id stringlengths 5 6 | input stringlengths 3 301 | output list | meta null |
|---|---|---|---|
e5mdxv | What were some of the other options brought up before settling on the 3/5's Compromise at the Constitution Convention? | [
{
"answer": "I'm afraid I can only touch on the Great Compromise a bit, but the 3/5 is in my wheelhouse.\n\nYour student's suggestion was the actual position of the less-enslaving states: enslaved people count zero for representation because they are in essentially no other ways treated like human beings. Count... | null |
10ect6 | why germany has maintained economic stability while greece has faltered | [
{
"answer": "Germany produces a lot of stuff. ",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "I think the answer that terminal_velocity gave has a lot of truth to it; namely Germany has a diverse exporting infrastructure, as well as a controlled import system. \n\nBut the most important thing to remember is t... | null |
vnr2j | Is it possible to kill a house fly with a static charge that you have accumulated? | [
{
"answer": "Well you can accumulate a voltage of between [1000 and 10000 volts](_URL_0_) with static electricity and most electric fly swatters have a voltage of 1500 volts or less, so I would assume it is safe to say that a fly could be killed with a static charge.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answe... | null |
83vszh | Nearly half of the people who died from the Spanish Flu of 1918 were 20-to-40 year olds, a normally resistant population. Do we know why? What steps were taken to curb the outbreak (which killed more people than the Great War)? What sort of advances had we made by 1998 to prevent a recurrence? | [
{
"answer": "There have been some studies that have shown that people who were exposed to the Russian flu pandemic of 1889-90 were the most likely to die if they contracted the Spanish flu. \n\nExaminations of the virus structure of the Russian flu and Spanish flu have shown that they had vast differences in th... | null |
7vo96p | why do our eyes/brains struggle to figure out how many numbers/letters are in something when one repeats it self vs when all are different (12333332 vs 60292813) | [
{
"answer": "This is because it is easier for the human brain to count different numbers since you can know at which number you are looking at (The criterion is that the next number is visibly different than the previous).\nWhen you have to deal with a repeatitive number, you \"have\" doubts whether you skipped... | null |
1wu3cc | Why did China not discover Australia/ the Pacific Islands? | [
{
"answer": "hi! there's always room for more info on this topic, but FYI, there have been several posts asking about non-European discovery/settlement of Australia. Catch up on previous responses here:\n\nChina\n\n[Why did the British/Europeans discover Australia and not the Chinese?](_URL_5_)\n\n[Why did the ... | null |
4n8gv5 | Why were D-Day landing craft designed the way they were? Opening the large ramp from the front seems almost suicidal to me. | [
{
"answer": "The D-Day craft to which you are referring (the LCVP) was based heavily on the a boat designed by Andrew Higgins in the prewar years, ostensibly for \"oil workers\" but probably a smugglin' swamp boat during Prohibition. The Marine Corps was not happy with the contemporary Navy options for landing... | null |
3e0op2 | how nearsightedness and farsightedness work | [
{
"answer": "It has to do with a problem with the lens in your eye. Normally, your lens focuses the light onto the fovea of the retina, which is an area that has a high density of light sensing cells (called photoreceptors). When you are farsighted, light from close up gets focused onto a different part of the ... | null |
1oebvs | why are savings account yields in australia 4%/year, and in the u.s. they are .025%/year? | [
{
"answer": "Because the Australian Federal Reserve bank has a cash target rate of 2.5% - banks charge more than that for lending (I pay 4.9% on my mortgage) and also more than that for certain high interest online bank accounts (the 4% your sister is getting). _URL_0_. Australia has typically had higher inte... | null |
5opvys | Limits of the Internet. What is the current limit of possible addresses? | [
{
"answer": "The most commonly used version of the Internet Protocol (IP), IPv4 uses 32-bit addresses (often represented as 4 numbers between 0 and 255 separated by dots, such as 192.168.1.1). Of these, a maximum of about 4 billion addresses are possible. But due to the way these addresses are assigned, the act... | null |
2gsmmr | why does it often say when trying to download something "download should start soon, if it does not press this button" instead of triggering the function of the always working button. | [
{
"answer": "They're trying to load balance server requests so that no one server gets nailed with all of the download bandwidth. They give you the link so that if the fancy load balancer doesn't work you can still get the file from the main server. \n\nAlso ads.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": ... | null |
236vfg | What has the sleep schedule of the US President looked like historically? | [
{
"answer": "During his presidency Coolidge supposedly would sleep around 11 hours a day. When writer Dorothy Parker was told in 1933 that Coolidge had died she replied, \"How can they tell?\" Source: The American Age: US Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad since 1750, Walter LaFeber",
"provenance": null
},... | null |
1ieb04 | What causes pianos to go out of tune, and why do they go out of tune faster if unplayed or in high humidity? | [
{
"answer": "I can answer some of these. A piano goes out of tune when the various components change shape and deform over time. For example, the strings are under quite a lot of tension and will eventually begin to stretch or slip ever so slightly. It doesn't take much of this at all for a good musician to hea... | null |
2if79t | Has there ever been an attempt to create a SI unit of time? | [
{
"answer": "The second is based on something physical - it's defined as \"the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom\".\n\nIt may seem somewhat arbitrary, because it isn't based on anything ... | null |
95ylhp | how did manual telephone switchboards work? | [
{
"answer": "Your phone (and all phones) were wired to the switching center, where a person would have to manually complete the circuit between the two phones and then manually disconnect when you were done.\n\nLong distance calls required switching at multiple locations, hence the added cost back in the day.",... | null |
1yuhj0 | The movie zeitgeist | [
{
"answer": "You may be interested in [this section of the FAQ](_URL_1_).\n\nWith Zeitgeist specifically, the answer generally is that no, there's no truth to it. [This](_URL_0_) lists some of them. A few illustrative examples:\n\n1. Horus wasn't born of a virgin, as the movie states, but by Isis impregnating... | null |
2jupix | Did the original Boy Scouts (British) have a tendency to wander into the army as they got older? What kind of effect did the early Scouts have on patriotism in Britain? | [
{
"answer": "The early Boy Scout movement emerged hand in hand with patriotism in Britain at the beginning of the 20th century. The Boy Scouts creator, Robert Baden-Powell, noted the general despair amongst soldiers during the Boer war in South Africa because of the significant number of casualties in the army.... | null |
1xffbb | Regarding the Large Hadron Collider, what else in terms of the standard model are we still looking out for? Has finding the Higgs made any significant impact? | [
{
"answer": "Not much in terms of the standard model. There is still some work going on to determine the spin/parity of the Higgs, and there are always lots of measurements that we can make (production rate\\*, interaction rate\\*, etc).\n\nSM measurements (Higgs coupling, different cross sections, branching ra... | null |
efmziw | Was the father of philosophy Thales of Miletus Greek or Phoenician? | [
{
"answer": "The short answer is: we're not sure, but it's likely Thales came from a Phoenician family that migrated to Miletus. As far as I know, Herodotus is the earliest source we have that talks about Thales. And even this source is written about a hundred years after Thales had already died. So we have ver... | null |
3fg0tv | What am I missing in Einstein theory of relativity? | [
{
"answer": "If that is the example in the biography used to explain how simultaneity of events is relative, then it is not only a terrible example, but it just entirely misses the point of relativity.\n\nIn the example, the two observers are not moving with respect to each other. So they are in the same inerti... | null |
eky3te | What were the reasons the U.S. attempted to pull off a coup of the Iranian government in the 50s and eventually imposed the Shah? | [
{
"answer": "This is a complex topic but I'll give it my best stab!\n\n > I thought the Iranian public had a very positive view of the U.S. at the time and this started off a chain of events that led the very hostile relationship we currently have\n\nFirstly, you're correct that the Iranian public had a relativ... | null |
1dypz7 | If someone was hemorrhaging uncontrollably, could you keep them alive by transfusing blood in at the same rate they were losing it? | [
{
"answer": "People can certainly have more than their entire blood volume replaced and survive. Normal blood volume is around 70ml/kg, so about 5L on average. One unit of blood (packed red cells) is around 250ml, so once someone has received more than 20 units of blood they are close to having replaced their c... | null |
445wzb | Do all plants metabolize (convert CO2 to O2) at the same rate or do some plants generate O2 more efficiently than others? | [
{
"answer": "There's variation among plants generally, but specifically an alternative carbon fixation pathway called Crassulacean Acid Metabolism (CAM) used in plants that are found in arid climates that is less efficient, but with the benefit that it allows the plant to shutdown respiration during the day whe... | null |
acj8mw | scientifically speaking, is there a hypothetical cure for every disease? | [
{
"answer": "the short answer is that we don't know.\n\nWe've cured a lot of diseases and accomplished amazing things with science. at times it seems that everything is possible. But unless we cure ever disease, we won't really know. \n\nMy guess would be yes. But we can really only guess.",
"provenance"... | null |
6hmn3m | what does the 'end task' command do differently than normally exiting out of a program? | [
{
"answer": "Imagine you are in a restaurant. And then you're asked to leave. You pick up your shit and leave. That's closing a program normally. Now when you end task. They bring in some bouncers and kick your ass out before you get to pick up any of your shit.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "... | null |
6fp08l | how someone can have a big belly but is relatively skinny/normal? | [
{
"answer": "Fat deposits vary from person to person and from source to source. A few of the hormones racing through your body affect the location of fat (cortisol directs it to the abdomen, for example) as well as your sex. (Women tend to have a 'donut' or bigger legs, men tend to have bigger bellies.) I don't... | null |
4i0a08 | why does windows 10 take over 2 gb of ram to sit there doing nothing, while windows 95 needed less than 0.004 gb? | [
{
"answer": "1. It's not sitting there doing nothing. There's tons of stuff running in the background- updaters, anti-virus, Cortana, and more.\n\n2. It doesn't actually need a full 2GB. But RAM that's not being used is just wasted, so it will load extra things into memory to speed up the computer if you have m... | null |
33iigz | does the united states government heavily regulate media outlets? | [
{
"answer": "No. The concept of [prior restraint](_URL_0_) is almost completely foreign to the US legal system.\n\nNow, the government can always *ask* an outlet not to run a story, or at least to delay it, and sometimes the network or newspaper will oblige. But it's almost impossible to legally prevent a US ne... | null |
e64kn2 | what is a name server, what is a network domain, and how are the two related? | [
{
"answer": "So a name server is like a telephone book, it takes the name of a website and converts that information into a usable IP address which is an internet protocol series of numbers like 8.8.8.8 which is used in this case to connect to _URL_0_",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Sorry if th... | null |
1r9av2 | how can long water fasting periods be healthy? | [
{
"answer": "That is insanely unhealthy. I had a friend one time do a 40 day fast, did it more for some personal factors, not weight loss. He discussed it with his doctor and took the proper precautions and he did it.\n\nFasting should **never** be a method of weight loss. His obesity will simply complicate thi... | null |
1c5doq | How dependent is oceanic life on phytoplankton? Not just fish, but mammals and all life forms that live off or in the ocean? | [
{
"answer": "[Extremeophiles](_URL_0_) would be okay.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "50557",
"title": "Phytoplankton",
"section": "Section::::Ecology.:Food web.\n",
"start_paragraph_id": 20,
"start_charac... | null |
5qufpa | why us telecos still use cdma technology, when majority of the world uses gsm for the communication? | [
{
"answer": "The main reasons are a matter of timing, corporate greed and legacy.\n\nBack when the US networks where starting to form, the switch from analogue to digital cellular technology was also happening and CDMA had some interesting advantages over GSM.\n\nOne of the most appealing features at the time (... | null |
xaiu9 | Jesus Christ and John the Baptist - Bibical Scholars wanted | [
{
"answer": "The association of Jesus with John is more or less universally accepted. There are a number of clues.\n\nFirst is the baptism. John offered baptism for the remission of sin, a fact that caused the last three evangelists apparent embarrassment. Matthew and Luke have John denigrate himself at the e... | null |
5rk0bm | what is the difference between relative humidity and dew point? | [
{
"answer": "They are related in that they are both measures of the amount of water in the air.\n\nRelative humidity compares how much water vapor is in the air to how much water vapor the air could possibly hold at the current temperature. It is a measure of how saturated the air is compared to how saturated ... | null |
4jd20l | How did the Roman aristocracy treat/view plebeians? Were they treated differently at different points in the republic? | [
{
"answer": "Much of the historical narrative that we have for the early Republic is dominated by the so-called struggle of the orders. This was sort of a civil rights campaign by the plebeians for equal rights. At this stage the patricians were a handful of established aristocratic families, and the plebeians ... | null |
3sgu4l | why are governments post-actively banning the filming of slaughter house cruelty instead of pro-actively following animal abuse laws? | [
{
"answer": "I don't know where the government is specifically making it illegal to film that - it already is based on normal privacy and employment law. If you trespass onto a private property to film, that's illegal. And if you gain employment there to film secretly, you've committed fraud - and you've prob... | null |
1qfqto | Can anyone recommend any books or articles on ancient cultures and sharks? | [
{
"answer": "This article might not quite fit the bill -- it's not specifically situated in an ancient period -- but it does do a good job of exploring the place of sharks in Hawaiian religion and culture.\n\nGoldberg-Hiller, Jonathan, and Noenoe K. Silva. “Sharks and Pigs: Animating Hawaiian Sovereignty agains... | null |
77y8tw | how do recycling plants process liquids? | [
{
"answer": "Yay! Something I can finally answer! \nI work as a chemist at a waste disposal facility. At our plant we sort liquids into various catergories depending on what we think is in the containers.\n\nThese containers are then shipped off to a machine which essentially crushes all the liquid out of the c... | null |
6vuxyw | why do we feel the weird banging in our body when listening to loud live music | [
{
"answer": "Sound is pressure waves moving through the air that vibrate your eardrums.\n\nYour ribcage doesn't have much that is solid behind it to stop it vibrating to large, low frquency pressure waves.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Sound is just waves of pressure or vibrations moving thro... | null |
2nx0kq | Kingdom of Sardinia's place in Italian Unification in the nineteenth century | [
{
"answer": "Well, there is no clean cut explanation.\n\nHistorically the Duchy of Savoia (mainly centered in Piedmont, capital Turin), was the more expansionist Italian state from the late seventeenth century onward.\n\nThe dukes played an active role in all the European wars of the period, shifting their alli... | null |
1k8ye7 | Do we know of any chants that galley sailors would sing while they rowed? | [
{
"answer": "It's unlikely that they sung - that would not be conducive to rowing, which is physically tiring. It has been theorised that they may have hummed, which is less tiring, but there is no substantial proof of this. [A reconstructed trireme was tested using various means of synchronisation - humming wa... | null |
umi4r | Why do certain musical scales sound happy, scary , eerie, etc? | [
{
"answer": "Im not aware of a ton of work in this area, but one guy who is sorta studying this is Gilden at UT Austin. Though he mostly focuses on the nature of musical \"groove\". It's a bit of a new line for him, but he talks briefly about it on his site (_URL_0_). The guy is crazy smart though, so if you... | null |
rjisw | Is depression more frequent amongst people in developed countries? | [
{
"answer": "I do not believe we have strong data about depression amongst underdeveloped nations, so this comparison may not be possible.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "_URL_0_ \n(Bokmal) _URL_1_\n\nI don't know about depression in general, but Scandinavia has a very high rate of seasonal af... | null |
9zdrzx | what is more dangerous for the human body. high ac or dc and why? | [
{
"answer": "The biggest advantage to AC is that it fluctuates the level, which gives you more of a chance of disconnecting from it. DC will lock your muscles and keep you from letting go.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Low-frequency AC is more likely to disrupt your heart rhythm than DC, but ... | null |
16b161 | How do changes in Earth's global temperature caused by Milankovitch cyclicity compare to other climate change sources (anthropogenic and other)? | [
{
"answer": "[This page at skeptialscience](_URL_0_) discusses Milankovitch Cycles and cites the variation of solar forcing due to orbital eccentricity as ~0.45 W/m^2. Current estimates of anthropogenic alterations to the radiative balance ([see IPCC](_URL_1_)) are about 1.6 W/m^2. So variations in forcing du... | null |
3rl322 | Washing clothing that was not color fast. | [
{
"answer": "To cover the basics first, dyes before modern dyes were color fast and dry cleaning did exist. One of the most popular dyes still today is indigo. Interestingly it doesn't dissolve in water nor adhere to fabric, so how does this work? You need an alkaline solution such as lye, ammonia, or urine in ... | null |
yjenl | Suppose we had working fusion reactors with the output and specifications we're working towards? What implications would it realistically have for other energy sources and humanity in general in terms of the other problems we have? | [
{
"answer": "Engineering student here.\n\nRegarding size, mobility - large, more or less immobile. ITER is large - it's a technology demonstrator for a power station. The reactor itself, plus all the necessary hardware to actually produce power (steam generation, turbines, generators, heat dumps) would take up ... | null |
2ciivm | How have norms against attacking civilian populations developed and been applied by Western countries post WW2? | [
{
"answer": " > The more specific question is: what instances after 1945 are there of Western militaries attacking civilian targets with the explicit or implicit aim of coercing the civilian population?\n\nWell, for one, the Korean War which began in 1950 saw the US use B-29 bombers to bomb Pyongyang and other ... | null |
244y1q | how do enzymes actually lower activation energy? | [
{
"answer": "The reactants don't immediately form products, they'll form a transition state first, and the energy needed to form it corresponds to the activation energy.\n\nA catalyst (including enzymes) will make a transition state available which is lower in energy than the one which is used without the catal... | null |
57ss1w | why do some people believe ai (artificial intelligence) will take over the world | [
{
"answer": "One of the larger concerns with AI is that if not programmed correctly, it will pose various risks to humans by simply being too good at its job. This is illustrated pretty well with the \"paperclip \nmaximizer\" thought experiment: \n\n_URL_0_\n\nIn addition, popular media has done a pretty good j... | null |
2sfem0 | how is normalizing relations with cuba going to affect the us economy? | [
{
"answer": "It will have some positive effect, but I think you're right that it's not going to be hugely impacting one way or the other.\n\nLifting the embargo will take quite some time because our laws will have to change. There's no clear agreement that lifting the embargo is a good thing, and our lawmakers ... | null |
ieekm | Is there a correlation between race and intelligence? | [
{
"answer": "It turns out that there is an arguably large cultural bias on many of these intelligence tests, combined with confounding factors like low socioeconomic status (poverty) and minority status in the US. For this one specific test, there may not be doubt that there are differences (on average) between... | null |
6ostsb | why does baking soda help get rid if mouth ulcers? | [
{
"answer": "Baking soda is a base and often ulcers are irritated by the acidity of our saliva. So if you the baking soda with the saliva create a neutral environment for the sore to heal. ",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "22022246",
... | null |
1u2f14 | What was Lenin's real nature in comparison to Trotsky or Stalin? | [
{
"answer": "I would absolutely agree with the first part of his thesis: that Lenin was a brutal dictator and that the myth of Lenin being a good Bolshevik and Stalin being a bad Bolshevik is unsupported by evidence. Lenin clearly wanted to provoke a civil war in Russia, as documents uncovered since the opening... | null |
2o1u9j | Tuesday Trivia | Never Done: Women’s Work in History | [
{
"answer": "Is today’s theme just an excuse for me to post a long winded ramble about my hobbies? Of course not.\n\nBut it’s time to talk about knitting and its fantastically understudied history. Knitting gets very little attention from “real” historians, its history and folklore was only passed orally for a ... | null |
2c55li | why do commercial airplanes board passengers using the seemingly inefficient "zone" system, rather than filling the seats chronologically? | [
{
"answer": "[This](_URL_0_) article from CNN implies that airlines are indeed doing some research in this area, maybe even testing. \n\nHere is a description of a [method](_URL_1_) modeled by Dr. Steffen, a physicist at Fermilab, which seems to cut boarding time roughly in half. ",
"provenance": null
},... | null |
10xcdl | If the Earth is shaped like a pear does that mean atmospheric pressure at sea-level differs depending on latitude? | [
{
"answer": "Where have you heard that the earth is shaped like a pear?",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "41822",
"title": "Troposphere",
"section": "Section::::Pressure and temperature structure.:Pressure.\n",
"sta... | null |
8248hw | Henry VIII jousting in The Tudors | [
{
"answer": "Jousting armour typically had excellent neck and forearm protection. As you note, it would be very dangerous to not have it.\n\nOne example of one of Henry's jousting armours:\n\n_URL_4_\n\nI believe this is the armour he wore for jousting at the Field of the Cloth of Gold tournament.\n\nJousting a... | null |
4nfa7k | where do nicknames for enemy soldiers come from? | [
{
"answer": " > In the US the bad guys are \"Charlie\"\n\nNo they aren't. That specifically refers to Vietnamese forces in the Vietnam war. The Vietcong (VC) is \"Victor Charlie\" in radio speak. That's where the charlie comes from.\n\n > in the UK they are \"Jerry\"\n\nAgain, it refers to just Germans. Not jus... | null |
1ld379 | what exactly fills up when computer memory is full? | [
{
"answer": "Imagine your device as a blank notebook. Now start writing all the 'data' or 'songs' down in the notebook. When it's full, so is your device. To put it as simply as possible. As far as the physical size of the device is concerned I'll go back to the notebook. As we get better at making notebooks we... | null |
1nt5d0 | why do we use radioactive metals in nuclear power plants? | [
{
"answer": "We don't choose uranium and plutonium because they are radioactive. We choose uranium and plutonium because they happen to split easily when they absorb a neutron.....AND produce more neutrons when they split to continue the reaction on their own.\n\nYou can split just about any element, but most a... | null |
46hvu3 | If we ever get to do brain transplants, what would happen? Would the person with the new brain have the new brain old memories, or would all memories be forgotten? | [
{
"answer": "**IF** it were ever possible, and that is a big if, you, and every conscious aspect of you, would be transported with your brain. Your mind is the product of the pink squish stuff between your ears. Move the squishy stuff around, and the mind follows.\n\nNow, there would be some things that would p... | null |
2fkllu | I can't think of the name of painting, nor the artist, that I can write a perfect paper about. | [
{
"answer": "I think /r/tipofmytongue might be a better place for this.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "5081530",
"title": "Donald Jarvis",
"section": "",
"start_paragraph_id": 4,
"start_character": 0,
... | null |
3e6fp6 | What reasons made Justinian’s conquest of Italy take so long? | [
{
"answer": "The conquest of Italy started off well in 536 with the quick taking over of Sicily and then Naples after some resistance. Once Belisarius reached Rome however things slowed down. He entered the city unopposed but there were significant challenges in holding they city. Food first of all there was ... | null |
1jebwg | How is it that different dogs breeds have specific personality types? | [
{
"answer": "Selective breeding by humans. If you want a good hunter then you breed the best hunters together, if you want a guard dog then you breed the animals that are more territorial. If you want a lap dog then you need to select the dogs that are less stressed by being around new and different humans. hum... | null |
mnedq | How can animals sense danger and humans can't? | [
{
"answer": "Animals have adapted to react to a variety of sensory inputs that are associated with weather changes or imminent disasters.\n\nDogs can sense the pressure and humidity changes in the air with an impending rainstorm. You'd always hear old people say \"I can feel a storm coming, I feel it in my bone... | null |
1111w0 | why are you supposed to always add acid to water and never water to acid? | [
{
"answer": "If water splashes up at you, it's not a big deal. If acid splashes up at you, it can be.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Water can absorb a great deal of heat. Acid, not so much.\n\nSo if you add acid to water, there's more water than acid. As the acid mixes into the water, it pr... | null |
4kfgyt | I know that the Civil War armies were said to make a miserable show to Europeans, but how did the Continental Army perform by European standards? | [
{
"answer": "Great question!\n\nThe answer to this will depend firstly on when in the way you're asking about, and secondly on what scale you grade an army's capabilities on. \n\nAt the start of the war, the Continental Army was, by almost every standard, terrible. The army that amassed outside Boston and later... | null |
dvr30j | what is a cocaine analogue? | [
{
"answer": "It means it acts on the e.g. brain receptors or whatever it is you're interested in, in the same way as cocaine does without all the other effects. Usually such analogues either take cocaine as a starting point for their synthesis or have a synthetic component very similar to part of the cocaine mo... | null |
1smota | What are the actual bytes made up of in a computer? | [
{
"answer": "That depends entirely on the type of medium. On a mechanical harddrive, those bits are magnetic. In RAM or within the CPU, they're represented by electrical currents or charges. Data could be written to paper as visual or physical data if someone chose to. The list goes on. Ultimately, \"bits\" are... | null |
9qyyre | Is the ethical debate over killing and farming animals only a recent thing? Or did it span back further? | [
{
"answer": "Related question, how and when did the practice of vegetarianism and similar diets go from being associated mostly with religious asceticism to being a non-denominational choice based on animal rights? Basically, if ancient arguments for vegetarianism were that it was unclean or sinful, how did tha... | null |
2ih061 | what led to the end of people's beliefs in mythology as a religion? | [
{
"answer": "That never happened. The vast majority of religion today are based on a mythology. Abrahamic mythology is still very prevalent today as organized religions. The Garden of Eden isn't any different than Pandora's Box or Thor crossing the Bifröst. The religions around some mythology's simply died out... | null |
o4rli | Why does gravitational potential start at zero and become infinitely negative? | [
{
"answer": "Potential energy is relative, not absolute.\n\nOne way of saying it is that you define where your zero point is and that becomes your reference.\n\nAnother way of saying it is that the you are really looking for a potential energy **difference** (Delta-U).",
"provenance": null
},
{
"ans... | null |
3vk9nm | if nothing can exceed the speed of light, how can we measure something as being 10,000 light years away without it taking 20,000 years to measure? | [
{
"answer": "If we were measuring the distance with something like a laser range finder, that would be true.\n\nObviously nobody measure the distance to such far away object be pointing a beam at them and waiting until it gets bounced back.\n\nThis method is actually used with close by objects like the moon whe... | null |
3mgqp5 | what happens to food when exposed to air that justifies having a "consume within x days of opening" date? | [
{
"answer": "Air has bacteria in it. Smoothies are great environments for bacteria to live in. Once it's opened, the number of bacteria will rapidly become high enough to threaten your health (and the taste of the smoothie). \n\n",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
... | null |
3g8j76 | kernels (computing) | [
{
"answer": "A kernel does all kind of commonly needed stuff for you:\n\n* interacting with hardware and provide a standardized interface (so you don't have to write separate code for - as an example - each different sound card in each program that wants to use sound)\n* make sure your programs don't mess with ... | null |
6lcr5e | When did people start calling themselves "Italians" and "Germans"? | [
{
"answer": "[This question came up about a year ago](_URL_0_), although it's a good question that can certainly merit more discussion.\n\nFor Italy, the short answer is, \"When Napoleon crowned himself King of Italy.\" Prior to then the concept of an Italian language and culture was solely the purview of a sma... | null |
2shkpc | In the second world war, was there ever an incident of a ship being captured by one side, then pressed into service for use against its former operator? | [
{
"answer": "The IJN used several ships captured from the British, Dutch and Americans as convoy escorts. These weren't captured in the traditional sense - they were never boarded. Instead, they were scuttled in port by their former owners when capture of the port seemed likely. The Japanese would later salvage... | null |
2uunfv | If one were to throw a magnet at a metal object, would it accelerate before it hits the metal? If so, where does the change in kinetic energy come from? | [
{
"answer": " > would it accelerate before it hits the metal?\n\nYes, it would. The extra kinetic energy comes the potential energy that was stored in the system due to two magnets between positioned at a distance from each other.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
... | null |
6wkps8 | according to data we have discovered 14% of all organisms on earth. where does this number come from, if the other 86% of haven't been discovered yet (and therefore we don't know if they exist)? | [
{
"answer": "Well it's a bit outside my area of expertise, but if I had to make such an estimate, I would look at the rate at which we're discovering new species, and how that rate has changed over time. That would allow me to estimate how many species we're likely to find in the future. If the number is much l... | null |
1p73hf | How do I calculate laser divergence? | [
{
"answer": "The units of the result are [radians](_URL_0_). \n\nThis is a unit that is actually dimensionless. That is, an angle of one radian is an angle that forms a circular arc with a length equal to its radius. Meaning, radians measure the ratio between two lengths, thus it is not actually a unit at all.\... | null |
ar9n23 | how do showers pump water to the highest floor? | [
{
"answer": "I would say that it mostly depends on your location. A lot of places such as New York City have water towers placed on top of the buildings that feed via gravity.\nA lot of small towns where you see large water towers up high above the town essentially do the same thing.\nThen there will of course ... | null |
ue5bx | Do Large Lakes Serves as Natural Storm Breaks? | [
{
"answer": "Yes, you're correct. **Lake modified air** can have an impact on these types of storms. Mostly in a way directly [opposite to this](_URL_2_) in the winter. In the spring/summer the lake is relatively cool compared to the land and induces subsidence (sinking air) that can inhibit thunderstorms whic... | null |
2l1j5i | During the Carboniferous, O2 levels were 163% modern levels while CO2 was 800ppm. With so many plants, why were CO2 levels so high relative to modern levels? | [
{
"answer": "Are you sure you mean the Carboniferous here? That period actually saw a huge drop in global CO2 level, indicated by \"C\" [in this graph](_URL_0_) around 300-350 million years ago. \n\nThose pCO2 levels had been steadily falling since the Cambrian period, but likely saw an extra large drop during ... | null |
27jxv7 | What are the neurological differences, if any, between reading a physical book and reading online? | [
{
"answer": "I'm not entirely sure about the standards of this journal, but it does have citations. I'll try to sum up the author's major points that are at least supported by studies:\n\n1) Reading online requires much more \"cognitive space\" for a number of different reasons. The use of hyperlinks embedded w... | null |
a8avzp | Does Mars have enough mass to support a habitable atmosphere? | [
{
"answer": "Titan, a moon of Saturn, has about 1/5 the mass of Mars but holds an atmosphere with 1.5 times Earth's atmospheric pressure. So theoretically yes.\n\nOne big difference is that Titan is much colder than Mars and nowhere near habitable, but it turns out even with Mars's higher temp, it should be ab... | null |
177lwi | the american game-show 'jeopardy' | [
{
"answer": "just a trivia show. There are three rounds. First and Second rounds have 7 (I think) categories with 5 questions each. Wrong answers deduct dollars.\n\nLast round is a single question. Players are given the category ahead of time and can wager whatever amount of money they have on whether they'... | null |
6zlgr0 | what is the premise of the 'shadow' that carl jung wrote about? | [
{
"answer": "The idea is that we look at ourselves in a good light, and this casts a shadow that hides from us our true selves.\n\nHe believed that we had to face that shadow in our journey to self realization. Facing that shadow means recognizing that all the worst parts of humanity are in you too. If you were... | null |
40le3p | how can the suns rays make you feel mentally/psychologically better? | [
{
"answer": "Mostly your brain (pineal gland) produces two kinds of \"drugs\" (hormones): one for the day (serotonin) and one for the night (melatonin). This is part of your inner clock. Serotonin keeps you awake and melatonin makes you sleepy. Light, specially sunlight, stops the production of melatonin. So if... | null |
fq5jqz | how can people take old videos and upscale them to 4k? | [
{
"answer": "That video was recorded in 1985 on film from my understanding.\n\nFilm itself has a resolution way beyond 4K depending on the grain size. As long as the film is preserved, it can be re-scanned using a higher resolution scanner.\n\nWe will probably get an 8K cut in a few years.",
"provenance": n... | null |
byeeg1 | why does water and air feel different at the same temp? full question below. | [
{
"answer": "Transmission of energy. Water holds and absorbs tremendously more energy than air, that's why it takes so much more airflow volume to create the same cooling effect as water.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "900160",
... | null |
bndjtz | The Great Arab Revolt | [
{
"answer": "I'll try to answer your question, sorry if it doesn't satisfy you.\n\nFirst, despite its name (and what was believed to be by Arab and Turkish nationalist historiography), there was no general \"Arab Revolt\" against the Ottoman Empire. Firstly, Husayn, the leader of the revolt, was not an Arab nat... | null |
4tfbu3 | A poor family living in the woods circa 1500; how did they find husbands and wives for their children? | [
{
"answer": "Hi, can you specify which region/culture you're asking about? That will greatly assist anyone contemplating answering here. Thanks! ",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "The average woods-living family would not have been quite as isolated as the family in that movie. Remember that they... | null |
285h83 | What is the largest molecule, and how is a single molecule defined (as opposed to an amount of a certain compound)? | [
{
"answer": "My guess (depending on your definition) would be some sort of plastic, seeing as how they basically form long chains from repeating units (*monomers* forming *polymers*). For plastics, this size can either be defined as the number of individual units (monomers) incorporated into the chain, or by th... | null |
dy1d3b | why does some movie theaters get to show a movie a day or two before it's actual release date? | [
{
"answer": "They're called advanced screenings, and they have several purposes.\n\nThey're leveraged for publicity and marketing for many shows. A private screening for film critics means getting reviews out early. Including a few VIPs and well-connected people can build hype. A few people describing how they ... | null |
6q0dhp | how are damages caused by disasters calculated and reported? how accurate should i expect them to be? | [
{
"answer": "Hi there molycow,\n\nJust as a disclaimer, I'm not an expert in disaster losses calculation.\nHowever, based on my experience from the hail storms that occurred in Sydney (it's happened many times, always every 2-3 years).\n\nUsually if you have insurance for your home or car, and your property is ... | null |
519pa8 | how does social science work? | [
{
"answer": "Social science is very much a soft science. It is a science, in that the Scientific Method is applied to try and find facts. However, there is an inherent, recognized difficulty in accurately measuring and testing in these fields.\n\nPhilosophy itself, while under the umbrella of social science, is... | null |
1k6mmy | How far has the crown gone through the royal family tree to find the closest living relative? | [
{
"answer": "Depends how you look at the War of the Roses. In terms of the most distantly related successor, Henry VII was the third cousin once removed of Richard III. However, this took place in the Wars of the Roses when there were often several competing claims, and Henry claimed that Richard was never the ... | null |
1p1rsx | Did the 'Cult of the Feathered Serpent' play a significant role in the end of Mayan civilization? | [
{
"answer": "No, not really.\n\nThe \"Feathered Serpent Cult\" is a name that archaeologists and iconographers have given to a pan-Mesoamerican explosion of imagery associated with Quetzalcoatl/Kukulkan dating to the Epiclassic period (around the time of the Classic Maya collapse). It appears to be a larger rel... | null |
36tsg4 | why, despite the various laws against it, is vigilantism wrong? | [
{
"answer": "Per the Constitution, accused criminals have a lot of rights. They need to be investigated by the police, tried by the DA, represented by a lawyer, found guilty by a jury, and sentenced by a judge. There's a lot of people involved in that, who should be making sure everyone else is doing their job ... | null |
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