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[Marvel] Who's a better shape shifter, Mystique or a Skrull? | Bonus question: Has Mystique ever interacted with a Skrull? | 54 | Skrulls have infiltrated super heroes and super villains organizations. They replaced meta humans for years before the invasion and were able to replicate their powers, personality and even fake relationships.
Mystique is more of a one pony trick for spy missions and that's it. | 85 |
[Mod Post] Regarding the "however minor" part of rule 1... | Other than repeated popular topics, one of the biggest complaints about CMV (from both within and outside our community) is top level comments that nit-pick a minor detail in OP's post. Here is an example of such complaints:
> The part I hate the most is how, somehow, the top comment is always people that respond t... | 75 | One problem I've been noticing is the people who post either extremely uncontroversial views or things that aren't even views but rather facts/factoids where it's pretty much impossible to debate it. You have to refute some point of their view but with their topic it's extremely hard to find anything to refute. You c... | 19 |
What is the latest and greatest theory of the origins of life on Earth? | I have heard that the 'Primordial Soup' model most of us were taught in grade school is largely regarded as discredited. What is the current thinking? | 31 | Some version of the primordial soup is right; there were lots of free organic molecules floating around, some how they got into the right configuration to start self replicattion. Most of the current work has been focused on what order the core aspects of life arose in and where.
Key things you need for life are 1. me... | 17 |
[Star Wars] How expensive is Hyperspace travel? Are there any other common and/or convenient methods of quickly traveling the galaxy? | Hyperdrives seem ubiquitous with space travel, so they can’t be prohibitively expensive (especially given the large amount of privately owned small craft we see throughout the galaxy), though I’ve never seen any numbers regarding the costs of space travel for any ship. | 26 | You wont find *any* hard numbers for vast majority of Star Wars mundane details. Best we can go by is Hans price to smuggle two people to Alderaan, and go down from there. Which IS prohibitively expensive. Yet in Attack of the clones Anakin and Padme travel in a shitty public transport ship, which is unlikely to cost t... | 28 |
[Spider-Man 3] What happened to the piece of the symbiote Dr. Connors had? | 16 | Really good question.
If the tiny symbiote mass is independent from the rest of the symbiote mass, a separate consciousness, It wouldn't have died when Spider-Man exterminated the bigger mass that bonded to Eddie Brock. the small portion of the symbiote might even grow larger over time, assuming it wasn't destroyed be... | 11 | |
Why were the jedi put in charge of the clone army? | With the low number of jedis, wouldn't they have been more useful as special forces or spies? Would a jedi know anything about large-scale military strategy or logistics? | 33 | Ah! This is an interesting topic that comes up a lot when studying the fall of the Old Republic.
In theory, the Jedi are a "peacekeeping" force for the Republic, tasked with negotiating, maintaining order through nonviolent means, and acting as mediators. Given this legacy of pacifism, why were they called upon as war... | 29 |
[HarryPotter] What does the wizarding world export? | The wizarding world seems to purchase a lot of mundane stuff (like food) from muggles. Enough that Gringotts does currency exchange as a regular service. But what do muggles buy from wizards? Wizards don't seem to make a lot of mundane stuff, and muggles certainly aren't allowed to buy property in the wizarding worl... | 31 | Natural resources would be a good choice. Locatus Diamondus or a similar incantation would allow the wizards to find something that muggles would easily accept. Or Cowus Biggus and such spells would make them highly effective organic farmers.
Effective divination could allow wizard and witch brokers to make big money... | 18 |
ELI5: If the moon were to explode right now, would we see it right away or would there be a delay? | Just wondering because of the distance and the speed of light and so on.[reddiquette](/wiki/reddiquette) | 16 | The moon is 385,000 km away, and the speed of light is 300,000 km/s.
So if the moon blew up, we'd see it in about a second. That's not much of a delay.
If the sun blew up, it'd take 8 minutes before we saw it. | 40 |
It is often said that fascists misinterpreted Nietzsche's philosophy. How true is this position? | Nietzsche's disdain for nationalism is often brought up. However, fascism isn't just excessive nationalism. Nietzsche was also deeply anti-democracy and anti-socialism which is an aspect that he shares with fascism.
What are the specific misinterpretations of Nietzsche by fascists? What parts aren't misinterpreted? | 58 | The most common "misinterpretation" referred to is the antisemitism of the Nazis. Nietzsche's sister was a virulent anti-Semite who misleadingly edited many of his works to reflect this bias of her. By all accounts, Nietzsche did not think highly of anti-Semites, and even lost his friendship with the Wagners because of... | 61 |
ELI5 How do hearing aids work, and can any hard of hearing person use them? | What I mean is, are there some medical issues that make the use of hearing aids impossible? Or can you use hearing aids and then one day no longer be able to use them? If so why? | 17 | At their core they're just a tiny microphone and speaker - the simplest version fits in your ear and basically just makes everything coming into that ear louder. There's tons of different versions depending on where exactly you put the microphone and speaker. The whole system might be in the ear canal, part or all of i... | 16 |
ELI5: Why do vehicles "smoke" more from their exhaust pipes when they first start up, and then when the engine has warmed up, stops? | 41 | The 'smoke' you actually see is water vapour, the product of combustion of hydrocarbons and oxygen into carbon dioxide and water. (CxHx + O2 -> CO2 + H2O)
When the engine and exhaust gas is cold, or the weather is cold, this condenses much quicker in the air to give a denser "fog". When the engine is running at tem... | 22 | |
CMV: Ending SALT deduction of state income taxes is fair | As a UMC earner living in a high state tax state, I'm part of the population that will be most harmed by Trump's new tax bill which takes away the ability to deduct state income taxes when calculating federal income tax.
However, on every dimension I can think of, I can't really find a principled reason to support the... | 27 | Addressing point 2.
If a state has a high tax rate, it is going to provide more services to its citizens. This reduces the dependence of its citizens on Federal programs. The SALT deduction creates an incentive for state and local government to handle their own problems, rather than relying on the Feds to solve them. | 29 |
Does anyone have seemingly "great" ideas that you lose interest in after a short period of time? | I love programming, I love problem solving, and I love creating something out of nothing that other people ogle over because "they could never do that".
One issue that I've found I have is that I lose interest in things too easily. I start projects, that would be great in application, and would benefit myself and oth... | 16 | Three slightly contradictory bits of advice here.
First: be less ambitious. Get used to only starting projects you know you can finish, and build it up.
Second: keep it up. Just keep doing what you are doing and eventually it'll click.
Third: go back to old projects. You never know, you may be re-inspired. | 10 |
ELI5: How do noise cancelling headphones work? | 26 | They have a mic which records the ambient noise around you, then when your music or whatever plays, thos noise cancelling headphones play the reverse wave of the ambient noise around you, essentially cancelling that noise.
| 21 | |
ELI5: Why do musicians always seem to have an "era?" | That is to say, why don't they just keep churning out popular hits for their whole careers, instead of a particular decade. Very few artists transcend this paradigm of music invention. I am writing a paper about this, but have been unable to find much information that directly pertains to this phenomenon. [serious] | 23 | Popular music has always been tied into youth culture. Youth culture is ephemeral. Artists reach their fame and popularity with a specific youth demographic at a specific time, but that demographic doesn't stay young long. A few bands can cut cross generations, but the up and coming youth demographic is looking for... | 25 |
ELI5: If nothing can travel faster than light than why light is unable to escape the blackholes? | 15 | If you think of space like a big, flat, rubber sheet, then you pinch a part of that sheet and pull it down some, the dip you get in the sheet is how gravity works. That's a "gravity well".
Now roll a marble along that sheet - that's light. The marble encounters the well, maybe straight on, maybe at an angle, and dep... | 45 | |
Would a Roman be able to digest today's food? How about a caveman? | Or going even farther back, would Lucy have been able to digest the stuff we eat today? | 25 | I don't see any reason why they wouldn't, the genetic varieties of plants have changed quite a bit but the fundamental nutrients are the same. It would be like us eating food in a foreign country, you can easily get a tummy ache but you won't starve.
The bigger problem would be the pathogens and any bacteria in the ... | 17 |
How fast can a submarine surface? | So I need some help to end an argument. A friend and I were arguing over something in Aquaman. In the movie, he pushes a submarine out of the water at superspeed. One of us argues that the sudden change in pressure would destroy the submarine the other says different. Who is right and why? Thanks | 7,803 | Actual US NAVY submariner here. It would not cause the hull to collapse at all. Submarines can surface from test depth at insane speeds without issue and do it yearly for testing purposes. The inside of the boat is pressurized and the change in depth would not cause any real problems. | 9,207 |
I helped a professor draft his letter of recommendation for grad school. Am I screwed? | I feel a bit dishonest for helping him with it, but he asked me to. He’s quite a busy guy and English is also his second language. Anyways I read somewhere that this kind of thing is extremely frowned upon and could even result in having your degree revoked later on if the school finds out. I now don’t even want to go ... | 19 | It's actually quite normal (or at least not unheard of) for students to basically "write" their own letters of rec.
If anything, it's a good opportunity for the student to let the professor know which traits they really want to show on their application. The professor may have thoughts of their own, or wording/stories... | 79 |
ELI5: When plants face the sun, how do they know where the sun is, and how are they able to orient themselves? | 63 | There are cells in the stem of the plant that grow at different rates depending on if they are lit by the sun or not. The ones that are not in sunlight grow more than the ones that are, causing the stem of the plant to twist towards the sun. When you watch a time lapse of a plant growing it can really look like the pla... | 70 | |
ELI5: Why did the swiss bank change the value of the franc and what effects does that have on the economy? | 33 | The Swiss Central Bank has been holding the Franc/Euro Exchange rate at a 1.20 Francs per Euro minimum rate since 2011.
Today they announced to no longer keep it this way, which made the rate shortly drop to 0.85 Francs/Euro, right now it's about parity/1:1. At the same time they announced to push interest rates from... | 15 | |
[Fallout] I got a fair amount of Nuka Cola bottle caps but they're all creased and a little rusty. Will the caravans accept them? I need my Cram. | 157 | Yeah, sure. Not every cap comes from a pristine, perfectly preserved bottle of Nuka fresh from the Vendo-O-Tron. They get traded around, carried around the wastes, dropped, and generally beaten up. As long as the person you're trading with *believes* it's a genuine cap, it's a genuine cap.
I've heard back in the Pre-... | 120 | |
[Star Trek]you know how getting the ship to self destruct requires both the captain and first officer to say special verbal codes, couldn’t anyone who works in engineering achieve pretty much the same thing by just whipping out their Phaser & shooting the warp core? | 348 | The self destruct is a controlled scuttling of a starfleet ship of the line, rather than a cascade matter antimatter reaction, that will send debri flying lightyears away
The self destruct countdown also allows the crew to evacuate to a safe distance quickly but safely rather than having micro explosions rock the ship... | 314 | |
[MCU] Who is Thor's stylist when he uses Mjolnir to 'suit up'? And related questions. | *ENDGAME SPOILERS!*
In the first 'Thor', upon earning back Mjolnir, Thor holds the mighty hammer aloft and as his powers are restored so too is his costume from earlier in the film. Okay, that's simple enough.
I forget in what capacity we see this in other films until 'Endgame' - if I recall he's pretty much just in... | 36 | Thor did it to himself. Mjolnir makes your exterior match your interior idealized self - working with what it's got, of course. It couldn't make you thinner or have longer hair, it just grooms what you have.
Steve's hair is too short for much of a makeover, but maybe it could be slicked back or something if he thoug... | 51 |
If dietary cholesterol has little to no effect on serum cholesterol, why do doctors advise people to lower their dietary cholesterol intake? | 41 | 95% of serum cholesterol is produced in the liver (Marks Biochemistry), but without HMG CoA Reductase inhibitors we can't effect this. So in turn we tell people to take control of what we can modify with lifestyle changes, ie dietary cholesterol.
So basically we tell you to lower cholesterol for the same reason you're... | 29 | |
If water boils in a vacuum, what happens if there is not much space for the water to expand into (e.g. the airless volume inside a container is only twice the size of the volume of water as a liquid)? | I was trying to image what would happen if I had some water (say a liter) inside an airtight container and it filled the space. If I could draw a plunger and expand the space to 2 liters, but no air could get in, and the container would resist the pressure, what would happen to the water. Would it become a basically a ... | 24 | If you have a vacuum that gets fills with water vapour, it's no longer a vacuum. As water starts to boil due to the vacuum, the pressure increases and eventually the vapour pressure would be in thermodynamic equilibrium with the water and it would stop boiling. | 46 |
ELI5: What is actually happening when my computer has "limited" connectivity to a network (yet it appears to have no connection)? | 119 | In at least one case (I guess there are others), "limited connectivity" means that the computer is able to connect to a network - for instance, the WiFi provided by the router - but not the internet - for instance, if the router doesn't have a connection to the ISP. That means it would be able to send data via network ... | 45 | |
ELI5: Why do standard-transmission cars stall when stopped and in gear, but automatics don't? | 26 | Stick shifts have friction plates coupling the wheels with the engine. Stop one, and the other has to stop as well. The friction is too strong.
Automatic transmissions have a fluid coupling between the movement of the wheels and of the engine. The motion is transferred by one set of turbines being driven and dragging ... | 14 | |
Are the effects of gravity on earth different to those in a spinning spacecraft like Rama? | How do the effects of "real-world" gravity felt here on earth differ those of "simulated gravity" in a spinning spacecraft such as Arthur C Clarke's [Rama?](https://www.google.com.au/search?q=rendezvous+with+rama&tbm=isch)
If I stand inside Rama and throw a ball in or against the direction of spin, will I see it t... | 46 | It sounds like you've got the right idea. The gravity felt on such a spacecraft is really centrifugal force, which is called a "fictitious force" because from the point of view of some observers, there is no force; it's just the tendency of things to try to travel in a straight line (inertia).
When you throw a ball "... | 12 |
In flatland, would the 3rd dimension be time? | 26 | It could be. However, answer me this.
What is the second and third dimension to us? Is it width and height respectively, or length and width?
The dimensions are arbitrary named and you would be correct if you named time as the first or second dimension.
So yes, if in flatland you declare time a dimension y... | 27 | |
ELI5: What makes our voice change after sleeping to be more deep, low, scratchy? | 199 | A combination of you being very relaxed when you wake up and having mucus dry onto your vocal cords during sleep, making them thicker and causing them to vibrate slower. It's often called morning voice. | 184 | |
ELI5: What makes wild boars so dangerous? | 19 | Their attitude.
In more official terms, they are very aggressive.
Most animals could be dangerous to humans if they wanted to attack. The safe animals would rather run away and hide, or find something easier to attack for food.
Wild boars, on the other hand, attack for many reasons, and they have tusks and lots o... | 21 | |
[Game of thrones] Olenna Tyrell - the queen of thorns is a sharp and intelligent woman and effective Matriarch of the Tyrell family, and her granddaughter is her gifted protege. How is it that Mace Tyrell is such an oaf (albeit a well meaning one) | How comes his character doesnt have any of the hallmarks of his mother ? | 30 | Olenna describes her late husband as a clumsy oaf, the same as her son. Which is fair because he died bird-watching, the man was looking at hawks and rode straight off a cliff.
Mace therefore takes after his father. It's also a medieval society, where Lords were the ones who groomed their sons for leadership. While O... | 28 |
ELI5: How can a company release more stock without losing it’s own share, or diminishing the value of the existing stock? | What title says | 22 | All stock is is a % ownership of the company. Assets - Liabilities = Shareholder Equity (Stock).
So, in a simple company lets say we have $1M in cash, no liabilities, and 1,000 shares of stock outstanding. Each share is worth $1,000 ($1M / 1,000 shares).
Now, lets say the company creates 1,000 more shares of stock ... | 33 |
[StarCraft] How are the Zerg a viable species? | With the exception of the drones and maybe the queen, they are all alpha predators with extreme energy requirements.
They would starve after a few days when they deplete their prey as no ecosystem is built to carry these kind of predators.
And even if they had enough prey, wouldn't they have to be constantly eating m... | 16 | > Unless they developed an organic nuclear reactor
They have, in a sense. You're forgetting about Vespene Gas. An Extractor is basically exactly what you describe they need, an organic power plant converting a natural resource into caloric content for the high metabolism zerg forces. | 31 |
[LOTR] How was Frodo able to freely give the One Ring to Tom Bombadil? | Was there some way the ring detected that Tom doesn't care about it and would give it back so the ring let go of the addiction? Did Tom Bombadil have an aura that let Frodo know the ring would be returned to him? | 354 | While others are correct regarding Frodo's state *in general*, it's not relevant to this question since Frodo had trouble handing the ring over to Gandalf, one of his closest friends, and was himself surprised at his willingness to give it to Tom.
The thing to keep in mind is that people aren't just getting addicted t... | 428 |
ELI5: They say an object has mass has gravity, does this mean i have my own gravity? | 61 | Yes, a very, very, very small amount of gravity. So, you attract the Earth to you with the same force that the Earth attracts you to it. However, you are much, much easier to move than the Earth is (due to mass affecting momentum). So, you end up moving toward the Earth rather than the Earth moving toward you.
Kin... | 91 | |
ELI5: Why do alcoholics die when they stop drinking? | 24,656 | Imagine you are always driving your car with the parking brake on. The parking brake depresses (lowers) your speed. You adapt by pressing harder on the gas. One day you take the parking brake off, and because you're still pressing hard on the gas you lose control and speed into a brick wall.
Similarly, the brain adapt... | 23,909 | |
[Folklore] What would be a good combination of materials to make into a weapon for fighting "Monsters" | For example, a Cold Iron sword with silver inlays, blessed by a priest? trying to cover all of the various Monsters vulnerabilities into one neat package. | 35 | Silver and Paladium, with an iron core, tempered in the blood of a virgin and blessed by a Catholic Priest.
The Iron counteracts Fae and Spirits, silver works against most variations of Vampires and shapeshifters, Paladium kills Demons, virginal blood burns witches, and the holy blessing is just for good measure.
*e... | 38 |
Why is gravitational mass proportional to inertial mass? Do both of them grow as an object reach relativistic speeds? | If they both grow, how can we explain the strong gravitational field in the object's frame of reference?
What's the difference between them on a fundamental level? | 41 | First, it's much better to think of mass in terms of rest mass, rather than relativistic mass. Almost no physicists think in terms of relativistic mass anymore; instead, it's the formulas for momentum and energy that get modified at high speeds. So we always say that an electron has a mass of 511 keV/c^2, even when it'... | 19 |
ELI5:Why do LED bulbs cause image tracking/persistence in vision? | I recently changed from G9 Halogen bulbs to LED in my sitting room. (2 x 5-bulb fixtures)
I've noticed significant image tracking/persistence in the room since the change - for example, when I wave my hand in front of my face I can see extra instances of my hand along the trail of movement.
A similar effect is create... | 159 | LEDs or your monitor are like stroboscopes, they don't give a constant light, but blink really fast to give the perception of constant lighting.
The still images you see are like what you see on the dance floor in clubs, the subject is iluminated for a very short time, creating a still image like a camera. | 65 |
ELI5: If electrons repelling each other means you never really touch something, how do different things feel differently? | 205 | Different configurations of electrons-repelling-you feel different. Your mistake is in assuming that you have to actually touch something to feel it- that's true for a common-English understanding of what it means to touch things, but not if you insist that touching something only counts if the atoms are knocking into ... | 81 | |
Examples of problems that can not be solved algorithmically? | I was listening to [this podcast](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9SFZNzF2Lo) with Sam Harris and Dr. Cal Newport, who referred to a paper by Alan Turing called "[On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem](https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/Turing_Paper_1936.pdf)" in which, Newport explai... | 20 | Formally these problems are called undecidable. And yes it means there can’t exist an algorithm that can correctly give you yes or no answers to an undecidable problem. the canonical example is the halting problem, which in a general sense is given a program (originally a Turing machine, but can apply to any formal alg... | 21 |
[MCU] what makes thanos so resistant to damage? | It takes iron man with his bleeding edge armour just to make a cut on his body, but Thor with stormbreaker can injure him like a normal axe would to an average man. Stormbreaker is said to be able to kill thanos, but what about thanos makes him so hard to kill, and what about the axe means that it is able to kill thano... | 83 | Thanos doesn't have an "origin" for his strength described in the MCU (yet), but in the comics he's a Deviant Eternal - basically a superpowered mutant, from a race (the Eternals) created by the Celestials that were already on a par with Thor.
And it's implied (or maybe stated IDK) that he further enhanced himself wi... | 123 |
x-post from r/askculinary: If I touch raw chicken, or anything with pathogens in general, then put my hand in salt, is that salt contaminated or does it kill the pathogen? | 91 | Salt is extremely good at killing bacteria. That is why food is preserved with salt. Some bacteria and fungus can survive in high concentrations of salt, they are called 'halophiles', but even then they cant survive past a certain concentration.
The problem with using salt to clean your hands is that if the salt is dr... | 32 | |
The JC Penney's fair pricing failure shows consumers do not make rational market choices. CMV | A couple years back, a clothing department store JC Penney's had Ron Johnson step into the CEO role. He was tasked with bringing new life to the store, and decided on a "Fair and Square" approach. He was going to do away with many of the deceptive tactics that had been in use previously.
Before, sales were used heavil... | 692 | The narrative as you tell it is the one most favorable to Ron Johnson: he tried to make pricing morally virtuous, he was too fine for this harsh commercial world, etc. But that's not the story that was being told _before_ the strategy flopped.
In reality, Ron's strategy was to change the image of JC Penney's. He didn... | 184 |
[Comics] What's an interesting super power that hasn't been used in comics before? | 149 | I want to see lower-powered or super limited versions of popular heroes' powers. Laser-eye vision, but only as strong as a laser pointer. Flight, but they have to put effort into it eg they huff and puff like they're running and arrive sweaty and out of breath. Heat control, but you can't create fire or ice, you can on... | 127 | |
ELI5: Explain this, If we made a stick 600 light years long, put it in between two space stations floating around a planet. If we pushed one end of the stick up about 1 inch, would the other space station get that signal instantly, or would it take time to get to him? | If said space station managed to stay perfectly aligned is a point to discuss, but say the space station ARE managing to stay perfectly aligned and nothing hit the stick, such as another planet or meteor(Or whatever the correct term is). | 531 | Unfortunately, unless Einstein messed up, you can't send information faster than the speed of light.
When you're pushing on that stick, it actually does take time for the "push" to reach the other side depends on the material properties of the stick. If, for example, the stick was really floppy like a string, if you ... | 500 |
[Star Wars/ROTS] why didn't anakin just go farther down the lava river or something? | so in the big fight between anakin and obi-wan at the end, obi wan jumps onto the "shore" of the lava river while anakin is still on the metal thingy and says "it's over anakin" - but why couldn't anakin just pilot his raft downshore and then jump onto shore somewhere else?
| 17 | It's not like he was in a clear mind at the time. He had just finished murdering dozens of children, the same kids he probably helped teach for the past decade, then he sees his wife apparently betray him by bringing his mentor to fight him. He yells "I HATE YOU" a little later, which could arguably be caused by losing... | 30 |
ELI5: Why do TV-screens attract so much dust? | Out of all furniture and objects in the living room, it's always the TV-screen, not it's edges or anything around it, that is completely covered in dust. Why and when does this happen? When it's on, off or both? | 16 | The electric current in the television ( especially in old CRT televisions) gives a small electric charge to the casing of the electronics, as well as to the air around it ( including the dust). The effect of which is any dust which happens to float by the tv sticks to it, in the same way as a balloon rubbed on your he... | 12 |
ELI5: Why do the YouTube ads stream so much faster than the actual video? | 103 | Ads pay for YouTube.. They are on better servers with less traffic that gets full priority over regular videos.
You browse and upload for free, so you get shitty service... Ads pay to be there so they get premium servers | 30 | |
ELI5: Why are bodies able to create an entire body with it's own lifetime supply of regenetive cells, but is itself unable to prevent gradual decay over a lifetime? | 169 | It's a lot like a car.
A new car you want to repair and replace as much as you can. As the car ages, it gets more expensive and time consuming to repair, and easier to just replace the whole thing.
Now consider that evolution is about what survives and prospers as a species. And consider the innumerable dangers that ... | 42 | |
ELI5: Why does being tickled make us laugh? | 77 | I remember reading that one purpose of parents ticking their children is it teaches them defensive reflexes if they are attacked at different parts of their body (or something along those lines). Like puppies or kittens playing, it teaches them valuable life skills to survive.
It makes you laugh / is fun because it i... | 55 | |
[Zootopia] How much is rent in Little Rodentia? | Very small apartments, but for very small creatures. Are they as expensive as the normal apartments or way cheaper? Is life better there then? | 24 | There's no way they're as expensive as other units, unless there are regulatory requirements to limit the size of Little Rodentia and prevent large creatures from assisting in construction.
It takes a lot less time and material to build a dollhouse than a full-sized house, and a one-square-foot lot is a lot cheaper th... | 28 |
Why do beavers build dams? | First: I'm unaware of an "ask an animal expert" subreddit, so I hope this still fits here. Second: The most common answer as discovered by google searching suggests that beavers are seeking calmer waters to build their home. This doesn't sound like the end of the story to me. Surely if a beaver simply wants calmer wat... | 43 | When asking why animals do things we can divide the question into proximate and ultimate causes. For example, the proximate cause of you eating is that you are hungry. The ultimate cause of you eating is that you need energy and nutrition to live and grow.
The ultimate cause of beavers building dams is to provide a ... | 53 |
[Electrical Engineering] If electric fan knobs are made to resist a set amount of electricity, then is the amount of elecricity consumed in the fan equal regardless of the amount of resistance in the knob? | In advance, I apologize for the horribly butchered question. I wasn't quite listening during workshop class. | 100 | Firstly, fans no longer use resistors, or rheostats, to control their speed. They either use switches that rewire the coils, or dimmer controls of various complexity that use, in one way or another, triacs as switches to control the amount of power that reaches the fan. These control methods are highly efficient, so th... | 49 |
ELI5: Why it takes longer to heat up two hot pockets in a microwave than one. | Same applies to any food, obviously. I just happen to be consuming a hot pocket currently while staring vacantly at the instructions. And does the same effect apply to normal ovens at all? | 93 | A conventional oven that heats up everything inside an oven including air, the oven sides, etc. That's quite a waste of heat but if you put one or two hot pockets in the oven, you won't see much of a difference.
A microwave oven is much more efficient, which is why it's fast. It only sends energy to food you put in i... | 72 |
ELI5: Rh positive and negative and why it matters so much when it comes to having kids | Yeah yeah I'm an idiot lol. I'm sure it's all so simple but I'm pregnant and honestly, lacking quite a few brain cells thanks to it.
Can someone explain to me why Rh positive and negative matter when it comes to reproducing and even marriage?! I just read something that said Rh negative women should not be with Rh pos... | 2,873 | Your red blood cells might have a protein on them called Rhesus protein. It's hereditary. We call people with Rhesus protein "Rh positive," and people without it "Rh negative."
If mom is Rh negative and dad is Rh positive, the baby could be either. In the case of Rh negative mom and Rh positive baby, mom's immune syst... | 3,061 |
How do the Great Lakes 'avoid' being salt water? | 19 | They have been and are fed by fresh water sources (rivers, springs, glaciers) and they are above sea level so they drain into the ocean. There is no source of salt that has a chance to mix with the water until it drains into the Atlantic Ocean. | 20 | |
[Harry Potter] When a person in a painting walks beyond the egdes of a painting, where do they go? | We know that painting-people can go from one painting to the other, and if you tilt a painting the people in there will slide out. Where do they go when they are between paintings? DO they have their own pocket universe there, or is it just eternal darkness between the few pockets of reality that are the paintings? | 58 | Painting in some buildings - like Hogwarts - are interconnected. The people depicted in them can enter other portraits. Like when The Fat Lady spent Christmas in the painting of the Four Drunk Monks, getting wasted.
Headmaster portraits have an additional enchantment that allows them to move freely between any portrai... | 37 |
[Tolkien] If Sauron is said to be the most powerful of all the Maiar, and the One Ring makes him even more powerful, why did he lose to Elendil and Gilgalad? | Assuming that Elves and Men are less powerful than Maiar to begin with. You would think that the two kings were incredibly outclassed. How the hell did they win? | 23 | There are different types of "Power". Sauron orchestrated the downfall of Númenor, the most powerful kingdom of Men to have ever existed in addition to most of the powerful Elves of the Second Age. He also would have defeated Middle-Earth yet again if not for the blind luck/divine intervention of two hobbits sneaking... | 41 |
ELI5: Why does laughter, a physiological response to humour, exist? | 130 | For the type of laughter when, for example, playing, it's a signal to the person with whom you're playing that everything is lighthearted and that they aren't hurting you. Even rats do that.
For the type after a joke, the leading theory is that before you hear the punchline, your brain is trying to come up with the an... | 71 | |
[Marvel/DC] Who are the wealthiest / smartest people on Earth who are not also a super hero or villain? | It seems like most of the top tier superlatives in both universes use their brains and/or wealth as either a means to or a cover for caped adventuring. So are there any noteworthy billionaires who don't secretly go out and cause or prevent mayhem? Any super geniuses who don't also spend their time fighting dinosaurs vi... | 25 | To be fair, almost all rich superheroes were rich *before* becoming superheroes, rather than as a result of it.
That said, the first who comes to mind is Spike Freeman for me. He's a media-mogul and billionaire. He's a bad person, and sort of an antagonist, but he's not really a "villain" in any poetic sense. He's a r... | 29 |
[Harry Potter] How can owning the three Hallows make you The Master of Death? Even if you wear the cloak 24/7, you will still eventually die of old age. | 178 | The Wand gives you power over the lives of others: you can kill them.
The Stone gives you power over the dead: you can "raise" them.
The Cloak gives you power over your own mortality: You can't be found to be killed
That's what is meant by mastery of death | 239 | |
(Game of Thrones)Some questions about the Night's Watch | I am caught up in the show, and I've only just started the books. That being said...
1. The Night's Watch are supposedly all equals, words like "common born" and "high born" are abandoned after they take their oaths. So why is it, at the beginning of the series, that Garret has to take orders from Waymar Royce? Accordi... | 33 | > So why is it, at the beginning of the series, that Garret has to take orders from Waymar Royce?
The Lord Commander placed Ser Waymar in command of the mission so as not to offend his father. The Night's Watch needs to maintain a good relationship with the lords to the South to keep the recruiting pools open.
>... | 40 |
[The Matrix] Does the Matrix simulation endlessly replay the whole 20th Century or are the people within it living out an approximation of the 1990s for roughly 100 years at a time? | I know that each iteration of the Matrix lasts roughly 100 years before a reboot is needed, admittedly I do not know if the various reboots are completely different incarnations (for instance, I know there was a “paradise” version of the Matrix and also a “nightmare” version of the Matrix at various points). My questio... | 15 | The date does progress in the matrix, as does *some* technological and sociological advancement. These advances are limited and controlled though along a predetermined formula to make sure humanity both stays around the 1990's level but also doesn't break the simulation by never letting any progress happen. They don't ... | 26 |
[The Dark Knight] When Mr Lau flees to Hong Kong, and Batman brings him back to Gothom would this create an international uproar? | Would China hold the US responsible for their vigilante kidnapping a prominent Chinese businessman? Mr Lau immediately being arrested makes it look awfully suspicious, plus Batman was seen by many eye witnesses and I'm sure they have cameras. | 654 | It'll be a delicate situation for sure. Given that lau is a Chinese national china will likely sue for his deportation to Hong Kong or Beijing. They'll issue an arrest warrant for Batman as well for the kidnapping and the pilot and crew of the illegal aircraft that kidnapped him. Ultimately it'll go nowhere. Lau was al... | 387 |
Are the stars we see at night mostly individual stars or galaxies? | And follow-up: If they are individual stars, why aren't they part of galaxies? | 68 | Majority of the stars we see are from our own milky way galaxy, the only non stars you can see with the naked eye is Andromeda, maybe a couple of satellite galaxies around us and obviously the planets too (edit: forgot about nebulas).
Other than that the light is far too weak for our eyes to make out. | 74 |
[MCU] Why does Captain America no longer use a gun? | He doesn't have a no kill rule and he was extensively trained with firearms in WW2. We saw him using a gun with his shield but nowadays he only seems to carry his shield. Why is that? | 102 | WW2 was war. Cap was often on the battlefield on the front lines fighting alongside with regular infantry, which is why he used a gun.
Modern day Cap is more special forces - a lot of his missions involve stealth and close quarters combat, which doesn't really rely on him having a firearm on hand.
| 74 |
ELI5: Why can't the U.S. hold their market hostage for companies that outsource a lot (through tarriffs, etc) to solve its economic problems? | Say the government gives, say, Apple a few years to move some of its factories over here from China, and if not they'll make it unprofitable to sell iPhones here. They will, because they'll take a dip in profit margins of it means they get to keep business in the largest economy in the world. If they made a lot of comp... | 18 | A tariff would decrease outsourcing but it would also raise prices. High tariffs also induce other countries to raise their own tariffs, which shrinks the foreign market for American goods.
That's not to say that tariffs shouldn't be higher, but raising them does also cause problems. | 11 |
Is nuclear energy a sustainable source of energy? | I have seen many people on Reddit advocating the use of nuclear energy, and since I don't know much about the subject I decided to research it. However, I have found many conflicting stances on the use of nuclear energy, more specifically on whether nuclear energy can be sustainable. I appreciate any clarification on t... | 41 | I think that it's technically a non-renewable resource-we are using nuclear fuels more quickly than they are being created. However, the amount of usable nuclear fuel eclipses the amount of available fossil fuel and thus it's considerably more sustainable than every other non-renewable resource. There are certain types... | 31 |
CMV: Most people are intolerant of others beliefs. | At least in the US, most people are rather intolerant of differing beliefs, rules, or ideas.
For example group A wants something allowed while group B doesn't, their reasoning is that people have the right to do something but B believes it's exploitative, discriminatory, or just plain highly immoral and shouldn't be a... | 26 | There's a difference between being intolerant of a belief and disagreeing with it.
Being intolerant of someone's beliefs would be saying that those people shouldn't be allowed to hold the beliefs they do. Mere disagreement means you don't agree with them, but you still acknowledge that they have the right to believe w... | 23 |
[The Matrix] Why would an Agent's firearm ever run out of bullets? Couldn't the Machines easily give them unlimited capacity magazines, heat seeking rounds, etc? | Given that the Matrix was created by them and is under their control, why make Agents play by the physical constraints of real world weapons?
On the other side of the coin, say a resistance group unplugged a human who had never touched a gun in their (virtual) life and was extremely ignorant of how they worked and w... | 62 | The major problem is that virtual objects are not static -- they are all interacting with each other all the time -- and each and every one of them contains the elegant core code for the physics of the Matrix.
Just like fundamental forces in the Real World (strong and weak nuclear, electromagnetic, and gravity), every... | 60 |
[General] There are evil kingdoms and evil empires. What are some evil republics from fiction? | 416 | Debatably, the Alliance from Firefly.
Its government is never fully explained, but it seems to be run by a parliament. Its evil is of the most banal sort - faceless bureaucracy grinding the disenfranchised into the dirt; scientists experimenting on entire planets, then covering up the deaths of millions as an inconven... | 373 | |
ELI5: How does nicotine affect our brains? | Hopefully this can motivate me to quit. | 45 | Apart from producing dopamine and causing dependency, nicotine also increases blood pressure but narrows the blood vessels and makes them less elastic. This can lead to heart failure in the long run.
With smoking, there are a large number of factors that add to health issues, nicotine not neccesarily being the subst... | 19 |
[Star Wars] why/how are the jedi able to dodge and block blasters but can't dodge a punch? | 69 | Jedi can predict where an opponent will attack and respond pre-emptively. However, there are two components to this. One is simply seeing the future, but the other is **reading the opponent's intentions**, then moving in advance to counter what the target wishes to do.
The fact that there is an element of "sensing the... | 51 | |
CMV: Mentioning gender is unnecessary in all but the most niche interactions and informing people of one's sex makes more sense | To start with some definitions:
By gender, I mean the cultural identity that loosely related to sex as a concept, but is not inherently bound to it. I believe this understanding coincides with how businesses and the dictionary defines it, but I recognize I could be misinterpreting something.
In this case, by unneces... | 130 | Times sex comes into play:
* Doctor appointments
* Discussions about reproduction
* Medical discussions
These are pretty limited.
Times gender comes into play:
* When you see someone
* When you speak with someone
* When you refer to someone else
* When you interact socially in any capacity
* When you use the ba... | 157 |
ELI5 Why can't we breed bees en masse | In nature the bees create a queen with royal jelly. Can we not use the chemicals involved in this process to mass create bee queen's and then farm the hell out of the bee queen's to create billions of bees. Assuming the pupate at a very fast rate?
Could we not solve the bee problem this way? | 315 | The bee problem isn't due to insufficient bees. Be colonies will grow prolifically on their own.
The problem is that we've created an environment in which bees die. You can create more colonies but that doesn't change the fact that we place those colonies in a very hostile environment for bees.
And not just bees real... | 528 |
How does a muscle attach to a tendon and how does a tendon attach to a bone? | Is it physical structures like microscopic hooks/anchors? Some kind of biological "adhesive"?
Edit: Question answered. Several very knowledgeable people have done a great job of explaining that there is no "attachment" rather there is no end between bone/tendon and muscle, they all just merge into each other. Which is... | 5,316 | Tendons are something in between pure fibrous tissue and bone tissue. So they kinda stick to the respective bone as a very adhesive tissue that is interwoven with the bone cortex. As you follow the tendon to the where it connects with muscle, it is more fibrous is origin and resembles muscle itself in structure. Follow... | 2,720 |
ELI5: why does Kim Jong Un and the Kim dynasty keep their people secluded? | Are they trying to create their version of a utopian society? Or is it that they are just control freaks?
Surely Kim and others realize he isn't a Dear Glorious Leader or some kind of God right? | 35 | Everyone (outside of NK) knows that there are huge problems in North Korea, such as people starving, poor access to electricity, and a lack of education. The only way to maintain that kind of status quo is to make sure that people don't know what the outside world has to offer. The Kim regime is able to live a very goo... | 33 |
How do oncolytic viruses recognize cancer cells from regular cells? And how useful are they really? | 42 | Many oncolytic viruses does target other cells as well however they are not strong enough to infect or spread infection in them as the immune system mechanisms in healthy cells recognizes them and initiates defenses. However, as many cancer cells often turn off immune responses in themself as part of their cancer mecha... | 19 | |
[Marvel] Deadpool's most underused power is - mercifully - the ability to instantly summon media, usually comics, from a reality where he and everyone around him is fictional. What's the most damage he could potentially do with a single such item (comic, trade paperback, etc.)? | 19 | I wasn't aware he had that kind of power, since it's usually shown to be only the perception of his being fictional.
The most damage he could do is to summon a complete piece of media that shows the past, the present, and the future (maybe a Marvel omnibus/character atlas?). Maybe a near-future, or something along tho... | 18 | |
[How The Grinch Stole Christmas] Where is that "headcanon" of The Grinch character coming from? | I'm not really familiar with the original book but in the newest movies (2000 and 2018) Grinch is depicted as very talented at building some sort of gadgets and machines. Though the first animation, which made him like this was from around 80s - The Grinch Grinches The Cat In The Hat.
In the oldest animation from 1966... | 18 | The original book *How the Grinch Stole Christmas* doesn't really suggest that he's a talented gadgeteer. He's clever enough to pilfer an entire town's worth of gifts and decorations in a single night without getting caught.
That suggests a level of mechanical ability. He has to optimize the route for speed and t... | 16 |
ELI5: what is that sinking/sickly feeling you get in your chest when thinking of losing something dear/going through a breakup? | Title says it all, we all know the feeling but why do we physically feel the pain in our bodies? | 60 | That feeling in your stomach is caused by anxiety. Anxiety triggers the ancient “Fight or Flight” response that is programmed in to your DNA. Anxiety manifests itself in complicated ways. Here are a few:
When you feel stressed or anxious, your body releases a rush of hormones. Neurotransmitters in the brain react ... | 21 |
ELI5:would the screen rotation function work in space? | I did try to tweet an astronaut about this but I only got a reaction from someone I don't know and I didn't understand what he was talkin about:
****
@xxxxxxxxxxx @xxxxxxxxx it works, but in a weird way, considering the variability of the coriolis acceleration on #ISS: not useful
****
Can anyone explain... | 199 | Phones have devices called accelerometers which feel the pull of gravity similar to how we do. Take one of these devices on a bungee jump, and it will record the increased force that you feel at the bottom of the cord.
In orbit, everything is in constant free-fall, so there is very little apparent gravity for people o... | 56 |
[W40K/Halo] How does a space marine match up against a Spartan? [xpost whowouldwin] | For simplicity lets say its a battlebrother from a codex chapter against a Spartan other than MC. | 23 | The Warhammer Space-Marine wins.
It's not to say that Spartans are weak or anything, but Spartans are designed to eventually become veterans; To eventually have a life and purpose that doesn't directly involve murdering aliens.
Codex Adherent Space-Marines are not. There are no Space-Marine veterans; There are only ... | 51 |
ELI5: How do companies discover that they've been hacked? | If you're a smart hacker, couldn't you figure out how to access information without anyone knowing that you did it? | 162 | If a good hacker didn't leave a footprint then the company wouldn't know about the leak, and you would never hear about the company having a leak.
The Sony hack wasn't noticed by Sony. It was the hacker group that publicly exposed the hack. | 139 |
ELI5: Credit Cards, how they work, and what is a good college student card? | Im so confused, Everyone tells me i need to build credit but how? | 41 | You just need to apply for a credit card and spend with it, but i can't stress this enough, don't spend more than you make. The last thing you want to do is to get into credit card debt, especially so early in life. And always pay your balance in full. | 29 |
[Wolverine] In the battlefield, what purpose does his yellow spandex suit serve? Better still, why is it made to stand out like that? | You'd think someone like Wolverine needs more softer black/brown colours to be more complement a more stealthy and animal-like approach in combat, not a sore-to-the-eyes "I'm HERE, Hit ME" sorta bright yellow suit. What positive does a bright yellow/blue suit serve in the battle? And even if it does serve something (He... | 31 | There was an answer somewhere in this thread from earlier, but basically —
Yes, it’s an “I’m here, hit me” suit.
Because it’s much better for enemies to attack him, the regenerating, nigh-immortal mutant with an adamantium skeleton, rather than his squishier, less-immortal friends. | 86 |
[DC/Marvel] If Bruce Wayne was given the same origin story as Tony Stark, how would he have escaped the Ten Rings and what kind of hero would he have become instead? | This scenario assumes Bruce's parents died in an accident when he was a young adult to match up with Tony's timeline. Bruce isn't an engineering genius of the same caliber as Tony but still has his own natural talents to fall back on - though less refined due to not having been driven to develop them from a young age i... | 153 | He's screwed, basically - Tony was an engineering messiah who built a weapons platform in a cave to escape.
Without first becoming Batman, Bruce Wayne is just a smart rich kid - being raised by his parents for longer would only cement that.
Tony Stark was always Iron Man, only without the suit.
Bruce Wayne became B... | 232 |
[Discworld] How did Rincewind, a person with almost no magical ability, get into Unseen University? | 15 | He had the potential to use magic when he was a kid. That allowed him to study until he became a full fledged wizard or flunked out.
He ended up getting that one spell stuck in his head. That spell was important enough to allow the faculty to let Rincewind stick around.
After the spell leaves, the next time Rincewin... | 27 | |
Why didn't the Jedi investigate Anakin's conception? | He was a pretty big deal and had a miraculous conception of sorts as far as the Jedi knew. Seems worthy of investigation. | 15 | What's to investigate? His father was the force. They knew it could happen, they knew how it can happen, and they knew it would happen. Using the force, Qui Gon knew that Shmi wasn't lying, and using the same techniques, the Jedi council knew Qui Gon wasn't telling porkies.
Perhaps the only question remaining is: "wh... | 27 |
ELI5 If skin is constantly renewing itself, why do blemishes remain? | 2,773 | The outer layers of the skin are formed by the cast-off remnants of the deeper layers. Blemishes exist in the underlying layers of the skin, where the cells are dividing to replace lost ones, and those get expressed on the outer layers as the cells surface and slough off. | 1,627 | |
How long is the LHC at CERN on for at a time? How long does it take before a test will be done? | Does it take a long time to actually charge up? Somebody told me it’ll take months before anything actually happens after they turn it on today, but I wanted to ask here if that’s how it works. | 221 | The ideal long-term running plan has ~10 hours of non-stop collisions followed by 2-3 hours of dumping the remaining particles, ramping down the magnets, preparing for a new fill, filling in particles, accelerating/ramping up magnets, and preparing the beams for collisions.
You can't fill in more protons once they hav... | 260 |
ELI5: Why do digital movies have such a hard time blending black and white, like when a person is in a dark room with a lantern? There are obvious rings as the colors fade into black. | 15 | That's called "banding", and it's due to compression. One of the steps of compression is to increase the length of sequences of the same color. This is done by combining similar colors into one. The combined results will have less granularity, and thus the distinct steps.
Banding is a reasonable trade off to have a s... | 16 | |
Why does blue seem to be the hardest color to achieve for so many things, such as LEDs, fireworks, and paints or dyes? | What makes blue special? Also what category would this be? | 132 | Not an answer but blue is the shortest wavelength and therefore the highest energy of the visible spectrum. And higher energy is harder all around to deal with. For example, 7,000 kelvin light bulbs emit a lot of blue spectrum and many people find them to be burning and fatiguing of their vision. Another example is rad... | 48 |
[ELI5] Why you can't drink water couple hours before a surgery? | 431 | They don’t want you to aspirate. A lot of things that happen when they first put you under can potentially make you vomit and if that goes into your lungs (aspirating) it can block your airway or cause an infection. Having your stomach empty means that risk is much lower. | 606 | |
ELI5: Why can some insects survive high radiation levels they wouldn't encounter on Earth and others don't? | For instance take the clichéd cockroach. They can survive substantially higher levels of radiation such as that from a nuclear weapon. Surely in nature they would never encounter such high levels of radiation, outwith some stellar events. Furthermore why do only certain species have such a great tolerance to radiation... | 20 | They do not have specific adaptations for surviving radiation, but they are pretty tough little bugs that can survive injuries, starvation, etc. Insect biology just handles radiation damage better than mammals and things, mainly because they're much simpler than vertebrates.
There are arthropods that can survive the ... | 11 |
What is the importance of the prime numbers? | I've often wondered what the importance of prime numbers are, since they seem to be stressed in mathematics. I've asked this question many times (this is the first time I've asked reddit), and I either get my question "answered" with a question, or a smarmy answer.
Can someone please explain to me the applications a... | 31 | Just to give an illustrative example, one of the most important properties of the natural numbers is the Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic, which says that every natural number has a unique prime factorization. This fact was crucial to Gödel's proof of the Incompleteness Theorems, which is widely considered to be one o... | 19 |
CMV: Universal Healthcare should mean you lose right to your organ when you die | What i mean if your country has universal healthcare you should automatically be enrolled into organ donation program no exception. If you don't want to then you should lose the right to enjoy universal healthcare.
My reason is your organ is an valuable resource and if we want some part of population to pay for our co... | 21 | That would be literally selling your body to pay for medical treatment, when the whole purpose of universal healthcare is to provide everyone with the medical treatment which they need so that they don't have to resort to such drastic desperate measures. | 11 |
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