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bqp32b
|
What was Einstein’s meaning of time when he says time is only an illusion.
|
Imagine you are watching a movie. You take a pause in the middle of the movie. You have the option of rewinding and re-watching something that happened earlier, or you can skip ahead and watch the ending. Humans like to imagine time as being similar to a river, or a roll of film. We imagine things that happened in the past as if they still exist. The 'past' is a place we could travel to if we could only get the DeLorean to 88 miles per hour.
This is not how the universe really works. There is no past. There is no future. Those are not places that exist. There is only the present. Even after things change, it is still the present. Even after many years, when we are all old and gray, we are still in the present, although the arrangement of things has changed around a bit.
One of the big discoveries to come out of Einstein's work is that time is relative. We don't experience it the same way, and a person near a large gravitational object or travelling at near light-speed will experience time very differently.
So let's say we took a trip to the supermassive black hole in 'Interstellar,' where time moved slower. We return to Earth and find 20 years have passed. Does that mean we somehow skipped into the future? No. We were always living in the present and it was the same present as everyone else. It's just that our rate of change was different so our *perception* of time is skewed.
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31bd0f04-b79d-4a3a-8b23-6bd9141d46d0
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bqpqab
|
Why do huge marine animals, such as Whale Sharks and Blue Whales, only eats small organisms like planktons and krills despite their enormous size?
|
This is sort of like asking why elephants and giraffes only eat leaves if they are so big. It’s because leaves (and krill) are abundant and they just didn’t evolve to fill the niche of high-up predator. Contrary to the case of sharks and bears and lions etc in which part of the reason those animals are large is to give them a predatory advantage over their prey, I think whales are large partly because it helps them avoid high up predators like sharks, and also because having an abundant food source such as krill or phytoplankton means there’s lots for you to eat.
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b4fb869e-9b3a-4001-8f8b-a372929270d3
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bqq603
|
Why are the planets in our solar system orbiting in the same plane?
|
I'll try to explain this like you're five, but I think you'll need a couple of background concepts first. This will probably work better if I explain this like you're an unusually smart seven year old.
First thing: vectors. If you're moving diagonally at a certain speed, your movement could be described as a combination of two separate directions and speeds. Meaning if your destination is 100 miles northwest of your current location, you could get to the same destination by traveling north for a while and traveling west for a while until you're in the right place, or you could go straight there. This applies to a lot of things.
Next thing: gravity. Gravity works on everything with mass. It causes an attraction between every pair of particles (with mass) in the entire universe. The more particles, the more force. The closer together the particles are, the more force.
Now we combine the two things: Our solar system has a lot of gravity keeping planets going around the sun. There are two components to this force: parallel or perpendicular to the ecliptic plane. Any deviation has to work against the combined gravitational force of the entire solar system, and there is much less deviation, on average, perpendicular to the plane than parallel. This helps to shorten the perpendicular component of the gravitational force vector every time there's a deviation. Over billions of years, that kind of gets smoothed out.
Fun fact: The existence of some outer planets in the solar system was predicted well before they were observed directly by tracking the orbits of known planets. This is one of the factors that allows for this to happen.
|
3947443d-3ad2-423d-8553-aafa18c0b656
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bqq93b
|
How did monogamy become so normalized across almost all cultures and religions?
|
Assume a society of perfect freedom to select your partners. Such a society is inevitably polygamous. Women choose to mate only with high status men and high status men choose to mate with as many women as they can.
However, this is often disastrous for societies.
For men who aren't in the high status class, this means they have virtually no access to romantic partners. These men tend to become what is termed 'surplus males'. This isn't just bad for the men who are 'surplus' - but often devastating for society because surplus males have a tendency to turn violent and otherwise act in socially disruptive ways. One of the consequences of this is that polygamous societies tend to be violent and warlike.
On the other hand, women aren't very pleased either. While women would prefer to mate with high status men, they'd prefer to *exclusively* mate with high status men. That is, they don't want to share the resources of that high status male with other women. In a polygamous society, women have virtually no value to high status men and are treated as disposable objects. In practice, this means that women exert limited social, political and economic power in a polygamous society.
Note that these polygamous effects can be observed even in nominally monogamous societies. The U.S. is technically 'monogamous'. But has polygamous characteristics. What actually occurs is that high status men may only be married to one woman at a time, but they'll generally go through multiple wives - always selecting a high value (young, beautiful) wife to replace a low value (older, fading) wife. At the same time, they'll also have (young, beautiful) women on the side as mistresses.
Given the inherent instability of polygamous societies, they tend to persist for shorter times than monogamous ones - and that means, over time, the majority of societies will be monogamous.
|
bbda784e-c193-4282-8d6b-6c3a90e4196d
|
bqqjhw
|
why do computers use RGB rather than RYB to make all the colors?
|
Because red, yellow, and blue aren't the primary colours of light.
Our eyes detect basically three wavelengths of light: red, green (slightly more on the yellow side of green, but still green), and blue. All the light that we can see is caused by the three types of cells responding to those three colours of light. If the light is bright yellow, then both the red and the green detecting cells will react, since it's close enough to their detection that they activate but don't activate as strongly as if it was red light or green light.
Red (actually, magenta), yellow, and blue (actually cyan) are the primary *pigment* colours, because each absorbs a single colour of those three, so that mixing them produces a new colour. For example, magenta light absorbs green light but reflects red and blue light. Meanwhile, yellow absorbs blue light and reflects red and green light. If you mix yellow pigment and magenta pigment together, you end up with something that absorbs both blue and green light, which means it only reflects red light, so it appears red.
|
2c7acc21-711f-4455-9021-ab48a3d54cd0
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bqqx6x
|
This passage on why the 2008 Recession happened
|
The household equilibrium condition he's discussing relates to the tradeoff between labor and leisure. It essentially says that in a perfect, frictionless world people work up until the point that the (marginal) value of what they could buy with some additional labor is equal to the (marginal) value of additional leisure time. If you were at this point and started working more, you could buy some stuff, but you wouldn't enjoy that stuff as much as just having more non-work time. Conversely, if you were at that point and worked less, you would get more non-work time, but it wouldn't have as much value to you as the stuff you gave up due to having a lower income.
Ohanian is arguing this condition wasn't satisfied in 2008. Because he's talking about a recession, I'd guess his claim is that people were working less than they wanted to. At first this doesn't seem like much of a shocker (basically every recession is characterized by higher-than-usual unemployment), but the crux of his argument about why 2008 is different is that there doesn't seem to have been any decrease in how productive people would be if they were to work. You could imagine some other recession where every computer permanently breaks and cannot be replaced. This would have a huge negative effect on the economy and employment, primarily because many workers would become far less productive without computers. However, in 2008 people stayed about as productive as they had always been, but there were still substantial job cuts and unemployment.
There's no explanation for this suggested in the passage (aside from "labour market channels"), but if I had to find one, I'd start hunting in the credit crunch brought on by the financial disaster. Firms had less borrowing power during that time. This reduced their ability to plan for the future, making them more hesitant to commit to employment relationships that in other times would be obviously good ideas.
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52e37ef4-c139-425a-b9aa-6d850fe38a18
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bqr01c
|
If exercising makes your heart stronger why are amphetamines and anxiety bad for your hear?
|
Increasing you heart rate is like a car going faster: through exercise is like using the gas pedal normally to control the acceleration of the car; amphetamines, anxiety, drugs like cocaine is like your car going off a cliff to go faster. You’re going faster, but you’re probably going to die in the end.
Cheers.
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5ce8d797-f1be-4d5a-9c2b-6c92457810c6
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bqr6xa
|
What is an ion exactly? And what is ionization?
|
Atoms without electrons does not, naturally, exist. But an ion can be an atom that has lost electrons (cation) or has gained electrons (anion).
An ionized atom is an atom that has gained or lost electrons, all that matters is that the charge has changed.
|
2ea6abba-4874-4569-bf5c-ec6ba0c460aa
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bqr8ak
|
What exactly is wrong with Jordan Peterson?
|
He's the boogyman?
Actually, Mr. Peterson has a systemic inflammitory condition, possibly a type of hereditary rheumatoid arthritis that seems to become active when he eats most normal foods. He has claimed that his symptoms go into remission if he maintains a diet of only water, beef and salt. And the last I heard he had been maintaining this carnivore diet without any particular side effects for quite a while now.
|
3a0f1cb3-84f4-4fb0-b14b-0d084fe5d025
|
bqriei
|
How come dry skin doesn't absorb moisture from showers and continually stays dry, but lotion helps?
|
Your skin can soak up water, but it will evaporate rather quickly.
In contrast, oil doesn't evaporate (much). So when you oil up your skin, it stays oiled.
|
b58aaf1f-1151-4e12-b269-6292b6a752de
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bqrl3b
|
How do medically induced COMA's work and what makes them safe?
|
A combination of sedatives and (sometimes) paralytics. We do it here in the ICU all the time. Often it’s done to stop people from bucking the ventilator, but also to reduce metabolic demand. People heal better when they’re breathing properly and all available energy is being devoted to the healing processes needed based on their individual case.
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6fd4c6b5-e7c6-4813-82f6-2fa25ddb3cd9
|
bqrp45
|
Why are Internet and phone companies so closely related? How has their relationship changed over the decades?
|
Over the last 30 years the internet has evolved from using the phone line system to connect homes (dialup), to being offered with cable TV services, to being offered exclusively over cable or fiber-optic. In the same span of time the phone system has gone from connecting every home with dedicated phone lines, to competing with cable services and finally being usurped by cable services.
In order for the internet to function, there has to be infrastructure to support it. When the internet was in it’s infancy in the 90’s, using the phone line infrastructure that was already in place made sense. However, the phone line system was never designed to transmit data. Internet modems were developed as a “hack” to convert audio signals to digital signals and vice-versa. As the capacity and capability of the internet grew, the two copper wires designed solely for transmitting one phone call at a time became inadequate and another solution was needed.
Cable television providers in the late 90’s realized their infrastructure was far more suitable to provide internet service, despite being designed to transmit video. Cable television has the ability to provide multiple television channels through a single cable, so providing internet service as an additional “channel” was possible with the addition of a cable modem, which could interpret the signal on the internet “channel” as data understandable to a computer.
Starting in the mid-2000’s cable television providers began converting their analog cable television systems to digital systems to pack more channels and to provide faster internet service. Around the same time, VoIP (Voice Over IP) services began to crop-up. VoIP services allow audio to be sent over the internet as a digital signal instead of an analog signal on traditional phone line. This spelled the end for traditional phone services for a few reasons. 1) A VoIP service provider does not have to contend with the cost of maintaining phone lines. Their service works as long as you have internet access. 2) VoIP has the ability to transmit several calls simultaneously on the same line. Besides the reduced audio quality (which would be quickly rectified with increasing internet speeds) VoIP could be offered for much cheaper than a traditional phone line. Eventually, cable television providers realized they could develop VoIP software and offer it as a service alongside their cable television and internet packages.
With the ability to develop and offer phone service cheaper and bundle it with cable television and/or internet services, dedicated phone lines have become more and more obsolete over the last 10 years. Over the last 20 years, cable service providers have acquired traditional phone systems through buy-outs and mergers. Many lines have been entirely replaced with cable services, but much of the traditional phone system is still maintained in places where cable service are not yet developed.
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b2c0a292-2a96-498e-9944-a4ce163ae06e
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bqrwvh
|
What is happening in our body when we faint?
|
Do you want cause or effect?
Cause: bump to the head or not enough oxygen to brain. A bump to the head would be a defence mechanism from the sudden jostling of the brain to protect it. I think the same thing goes from a shock, stress, fear, pain... I don’t know for sure. Not enough oxygen getting to the brain is the reason why you get light headed and/or black out. Drops in blood pressure too.
Effect: your body goes vertical so the heart has an easier time pumping blood to the brain.
Cheers.
|
503cb3f7-785a-4647-8b0d-7fadcac12dba
|
bqrzyn
|
Why doesn’t a fly hit the back of the car if it’s flying in it?
|
When riding on a motorcycle for example, it isn't actually the moving forward part that pushes you backwards when moving at a constant speed. It is the air resistance pushing you backwards the same way you are pushing the air out of your way. In a car, this doesn't happen, as air resistance does not have to be accounted for while inside the car. It still affects the car, but not the driver or passengers as they are protected inside of the car. As you might expect, you don't experience air resistance or wind while inside a car, and neither does a fly. The air inside the car is moving with the car, and a fly will as such move with the air inside the car.
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eb61b1e0-94a9-474f-96aa-3369d0d4a10c
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bqscvb
|
What consequences will Huawei Users have now that Google had to revoke their android License?
|
"Existing Huawei smartphone users will be able to update apps and push through security fixes, as well as update Google Play services.
But when Google launches the next version of Android later this year, it may not be available on Huawei devices.
Future Huawei devices may no longer have apps such as YouTube and Maps.
Huawei can still use the version of the Android operating system available through an open source licence."
Explanation from bbc news
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cdb78dd8-701b-4219-8afd-ae0d1e64b1a4
|
bqsk3s
|
Why do “opposites attract” (opposite people attract)?
|
They don't. Studies have shown no real statistical evidence that opposites attract, contrarily similar people tend to have longer, more stable relationships. It is mostly a much repeated myth.
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3f7963ae-c7ec-44bc-ac96-c0d5cf4b2172
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bqt4cv
|
Why does toothpaste and mouthwash give that intense cold and sometimes spicy feeling in your mouth, when it isn’t actually cold or spicy?
|
The neurons that are sensitive to cold are also triggered by the presence of the flavour compound menthol.
So a drop of menthol mouthwash on your tongue sends basically the same message to your brain as a drop of cold water would.
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e9230328-afb0-40ba-9b7c-54d57da7ea36
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bqt8h4
|
What caused Adolf Hitler to hate Jewish people so much? What were his specific problems with them?
|
Anti-semitism had always been ubiquitous in Germany, and was particularly rampant at the beginning of the 20th century.
Ian Kershaw, renowned historian, writes in his defining Hitler Biography:
> “Not least, in the search for scapegoats, Jews increasingly became the focus of intensified hatred and aggression from the middle of the [first world] war onwards. The sentiments had all been heard before. What was new was the extent to which radical antisemitism was now being propagated, and the degree to which it was evidently falling on fertile ground. Like every other sector of society, Jews had been carried away by ‘the spirit of 1914’ – at last, they thought, at one with their fellow Germans. By 1916 such presumed unity had been destroyed for ever. A new wave of vicious, increasingly radical völkisch antisemitism was blatantly fostered by the annexationist lobby, and found more ready support than at any time before the war. Jews were now attacked as racially inferior immigrants flooding Germany, as war profiteers thriving on the nation’s suffering, and as shirkers avoiding service at the front. That the numbers of Ostjuden entering Germany were insignificant, that four or five times more non-Jews than Jews were directors of armaments companies, and that the proportions of Jews and non-Jews serving at the front scarcely differed could not, of course, prevent the spread of such a slander.”
Excerpt From: Kershaw, Ian. “Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris”.
Hitler in particular was strongly influenced by Austrian anit-semites and the pan-German nationalist movement around Georg Ritter von Schönerer:
> “The almost homogeneously German population of the provincial town of Linz, numbering around 60,000, was strongly German nationalist, but politically divided in its expression of nationalist feelings. Hitler’s father’s nationalist sentiment was of the kind which vehemently supported the continued dominance of German interests within the Austrian state (especially at the time in the later 1890s when they seemed threatened by concessions made to the Czechs). He would have no truck, however, with the pan-German nationalism of the Schönerer variety – the ideas of the movement that had emerged in the 1870s, led by Georg Ritter von Schönerer – which rejected the Austrian state and lauded the virtues of Wilhelmine Germany. Adolf, on the other hand, was plainly drawn in his Linz school – a hotbed of German nationalism – to the symbols and incantations of the shriller Schönerer-style pan-German nationalism which, whatever its limited general appeal in Linz, found ready backers for its emotional appeal among the youth.”
> [...]
> “The strongest and most thoroughly consistent anti-Semite that Austria produced’ – before Hitler, that is – Schönerer’s antisemitism was the cement of his anti-liberal, anti-socialist, anti-Catholic, and anti-Habsburg ideology. Hitler had imbibed the Schönerer creed in nationalist Linz. The ‘Heil’ greeting, the title of ‘Führer’ (bestowed by Schönerer on himself and used by his followers), and the intolerance towards any semblance of democratic decision-making in his movement were among the lasting elements of the Schönerer legacy which Hitler carried over to the later Nazi Party.”
Excerpt From: Kershaw, Ian. “Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris”.
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c77d6930-52b5-4c29-8b61-113e8951a505
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bqt93i
|
How do we restore missing blood after a blood donation??
|
Taking bkood from your body lowers your blood pressure, and triggers your bone marrow to start making more. Its more complicated than that.. But..
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b4afc17b-f9f6-4676-b92e-2c8e811d02ca
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bqtgiv
|
What is the physical (or chemical) mechanism by which soap (liquid and/or bar) cleans you?
|
Soap is a molecule where one end likes sticking to water and the other end likes sticking to oil, this molecule is a stretched out triangle shape which means when it chains together it makes circles and spheres around the dirt and oils with the end that likes water on the outside of this bubble, the dirt and oils can then be washed away along with the rest of the soapy water.
These bubbles filled with dirt and oil however are very small, the foamy bubbles you see are mostly so you know where you’ve put the soap and to lift the tiny dirty bubbles away from your skin so more soap can get in and give you a clean.
Shampoo contains certain oils (some soaps have moisturiser in them too) which linger in your hair, we are naturally oily and don’t do very well when all the oil is stripped off our skin and hair so need it put back once we have taken the dirt filled oil off our bodies.
Toothpaste is more of an abrasive, it scratches the surface of our teeth (yes, you can brush too much and too hard, though it is more of an issue for your gums than your teeth) to get the germs and bacteria off and traps them in the toothpaste for you to spit out, it can also contain things like fluorides to whiten your teeth and remove any stains, making it look like it’s removed more plaque than was actually there.
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8a88f22d-0b70-4d9f-bca5-67ea7f209ac6
|
bqthis
|
Why does tickling make us laugh and smile even though we hate it?
|
Tickling usually on our most vulnerable spots like the ribs, neck, etc is usually where we are most likely to get attacked. This stimulus of touching (tickling) these spots sends a signal to the hypothalamus which is our pain but also laughing control center. So the stimulation of this center controls both and as a result we laugh but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a threat to your body. That’s why you tend to react violently to someone tickling you and you may push them.
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413e5283-563f-46c4-abf3-c5336561baba
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bqtpih
|
If the USA National Debt was paid off, what would actually change?
|
Let’s look at it comprehensively. Why hasn’t the government tried to pay off the debt? Assuming they are rational economic agents, the simple explanation is that they value the money they can spend today vs the interest they will owe in the future. In reality it’s a mix of this and politics.
For example, It might be worth having to pay interest in order to buy more military equipment today rather than buying small amounts each year. Or constructing a highway in 2 years to get public approval and be re-elected rather than in 5 years where the benefits come after you get kicked out of office.
So what happens if the government decide it’s no longer in their interest to pay interest (lol). The money to pay off the debt has to come from somewhere. This could be increased taxes, or decreased government spending (on education, healthcare, public services etc).
For the short-term, you will see less economic activity as more money is being diverted to pay off debt. In the Long-term, the government will have to pay less interest and will have more Budget for other purposes.
So what does that mean for the average person? If you’re employed in an industry that relies on government purchases, you might have a hard time. For everybody else, taxes may or may not go up, which can affect your disposable income.
In the Long-term, wealth will be transferred from holders of government debt (eg large banks and investors) to whatever the government decides to spend on with its increased non-interest Budget. Whether the average person benefits depends on what the future government wants.
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71dbbe52-f969-467d-913c-8d39b2356541
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bqtw71
|
Why do brain cells die so quickly without the supply of oxygen? compared to other cell types in the body?
|
Brain cells have an high demand in terms of energy... IE sugar, oxygen and many other metabolytes.
The higher the demand, the quickest is the death when starving
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17472e34-3659-4972-b4dc-cfada960eecc
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bquey5
|
How do squats build ab muscles?
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When you squat with heavy weights, your abs and lower back will work harder in order to stabilise your spine. They act similar to a weight belt, creating support so that you dont just cave in under the weight. While squats aren't the best abs building exercise, they can definitely help with overall core strength.
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a3c78061-015b-418e-986e-89d7079a19c1
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bqutzl
|
What does politics have to do with racism besides the policy change?
|
Not sure quite what you're asking here.
Politics can be racist, eg. policies that hurt disadvantaged races, practices and attitude that exclude them or speech that attacks them. It can be anti-racist, eg. pretty much the opposite.
Can it be neutral? Probably only in specific areas, where there are no race-related issues.
|
1aaabaf2-f7ec-462d-a2f2-86b330349055
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bquumg
|
How does CO2 trap heat? And why is it that methane traps even more heat?
|
The sun's energy comes to earth largely as visible light. CO2 and methane are transparent to visible light. The light heats up the earth. The warm earth radiates energy back into space, cooling it. The energy radiated back out is primarily infrared light. CO2 and methane are opaque to infrared light, so they prevent that energy from going back into space.
A greenhouse gas is any gas that is transparent to visible to light and opaque to infrared light. "Stronger" greenhouse gasses are more opaque to infrared than weaker greenhouse gasses.
|
c274da12-a8fb-44d2-ac63-83ad06c9e0e9
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bquw8p
|
why when a movie sucks does the director get all the blame, yet when a TV show sucks the writers get the blame?
|
Writers have a bigger role in TV production. There is usually a team of them working on salary because they have deadlines to meet, and the director doesn't have as much spare time to take creative control. What they film is normally pretty close to the script.
Movies aren't like that. A screenwriter sells their script to a studio, gets a one time payment, and then hands over creative control forever. The studio then hires a director who will have nearly total creative freedom to change the story and the script. Beyond that, the director also decided how everything should be shot and has final say on set design and wardrobe. On a movie set, everyone works in support of the director's vision.
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4d307e48-62bf-4f87-b856-380eb9cfa5db
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bqv34a
|
What happened during the other interglacial periods?
|
Can you clarify your question? You are asking about what happened across the entire planet during numerous spans of thousands of years. A lot of stuff happened.
|
736983eb-b42b-4277-8ebc-fb6b0e01b284
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bqv677
|
If everyone actually recycled their plastic, would using plastic be ok for the environment? Is not recycling the real issue?
|
The issue with plastics is that, contrary to other materials like paper, glass or metal, recycling plastics is very difficult. Specifically, when you recycle plastic, the 'quality' of that plastic is reduced (a process known as 'downcycling'). If you recycle a clear plastic bottle, for instance, that plastic will never form a clear plastic bottle again because the process used to recycle it lowers the quality of the plastic, and will instead be used in stiffer, opaque products like pipes and vehicle parts. Similarly, when those products are in turn recycled, they generally end up as even 'lower grade' plastics, e.g. in insulation. So plastic can only actually be recycled a few times, and each time it's recycled, its quality reduces.
Whilst recycling plastic is obviously a lot better than just throwing it away into the environment, it is still not sustainable. There's no such thing as 'free' recycling - all recycling requires some amount of energy and processing. However, whether other materials (such as glass) can genuinely be sustainably recycled, this is not the case for plastic. So recycling is a step in the right direction, but unfortunately it doesn't change the fact that single-use plastics are fundamentally unsustainable. Obviously, companies involved in the production of single-use plastics are not particularly happy about this representation of their products which is why they give the impression that recycling plastics is the solution, but it isn't. The only genuinely sustainable solution is to simply stop using single-use plastics in the first place. There have been attempts to make biodegradable plastics that cause less environmental damage but so far, most of the attempts have been demonstrated to biodegrade poorly in natural conditions so again, whilst certain companies like to give the impression that their product is the solution, it's not as simple as that.
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3e248de5-ff7a-416b-bfe5-ca24c6db6aa3
|
bqv6c0
|
Why do governments want a low inflation rate instead of no inflation at all?
|
If there's no inflation, my $10 is the same as $10 in 10 years. I know I need money for retirement, so I could just keep that money in my mattress. That's money that isn't be spent on anything. It's "dead" in a sense. It won't be used for a very long time. That's not good for economic growth, that is for jobs to be created, existing jobs to become more productive and valuable, and more money to be created to represent the added value. So a little inflation basically means that my $10 today won't be worth $10 in 10 years. In fact, I'd be lucky if it's worth the same as what $5 represents today by the time I retire. I'm basically "paying" money to keep it instead of use it. So if I don't want to lose money just for not using it, I have two options:
1. Spend it now on goods and services. Goods can also be things like houses that also change in value so that hopefully I keep more of the original value of the money I spent if/when I sell the house. This is good for the economy, I'm supporting jobs related to the goods and services I'm buying.
2. Invest it in banks, stocks, bonds, etc. Basically, I'm lending out my money to be used by other people to generate profits, and then I get a cut of their profits. This helps the economy a ton. So even if I'm not using my money, someone else is, and I "get it back" and then some. So now my $10 today might be worth the same as $20 in 10 years, which is even better for me.
|
38541c8f-cd5c-41a6-9657-935dbb09eded
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bqw402
|
Why do we use teabags but not coffeebags?
|
Ground coffee loses its flavor when exposed to air, while tea does not. If you had a box of 'coffee bags' like you do tea bags, most of the box would taste terrible long before you reached the end.
That's why the packaging for ground coffee is designed to seal the product away from air. It's also why coffee enthusiasts often grind their beans on the fly.
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fe88e1c1-f89c-4c16-af37-a4b2cabd0546
|
bqwaug
|
How do G-suits work?
|
G-suits have pockets where air is pushed during high G manouvers so it compresses the body and restrains the blood from going to the extremities so the pilot won't black out from lack of blood to the brain.
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046b545c-919f-4320-831c-2b299fb5f424
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bqx98d
|
Why doesn’t the water in lakes and rivers get absorbed into the ground?
|
Some do lose water due to seepage. They lose more or less depending on what kind of rock and sediment lies beneath the lake. A rocky bottom holds water better than a sandy bottom.
Lakes are also subject to evaporation from their surfaces – especially in a dry places – for example, the American West.
So why don’t lakes just dry up? Some do. For a lake to keep its water over time, it has to be replenished. There are both natural and man-made lakes. The main way that water gets into reservoirs and man-made lakes is from the rivers and streams that were dammed to create them. Like man-made reservoirs and lakes, natural lakes may also be replenished by rivers and streams.
Natural lakes have another advantage, when it come to holding their water. They tend to form in the lowest elevations in a given area. So these sorts of lakes may also get underground water that flows in from underneath the lake – the lake floor may be an area of water input, rather than a drain for the lake.
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dd86facd-cff7-4c7a-8d94-5eb10b585086
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bqxdoc
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why do objects get cold faster when they are wet?
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Evaporation. The liquid coati g the surface evaporates, and in doing so it takes some of the thermal energy of the body with it. This is why alcohols feel so cold, because they have a lot lower boiling temperature than water they alps evaporate faster and cool down an object faster
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bbd55dbe-4cba-4863-b336-e6262bbec4cd
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bqxkyc
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what gives different types of clouds their shape?
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There are a few important points.
Temperature is very important. Hot air will rise very quickly, create what we call "thermals" - also known as updrafts. This hot air can then condense when its a lot higher than colder air. Hot air often also carries a lot of water, and so hot air water can produce towering clouds that seem to be "compacted". Cold air forms low-sitting clouds that may be more stretched out as there is a bit more time to separate the water.
Pressure is very important. Low pressure can create "harder" (instead of fluffier) clouds which are more centralised and compact. High pressure can create very high-in-the-sky clouds which are fluffy/wispy.
"Wind" is related to pressure and temperature usually, but forgetting this, of course wind can move clouds around, potentially winds can separate large clouds into a few smaller clouds.
Of course, because wind, temperature, pressure and "the amount of water in the air" are related (they all affect each other), very generally we have a picture of 2 types of clouds - those which form on calm, sunny, high pressure days (high, spread out, white, fluffy/wispy, unlikely to rain). And those which form on windy, wet, low pressure days (lower, much more dense, often grey/black, occasionally with thunder).
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61264039-de00-4555-8bd1-af959244d1c0
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bqxygh
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Why can't you ever divide by zero?
|
This is a really commonly asked question, don't forget to use the search function.
_URL_0_
From another topic:
> Division and multiplication are the same thing, just in different directions. "What is 10 / 2?" is the exact same thing as "2 * what equals 10?". 2 * 5 = 10, so 10 / 2 = 5.
> Now try it with a 0. "What is 10 / 0" is the exact same thing as "0 * what equals 10?". So...0 times what equals 10? There is no answer to that - you literally can't answer that, other than "you can't do that!". This means the answer is "undefined".
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02ad5e35-81c8-43c2-85e9-6274fdf01682
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bqy9dj
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Roasting in America
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I don't know the history. I am an American, but I have no other qualifications to answer these questions.
The roast is not done among normal people. It's only done for celebrities, entertainers, or for entertainment purposes. These are people who have achieved high levels of success, usually in the entertainment industry.
I think of it like this. These are serious people in a non-serious role. The roast is the antithesis of the "award show" in which celebrities take themselves far too seriously.
As for regular people doing it on Reddit, I think these people want to feel like they are Snoop Dogg. They want attention, and maybe to learn some jokes.
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fe7494f4-15e5-430c-b9ce-5214029eb851
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bqydua
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What is “international law” and who enforced it?
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"International law" is the set of treaties, compacts, and conventions to which various nations have all agreed. It is enforced through lawsuits and through international regulatory agencies, such as the World Trade Commission, the International Criminal Court, or the like. Sometimes, the suits can be filed in a country's domestic courts, as well as the courts of the other nation, as well.
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85ad0fe7-cdca-4c5a-8fb9-cab866b3c472
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bqyzu7
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Whats medical nanotechnology ?
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It would be any medical technology on the order or 10^-6 to 10^-9 meters. For example, by nanoscience and nanotechnology teacher was conducting research to combat cancer. Cancer cells die at a certain temperature, but so will your regular cells. He was trying to find a type of metal that, when exposed to a magnetic field, would heat up into the temperature range that would cook the cancer, but not kill your other cells. Apparently there is already a way to make injections specifically seek out cancer cells. He was going to combine his findings with this cancer-seeking technology to send nanoparticles of that particular metal straight to the cancer, then subject them to a magnetic field via ekg or mri or something (I can't remember and I'm not well-versed in medical things) so the cancer would die.
He hadn't yet found a suitable metal for this yet by the time I finished his class, but he implied this technology already exists in certain other countries, but it's ridiculously expensive to purchase the system, and the manufacturer keeps certain aspects a secret, which is why he's doing his own research.
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e03c8e06-0f89-4d6a-b0b1-15ad79ec95a4
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bqzcc6
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what does humanity really hope to learn from the Hadron Collider?
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The hope is to learn more about some of the most fundamental particles in the universe. It's incredibly difficult to study them, the Hadron Collider provides a tool to do just that. Just like learning how to manipulate atoms revolutionized many areas of science, it could be that learning how to manipulate these subatomic particles could one day lead to their own discoveries.
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99989798-9f6f-4b80-a2f1-c253e413d9a7
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bqzupu
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Why can we not revive people who died? Not minutes later but hours later.
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Cells need oxygen to survive. Especially brain cells. They can survive a few minutes without fresh oxygen, but start to die soon after. And once they are dead, they can’t be used anymore. No brain, no heartbeat, breathing, or any other bodily functions.
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f01e7fde-a99f-421f-bf34-cd8bc419449d
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br0gzn
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How can France starve Vincent Lambert?
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When people enter into a vegetative state where they are no longer capable of making decisions for themselves it becomes necessary for a court to appoint a guardian to make those decisions on their behalf. The most important of those decisions is "would this person want to be forced to remain alive in this state?"
In a lot of these cases the vegetative individual doesn't leave a directive appointing such a guardian, and so the courts have to figure out whether to appoint the spouse or parents as guardian. Typically when these cases get media attention, its because one of the possible guardians says "if he could talk he would ask to be allowed to die" while another possible guardian says "he would want to continue to live as long as medical science was able to support him." In the case of Lambert, his wife wants to let him die while his parents want to keep him alive.
The French court system has decided that, since his wife is his sole heir, that it is most appropriate to appoint her as his guardian. Because his wife believes that he would want to be allowed to die, she has decided to stop feeding him. To be clear - this is not that they are no longer presenting him with food. This is that they are no longer pumping food into his stomach. When presented with food, he does not react and will not attempt to eat it on his own - his life is only being sustained by a feeding tube that pumps food directly into his stomach.
The situation with Lambert is being handled more or less the same as it would be handled in most, if not all, US states. You can always prepare a written directive that specifies who you want your guardian to be and how you want them to act if you ever enter into a vegetative state. If you leave such a directive then your wishes have to be followed as much as is practical. This situation only arose because there was no directive, and in such cases its very typical for a sole heir to be granted guardianship.
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e1f0c8c0-8c75-4b98-a186-dd724c463974
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br0lsi
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Why do different injections go in different parts of the body?
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Different routes absorb at different rates is the primary reason. Where you want the medication to go is another. You can push a smaller amount of a medication through a vein and have it take affect quickly or you can push a large dose into a muscle and have it start working over time. Also, you might be injecting a medication like lidocaine to numb a specific location; lidocaine in the veins is done to treat certain heart conditions and could be fatal otherwise.
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9f10c003-761f-48cb-90c7-f68dd845ba37
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br0njb
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How does the price of the dollar affect the economy of foreign countries?
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If the price of the dollar (exchange rate) is low, it means that countries with a different currency can buy the same US products for less money. Example: company A sells 100 products for 100 USD to a foreign company B. Now the exchange rate falls and 100 products now cost 95 dollars. This might look not great for company A, but now company C would also like the cheaper products. Therefore a lower exchange rate makes US products more compatible with foreign products. US firms will probably have more orders and exports.
This is one reason why Germany is fairly interested in keeping the Euro low, since it "boosts" exports. (Not the best for the Euro area as a whole, since most countries import a lot)
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c8768519-bdc3-4ad9-a8da-94286597fee4
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br0sdf
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Why do Japanese things have such weird titles? Like, Steins;Gate and FLCL, and all the songs with hearts and stars?
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Well it depend on what you mean by nonsense. Steins;Gate for example, the author said that they are no deep meaning behind it. He use the name Steins, because it felt like Einstein. It started has a visual novel and the people that workd on Steins;Gate worked on Chaos;Head before so it fit the visual style. I don't see any nonsense in that title really.
& #x200B;
FLCL director Kazuya Tsuramaki said in an interview once that he always wanted a short english name for his show. He used the FLCL which is an abbreviation of fooly cooly thinking that it meant fool and cool, no knowing that it's not the meaning at all. This one is more of a mistake that turn out really funny.
& #x200B;
I think that American culture and English as their language influenced a lot Japan in the last 70 years of so. After WW2, the US became one of the most important ally of Japan, even today there is about 60 thousand US military personnel in Japan, they train together. For civilian, Japan trade almost as much with the US as they trade with China and after that they trade mostly with South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong, 3 other asian country with a lot of US or British influence. I think that Japanese culture just think that using english word is cool, even if they don't alway master how to use it, it doesn't realy matter, because most Japanese are in a similar situation. They know basic english, but don't really master it enough to be bother by those things.
& #x200B;
As for the stars and hearts, I think it's just emoticon that a lot of the younger generation use a lot, so it make sense if they use it in their culture like the name of their songs. Usually you only found them in pop songs.
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dd3c4e36-d130-432f-a3a2-8c54d4bbcdab
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br0wgy
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How can humans not be immune to pollen
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By adapt, do you mean genetically? The thing about changing our genes through evolution is that it works better against stuff that kills us. Because if we are randomly mutating and something kills all of us who don't have a special mutation, the ones that are left pass on these genes, and the entire population is immune.
& #x200B;
There may be lots of people out there immune to pollen, but because that isn't making them survive (i.e. pollen-haters can still have kids), then there's no way to make a population pollen-immune.
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f01e0ccd-9aff-4cab-aee9-7fe83ae8d411
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br1cb5
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What do percentages on weather forecast apps mean?
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This percentage is the product of two values:
1) The probability/certainty of a weather event occurring, and
2) The fraction of land affected in the forecast area.
For example, 50% chance of rain over 50% of the forecast area results in a forecast of 25% rain, while a 100% chance of rain over 25% of the forecast area also results in a forecast of 25% rain.
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ae4490b7-805c-4b18-a1ea-5ac2394f2d6f
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br1xxm
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I’ve heard that if you were to fall from a really high place, you would lose consciousness on the way down. If this is true.. why does this happen?
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It isn't necessarily true. People have fallen from great heights, and miraculously survived, and been conscious all the way down. Fear may make some people pass out, and from a really, really great height lack of oxygen may also make you do so, but otherwise....
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37e1cb87-d3ce-4f99-8783-1bf0e8326355
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br1zgk
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I heard ant eggs laid by a female (or queen?), if left unfertilized, will hatch into male ant offspring, but doesn’t that mean that the offspring should be clones of the mother and, therefore, should be female?
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Ant sex is determined by the sets of chromosomes. If they have pairs of chromosomes they are female. If they have a single set they are male. A fertilised egg has pairs of chromosomes, one set from the mother and and one from the father and thus develops into a female. An unfertilised egg has one set of chromosomes only from the mother and thus develops into a male.
Interestingly this means a male ant cannot have a son and has no father. However they can have a grandson and they have a grandfather.
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65ad294f-8d21-4320-adb5-e4d01f0cc16d
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br20ke
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Why does water taste different depending on the brand?
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Water is Water. What makes one water taste different from another is the difference in the mineralal content of that water.
Our taste for water is a refinement of reptilian tastes for sanitary water. Those tastes are instinctual. No one teaches taste when it comes to water, but we all agree on what tastes bad.
I like clean, clear, mountain spring water. That description should sound good to you too. And there is a reason. That water is cleaner and free of surface water algae, insect larvae and fecal coliforms.
A spring is where an underground water source surfaces. It is flowing because more water is pushing it up to the surface. And that continuing flow over millions of years has washed the underground source of that water so much that the mineral content is very, very low. That underground flow has also filtered out most organics too. But you didn’t need to know all that. You knew from the original description that you’d like it.
Back to water companies. Water is just water, except for the minerals, so bottlers find a good source of water and modify it through known puriification methods to subtract and/or add minerals in order to improve the taste and purity of their products.
Finally, big brand names establish standards for their product water that all of their bottlers must meet. That means X brand water in California will taste like X brand water in Iowa.
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f1145b98-896c-4126-a377-7b3bcf1a5f96
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br22c9
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What is the 0 dB in digital Audio?
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dB is a logarithmic scale. Every time you add 10 dB, you make the sound ten times as loud. Every time you subtract 10 dB, you make the sound one tenth as loud. Zero dB is like multiplying the sound by 1: it's just the original, unchanged sound, at it's original volume.
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39c017d6-e950-4040-846d-0fff33724654
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br272x
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Why is looking at the sun during a solar eclipse worse than looking at the sun on a normal day?
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The amount of UV radiation doesnt decrease substantially during a solar eclipse. The amount of visual radiation does though causing your eyes to dilate. The net result is that your eyes let in a lot more UV radiation than it would normally receive.
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5e7ed453-4c8a-4465-8853-5414bf1e742b
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br2aiy
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Why is latency and bandwith separated? If latency is delay of data, and bandwith is data over time, shouldn't one affect another? If it takes 5s for a car to start, and 10s to reach it's destination, then the average speed would be spread out across the whole 15s. Should this not be the same?
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Consider conventional mail (via a post office). This a high latency, high bandwidth type of communications. It takes a few days to get a shipment somewhere, but that shipment can contain almost unlimited amounts of data.
Contrast this with SMS (text messaging). This is fairly low latency - your text message arrives almost immediately - but low bandwidth (you can't send all that much data).
Another way to consider this:
Latency is *responsiveness*. It's how long it takes to get a reply once I send a message.
Bandwidth is *volume*. It's how much information I can send over time.
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1a3f02c2-cc52-4a20-a0c2-513802a44857
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br2qcr
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Why do products that have an active ingredient need other ingredients?
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One good example is artificial sweetener. 99% of what's in those little packets is filler, because most artificial sweeteners are *super* sweet. So sweet you only need a tiny, tiny bit to make your coffee sweet. They have to bulk out the contents with filler because most people aren't going to deal with trying to put a milligram of sweetener in a drink.
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b59ed456-f3f7-463f-ac35-a862192f9610
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br2uz2
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Why does it feel like your running faster in a small area, such as a hotel hallway?
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It's a phenomenon known as parallax. This is when two objects appear to move at different speeds because they are different distances away.
When you run outside, the trees etc are far away, so they don't seem to move much.
When you run inside, all your points of reference are much closer, so they seem to move quickly.
Our brain then wrongly reports our perceived speed.
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6ddc3f44-90d3-4668-b3f4-0f97a8e17135
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br2xuh
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How come hard liquors don't freeze in your household freezer?
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Because hard liquors contain ethanol, the actual alcohol which has a freezing point of -114C or -173F. The ethanol dissolves in the rest of the solution, lowering its freezing temp.
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3b6aa7be-5c4c-413d-836a-d75923d05b59
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br32cv
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Why does an extra proton here or there make such a difference in the properties of an element?
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An extra proton changes two things: the amount of electrons and the space they occupy. Simply put, when you add a proton you must add an electron to match. This electron can't be where any other electrons already are. When other atoms are around a given element the electrons of the two atoms talk. Where the electrons are ultimately dictates how they talk. That is to say, electron distribution determines bonding strength and angles, which determine chemical properties. Remember, chemical properties are electrical properties.
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4c549711-496a-42c4-a545-d621b9fd73ef
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br3b7m
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Why do Wii games have such a larger hacker base than the Gamecube? And why are there so many GBA Pokémon rom hacks compared to the DS lineup?
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Ease of access in all cases. The wii has internal memory, and easily accessed (on a pc) external memory as well as exploits. The GameCube has only has memory cards you can’t plug into a pc, there are ways around it but you have to spend money. So wii just needs an sd card and specific game.
GBA game’s at this point have better tools, no one ever made great tools for ds modding, so less user friendly tools, less mods.
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2c3dbad6-16b0-4f2f-8fee-dfe353829e1c
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br3pqk
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Why do buses have no seatbelts compared to other forms of public transport such as trains?
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I've never seen a train with set belts.
With cars, you're small and things get smashed up. Your job is to make sure you don't get smashed too, that's why you have seat belts and airbags.
With buses and trains, you're doing the smashing. Goal is to GTFO when everything is finished.
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9b41a3d6-0fec-45e2-95ad-7f54a6d398be
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br445l
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Why is it so necessary to leave a tip in the US?
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Waitstaff are specifically exempted from minimum wage laws in most states. Some are paid as little as $3.00 an hour, and are taxed on their tips as well.
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0563d686-9fe7-4532-b61a-ceca540ea4c6
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br4oa1
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How does breast milk not get sour in breasts?
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The ducts in the breast are an isolated environment where the bacteria that would cause it to "sour" are unable to survive and do so. Once outside the breast it is vulnerable to all the bacteria in the air and can sour fairly quickly as a result.
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e396f6c4-390c-4ffe-9c04-79bd81c3337d
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br4rim
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How do we breathe on commercial airplanes? If humans breathe out carbon dioxide then shouldn’t we run out of breathable oxygen at some point?
|
It's a mixture of fresh air from outside, and recirculated air. Here's an interesting article that explains.
_URL_0_
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379b7248-12d3-47c0-ac81-d03ac08a7199
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br4szh
|
How does exercise benefit brain function?
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Mainly because it stimulates blood flow to the brain. During a workout this clears stress hormones and encourages dopamine release. This results in better sleep and increased motivation, which can in turn positively benefit your health and brain. And of course the brain needs about 1/5th of the body's oxygen, so keeping the heart strong and arteries supple and encouraging capillary growth keeps up healthy oxygen levels.
Also when you exercise you are stimulating the nervous system, because the body's movements are controlled by the nervous system. This is also the system your brain is a part of, and the result is like a "physical focus"; like meditation this reduces anxiety and also increases neural connections, which causes growth of new brain cells.
Basically the brain is part of your body, and keeping your body healthy keeps your brain healthy, which is good for it.
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0f8570d4-7f49-4cc8-8874-d59670498829
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br56e0
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How does audio translate into bits in a computer file?
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If you think of a digital picture, you essentially have a bunch of tiny, single-color pixels which, when put together, make a pretty good recreation of whatever you take a picture of. The same is true for a digital audio file, it's essentially a ton of tiny "pictures" of the audio signal and when you put them together and play them back, it's a fairly accurate and sometimes exact replica of the original audio, depending on the audio format. You have an analog-to-digital converter which takes in the audio as input, and separates it into millions of tiny pieces of sound, often 44,100 times per second. Each of these tiny pieces is an approximate record of the sound of the audio signal during that fraction of a second. When you play an audio file, the computer stitches all these tiny fragments back into a continuous sound which is played by a speaker.
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272c9140-dad1-4fbc-ae20-4de574e0f800
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br5fi6
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British aristocracy, their meanings, and their rankings (i.e. earls, dukes, barons, etc.)
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These originated under the monarchy long, long ago.
& #x200B;
The short version is this: in medieval England it was understood that all land in the kingdom belonged to the king. Or in her case, queen. They would, in turn, appoint land managers to oversee parts of the land.
Even today it is not practical for the king or queen to travel to all parts of a kingdom on a regular enough basis to manage the week to week needs of the areas under their rule; and in the days of horses and foot such travel was even more impractical.
& #x200B;
Common people would rent from the land overseers, who in turn paid tribute to the king or queen. In turn, the local overseers would maintain an army and defensive efforts, law enforcement, justice, a local 'palace' where the king could stay on his visit, and so on and so forth.
& #x200B;
It was common for the monarch to award land for valor in battle, to family members, or to particularly wealthy businessmen/traders.
& #x200B;
The various titles, duties, responsibilities, and all that goes with them evolved from this basic setup.
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30577722-4ef5-4bfc-946b-19bfcb4fc0cb
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br5ghw
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Why do dark bags form under your eyes from lack of sleep?
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I'm not a doctor, so here's the relevant except from an article I found after a 15-second Google search.
> When the body is tired, production of the chemical cortisol is dramatically increased to help give you the energy you need to stay awake. Among many other things, cortisol actually increases the volume of the blood in your body, which causes the blood vessels (including the ones below your eyes) to engorge to accommodate it. As we've already mentioned, dark circles are mostly caused by us seeing our blood vessels / blood through our skin, so it stands to reason that when those blood vessels are engorged, they'd be easier to see, even in people who may have been blessed with thicker skin below their eyes.
Source: _URL_0_
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32b92295-3958-42b0-8e41-e1915e126574
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br5khn
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What is a bulletproof vest made of & how does that stop a massively fast bullet?
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To keep it as simple as possible, there are two main types of bulletproof vests; soft and hard.
Soft vests are made of woven kevlar. These are tiny strands of extremely strong fabric. They're woven and layered up to create a relatively soft, flexible panel.
This stops bullets by slowing them down as they impact the kevlar, losing energy as they rip through the layers of fabric.
Think of it like a speeding car plowing into a bunch of buckets filled with water.
These soft vests are the type typically worn by police. They're designed to stop most handgun rounds.
The second type of bulletproof vest is hard armor. This is typically in the form of steel or ceramic plates.
Basically these are just strong enough to withstand the impact of a bullet. Ceramic plates shatter and spread out the force of the impact much like kevlar does, but on a higher level.
These type of vests are worn by military. They're designed to stop rifle rounds. Increasingly, police will carry these in their cars as well.
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7449a468-8208-42ea-9197-3ce579fc0e4e
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br5lz1
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Why do ants go crazy when you blow on them?
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No science background, but I'll explain like I (the explainer) was 5: imagine if you had to balance your eyes on the top of a stick that sat on top of your head and then a large gust of wind kept smashing them around to the point where you couldn't focus on anything except hoping to keep your eye-sensor things intact.. I can't speak for you, but if this happened to me I'd also go fucking crazy.
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8910d600-1d71-46b5-8e2b-e498f04353dc
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br5vl2
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When tectonic plates shift, why is there only an earthquake in a single place and not all along the plates' boundaries?
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As plates try to shift, the plate becomes locked as rocks on one side catch on rocks on the other side. The plate bends as the forces build up and the catch point gives, and you get an earthquake. This shifts load to other catch points, that might then give - these are aftershocks.
These quakes release the tension in that area of the plates. Another sequence of quakes will happen mearby, releasing tensions in that area. All these small shifts happening over the centuries makes up a shift in the tectonic plates.
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e93c74fb-834a-4c5a-8dad-c6104941baa7
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br617g
|
How were computers “commanded” before computer languages existed?
|
Computers always run on what is called "machine code", the actual values which make the computer components behave as desired. At this stage it is just like flipping electrical switches at the start of a long chain reaction.
The secret is that computers *never changed from that.* Computers do not "think", they do not understand anything, they don't "obey orders" any more than an electric winch obeys an order to pull on something when it is turned on. Computer languages and code are just abstractions to allow people to more easily construct logical processes than putting the machine code together directly.
Imagine a purely mechanical calculator, something that adds and subtracts numbers via gears and levers. The numbers to be calculated together are indicated by the positions of the gears at the start and that is in essence what computers are doing. The difference is that it is much faster, the parts are smaller, and it is done without moving parts using semiconductor switches.
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5a5d4bcb-326d-430f-a1c7-818a15d5f306
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br65k9
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What exactly is radiation and how does it treat cancer but also kill you?
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Large atoms are unstable. An atom that is too big is at risk of falling apart. When this happens, it releases a burst of energy. Sub-atomic particles and smaller atom chunks go flying in every direction. Some of these particles go zipping about at light speed. It's like a microscopic bullet piercing your body. (This is called 'ionizing radiation.)
These subatomic 'bullets' are so small that they aren't very dangerous. They can actually pass straight through your body without hitting anything or puncturing any cells. That's how small they are. But every now and then, one of them will strike a cell. The cell might die, or the particle might break the DNA string inside the cell.
There's not much need to worry. You are getting bombarded by subatomic particles all the time. Usually it doesn't cause much harm. But if you are subjected to a larger dose of radiation, you being hit by more particles and run a greater risk of being injured.
Cancer is caused by cells in your body that are abnormal. Ironically, sometimes the cancer itself is caused by radiation (for instance, if a particle hit your DNA and caused a cell to malfunction).
The only way to really deal with cancer is to kill those cells. There is no good option for this. Sometimes they can be killed with chemicals or removed with surgery. Radiation can be used to target and kill cancer cells. The doctor might embed radioactive material in the center of the cancer cells, or he might 'shoot' the cancer with those subatomic 'bullets' in hopes of killing it.
So the next obvious question is: "Won't that also damage healthy cells?" Yes. It does. But that's the problem with cancer. We often don't have a good way to target and kill the cancer cells without hurting the healthy cells.
|
d9b2bbe9-0763-4da9-89b8-edbe465510fa
|
br6rmf
|
aspirin lowers your nervous sensors that's why you feel less pain when you take one, but how does it actually work?
|
Aspirin doesn't exactly "lower your nervous sensors."
Put simply, aspirin slows down the action of another chemical in your body (cyclooxygenase) by changing its shape, which ordinarily produces a particular *other* set of chemicals called *prostaglandins,* which attach to our nerves and cause us to feel pain.
With less prostaglandin to attach to our nerves, our perception of pain is reduced.
|
6ba2396f-b872-4f00-bcfd-dc969039baba
|
br6u1x
|
How does adding 's' to end of 'http' make it protected against hackers?
|
The S stands for "secure", specifically it means that the connection between your browser and the website is encrypted using the TLS protocol.
The TLS protocol does two things:
1. When you connect to the server, the server sends you a digitally signed certificate. The certificate is used by your browser to validate the server's identity, i.e. make sure that the entity sending you the certificate is indeed reddit and not a hacker pretending to be reddit.
2. After validating the certificate, the client (your browser) and server set up an encrypted connection, so that all the data transmitted between them is encrypted. This means that it is hidden from anyone who intercepts the communication, and that it can't be manipulated.
|
6ff2a0c9-c125-454b-aba2-140a04d4c5b8
|
br6xd4
|
How did name "Richard" become "Dick"?
|
"In the days of writing everything by hand, Rich and Rick emerged as common nicknames for Richard, and apparently, people also used to like to come up with nicknames that rhyme. This gave rise to nicknames like Dick and Hick around the early Thirteenth Century, but unlike Hick, Dick continues to stick around today."
[source](_URL_0_)
As for the curse word/slang part: as you know, us humans like to come up with nicknames for *everything* for fun, *especially* for the penis! So, since 'Dick' was already real nickname (similar to 'Willy'), it seems people just started using it to refer to the penis in an attempt to come up with a good nickname for it.
I think it caught on because of the "hard" pronunciation (similar to 'fuck'). I presume people associate that kind of sounding word with offensive themes, because the actual tone of the word may sound offensive, especially when shouted (comparable to a cat's hiss or something). Basically, there was the name 'Richard', 'Dick' came from that, the slang usage for penis came from that, then it started to get dirtier/more vulgar because of that association, so it apparently started to become an insult because of that.
Edit: they removed the part asking how it became a slang term for penis and just an overall offensive term that is used as an insult these days.
|
4f51d6be-b1d4-430e-890f-6610f2d709e6
|
br6z6i
|
Why are naturally dangerous things relatively uncommon?
|
As a general rule, people tend not to want to live in areas with dangerous things.
Because said dangerous things also killed the animals/plants we raised.
Also if there were dangerous things, but humans needed to live there.
Up until very recently, the humans would just start killing the dangerous thing until it wasn't around anymore.
It's why wolves nearly went extinct in many areas of Europe, and why conservation is bringing them back.
Wolves were dangerous, so we killed them.
|
8e21e53a-004c-43e6-891c-3705939edbc6
|
br7c93
|
Why do home LED lightbulbs have so much heat on heatsink yet devices like iPhone that use LED lighting seem to have very little
|
Because a LED bulb with a heat sink will emit many time more light then the screen of a iPhone. A low power LED bulb do not need a heat sink.
Just try to illuminate a wall in a dark room with the screen and compare that to a light bulb.
There might be a difference in efficiency and the phone product less heat for the same amount of light and that is because how you it is constructed so you can run a LEDs on mains voltage versus the battery in a cellphone. A LED bulb often is made as cheap as possible but the cellphone charger and voltage converter in the phone is more advances, expensive and efficent. But the main difference it still the amount of light they emit.
|
f7d004fd-0bcc-47c4-abc0-5d7a018de820
|
br80ns
|
Why is harder to balance on a bike the slower it goes?
|
Inertia.
As you have momentum in a forward motion, the cycle has less of a tendency to want to fall sideways.
If you spin an angle grinder disc, it gets harder to twist it sideways for exactly the same reason.
Stationary, the bike wants to fall sideways since it has no stability that way. While moving, the momentum forwards makes it harder to move sideways. I feel like I’m not explaining this thoroughly, but I hope it helps.
|
85dfecb7-a44f-4561-a8a4-b0f9a6164cc6
|
br8ajb
|
Why do military units carry the same formation through history such as the 450 year old 2nd dragoon regiment in France.
|
History and tradition is a big thing in the military of many nations. It generates a sense of "belonging" that the current personnel are the inheritors of a line of battle honours dating back through the years. Maintaining that tradition is a big motivating factor for new recruits.
|
e9a67432-1ef9-4a87-abe7-3a4248275f53
|
br8c8j
|
why do most suburban houses in USA are made of wood, despite all the strong winds and tornadoes they experience?
|
Some time ago it was explained to me that the problem with tornados etc. are not the strong winds, but the stuff that is flying around because of that winds.
A stone house may be better suited to withstand the wind, but when it is hit by a tree or similar large/heavy stuff it will be badly damaged or collapse the same as a house made of wood. But at the same time it is much more expensive to build a proper stone house.
So in the long run it is cheaper to build wooden houses and rebuild with low costs instead of build expensive stone houses that also do not withstand the tornado.
Additionally when the stone house is only damaged but not totally destroyed it may still be beyond the point where you could repair it or it is save to live in it. Then instead of just rebuild you also have the extra cost of properly tear down the ruins.
|
a6f239e9-9796-46d7-b96f-f9117c1a8d9f
|
br8n86
|
Why does the jeans break always in the same manner, first the vertical fibers, then the horizontal?
|
The vertical fibres are under more stress more often (eg - especially at the front bend of the knee)
After the first vertical fibres fray and break, this adds more load onto the other ones, so they break more easily.
And this finally exposes the horizontal threads. So they'll start breaking too, eventually.
|
226e76f4-548e-4113-8651-784ede577afb
|
br98dc
|
Why is barcode scanning so quick and accurare, but OCR even for digital text is kinda bad?
|
Given the previous answers I have to add the following.
& #x200B;
Barcodes and QR-codes have been Designed for computers. They have features in place that help with alingnment. Barcodes have built in error checking numbers and QR codes can even have enogh redundancy in them that a computer can compute the correct result from a bad read or a damaged code.
|
0d168bf5-757d-448d-a660-8b3b12ad887b
|
br9ag6
|
in the 90s and early 00s, meth was America's biggest drug problem. Now it's heroin. What changed?
|
Doctors were given perks for overprescribing opiates and this got tons of people’s addicted to OxyContin. Once you get cut off, and due to price of oxy skyrocketing to a dollar per mg if not more people turned to heroin because it’s cheaper and easier to get.
The FDA also made it a lot harder to make meth when they got rid of ephedrine and made pseudoephedrine a lot harder to purchase in quantities big enough to make methamphetamines.
|
42dec6e6-f3de-4aa3-9a7b-cd03f61f20ad
|
bra3t8
|
Why do car seatbelts have one strap whereas airplane pilot seatbelts have two straps?
|
Pilot harnesses are actually a 5-point harness; there's a strap that comes up between the legs, with a 4-part buckle assembly, and then a lap belt (L and R straps) and two shoulder straps (L and R) go into that.
You find this same sort of harness in the seats of high-speed race cars.
The use-case is the same: keep the person/people in control of the vehicle firmly in place despite the extreme forces exerted on them trying to pull them out of their seats in some extreme conditions that either may (pilot) or will (racecar driver) occur in normal operation.
|
c51be73c-557c-40af-80a2-943e3174d263
|
bra8uz
|
How come USA came about using the metric system and why are they still using it?
|
USA doesn't use the metric system, the rest of the world does. USA uses the imperial system.
|
37a7ea63-b561-404c-8e94-60c1075228cc
|
brabkm
|
When you hurt your toe (for instance), why does holding the painful toe with your hands make the pain less?
|
It’s due to what is called the “gate control theory.” Simply put, the “ouchie” signal and the “not-ouchie” signals meet in your spinal cord, and can only send one signal to the brain. The non-painful signal (holding or touching) always wins, dampening the pain signal.
|
16896886-e48c-477b-8c70-15ad701d4577
|
brabt9
|
Is oxygen toxic/poisonous?
|
2 things here: Is oxygen toxic, and what are antioxidants?
Everything is toxic/poisonous to something at some amount.
Oxygen is not toxic to mammals at our atmospheric amount. 100% is toxic to humans, but not immediately. Our lungs like the amount of oxygen in the air, but they can function with different amounts. It takes time for our lungs to be saturated and do harm. People do breathe 100% in certain situations.
Now, the act of using oxygen, our fuel, does cause free radicals. Free radicals are what is harmful. Using anything would produce free radicals, so there is no way around that. Antioxidants protect against free radicals.
|
c6447906-19f6-41b6-9af2-e9ce0cb413a8
|
braduf
|
If heat is a measure of the mean kinetic energy of the particles of a substance, then how does compressing it increase its temperature, since compression squishes the particles of a substance closer together, theoretically limiting movement?
|
You're thinking temperature, not heat. These are related but different.
The reason compression increases temperature is because the energy of the compressed gas is now more concentrated into a smaller volume, and thus the mean kinetic energy of the *volume* of the substance is higher because it occupies less volume with the same stuff.
|
e2006041-12b2-48b5-88a7-133d914b3ce5
|
brarua
|
To someone who does watch GOT, what was so bad about the last episodes?
|
I'm far more neutral about this last season than a lot of people, so someone else will probably give you a better answer. But I can tell you what disappointed me personally.
Daenerys has been one of the primary characters since the start of the series, and throughout the past 8 years she has been portrayed as someone who wants the throne for two reasons: to return it to her family after her father (the former king) was murdered, and to make a better world for the people. Before making her way to the capital, she freed entire cities of slaves and killed the ones who enslaved them, promising to do the same to all the known world.
Now, she wasn't a total saint. She was ruthless when it came to people she deemed evil, she'd have her dragons burn them alive without hesitation. But in a world of horrors, she was objectively a force for good. Thousands of men in her armies fought for her through choice, not obligation.
Fast-forward to season 8 and she's finally on the cusp of taking back the throne, when the current (objectively evil) queen kidnapped and murdered her handmaiden (her best friend basically), she is obviously enraged. She responds by burning down the entire city with her dragon, slaughtering hundreds of thousands of innocent lives despite everyone around her pleading with her not to. They turned her into a villain at the 11th hour, going against everything she had shown herself to be for the entire series. It's not like afterwards they showed her to be remorseful or anything either, she still believed herself to be right. She was just an entirely different character to who she had been before. It felt like a cheap swerve to make the final season unpredictable.
|
1d7bc15f-5971-4e38-9981-452b6569deab
|
braryn
|
How do our toilet pipes that lead to sewers remain unclogged for years on end?
|
Because most the stuff that you put down your toilet is a semi-solid or break down very easily under flowing water. that is why you're not supposed to put sani wipes or feminine products down the loo because they do not actually break down like paper or poo.
in the same regard, you should not pour grease down your drains either, cuz it solidifies in the cool pipe & begins to clog and build up on the walls
|
a171595b-e1e2-4760-931a-26270108bb33
|
braulx
|
What exactly are robocalls? Why are they on a surge right now? And why isn’t anything being done to prevent them?
|
Technology has made it inexpensive to build massive call centers in countries that made it difficult to stop with legal actions.
The US telecoms are terrible. They have no incentive to provide a good customer experience, so they don't use technology that easily blocks numbers that are masked.
|
9ca4ac25-fb64-454d-98d2-4f6fa2c6ae38
|
brb4t7
|
How do all these different fruit and plant seeds form?
|
There wasn't an identifiable first apple or orange seed. They would have evolved from some preceding plant species slowly over time. So over thousands of generations the preceding plant becomes more and more like an apple or orange tree until eventually it matches what we would recognize as an apple or orange tree but there wasn't a single point where you could say one generation wasn't an apple or orange tree and the next was. Think of it like a person aging. Any given day they won't look any different than the day before but look at two pictures taken 20 years apart and you will see how they aged.
|
8c1d5117-84d3-45af-a792-e0bdc5a4b581
|
brb714
|
The London Whale Trading Incident
|
"The City" is basically gambling. There are a few straightforward investments made, but also a lot of straight gambles on whether a share price will rise or dip, or all kind of other fancy indexes. No kidding, it's straight up gambling. These guys lost, and whilst chasing their losses there was nobody saying "stop!"
|
8a2bce92-724c-4c2c-9798-f7b82498673f
|
brbsuu
|
What causes diet sweets to give you diarrhea? what actually happens inside your body?
|
It is the sweeteners found inside them. They are similar enough to glucose and other sugars our body uses for our taste receptors to think they are sweet, however ij our gut there are more specialist transporters that only work with specific sugars, mostly glucose. The sweeteners aren't compatible with them so they stay inside the gut. This is why sweeteners can taste sweet but be zero calories, your body physically cant use them.
Now these sweeteners stay inside your intestines to be excreted in your poo. But if you rat them in a high enough amount it will draw water into your gut via osmosis (or prevent water already in their being absorbed by the body) extra water in your pool causes diarrhoea or loose stools.
|
0b254d23-50a5-4f6c-b941-c8e7d5523557
|
brc25s
|
How does a network connect to other networks over WAN?
|
Intercontinental communications are typically done with undersea fiber optic cables. Satellites are used for this too, but have less bandwidth and reliability; So they're significantly less common, and mostly used for providing internet to remote locations that have no wired connections available.
Undersea cables use extremely strong armor and shielding to protect themselves from the elements. They're typically buried slightly underneath the sand at the bottom of the ocean. They're planned in advanced to go through the most shallow points of the ocean.
|
ae0c2d2f-43ca-4459-bbb3-90443c995680
|
brcudc
|
With the possible future of super resistant bacteria ahead, should people be getting surgery now in preparation?
|
It is dramatically more dangerous to undergo surgeries that are not medically necessary than it is to undergo surgeries in a hypothetical future wherein our ability to combat bacteria is more limited.
|
620d0587-dd13-41ad-9c00-61223744451e
|
brcuzm
|
How does a radio prioritize two identical frequencies from two different stations?
|
Cloud cover won't have any impact of note. If it was an AM radio station then the ionosphere, active and reflecting radio waves, was the culprit. If it was an FM radio station most likely there was an unexpected transmitter problem, reducing its power for some period of time.
In both cases the decision on which to play is the strength of the incoming signal.
|
27f8316c-34de-45a3-bc11-9b9fcabd8167
|
brcv6l
|
Why are the majority of glass beer bottles brown. Does it protect the beer somehow?
|
> Does [brown glass] protect the beer somehow?
Yes. Brown glass blocks ultraviolet radiation from sunlight that would turn beer skunky.
However, it doesn't block all the UV.
|
b4c5a29f-7d08-4b76-89fc-429490776c3b
|
brcvs9
|
Why does a mirage reflect the ground and area in front of it? E.G a car traveling on the highway where you can see the reflection on the road.
|
It is a complicated concept which uses refraction, critical angles, snells law, etc.
First you need to understand refraction. This happens when lights moves from one medium to another. Say water to air. This you can notice in a pool, where if you put a stick half way in water and half outside, you will see it bend. This bending of light is called refraction. This is caused due to differing densities of the two mediums.
When light travels from a medium of higher to lower density. It bends away from the vertical. When it goes from lower to higher density it bends towards the vertical. This is explained in more detail using snells law.
We are interested in the first case where light bends away. The angle at which it bends( angle of refraction) is proportional to the angle at which the light is hitting the transition surface (agngle of incidence) between the two mediums. Now as that angle of incidence keeps increases the angle of refraction keeps increasing as well. Now since the light bends away from the vertical in this case the angle of refraction will always be greater than the angle of incidence. As the angle of incidence gets close to the horizontal (or the horizon where you usually see a mirage) this angle becomes so big that the angle of refraction is now parallel to the ground. So the angle of refraction now starts to just come back into the same medium where it started. Hope that makes sense.
So a mirage is just that but inverted, where the hotter air closer to the ground has lesser density than the cooler air above it. So when light comes from the cooler(more denser) air to the hotter (less denser) air it starts to refract. As you watch the objects closer to the horizon, the angle of incidence increase which proportionally increases the angle of refraction, and when you reach the critical angle, it just starts reflecting back (like a mirror).
|
06fbbcc6-3a96-4bf2-bead-475c623fc889
|
brcyf6
|
Why do Adblock softwares not work on streaming platforms (Hulu, Fox, TNT, etc.)
|
the how: its a combination of adblock detecting scripts that then deny you the service, the ads built into the same content delivery system as the service - this makes it so you can't block the ads without blocking the service as well, and lastly unintentional coding errors that happen when you stop the ad from running.
& #x200B;
the why: hulu isn't free, its paid for by you watching ads or paying for ad-free. their intention is to feed you ads so they're not going to go out of their way to make their site work for people who block the ads.
|
d6b8c2ad-a911-4a07-ba77-a1fbf7ead117
|
brd35t
|
How do plants, without musculature, move in such short periods of time to face the sunlight?
|
Generally "rapid" plant motion involves a shift in [turgor pressure](_URL_1_) \- the solute concentrations in the plant's vascular system change, causing individual cells to absorb more water and expand or release more water and shrink. Together, they can change the shape of the plant. This principle can be exploited further by a structure called a [pulvinus](_URL_0_) which acts a bit like a skeletal joint. Some animals similarly use liquid pressure to move, most famously spiders and other arthropods.
|
47ea6f3b-e279-4faa-a54e-4bbcfea26d4b
|
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