceptive persona to succeed in dating. What I am saying is that far too often people are given advice along the lines of "just be yo... | 55 | To me, "be yourself" means, don't present yourself as someone you're not, because you wouldn't want to date someone who is only interested in the pretend-you. Like, let's say you think guys won't like you if you're a smart, nerdy gamer girl. Wouldn't you get more out of a relationship from someone who likes you for tho... | 49 |
ELI5: How did they get, and keep, the footage of the atomic bomb tests? | You've seen the footage: those orange-red tinged shots of the car and bus being blasted across the desert, the shockwave hitting the trees and making a "forest" shimmy, and the house blistering into ashes.
So with all these thermonuclear torments, how the the camera stay trained on the spot, and how did the film not v... | 26 | First of all: for most shots of the blasts themselves, the camera was with the human observers i.e. sufficiently far enough away to be safe from massive shockwaves. Zoom lenses did not need to be super zooms, given the sizes of the explosions. Some cameras were put in massively heavy enclosures to survive being closer ... | 11 |
ELI5: Why can we only see so many stars in our own galaxy, but we can see the Andromeda Galaxy billions of light-years away with the naked eye? | 22 | That's kind of like asking why you can see the moon, but why can't you see a grain of sand 100 yards away. The sand is much closer, but the moon is much bigger.
Andromeda Galaxy is 220,000 light years across and contains a trillion stars. A typical star is 1.4 million kilometers across. That means a star is 0.00000000... | 19 | |
Is Plato's Republic a good place to start? | I got Republic and dialogues of Socrates from my local bookstore and am about halfway thru book 4 in Republic rn. I've been annotating the text, by highlighting and writing annotations and explanations to sections and that has helped me a lot. I just want 2 make sure I'm not picking something that's like a bad place to... | 46 | I would have started with something like the Crito as way of getting into the dialogue format and how he gets the character of Socrates to argue. The republic is jumping in the deep end, but its not as bad as the laws. | 26 |
What do you recommend me? | Hey I'm 16 years old and I know C and a little html. A lot of people recommended me to learn python and stick with it.
What do you guys think? Should I learn python and work with it? If so, what are some good courses that you can learn python?
Thanks in advance! | 17 | Python is an easy to use tool for nearly everything. It's good to know Python.
On the other hand, if you are good with C, stick with it for a little bit, just to become even better. There is almost no language that you cannot understand if you are a decent C programmer. It's literally a 70's language that survived th... | 31 |
ELI5: How do streaming services analyze the success of their shows/movies? | With the strong influx of movies being created by streaming services like Netflix and Hulu, how exactly do they know if their movie was a success?
For example, if a studio like Warner Bros created a movie with a final budget of $10m, they can analyze their success based on the revenues. If they made >$10m...it was... | 39 | They look at details like:
- How many people watched it?
- How many people watched it right after signing up? (Assuming that the show is what motivated people to join)
- Did signup rates spike when the show was announced or became available?
- How many people watched it as soon as possible?
- How many people, after w... | 38 |
ELI5: Why do our nipples get hard when it's cold out | 2,426 | This is an interesting question, with an interesting answer.
basically its to reduce surface area so its harder for them to cool down further, as to not get nerve damage, and keeping the body warmer.
/u/penguinluvinman has a great answer.
>When exposed to cold temperature skin reflexively contracts, causing the... | 1,076 | |
[eli5] What actually is food poisoning and what is happening in our bodies that make them respond so violently to it? | 52 | Food poisoning happens when you eat some bad bacteria living on/in your food. These bacteria (commonly staphylococcus aureus and bacillus cereus) make a toxin and spread that toxin all in your food. When you eat that toxin, your guts are like “this is a bad thing so let’s get rid of it” and your guts get rid of it with... | 54 | |
[The Matrix] When a program for something like martial-arts or piloting a helicopter is uploaded into your brain, it's in your brain... right? So technically can you still utilize those skills outside of the matrix? | 109 | Yes and no. You can't use the program, that's a part of your avatar inside the matrix. However, if you got the chance to actually pilot a helicopter, you would remember doing so, and while your muscle memory might not be up to scratch, you'd at least know what switches to switch, what the helicopter should feel and sou... | 102 | |
Will turbulence experienced through flight ever be a thing of the past? How will it be avoided if so? | 53 | Turbulence is a result of flying through unstable air and the best way to avoid it is to fly higher. One day we might have sub orbital space planes which fly very fast and 40-60km up which would experience very little turbulence while at cruising altitude. There would still always be a chance of turbulence when travell... | 22 | |
Advice for Programming Birthday-Suprise for my Fiancée | Hi All! I'm (M33) a non-native English speaker, on a throwaway account because I don't want my fiancée (F30) to find out.
I have an idea for her birthday gift but would like your input on it because I don't even know how to code. (She does it for a living). My idea was to create a self-designed apron for the kitchen, ... | 17 | How about making it a bit more so that it looks like code syntax?
void Hunger (Mood, Stomach)
{
if (Mood=="Grumpy")
{
if (Stomach=="Growling")
{
Food = TimeToCook() ;
Eat (Food) ;
Mood = "Happy" ;
... | 23 |
CMV: corporations should be required to pay for the disposal of their products. | If companies were explicitly responsible for the disposal costs associated with their products it would incentivize the production of items that are more reusable and less costly to dispose of. It would also help ensure products are correctly disposed of, since there would be dedicated funds.
The current system unfai... | 292 | If you want to use cost to incentivize the correct disposal of waste (I good idea IMHO) shouldn’t that cost be applied to the ones who make the choice of disposal (ie the consumer)?
The problem with charging the producer for waste disposal is that the cost of disposal depends on how the consumer handles the waste they... | 16 |
[DC] Does the Green Lantern Corps have the equivalent of a non-interference protocol or Prime Directive? Would the Guardians recognise the sovereignty of civilizations whose leaders ask they be left alone no matter how evil or unjust they might be? | 81 | Pretty sure those those guys are all about interfering whenever the heck the feel like it. After all their three powers are being super-condescendingly arrogant, being almost always wrong, and Making IT Worse. | 78 | |
Why do price ceilings cause shortages if each individual unit of a product sold still makes a profit? | [https://imgur.com/a/mLF4fTm](https://imgur.com/a/mLF4fTm)
If you are making on a profit on each individual unit of ice cream, why would a company sell less of it? The only way I can think of this happening is if the price of the materials or labor gets more expensive as you make more ice cream, but isn't the opposite... | 20 | Cuz only the folks that can make a profit at that price point sell it. And they might not be able to expand their production and still make a profit.
​
Say there are 20 folks that can make ice cream. 10 of them break even at 5 bucks a pint, the others at 7 bucks a pint. If the price is set to 5 bucks, 10 o... | 17 |
[Green Lantern] The rings all happen to only represent emotions that humans feel. Does the series address this in any way? | For example there is no ring for an emotion only aliens feel. There does not seem to be a problem translating emotions across species (ie hate is a positive thing for this species of alien so it translates to compassion). There also seems to be no issue with magnitude. Like this alien feels incomprehensible amount of h... | 32 | Emotion is a cosmological constant in DC. The variation in feelings and perspective you’re suggesting doesn’t exist. Separate species may express their emotions differently, but the emotions themselves are constant. | 52 |
What are "cosmic rays"? | I know space travel is hazardous to astronauts due to long term exposure to "cosmic rays".... but what are they? Are they part of the electro-magnetic spectrum, like gamma rays?
Also, I've read that they are difficult to shield against... but an insulating layer of water in a space ship's hull could provide protectio... | 19 | They are highly energetic charged particles which originate outside our solar system. They are primarily protons.
When they collide with atomic nuclei in the atmosphere, they produce showers of other particles via nuclear spallation and other high-energy reactions.
There are muons traveling through your body right no... | 16 |
ELI5: How does gravity make time slow down? | Edit: So I asked this question last night on a whim, because I was curious, and I woke up to an astounding number of notifications, and an extra 5000 karma @___________@
I've tried to go through and read as many responses as I can, because holy shit this is so damn interesting, but I'm sure I'll miss a few.
***Thank ... | 18,684 | Speed is equal to distance over time.
Gravity increases the distance light travels as it curves space.
The speed of light is constant no matter where you are and no matter how fast you're going.
So, if the speed of light is fixed and the distance increases due to gravity then time has to slow to make sure the equati... | 18,354 |
ELI5:Why do firefighters "make it rain" on a fire instead of pointing the hose at the ground or directly into the fire? | 50 | What they are trying to do is prevent the area immediately next to where the fire is from catching fire. By doing this (in theory) the fire will have nowhere to go and eventually use up the fuel that is currently on fire and extinguish itself.
The "make it rain" approach is common because it starves the fire of both h... | 41 | |
CMV: Developing space infrastructure should be a higher priority than trying to colonize Mars | There seems to be a lot of romance around the idea of colonizing Mars and I hope that someday there is a Martian colony. But first we need better space infrastructure. That means more efficient ways to launch and reuse rockets like SpaceX is developing. More needs to be done to develop Earth orbit capabilities, and pe... | 69 | I work in the software development industry, and there is a recurring debate on this very issue.
On the one hand, new projects are sexy. They attract investors and customers. They have goals that are easy to define and market.
On the other hand, infrastructure projects can help the "sexy" projects move faster in the ... | 18 |
ELI5: Why is rolling your eyes a universal sign of being annoyed? | 21 | It isn't a universal expression of annoyance, though. In fact only since the 1930s or 40s did it start to have that connotation in the U.S. Watch old movies, and you'll see it was an expression of wry amusement. (Look at even older movies and it was a "come hither" gesture!) It evolved from amusement to the dismissive ... | 16 | |
If I keep my chapped and cracked lips shut, will they heal together? | 29 | Yes. Skin cells are dumb. Cell adhesion complexes in general are dumb. If you managed to hold them together close enough while they healed, you could get them to grow together. But the contacts would likely not be very strong, and you could probably pull them apart with very little force. Incidentally, the same phenome... | 26 | |
ELI5: Why do movies usually take 2-3 years to produce while similar quality shows like House of Cards can be produced annually? | 258 | House of Cards *did* take 2-3 years to produce from writing to casting to shooting. It is important to note that Netflix ordered two seasons of 13 episodes each from the get-go. They didn't film one season, leave, and then suddenly get the call for another season and then scramble and put it together all in one year, i... | 150 | |
CMV: The notion that you would be able to defend yourself from a corrupt government is irrational. | Like the title says, many pro-gun advocates make the argument that they own firearms to defend themselves from a corrupt government (in this case, the U.S.), but don't realize they would be far from threatening to an organized fighting force with military equipment (national guard, army, etc.) This argument would be ap... | 30 | It's largely a matter of what you're willing to give up.
If a dissident guerilla group of terrorists decides to wage a long campaign against the government, hitting soft targets and retreating into sewers and basically waging a campaign of assassination and murder - well, most of them are going to die. They're going t... | 27 |
CMV: While I believe tattoos can serve significant personal meaning, a large number of piercings simply suggests a generally lower amount of self-esteem. | I'm coming into this suggesting that my evidence may be mainly anecdotal (not to mention with a pretty malleable perspective), so this might be an easy one for you guys, but it still bothers me.
I simply can't understand the psychology behind desiring a large number of piercings in the face and other body parts. There... | 27 | >I simply can't understand the psychology behind desiring a large number of piercings in the face and other body parts.
I personally can't understand the psychology behind going to a Taylor Swift concert, but that doesn't mean there is something wrong with her fans.
It's a hobby, there is no need to regard it as... | 15 |
[The Boys] Is Billy Butcher actually English? | As an English person his accent to me is such a caricature of a cockney it's insane. As far as I remember he never mentions anything about his English past. Did some trauma from his past make him snap into this cockney character? | 42 | He might have learned to exadgerate his accent in the english military, or he might have spent so much time in one intelligence program or another under a cover that he lost his natural accent. He is from Britain, but time spent in the melting pot of the military industrial complex can warp someone's language pretty st... | 43 |
ELI5: How does eating high fibre food prevent us from getting constipation? | 32 | You can't digest/break down fibre. It stays in your gut. When things stay in your gut, it tends to pull water in because the water can't be absorbed into your intestinal wall. That water acts to soften up your poop, making it pass along easier. | 29 | |
ELI5: Monte Carlo simulations. | I guess I just don't understand how they are done. | 36 | Suppose you are sharing a room with your brother. The left side is yours, the right side is his. You draw a line on the floor to mark them, but you think it should be moved more to the right and so you start quarreling. You do not have a measuring tape (and besides, since the room is not a rectangle it's hard to measur... | 60 |
ELI5: Why don't Federal programs have a small trial-run like "America Works" had in 'House of Cards'? | You'd think with all the fighting in Washington, you'd think any idea could be trial run on a small scale to collect data on whether or not to unroll the programs nationwide. | 33 | They frequently do. Either the government will run a pilot program to test it out, or the program will have been tested in a state (or states) prior to national adoption.
For example the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare") tried in Massachusetts for years before it was adopted at the Federal level (and the success of... | 22 |
ELI5: why do bats hang upside down. | 25 | Hanging from the ceiling provides a more optimal position to escape harm should a predator or some other danger come along, as they can simply drop and spread their wings to be airborne instead of needing time to take off from the ground.
Also, the ceiling of a cave is less likely to encounter predators than the floor... | 27 | |
[Star Wars] Are snowtroopers, sandtroopers etc specialised infantry divisions that are only deployed to planets with specific conditions or are they regular stormtroopers who are fitted for whatever the conditions demand? | Side question. If they are specialised divisions are they considered more elite and harder to be accepted into? | 76 | They're normal troopers in specialised armours. The sandtroopers deployed searching for R2-D2 and C-3PO were dispatched from the Devastator. It'd be fairly silly for Star Destroyers to carry specialised divisions of troops for every possible environment as most of them would rarely see action and be useless. Much bette... | 62 |
CMV: The Humans are the good guys in Starship Troopers | I know the symbolism and what it is supposed to mean but it just doesn't seem to add up symbolically. It doesn't seem to make a good case for what it intends to satirize and instead seems to further (unintentionally) glorify it.
I find it odd that the bugs are often cited as good, or victims. They have actively conque... | 15 | The movie is a very straightforward critique of American fascism, and the bugs are presented as basically neutral.
The meteor "attack" on Buenos Aires was only **blamed** on the bugs, never actually attributed to them. It's implied in the movie that it's a Reichstag Fire moment, where the government allowed/caused it ... | 27 |
ELI5: Why do people claim to know how many illegal immigrants are in the United States? | If someone is illegal, there's no documentation on them, right? I realize the numbers are estimates, but I can't imagine how these estimations are even close if there isn't any hard data. | 40 | There are multiple ways to estimate the illegal population. These include economic impact, public service usage, population samples, the census, and migration tracking.
Economic impact looks at levels of spending and the flow of money to determine the population involved in the economy. We can compare this to the docu... | 14 |
[Marvel] How do Daredevil and She-hulk still practice law without a secret identity? | The BAR association can't ignore the fact that those two are publicly known for going out at night and beating people up ignoring the rule of law. Why havent they lost their law licenses? | 15 | Mat Murdok isn't publicly known as a super hero and Jennifer Walters is not a super hero. She has been attacked a few times and has helped fight terrorists a few times but she isn't a super hero she is a lawyer with a medical condition. | 41 |
[generic or classical sci-fi] How to describe dimensionality in other terms? | A popular way to reference other universes in less technical terms is to call them other dimensions, but this term has its own peculiarities that logicians love to make hay about.
"A dimension is just length, width, depth, or time," they may say. "How can you visit a whole other dimension like it was a separate univer... | 21 | Take a potato and slice it thinly. Each thin slice would have a slightly different shape, different feel. You could take a thin slice and cut a hole in it, and the slices next to it would be unaffected. Now take all the slices and stack them back up so they're in the shape of the original potato. You can travel bet... | 10 |
[Star Trek]it's 2147 and you're a 24 yr old with an associate degree in engineering, your goal in life is to see as many planets as possible. Are you better off applying to star fleet and hoping you eventually end up on an NX ship, or are your chances better if you just sign onto a freighter crew? | 307 | At that time-prior to the Romulan War-United Earth Starfleet (UES) was still relatively small compared to its potential allies (Vulcans and Andorians). However, because it was small, most of its development was in line ships, rather than support ships.
The merchant fleet was far larger (though not nearly the size of ... | 218 | |
Would a bullet in a vacuum travel in a straight line or a corkscrew patern? | I know that bullets move in a "corkscrew" pattern in the atmosphere, but is this due to interactions with the air or just centrifugal force alone? To put it another way, would space guns be better off with or without barrel rifling?
Edit: *pattern | 20 | Rifling is mainly for aerodynamic stability, to prevent the bullet from tumbling. It doesn't really make the bullet travel in a corkscrew pattern, though. The bullet still travels in a straight line, but it spins around its long axis. | 12 |
ELI5: If Communism promotes social equality, why is there such a big poverty gap in China? | Recently learning about different economic systems and this question came to mind. | 44 | The People's Republic of China has been most communist in name only. It is communist only in the sense of how the political party functions, and has had no responsibility to redistribute wealth since the 1990's. China has a capitalist economy that is state-driven, as opposed to the market-driven economies of the West.... | 43 |
Are living fossils like the Horseshoe Crab evolutionary dead ends? | Since they haven't changed in millions of years does that mean their's no room for improvement or is it their mating practices that keep them the same? | 143 | This question stems from a misunderstanding of what evolution is. Evolution is not a journey, a ladder or a race - there is no end goal or pre-destined 'better' point which beings are evolving into. Every species which isn't endangered or extinct is perfectly suited to its own niche.
Evolution is a reaction to changin... | 200 |
[General] So I found a genie in a bottle and he said I can have three wishes. My first wish was for unlimited wishes. How does the genie handle this? | 23 | Genies as depicted in the Arabian Nights aren't wish factories, they are immortal semi-demonic giants that may grant wishes if the circumstances are correct. The OG legend of a genie being freed and offering wishes is that the genie was so happy about being freed that he offered his savior the wishes.
If he was givi... | 63 | |
In the Pale Blue Dot picture, why is the Earth the only relatively bright object? Where is the Sun and other planets and why aren't they visible? | [Pale Blue Dot](http://i.imgur.com/3iPkXHq.png) | 76 | Well, if you'd had the sun in the frame, the earth would be washed out, so obviously, you've got to shoot the earth and not the sun. also, objects in space are really far apart from one another. it's rare that you have two planets in the evening sky close enough to view together in a scope.
so to answer your question... | 52 |
ELI5:In our dreams, how are the people we have never seen or interacted with before conjured up? | I feel like I interact with humanoids when I remember a dream with someone I have never met before. | 32 | If you walk down a typical shopping street or visit a cinema or restaurant, you see hundreds of faces in the space of an hour that you'll never remember you saw. If you go to a music festival or sports event you'll see thousands that you'll never remember you saw. Even if you never leave your house and only watch TV, o... | 21 |
[Harry Potter] How would things go if Voldemort and the Death-eaters chose to conquer the muggle world before laying siege to the Wizarding world? | 53 | Conquering the Muggle world would be a relatively simple matter for the Dark Lord. Apparating into the bedchambers of world leaders and Imperiusing them in their sleep would be a fairly trivial task for someone like Voldemort.
The thing is, though, Voldemort has no desire to conquer the Muggle world. To Voldemort ... | 64 | |
[Star Wars] I understand that the rebels are battling the Empire, but why? What was the issue with the Empire running the universe? High taxes, too conservative, too authoritarian? | Maybe it’s explained in one of the movies, but I must have missed it. It’s clear they are pretty brutal and authoritarian, but so are most countries when dealing with violent rebels. | 811 | Well, there are a few little things. Just minor quibbles, you know.
The dismantling of all forms of democratic representation. The government being under the control of a ruthless dictator-for-life. The use of tactics like orbital bombardment on civilian populations. The strip-mining of worlds down to the mantle to fu... | 1,172 |
ELI5: Why is it nearly impossible to breathe when strong winds hits your face? | For example, when you lean out from the car window when driving, or when it's just storming outside, it feels like the throat is "closing" and makes it really hard to take a breath. | 35 | So when air (a gaseous substance) is in motion it creates a low pressure zone, as opposed to stagnant air. Your lungs work by expanding and creating a low pressure zone for the surrounding air to push into and then by compressing and creating a high pressure zone the air in your lungs is pushed back into the lower pres... | 18 |
ELI5: How do we know that someone "died in their sleep"? Can we tell they were asleep when they died? | 130 | Not an expert but took a class in forensic medicine. You look at the surroundings. If you see the nightlamp beside the bed toppled or pillow/blanket was thrown violently around, more likely than not the person did not die in their sleep | 143 | |
[ASoIaF/GoT] Who was the better Hand of the King: Tyrion Lannister or Tywin Lannister? | 15 | Tywin. Not that Tyrion was a bad hand, but Tywin faced way, way less opposition to him doing his job because of how much everyone respects and fears him. Plus he has way more experience in the job than Tyrion | 31 | |
What is the unit of measurement for gravitational waves? | Now that we have found einsteins gravitational waves; I am writing a bit of science fiction which is centered around space-fold/warp technology. I am curious, now that Einsteins gravitational waves have been proven; what is the unit of measurement by which they are measured? Also are these gravitational waves measurabl... | 74 | The typical unit is strain h, which is dimensionless. It's the change in distance over the total distance (h=∆L/L). This is a very small number, as you might imagine, since gravitational waves are extremely hard to detect. For LIGO, h was 1 x 10^-21.
You may also want to consider the gravitational wave frequency, whic... | 16 |
[Star Wars] Was the Empire Sexist? | I'm curious if the Empire (either the military specifically or the broader political entity) was sexist. I don't recall ever seeing or reading of any instances where males are overtly favored, so I'm tempted to say not especially. On the flip side, there is a notable lack of females in the military (Captain Phasma notw... | 15 | The Empire actually has a number of female in a number of important positions. For instance Ryloth was under the control of a female moff who was mostly ineffective because of her grief for her lost wife and having her number 2 run things. There have been a number of female governors as well as female offiecers in the ... | 28 |
For every poisonous item on Earth, do we know it is poisonous because someone tried to consume it and died? Or is there a way to know a substance is lethal without the trial and error? | 90 | We have the Universal Edibility Test, and it was probably used by people of the past as well.
Here are the basic steps:
1. Separate the plant into its various parts—roots, stems, leaves, buds, and flowers. Focus on only one piece of the plant at a time.
2. Smell it. A strong, unpleasant odor is a bad sign.
3. Tes... | 88 | |
CMV: Stereotyping is often logical and a perfectly normal application of human reasoning | Stereotypes are perpetuated because there is some truth to them. Bad or absolutely false stereotypes are rarely common, because failure is like natural selection. People use stereotypes as a short cut to knowledge, because we almost never have all the facts to make an informed choice. So people fill in the gaps, someti... | 46 | There is a subtle semantic distinction here that may explain the issue.
Most of the things you mention are not stereotypes. Most of you the things you mention are *expectations* about certain groups. A stereotype is an *expression* of an expectation about a group, not the expectation itself. Acting on these expectat... | 13 |
CMV: Sauce makes the meal, not noodle | I don't like spaghetti. I never have. When I tell people this, they start asking me if I like other noodle dishes with tomato sauce, as if it is the physical noodle I have a problem with, not the dish as a whole.
While I am aware different noodles make different titled dishes, I believe they are all basically the sam... | 37 | I disagree. The different shapes and sizes of pasta hold sauce differently, changing the ratio of sauce to noodle greatly. If you have a heavy Alfredo and put it on a heavier pasta like fettuccini, the ratio is perfect. If you put that sauce on Angel hair, you have a nasty bowl of butter, cream and garlic. In reverse, ... | 20 |
[Rick & Morty]what happened to Rick that made him loose his contempt of authority so much he became a Cop? Why does the Citidel even bother policing its slums? | 41 | He probably did it because he cares for Morty and most "criminals" appeared to be Morty.
Also remember (according to Evil Morty/Rick) Ricks can be categorized on a moral spectrum and "our" Rick is on the pretty "evil" side, at least according to Evil Morty. | 59 | |
[Star Wars] What did people expect to do after the Clone Wars if their side won? Did General Grievous have a retirement plan? | 26 | There was already a government in place for the CIS. Dooku was essentially the Chancellor of the Separatist Senate, each system in their senate had similar powers to the Republic Senate, the primary difference is they believed it was far less corrupt and was not as stagnant as the Republic had become.
That wasn’t the... | 24 | |
ELI5: I recently got an electric toothbrush that has a UV chamber to kill germs. How can such a little blue light actually do anything? | 52 | The blue light is just what your eyes actually see. Ultraviolet light is beyond the range of human eyesight.
DNA, when exposed to UV light, will take damage. This will kill living cells. Shining bacteria in the stuff will kill them fairly quickly with minimal effort. | 51 | |
[Doctor Who/Marvel Comics] Could Reed Richards outsmart the Doctor from Doctor Who if they were both trying very hard to acheive their goal? | The Doctor is one of the smartest being in fiction. Hes fought very powerful beings on regular basis and won with mainly using his wits. He's considered the smartest person in his universe. Reed Richards is generally considered the smartest person scientifically/generally in the Marvel Universe. Let's say they both hav... | 33 | The Doctor is very clever, and has a LOT of experience to draw from, but he often bumbles around and makes silly mistakes. While he's great at recovering from them, this shows that he isn't always paying enough attention.
Reed is always, always thinking at insane levels. He's built devices that shoot bombs that make ... | 38 |
[Star Trek] How did the Klingons ever manage to build a spacefaring civilisation? | They have a strong tendency to be hot-headed and short-sighted, highly prone to violence, with little respect for intellectual pursuits, and leadership often being decided by melee combat.
This doesn't lend itself to the stable, intricate infrastructure and highly educated population required for that kind of advancem... | 534 | I’m gonna guess that not all Klingons are hot-head, rash types. There must be many individuals in the species who are more intelligent and less impulsive who make great engineers (and doctors, lawyers, priests, or their equivalents thereof), but they are simply underrepresented in the higher echelons of the military an... | 345 |
[Fantasy] What Faction in Fantasy uses magic the most effectively in Combat | I have always wondered what faction in all of fiction is best magic users in war. I’m talking about factions who can field entire armies of wizards and these wizards can actually use magic to its full potential | 20 | the black tower managed to rout an army of 40,000 aiel and 300 aiel channelers with just 200 or so of their own channelers.
they had maybe 7000 or so buddies helping them but really they did most of the work. | 43 |
ELI5: How do one-way mirrors work? | 18 | It's really just a window with tiny flakes of something reflective (Aluminuim or silver, for example) in it. When the other room has very bright lighting (and the observation room very dim) the window looks like a mirror because so large portion of the light comes reflected from your side. | 10 | |
Professor heavily failed (42%) a final paper which was build around other papers (90+%) | I took an English 201 class two quarters ago, the class was to write an argumentative essay. Throughout the quarter, we were tasked with writing assignments that we would later use to construct our final paper. The class briefly touched on argumentative essays, but quickly turned into a sociology class, with the profes... | 67 | Are office hours still a thing? If so, use them. Print your grades for the semester. Print your paper. Knock on door. If your prof isn't there for scheduled office hours, visit the chair's scheduled office hours.
Even given that paper was garbage worthy of a very solid F, you're entitled to feedback so you can improve | 90 |
[Halo] What is so important about Reach and why was it's fall a major event in history? | Was it a strategically important location or was it purely just the Covenant saying "look we can knock you on your ass even at your strongest fortresses" hoping to demoralize humanity? | 288 | Reach is at Earth's metaphorical doorstep, being 10.5 lightyears away from the Sol system. It was the nexus of the UNSC military command, Humanity's 2nd most populous colony, and a major producer for the UNSC's war material and recruits. It's titanium mines are the largest sources for humanity.
Its fall to the Covenan... | 388 |
[MCU] Why is spiderman so hard to kill | I mean he heals fast but a single bullet though his brain would end him. So why hasn't this happened yet? He's not Deadpool or Wolverine he can't just regrow his brain. | 25 | Spider-Man knows the bullet is coming before you even fire your gun. His spider sense and instant reflexes make him hard to hit, let alone kill. He also has a genius level intelligence backing up his powers. | 56 |
[King Kong 2005] King Kong fought and killed three theropod dinosaurs. Are they Tyrannosaurus? | 34 | They're closely related descendants -- it has been 60 million+ years. Just as there were very similar relatives of crocodiles long before even the dinosaurs, they're not technically the same species, just very similar in appearance. | 25 | |
ELI5: Whats the difference between torque and horsepower? | 36 | Torque is the real, measurable force applied by the wheels to the road. (It's generated by the engine, then multiplied by the gearbox, final drive, and wheels.) Because it's applied by a circular wheel, it's measured in a combined unit of weight and length - pound-feet or newton-meters. A torque of one newton-meter app... | 31 | |
ELI5: Why do cars lose so much value the moment they’re driven for the first time? | 40 | If you decided you'd made a mistake and wanted to resell the car, do you think *anyone* would pay as much for it as you did? For that, they can go to the dealer and get a certifiably-new car. So you'll have to offer a discount, to make the deal worth considering. | 37 | |
If I am poor, and get a life threatening disease, do I just die? | So I am poor, not homeless, but no insurance (Other than obamacare). What happens if I develop cancer, am I just let die? Do I get sub par care? | 40 | In any civilised country, apart from America, you get treated, hopefully return to full health, then go home and forget about it. In America, generally, you get treated, hopefully return to full health, sell your home to pay for it. | 71 |
ELI5: Why does my poop smell fine to me, but it smells terrible to other people? | It usually smells okay for about 10 minutes, and then after than it starts to smell like anyone else's poop. Farts apply here as well. | 22 | Our sense of disgust is a way to stop us getting bad germs in to our bodies. This is why we don't drink gone off milk. Our noses are pretty good at telling us what is bad and what is good hence why we can smell whether food is good or bad.
This sense is triggered when smelling a fart. Only the understanding that it w... | 18 |
ELI5: Why does water mostly stay still while you turn a glass? | If you have a glass of water with ice and you try to turn the glass around to drink from another side, the ice will mostly remain in the same spot while the glass turns. So if the ice was hurting your teeth and you wanted to drink from an end where the ice isn't, it's not as easy as I feel it should be. What is happeni... | 15 | Physicist here.
So imagine that the water is made of several layers starting from the walls of the glass and going in.
When you turn the glass, the layer of water that is touching the walls of the glass will rotate with the glass itself, because it is being directly pushed. Then, the first layer of water tries to pus... | 27 |
[Captain America civil war] If Thor was on Earth when the events of civil war happen do you think he would pick a side? or try to stop both teams from fighting | 43 | This is an interesting question, because it gets to the heart of Thor's character arc.
First, his entire initial showing revolved around Thor learning the dangers of running off half-cocked and ruining things for everyone else. Odin stripped Thor of his power and banished him from Asgard because he used his power and ... | 97 | |
[Star Wars] Did the Emperor just choose an off-the-shelf protective burnsuit/ventilator for Vader or was that custom made? | Please select a color for your **burn mask w/cowl**:
* desert sand
* midnight black
* Corellian blue
* bantha fur brown
* protocol droid gold
* chrome | 30 | Everything about Vader's suit was custom made to make him as effective, terrifying, and intimidating as possible. It's also been upgraded several times over his tenure as a Sith Lord, making it even more powerful and thus making him even better at killing Jedi and other enemies of the Empire. Also side note, the design... | 24 |
ELI5: why do the moving parts of cartoons have a slightly different color? Like if a car for is about to open, it will be a slightly different shade of color until it opens. Then when it's closed/done moving independently, its color matches the rest of the car. | 1,101 | Those are animation cels. Rather than have the animator draw the background for each frame, they instead have one background sheet, and then a series of celluloid sheets with the movements of foreground objects.
Because of the different techniques for creating celluloid sheets, colour matching between the background a... | 891 | |
ELI5: Does understanding E=MC2 actually require any individual steps in logic that are more complex than the logic required to understand 2+2=4? | Is there even such a thing as 'complexity' of intelligence? Or is a logical step, just a logical step essentially, whatever form it takes?
Yes, I guess I am suggesting solving 2+2 could require logic of the same level as that required to solve far more difficult problems.
I'm only asking because I'm not convinced I've... | 86 | Not directly answering your question since E=mc^2 is physics, not maths. So requires observation in addition to pure logic.
Let's stay within the realm of mathematics.
Technically almost all mathematical results can be derived from a set of axioms (assumptions, logic is useless without assumptions)
What makes no sen... | 44 |
ELI5: Why are humans more interested in planetary travel/discovery rather than fully exploring all of Earth first? | 27 | There is interest in exploring all the unknowns. There are teams studying the ocean floor and atmosphere and finding what they can on earth.
But earth is still local and a limited space, and when considering the pace of humanity, space is where we will continue to expand. And like the many nomadic tribes before us, w... | 34 | |
What is the general Marxist view on charity in the modern sense, and more specifically, charity based organizations? | 20 | In general, if the means of production aren't changing hands then nothing is *really* changing and this is why charities aren't effective enough for the Marxist: they don't cause lasting change that empowers the beneficiaries, they don't allow for an escape from poverty. | 16 | |
Can you make blackholes from electromagnetism? If so, why are there so many made from gravity since electromagnetism is so much stronger? | 15 | Black holes are a gravitational phenomenon.
However, an object with electric charge (and black holes can have electric charge) creates an electromagnetic field around it. The energy and momentum in this field are included in the energy-stress tensor, the source of gravity in general relativity. So the spacetime *metri... | 16 | |
CMV: Hillary Clinton is More Economically Conservative than Donald Trump | **NOTE: THE POINT HAS BEEN PARTIALLY CONCEDED. SEE EDIT #3**
Donald Trump's tax plan is estimate to raise the deficit by[ an unprecedented 10 trillion dollars](http://www.politico.com/story/2015/09/donald-trump-tax-plan-analysis-deficit-214211) over the next decade. While this deficit is coming largely from a decrease... | 18 | I don't agree that the conservative position is "to not have the federal government run on ever-increasing deficits." The two modern presidents who had the federal government run *the most* exorbitant deficits were Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. Do you have any evidence for your position? | 18 |
[Pokemon] Whenever trainers catch Pokemon like Magikarp, Relicanth, Whiscash, or other fish-like ones, how the hell do they survive on land? How do they move around? | 63 | [](/derpyhappy) They can survive being roasted, poisoned, paralyzed, electrocuted, hyper-beamed, exploded, constricted, stabbed, bitten, telepathically assaulted, crushed, or haunted. You're worried about them *suffocating?*
As for locomotion, well, they're pretty good at flopping around. | 54 | |
ELI5: If alternating current oscillates back and forth at equal frequencies, how does power still flow in only one direction? | 20 | Imagine you want to move a heavy box. If you push it, where does power go? Well, it goes from your hands to the box, and then into the friction of the floor.
What if you pull it instead? The power still goes *from you* to the box, and then consumed by friction! So, no matter if you push or pull, the power goes in the ... | 41 | |
[40k] Has there ever been any case of chaos ever working with any of the other factions in the 40k universe? | I don't know why I ask, but I've seen Imperium/Tau/Eldar alliances, and it just crossed my mind, has chaos ever had an alliance with any of the other races, even if it was a sort shaky alliance that ended in betrayal? | 18 | Since the warp entities can't enter the material plane without being summoned and sustained by someone else then they have had 'alliances' with everyone. The chaos space marines are in a way allies of chaos through corruption or promises of power and almost every race has had some of its members corrupted at one point ... | 11 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.