id stringlengths 5 6 | input stringlengths 3 301 | output list | meta null |
|---|---|---|---|
1akcbu | what is this vault everyone is talking about? did i miss something? | [
{
"answer": "guy found a safe in his friends basement, that used to be owned by a drug gang, asked reddit for advice on how to find out what's inside.\n\nOP has yet to deliver.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Dude recently moved in a house previously owned by drug dealers. Finds safe/vault in b... | null |
145os8 | Why does it seem that revolutions break out in waves (eg. 2011, 1989, 1968, 1848)? | [
{
"answer": "Revolutions are usually the result of the break down of a given social or political consensus, which in turn is usually butressed by certain economic conditions. This consensus can break down for any number of reasons. However, these waves of revolution usually occur in a given region where polit... | null |
2e8vqg | what causes people (recently highlighted young muslims) to become radicalized? | [
{
"answer": "Well, to give you the ELI5 answer it would be education. There is a lack of education in the Middle East, which in turn affects the income of the average person. Eventually, when you're stuck in poverty and your government (Iraq), which is created by some other Western Democracy (The U.S.), does no... | null |
ks03m | How long would it take, in SUBJECTIVE time, travelling at just below the speed of light (say, 299,000 km/s) to reach Alpha Centauri? | [
{
"answer": "An arbitrarily small amount of time for any distance, depending on your quantification of \"just below\".\n",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "The equation when you're going near the speed of light is (4 years)*sqrt(1-v^2 /c^2 ). Plug v in and see.\n\n[Here's a graph](_URL_0_), which ... | null |
ndnm7 | What would happen if we put tons of radioactive waste on the Sun? | [
{
"answer": "nope. 'a drop in the ocean' wouldn't even do it justice.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "To put this in perspective, the sun is over 300,000 times more massive than the earth.\n\nIf we shot the *entire earth* into the sun, it wouldn't make a difference. ",
"provenance": null
... | null |
6gmv0w | Was there a Tsarist secret police? What was the transition from the Cheka to the KGB? How much continuity has there been throughout the history of Russian espionage services, in general? | [
{
"answer": "Significant state censorship and surveillance followed the failed 1825 uprising known as the Decembrist movement. Tsarist Russia, by the late nineteenth century, had a secret police force called the _Okhrana_ which was preceded by a brutal, infamous, secretive police unit called \"the Third Section... | null |
2nk3ap | what is the difference between the european union and the european commission and the european community? | [
{
"answer": "The European Union (EU) is a group of 25 countries that have signed various treaties giving them close political and economic ties.\n\nThe European Community is an older name for the same thing.\n\nThe European Commission is the executive governing body of the EU, it is responsible for proposing le... | null |
eveqy1 | when we look at stars in the sky that are light years away, are the stars there at the moment we look, or are we looking at a years-old after image? | [
{
"answer": "Simply, yes - we're seeing stars after the light has travelled all the way to us. Ten light years isn't that far (space-wise) so some of the stars we see have already died. And there's lots of stars that exist that we can't see yet, because the light hasn't reached us.",
"provenance": null
},... | null |
wfv4a | Is their a psychological or physical benefit to tennis players who "moan", "groan" or scream every time they hit the ball? | [
{
"answer": "Comming from a martial arts background where we scream at the end of some of our techniques, here's why we do it:\n\n1) Psychological - anything that distracts or disrupts the other person's concentration is a benefit to you. It doesn't take much when two people are evenly matched. If you're out... | null |
1m0f5s | Did women of the renaissance have a renaissance? | [
{
"answer": "In my very humble opinion, the question is ill posed.\n\nThe *renaissance* is not a renaissance of man. It refers to the rebirth of interest in concepts of Antiquity, and encompasses changes and new ideas in science, society and art. It is described as a radical change in the view of the world. Wom... | null |
f283op | how are structures able to be built such as oil rigs or bridges where the foundations are hundreds of meters deep in water? | [
{
"answer": "oops didn't realize oil rigs float",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "There are devices called caissons that they construct where the pilings need to go. They are hollow boxes/cylinders that extend from the bed to the surface and the water is pumped out, and workers go down and instal... | null |
5rfk0v | why is it called "latin" america when spain/portugal are the biggest european influences to the region? | [
{
"answer": "Spain, Portugal, France and Italy(and a few other minor countries) make up Latin Europe. The all speak romance languages which evolved from Latin after the fall of the Roman Empire. Since as you mentioned Spain and Portugal had the biggest influence on them they are subsequently known as the Latin ... | null |
2tye40 | why do people rub their faces when they are tired? | [
{
"answer": "Just a theory, but by rubbing your face, you are stimulating nerves (which in your face are closer to the epidermis). By stimulating nerves, you are sending signals to your brain, occupying it to delay sleep.\n\nEdit: if you meant *eyes* then you are opening up your tear ducts which have most likel... | null |
2whm3l | why don't television shows and movies show male genetalia as much as they do female genetalia? [nsfw] | [
{
"answer": "You don't see pussies, you don't see dick. \nYou'll see both topless, and the ass of both.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Men will tune in more if theres boobs involved. Women arent as quick to jump at the opportunity to see another pair of balls. ",
"provenance": null
},
... | null |
1i0x5z | Can the effect of semantic satiation occur in things other than words? | [
{
"answer": "Maybe this is too far off topic, but it's reminiscent of the way we think about cliches and colloquialisms. If you hear a phrase repeated to you throughout your lifetime, you may stop thinking consciously about the literal meaning of the words while still understanding the implication of the phrase... | null |
369unt | why don't women ever have "butt-chins"? | [
{
"answer": "Women do have chin clefts. I'm not sure why you think they don't. It happens.\n\n[Here is incredibly famous actress Sandra Bullock for one such example.](_URL_0_)\n\nYou can Google Image Search \"Woman Chin Cleft\" to see plenty more examples. It's usually not as prominent on women as it is on men,... | null |
67x0n1 | why did people use to pickle vegetables to preserve them? | [
{
"answer": "Because that was the only way they had to preserve vegetables. When growing your own vegetables, you have to pick the vegetables when they're ready, and vegetables go bad very quickly. If you have more vegetables than you can eat in a short time, you would want to preserve the rest until you could ... | null |
4kifbl | why can't helicopters deposit large oxygen bottles strategically on mt. everest or pick up people in trouble by harness? | [
{
"answer": "The air pressure at the top of Mt Everest (29,000ft) is only about 1/3 as much as at sea level so your helicopter can only generate 1/3 of the lift. In addition it's cold so you risk ice forming on the rotors, fuel and hydraulics freezing and finally the weather isn't always very nice.",
"prove... | null |
4b9c4i | gear mechanics? | [
{
"answer": "To ensure proper tooth mating, your \"diametral pitch\" on both gears has to match. Read [this](_URL_0_) for a technical brief if you want to know more.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "_URL_0_\n\nHere is a link to a gif that I think will answer a lot of your questions. For two gea... | null |
2ffrof | why can a baby scream endlessly for hours on end while an adult loses their voice after a short period? | [
{
"answer": "It is because babys use the full potential of their lungs - kind of like opera singers. That way they don't Stress their vocal cords that much. We as adults don't do that anymore, our breathing is much more shallow, so we have to use our muscles as a compensation. And that is exhausting and you los... | null |
14kpyx | What would happen to a small piece of neutron star matter if you were able to remove it from the star and place it alone in space? | [
{
"answer": "The star matter stays so dense due to the immense gravity. If you plucked a chunk out and placed it into space, I bet it would explode rather violently. I'm no scientist, just dig physics, so don't take my word for gospel...",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Considering that it is... | null |
57em5n | how does the lever, one of 6 simple machines, work? | [
{
"answer": "A first class lever trades range of motion for force, second and third class levers the opposite.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "38857",
"title": "Lever",
"section": "",
"start_paragraph_id": 1,
... | null |
2ydk2q | History teachers of reddit, I have a question... | [
{
"answer": "It depends very much on the class. Mostly I TA sections for large (500+) survey lectures (I'm scheduled to teach my second class as instructor this summer - yay!); I don't know if you have those in Europe. They usually fill a GER, and that means you get a spread of students: Freshmen who never ha... | null |
6p8x7m | why do some sound systems not hurt your ears at high volume levels? | [
{
"answer": "100% deaf here, and the loudest volumes possible do not hurt my ears but they hurt my eyes, and makes the hair inside my ears itchy.\n\nLike putting head next to speaker.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "763138",
"tit... | null |
5mub22 | What would William Shakespeare's (~1564 - 1616) education have entailed? | [
{
"answer": "Stand back, finally an r/askhistorians question I am qualified to answer!\n\nShakespeare is often depicted as uneducated, but we have to understand what that means in context. Many literary figures of the day were Oxford or Cambridge graduates or drop-outs, and so it is tempting to depict Shakesp... | null |
u0jun | Are the number of biological discoveries increasing or decreasing? | [
{
"answer": "Even if you only categorize biological discoveries as finding new species, there is so much in the ocean, and still some in jungles we have likely not discovered yet.\n\nHowever, to classify biological discoveries as finding new species would be like classifying physical discoveries as finding new ... | null |
11jcmv | What happens to the umbilical cord when twins, triplets, etc. are formed? | [
{
"answer": "It depends on what kind of twin it is. With fraternal (dizygotic) twins, each fertilized egg produces its own placenta (and umbilical cord), and thus each twin is completely independent of the other. With identical (monozygotic) twins, it depends on the stage at which the twins separated. If the... | null |
35gav4 | if regular sun exposure increases your chance of skin cancer, why do people in warmer states generally have lower rates of skin cancer? | [
{
"answer": "Those statistics don't take into account racial distributions in the statistics. People with increased skin pigmentation have lower rates of skin cancer.\n\nBasically, the whiter the state, the higher the incidence of skin cancer. ",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"proven... | null |
b65omj | What makes metals like iron melt when exposed to very high tenperature? | [
{
"answer": "Temperature is a representation of the kinetic energy within the molecules of a given material. In other words, temperature is a way for us to quantify how fast the molecules in an object are travelling - longitudinally (side to side), rotationally and vibrationally. \n\nWhen a metal like Iron abso... | null |
489dav | How was stone transported all the way from Egypt to Rome? | [
{
"answer": "The Parthenon is in Athens, not Rome. The Pantheon, built by Marcus Agrippa is in fact built of granite, although I don't know whether it's Egyptian stone or not, though I have no reason to doubt it (there were major granite quarries in Egypt that supplied the city). People in antiquity were perfec... | null |
ivkrm | What would be the best method for us to use if we wanted to send and receive information across vast interstellar distances? | [
{
"answer": " > radio wave laser\n\n= \"maser\", I think. \n\n\\- _URL_0_ - ",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "I don't know about the 'maser' wonderfuldog mentioned, so it's worth looking into that. I also don't know about this talk on Cosmos about the Arecibo Observatory. Last time I checked, th... | null |
14jq8u | What happened in America during the English Cromwellian period, and how much did the influence of parliamentarians influence the nascent "American" ideology?
| [
{
"answer": "A similar question was asked [here](_URL_0_) but it's not a 100% fit with your own question, so take what's written there in addition to any answer you might receive here.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "During the Cromwellian period we don't see a King James, James I was the king ... | null |
5t618t | Is 'staying up late' a new habit since the advent of the electric light, or have humans always been night owls? | [
{
"answer": "The evidence from medieval Latin Europe is mixed. While we can trace adaptations to the shorter winter days even at the institutional, official level, it's clear there was plenty going on in the dark.\n\nI'd like to direct your attention to the wonderful discussions in this thread by me, /u/mikedas... | null |
5p83nb | Did the Romans have a sign laguage for deaf people? | [
{
"answer": "You ask for Rome, I answer with Greek (but perhaps it will be a little bit helpful).\n\nSo the Greek word for deaf - κωφός (kophos) - also means mute and unintelligent. In an oral culture where literacy rates are low, hearing, speaking, and intelligence are tightly associated. There aren't very man... | null |
9w1fm5 | why do some analog watches contain quartz/rubies/other gems? | [
{
"answer": "Those jewels are used whenever you need a moving piece; as jewels are really hard, they present little or no wear over time.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Synthetic rubies are used to mate moving parts to prevent metal-on-metal contact and wear. The reduced friction created by t... | null |
6jh86b | If it's true that the brain alone uses 25-30% of our calorie intake? How do they even measure that? And do smarter people or people who think more actively in general burn more? | [
{
"answer": " > 25-30% of our total calorie intake for the brain seems like a lot\n\nThe typical estimate is that your brain uses about 300-400Kcal per day (typically around the upper end) which is about 18-20% of an average height man's daily calorie intake. Yet the brain is only about 2% of your body weight.... | null |
ljbt3 | Am I really looking at individual atoms here? | [
{
"answer": "Yes, it is an image reconstructed from [scanning tunnelling microscopy](_URL_0_).",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Hey OP, here is a picture of a single molecule: _URL_0_",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Guys, \"surface reconstruction\" is a technical term in surface... | null |
9n34p0 | Can historians help explain the truth behind African Americans being Israelites and Africans being Hamites? | [
{
"answer": "Africans being Hamites comes from an old Biblical tradition about the origins of the races. Basically, Noah had three sons (Shem, Ham, and Japheth) who went on to repopulate the world after the flood. Shem’s line went on to become the Asian peoples, Japheth’s became the Europeans, and Ham’s became ... | null |
31otju | Photographs from WWII almost always seem to show Soviet soldiers as not wearing helmets. Why? | [
{
"answer": "There was no strict rule of wearing helmets in Red Army (and in memoirs Soviet soldiers were amused by US soldiers wearing helmets at all times).\nIn early years of war lot's Soviet soldiers didn't want to wear helmets since they're were cumbersome, heavy and sometimes it was considered an 'unmanly... | null |
axp7mc | Are Bound Muons More Stable? | [
{
"answer": "No.\n\nThe binding energy of ~3 keV doesn't matter for the muon which releases 105 MeV in the decay. Even heavier nuclei won't affect its lifetime much. You can get \"muon capture\" as additional process, however, similar to electron capture.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
... | null |
8msb1t | Is the earth a perfect sphere? How/why did it become this form? | [
{
"answer": "The Earth is approximately an oblate spheroid due to its rotation. Even if the Earth were not rotating, it would only approximate a sphere due to its non-perfect surface. The tidal effects caused by the moon and sun also deforms the shape of the Earth.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer"... | null |
32wa96 | how does a python digest an alligator? | [
{
"answer": "Pythons swallow all of their food whole. Large pythons often over estimate their ability eat something. \n\n_URL_0_\n",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "621",
"title": "Amphibian",
"section": "Section::::Anatomy... | null |
6pb2ar | why is it that spicy tastes considerably amplify when a person chokes on it and it gets into the throat, compared to swallowing normally? | [
{
"answer": "Your mouth is literally made to eat and experience taste, it's specially equipped to eat stuff!\n\nYour throat is made to transport all the goop you just chewed up into your stomach and the rest of your body, after your teeth break down the major chunks and your saliva gets in there and breaks it d... | null |
9h0va7 | if our eyes have a large field of view why cameras with wide field lens distort images spherically and our eyes don’t? | [
{
"answer": "Being that a camera shows that distortion is a very good indication that there is in fact a distortion with the field of view of our own eyes, the reason why you don't perceive the distortion from your eyes, whether or not it's there, is because your brain regularly makes up for distortions and mak... | null |
279sgm | why do the numbers on dice have the orientation that they have? | [
{
"answer": "I don't know about larger sided dice, but the 6 sided dice is arranged such that the front and back of every orientation adds up to 7. If this is true with 20 sided dice, that would be part of the explanation. Otherwise, it is just a fluke with the 6 sided version.",
"provenance": null
},
{... | null |
4sa4bq | Suicide in the trenches. I have never heard of any discussion about this topic, but it had to occur. What information do we have about it? | [
{
"answer": "Follow up question:\n\nWhat was the punishment (if any) if a soldier was unsuccessful in his suicide attempt? ",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "As a clarification on your question. How would you distinguish between a fatality and a suicide, when the simplest form of suicide would b... | null |
dg4lf8 | why does smoking kill slower than smoke inhalation? | [
{
"answer": "You're not totally absent of oxygen when smoking. If you're inside a burning room, the oxygen is helping to keep the fire going and is being replaced by smoke.\n\nEdit: I should add that firefighters are increasingly looking to test their gear to see if they've been exposed to anything harmful. I k... | null |
2uhbcu | why are china and korea still litigating japan's ww2 behavior in the press, while the western ww2 countries have moved on? | [
{
"answer": "Well Greece is just this past week bringing up Nazi looting and destruction to try to force Germany to restructure some of their debts, so I would say your premise that it is dead in Europe is false. ",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Because Japan has been horribly negligent regardi... | null |
2yr2gf | when you hear about pharmaceutical companies lobbying congress, what are they actually doing? | [
{
"answer": "They're trying to prevent laws that might hurt them from being passed. This includes, but is not limited to, laws regarding the patents of medicines that are nearly identical to one that is public domain, regulation of the \"disease mongering\" ads where they take normal human behaviour and call it... | null |
3ntujw | The Chinese have historically always controlled large areas of land. The Korean peninsula is comparatively very small. Why have the Chinese never occupied the Korean Peninsula? | [
{
"answer": "I think it's worth pointing out that under the command of Ögedei, the Mongols did conquer the Korean peninsula, and the Mongols are a recognised Chinese dynasty (the Yuan dynasty), so you could almost make the case that the Chinese *did* conquer Korea. Unless you mean specifically the Han Chinese d... | null |
9v6gmv | In WWII European theatre and Pacific theatre, how would combatants on both sides dispose of slain enemies? | [
{
"answer": "In both the European and Pacific Theaters, the primary U.S. Army unit tasked with the location, transportation, identification, and burial of friendly and enemy dead was the Quartermaster Graves Registration Company. Mass graves registration operations in the interwar period remained basically conf... | null |
1z37er | why do webpages seem to lose all aesthetic features on a bad internet connection? | [
{
"answer": "The page's style is usually located in a separate file - the CSS file. This is done on purpose, in order to separate the page's contents from its appearance.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "36802858",
"title": "Ticke... | null |
4dlpfi | how does china justify censorship to its citizens? | [
{
"answer": "They are doing it to protect their people from the influence of the west. That influence corrupts and taints the cultural and familial heritage of the Chinese people. Corrupts their families and youth, so to protect their people from those tainted values they block the acces to then. The government... | null |
b3pscp | what are the main technologic advancements that make it possible to store so much more data in increasingly smaller circuits? | [
{
"answer": "Our ability to make tiny transistors which is largely driven by the machines that build them. I wouldn't say there is on specific thing that allows it, chip companies put a lot of effort into developing the machines that make the chips, and it's many advancements that come together to make what it ... | null |
t6npg | Does Heartbeats per minute have anything to do with the length of a life? | [
{
"answer": "Check this article out: [\"1 Billion heartbeats\"](_URL_0_)\n\nI think it is the [heartbeat hypothesis](_URL_1_) that you are thinking of",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Thanks for the answers :D",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "So I spend my day as a cardiac electr... | null |
3m1v8v | is there any real danger of muslims implementing sharia law in western societies? | [
{
"answer": "No, there isn't. \n\n* The vast, vast, vast majority of Muslims living in the West have no intention or reason for implementing the Sharia in any Western country. \n\n* The few extremists who do have no chance of doing so. How would they?\n\n* Do not forget that Muslims are a very heterogeneous gro... | null |
bdhxfq | Are there contemporary accounts of how early modern bayonet versus sword encounters played out? | [
{
"answer": "This would be modern, rather than early modern, but *D.A. Kinsley's \"Swordsmen of the British Empire\"* has a 30 page chapter comprised of contemporary accounts of Bayonet vs Sword combat in Indian and other colonial wars. The format of this book is just the first hand anecdotes rather than analy... | null |
43n6tg | why does sleep paralysis usually only occur when sleeping on one's back? does it have to do with blood flow or the inner ear? | [
{
"answer": "I've definitely gotten it before in different positions, but I can tell for sure my position has a lot to do with it.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "I don't know if there is enough data to say. All I know is that when I do get sleep paralysis it is usually when I'm laying on my ba... | null |
2krxcg | why was /r/creepshots not ok (perv pics taken in public places), while it is ok to have entire subs dedicated to pictures of freshly murdered woman, or bloody babies recently aborted? | [
{
"answer": "This post is not asking for a layman-friendly explanation to something complicated or technical, so it doesn't belong here and it's been removed. Entirely subjective questions generally belong in /r/askreddit.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
... | null |
c51h7a | Marco Polo is quoted to have said on his deathbed, "I did not tell half of what I saw, for I knew I would not be believed." What things may he not have described to the public and why? | [
{
"answer": "Jacopo da Acqui's report of Marco Polo's last testament should be put in its proper context. His family members were trying to get him to repent and disown all the lies he'd written, to which Polo sneered that he had not told even *half* of what he'd seen.\n\nAssuming the anecdote is true (or even ... | null |
334jur | was there any efficacy to leaches or bleeding as a medical treatment? if not why was the practice so well accepted? | [
{
"answer": "The practice of blood-letting was based on the idea that all medical problems are due to an imbalance in the four humors, blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phelgm. If you were sick, doctors would try to fix you by bringing the humors in balance, and blood-letting was a way of doing this.\n\nNow ... | null |
2mw0r0 | Why was it so important for us to take all the beaches involved in Operation Overlord. | [
{
"answer": "The securing of the beaches also meant the denial of causeways leading *to* the beaches. An invasion on a broad front had to be accomplished fully to prevent traffic jams (which occurred anyways as resistance inland was fierce) and to deny the Germans a salient from which to hit the flanks of a bea... | null |
9bqf4h | how does the supreme court's decision affect laws nation wide? | [
{
"answer": "It sets a legal precedent.\n\nThe Supreme Court is the final court in the US. When they make a decision, that decision is essentially final, and the only people who can overturn that decision is the Supreme Court, or Congress could change the laws the decision was based on.\n\nAfter they make a dec... | null |
4q53da | How many African countries aside from Egypt have a legitimate basis for national unity that goes further back than their colonial institutions? | [
{
"answer": "I believe the question being asked is if there are any African nations that owe their shape and/or territory to native institutions (cultural or legal), or if they owe it to colonial politicking and treaties.\n\nI don't think Egypt is too proper an example. Its territory had been reduced and cultur... | null |
6zi0ph | how is it that we can take our pulse and not completely block out veins/arteries when we do so? | [
{
"answer": "You may temporarily reduce blood flow when you do this, but the body isn't *so* delicate that this would hurt you.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Nurse here. It does reduce blood flow but the blood pressure does push it to stretch on the side of the artery without pressure. But yo... | null |
1hqeev | sun tzu - why exactly was he so great? | [
{
"answer": "Sun Tzu's philosophy is a widely applicable approach to any sort of battle, from war to competing business to schoolyard cliques. It forms a very good foundation of techniques to prepare and instigate a \"battle\" to ensure that all your weaknesses are covered and the target's are exploited. As wel... | null |
5pfld0 | what does chemo do to your body? | [
{
"answer": "Chemo basically kills all fast growing cells. It normally causes some kind of DNA damage that will kill cells. This is more harmful to cells that are quickly dividing because they don't have time to repair the damage. The cancer cells are growing fast so it can hopefully kill all the cancer cells, ... | null |
3wsfhe | How much did medieval and renaissance society know about the Ancient World? | [
{
"answer": "This question is a difficult one to respond to, since it's both difficult to quantify, and of course the early Middle Ages were right after the Classical era, so it was, essentially, yesterday to them. By the time you get to the Early Modern period, Shakespeare is still writing plays about classica... | null |
2zsztn | How is it that DNA is like a computer even though it seems nothing like a computer? | [
{
"answer": "The DNA encodes a series of commands using a four-letter code. This code then has commands written into it for starting and stopping replication into RNA. Within the part that can be copied into RNA are three-letter instructions to direct ribosomes to make proteins. In this way, there is essenti... | null |
3ps3z7 | Did any Roman emperors attempt to have themselves elected to the papacy? | [
{
"answer": "Essentially no. The position of pope as we recognise it now didn't really exist, and no emperor ever attempted to claim the position of the time we now call \"pope\". Those in the time period that we now call \"pope\" would have been seen at the time as simply the bishop of Rome. While this was cer... | null |
elwbal | can ocean water be used to extinguish large scale forest fires? | [
{
"answer": "Ocean water is full of salt.\n\nSalt interferes with plant growth.\n\nScooping up a bunch of ocean water and dumping it on vegetation might help put out a fire, if you ignore the logistics needed to transport ocean water like that, but you'd be screwing up the long-term health of the place.",
"... | null |
cw5huq | why does it feel like hitting concrete when you jump into a body of water from 50 feet or higher? | [
{
"answer": "Liquids have viscosity that differ. The thicker a viscosity the more it can mimic (for lack of a better word) the properties of a solid. Water has a relatively low viscosity compared to oil, but when you get to a certain velocity, that viscosity is enough to injure.",
"provenance": null
},
... | null |
egxdl6 | the science behind having naturally really dry skin | [
{
"answer": "Many people wash their skin too much. Soaps strip the skin of the naturally occurring oils that protect skin and keep moisture in.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "1887793",
"title": "Diprobase",
"section": "S... | null |
49kn5x | Why is the eastern United States so different in climate compared to to the western United States? | [
{
"answer": "One of the reasons is that the ocean water by California is much colder than the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean (currents push the water from near Alaska all way down to California). Colder water evaporates less and cools the air. Cooler air can hold less moisture as well. \n\nAlso, mountains an... | null |
9tuf26 | What was Adam Smith denouncing with his plea for ‘laissez-faire’? | [
{
"answer": "I can't say much about all the English guilds in the 18th c. But I can say something about state-granted monopolies, or monopoly patents.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nThe origin of such things seems to have been a recognition that some industries were useful and needed to be encouraged. If some French glass-... | null |
2i0qfg | when i have a tube filled with marbles and push in on one end, another pops out instantly. what if the tube was a mile? would it still be as quick? | [
{
"answer": "The pressure wave will be transmitted from marble to marble at the speed of sound in marble.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": " > What if the tube was a mile? Would it still be as quick?\n\nNope. There is the limit to the speed that a physical force can propagate through a medium. ... | null |
1rc5ir | why are canadian and american accents almost indistinguishable, even to residents of either country? why are the two countries so similar? | [
{
"answer": "I wouldn't say that's necessarily true. I would say a lot of accents are distinguishable, especially in the east. ",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Canadian and American accents both vary wildly. It's pretty easy to distinguish.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Canad... | null |
thhu7 | pink lemonade. if it's not strawberry or raspberry, then what is the pink? | [
{
"answer": "There is a pink lemon, but it's not used.\n\nPink lemonade is just normal lemonade colored pink. It's dyed using artificial dye, raspberries, cherries, red grapefruit, grapes, cranberries, strawberries, grenadine, or, as in the origin story, cinnamon candy. The flavor may or may not be different.",... | null |
3b9o3q | why doesn't wifi quality correlate with wifi range? | [
{
"answer": "Excellent question, I used to work on corporate and hospitality systems (think like the Marriott or Sheraton wifi) and this I had to learn fast.\n\nSo a wireless signal transmits also called broadcasts a lot of information in the signal. Some of your signal is the data (we call it throughout), some... | null |
7yg3ar | synthetic meat | [
{
"answer": "No one has figured out how to make it cheap enough yet. Consider the price of ground beef, if you have a multimillion dollar lab making lab-grown beef then you're going to need to make millions of pounds to have it pay for itself.\n\nThere are a bunch of companies work on it, but none of their pro... | null |
b99m98 | what is a white dwarf star made out of? | [
{
"answer": "To an extent it depends on the star that died. A White dwarf is essentially the exposed inerds of a sunlike star once the outer atmosphere has been cast off and nuclear fusion has ceased. What it's made of depends on it's mass and what it was last fusing before the reaction ceased.\n\nStars begin a... | null |
3w9vjk | What is the evolutionary reason to losing all hair on our faces besides eyebrows and, for men, beards? | [
{
"answer": "We obviously lost quite a bit of hair if we compare humans and our cousins the chimapanzees, though maybe not as much on [the face](_URL_2_). Humans probably lost our hair [roughly 1.2 million years ago](_URL_0_). I don't know of one dominant theory of why there was hair loss in general, but it cou... | null |
13za0r | what is redshirting in ncaa sports? | [
{
"answer": "NCAA rules say that a player can only play for 4 years. They don't want students essentially becoming professional college sports players. The primary reason they're in college is supposed to be to get a degree.\n\nBut, the team might not want a player to play in their first year. They may want a p... | null |
2l4ayc | Did early humans (cavemen) have access to or eat rice, sugarcane, potatoes, etc.? | [
{
"answer": "Hunter-gatherers ate the same plants we do today, but in their wild forms. Most plants we eat today, including rice, sugarcane and potatoes, are domesticated versions. These were only domesticated after the advent of agriculture, so they were not available to hunter-gatherers before agriculture, bu... | null |
7qqt3f | how is phobias treated? | [
{
"answer": "Education and Exposure mostly, depending on severity, you can generally treat phobias first by educating yourself on the actual risk and facts of the phobia, then exposing yourself to it. This doesn't mean if you're afraid of spiders you need to go handle a live spider, but it does mean approaching... | null |
2yaoci | microfiber cloths. they seem to be recommended to clean everything? what are they and why are they so amazing? | [
{
"answer": "Better question: why do we even have OTHER options?",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "1 they are cloths with a far higher surface area than more common ones\n\n2 the surface area means holding more water and particles, so you can clean more easily. All are synthetic, and high qualit... | null |
2sgczp | Is the lava from different volcanos around the world made out of the same material, or do different volcanos have diffetent lava composition? | [
{
"answer": "There are indeed several different types. Lava is classified in various ways, SiO2 content increases from Komatiite (ultra low), to basalt, andesite, dacite and rhyolite (high) ([example of SiO2-based classification](_URL_0_)).\n\nThere are also more subtle geochemical signatures recognized by trac... | null |
4j4x9h | What was the Stalin era Soviet leadership's stance on Tsar era or before Russian military heroes and leaders like Nevsky, Suvorov and Bagration? | [
{
"answer": "The 1930s witnessed a return of sorts by the Soviet state towards its Great Russian past. Both during the Revolution and the 1920s, the state had looked at the historical past of tsardom and its various forms of commemoration of it with a rather jaundiced eye. The Soviet government of the 1920s dev... | null |
1w7890 | How were the cracks and streaks on Europa formed? | [
{
"answer": "The current theory is the moon is being flexed by Jupiter's gravitational tides, and the ice crust that floats over a liquid sea continually heaves and buckles under that stress. Water then percolates up through the cracks and leaves streaks of material behind on the surface of the ice, within thos... | null |
1juqs4 | why do tv shows and movies sometimes have to change the names/logos on items for copyright reasons? wouldn't it just be free advertisement for the company/product? | [
{
"answer": "There are a number of reasons for this.\n\nFirstly, it limits liability for trademark violations. If, for whatever reason, the company who has their products featured on a given show doesn't like the way in which the products are presented (or doesn't want to be associated with that particular show... | null |
8uxqn1 | What's the difference between an ionised hydrogen atom and a proton? | [
{
"answer": "A ^(1)H^(+) atom is exactly the same thing as a proton.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "They are synonymous, sometimes. \n\nA proton is a subatomic particle that has a charge of +1e (1 positive elementary charge) which is equal to about 1.602*10^-19 Coulombs. That is an extremely ... | null |
3m1lnu | how did disney delay mickey mouse from being in public domain? | [
{
"answer": "Money. They gave so much money to the law makers that they actually made a Mickey mouse law. ",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Every time the copyright for Mickey Mouse is about to expire a bill goes into law stating that the length of time a copyright lasts is longer than the last ... | null |
3qyrw5 | union between countries (denmark-norway, austria-hungary etc) | [
{
"answer": "In the case of Denmark-Norway the king of Norway (Håkon Magnusson) married one of the daughters of the Danish king (Margrethe). They had a son, Olav, who was hair to the Norwegian throne. All of Margrethe's siblings died, and her son, Olav, now was chosen as hair to Denmark to. Olavs grandfather, V... | null |
cv8ziu | what's the"resolution" of film photography? | [
{
"answer": "There isn’t a specific “resolution.” It depends on two main physical characteristics of the film itself - the size of the film and the speed of the film - as well as the way that film is exposed.\n\nThe first physical aspect is what format of film you’re using - there’s small, like a standard 35mm ... | null |
2putaa | how computer languages work in different (spoken) languages. if i wanted a computer to communicate with a computer in russia, would i have to speak russian, or is there some international standard? | [
{
"answer": "Pretty much every programming language is in English, if that's what you're asking. People who can't speak English well have a very hard time learning to code, since it's harder to remember what (for example) an \"if/else\" command's name is if you don't know what if and else mean.",
"provenanc... | null |
cjg8kc | Regression after the Fall of the Western Roman Empire | [
{
"answer": "Britain and Italy were two special cases of regression, it's not possible to guesstimate how things would have continued to evolve if the Roman Empire hadn't withdrawn from the West and how that compares to what happened in real life, but it's worth noting that each region was different.\n\nFrance,... | null |
15dvle | what was going on in libya when gaddafi was in power and why was he killed. | [
{
"answer": "Gaddafi was about to introduce a new currency, the gold Dinar, made from real gold for the african countries. He would have then sold the petrol from libya for gold only, wich the usa cannot afford. So the usa went in to abolish the gold dinar",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
... | null |
2whflw | why are recorders still taught in music classes in school if they all sound so terrible? | [
{
"answer": "Because they are really cheap instruments you can't make everyone buy a $1000 violin. ",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "They are cheap and easier to play with tiny hands.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "They're cheap, small, simple, don't require any real maintenan... | null |
9zr9oj | Why did Battleship design in the Pre-And-During WW2 Era seems to settle on the A-B X turret arrangement? | [
{
"answer": "Balanced ship designs tended to have 8-9 guns for complex reasons linked to the interaction of armament weight vs armor weight to stop the same caliber of shells. A smaller number of guns makes it hard to fire rapid salvos, required to spot your fall of shot and thus shoot accurately against moving... | null |
aagyft | what exactly does "airplane mode" do and how does it keep my phone from disrupting airplane functions? | [
{
"answer": "It disables the cellular transceiver in your phone. It just turns off the part of your phone that sends and receives data from cell towers. The idea is that you will not be creating electromagnetic interference that could potentially interact with the aircraft's instrumentation. The reality is that... | null |
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