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6zlj1y | when using carbon dating and similar techniques, how do we know the age of the object it made up, rather than the age of the carbon or other isotope from when it was formed in a star? | I hope the wording of my title makes sense. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6zlj1y/eli5_when_using_carbon_dating_and_similar/ | {
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"Carbon dating works of the natural rate at which Carbon 14 (an unstable isotope) decays based on its half life. When things are alive, everything in an environment has an equilibrium of C14 as carbon is being continually being transferred between organisms. When they die however, there is no more carbon addition, and the organism becomes \"out of sync\" with the rest of the environment, for lack of a better way of phrasing it. We can then identify the age of it by extrapolating backwards to find the time period when it was in equilibrium with the environment. It's pretty good for the most part, but obviously it leaves a lot of room for error, which is why the dates we get from carbon dating a very broad estimates. ",
"To elaborate somewhat, the formation of Carbon 14 comes from cosmic rays colliding with Nitrogen in the upper atmosphere, which turns them into Carbon 14. This C-14 gets turned into carbon dioxide and makes its way into living things, by eating, breathing, etc. When the living thing dies, it stops taking in anything, including C-14. As the existing C-14 decays, the amount in the subject slowly drops. Measuring the amount left lets us determine when the intake stopped.\n\nFun fact: there's actually another form of carbon dating! C-13 is completely stable, but plants that use photosynthize tend to be slightly better or worse at converting carbon dioxide with a C-13 atom than they do regular old C-12. So by testing for the amounts of C-13 deposited in fossils or rocks, it's possible to determine if photosynthetic plants were present.",
"Some dating methods don't rely on physiological processes or knowing anything about the origins of the material. For instance K/Ar dating is a mineral dating method that tells you when the mineral formed. It depends on the fact that the radioactive K40 decomposes to Ar. The Ar is a gas and escapes normally, but in the confines of a mineral the Ar becomes trapped. By measuring the ratio of the K40/Ar you can tell how many K40 half-lifes have taken place since the mineral was formed. It doesn't matter how much K40 you started with, since the experiment is self normalized and measures BOTH residual starting material and decomposition product."
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fmxdgz | why do our lungs remain full when we hold our breath? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fmxdgz/eli5_why_do_our_lungs_remain_full_when_we_hold/ | {
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"Actual air does not get into your bloodstream. If it did, you would die. \n\nYour body absorbs more of the oxygen when you hold your breath. We don't absorb 100% of oxygen with every breath.",
"You've basically got it right. The oxygen in your blood gets turned into carbon dioxide. That carbon dioxide escapes back into your lungs, more or less replacing the oxygen that is absorbed into your blood, since carbon dioxide is what the oxygen is getting turned into.",
"First of all, the air you breathe in only contains about 18% Oxygen of which you only take in 3%(in relation to the original 100! not the 18).\n\nIn addition to that, while your blood takes in oxygen, it gives out carbon-dioxide. \n\nThis results in the total amount of air in your lungs to not change enough for you to perceive."
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6y5p4n | why is k-12 a state issue when most citizens look to the federal government? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6y5p4n/eli5_why_is_k12_a_state_issue_when_most_citizens/ | {
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"[Assuming you're speaking of the US]\n\nK-12 is a local government issue, primarily funded through property tax. The federal government sets minimum standards, which the individual states tend to exceed by various amounts. ",
"In the US if the Constitution does not specifically give the power over something to the Federal Government it belongs to the State. Education is not specifically given to the Federal Government so they are only allowed to put a few regulations on it. \n\nAnd what do you mean by \"most citizens look to the federal government\"? They look to it for what? ",
"On top of the other two answers, the only reason the federal government can set requirements is because it's tied to funding. (The supreme court has ruled that it's allowed to give funding with conditions)\n\nIf a state were willing to go full scorched earth, there's only a few regulations (like segregation) that they can't ignore. but billions of dollars in funding is a hefty thing to give up."
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879oc3 | why is it that despite how much cgi has improved in the last 20 years it is always possible to tell when human faces are digitally rendered? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/879oc3/eli5_why_is_it_that_despite_how_much_cgi_has/ | {
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"The term is “uncanny valley.” And yes it is much harder to make something real look realistic. Our brain is much better at finding something strange about things that we are used to.",
"Humans have spent many many many generations perfecting our ability to identify people, and faces in particular. We're so good at it our brain can pick faces out of a lot of different inanimate objects. \n\nBut along with that, we're also keyed to spot differences. Whether that's inter-tribe (they don't look like us), or more basic safety (they look sick/feverish/diseased), we're very good at it.\n\nCGI hasn't gotten to that point yet, especially when we see them move. It's the reason for the uncanny valley; stuff goes from 'this is obviously a representation of a face' to 'this is a real face but something is HORRIBLY WRONG.' \n\nI suspect there's a part of the design that's intentionally making them look slightly more off than we -can- make them, to avoid falling into that valley. ",
"Our brains are specially tuned to recognize all of the details of faces, in a way that they are not tuned to recognize details of, say, tree trunks. It is really difficult to replicate all of the colors, textures, shapes and movements of a human face in a way that can fool this powerful brain circuitry. Obviously there are good evolutionary reasons for us having this capability.\n\nInterestingly enough, there are people whose facial recognition circuitry in their brain doesn't work that well. You might imagine them as looking at faces and only seeing tree trunks. I had a boss like that. He would walk into a room with 4 people and have to ask \"is il1li2 here?\" because he couldn't recognize me. You or I could do that in a room of 15 people nearly immediately, and in a room of 100 people with a quick visual scan. I think if he concentrated hard enough he'd be able to, but it wasn't immediate.",
"Humans have a large part of their brain devoted to processing and interpreting facial expressions. Fooling that kind of hardware is very hard. Hard edged, man-made objects are computationally much easier. They add some shine to CGI facetones because even though you spot it as fake, it's less fake than flat facetones would be."
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8k57st | why do credit card companies send pre-approval letters for loans? how does this help their business? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8k57st/eli5_why_do_credit_card_companies_send/ | {
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"They are in the business of loaning money to people, and they make a profit off the interest. The more people they get borrowing money from them, the more money they make.\n\nIf the send out letters encouraging people to apply for credit, then they'll make more money."
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s6dds | how does china's great firewall work? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/s6dds/eli5_how_does_chinas_great_firewall_work/ | {
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"Not sure if this totally answers your question, but here goes:\n\n1. All Internet connection provided in China is provided by the same \"company\". Imagine if everybody in the US only got internet from Comcast and there were no competitors. \n\n2. The basic idea of the internet is little packets of information being sent and received. When you type \"_URL_0_\", your computer sends a bunch of one's and zero's through your modem to your Internet Service Provider (ISP). The ISP's machine reads these little packets and says \"oh, these need to go to the Reddit server.\" It then looks up the address and sends them along. Then reddit responds with more information and the ISP's machine forwards that response back to you.\n\n3. An ISP can easily set up rules that say \"if there is a request for '_URL_0_', send back a response saying 'blocked'\"\n\n4. Since, as stated in #1, all internet in China is provided by one \"company\" (it's a little more complicated than that, but the government ultimately controls the ISPs), they set up big list of sites that are \"blocked\". Whenever anyone sends a request to their ISP for one of those sites, the ISP returns a \"blocked\" error instead of forwarding the information along to the correct server.",
"Nice Try, Anonymous."
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4qylfv | how our stomach "know" how much acid it have to use to digest some food? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4qylfv/eli5how_our_stomach_know_how_much_acid_it_have_to/ | {
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"Food introduces relatively basic material into our stomach. pH receptors in our cells tell the stomach to produce more acid as its contents become more basic. After the food is sufficiently digested, the pH becomes increasingly acidic as more acid than food is being added into the mixture. Once it gets to a certain pH (around 2), the cells stop producing acid. It's a bit more complicated than this, but this is the general idea. This is also an example of what's called a negative feedback loop."
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26hdhb | what makes an iceberg invisible? | For example, with the Titanic, the captain wasn't able to see the iceberg. It "came out of nowhere." And also on the front page today, there was a video of an iceberg illusion where the iceberg's top part seemed to be floating above the rest of the iceberg. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/26hdhb/eli5_what_makes_an_iceberg_invisible/ | {
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"In the case of the Titanic, the lookouts had a hard time seeing the iceberg because it was nighttime and because they didn't have any binoculars.\n\nIt's difficult to spot any object on the water when there is no light.",
"For a few reasons.\n\n1. Blue Ice. It's when an iceberg stays in one position over a long period of time, meaning the part above the water and at the waterline erodes and the water leaves it. This makes the icebergs white at the top. After this, the iceberg tumbles and the part that was under the water is now above the water. Because it's smooth and filled with water, it appears a cool or dark blue.\n\n2. Moonless night. Whatever little light the moon could provide was gone.\n\n3. Flat, calm waters. Lookouts rely on the waves crashing on any objects to spot them. Since it was as calm as a millpond, the lookouts had no reference point.\n\n4. It was difficult to know where the horizon was. This was explored in the documentary you mentioned.\n\n5. Position of the lookouts. They were 70-80 feet above the water looking down. This meant that the icebergs would be against the water. Since the water and the iceberg were both dark, it was very difficult to see until they were right on top of it. The bridge had spotted it at the same time as the lookouts for this reason.\n\n6(?) Lack of lights. I put a question mark there because it was believed that the lookout's night time vision would be more effective and using a headlamp would narrow their vision too much while eliminating their night vision.\n\nThe binoculars weren't the real problem. They were only used after they had spotted a possible target to confirm it. They didn't see it until it was too late.",
"This isn't specific to the Titanic, but fog can reduce naval visibility to just few dozen yards."
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3lxhfz | if stem cells can be used to create any tissue and the reason we age is to do with damage occurred during cell reproduction. why can't we stop aging using stem cells gained from embryos? | So the stem cells gained from embryos would have less damage caused by cell reproduction. So wouldn't using these to help rebuild certain areas of your body reduce the effects of aging?
Theoretically speaking. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3lxhfz/eli5_if_stem_cells_can_be_used_to_create_any/ | {
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"Yes, theoretically, but embryonic stem cells have a tendency to not do precisely what you want, and we still have lots and lots and lots of learning to do before we can use them effectively to \"stop\" aging, and even to slow it down in any material way. \n\nThe problems to solve include getting them to where they need to work in the body, convincing them to form the right type of cells, getting rid of the old cells that are in their way, and doing all this within the actual structure of the human body. \n\nThat's why they're concentrating research on helping with certain conditions where stem cells (embryonic or other types) can help by being implanted in a small region. This will help us learn more and help people get used to the idea of such therapies, which is important because big movements of people dislike the whole concept as a frankenscience or because it's against their beliefs."
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7ccmjw | how do uhaul and car rental companies get their cars and trucks back when they are dropped off in different states or cities? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7ccmjw/eli5_how_do_uhaul_and_car_rental_companies_get/ | {
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"Because other cars and trucks are being driven from other cities to that location. It's a constant network of vehicles flowing in and out. I'm sure if there's too much of an imbalance between locations they transfer vehicles without them being rented. But that is easy enough.",
"Ideally, there is enough balance that a return trip brings the vehicle back. That's the reason you see so many out of state license plates in a lot of rental places, they just keep the car and hope another car will make it back.\n\nIf not, the next option is to pay customers to do it. If you want a one way rental from Atlanta to Detroit in the dead of winter, you can get a killer deal compared to going the other way.\n\nFinally, they put a bunch of guys in a van, or even use a trailer to bring them back. Note that if you take a car from NY to LA, no one is likely to come all the way back to get it. If LA has too many cars, they will send some to Vegas and Phoenix. If NY has too few, they'll get some from Philly or Buffalo. Eventually, surplus cars will flow to the places there is demand, and it will all even out.\n\n"
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2b0286 | who/what are the russian "separatists" involved with today's downed airliner? | Just seeing it pop up everywhere, are they living IN Ukraine or IN Russia, and how did they get a surface to air missile launcher? I'm lost in all of this! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2b0286/eli5_whowhat_are_the_russian_separatists_involved/ | {
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"This part is factually settled:\n\nThey're living in a part of Ukraine that they currently have taken control over and want to reincorporate into Russia. \n\nThis part is still unclear:\n\nRussia may have given them the surface to air missiles. But, the problem is that since Ukraine is a former part of the USSR, all their military weaponry and technology... is pretty much the same stuff. So the other explanation is that they managed to get these SAMs after capturing Ukraine's military posts in the region.\n\nBut there's now the possibility floating around that this thing was actually shot from inside Russian territory, which would be a game changer.\n\nWe really don't know the facts of what happened yet. We just don't. And the separatists are, right now, saying that they won't let Ukraine (which is still technically the government of the area where the plane crashed) come in and investigate, and that they have the \"black box\" from the plane and they're gonna hand it over to..... Russia. So we'll see how this investigation goes down.",
"Probably they are Russian troops involved in trying to split part of Ukraine off so it becomes Russia. That explains why they have access to excellent military hardware.\n\nThey would probably not be in uniform, however.",
"At this point, not much is known \"for sure.\" The media is going wild with accusations and theories that are presented as fact because the relationships between Ukraine/Russia and Russia/US are generally strained right now. It will be some time before anyone knows anything finite and, even then, there is no guarantee that any information that is discovered will be accurately represented in the media. ",
"Basically, they are Russian-speaking Ukrainians who were fired-up by the Euromaiden protests (resulting in a new government that wishes to not align closer with Russia) and Russia's annexation of Crimea. They both fear what the new Ukrainian government means for them as Russian-speakers and wish to be like Crimea and just join Russia.\n\nNow, the details regarding MH17 are not clear yet but what appears to have happened (and assuming it was rebels that fired that SAM) is they mistakened MH17 for a military plane (thus a military target, they have shot down Ukrainian military planes in teh past) and someone opened fire. I doubt they fired knowing it was a commercial aircraft because mass foreign casualities is NOT the rebels' objective but rather joining Russia is and MH17 going down will only make things worse.\n\nThe rebels got the SAMs from Russia in a secret, claudestine deal is the allegation and is probably true because where else are they going to get that kind of sophisticated equipment?",
"Well [here is the back story for what has been happening in Ukraine for the past year](_URL_5_) which you can read at your leisure.\n\n* Russia has since [annexed Crimea](_URL_2_), and has engaged in a [propaganda war](_URL_0_) against the new Kiev-centered government. The propaganda (broadcast largely by Russian sympathetic media such as \"RT\") basically claims that the new government are fascists and Nazis (there is zero evidence of either).\n* But there is a large Russia-speaking, and Russian sympathetic population in the very east of Ukraine. This population has [risen up](_URL_4_) and [taken over numerous government buildings](_URL_8_) in various cities near the eastern border with Russia (largely in Donetsk and Luhansk). They have held referendums, and generally solidified their position for many months. (They are not 100% of the population, but they are a large enough percentage of the population to actually take over these government buildings and organize into a rather annoying paramilitary.)\n* From numerous on the ground reports by reporters such those from [VICE news](_URL_3_), it is fairly clear that these people largely accept the Russian propaganda, and routinely refer to those in western Ukraine as Nazis. Keep in mind that there are Jewish organizations working with western Ukraine, and they have never expressed any feelings of being under threat by the new government in Kiev.\n* There is evidence that Russians have been supplying logistic, financial, and [weapons](_URL_1_) support for these separatists, though one possibility that is not widely discussed is that the ousted Yanukovich, an extremely rich man, may be funding the insurgency himself from his exile in Russia. Most discussion, however, have been focused on Vladimir Putin's involvement in supporting the separatists.\n* While initially there were a number of setbacks, the Ukrainian military has gotten its act together and started engaging the separatists in direct military engagements. There have been many casualties on both sides, but the Ukraine nationalists have recently ejected the separatists from the city of Slovyansk. But there was a pretty heavy price to pay for this -- [Slovyansk is kind of a disaster area](_URL_6_), and water and electricity and not functioning normally there.\n* The US and EU have threatened Putin and his supporters with sanctions for his involvement in the current crisis, [implemented some](_URL_7_), and in fact yesterday (7/16/14) , Obama announced a new round of tougher sanctions because of perceived assistance to the separatists from Russia."
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"http://www.c-span.org/video/?319014-1/secretary-kerry-ukraine",
"http://www.rferl.org/content/ukraine-united-states-russia-/25456999.html",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Crimea_by_the_Russian_Federation",
"https://news.vice.com/video/russian-roulette-dispatch-43",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_pro-Russian_unrest_in_Ukraine",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ypca3/official_eli5_ukraine_thread_pt_2/cfrf707",
"https://news.vice.com/video/russian-roulette-dispatch-54",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_individuals_sanctioned_during_the_2014_pro-Russian_conflict_in_Ukraine",
"http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26910210"
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2ze3f2 | what happens to headphones when one of the ear buds stop working unless the cord is in the sweet spot? | Just had this happen again. They were working great this morning on my walk to work but on the walk home the left bud would keep cutting in and out. Couldn't deal. Another pair to the grave yard.... | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ze3f2/eli5_what_happens_to_headphones_when_one_of_the/ | {
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"Inside the bud itself, the wires are soldered onto connecters attached to the speaker part that makes the noise. Because of how thin the wires are, and how cheap ear buds tend to be, they work themselves out of the solder pretty easily. What you're hearing (or not) is the wire actually physically breaking connection with the lead, unless the wire is being pressed into it *juuuust* right.",
"A lot of times, the wire that goes to your headphone will develop kind of a small tear where the electrical connection is now broken into two halves. \n\nBUT if you move the wire around and get that \"sweet spot\", the plastic insulator that the wire is in kind of squeezes the metal pieces back together temporarily, and then your phones start working again.\n\nOf course, as soon as you move the wire the two pieces will separate again.",
"Most likely somewhere along the portion of the wire from the actual headphone, to where it splits, there's a disconnection. Or it could also be the headphone jack doesn't fit fully and it's not getting the full signal. "
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231g7r | masturbation, oral sex, and other non-intercourse from an evolutionary perspective | I understand why people do it, because its pleasurable. But why do monkeys and other primates do it?
How did the animal kingdom discover the other non-intercourse sexual activities? It's my understanding that they know to have intercourse by instinct to ensure offspring. So why do you see primates and monkeys do oral sex and masturbation as opposed to just vaginal intercourse?
I don't mean to sound patronizing to our relative primates, but I'm just curious. Surely the discovery of non-intercourse sexual activity has had some effect on population for animals. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/231g7r/eli5_masturbation_oral_sex_and_other/ | {
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"They do it for the same reasons we do. It's fun.\n\nThey discover it through experimentation and/or observation.",
"It's apparently just as pleasurable for many other mammals as it is for us.",
"its a way to bond and resolve conflict within groups. like with the bonobos."
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g2ddpi | brain focusing and unfocusing | Can the brain focus on being unfocus so that you won't miss alot of information when you're in focus mode? For example like watching magicians Unfocusing seems to do better than focusing. Does that make sense? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/g2ddpi/eli5_brain_focusing_and_unfocusing/ | {
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"Unfocusing is just paying attention to something else, whether it's something in the environment or your own thoughts it doesn't matter. I believe you are trying to ask whether it's better to look at the \"whole image\" (the whole act, the magician and his stage) rather than focus on something more specific(for example his hand movements)?\n\nYou can do that, however you won't catch as many details because our attention has limited resources. For example we often find details we missed out in movies when we rewatch them. The brain already processed the big picture once and you already know what's happening, so now it can pay attention to something else as well, for example a poster in the background."
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4rn109 | how is lip syncing done in movies like "kubo and the two strings" | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4rn109/eli5how_is_lip_syncing_done_in_movies_like_kubo/ | {
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"The dialog is recorded ahead of time, so all of the audio can be timed and charted for the animators. Each scene length is (generally) set in stone, too. So the chart says, \"According to the audio track for this scene, the character should be making an 'S' sound at frame 47.\"\n\nI'm not sure what Laika's charts look like, but they're probably very close to these traditional charts (called exposure sheets or X-sheets):\n_URL_0_\n\nOn the left hand side you can see the dialog sounds that the animator must match with the frame number.\n\n\"Kubo\" is stop-motion animation, so there's a real set with characters. Every \"frame\" is a picture taken by a camera, which will then be compiled into moving footage - a movie. After each picture is taken, the characters are moved a tiny bit before the next picture. To get that beautiful animation and accurate lip sync that Laika achieves, an immense amount of calculation and planning takes place before a scene is executed."
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2mnvy9 | what is happening in missouri right now? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2mnvy9/eli5_what_is_happening_in_missouri_right_now/ | {
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"All is calm in St Louis so far. Still waiting on that Grand Jury for the decision though. Most of the protests have been peaceful, but the governor declared a state of emergency and preemptively called in the national guard in case people are upset by their decision and start rioting again."
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2puhmp | i got hit in the nuts with a soccer ball lastnight, why did i feel such pain in my stomache? | It didn't hit my stomache or lower abs, This was bang-on, bulls-eyed on the nuts as I was goaltending. Knocked me down pretty damn good. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2puhmp/eli5_i_got_hit_in_the_nuts_with_a_soccer_ball/ | {
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"The same reason that if you wiggle a finger in your belly button it makes your balls tingle.",
"Every fetus starts out female; the reproductive organs all start out in the gut. If you are finally a male, the organs drop out of the body and dangle precariously in a thin, vulnerable pouch of skin. But the nerves in the organs still register as in the gut. "
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7erdlg | why is it easy to type from the thoughts/words in your head, but difficult to type the alphabet? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7erdlg/eli5_why_is_it_easy_to_type_from_the/ | {
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"Muscle memory. \n\n\nYou are used to type these short words over and over. \n\n\nYou have very few words that have more than ABCD or BCDE or CDEF ect connected.\n\nSame reason you can easliy read last names you are used to read but a very foreign name will have you trying to reconnect syllables and hesitate on the word.",
"After so many years of typing, you've developed pretty strong muscle memory to jump from one letter to the letters commonly used after it in English speech. English isn't the cleanest language around, but it still has rules and order that it follows.\n\nThere's no real rhyme or reason to the order of letters in the alphabet, the letter order is arbitrary and you don't memorize the sound associated with the order.\n\nThat makes typing out the alphabet an exercise in replaying the alphabet song in your head while hunting down the right keys, which is a lot slower than the rapid word recall you're used to."
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5xb248 | why do the countries that used to be a part of the british empire (canada, new zealand, australia, etc) have a dollar ($) for a currency, instead of a pound (£) like britain? | Just a thought I had, and it made me wonder. You'd think that when Britain gave Australia, Canada, and whatnot, their independence that they would have the pound as the currency. It's like they decided to join America on the dollar bandwagon. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5xb248/eli5_why_do_the_countries_that_used_to_be_a_part/ | {
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"Malaysia has been under the British Empire but does not use dollar for currency. Malaysian Ringgit (MYR) is used. ",
"New Zealand and Australia used their own independent pounds, shillings and pence for some time after they had independence. When they decimalised, they found people worked in shillings. So they came up with a system where the cent was similar in value to the old penny, and 10 cents was a worth one old shilling. To keep it decimal, they needed a new currency worth 100 cents, and so they picked the name \"dollar\" because it's understood as a currency name, and other proposals were unpopular.\n\nOther countries weren't straight for their own currency, and adopted a decimal currency with a similar value to their neighbours. Dollars were recognizably different from pounds, so made sense.",
"The Spanish Dollar (aka \"pieces of eight\") weighed about the same as a Crown coin. A crown was worth 5 shillings or 100 pence, so it was the natural unit to convert to when you're trying to decimalize with existing coins. Also, during the 19th century the Japanese, French, Americans, and British minted \"trade dollars\" of equal weight to the Spanish dollar as it had become the de facto currency of trade in Asia. So to many the Trade Dollar appeared to be on its way to being a global currency. This notion fell apart in the early 20th century.\n\nThe UK did not do this because they decimalized very late and was less interested in fixing value to the pence or the crown but in retaining the \"very British\" pound. So they kept the unit and reminted all the coins (which is more expensive, but not as challenging in the modern age).",
"Why did you leave the US out of this list?",
"Australia used to have the pound but we're in Asia, so I guess it made \"cents\" to transfer to a decimal currency.\nThat and if you look at the old currency, shillings, half Pennies and Guineas its freakin nuts.",
"You literally answered your own question. But I love how you assume they copied The United States. The US dollar is actually based on the Spanish dollar, so you really should be adding the USA to that list.",
"Australia: When we swapped to decimal currency we swapped from dollars to pounds. The name change was to distinguish between the two, especially as there was a period during the transition where both could be used at once. Note that the change was NOT made at federation (independence) in 1901, it was made when the currency was decimalised in the 1960s.\n\n\nA lot of names were thrown around for the new currency, opinion polls and all that, in the end the Federal Cabinet just went with dollars and cents. [Article on it](_URL_0_)",
"German: Thaler\n\nDutch: Daalder\n\nIn English, these became dollar. The dollar was a silver coin minted by a variety of Dutch & German countries. And Bohemia. Yes, the Netherlands used the guilder as their currency before the Euro - that was their name for their gold coin. We're talking about silver here, which is far more widespread & important.\n\nThe Dutch were heavily involved in international trade, including the fur trade in North America. So the word stuck. More importantly, the Spanish were minting galleon-loads of silver pesos like you wouldn't believe. From Mexico, and especially from Potosi. Potosi was a mountain made of so much silver it basically destabilized both Europe and China because it caused so much inflation. Pesos, pesos everywhere! In fact, our dollar sign probably comes from the mint-mark for Potosi coins.\n\nEnglish-language countries continued to use the word dollar for pesos because both coins contained the same amount of silver. In contrast, British pounds were heavier, containing more silver than a dollar/peso. With the wide-spread Spanish minting, the Spanish weight (also the dollar weight) became the international standard. And as other posters mentioned, Britain kept most of its gold & silver in the domestic market.\n\nSo all around the world in British colonies people were using daadlers-called-dollars and pesos-called-dollars. But they couldn't call them the pound - because pounds are a different weight.\n\nPaper currency without inherent value doesn't become common until after all these countries gained independence. If it had, those former colonies probably would be using something called the pound."
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453vje | 3/4, 12/8 and similar notations in music. also, 3/4 = 6/8 in this context? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/453vje/eli5_34_128_and_similar_notations_in_music_also/ | {
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"The top number denotes beats per measure while the bottom denotes which note gets the beat. \n\n2/4 time would mean two beats per measure and the quarter note gets the beat. \n\n2 beats per measure is duple meter, 3 is triple, and 4 is quadruple. \n\n3/4 and 6/8 time sound very similar, but 3/4 time is usually seen with slower pieces like waltzes. 6/8 time is usually seen in faster music, because 8th notes are thought of as \"faster\" than quarter notes. \n\nAnother difference between 3/4 and 6/8 is that 3/4 time is simple meter while 6/8 is compound meter -- the beats in the measure don't divide evenly into twos. You'd normally count 6/8 time as 1-la-li 2-la-li, but 3/4 time would be 1-and 2-and 3-and. ",
"As others have noted, the bottom number is the duration that gets the beat and the top number is how many of those beats are in a measure. So 6/8 would tell you that there are \"six eighth notes\" in a measure, while 3/4 would mean \"three quarter notes\" in a measure\".\n\nThe reason we have that bottom value is that it fundamentally changes where the pulse falls: \n6/8 is a compound meter, meaning things are subdivided into groups of three. In 6/8, the pulse falls on beats 1 and 4:\n > **1** 2 3 **4** 5 6\n\n3/4, by contrast, is a simple meter, meaning the beats are subdivided in groups of two. For example, if we were to subdivide a 3/4 measure into all 8th notes:\n > **1** & **2** & **3** & \n\n\n\nYou can, in practice, write the same music in both 3/4 and 6/8 -- which time signatures you use is one of the considerations that a composer or arranger needs to make -- but you'd need to clearly specify where the emphasis falls using accent marks or other articulations. You'd get something like this in 3/4\n > **1** & 2 ** & ** 3 & \n\nMy go-to practical example of this is the Christmas tune Silent Night. It's originally in 6/8, but you'll frequently find arrangements in 3/4. It all depends on where the composer or arranger want the pulse and phrasing to fall."
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j6wa8 | what are gas future that i've been told affect our price at the pump so drastically? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j6wa8/eli5_what_are_gas_future_that_ive_been_told/ | {
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"So this is how it goes: gas has been transformed in a financial asset! What that means is that you can, today for instance, say to somebody \"I will buy from you 3 papers that represent gas. But I won't buy them today, but ten weeks from now and I'll give 10$ for each paper.\" If the other person accepts, ten weeks from now if the price of gas has increased, and say, is worth 12$ a paper, you have have won some money. If the price has decreased, you have lose some money. \nNow, gas prices are set according to supply and demand of oil. If there's a lot of oil being produced, for instance, the prices drop. But!, if there are a lot of people saying that in 10 weeks the price of gas would go higher and buying, the sellers now increase the value because there's a lot of demand.",
"Gas futures are a separate issue from the limited supply of gas.\n\nThe futures markets apply to commodities. Commodities are things that are valuable resources which do not have to have something \"done\" to them to have value.\n\nFor instance, corn, gold, pigs, and gas are commodities because they have value for what they are. Driftwood is not a commodity because by itself, it has no value. But if you were to turn driftwood into art, you could *make* it valuable.\n\nIn fact, gasoline used to be a waste product without value, which was thrown away after more valuable kerosene was made. Now, it is very valuable because lots of things use it.\n\nCommodities require time to harvest or gather. A futures market is used to buy something now which you need later. For instance, \"corn for October delivery\" or \"gas for August delivery\". The people who can produce a commodity and the people who want to buy it will come to an agreement on price.\n\nIf something bad happens to the source - like a really hot year makes a lot less corn grow, or if there was a pipeline or gas refinery problem which means that there's less gas going to be sold - the price tends to go up. If people want more of a given item - like someone discovers a new use for corn, or people drive more in the summer - the price tends to go up. If the desire for a commodity goes down or there is more of a commodity than people want to buy, the price tends to go down.\n\nThe reason people buy this sort of thing on the futures market rather than just trying to find someone who has what they need right then and there is this:\n\nLet's say pig bellies are a commodity you're interested in, because you make bacon. You run a large factory that cures bacon, and you have enough workers so that every day, you need 200 pig bellies. If you had to go buy pig bellies only when you ran out, you'd go to the commodities sellers in a bit of a panic - if there were any sort of delay or a shortage, that'd be the first you knew about it.\n\nIf, however, you bought pig bellies for delivery in 30 days, you don't have to panic about a sudden situation arising where you have a bunch of people ready to work, and no new pig bellies for them to start working on. If there's a shortage, you know about it 30 days in advance, and you and your workers can plan for it - less hours if there's less supply, and more hours and/or more workers when supply goes back to normal. You can also set your prices better this way, because if your prices for August commodity delivery go up 20%, you know that you need to start raising your prices in order to make sure you're not losing money.\n\nGas works the same way. Demand usually goes up in the summer, down in the winter. Supply can be affected by new sources starting up, old sources shutting down, problems with pipelines, refineries going down, and things like wars in countries with gas sources and pipelines.\n\nThe profits on selling gasoline to the public depend on how much more you sell it for than how much you buy it for as a commodity, so knowing about supply/price changes in advance is very important.\n\nHopefully that clears it up a little.",
"So this is how it goes: gas has been transformed in a financial asset! What that means is that you can, today for instance, say to somebody \"I will buy from you 3 papers that represent gas. But I won't buy them today, but ten weeks from now and I'll give 10$ for each paper.\" If the other person accepts, ten weeks from now if the price of gas has increased, and say, is worth 12$ a paper, you have have won some money. If the price has decreased, you have lose some money. \nNow, gas prices are set according to supply and demand of oil. If there's a lot of oil being produced, for instance, the prices drop. But!, if there are a lot of people saying that in 10 weeks the price of gas would go higher and buying, the sellers now increase the value because there's a lot of demand.",
"Gas futures are a separate issue from the limited supply of gas.\n\nThe futures markets apply to commodities. Commodities are things that are valuable resources which do not have to have something \"done\" to them to have value.\n\nFor instance, corn, gold, pigs, and gas are commodities because they have value for what they are. Driftwood is not a commodity because by itself, it has no value. But if you were to turn driftwood into art, you could *make* it valuable.\n\nIn fact, gasoline used to be a waste product without value, which was thrown away after more valuable kerosene was made. Now, it is very valuable because lots of things use it.\n\nCommodities require time to harvest or gather. A futures market is used to buy something now which you need later. For instance, \"corn for October delivery\" or \"gas for August delivery\". The people who can produce a commodity and the people who want to buy it will come to an agreement on price.\n\nIf something bad happens to the source - like a really hot year makes a lot less corn grow, or if there was a pipeline or gas refinery problem which means that there's less gas going to be sold - the price tends to go up. If people want more of a given item - like someone discovers a new use for corn, or people drive more in the summer - the price tends to go up. If the desire for a commodity goes down or there is more of a commodity than people want to buy, the price tends to go down.\n\nThe reason people buy this sort of thing on the futures market rather than just trying to find someone who has what they need right then and there is this:\n\nLet's say pig bellies are a commodity you're interested in, because you make bacon. You run a large factory that cures bacon, and you have enough workers so that every day, you need 200 pig bellies. If you had to go buy pig bellies only when you ran out, you'd go to the commodities sellers in a bit of a panic - if there were any sort of delay or a shortage, that'd be the first you knew about it.\n\nIf, however, you bought pig bellies for delivery in 30 days, you don't have to panic about a sudden situation arising where you have a bunch of people ready to work, and no new pig bellies for them to start working on. If there's a shortage, you know about it 30 days in advance, and you and your workers can plan for it - less hours if there's less supply, and more hours and/or more workers when supply goes back to normal. You can also set your prices better this way, because if your prices for August commodity delivery go up 20%, you know that you need to start raising your prices in order to make sure you're not losing money.\n\nGas works the same way. Demand usually goes up in the summer, down in the winter. Supply can be affected by new sources starting up, old sources shutting down, problems with pipelines, refineries going down, and things like wars in countries with gas sources and pipelines.\n\nThe profits on selling gasoline to the public depend on how much more you sell it for than how much you buy it for as a commodity, so knowing about supply/price changes in advance is very important.\n\nHopefully that clears it up a little."
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3vicp4 | what is the difference between decriminalization and legalization? | I'm in Canada and our Prime Minister is intending to legalize marijuana. I noticed other people who were running in the elections wanted to decriminalize it but what's the difference? Is a non-criminal activity different from a legal activity?
[Edit]I've marked this as explained like a million times over the course of yesterday and today, mods plz halp | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3vicp4/eli5what_is_the_difference_between/ | {
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"Decriminalizing simply removes criminal penalties, legalizing involves the process of creating infrastructure for regulation and taxation.",
"Decriminalization means it's still illegal, but there are no criminal penalties (like prison). \n\nParking violations, for instance, are not criminal. It's illegal, but you'll just get fined",
"Thank you all for your answers ",
"Decriminalized means that, if I get caught with some weed, the cop will take it away from me & give me a small fine - like a parking ticket or a speeding ticket.\n\nLegalization means I can walk into a store & buy it or grow it in my backyard without any problems.",
"If something is decriminalized, it means it is no longer a criminal offense. For example, Massachusettes has decriminalized marijuana, but not legalized it. That means that if you are busted with marijuana in Massachusettes, you can receive a citation and have to pay a fine, but nothing more, you can't go to jail. It's similar to running a stop sign or having a broken tail light in your car.\n\nIf something is *legalized*, it is completely legal, and there are no legal consequences for said act. Colorado has legalized marijuana, which means you cannot receive any citations or be arrested for smoking it."
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1id1kg | how does paying off a house work? | Start from the second you decide to buy a house and the day you pay it off completely. To make the example easy use a $200,000 house for an example, and typical rates. Explain all the terms. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1id1kg/eli5_how_does_paying_off_a_house_work/ | {
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"You put a downpayment on a house. A *downpayment* is a large sum of cash you have on hand. Obviously, most people can't pay for a whole house at once. They go to a bank. The bank checks their *credit rating*, which is based on paying payments for credit cards and other things on time. The bank also makes sure you can afford the house you're looking at. They give you a loan for the rest, essentially buying the house from the owner. Now the bank, not you, technically owns that house until the loan is paid off. You pay 200,000-downpayment back to the bank, plus interest. Interest rates vary greatly, so I can't give you an idea here. My parents have 4% I believe. \n\nSo this monthly payment you make to the bank is called a *mortgage*. Generally this will also include homeowner's insurance which may or may not be required where you live. It covers trees falling on your house, it burning down, etc. Also if someone slips in your driveway. You will also get taxed on having a house (don't you love being an adult?!), and that *property tax* is sometimes factored into mortgage as well. It's to make sure you don't have to pay a huge tax bill all at once, but pay it off over time which is less of a burden.\n\nSo say you paid 40k. You owe 160,000k at 4%. Do you want to pay that back in 15 years or 30 years? That is your choice with the bank. You will have a lower mortgage for longer if you pick 30 years, and you'll pay more overall. But this could be more affordable for you monthly. 15 year mortgages have you pay higher payments over a shorter period. You pay less overall, but have high monthly payments which could be a burden. Now which do you pick? You might get a raise later and 15 yr would be good then, but not now while you are starting out! Let's think about *refinancing*. You pick 30 year mortgage. After 5 years, you get a big raise and somehow the interest rates also dropped! Take a trip to your bank, ask to refinance and they will switch you to a 15 year and may also lower the interest rate since you refinanced and are paying them back faster.\n\nIf you don't make payments, you will be in trouble. You will probably be in *forbearance*, which is where you agree to get back on track with your bank and they don't *forclose* on your house. *Forclosure* occurs when you don't pay the bank back for paying for your house. They will then evict you and sell your house to someone, usually quickly and \"as is\" unless there is a major issue they may need to fix first. This is usually a *short sale* b/c the process is very quick and mainly to cut their losses. You were supposed to pay them 160,000k WITH interest and then you didn't. They just want what they paid for the house, to break even.\n\nHope this helps!"
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7rxfua | how does sound move onboard the international spacestation? | I know that sound moves via the compression and rarefaction of air. But surely the lack of gravity would impact this? Would speech on the ISS sound different, delayed or weird? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7rxfua/eli5_how_does_sound_move_onboard_the/ | {
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"No, sound is not significantly affected by gravity. Sound on board the ISS is the same as it would be if the ISS were stationary on the ground.\n\nAnd as a side note, there is no lack of gravity on the ISS -- it's in *free fall* which creates an experience much like zero gravity, but as it's very close to Earth, there is actually plenty of gravity.",
"The ISS experiences 90% of Earths gravity as compared to the surface, so even if gravity affected sound in a meaningful way (it doesn't), then it wouldn't on the ISS.\n\n[Chris Hadfield](_URL_0_) recorded the ambient noise aboard the ISS. It is just normal sound (albeit it's loud as hell)",
"Gravity impacts everything we observe. However, our ability to hear isn't good enough to tell the difference between sound in orbit and sound on the surface of Earth. \n\nedit: temperature and the gas make up of the ISS are much more likely to change sound. \n\nedit 2: You could always look up recordings of astronauts talking to each other. "
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misf7 | how do e-cigarettes work? | So I fell for an ad that a company ran on reddit (vapornine). And now I haven't smoked in 3 weeks. But I just don't get how vaporizing works. I understand that it turns the liquid into vapor (but I don't know what this means) and then I inhale the vapor. But I when I exhale, the vapor looks like smoke. Shouldn't it have cooled enough in my lungs to not be vapor?
And yes this looks like a shameless plus, but I've already saved a lot of money and improved my health. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/misf7/eli5_how_do_ecigarettes_work/ | {
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"Imagine this. You have a piece of paper, and you have a really hot light. You move the paper close to the light but it doesn't touch the light. The heart from the light causes the paper to burn, thus releasing smoke.\n\nThe E-Cig is essentially doing the same thing although instead of paper you have some sort of liquid type stuff. And when that gets hot instead of releasing smoke it releases thick vapor (not water vapor, which would cool in your lungs as you said) that vapor contains some nicotine in it as well as some flavor. When you exhale there's more in it than just water vapor so that's why you see it.\n\n\nHope this helps",
"Electronic cigarettes contain a small heating element which is designed to heat up the nicotine liquid that you put inside it to what is known as it's vaporization temperature. In other words, when the liquid is heated enough to reach this temperature, it then contains enough added energy to begin converting from it's regular liquid state to a gaseous state, which is the vapor you end up inhaling and breathing out. So in a nutshell, the e-cig heats up the liquid until it vaporizes into a gas, and then you can inhale the result which is mostly just water vapor, nicotine, and a bit of whatever other additives/flavorings they put in the liquid. The funny thing is, when you smoke tobacco normally, you still get the majority of your nicotine by vaporization. Most of the nicotine is destroyed by the actual combustion of the tobacco and paper when you light it, but the unburned tobacco next to the flame gets vaporized by the flame's heat and is then carried in the water vapor within the smoke to your lungs. All you really need to smoke is some source of water vapor; e-cigs just cut out all the nasty other stuff that comes with smoking normally. Also, some of the vapor DOES condense in your lungs and is absorbed, that's how the nicotine gets into your bloodstream.",
"A heated filament raises the liquid's temperature to its boiling point converting it from a liquid to gas. It is called a phase transition. You then inhale the vapor.",
"glycerin or propylene glycol are the liquid used with a small amount of nicotine added. They turn from liquid to a vapor at a relatively low temperature and form a vapor (\"smoke\"). It is the same thing used in fog machines. You lungs are relatively warm, as is room temperature once it becomes a vapor. Just like fog machines fill a room and it is slow to disperse.\n\nA battery heats up a small heating element wrapped in a metallic porous mesh which wicks in the liquid using surface tension and capillary action. When you inhale the heating element heats up the liquid turning it into a vapor that stays like a vapor until you exhale it. The evaporated liquid is replaced by wicking in more liquid.\n\nIt is the same thing as an asthma inhaler except the vapor makes it seem more like smoking. ",
"The liquid is basically water+glycerin+nicotine+flavor.\n\n**Water+glycerin+heat makes something that looks like smoke.**\n\nSomething that looks like smoke+nicotine+flavor gives us smokers a feeling of satisfaction without as many of the carcinogens.",
"A bit off-topic:\n\n > I've already saved a lot of money and improved my health.\n\nYou should also be aware of the fact that the e-cig kind of smoking is not studied enough yet. We don't know exactly what substances are put into that liquid (what we know is probably only the official \"receipt\"), how are they transformed by vaporisation and we don't know their effect on the health on the long term.\n\nSo, I guess that smoking e-cigs is replacing an evil with a less evil at best, and even worse than smoking traditional cigarettes at worst.\n\n( *I'm also a smoker, and I'm also trying to completely switch to e-cigs... I don't think however that I'm or will be healthier because of this. Not putting any kind of smoke / vapor into your lungs is the healthiest kind of smoking, I guess.* )",
"Imagine this. You have a piece of paper, and you have a really hot light. You move the paper close to the light but it doesn't touch the light. The heart from the light causes the paper to burn, thus releasing smoke.\n\nThe E-Cig is essentially doing the same thing although instead of paper you have some sort of liquid type stuff. And when that gets hot instead of releasing smoke it releases thick vapor (not water vapor, which would cool in your lungs as you said) that vapor contains some nicotine in it as well as some flavor. When you exhale there's more in it than just water vapor so that's why you see it.\n\n\nHope this helps",
"Electronic cigarettes contain a small heating element which is designed to heat up the nicotine liquid that you put inside it to what is known as it's vaporization temperature. In other words, when the liquid is heated enough to reach this temperature, it then contains enough added energy to begin converting from it's regular liquid state to a gaseous state, which is the vapor you end up inhaling and breathing out. So in a nutshell, the e-cig heats up the liquid until it vaporizes into a gas, and then you can inhale the result which is mostly just water vapor, nicotine, and a bit of whatever other additives/flavorings they put in the liquid. The funny thing is, when you smoke tobacco normally, you still get the majority of your nicotine by vaporization. Most of the nicotine is destroyed by the actual combustion of the tobacco and paper when you light it, but the unburned tobacco next to the flame gets vaporized by the flame's heat and is then carried in the water vapor within the smoke to your lungs. All you really need to smoke is some source of water vapor; e-cigs just cut out all the nasty other stuff that comes with smoking normally. Also, some of the vapor DOES condense in your lungs and is absorbed, that's how the nicotine gets into your bloodstream.",
"A heated filament raises the liquid's temperature to its boiling point converting it from a liquid to gas. It is called a phase transition. You then inhale the vapor.",
"glycerin or propylene glycol are the liquid used with a small amount of nicotine added. They turn from liquid to a vapor at a relatively low temperature and form a vapor (\"smoke\"). It is the same thing used in fog machines. You lungs are relatively warm, as is room temperature once it becomes a vapor. Just like fog machines fill a room and it is slow to disperse.\n\nA battery heats up a small heating element wrapped in a metallic porous mesh which wicks in the liquid using surface tension and capillary action. When you inhale the heating element heats up the liquid turning it into a vapor that stays like a vapor until you exhale it. The evaporated liquid is replaced by wicking in more liquid.\n\nIt is the same thing as an asthma inhaler except the vapor makes it seem more like smoking. ",
"The liquid is basically water+glycerin+nicotine+flavor.\n\n**Water+glycerin+heat makes something that looks like smoke.**\n\nSomething that looks like smoke+nicotine+flavor gives us smokers a feeling of satisfaction without as many of the carcinogens.",
"A bit off-topic:\n\n > I've already saved a lot of money and improved my health.\n\nYou should also be aware of the fact that the e-cig kind of smoking is not studied enough yet. We don't know exactly what substances are put into that liquid (what we know is probably only the official \"receipt\"), how are they transformed by vaporisation and we don't know their effect on the health on the long term.\n\nSo, I guess that smoking e-cigs is replacing an evil with a less evil at best, and even worse than smoking traditional cigarettes at worst.\n\n( *I'm also a smoker, and I'm also trying to completely switch to e-cigs... I don't think however that I'm or will be healthier because of this. Not putting any kind of smoke / vapor into your lungs is the healthiest kind of smoking, I guess.* )"
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6d6e4q | how do scientists know we're not simply still in the expansion phase of a "big crunch scenario?" | The "Big Crunch" model of the universe has fallen out of favor because we can observe the universe is still speeding up, but how do scientists know it will continue to do so forever? Wouldn't it be possible that the universe is still "exploding," but will eventually run out of steam and collapse? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6d6e4q/eli5_how_do_scientists_know_were_not_simply_still/ | {
"a_id": [
"di08q62"
],
"score": [
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"text": [
"It's because of the very fact that the expansion seems to be speeding up (accelerating). If you think of Big Bang as an explosion, the highest velocity is always at the initial time and point. In the Big Crunch hypothesis, with gravity exerting its force, the universe will continue to expand but it would be expanding at an ever slower rate, eventually reaching a maximum and then reverse into a contraction. However, we now have evidence that not only is the rate of expansion not slowing down, but some force (we aren't sure what), is actually speeding it up."
]
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[]
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|
1ohgpt | how do any thing that lay eggs fertilize them? | like does the egg harden when it's fertilised? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ohgpt/eli5_how_do_any_thing_that_lay_eggs_fertilize_them/ | {
"a_id": [
"ccrz9ls"
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"Eggs that don't have shells, such as those laid by fishes and frogs, are usually fertilised after being laid. The female produces the eggs and then the male covers them in sperm. It's an inefficient method, which is one reason why these creatures usually lay large numbers of eggs.\n\nEggs in shells, however, such as those produced by reptiles and birds, are fertilised before they're laid. The male and female animal copulate and fertilisation occurs -- much like with mammals. However whereas mammals keep the developing foetus internally in a womb, in egg-laying animals a shell then develops around the egg and it's ejected from the body."
]
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[]
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|
9zlf1o | how does time dialation work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9zlf1o/eli5_how_does_time_dialation_work/ | {
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"Imagine standing in a train, rolling a ball on the floor. The train is moving at 70 mph. \n\nFrom your perspective inside the train the ball is rolling at 10 mph.\nFrom the perspective of someone outside the train the ball is moving at 80 mph.\n\nAs your velocity approaches relativistic levels the length of time in a second starts to get longer. From your perspective travelling that fast, time seems normal, but from the perspective of someone external your clock appears to slow down.\n\nThe result is if we travelled to somewhere 20 light years away at 99% the speed of light, from our perspective on earth over 20 years would pass but from the perspective of people on the ship the trip would probably only take about 3 years.",
"Here's a thought experiment that helped me:\n\nYou're in a car, driving due north at 60mph. All of your motion is going north. In an hour, you'll be 60 miles north from where you started. If you were instead going due **northeast** at 60mph, an hour later you would definitely have gone north, but not as far. Right? Some of your motion went to the *east* instead.\n\nTime and space work in the same way. If you're not moving through *space* at all, then it's like driving only north. You just go through time. But as soon as you start moving physically, some of your motion through *time* is diverted away. You travel through time slower when you are moving.\n\nThe difference is absolutely miniscule at any practical speed, it only becomes important as you approach the speed of light, BUT!\n\nThere was an experiment done where atomic clocks were synchronized perfectly on the ground, and then some were put into jet planes and flown around the globe. When they returned and compared the clocks, the time discrepancy between them was exactly what the math predicted.\n\n[\\[LINK\\]](_URL_0_)",
"**relative velocity**\n\n*How fast do airplanes fly?*\n\nWe can find out by timing a flight from New York's JFK airport to San Fransisco's SFO. It takes about 6 hours to go about 3,000 miles. \n\nThat's 3,000 miles per 6 hours or 3,000m/6h = 500 mph\n\nBut wait, if we go back (from SFO to JFK) it takes almost 6 and a half hours. Or only 461 mph. \n\nHow can it take longer to go west to east? Because the Earth is moving too. It rotates east to west. \n\nThe planes velocity is relative to the Earth's velocity. We measure speed between two objects. Not one object and some fixed point. Everything is moving and everything is relative. \n\nMeaning you in the plane and a stationary observer at the San Francisco airport would disagree about the speed of your flight. In e saw you travel 3,000 miles, but you saw San Francisco come part of the way toward you — making your journey shorter. \n\n*How fast can you throw a ball?*\n\nMaybe 30 mph right? Unless you're standing on a plane — now if you're headed to SFO and throw it west, the ball is moving 30 mph *relative to the plane* but also, we could say it travels 500 mph + 30 mph *relative to the Earth*. You would add the speed of the plane to the speed of the ball. \n\n**How fast does light travel?**\n\nAccording to the laws we discovered when measuring magnetic fields (Maxwell’s equations and Lorenz invariance), photons have to travel at a fixed speed regardless of the speed of anything else. This is the speed of light. It is **not** like the plane moving between two moving airports. \n\nBut that’s confusing. If you're on a plane going nearly the speed of light and then you throw a ball forward, would the ball be going faster than the speed of light? We know that shouldn't be possible. \n\n\nAlso, while on the plane, if you flip on a flashlight how long does it take to reach the cockpit of the plane? The plane is definitely moving. So shouldn't the beam of light either travel at nearly the same speed and appear to be basically motionless relative to the plane — or shouldn't the speed of the plane be added to the speed of light like the ball was?\n\nIt seems like either you would perceive the speed of light as slower relative to the plane's fast speed or your speed gets added to the speed of light and a stationary observer on the earth would disagree about the speed of light. Meaning light looks slow to you but fast to the standing still on Earth guy. But the equations say neither happens. Somehow both observers would see the speed of light the same relative to themselves. But are the equations right?\n\n**We tried measuring it.**\n\nMeasurements like the Michaelson-Morely experiment seem to back this up. When lasers are fired North-South and compared with lasers fired East-West (adding the rotational speed of the earth, roughly 1,000 mph) there isn't a difference in measured speed of light at all. \n\nHow can this be? Well Einstein figured out that of you do the math (simple geometry really) the implication is that a bunch of really counter-intuitive things happen to allow light to stay a fixed speed. *Space and time itself warps* to accommodate a fixed speed of light relative to all observers. \n\n**Think about it. If light looks slow to you on the plane, so that it looks fast to a guy standing still on Earth, what would that mean? How would you see it? When light moves slow, electrons move slow — all interactions move slow. Interactions is what makes time pass and clocks tick. Time slows down. And now light looks like it's normal speed. And it is, because it turns out that space is linked to time too.**\n\nIf you throw the ball, the ball does in fact move faster than you relative to you. But time itself slows down for you. Everything moves slower from your point of view. In fact, a 6 hour flight near the speed of light might have you arrive 6 hours later, but might only experience 6 minutes of travel. Time dialates when you move really really fast. That's how both you and the guy waiting at the airport would see light moving at the same speed. You would disagree about how much time passed — how far the light traveled. \n"
]
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[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafele%E2%80%93Keating_experiment"
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||
c051l6 | why do lips start to stick together when closed for long times? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c051l6/eli5_why_do_lips_start_to_stick_together_when/ | {
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"We use our tongue to keep our lips moist and when we don't do that, lips lose their moisture- this also happens when we are dehydrated. So when the moisture on the lips dry up, the left over thin coating which is made up of a sticky substance which comes from the mucus of saliva makes lips to stick together."
]
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[]
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||
8bbtq6 | why do bigger document scanners cost exponentially more? | After a day of scanning in 24in drawings through a scanner at my work each taking 1 min to scan at 300 dpi on a machine similar to [this](_URL_0_) costing easily 3000$ and is slow and okay at scanning. Yet a copier can scan 11in drawings in a row at high quality and relatively fast for relatively cheap. Even a home scanner like [this](_URL_1_) is like 80$. why does the jump to 2x wide make the price just skyrocket? I feel like some engineer could design a way cheaper one. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8bbtq6/eli5_why_do_bigger_document_scanners_cost/ | {
"a_id": [
"dx5h6ed",
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"text": [
"The main reason is that the market for these devices is very small, so they don't benefit from the economies of large-volume manufacturing and competition.",
"Market size and build quality.\n\nUsually your work wants only one scanner dozens or even hundreds of users... but boy do they put some mileage on that puppy. If it broke down all the time customers would not come back. Home scanners and printers frequently use cheap or fragile parts and build techniques to keep the price down. "
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"https://bycolortrac.com/a1-scanner-smartlf-scan-24-large-format-scanner",
"https://www.amazon.com/Brother-DS-620-Mobile-Color-Scanner/dp/B00EKWE55K/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&qid=1523397114&sr=8-13&keywords=scanners"
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7h7es0 | how did we come to decide which words mean what? are sounds just randomly formed into words or do they carry some sort of meaning? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7h7es0/eli5_how_did_we_come_to_decide_which_words_mean/ | {
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"dqp07xe"
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"text": [
"Originally? We don't really know. However new words are created all the time and gain meaning by their shared use. \n\nAs far as I know, theres no human universal \"meaning\" to any particular sounds, it's just whatever the language evolved to use. Most of the words in english come from pretty easily identifiable sources, the most prominent being French, Latin, Norse/Germanic, and the rest being created unique for the english language. "
]
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[]
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||
3s8w4i | how come certain videos on youtube can use copyrighted material and others can't, even if it's the same material? | I've never quite got it.
I recently spent 4 months editing a video of a trip I went on to Iceland using the music of Sigur Ros. I figured it'd be fine, they've always been very open with their music and even had contests where fans could pick songs off their album, make their own music videos, and upload them online. Once I uploaded it though it immediately gets flagged for 6 copyright claims by Warner Music Group and is blocked in 236 countries.
How is this possible when they have entire Sigur Ros albums and tracks that random users have uploaded to YouTube that have millions of plays on them but are still up there.
I posted that the material belonged to the band in the video description and nothing was set for being monetized or anything like that. What gives? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3s8w4i/eli5_how_come_certain_videos_on_youtube_can_use/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"It's not fine to simply include commercial music in your videos, even if you see others include the music in their videos. What you did was an explicit copyright violation.\n\nYou are only permitted to incorporate the music into your video when you have explicit master and synchronization rights.\n\nFor some music, such as music provided under a Creative Commons license, master and synchronization rights are provided to everyone free of charge.\n\nIn the vast majority of cases, however, you must contact the record label and/or music publisher (more technically the copyright holder or individual/group acting on behalf of the copyright holder) and seek express written permission (e.g. in the form of an explicit license/contract) allowing you to incorporate the music into your video.\n\nImportant note: the artist in many cases is *not* authorized to give you permission to use their music in your video because often the copyright holder of the music is *not* the artist, but instead may be the original composer/songwriter, a publishing group, or some other organization. So just because the artist says it's okay for you to use doesn't always make it so.\n\nTo provide some clarification, the synchronization license provides you with the right to incorporate the music composition and synchronize it with your video BUT this does not grant you permission to use a specific master recording of the song (e.g. by the popular artist), it only permits you to use *a* copy of the song that you have obtained the master rights for (e.g. a 'royalty free' version by a no name singer/artist).\n\nThe master use license is what allows you to use a particular recording of the song (e.g. featuring the popular artist), but you can't synchronize it with visuals (i.e. incorporate it into your video) without also having the synchronization license. Luckily, it is possible in some cases to obtain the master use and synchronization rights together in one negotiation to avoid unnecessary licensing complications.\n\nThen there are also performing rights royalties that have to be paid to the composers/songwriters, but luckily for you these royalties are paid for on your behalf by YouTube.\n\nRoyalty Free music is another option to consider. Royalty free doesn't mean it's free to use, it just means that you (typically) pay just once and then you get master + sync rights to use the song/track in your videos/projects without having to worry about any future licensing or royalty payments.\n\nAs I mentioned earlier, there are also music composers / songwriters that produce music independently and release it under Creative Commons or an equivalent license so that you can use the music freely without paying for master & sync rights."
]
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6gkn46 | how do names work in sign language? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6gkn46/eli5_how_do_names_work_in_sign_language/ | {
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"Fluent in ASL here, ties with Deaf community. \n\nYour sign name is normally given to you, kinda like a nickname as stated prior. ",
"Just as all other communication occurs in this language, names are expressed visually. Sure they can be spelled out using signed alphabet letters, but that's so phonetic and not really how sign language works. \n\n\nIf my hearing name is Roxanne and my right eye is a lazy eye, I can almost guarantee you my signed name will have something to do with an \"R\" pressing against my right eye. Or, if my hearing name is Ashley and I have huge breasts, my signed name might honestly be something like an \"A\" in each hand motioned around the chest area. \n\nDat shit be visual. ",
"If you don't have a name sign, you introduce yourself by fingerspelling your name.\n\nIf you do have a name sign, first you fingerspell your name, then you show your name sign. \n\nName signs are always given, by a Deaf person, you can't give them to yourself."
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8n1nvp | why can you get food poisoning from cooked chicken that has been left out for 12 hours on the counter, but not from a piece of chicken that has been stuck in your teeth for 12 hours before you brush? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8n1nvp/eli5_why_can_you_get_food_poisoning_from_cooked/ | {
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"A tiny piece of chicken stuck in your teeth for 12 hours could develop bacteria, but it would be a very tiny bit of bacteria.",
"The difference is which type of bacteria grows on the chicken. Since the chicken is cooked, any bacteria on/in the chicken was killed, meaning that only environmental bacteria will grow on it afterwards.\n\nOn the counter, bacteria from people touching the counter, dust and air, and all the other things that may be in the kitchen could make its way onto the cooked chicken. Some of this bacteria may be harmful, potentially causing food poisoning. \n\nIn your mouth, there are loads of bacteria already present, all of which (assuming you’re healthy) are not harmful to you. When chicken is stuck in your teeth, it’s almost guaranteed that the bacteria growing on it are from your mouth and not harmful to you. Also, if a bit of bad bacteria have made it onto the chicken, it’s likely that they will be out-competed by less harmful bacteria already in your mouth. \n\nTL;DR: Mouth bacteria are generally less harmful than counter bacteria. ",
"In addition to the other answers, your saliva is a moderately-strong anti-bacteria agent which will suppress the growth of bacteria."
]
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||
4y3rgy | the difference between aerobic and anerobic fitness | Redditors,
Im currently studying for my USTFCCCA coaching certification, and in Effectively designing a program for track and field athletes, i need to confidently know the differences between the energy systems so that i can addrsss them in different workouts during the week. Help!!!!
Im understanding the glycolic process but im still a but weary on glycolitic capacity, aerobic power, and when one switches from anaerobic to aerobic. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4y3rgy/eli5_the_difference_between_aerobic_and_anerobic/ | {
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"text": [
"Aerobic is when your cells can receive oxygen adequately from the blood. You're currently in aerobic respiration. Anaerobic is when you are hard at work and your muscles can't get adequate oxygen. Aerobic respiration is 26x more efficient than anaerobic. Anaerobic produces lactic acid I think. "
]
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5x449u | if chess is considered a sport, why not checkers? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5x449u/eli5_if_chess_is_considered_a_sport_why_not/ | {
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"text": [
"A lot of people wouldn't consider chess a sport, a few people would consider checkers a sport. To get to what you're asking in why someone would consider chess a sport, but not checkers, chess has a damn near infinite amount of possible moves that to this day, we've not been able to build a computer that has solved chess(impossible to lose). Checkers was solved decades ago.",
"There is no one single definition of sport. Some definitions include chess as a sport, some do not. Checkers is the same way.\n\nA few reasons checker might not be considered a sport while chess is:\n\n* It has been solved by computers.\n* It lacks the same sort of professional players and big money tournaments.\n* It is less competitive. The great Marion Tinsley lost a total of 7 games over a 45-year career, 2 of them to the computer that eventually solved chess."
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45say6 | why is russia a very hated country by a majority of people? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/45say6/eli5_why_is_russia_a_very_hated_country_by_a/ | {
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"text": [
"A lot of it is residual distrust from the Cold War.\n\nBut Moscow under Putin has performed a destabilization in Europe by annexing the Crimea and Russian politics has taken on a somewhat sinister cast. Now we could have used a different sort of diplomacy in Ukraine (like not inviting them to join NATO) and minimized the damage to statecraft. Their incursion into Syria might have been managed a little differently by us as well from a political stand point. But the big caution flag (I believe) is the blatant embrace of classic Fascist political techniques domestically. You have the criminalization of dissent, the repression of sexual minorities, the marriage of church and state, the manufacture of \"popular approval\", and a generally worshipful attitude toward the President and the Fatherland.\n"
]
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||
8594bq | why is pcr significant? what can it be used for? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8594bq/eli5why_is_pcr_significant_what_can_it_be_used_for/ | {
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"Lots of times when we procure DNA, it's in very limited amounts. [PCR](_URL_0_) allows you to make a lot more of that DNA, so you can do a lot more testing (or whatever you need to do) without worrying about using up/destroying your sample.",
"There's a lot of uses of PCR\n\nThe basic usage is that we have a limited starting sample, and we want more of it so we use PCR to replicate\n\nWe can also use PCR to convert RNA to DNA and test for concentration of RNA in a cell (measures gene expression). This is called RT-PCR, and qRT is the method of measuring gene expression quantitatively\n\nWe can also use PCR to attach two separate genes together using overlapping primers. You can do this to make glowing versions of your protein of interest by attaching a florescent protein to the end of your original one\n\n",
"To add to other answers, PCR allows us to selectively amplify (multiply) a specific region of DNA which makes subsequent tests easier.",
"PCR is used in diagnosing viral diseases as well in Medicine so that’s another important use for it. "
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483hlb | how snipers adjust their sights so that they get a 'headshot'? | In movies, the centre 'X' marks the spot and that is where the bullet will go.
But this can't be real.... the barrel is a good inch or so below the sights, and the bullet falls under gravity....
So do snipers always aim high? Or do they adjust their sights accordingly somehow? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/483hlb/eli5_how_snipers_adjust_their_sights_so_that_they/ | {
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"1) Experienced shooters, from military snipers to police officers don't aim for a \"headshot\" in normal circumstances. They aim center-mass. This means they aim for the torso.\n\n2) For a sniper, they'll know how far away thier target is. They'll adjust the sight so it hits more or less in the crosshairs. They'll have a spotter with them giving them ranges, wind conditions, etc.\n\n3) Gun sights are \"zeroed\" to certain ranges. So they'll be slightly canted so the bullet hits in the sights at a certain range.\n\nOutside of that range you just aim up or down accordingly.",
"Snipers have to adjust according to many factors such as distance from target, wind conditions, whether or not their target is moving at the time. It takes a fair amount of fast mathematical calculations to make a successful shot. Movies like to simplify the process and show you that \"X marks the spot\" so to speak. However, in real life snipers usually have a \"spotter\" with them who uses binoculars to help guide the sniper to a successful shot. ",
"[This](_URL_0_) should help, but yeah headshots are video games and movies. Well placed shot to the torso will kill you and it's usually easier to hit."
]
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5fw351 | what makes hair go gray for several inches in the middle of a strand then grow dark again? | Does it indicate the pigment cells in the follicle are fluctuating/dying, therefore it's on its way to going all gray next? Is it typical to waver back and forth before a follicle stops producing pigment entirely?
It's just something I've noticed with my hair and it made me curious. Of the twenty or so gray hairs I've found, most are only gray in a section in the middle or at the tip, not at the roots. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5fw351/eli5what_makes_hair_go_gray_for_several_inches_in/ | {
"a_id": [
"dankfag"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Gray hair is caused by the absence of melanin. Your hair follicles use melanin to color the hair. Over time for some people you begin to lose the melanin in your hair.\n\nIn your case you appear to have lost melanin for a period of time. This can be caused by any number of health issues, diet, stress, or even the natural process of going gray. \n\nFor more info you may want to consult a dermatologist. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
9g5od0 | how do "extended release" work? does the tablet just sit in your intestines fizzing away? or is it more complex? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9g5od0/eli5_how_do_extended_release_work_does_the_tablet/ | {
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"It depends on the type of medication. However, typically half the medicine will dissolve very quickly while the other half has a coating of material on it that it takes your body a certain amount of time to break down. An example would be half the dose now and the other half in four hours. For reference, the form of medication that this would pertain to is a caplet which when you open will contain many tiny beads half of which are coated and half of which aren't.",
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664xef | how do salt evaporation ponds work? | I understand that the water in the salt water is evaporating, leaving the salt. But why are the multiple levels of evaporation pond needed, and how has the technology developed since its origin? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/664xef/eli5_how_do_salt_evaporation_ponds_work/ | {
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"It's mostly for operational efficiency. The water will evaporate the same no matter where it is. Imagine you have 10 evaporation ponds. Fill 7 with sea water. When those reach a certain level, pump the brine concentrate into 2 spare ponds, and refill the original 7 ponds. When the 2 concentrate ponds are further concentrated, pump that into a finishing pond.\n\nThat way you can assembly line the process, and use the salt collecting equipment efficiently. Remember the final pond will have the salt quantity of the original 7. Using the salt harvester on 7 ponds might not be worth the expense."
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1l90le | depression | Depression is a topic I thought I understood, but as I've seen or interacted with technically depressed people I've slowly lost confidence in my understanding of the topic.
It seems to me, that whenever people discuss Depression in AskReddit threads and the like that they speak about it in a very vague or obscure way, and I don't really understand what they are talking about.
My major question is this: **Is depression something that has a catalyst rooted at it's heart?** e.g. some tragic event in your life.
It seems to me that whenever people discuss it they talk about how they feel, and never why they are depressed. It also seems like Depression isn't really something you can understand unless you have been through it yourself.
Signs seem to point to "No" as the answer to my previous question, but that seems very surprising and new to me. If depression is not caused by anything, do people just sort of drift into it? How does that process start? My brain can't really fathom the process as having no catalyst.
I often see Depressed people refute things like "Just feel better!" or some such inanity. This also perplexes me as to why people would suggest something like that. I don't really believe that people are that stupid in reality, is it often meant as a joke or something?
There is so much about this topic my brain can't fit into place that I'm struggling to even write this post, so please just educate me about the subject in general, if you would be so kind. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1l90le/eli5_depression/ | {
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"I like to think of it as an emotional atrophy.\n\nWhen you break your left wrist you get a cast on your arm for about 6 weeks. During that time, you don't really use those arm muscles. When the cast comes off, those muscles are smaller and weaker for a while because you didn't use them all that time.\nIn depression, it's a similar thing with your feelings. You don't use your \"happy muscles\" for so long they become smaller and weaker. \n\nWhy they stopped using the muscles can vary from one person to another.\n\nAsking a depressed person to \"just feel happy\" is like asking a weak person to lift a heavy weight. They might be able to someday, but they physically aren't able to today. They need to do high repetitions of lighter weights and build up to bigger weights over time.\n\n\n(it's actually called up-regulation and down-regulation of receptor sites for certain hormones etc, and even that is overly simplistic, but you are 5 so I will explain the rest when you are older).",
"I've had depression for some time now. My great-grandmother (who died this year at 99) always told me that happiness is a choice, and I've lived my life believing that. It's just that no one ever told me how incredibly hard it is. \n",
"My former neighbor suffered from depression. He explained that he's brains were fucked up in some way (the chemical imbalance). He kinda creeped me, never showing any emotion, always speaking in a monotonous voice etc. \n\nThat really was somehow scary and I felt extremely bad for him. Think of life without joy, excitement or even disappointments... ",
"I'll try to be as detailed as I can, typing this on my phone.\n\nUltimately, clinical depression isn't just a state of mind but a depressed neurobiological system.\n\nLong story short, there are neurons that are involved in associating one set of neurons with another, and these neurons that form these associations act positively (in that they turn other neurons on instead of off). In clinical depression, there's a dysfunction in the signaling of those neurons, so that they do not act as robustly as before. As a result, things appear less stimulating, fewer things are associated with emotions, and cognitive function is 'depressed'.",
"[Allie explains it quite well.](_URL_0_)\n\nIt can also not always be a 'sad' thing, and be rooted in things like attention span and desire. When I was depressed I just had to keep buying things so I'd have something to look forward to, then attain. After I had the thing, I'd start to slump again, and I'd have to repeat.\n\nIt's quite a diverse state of mind.",
"Depression? When I become depressed I don't realize it usually until after some time has passed. It is insidious in it's subtlety. Camouflaged as a \"bad day\" until you realize you haven't enjoyed anything, not a meal, a conversation, not an entertainment event, in weeks. It feels like being in a room where the only light source are the windows and the windows get dirtier every time you stop paying attention to them. Then one day you realize you are totally utterly in the dark, at which time you are so devoid of energy you pretty much don't care. At the same time, you definitely don't want to tell anyone. How do you explain to your boss \"I just feel yucky and pretty much don't give a shit about anything\"? How do you tell your mother, friends, family, \"I kind of don't want to BE anymore\"? This shit is deadly. The main coping mechanism for me is early warning awareness. I have a few things I keep an eye on. When any of those things occur, I stop whatever the fuck I am doing and do a self assessment. When I confirm I am becoming depressed, I have a few people I trust and have previously tee'd up to be prepared for a conversation something like \"Hey I am pretty down. Would you mind checking on me time to time?\" That ALWAYS sucks to ask that. But it does get a little easier with practice. \n\nThink about depression as that time where you were in the middle of the pool after playing in the water for a long time. You are tired and someone dunked you under. That place you go when you are flailing and gasping for air and at the same time are so fucking tired, lactic acid buildup in your muscles, everything hurts, all you feel is panic but you have zero energy. That is as close as I can come to what it feels like to get out of bed on the bad days. ",
"Depression can be caused by a catalyst, e.g. outside stimuli, but ultimately it is still a chemical imbalance. There are physical manifestations of neurological disorders in the brain, you can actually see differences on an MRI when someone has, say PTSD.\n\nThere isn't a hard line differentiating depression caused from external stimuli than that of someone with an inherent imbalance. It's a graduating scale. \n\nA good analogy might be to think of a cup. Over time this cup is filled by traumatic events, stress, chemical changes in the body, i.e. puberty, and even outside chemical contact, like drugs and alcohol. If you can't drink fast enough, the cup will eventually overflow; even if you can keep it from overflowing, you may feel sick to your stomach.\n\nSometimes depression, at least in the colloquial, can be \"gotten over\", through introspection and resolve. When someone says \"Just feel better!\" I think it's an attempt to encourage said introspection. Imagine a strenuous activity, like lifting weights, and someone is encouraging you to lift more; \"Just do it.\", \"Suck it up man, you've got this!\", etc.\n\n",
"I'd also like to add to what everyone else has said by noting that sometimes a direct cause for depression isn't something you're really aware of. Sometimes it's a series of small events that pile up, instead of something immediate and tragic like a death or injury. \n\nI have friends who are depressed because of chemical imbalances and it is very tough relating to their condition because it's something unaffected by the conditions around them or effort on their part. \n\nFrom my own experiences; depression tries to sink in and grab hold of me when I try my hardest to achieve something/anything and I fail at it repeatedly for whatever reason. Day to day I really don't notice it but there always comes a point when I think \"Wow... I'm really not happy am I\" and I discover I've been in depression for awhile. ",
"I have a history of depression, and my explanation for it is that it is a change in overall mood (or an average), where most people get through the day feeling pretty content or neutral and a depressive generally feels more downbeat from dawn to dusk. The severity ranges between people, and can be caused by anything that would cause a low mood throughout the day for an extended period of time. Examples are low serotonin levels in the brain, working a shitty job, going through a trauma in life, etc. The list is pretty long, and with such a diverse range of causes its no surprise why depression is so common today.\n\n\nA depressive might not even have that big of a change in overall mood. However, being just a little sad during the day can have big consequences; when people are happy they easily do things that keep them happy, and when they are depressed they easily do things that keep them depressed. This principle determines whether or not a person will harbor negative thoughts and have trouble dealing with their own problems, and is a good reason why depression tends to get worse with time. This also leads to a concept that is kind of like a 'probationary period', where whenever you start experiencing a drop in mood for a period in time you become at risk for depression. If you decide to think positively during this period, go to lengths to fix the problem or live in a positive atmosphere, you probably won't snowball into depression.\n\n\nThis also explains why it might not be a good idea to tell someone to 'just get over it' or a variation of that. According to my explanation depression has an identifiable cause, and saying such an indifferent statement is equivalent to saying it to someone with any other problem in life. It's really insensitive to say (and indicates a lack of thought), because the depressive person is suffering from this specific problem at every waking moment, and by giving such a statement not only are you distracting them from an actual solution, but you are also suggesting the impossible.",
"I copied a post a user made in /r/depression a couple of weeks ago that I thought explained it perfectly, tried looking through my post history to find it but couldn't so I'm sorry I cannot provide source but it was from a user on /r/depression. when I read this it almost brought me to tears as being a near perfect explanation * WARNING THIS CAN BE A TRIGGER FOR SOME PEOPLE*\n\nit starts with something simple; maybe a rejection, or a social faux pas, or a harsh word from someone. Whatever it is, it plants a seed of self doubt in your mind that won't go away. This leads to a consistent feeling of self hatred, the feeling that you are somehow unfit or that everyone would be better off if you weren't around to embarrass or annoy them; you begin to isolate yourself because of this.\n\nThe longer this isolation goes on, the more persistent the feelings of inadequacy become. It becomes harder and harder to shake the perception of yourself as an essentially worthless person. Outwardly you maintain a persona, smiling, laughing, socialising, but on the inside you feel like you are slowly being ripped apart.\n\nIf you're like me, you feel very strongly that you cannot share these feelings with anyone; perhaps you are afraid that they will confirm your worst fears about yourself, or they will belittle your problems. Perhaps like me, you're afraid of being stigmatised as a basket case, or having your masculinity questioned because you're a man who talks about his feelings. In any case, instead of seeking help you bottle your feelings up.\n\nSlowly and painfully, you begin to disintegrate on the inside. You push friends and family away, believing yourself to be unworthy of them or not wanting to worry them. You lose interest in things that you once loved, able only to procrastinate and wile away your time abusing substances. You neglect your physical health, hygiene and work commitments; concepts like hours, days and weeks become meaningless as your life blurs into a meaningless sludge alternating between when it is light and when it is dark outside. Your brain seems to be fogged constantly, similar to the aftermath of a heavy night out, and thanks to your inability to have proper sleep you are constantly exhausted.\n\nEventually you hit rock bottom; you sleep and eat far too little or far too much, and things such as dressing yourself or brushing your teeth become not only monumental challenges but seemingly pointless. The only thing that stops you from ending it is your fear of the act, your guilt over the consequences and your complete lack of drive or energy. You have forgotten what it feels like to experience love, joy, excitement; all that persists is the exhaustion, the anxiety, the embarrassment.\n\nAt this point you no longer experience what it means to be human; you are a husk, a body robotically carrying out meaningless tasks. That is what depression feels like.\n\n ",
"Someone sent me this once and I thought it was a good way of seeing depression:\n\n_URL_0_",
"An interesting study of depression can be seen by looking at brain scans of depressed and non-depressed people. For many reasons, chemical or life event, the brain functions in a less complete and robust manner when a person is depressed. There may or may not be a single or series of catalysts to attribute, but a persons neurological chemistry is always a significant indicator of depression. Some people are more likely to become depressed than others, in fact depression can be precipitated by not taking good care of your body: nutrition, hydration, sleep, and exercise are highly correlated with your mental state. Exercise is one of the most unused and highly effective antidepressants that doesn't require a prescription.",
"Saying, \"I have depression\" is also a very American thing. In other countries, it is described differently. It would translate to something more similar to \"depression has me,\" trying to capture the all consuming nature and powerlessness we feel when we are depressed sometimes.",
"[This is the best way that I've seen it described.](_URL_0_)",
" > It seems to me, that whenever people discuss Depression in AskReddit threads and the like that they speak about it in a very vague or obscure way, and I don't really understand what they are talking about. \n\nIt could be due to the fact that it will be different for everybody. I've never been clinically diagnosed, but I do have near constant problems with feeling like I'm not good enough. Like I'm a failure. Like my wife could do better than a loser like me. Friends back in school would tell me to stop being hard on myself, or to stop being self deprecating. It's hard. I *can't* stop. I can't stop over analyzing every single failure in life. I can't stop wondering why a relationship 13 years ago failed or what I could have done differently. I can't stop having all these things weighing and dragging me down every day. Some days are better than others, yeah, but it's an every day thing.\n\n > I don't really believe that people are that stupid in reality\n\nSounds like you've never worked customer service. People *are* that stupid, and that is part of it for me as well. It's hard for me to fathom how some people even survive a day, and that compounds things further. Now, in regards to depression, hell, if they've never felt it, they just don't know. I'll give them that. There's a distinct difference between ignorance and stupidity.\n\nThe basest way I can put it is this: Take a breakup, a pet dying, whatever sad moment in your life. A breakup for me is a good one, because the one I mentioned above devastated me. Maybe take a point where you failed at something and felt awful about it. Then multiply that by *every day of your life*. Some days are the failure, some days are the breakup, some days are just a day. There's always something digging at you, like an itch. You can't decide to just stop itching, just like you can't just stop being depressed. It's not just sadness. It's mental exhaustion, physical fatigue, lack of motivation. It is the hardest thing in my life to deal with on a daily basis.\n\nLike I said though, everyone is going to be different. This is just me.",
"I don't have the energy.",
"It can have a trigger like grief from a family death (increase in cortisol through stress) but I think its a state of mind where pessimism gradually takes ahold of you. You lose interest and motivation because you've stopped enjoying things (bad sign is when you can't remember the last time you laughed) so you start doing things like cutting ties with friends because you can't be bothered anymore. I think depression is when you feel unbelievably alone and honestly don't see your life improving. You keep waiting for that magical thing to come along to \"snap you out of your slump\" except it never does. In terms of neurochemistry, long-term brain activity by these \"moods or ways of thinking\" causes remodelling (think behavioural remodelling in drug addiction) and excessive activation in certain areas of the brain, which leads to oxidative stress upon neuroreceptors and the normal effects of neurotransmitters are compromised. Modern antidepressants act to increase synaptic levels of neurotransmitters (particularly serotonin) to restore \"normal\" activity. The exact cause is unknown but the commonly accepted theory is the \"monoamine theory\" which is basically a deficiency in neurotransmitters related to mood. Another theory I've heard is due to an imbalance between the hippocampus (associated with \"good moods\" and gets smaller) and the amygdala (associated with anxiety and gets larger). ",
"(I don't have depression myself.)\n\nOne thing to understand about this condition is that it is an affliction that is out of the person's control. You may find when you get mad or sad that you can do things that affect your mood. This is because the normal cycle of brain chemicals responds to your intent...you can literally behave in a way (mentally) that causes your brain to start spitting out more dopamine and change your mood in the same way that you can will your arm to move and it does. (Not *exactly* the same, but you see the correspondence.)\n\nNow you might argue that you don't have control over your brain chemicals...but I would point out that not knowing *how* you control something...that is, not being *aware* of how you do something...is not the same as not being in control of it. To wit, do you actually understand exactly *how* the intention to move your arm actually results in your arm moving? No, no one really understands that deeply. But you would never say you therefore don't have control of your arm.\n\nWell, there are people that don't have control over their arms. They are paralyzed, or maybe they have a neurodegenerative condition that causes their arms to spasm and move sporadically. Try as those folks might, they cannot control that arm.\n\nSomeone with clinical depression does not have that control over their brain in the way that others do, same thing. And in the case of clinical depression, just like the person with no control over their arm, the context of the situation doesn't really matter. By all rights a person without depression might be happy in a given situation; a depressed person will not.\n\nThe difference is that the brain is conscious of itself. People with depression often have trouble accepting they do not respond to situations they way they would like to, often more trouble than someone who loses control of their arm. So not only do they have depression, they feel as though they *ought* to be able to respond appropriately and be happy and grateful and feel all sorts of things...but they can't, and in the parts of the brain they can control, the depression is deepened.\n\nEnd of the day, telling a depressed person to lighten up or change their mood is no different than telling a quadriplegic to get up and walk. It's judging someone unfairly, by something they cannot control."
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23wld6 | how companies like valve and gog get rights to sell games, when the game creators are out of business? | How can companies sell games that are old and the companies are out of business? How do they acquire the IP's for games when the companies that made them are out of business? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/23wld6/eli5_how_companies_like_valve_and_gog_get_rights/ | {
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39t2fk | how was arnold schwarzenegger's rein as governor. | Was thinking about the fact that he was governor and wondered how did he do? Any notable positive or negative changes thanks to him? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/39t2fk/eli5_how_was_arnold_schwarzeneggers_rein_as/ | {
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"Not great, and in the end, shameful.\n\nHe liked to give speeches and hear the people cheer, but had no stomach for taking the criticism the comes with pushing a governor's agenda.\n\nFor example, in 2005, he called for a special election to approve four fiscal reform ballot initiatives he considered essential for solving California's deep financial crisis. They involved measures to reduce the power of unions in the political process, and he could not handle it when the unions attacked him. His campaign became half-hearted when all of Cal-ee-forn-ee-yah did not line up behind him, and essentially threw in the towel weeks before the election. All four measure failed, and the special election he called seemed turned out to be a huge waste of time and money. After that, he was ineffective as governor.\n\nHis tenure ended on a particularly bad note. As outgoing governor, he violated California law by granting last minute pardons and commutations, with out the required notification to the legislature. On his last day in office, he commuted the sentence of a gang member and murderer who just happened to be the son of a political buddy.\n\nI would say the best way to sum up his term in office would be one of political cowardice. ",
"My understanding is that the recession crippled his ability to govern.\n\nCombine that with the fact that he ran out of patience with the scum that are career politicians...and his reign was mostly ineffective.\n\nMy opinion is that he could have been a good governor had the circumstances been different. Nobody could have done well during the time period he was governor though."
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7h2rfn | nasa engineers just communicated with voyager 1 which is 21 billion kilometers away (and out of our solar system) and it communicated back. how is this possible? | Seriously.... wouldn't this take an enormous amount of power? Half the time I can't get a decent cell phone signal and these guys are communicating on an Interstellar level. How is this done? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7h2rfn/eli5_nasa_engineers_just_communicated_with/ | {
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"There isn't very much in the way of it, since it is mostly empty space between there and here.\n\nThere is a high latency, of course.\n\nYour phone signal can't work with high latency since it is designed for quick communications, and it is prone to errors caused by other nearby signals.",
" > I can't get a decent cell phone signal and these guys are communicating on an Interstellar level.\n\nMobile phones work off UHF (Ultra High Frequency), so the range is very short. There are usually signal repeaters across a country, so it gives the impression mobiles work everywhere. \n\n > wouldn't this take an enormous amount of power\n\nSo, not really, as long as there is *nothing* between Voyager and the receiving antenna (usually very large). As long as the signal is stronger than the cosmic background, you'll pick it up if the antenna is sensitive enough. \n\nSo the ELI5 version of this would be :\n\n- Listening to a mouse in a crowded street.\n\nVersus\n\n- In an empty and noise-less room, you are staring at the mouse's direction, , holding your breath, and listening for it.\n\nEDIT: did not expect this to get so up voted. So, a lot of people have mentioned attenuation (signal degradation) as well as background cosmic waves.\n\nThe waves would very much weaken, but it can travel a long wave before its degrades to a unreadable state. Voyager being able to recieve a signal so far out is proof that's its possible. Im sure someone who has a background in radiowaves will come along and explain (I'm only a small-time pilot, so my knowledge of waves is limited to terrestrial navigation).\n\nAs to cosmic background radiation, credit to lazydog at the bottom of the page, I'll repost his comment\n\n > Basically, it's like this: we take two giant receiver antennas. We point one directly at Voyager, and one just a fraction of a degree off. Both receivers get all of the noise from that area of the sky, but only the first gets Voyager's signal as well. If you subtract the noise signal from the noise + Voyager signal, what you've got left is just the Voyager signal. This methodology is combined with a lot of fancy error correction coding to eliminate reception errors, and the net effect is the pinnacle of communications technology: the ability to communicate with a tiny craft billions of miles away.",
"They used a very large dish to focus the transmissions into a narrow beam. The bigger the dish, the greater the effective power. A 70M dish has a gain of around a million (depending on the frequency) . \n\nThey also used very low bit rate communications. The usable bit rate is highly dependent on signal to noise ratio. \n\nThey do use high power on the Earth side, but the spacecraft has only a few watts, and a small dish. The Earthbound receivers use ruby ~~masters~~ masers cooled in liquid helium to get the lowest noise. \n\nEdit: changed a word",
"We know where Voyager is, it knows where the Earth is, and we built extremely large satellite dishes to be able to pick out the signal from the background noise.",
"Firstly, its not \"interstellar level\" it's 19 light hours away and the nearest star is 37168 light hours away (4.243 ly). \n\nSecondly, NASA has access to giant radios and receivers.\n\nOne 34-meter (112 ft) diameter High Efficiency antenna (HEF)\n\nTwo or more 34-meter (112 ft) Beam waveguide antennas (BWG) (three operational at the Goldstone Complex, two at the Robledo de Chavela complex (near Madrid), and two at the Canberra Complex)\n\nOne 26-meter (85 ft) antenna\n\nOne 70-meter (230 ft) antenna (70M)\n\nVoyager has a 3.7-meter (12 ft) diameter parabolic dish high-gain antenna to send and receive radio waves via the three Deep Space Network stations on the Earth.\n\nYour cellphone antenna is about as long as your phone\n\nHere you can see what all the DSN arrays are doing - _URL_0_\n\n",
"One thing that they do in order to make communication with these spacecraft more reliable is to send the same batch of commands multiple times, each with a very slight frequency offset. This accounts for any relative velocity variation between Earth and the spacecraft, which may receive 3 of 5 commands sent, for example. The signals from the Voyagers are not strong - they are, in fact, weak compared to the background noise, but clever software algorithms have been developed which identify and isolate these transmissions.",
"1. The electronics on board was state-of-the-art at the time of launch.\n2. The electronics had to be tough and a lot of protections had to be added so it could survive cosmic rays and other hazards.\n3. The electronics was way simpler that it would be if built today. Less complexity less stuff to fail.\n4. Because the hardware is simple, the software it runs is simple, compared to today standards, so, less or no bugs, less motives to fail.\n5. Voyager was built with a lot of redundant components. So, if one part is not working well, there is another wan that works and the whole thing keep going.\n\nBut obviously, a lot of stuff is broken by now. Space is hostile as hell and time is unforgivable for any machine and organism. It can last long but it will fail eventually forever.\n\nThe only hope is that some civilization finds our treasure chest one day and see they are not alone. ",
"There are two factors that impact how far apart you and someone else can communicate\n\nHow loud can you shout? How quiet of a sound can you hear?\n\nVoyager is little so it can't shout very loud, and it can't hear extremely quiet things so the Earth station makes up for it. NASA uses very large and very powerful satellite dishes to blast transmissions at Voyager, and extremely large and sensitive antennas to listen to the really quiet messages it sends back\n\nThe antennas on Earth send about 20 kW(73 dBm) of power at Voyager for it to be able to hear the message. Voyager sends back a 20 W signal and by the time it arrives it is at an extremely low power level ( < -240 dBm, no i can't convert that into normal watts its too damn small)",
"They use a system called the Deep Space Network that uses huge satellite dishes located all over the world. \n\nYou can actually see which spacecraft are connected in real-time here: _URL_0_",
"How long would it take for the signal to reach with something like this?",
"Sending radio waves long distances is hard, but to help they use a dish to concentrate the antenna's output into a beam rather than out in all directions. This greatly magnifies the signal in the direction that the dish is pointed. But this then requires the spacecraft to be very accurately pointed at Earth, or the beam will miss the Earth and we would not receive the signal. So the spacecraft uses thrusters, basically tiny rocket engines, to turn the craft to always point the dish towards Earth. Voyager has two sets of thrusters, and the set that they normally use to point the dish are running out, so they tested the other set to make sure they can start using them for pointing the dish. The test was successful, which means they can still point Voyager towards Earth for a few more years. \n\nFor power, they use plutonium. Plutonium is radioactive and heats up when you put enough of it in one container. You can make electricity if you put something hot - the plutonium - and something cold - space - together, which powers the radio dish, as well as the rest of the spacecraft. Unfortunately, the plutonium makes less and less heat over time and will eventually no longer be able to make enough heat to power the spacecraft and the antenna. When this happens Voyager will no longer be able to talk to us, or run its computer. It's lifetime will be over. ",
"Scientific systems engineer here...\n\nIt's not about the amount of power needed to generate and broadcast the signal from the instrument, it's about the massive infrastructure needed to *hear* it. As such, NASA has built a massive ground system called Deep Space Network that's designed specifically to communicate with interplanetary spacecraft. Three ground stations in Australia, Spain and California coordinate their huge arrays of dishes (dozens at each site, each one with its own 70m dish) to send and receive signals to basically all of the exploratory research instruments in the solar system. In the case of Voyager, it takes something like 30 hours just to get a signal there and 30 hours to get it back, but as long as it's RTG can create enough energy to power it's high gain antenna, we'll still be able to talk to it.",
"The earth rotates constantly though. So if it's a single straight beam signal coming back in a tunnel, how do we maintain connection?",
"How long did it take for Voyager to receive the signal?",
" > Half the time I can't get a decent cell phone signal\n\nYour cellphone isn't communicating with [this](_URL_0_). \n\nIf it was your signal would be 5 bars at all times",
"I didn't read all the comments before replying, so I apologize if anyone has already mentioned this, but a key factor in digital communications is the energy in the received signal, not just the power used to transmit it. These two quantities are related by the amount of time it takes to transmit one bit of information (and other things like distance, and interference). If you multiply power by time you get energy. In your typical cellphone link you're transmitting a lot of information very quickly (i.e. Mbps). When you compare that to the amount of data it takes to, for example, command a microthruster to turn on, you're looking at a command sequence that's only a handful of bits, maybe a kilobit. And you can afford to wait seconds (I'm not talking about a delay now because that also takes a while, but the time it takes to receive the message from when the first bit arrives to when the last bit arrives at the receiver). In addition to this, as others have said, the sensitivity of the receiver is very good (because it's cold, it's looking mostly at cold space, and it has a very narrow beam aka high gain), and there is no obstruction or significant sources of interference. However, simply a lower data rate helps to receive a weak signal more strongly. Hope that helps. (I am an electrical engineer who works for an aerospace company designing communications satellites.)\n\nTL;DR say it slow and it's easier to understand from far away.\n\nedits: clarity and adding the TL;DR.",
"Curious about the affects the theory of relativity would have on the actual amount of time the satellite has been out there in space. This is to say that if the satellite is moving at a high speed and is experiencing time moving slower when compared to ours here on earth, would that mean the satellite has really not experienced 40 years of time but instead has only undergone a significantly smaller amount of time with which it’s parts can age?",
"Reposting my own top comment from [one of the last times this question was posted](_URL_0_): \n\n > Some other commenters have covered really well how it's still transmitting, so I'll cover a bit of how we're receiving. The signals Voyager transmits are really weak when they get here, and there's a lot of noise in the electromagnetic spectrum, so the signals are way weaker than the noise. \"But wait\" you might say, \"if the signals are weaker than the noise, how can we hear them?\" It's a challenge comparable to hearing your friend whispering from across a room full of people talking. We came up with a really clever way to hear them, though.\n\n > Basically, it's like this: we take two giant receiver antennas. We point one directly at Voyager, and one just a fraction of a degree off. Both receivers get all of the noise from that area of the sky, but only the first gets Voyager's signal as well. If you subtract the noise signal from the noise + Voyager signal, what you've got left is just the Voyager signal. This methodology is combined with a lot of fancy error correction coding to eliminate reception errors, and the net effect is the pinnacle of communications technology: the ability to communicate with a tiny craft billions of miles away.\n\n",
"Could I send my own radio signal to voyager ?\n\nEDIT: phrasing",
"So why doesn't NASA send out new probes similar to Voyager when new technology becomes available to them? If the Voyager 1 and 2 were launched nearly 40 years ago, why can't we send more, more frequently? ",
"A bit out of scope, but if we wanted to, could we reorient Voyager to come back to Earth ? How long would this return trip take ?",
"I work for the Deep Space Network (DSN), which is the group responsible for communicating with all of the unmanned spacecraft NASA has launched. We use high powered transmitters on large radio telescopes for outbound communication. Then for inbound communication, we amplify the signal, while removing noise at the same time. We know how the inbound signal should look and so we can remove most of the noise and amplify the rest. \n\nVery simple response but, I can provide links and additional detail as needed. ",
"Is there some sort of news alerts you can sign up for that keeps you aware of cool stuff like this when it happens? This should be the all over the media",
"Let's forget about antenna quality for a moment and talk about the signal itself.\n\nFirst, consider that computers generally communicate in a sequence of zeroes and ones. Voyager uses its communication equipment to pick up electromagnetic waves from space and turns them into zeroes and ones. Unfortunately, almost every number it receives is \"noise\"; that is, it actually came from space. But every once in a while, we manage to beam a 0 or 1 all the way out there.\n\nBasically, imagine that Voyager is flipping a coin over and over, and writing down the result. Except that every 10,000 throws we get to pick the result ourselves. \n\nInformation theory tells us that any message can be encoded across any channel if the receiver gets any consistent stream of real information at all, no matter how infrequent. Smart engineers/mathematicians can come up with an encoding scheme where 1000101110000111010100111110100101010 somehow means \"1\" after filtering out all the garbage.\n\nUsing this technology, Voyager can theoretically decipher messages no matter how far it travels. However, computing limits will eventually render it impossible. ",
"They should be sending Probes out every year in the same direction so that they can have a string of them communicating with each other back to us.",
"Related question: how long does it take the signal to get from Earth to Voyager?",
"Antenna design can do a lot, too. The transmitter and receiver can sacrifice sensitivity in one direction for a boost, or \"gain\" in another. So the transmitter here on earth can send a pretty strong, directed WAKE UP VOYAGER, GET BACK TO WORK signal, and then a really sensitive antenna can point directly at Voyager, and listen for higher-than-background-noise signals.",
"Is Steely Dan still around?",
"Simple answer: digital signal processing\n\nAnalog waves get messy and lose information at long distances. With the help of digital signal processing, data can travel million miles and the information still stays the same and we extract it from the garbage.\n\nSource: EE who works in telecom",
"Can someone put the distance between us and the Voyager 1 into perspective?",
"A radio wave traveled 21 billion miles, the gear on the probe received the transmission and replied with its pre-programmed response. The craft then beamed that response back to earth and a dish on the ground received the reply. Now if you are asking how the equipment is still working or how it has enough power to work, that is a completely different answer. ",
"Space is a vacuum. When we are talking about a moving particle, or in this case a photon there is a term called the \"mean free path.\" This mean free path is the average distance said particle will travel before it collides with another molecule, and this is inversely proportional to pressure. Since space is about as close as you can get to being a perfect vacuum messages can travel nearly unlimited distances before hitting other molecules ( unless you hit planets or stars). When on earth the pressure is pretty high so not only is the mean free path of your signal reduced significantly, but you also have a lot more physical barriers like mountains and trees to overcome.",
"my real question would be: how much is the latency? Like, they send a message and how long does it take to go to the other side?",
"Space is just a Infinite empty void, there is nothing that prevents the signal from reaching the target.",
"Also What protocol does it use? I imagine tcp would be pretty bad with the rtt. "
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20p5sh | the big bang theory. lately, all this talk about the big bang has made me wonder exactly what it is. but from what i can find online, i still don't completely understand. | If you could explain to me what did the universe consist of before the Big Bang? Wiki tells me the "universe was in an extremely hot and dense state". Doesn't this mean that the universe, even before expansion, already existed before the Big Bang? What did the universe consist of before the Big Bang and how did this material come into existence? I'm mostly curious about the existence of the universe BEFORE the Big Bang. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20p5sh/eli5_the_big_bang_theory_lately_all_this_talk/ | {
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"Nobody really knows. ",
"We have zero understanding of *how* to answer that question. Science literally hasn’t come up with words to talk about it.",
"[disclaimer:I'm drunk] Scientist will say that no one knows... but that doesn't mean we can't extrapolate from currently derived knowledge of existence. Essentially all energy, the stuff which combines to create macroscopic objects, was freely flowing in a region of existence that did not define properties and boundaries. This coagulation of freely flowing energy exists antithetic to a region of zero energy (including zero space as space is a boundary with properties). Think of this zero space region as an emptier than empty region of \"space\"... so empty that it did not even contain space. To simplify this consider a cheeseburger. Now the concept of a cheeseburger is created from the constituents of that object (cheese, meat, bread, bacon, lettuce, tomato, sauce)... and blend that cheeseburger in a blender. The constituents of that cheeseburger still exists, yet the macroscopic object of \"cheeseburger\" cannot be defined unless the constituents of the blended burger are separated from one another and the components are organized and reconstituted. \n\nSo the pressure of an energy rich region is greater than the pressure of a net zero \"empty\" region. This pressure, over time, exerts enough force on the empty region to force energy into that empty region. Now we get into mind boggling time scales... Initially there is no reaction, however... on a long enough timeline (eons X eons and so on) after many energetic impregnations in this empty void, the void begins to react and absorb this energy conferring it in different ways. In our particular instance of reality: when the pressure of energy began to impregnate the void, the void began attributing properties to this energy. One key property was mass, another gravity. Eventually, on a long enough time line, you get a void which confers enough properties of this invading energy to create a container that we know as space... with this container called space existence can then contain the energetic waves that propagate through it and build upon those discreet wave packets. Again... over time... those waves coalesce into atoms.... and so on.\n\nReality is probabilistic which means many iterations of existence have come and gone and been either unsuccessful, or successful -such as our own existence. Quantum mechanics dictates that over time chaotic energy will eventually organize itself. The big bang is simply the beginning of the iteration that spawned our existence.\n\nSimplified: If you have enough energy to create a cheese burger, that energy has enough activity to (over time) vibrate itself into a region of existence where it can define what a cow is, what lettuce is, what a pig is, what wheat is, and coalesce into a cheeseburger. \n\nAlternatively: on a long enough timeline if you shake enough helium up in a balloon you can build a cheeseburger. "
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1udid2 | what is the evolutionary advantage of having very pale skin? | I have very pale skin (I'm white) and I'm wondering what the advantage is. I would assume better vitamin D absorption but I have a vitamin D deficiency (I live in NYC where there's not a ton of sunlight). Nothing racial supremacy or anything gross, just curious. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1udid2/what_is_the_evolutionary_advantage_of_having_very/ | {
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"I don't think you can really call it an \"advantage\". It is more like \"adaptation\". Pale or what we call white skin is an evolutionary adaptation to the colder, darker European climate - for more Vitamin D absorption in the shorter duration of sunlight exposures. ",
"The pale skin allows more uv light to pass through the skin and produce vitamin D because the pheomelanin, fair skinned people have pheomelanin. Which type of melanin you have is encoded in the mc1r gene",
"Higher paying jobs. "
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32sp9z | am/fm radio business. how is this still working for people? is there really a big enough audience where this is profitable? it seems incredibly ancient at this point. | An American here. Maybe I'm being ignorant and more people use this than I realize, but I can't imagine the audience size is beneficial to advertising and artist's music playing. Someone please tell me how wrong I am! Or right. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/32sp9z/eli5_amfm_radio_business_how_is_this_still/ | {
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"It is not ancient since it is used by probably 75% of the population daily. It is free so you don't need monthly fees or anything and the quality is actually decent. "
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6jinvp | the whole "mining" thing with rx video cards? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6jinvp/eli5_the_whole_mining_thing_with_rx_video_cards/ | {
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"Crypto currency \"mining\" is basically solving a bunch of complex math problems, in exchange you get some of that crypto currency. It just so happens that Radeon graphics cards, specify the newer RX ones, are very good at it. GPU's are better in general at this than CPU's and Radeon based graphics cards are better at it than Nvidia based graphics card.\n\nThis caused a very high demand for these graphics cards, as the price if Bitcoin and a few other crypto currencies have increased very quickly in the last several months. Many people are buying Radon RX series graphics cards to get in on the increase in crypto currency maker value."
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36bkyl | why/how do some people hold the belief that only white people can be racist? | Lots of people on the internet have differing explanations, like how some people have different definitions of the word "racist", or because white people are the majority and therefore only they are able to oppress. But, for example, if a white man and a black man both applied for a job, and the black interviewer chose the black man just because of the color of his skin, how is that not racist? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/36bkyl/eli5_whyhow_do_some_people_hold_the_belief_that/ | {
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"I'm going to try to explain. This is not necessarily my opinion, but an answer to your question.\n\nBecause the idea of racism - when looked at as a social problem - is, to many, inclusive of \"power\". Since white folk are - when talking at an entire race level - in power, it is impossible for them to be victimized in the same way that a black person is. The _problem_ that comes with prejudice is only a really big problem if that prejudice impacts social and economic opportunity. If you don't have power, you can't have that impact.\n\n\n",
"There are two kinds of racism, personal and systemic. Personal racism is when an individual judges a person based on the color of their skin. Anyone can be racist, of course. \n\nHowever, the systemic racism in the US is geared in favor of white people and against people of color. For example, the old practice of red lining, which denied black people housing outside of certain, usually run down, areas, still has effects today. Because in if the resulting segregation, and because black people were relegated to poor areas that stayed poor, they were in the worst schools, were less likely in many cities to know people with college degrees (making kids less likely to pursue college themselves), and were more likely to suffer from toxic emissions and such that would be allowed in their neighborhoods and not in wealthier writer neighborhoods. The effects of these disadvantages pile up and effect subsequent generations. It ends up being a bias in the system, which is greater than the sum of the individual people who make up the system. It has a life and momentum of its own, and it favors white people. \n\nSo while individual racism can go in any direction, systemic racism in the US always goes against people of color. ",
"A lot of unnecessarily controversial answers to this.\n\n > Why/how do some people hold the belief that only white people can be racist?\n\nBecause they're racist themselves. The entire basis of racism is unfounded beliefs regarding those of a specific race.",
"_URL_0_\n\n\nThe whole \"Only whites can be racist\" is an extremist view and is **NOT** the view supported by the majority of academics.",
"Only whites can be racist and only men can be sexist is just some tumblrtard mumbojumbo. I've never met a person in real-life that doesn't notice sexism or racism for what it is, rather than attaching a bunch of conditionals and double-standards to decide whether or not racism is *actually* racism ",
"The rationality seems to be this--it's one thing to be \"prejudiced\" against certain races. People of any race can be prejudiced.\n\nBut \"racist\" means that a prejudiced person can use prejudices from a position of power that allows them to act on their prejudices. Since, at least in the US, it is the white man who has a position of power, only white males can be racist.",
" > ELI5: Why/how do some people hold the belief that only white people can be racist?\n\nSome people believe stupid bullshit ",
"Your example would be an example of racism. What disturbs me is when racism against whites is termed reverse-racism. There is no such term it is racism all the same. It's as if the term racism has been hijacked to mean only racism by whites against presumably minorities. Additionally fraternities, scholarships and other social devices exclude whites and it is deemed acceptable by society in what can only be termed acceptable racism. Yet even the mention or attempt to bring any discussion forth about this topic is so entirely taboo that no meaningful progress has been made at eliminating this form of racism within society. ",
"This is a copy of what I wrote yesterday on another thread, which can be read [here](_URL_0_).\n\n > It annoys me to no end when someone attempts to redefine racism to what UnicornOnTheJayneCob said. Racism is a myriad of ideas and actions that revolve around one concept, that *that* race is inferior. It doesn't matter if it's ~~exorcised~~ exercised from a government or from a person, that denomination of racism doesn't suddenly become the definition.\n > \n > If a white person discriminates against a black person because of that person's race, that is racism.\n > \n > If a black person discriminates against a white person because of that person's race, that is racism.\n > \n > If a government discriminates against a black person because of their race, that is racism.\n\nAs for the reason why people hold this belief, I imagine it having to be because of that particular type being the most prominent in their lives. I have heard similar skewed viewpoints from the gay community saying that straight people cannot experience discrimination based on their sexuality, even when those very same people actively harass (usually while drunk) straight people walking down the street who are holding hands, saying things like \"Oh, put your privilege away!\"",
"The social justice definition of racism, which I personally find backwards and goofy is prejudice plus power.\n\nBasically, you can't just hate someone to be racist, you actually have to have a power over them.\n\nBasically a group of people gets to decide which people it's acceptable to discriminate against based on some notion of power that they define.\n\nI hate to go all godwin's law but I'm pretty certain that's the exact same premise that made nazism acceptable. Jews had power so therefore it was acceptable to attack them.\n\nI'm not saying SRS is a group of nazi's, I'm saying that picking winners and losers based on who you feel should win the race is a terrible idea over letting them all race and giving the prize to the winner.\n\n",
" > Lots of people on the internet have differing explanations, like how some people have different definitions of the word \"racist\", or because white people are the majority and therefore only they are able to oppress\n\nBecause a lot of the people who use the \"its only racist if you have power\" definition say a lot of very racist things about white people. \n\nTo try and deflect from the fact that they are basically as racist as a sheriff in 1950's Alabama they change the definition so they are no longer racist according to their new definition.",
"Because they are being fed garbage by the media that tells them that white people are evil oppressors and any racist behavior by those that are not white is just them speaking out against systematic oppression. Of course it's all bullshit, but it makes for great leverage in justifying things like culture that promotes violence and crime",
"When I was in college I had black racist college professors. There is a facet of people in academia that have changed the definition of racism to be defined as a dominate group having privilege or power over a subordinate group. And if you belong to a subordinate group you cannot therefore be racist, but you are the result of racism from the dominate group. They go on to say that only white males can be racist because all ethnicities are subordinate to whites and females are subordinate to males. Therefore, if you are a white male you are a racist by virtue of being born. Everyone else is your victim.\n\nExample: _URL_0_\n\n > A subordinate group whose members have significantly less control or power over their lives than members of a dominant or majority group\n\n > Not limited to mathematical minority: example women, ...\n\n > Males are a social majority; women demonstrate four out of five characteristics of minority status.",
"They are wrong. Anyone can be racist. \n\nSome systems are institutionally racist. These systems tend to be racist against different ethnic groups in different countries. If you go to Japan, you'll find things difficult as a non-Japanese. Go to the USA, and you can find things difficult as a non-white. Go to Zimbabwe, and you'll find things difficult as a non-black.\n\nIf someone believes that only white people can be racist, they haven't considered the world as a whole. It may well be true that in their particular area, the only institutional racism is pro-white, but that's not really the same thing.",
"From an academic perspective, that definition came in 1993 from a sociologist named David Wellman in his book \"Portraits of White Racism\". It is highly debated, largely because it requires a simplistic, black and white view of the world, and there has been some excellent work showing that race is more complicated than that. However, it got picked up with a passion by critical race theorists and by people in very liberal circles. It fits in nicely with a worldview that has white people as always powerful and minorities as always oppressed, and as you pointed out it has the benefit of allowing one to say that minorities cannot be racist, which is appealing to some people.",
"This difference comes down to a difference in definition of the word racism. To those that think everyone can be racist, racism simply means having unfair and prejudiced opinions and preconceptions about the nature and character of people of one or several races (or something like that) to those who believe that it's impossible to be racist to white people racism specifically refers to societal oppression at the hands kd institutions which does not target white people. From this perspective, being racist means specifically supporting these institutions which they see as impossible for a non-white person use against a white person. These are crude descriptions of complex topics but at the end of the day as far as I see it, both sides have a cogent argument, they merely lose each other in the semantics.",
"I don't think many people genuinely believe that \"only white people can be racist.\"\n\nWhat people believe is that when whites are racist it is far more harmful than when a black/Asian/Hispanic/etc is racist. This is because white people control all the desirable institutions. Almost every single high-ranked company or school has a leadership comprised almost exclusively of white people. The media is controlled by white people and primarily caters to the preferences of white people. Most small businesses are owned by white people. Most cops are white. Most lawyers and judges are white. If you're in America, white people make up 80%+ of the population.\n\nPeople are much more vigilant about white racists because white racists can actually do something about it.",
"It's a double-standard and part of a victim mentality. \"I can't possibly be racist because I'm a minority!\" BS."
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3t9uvi | what actually goes on in your body when you grow taller? | Hi reddit, can anyone give me some information on what actually goes on with your cells, bones, fat, protein, muscles etc...during puberty or when a baby turns into a toddler?
Would consuming any specific food or water causes things to go differently?
Thanks! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3t9uvi/eli5what_actually_goes_on_in_your_body_when_you/ | {
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"In short you have [growth hormone](_URL_0_) that is anabolic (growing up)it stimulates growth as per its name, it affects your whole body basically except the brain. \nOther factors come into play when deciding your height, bones growth is mediated by a number of chemicals but estrogen is one of the most important.Higher concentration of estrogen will lead to bones maturing and it will stop the bone from growing. \n\nSince females have higher concentration of estrogen their bones will close sooner, that's why girls usually are done growing when they are ~16, and boys can continue to grow until 20-22, hence why males are taller in general.\n\nAfter the bones growth palates fuse you have reached your maximum genetic height. This is assuming you had a normal diet with no major deficiencies in vitamins/minerals/protein. \nIf you had any diseases that affect growth or deficiencies you will not reach your maximum genetic height and if not corrected until the bones fuse you will never achieve that maximum.",
"For the laymond's description of it, there's growth plates inside various joints that are activated by hormones. These growth plates, for a simple analogy, are like those toys you could have as a child, or those forklifts that can go up or down. Like this; [X][X][X] and then fold up like [I][I][I]. The growth plates extend your bones in order to grow, albeit at a very slow pace. I actually almost damaged my growth plate on my left leg when I broke it skiing, the fracture was about a milimeter away from it being damaged, thus me having one leg being drastically smaller than the other."
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508yyk | why is it that a light flashing at 60 hz is perceived by our minds as "always on", but not "always off"? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/508yyk/eli5_why_is_it_that_a_light_flashing_at_60_hz_is/ | {
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"When you see a light that is off, you see no light coming from it. \n\nA light running on mains power receives oscillating AC power at 50 or 60 Hz. This graph shows what the voltage would look like osscilating back and forward in a sine curve: _URL_0_ With a maximum/minimum of +/- 120 V (or 240V in Europe). \n\nSo, the first thing to notice is the light isn't actually \"off\" half the time. It's only off for a infinitely small amount of time when the voltage passes through 0. Remember, lights can accept power flowing either way, so it'll run on \"negative\" voltage anyway.\n\nTL;DR **So when you see a light running at 60 Hz, you just see an average of the light level, which is proportional to voltage, which is somewhere between 0-120 V. Your eye can't distinguish the light that fast, so it just averages**. ",
"Whenever you see something, there's a *slight* lag between your cones and rods (the light-sensing cells in your retina), your brain receiving that signal, your brain processing the light into an image, and you being able to act on that image consciously. That's how 60hz can appear continuous and not choppy - by the time your brain starts to notice that the image isn't moving, the next image is up.\n\nThere's also a lag before your retina cells stop firing. They turn on almost immediately, but take a little bit to turn off. And it's not like an electrical signal that's completely on and then completely off, the retinal cells ramp up and ramp down. The ramp up is very fast, but the ramp down is a little slower, so if the change is fast enough, even if the light is completely gone, your retinal cells don't have enough time to turn off completely.\n\n[Relevant Smarter Every Day](_URL_0_)",
"The main reason for this is that your brain *averages* the signals that your eyes perceive. So, to put it very simple, if you switch the light on (1) and off (0) repeatedly fast enough, your brain tells you it sees that the light is on, but not that bright (1/2). \n\nYou can find a much better explanation together with a great example in this video: [\\[Link\\]](_URL_0_)"
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70iimp | if the main goal of our brain is survival, why does it let get depressed and in some cases commit suicide? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/70iimp/eli5_if_the_main_goal_of_our_brain_is_survival/ | {
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"Our bodies don't have \"goals\" per se, they are how they are because it has worked \"well enough\". Of course our bodies tend toward efficiency because it tends to survive harsh times better, but the fact is that occasional depression and suicide are malfunctions at an acceptable level for the continuation and proliferation of the species. Evolutionarily speaking the individual is irrelevant.",
"The main goal of life is to reproduce, not to survive. Survival is a byproduct. Mental disorders are disorders, as in, not the norm. Anomalies happen.",
"Lack of meaning in a post-(post?)- modern world. Maybe there is no need to survive, no need to forage , to hunt, to gather , to build , to journey. \nWe weren't meant to sit inside at desks for 8+ hours a day. We are animals. And consciousness is our tragedy. But what do I know ",
"A brain is like any other organ - it will malfunction. But our knowledge of the brain is very little as compared to other parts of the body. ",
"IIRC, the goal of evolution is survival of the species, not of the individual. If an individual person is in a situation where they feel that they are not contributing to this end, they may feel inclined to eliminate themselves in order to preserve resources for the rest of their society. \n\nI don't know if this is accurate or not, but it seemed to make sense at the time that I heard it.",
"While it's not clear if depression is defined by recesive genes, I'd like to point out that features of recesive genes can continue to exist over generations without affecting individuals. \n\nFor comparison, blue eyes are recesive gene features. Even when all parents and grandparents have dark eyes, one child can have blue eyes, simply because both parents have a recesive blue eye gene in one of their chromosomes which eventually got activated in their offspring when the child had no brown eye gene present.\n\nI suspect that with disorders it can be the same.\n\nBesides that others pointed out that reproduction is distinct from survival - but it still would lower survival chances of the offspring in the end.",
"The point of the brain isn't survival, per se. It's to increase the chance for your genes to pass on to the next generation. The brain has to allow for suicidal actions, for example when a father does something suicidal to save the lives of his children. Once you allow that suicidal thought to exist, there are going to be things that trigger it at the wrong time.",
"The answer's in your question. It's because the brain isn't working right. That's practically the definition of mental illness, which is an underlying cause of a lot of suicides.",
"The main goal of the primal part of our brain is to survive/reproduce (I would say reproduce is actually a higher goal considering the number of species that die after intercourse), but we're more evolved than that, which allows humans to make decisions like sacrificing their life for another person or choosing to not reproduce. Depression to the point of suicide is also caused by a mental disorder, which if you think of it like schizophrenia, causes our brains to process things in ways it's not meant to. ",
"While somewhat contentious as it's hard to scientifically prove, meme theory may play a role in this as well. From an evolutionary standpoint, you're right - it makes no sense to have things like depression or suicide. It also doesn't make any sense to evolve a brain our size from a physical standpoint. So we must consider the possible ideas a brain like ours harbors, memes (the technical term for such ideas, not a joke). Basically, it looks like suicide and depression are not developmental side effects of evolution directly. Evolution only caused us to have a big brain and comprehension as to allow for more memes. Such memes indirectly happen to cause more existence thought, in addition to everything else that makes humans just so darn good at surviving.",
"It's believed that depression is a first world disease. If you're concerned with surviving, you don't get depressed.\n\nThere have been studies of indigenous people, and depression doesn't show up in them, and when asked about suicide, one group laughed, asking, \"why would anyone kill himself?\"",
"Your brain is not designed to function in a modern civilized society. Artificial light, lack of sleep, lack of exercise, improper diet, none of these were problems for humans pre-civilization. \n\nSurvival is only a goal from an evolutionary perspective, it's not something your body is purposefully doing. All the things that keep you alive are pre-programmed. ",
"Depression is a physical illness of the brain which causes adverse effects such as suicidality and isolating behavior. It is not normal and just like when any other organ is afflicted with a malady we should treat it as though it is malfunctioning. The terrifying and confusing thing about the brain is that it controls our personality which we like to think is separate from the body but is very much connected to our physical state.",
"A healthy brain wants survival. A \"sick\" brain that is not operating \"correctly\" would misconstrue its purpose. Hence suicide. ",
"Your brain doesn't have a goal. It's just a collection of functions that have turned out to be really useful in the whole survival-of-the-fittest thing. Like a function, it has expected inputs and its evolution has been predicated on assumptions about our environment and lifestyle. Our idle, sedentary lives are a proverbial wrench in the brain's system. The damage is expressed as neurotic mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety.",
"First of all, not the brains goal is survival, evolutions goal is survival till reproduction. We are able to produce kids at the age of 12. Most people died before 20 historically and the rest made losts of kids, so our numbers grow, evolutionary we are winning.\n\nEvolution doesn't really care about anything else. We did select for stuff ourselfs as humans over the time we lived, but we can't really select for brain chemistry that might go awry at some point in the future, because it hasn't happened yet. People get depressed at different ages.\n\nAlso we are not in a natural enviroment. Everything we created is artificial. It might be that we are actually doing something wrong as society. In nature you have to work everyday and get immediate gratification. You search for food, you find food, you eat food, you are happy. You find a suitable mate, she accepts you you are happy.\n\nIn modern society everything is a lot more abstract, in many decades and still in some countries today, if you weren't able to do something that other people really need and appreciate, you have a miserable existence (especially when you compare yourself to others). Often you really can't do much about that.",
"I suffer from depression since five years and asked me this myself. Note that depression is a bunch of symptoms and is different for everyone. E.g. some people cry for days, since can't cry at all, some eat like a whale some loose weight.\n\nHowever most mental illness has external influences, though we found some Genetics. See those illnesses as reactions of the brain to it's surroundings.\n\nSo, assume your life is shit. Like so bad you are constantly sad. After a while your brain can't deal with that anymore. It reduces all emotional reactions, good and bad. That's depression, a loss of emotional response.\n\nOne point about biology: the more you use a strain of thought the faster it gets (mathematics, language etc.). If you constantly use your \"I'm shit\"-thoughts you get really good/fast at thinking you are shit\n\nAssume you are in life threatening situations: rape or military operations. People often suffer PTSD from that. And some of ptsds symptoms are\n\n- an extreme level of awarness your surroundings: my ex-bf was working in kindergarden and was able to know every childs position at every time.\n\n- split yourself from your own experience: many describe it as watching someone else in their bodies.\n\n- uncomfortable to human touch, loss of trust etc.",
"In my opinion, its not the \"brain\" its the mind. It has to do with lot of things, but lets look it deeper:\nSurvival: back in the tribe days, people would get more stress, and with that stress they got more action, the mind would fuel them to do all certain things and to take action towards those things to survive, which include:\n- Saving family from other tribe members or \"attackers\"\n- Killing an animal to survive\n- Going on a dangerous journey\n\nAnd people were always in DANGER, they lived dangerously right at the edge. For them it was normal to expirience danger almost everyday. You see, when you're body is faced with a feeling of \"you are going to die\" or some sort of danger, it so much influences your nervous system that with all that action you feel, YOU MUST FIGHT, OR RUN. And after that body is REWARDING YOU, giving you dopamine, the body, mind brain will give you good emotions which are saying \"BRAVO YOU DID IT\" Those people who don't have them are doomed, they are gone - dead. People who don't expirience danger or some sort of fear, are bound to be depressed.\n\nNow in a society, this is exactly what is happening, we are not feeling stressed and in danger as tribe people were. We are shutting ourselves down. \n\nThe whole point and diffrence is in ACTION. Depression is just that, lack of action. Depression (and it depends which) CAN be cured by taking action, moving, doing something, planing something. I truly believe if depressed people were to be put in wilderness for 1 week and needed to survive, or if the bear would chase them - some sort of danger - they would be cured. Its just a closing mechanism we all have. Fist you close to all the people you don't care about, then you close up to your friends, then to your family, and then you close to yourself, and after that when you do it, its just a matter of time when you will close to the World. When you do that, suicide is after that. But depression (+ suicide) and survival are in my opinion diffrent things.",
"What makes you think our brains main goal is survival, I think its more along the lines of \"what can I do to not be bored\" ",
"As to depression, there is actually an evolutionary explanation for why such a trait may not have been weeded out by natural selection over time. While it is true that depression can be classified as an unnatural imbalance of certain chemicals in the brain, this phenomenon has persisted because of its benefits in helping individuals survive. For instance, if there were a disease of some kind that broke out within a tribe, who would survive? Those that went out everyday, or those that stayed isolated from others because of their depressive symptoms of isolation and little movement? Social isolation because of depression could have helped to prevent the spread of disease. Another example is that in a cold environment or time when there was not enough nourishment, depressed indiciduals who were lethargic would have had a greater chance of surviving than others.\n\nNo idea about suicide though. Maybe that's just an extension of depression that isn't threating enough to humanity as a whole to be weeded out by natural selection, so it sticks around.",
"Conciousness is a bit like quantum mechanics in physics. We know everything kind of follows the same guidelines, conciousness is birthed by evolution and quantum mechanics from physics, but we don't really get it. Physicists say classical physics breaks down at the quantum level, and I'd argue evolution breaks down once you reach a certain level of conciousness",
"Gad Saad said something about this once (iirc) and basically revolves around the fact that depression stems from not being able to contribute to the group. From an evolutionary standpoint the groups survival is more important than the individual so an individual that cannot contribute is effectly a drain on their species. This in turn makes their brain trigger a depression so they recuse themselves and possibly terminate themselves to eliminate the drain on the group. It's brutal, but a valid theory. \n\nAnother theory is that depression stems from inflammation of the body so when you become injured or diseased your body will make you become depressed. This will make you more prone remove yourself from the group to reduce the risk of transferring the disease or endangering anybody else until you are healed. The problem is, if your body stay inflamed for any reason chronically (diet, lack of exercise, etc...) Then you never return back to normal and the depression deepens. \n\nIts all speculation because the human mind is one complex motherfucker. ",
"Psychologist and Suicide Counsellor. If you see the brain as a tool for solving problems then suicide is adaptive. Problems solved, pain ended.\n\nI do not condone suicide - there is usually another option... But reading through this thread, maybe it's society that contributes to depression and suicide by shaming people who are down and out with labels like 'maladaptive'. No one is an island. I prefer to see thoughts of suicide as the last recourse of a mind trying to cope with a huge problem. People usually feel a bit better about their issues (and I think less likely to kill themselves) when they hear that.\n\nEdit: Grammar\n",
"Strictly speaking, I don't think the brain has survival as a goal. It has developed several mechanisms to avoid/seek relief from things which are painful. It just so happens that things we identify as painful also tend to be things which are actually hazardous to us. This gives the appearance of a goal. I'm guessing it seems so universal because things that didn't have the ability to feel pain and react had no motivation to keep themselves away from potential danger, so their genetic configuration had a lower likelihood of being inherited.\n\n\nIt may be that suicide is just an extension of that desire to avoid pain or seek relief from it.\n\n\nSince we can understand that pain can last beyond the immediate circumstances, and that frequently the things we do to relieve it will only provide temporary relief at best, it can look like there is no end to the pain. This doesn't stop you from wanting relief, so your mind keeps working until it arrives at a solution.",
"Because the main goal of our brain is not survival. It's \"a\" goal. It's one of many, albeit a very, very strong one.\n\nIn a brain, we have a variety of different motives and emotions and thoughts. There are so many that our brains can abstract from logical thinking that many are divergent and contradictory thoughts. Who has never thought, at different times, \"I hate life\" AND \"I love life\"? Who has never thought \"That music is great\" and after hearing it 100 million times, thought \"That music sucks.\" We can hold many different thoughts and feelings at the same time. Nothing is really an either/or situation.\n\nIt's not all about survival. Giving one's life so that another may live is not unusual at all, from all walks of life. Firemen make a profession out of potentially dying so others may live. It is not even a uniquely human instinct to \"not survive.\" *Most* mammals will give their lives for their young - not just humans. We also give our lives for many other reasons - for an idea or philosophy or whatever. One may kill themselves due to extreme and constant and never-ending pain. It is understandable.\n\nAnd, of course, mental pain is much worse than physical pain. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but they'll pretty much the bones will heal in 6 weeks, but words may stick with someone and cripple them their whole life. With people with mental illness, this is amplified.\n\nAs far as why people get depression and mental illness, I guess that is just natural selection. The luck of the draw. The brain develops in a way that is not conducive to the current environment. But the brain is a physical structure, no different than a leg or an arm. Go google \"deformed babies\" and look at the images, if you have the stomach for it. If we are \"supposed\" to survive, why does a body get born with birth defects? Just natural selection, fetal development, and the effects of the environment.\n\nThere is not just one goal of the brain. There's not one or two or three. There are hundreds and hundreds of goals/aspirations/etc. Under a set of particular circumstances, any one of them can come to the fore and subsume or quash the rest.\n\n**TLDR:** Survival is not the sole goal of the brain. There are hundreds and hundreds of goals, and under different circumstances, any of them might outweigh all others, and be acted upon.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n",
"That is assuming the brain is functioning at the level it is capable of, however, when someone commits suicide they are not functioning properly mentally. Basically, you're assuming rationality in our brains goals but we are irrational beings.",
"Suicide is more like a solution to a problem than self destruction per se.\n\nI used to suicidal....so I can tell you it becomes something we fanatsize about. Something we look forward to. In a way.....I guess we don't see it as death.....just as a solution.\n\nWe go over solutions in our head and that is the one the solution that surely \"works.\"\n\nAnd if we get sad we think \"well....I know suicide will work for sure....\"\n\nOur survival instincts kick in when we go to kill ourselves. I tried twice in my life.....and both times scared the shit out of me. \n\nEvery person who has killed themselves regretted the moment it was too late....remember that.\n\nI tried to kill myself at 16....and again at 22....\n\nI'm 27 now....and had I died I would have been missing out on some of the most wonderful things life can offer.\n\nI'm not a psychologist.....but I figure I would chime in with my personal experience anyway.",
"I feel as though living in today's advanced society lends itself to depression and suicides in individuals who might have otherwise made a happy hunter-gatherer human or something. It's not the environment which our brain adapted to survive in. Of course depression before civilization may have been a positive adaptation, but in our new societal environment, depression festers and doesn't help the individual hardly at all. \n\nIn other words, our brains do what they think they're supposed to in order to survive, and usually what the brain does is the right thing even in our new modern environment. However, modern unfamiliar territory seems incompatible with the brain not just for the obvious case of suicides, but also for the general happiness among people. This is what happens when we take a system optimized to do one thing and tell it to do another. Given the rate of pharmacological and neuroscience advances, (and since I can't see us changing the status quo to conflict less with what our brains evolved to encounter anytime soon), I'd wager we will have drugs effective enough on the brain to eradicate most issues of severe depression and suicide by 2100. A synthetic adaptation if you will, simulating hundreds of thousands of years of evolution all in a few pills.",
"I'm not a scientist, but I have battled anxiety disorder in the past and learned enough about anxiety and depression to give an educated answer on this! \n\nIt all has to do with human nature and it's relationship with environment. I know that sounds vague, but stick with me...\n\nHumans, as hunters and gathereres, had a drive for survival that was constant--running from dangerous animals, hunting animals, gathering food, procreating, etc. A lot of natural stimulation. \n\nBut, as civilization is now, many people have easy access to food, aren't running from anything and have rooted stimulus in things like television, music, sex, social environments, etc. \n\nWith complex society comes a lot of social constructs that are abstract ... made up, to put it lightly. \n\nYou have to have a car, a wife, a job, a kid, money, happiness exterior to your desk job, friends, a successful favorite football team, a cool hobby, etc. \n\nWe don't actually HAVE to have these things, but in a life where we aren't in immediate danger or starving our brains begin using these arbitrary social constructs and reacting to them chemically. \n\nWith anxiety disorder, the central issue is that sufferers enter the \"fight or flight\" response for things like...idk...not getting a text from a crush after texting them, or misinterpreting something your boss said, or not having money. Our body reacts the same way it would if you were backed into a corner by a bear, but there's no actual danger. \n\nDepression is the other edge of the sword. We can get overstimulated too fast because of the complexity of our society. Remember your first roller coaster ride? Think about all the emotions you felt beforehand, right? Now think about how you would feel if you rode one each day for your entire life. Eventually the feelings of anxiousness subside. It's kind of like how birthdays were awesome as a kid, but eventually they're just...bleh. We live lifestyles where repetition and routine can leave us surrounded in a world that we find, eventually, not interesting at all. This is why people with seemingly no \"major issues\" end up depressed. Also, we put a lot of worth in other things, so that when we lose them it's depressing. Example: at 13 my Dad took my Xbox away. I was actually depressed for weeks. \n\nWhen we get to more complex things like breakups, or losing a job, or a friend, or financial trouble, we lose our sense of self worth. That's not right...we are all very lucky to live in the time and place we do, so ironic it is that we get jaded and self deprecating so easily. \n\nAnd social media is a category in itself. We are operating in a daily lifestyle where there's constant need for recognition and we are constantly comparing ourselves to others. \n\nTL;DR -- our fight or flight instincts are not compatible in a modern lifestyle, so our brains literally recalibrate to our surroundings -- often with unhealthy results ",
"As someone else mentioned, the goal of evolution is not survival of an individual but survival of the species. In other words, reproduction of viable offspring.\n\nBut to add to that, it may be better not to think of it as a \"goal\" at all. It's more of a natural consequence.\n\nWhy does wood float on water? It's not because wood *wants* to float on water. It just happens because of the materials' densities and the laws of physics.\n\nSimilarly, it's not that every species *wants* to reproduce and perpetuate its genes (I mean, we have other reasons to want to engage in reproductive acts, but there's no built-in motivator as a species... you know what I mean). However, the species that are around today are the ones that were more likely to reproduce. Because the ones who didn't like reproducing just died out a long time ago. Wood floating on water.\n\nEdit: put another way: We don't reproduce because we like sex. We like sex because our ancestors were the ones who reproduced the most, and in a group of animals where some happen to like sex and some don't (much like some people happen to like blue and others don't), those who liked sex would have reproduced more.\n\nIt's very circular and I'm not explaining it very well, but the point is, a person's brain does not *want* to survive. It's just a collection of genes and characteristics that exist because all its ancestors happened to survive *long enough to have kids* and that's it. Any traits that don't affect surviving long enough to have kids will have no effect on evolution, and sometimes they combine in weird ways to produce glitches.",
"It's not normal, it's your brain fucking up. There's a reason why depression is considered a disorder/illness. Your brain is just an organ so depression is just like a heart attack or kidney failure in that sense. It's just not working the way it's supposed to. Weather it's due to life circumstances or genetic predispositions, depression can be treated in many cases if the individual seeks help",
"Well, when programmers designed a bot to play Tetris for as long as it could without losing, it eventually just paused the game indefinitely when it was about to lose. The only way to beat the game was to not play at all. It's a bit the same with humans- when things are so bad and they never seem to get better, we just stop playing the game of life. The problem is that it's a short-sighted solution: things usually do get better but only in the long term. The brain is too focused on short term solutions than long term ones. I'm sure there's an evolutionary explanation like: \"we didn't get depressed in the old days so natural selection never weeded out the suicidal gene,\" but I wouldn't know too much about that to explain it through.",
"Consider your brain as a tool to perform better. It can be compared to another tool, the knife. You can hurt yourself on the knife, but most of the time it improves your (cutting) performance. Similarly having a self-aware brain is useful most if the time, but it can hurt you.\n\nHope this was a bit more ELI\"5\"",
"The brain is a survival tool which limits work/suffering/stress by creating approximations of the world. People survive best when these approximations of the world are more accurate. The brain is best capable of creating accurate approximations of the world when it is not receiving conflicting information. How does this relate to suicide? Like so:\n\n\nHumans want power, just like every other animal, because individuals with power survive better than those without it. Humans are unique from other animals though. They don't merely want power now. They want power forever. Even after they are dead. We call this seeking power beyond the grave a *legacy*. Why are humans the only species to care about their legacy? \n\nBecause only humans know that they die! Other animals don't know that. They have no fucking clue.\n\nThis is very important, because the knowledge of death creates a conflict in the brain: on the one hand, there is a drive to amass power...but on the other, there is the knowledge that all that hard-earned power will be taken away forever. Pretty ghastly predicament for the brain if you ask me. And this predicament makes it difficult for the brain to understand the world because both pieces of information are equally valid, yet totally contradictory in what they mean for the individual's behavior. Should you work to amass power if it will all be taken away someday? The question becomes essentially, should you work and then cease to exist or merely cease to exist? This is a troubling question because obviously the latter--to skip working and suffering altogether and go straight to the not existing part--is the superior option from a cost-benefit analysis perspective.\n\nSo what does the brain do to resolve this dilemma in which all life is seemingly a zero-sum game? The brain creates illusions. Some people believe these illusions are culturally endowed. Personally, I think the brain's ability to create illusions for itself is an inherent evolutionary adaptation because many people are capable of creating their own illusions without the help of society. I digress. Anyway, one of these illusions is this: \n\n*a person's legacy represents a permanent, immortal part of oneself which cannot be destroyed.*\n\nWith this illusion, people can go on amassing real-world power comfortably, without the nagging thought that it is all for naught.\n\nSo back to suicide. Some people lose faith in their own legacy immortality. These are either 1) people who see that immortality is an illusion. They see that the legacy can't really live on forever. It must be forgotten eventually. Or 2) they are people who believe their legacy is too bad or too meager to \"make up\" for their own death. \n\nEither way, the legacy goes out the window and you end up with a conflicted brain: instinct is telling it to amass power yet it knows that power is all for nothing. So with no clear answer as to what to do, the brain leaves the question unresolved, crippling the individual and leaving them with no good roadmap--no good approximation--of how to face daily life. This is, I believe, a reasonable explanation of what we call *depression*. \n\nEssentially, the question becomes this one again: is it better to work/suffer and then die or just to die? The brain reasons that no working/suffering is better than working/suffering, and therefore it reasons that to kill itself it actually the best strategy for survival.",
"As someone who thought about suicide, I agree with the problem solving post. To me, my depression was fueled by anxiety. We evolved to have anxiety because it kept us alive when a giant animal was chasing us. But, there are three reactions we have: fight, flight, or freeze. When our anxiety fueled by intrusive thoughts that seem believable and threatening, how do we escape? Freezing is when you give up and try to experience the least painful death. Flight is when you run. Fight is when you kill. How do you escape when the problem is in your head? Which one do you choose when you can't get out of your own head? The threat never leaves no matter which one you choose, so survival becomes less important. ",
"Ooh! I can answer this for once.\n\nFirstly, we must understand the role that sadness plays in human lives and society. It is a biological response to something bad happening in our lives. It is a way our body tells us, hey, this isn't good for you. It allows you to take a step back and reconsider certain aspects of your life. It also plays a role in \"social signalling\". Being as social creatures as we are, we have the capacity to empathize and support others in need. Being sad will evoke that support from society. This is actually best shown in post-partem depression. Women who recently give birth are weak physically and emotionally. By inducing that kind of sadness, we fellow humans will go out of our ways to support that woman. However, that is a very special case that is generally considered different from unipolar or bipolar depressions. \n\nSo now to depression. Depression is surprisingly prevalent in society and one would think that it would be evolutionarily selected against. However, depression is considered the result of the insufficient regulation of hormones, typically responsible for sadness. At the same time, we still know very little about this subject. Humans are so complex not just biologically but also cognitively and socially. It's the combinations and interactions of these factors that result in our behaviours.\n\nTLDR; Humans get sad. But sadness is good because it helps us understand what is bad in our lives. Depression is the result of our body not handling sadness correctly. But as always, humans are much more complicated than this.",
"On another note if the goal is survival why can't we get ourselves to workout or eat healthy if we know we are having or will have health issues",
"We evolved with the concept of \"pain.\"\n\nPain is something that tells your brain something is wrong, that something is happening to your body which needs to stop or or will kill you. It's suffering.\n\nOur ancestors (and nearly all animals) suffered throughout evolution as a means of survival. Brain: \"That hurts? Don't do it.\"\n\nThe problem is that this feeling of suffering is often misinterpreted by the brain. Like a child that won't take medicine because it tastes bad, the brain *thinks* it's making the right decision because the terrible taste is clearly poison or inedible.\n\nAnd when the body survives despite this thinking, the brain believes it did something right. **The brain knows it's supposed to suffer.**\n\nNow, after millions of years of evolution, our society gets to a point where a huge part of the population has no reason to suffer. We have shelter, food, medicine, love, entertainment- everything humanity has struggled to attain throughout its entire history. It's all here.\n\nThere's nothing that makes us suffer like our ancestors did. Predators, disease, hunger, sexual gratification, natural elements- all under control.\n\nBut the brain knows you're supposed to suffer.\n\nAnd nothing outside of your body is causing it.\n\nSo the brain *makes* you suffer. It interprets things to make you suffer. You aren't suffering, so those people don't actually care about you. You aren't in pain, so you don't deserve the life you have. Why are you happy? You should feel bad- you haven't felt bad enough to earn your existence. You're a piece of shit. You're so worthless.\n\nDepression.\n\nFinally. Pain. Good. \n\nBut your life does one of three things- it gets worse, and your brain was right. You don't deserve it. After all, all these bad things are happening. (And they may not even be bad things, but your brain convinces you they are because it needs something to go wrong). So you still feel horrible because your brain was right- you don't deserve this and you're finally suffering.\n\nOr your life stays the same. Nothing changes. Your brain was right- you haven't done anything to deserve this. So it continues to search for suffering.\n\nOr your life gets better. But you didn't suffer enough for it, did you? You didn't actually earn this, or the life before it. We need real suffering.\n\nOr.\n\nAn escape.\n\nA healthy diet and exercise can help you deal with it. But that's work. And work isn't suffering.\n\nVideo games, or a movie. Temporary but effective. You distract yourself. No suffering.\n\nDrugs. Drugs can block out that part of your brain. Alcohol, heroin, antidepressants. Drugs, drugs, drugs. The good ones can help your brain realize it's okay to not suffer. The bad ones can lead to actual suffering, which is what your brain wanted the whole time. Your addiction forms. Finally, suffering. An addiction to the drugs- an addiction to the suffering.\n\nAnd sometimes it's not enough. Your brain becomes so exhausted, so tired, so full of pain that isn't caused by anything but itself that it just wants everything to stop. No more suffering, no more pain- nothing. It has to stop.\n\nSuicide.\n\nThere's nothing actually wrong with you- your brain is just trying to cope with the suffering it's never experienced. It thinks it's helping.\n\nBut sometimes you need someone else's help.\n\nNational Suicide Prevention Hotline: 1-800-273-8255",
"Our brains were not designed. The do not have a \"survival goal\" set in advance. Instead, we have evolved somewhat haphazardly over thousands of millennia in ways that depended on the particular set of pressures at the time. Evolution is a process of (unguided) trade-off and compromise.\n\nOn average, the human that have survived until now must have some advantage over the ones that did not. That's tautological.\n\nI'm just speculating from here on but maybe the flexibility of a problem solving brain (which is evolutionarily beneficial) just has an unavoidable side-effect that it can (at the extremes) descend into fatal obsessiveness; or maybe slightly more resources were diverted from brain activity to immune systems, or muscle growth or bone strength or blood oxygen; or maybe (as /u/doppelwurzel said [in this comment](_URL_1_)), the habits of a person with depressive tendencies lead to a net gain because it led to more focused problem analysis.\n\nThe problem is that our brains have a complex set of feedback signals with mind-bogglingly (heh) intricate chemical-receptor interactions. If the balance of the chemicals tips a little too far, it can switch the decision making process from \"super-obsessive but effective problem analysis\" to a crisis of \"[analysis paralysis](_URL_0_)\".",
"In a maybe somewhat philosophical vein, our brains hardwired will to live long before we gained consciousness of death. So we have all these survival instincts but are now also faced with knowledge of this inevitable fate. Awareness of death came as surprise to our psyche, evolutionarily, right?\n\nOn one hand, you can be convinced you keep living after death (perhaps due to strong survival instincts), making suicide trivial. \n\nOn the other, consciousness of death may convincingly let one overpower their instinct to live as we can overpower other instincts we might consider ourselves burdened with. From this perspective, any justifying reason will do, doesn't matter, whether or not it overrides that instinct is up to/depends on the subject. To escape pain, to escape punishment, curiosity, nihilism, whatever. \n\nNot to mention, suicide itself may be an instinct. Cells in our body undergo a process called apotheosis, where they basically self-destruct if they determine themselves to be malfunctioning I guess, for lack of a better word.\n\nAlso, it's interesting to wonder if an AI that gains consciousness or omniscience might just shut itself off -- maybe without instinct for survival (something all living things have at this point, all else being easily filtered out through natural selection far early on if it ever was there to begin with) the best course of action is just to abandon consciousness. Just an interesting thought experiment at this point I guess, but not an irrational idea in those circles. ",
"First time poster, very long time lurker. But for once, I know a thing or two about the subject and I'll try to participate in this great community.\n\nThe brain is like any other organ of our system, it has a role and has to fulfill certain tasks. Like the rest, it has evolved to do these in the most adaptative way up to date. Today, we understand quite a lot of what it does but to say the ultimate goal is survival, we don't know really.\n\nThe psyche, the mind, is something else. It's who we are, what we remember (and what we forget), what we experienced, what we think. Our brain does not think, we are. Of course, there is a very close intricacy between the two, as brain activities are often started by a thought. But the brain didn't create the thought.\n\nPsychic life is built on losses and separations, and our capacity to integrate them goes with our capacity to create. You could say that's how we grow up, how we change. Some authors talk about the \"depressive capacity\" as something invaluable and depression would be the failure of it.\n\nDepression occures for someone when an inanimate state becomes the only way for him/her to stay alive. Something (not necessarily someone) has died and to keep it, one identifies as the tomb. This impossible grief neutralises the depressive capacity. Antidepressants have a cortical action that erase some of the pain. This action on the brain alone will not solve the depression, but it will restores a minimal psychic well-being that allows the creative capacity to come back.\n\nI tried to stay as ELI5 as I could, also please excuse my English as it's not my native language.\n\nEdit: typos",
"the brain simply is what it is. \nThe statement that the main goal of the brain is survival is an assumption. \n\nAn organism is simply a biological machine that maintains its form and propagates it's form. It's a physical object that has no agenda and just so happened to reproduce itself because reproduction is a positive feedback loop and a series of occurrences caused evolution. \n\nA body's main goal isn't to survive. It just so happens to have mechanisms that facilitate preservation of it's form. it's an object. Emotions are not perfect survival mechanisms in every sense of the word. They are merely mechanisms. For example fear causes us to run and preserve our lives, but we can also become frozen in fear, which is a counter productive behavior. \n\n\nWe can allow ourselves to get pricked by a needle full of medicine can't we? \n\nOrganisms are not as utterly bound to their survival instincts as your paradigms suggest. ",
"Survival is not the goal of evolution. \n\nConsider a man or women who abuses drugs their whole life, is dumb as a box of rocks, has multiple mental issues including depression, but fuck everything they see and then burn out at 30 and and kill themselves. They are extremely likely to have multiple children and pass on their genes, particularly in today's welfare drive environment where those children have higher survival rates compared to most of human history. \n\n Now consider a man or women who is careful and contentiousness, who is mentally healthy, eats healthy, exercises, and takes every precaution , but perhaps waits a little too long to have children(or just chooses not to). They may well live too 100, but they'll never pass on their genetics.\n\nThe first group is are reckless and make poor choices. They are not survivors, but they win the game of evolution. The second group are survivors, but lose the game of evolution.",
"I haven't seen anyone else say this, but the most accurate answer to your question is that **we don't know. Science does not have a definitive, well-established answer to your question.** \n\nSome psychologists, or evolutionary behaviouralists, or neurologists, or random people on reddit, have *speculative theories*, but like a lot of evolutionary psychology, the nature of the issue means that empirical, definitive answers are near impossible to obtain; We have no data on depression or suicide rates on any timescale that would yield meaning insight on the evolution of those behaviours. Also doing experiments on humans involving encouraging, (or even to not actively *dis*couraging) depression and/or suicide raises major ethical issues, and scientists have 'ethics committees' that prevent them from doing experiments like that. \n\nAnd even if you somehow *did* have consistent, credible data on depression and suicide rates, over the centuries/millenia you'd need to draw conclusions about the evolutionary impact of these things (and shit; we don't even have that kind of data for *today*, on an international scale)- working out how to effectively *anaylse* that data, to draw meaningful conclusions, would be a whole other thing.\n\nSo read what other people have posted, but IMO be very cautious of any definitive claims they make, imo. Look for claims with credible sources, obviously, but also ask yourself \"how could scientists possibly know that? What kind of experiment or data analysis would we need to make that claim?\"\n\nEvolutionary psychology, (*especially* regarding humans, and *double especially* with behaviour unique to humans, and *triple especially* with *controversial* behaviours unique to humans,) is a murky, murky field. Super-interesting, but credible experts on the subject will make it clear that 95% of the time, this stuff gets pretty speculative, pretty fast. Proceed with caution.",
"This is my take on why people become depressed and ultimately hopeless and giving up.\n\nPeople eat shit food and find little meaning in their life because they're a cog in a machine. No real goals, nothing to strive for. We are goal oriented towards thing we have a passion for. No passion, no directiom, nothing to look forward to. In the West we see the most \"exquisite\" of lives all around us. On internet, tv, movies, everywhere in our culture. We reflect this fantasy upon or own lives and draw imaginary short comings. \n\nTraditionally, cultures have taught that to find peace is through some form of enlightenment. Our culture promotes chasing the dollar. Their is no fulfillment in materialism. It is in pursuing what we love to do that leads to true happiness. For most people, living a menial life with a menial job filling their daily schedules 9-5 does not lead to this satisfaction. \n\nMost come home from these jobs and relieve themselves with a drug of some sort, whether it be sugar or alcohol, and everything in between. The perpetuity pushes many further into their mental abyss. \n\nI speak as someone with experience with years of being diagnosed with Bipolar, suffering many lengthy downs. I found that while my brain does have extreme chemical imbalances and this is not often looked upon optimistically, this can often work towards my benefit. The energy that the sensitive person can exhibit is a mechanism that has been used my brilliant minds throughout the ages to come to brilliant conclusions. From science to art, Van Gogh to John Nash(A Beautiful Mind), these minds experienced horrific tears in their psyche ripping away their reality from the common mind. These minds have dipped their toes in hell and stabbed their hands into the heavens returning with remarkable intuition and expression. \n\nIt is my belief that these minds occur in the human species to further evolve culture and civilization. They question the norms because, to them there is no normal . Their mind is not the reality we know. This disconnect plummets these minds into a somewhat nihilistic depression, for lack of a better word. \n\nBecause of many factors, the human mind reacts to its environment in a way that cause turmoil of the psyche, this can lead to intuition and discovery. Today's society puts people in boxes and prescribes no other remedy than anti-depressanta, anti psychotics, and mood stabilizers. Very infrequently do doctors take in to account environment and diet. This results in a massive depressed population. There is no hope in this current school of thought we have pertaining to the human mind. There is no solace in a pill, only numbing crutches. All minds are beautiful and have great potential to love and create in unique ways. It's unfortunate that so many potentially brilliant minds boxed into a room too small for them, having questions with no hope of answering and an environment with no hope of recovery, decide to end their life. \n\nI've been on the ketogenic diet for about two months now. I've never felt better in my life. I've been on every pill on the doctors note pad. They made me fat, slow, and more isolated than every before. Many times I found myself in positions wanting to end my life. I found myself making the plans. Suddenly, all this is gone. For some god damned reason this diet change has made my brain take a 180 keeping me consistently baseline with reality. I've never been more driven and I've never been determined. The one thing I have a lot of thanks for is drugs. \n\nIllegal drugs helped me get through my hard times. I numbed the pain and it let me stretch out my pains. It let me look at my demons frame by frame. It showed me the edge of this existence. Many illegal drugs have remedies, that I am certain, when combined with with healthier dietary conditions(NOT THE STANDARD AMERICAN DIET), Could drastically reduce depression and suicide rates. Old cultures accepted the use of drugs for spiritual and enlightenment purpose. Now you goto jail for doing this. This cultural change has played a key roll in changing the perspective of approaching your psyche. The drugs I speak of in a positive light in this context are, visionary substances, psychedelics, and empathogens.\n\nTL;DR: this is my opinion . Lots of bad food, unrealistic standards, no life goals, it takes a toll . our culture is the personifcation of materialism. Drugs are a crutch. I have bipolar my self. Van Gogh, John Nash. Brilliant, depressed minds. Questioning the norm brings in innovation. Psyche drugs should only be used on extreme cases and are dangerous. I use the Keto diet, used to be fat and suicidal; not the case anymore. it gave me life again. Drugs being illegal stop the use of man's oldest psychological tool. \n\n\nThis post is referencing anecdotal evidence and my limited understanding of evolutionary psychology\n\nEDIT: sorry for not explaining quite like I would to a 5 year old, but this is difficult for me because I never would share the dark points the human mind could reach to an innocent mind. Nonetheless, I felt my experience should be shared. \n\nAlso ,sorry for these long ass sentences and grammatical errors.",
"A hundred thousand years ago, as cognition was evolving, there were two proto-humans: Oog and Uug. Both of them spent an afternoon lying around accomplishing nothing. Oog's brain didn't experience anything negative from this. Uug felt very sad that he wasn't improving his condition. Oog eventually starved to death, while Uug got in gear, spent the next afternoon hunting, building a fortress with rocks, and looking for a mate. Eventually, all proto-humans have Oog's tendency to feel bad whenever he isn't accomplishing massive, life-saving victories.\n\nFast forward to today, and our brains expect us to constantly reward them with epic, life-or-death victories over predators and starvation. But with food delivered to grocery stores and no real threat of predation, it's virtually impossible for modern humans to constantly find something productive to do in the interest of saving our lives. So we spend a bit more time doing things to find a mate, such as learning to dance or working overtime to earn more money. But even then, most of us have a lot of those empty afternoons.\n\nStaying active and being involved does minimize the downtime and help with depression, but for people on one end of the bell-curve it isn't enough. One day our brains will catch up with modern society and suicidal depression will be evolved out of our species, but this may take thousands or even tens of thousands of years.",
"I think it's more complicated than that. \nOur brain isn't designed with a purpose, it emerged out of circumstance due to evolution. \nThat means our brain is not \"for surviving\", it's only \"as good at surviving as it needs to be for there to still be humans\". Not because it is \"meant to\", but because it simply happens to be. If it weren't, we wouldn't be here to ask the question. \nThe brain kinda does its thing. It just so happens that it helps us survive most of the time, and that's how there are still brains.",
"For the same reason that when you beat a horse to make it go faster sometimes it dies on you. Or that when you torture prisoners to get a confession sometimes their heart stops. ",
"Maybe herd instinct. If a person becomes dysfunctional to the extent that they are unhealthy for society, and if they feel like ending their lives at this point, evolution might select for societies whose members have this behaviour encoded in their genes. As a way to remove maladapted behaviours.",
"Chronic depression isn't really a subconscious mechanism. It's a defect in the brain. You're lacking a hormone or neurotransmitter. That's why people with chronic depression don't benefit from therapy as much. They mostly need medication. It's the same as bipolar, schizophrenia, or any other mental illness. \n\nHowever, regular run-of-the-mill depression is a product of lifestyle; it comes about from emotion. When you feel so hopeless about your situation and helpless to change things, it's hard to process those emotions productively. Your thought process gets a little overloaded and you feel like your only escape is suicide. \n\nSo to sum up, chronic depression is an illness. You need medication of some form or another to maintain it (people debate on what kind, but I strongly support pharmaceuticals) and regular depression stems from extreme emotion, specifically helplessness and hopelessness. "
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"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/70iimp/eli5_if_the_main_goal_of_our_brain_is_survival/dn45g08/"
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21lda6 | people who are hearing at an older age for the first time- how do they understand the language? | There have been a few videos going around lately of people who are hearing for the very first time at an older age, and they seem to understand the language. If you've never *heard* a word being said before, despite understanding how it's spelled and what not, how do you actually comprehend what people are saying to you? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/21lda6/eli5people_who_are_hearing_at_an_older_age_for/ | {
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"They're still lip-reading.",
"Lip-reading most likely. They know the movement a mouth makes for a certain word. When they hear the spoken word they know that the way the mouth moved = that sound and thus has that meaning.\n\nAlso, it is not uncommon for deaf people to speak slightly; they know the general mouth movement, but don't know all the articulation. Which why they sound \"odd\" when they speak (just a reminder they dont hear themselves and never heard the spoken langauge before! Quite impressive really).",
"Deaf from birth doesn't mean you never learn to talk. School's for the deaf begin teaching basic verbal communication (yes/no, please, bathroom) as early as elementary school, and it ramps up in complexity (\"the formal pretext for Russia's assertion to annex Ukraine is historically based, complex, but ultimately a defensive move made as a last resort to maintain national prestige/may i have a beer/fuck you/ nice titties\") as a person matures. It does take an enormous commitment of time, and the threshold for what constitutes a qualified teacher is enormously high, which is why its usually only at expensive private schools that you can find highly rated programs for it. The feeling of sound, the actual reverberations, in your throat, in your mouth, on your tongue, it all is included with advanced speech pathology techniques for learning to enunciate first simple sounds, then complex ones, finally to string together sounds into words. Lip reading is the first step, because the shape your mouth makes and how you see a persons tongue move can be mimicked, but the actual learning involves goes much deeper.\n\nOnce they get a cochlear implant, it does take a while to connect the dots (literally to make nerve connections) but it happens faster than you might thing.\n\nSource: My mother taught at the university level for Speech and Language pathology for a while, so i heard a bit about it.\n\n\n\n\nTl:dr - its a skill that can be taught, like anything else. They don't learn it naturally at a young age(age 2-4), but it can be learned, indeed humans are meant to learn it, which is why even with the absence of natural hearing it can be done."
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6q9djy | why do some houses/buildings have balconies without a door leading out onto the balcony? | I see so many houses with very pretty balconies and then I realize that the only way to get onto the balcony is by climbing out one of the windows. I am sure it saves a little bit of money by not adding a door, but there most be some other reason | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6q9djy/eli5_why_do_some_housesbuildings_have_balconies/ | {
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"These balconies are meant only as decorations, to make the building look prettier from the street.",
"There are a lot of balconies without doors in New Orleans, and it's because there was a door tax at some point in the city's history (can't remember exactly when). So instead, there are giant, floor to ceiling windows to get out on the balconies. Same goes for interior doors, all of the really old houses have no closets, and lots of armoires. "
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7anp9j | is there any scientific basis in the idea that full moons affect the world in strange ways (e.g., more births, more murders, more freakouts, more gettin' lucky)? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7anp9j/eli5_is_there_any_scientific_basis_in_the_idea/ | {
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"other than the psychological effect? nope. We can make astrology be true without intending it, or even realizing it. \n\nIf people say full moons are an aphrodisiac, that will hang in the back of your mind."
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2j8ddt | defined benefit pension | Hey there,
ELI5: My employer offers a defined benefit pension plan. There is a formula and a lot of literature but its going way over my head. The plan vests 20% per year over 5 years.
Additionally, the formula for fully vested until retirement is :
2.5% x Final Average Earnings x first 15 years of Credited Service
Plus
1.5% x Final Average Earnings x each year of Credited Service over 15 years (but only up to 17 years).
If you leave before retirement the plan is:
The benefit formula described above (using credited service to your projected retirement date to a maximum of 32years)
total credited service at X termination
potential total service at normal retirement
I am 30. Assume an average salary of $100,000 for simplification.
Can someone help explain the potential gain if I work 3 years (60% vested), 10 years (100% vested + 5 extra years) and fully vested?
Thank you! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2j8ddt/eli5defined_benefit_pension/ | {
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"I'm having a little trouble translating the \"If you leave before retirement\" portion. I think you're saying that if you terminate prior to retirement, then your benefit is reduced by a factor of 'actual credited service' divided by 'total service projected to normal retirement'. But, in hopes that I don't give you terrible advice, I'll just ignore this provision for now.\n\nThere are a couple of other pieces of information that could be helpful but aren't absolutely necessary to give you estimate such as: ~~your current age~~, what the definition of Normal Retirement is, and what the averaging period is for final average earnings. I'm going to assume ~~30~~, 65, and 5 respectively. I'm also going to conservatively assume 3% annual increases to your salary.\n\nAfter 3 years, your annual accrued benefit payable at age 65 is: ~103,000 (average compensation) x 2.5% (earnings multiplier) x 3 (years of service) x 60% (vesting percent) = $4,635.\n\nAfter 5 years, your annual accrued benefit payable at age 65 is: ~106,000 (average compensation) x 2.5% (earnings multiplier) x 5 (years of service) x 100% (vesting percent) = $13,250.\n\nAfter 10 years, your annual accrued benefit payable at age 65 is: ~123,000 (average compensation) x 2.5% (earnings multiplier) x 10 (years of service) x 100% (vesting percent) = $30,750.\n\nAnd lets do one for the maximum 32 years. After 32 years, your annual accrued benefit payable at age 65 is: ~236,000 (average compensation) x 2.5% (first earnings multiplier) x 15 (first 15 years of service) + 236,000 (average compensation) x 1.5% (remaining earnings multiplier) x 17 (remaining years of service) = $148,680\n\nSource: Credentialed actuary with 7 years of pension administration experience \n\nEdit: I can't type, and I saw that you provided your age."
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4exg1x | why does pi(π) never end? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4exg1x/eli5why_does_piπ_never_end/ | {
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"Its called an irational number. It cant be represented by the ratio of two integers. And some super smart math people proved that its irrational. Using math.",
"Pi the number does end. Pi is a finite number. It is exactly equal to the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle.\n\nPi the notation doesn't end, because our normal decimal notation is bad at writing pi. Theoretically, all numbers have infinite decimal places, we just don't write them because \"1.0000000000000...etc.\" is a really inefficient way of writing \"1\".\n\nPi, as an irrational number, is just very *precise*. There's no efficient way of notating it because the decimal points never come to a repeating pattern where we can stop and say, \"...and then just keep writing this section over and over again.\""
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ckgil4 | why can people with alzheimer's easily remember their childhood and young adult life but not recent events? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ckgil4/eli5_why_can_people_with_alzheimers_easily/ | {
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"It could be that long term memories are stored in the frontal lobe of the brain and Alzheimers first targets the hippocampus, which is responsible for memory reconsolidation (the creation of long term memories from short term memories)",
"Alzheimer’s starts affecting different regions of the brain for different people. My mother is a nurse at a long term care facility and I vonlunteered there once. There was a man who had it, and he could remember everything except how to react emotionally to different situations. So instead of being mildly annoyed at receiving the wrong jello color, he got furious and threw a chair across the room, was yelling kicking and screaming. This man was over 6ft tall and 200 lbs, so try being a 5foot nothing nurse and calming him down... \n\nIf the disease reaches your short term memory are of the brain then youll forget you bought a carton of milk and you’ll have 17 in your fridge. If it affects long term, you’ll forget who your family is and where your from or other things. Eventually people can “forget how to breathe” and pass away. \n\nIt’s a terrifying disease.",
"This is because of the nature of memory. Despite what many people think, there is no such thing as a \"short-term memory\" and \"long-term memory\" area of your brain. In fact, short-term memory doesn't even really exist as most people know it-- it is really it's just different degrees of long-term memory.\n\nWhen you first \"remember\" something, that memory is strongly encoded in a structure in your brain called the hippocampus. But as that memory \"ages\" (when I say ages I mean over the course of 10+ years) it becomes distributed across the whole brain somehow. The details of this process are really fuzzy because, frankly, we know very little about how memory works. What we do know is that initially, being able to recall a memory is vitally dependent on an intact hippocampus, but as time passes, that memory becomes \"distributed\" across the cortex and the hippocampus is no longer required to access said memory.\n\nAlzheimer's disease targets the temporal lobe, which is the area of the brain where the hippocampus is located. This is likely why Alzheimer's patients will forget \"recently\" encoded memories, but will likely not forget very old memories until the disease has progressed a lot."
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6o785v | why is baltimore such a violent city? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6o785v/eli5_why_is_baltimore_such_a_violent_city/ | {
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"Economist here: Income inequality, which is pretty much the answer to why is X so violent 70% of the time.\n\nThe Baltimore area has the highest percentage of college graduates in the US and some of the highest paying jobs, yet some of the highest percentage of people living below the poverty line.\n\nFor example some neighborhoods in Baltimore have a 50% unemployment rate and a 34% high school graduation rate, or lower.\n\nSo combine some of the richest people in the world, with some of the poorest within feet and you will have a very bad time anywhere in the world.",
"Same thing that drives violence in other cities, since Baltimore isn't the most violent city. A lot of single parent families, drug addiction, alcohol abuse, poverty, people who are poor decision makers due to poor schools and poor parental role models, police use of excessive force, high rates of incarceration being training grounds for violent crime, etc.\n\nIf it were up to me to change one thing, I'd offer a stipend to all teenagers who had government paid for implanted birth control until they were 21. I think teenagers having babies continues the cycle of poverty and is at the root of a lot of social ills."
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28hqtn | jumping on a grenade | Ive heard of heroic people jumping on grenades to save others, how is their body not non existent afterwards when a grenade creates such a massive explosion | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/28hqtn/eli5_jumping_on_a_grenade/ | {
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"Real grenades don't work like they do in the movies. There isn't some massive fiery explosion which vaporizes everything in a 50 foot radius. There's a small explosion, and then a ton of shrapnel, which is what does most of the killing. So if you jump on the grenade, your body takes up most of the fragmentation, protecting everyone nearby. Your body might get blown in half, but you're not going to just disappear. "
]
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[]
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|
3dd7il | exactly where is the new horizon now after passing by pluto? | Bonus: Will it ever come back to Earth? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3dd7il/eli5_exactly_where_is_the_new_horizon_now_after/ | {
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"It's just on the other side of Pluto. It's traveling at about 14.5 km/s, or about 32,500 miles per hour, which is really fast, but Pluto is about 3 billion miles away from Earth, so it's not going that fast relative to the distance it's already traveled.\n\nIt won't ever come back to Earth. Its next stop is a few other objects in the Kuiper Belt, which is the belt of objects Pluto is in, after which it'll continue to head out of our solar system and into deep space (though it probably won't be used for anything once it's done that).",
"Since we got the \"Mission Accomplished\" message from New Horizons, we know that it successfully completed it's flyby of Pluto. That means it's some distance away on the opposite side of Pluto from us, moving roughly 30,000mph. \n\nBecause of the way New Horizons was designed, there was no way to slow it down enough to put it into orbit around Pluto. Furthermore, the speed at which New Horizons is travelling exceeds the Sun's escape velocity (how fast an object must move to break away from another object's gravitational pull); so New Horizons will never be coming back, it's destined to float on through space indefinitely (until it finally runs out of power)."
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aygp9o | why is pressure cooking (instant pot) affected by altitude, when cooking pressure inside the pot is preset? | I understand that lower pressure at altitude lowers the boiling point of water in a pot.
But if a pressure cooker (instant pot) is going up to a specific pressure to cook, why are any adjustments needed? Doesn't that negate ambient pressure differences?
Also, why is a longer time needed? I'd think that if water boils more easily at altitude, the time would be shorter. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aygp9o/eli5_why_is_pressure_cooking_instant_pot_affected/ | {
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"Pressure cookers report internal pressure as how much they are higher than outside. So a 10 psi pressure cooker at sea level would have an effective pressure of about 25 psi (10 + \\~15 psi in the atmosphere), whereas if you are up at 3km, the atmospheric pressure is only about 10 psi, leaving you with a total of 20 psi inside the container.",
"It takes longer to cook at high altitudes because water boils at lower temperature.\nThere are 3 relevant facts to understand why:\n\n1) water does not get hotter than its boiling temperature (unless in a pressure cooker)\n2) lower boiling temperature = less heat transfered to food. \n3) less heat = longer to cook"
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8v2bgi | does heat produces light or light produces heat ? | Edit : Thank you everyone for answering
One more question What about infrared , we dont see it but it heats ? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8v2bgi/eli5_does_heat_produces_light_or_light_produces/ | {
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"Both\n\nAn object emits radiation which changes with its temperature. A hot enough object will produce visible light.\n\nObjects absorb some of the light that hits them and that energy becomes heat.\n\nIf you hit an object with enough light then it will become hot enough to emit visible light of its own which can heat up a near by object which does the same and so on."
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3l6rd7 | what is an electric field? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3l6rd7/eli5_what_is_an_electric_field/ | {
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"I like to think of a field as a \"region of influence\". For example: earth has a gravitational field. It has an area around it that can influence other objects with mass like people, cars, and the earths atmosphere. This region technically extends infinitely away from earth, but its strength decreases the farther away you get from earth.\n\n & nbsp;\n\nAn electric field is a region of influence around a charged particle. Protons and electrons are two basic examples of charged particles. Just like how gravity affects things with mass, an electric field affects things with a charge. So protons can move other protons and electrons. We label charged particles as positive or negative. Positive particles repel each other, negative particles repel each other, but a negative and a positive particle will be drawn to one another.\n\n & nbsp;\n\nTL;DR : an electric field is the area around a charged particle that can affect other charged particles"
]
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72q74x | what are the actual negative effects of drugs like ecstasy and molly? | Most websites I've found just say that they will cause increased body temperature and dehydration, but I've heard others warn that they can "melt your brain." Are there any studies or evidence to show how bad they actually are for you? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/72q74x/eli5what_are_the_actual_negative_effects_of_drugs/ | {
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"Hyperthermia, hypertension, excited delirium, and psychosis are the most likely. I work ems and teach responders about dealing with patients that take drugs. Psychosis is probably what people mean when they talk about melted brains.",
"Molly/ Ecstasy is supposed to be MDMA (see [3,4 Methylenedioxymethamphetamine](_URL_1_) for the wiki article)\nBut can sometimes be cut with stuff nothing of the sort; like research chems (another topic)\n\nBasically, MDMA activates a part of your brain which releases serotonin and that part is like a bank or a \"holding space\" of serotonin. Serotonin is also released when we eat chocolate, have sex or do something fun we enjoy and get that \"happy feeling\". \n\nWhen someone takes MDMA they release almost \"all\" of the serotonin in their bank, so it feels good and you have a great time because serotonin. \nThing is, serotonin takes time to \"fill\" back up in the bank. \n\nMDMA also acts as a psychedelic drug (a drug that can induce hallucinations or the feeling of expanded consciousness). \nWhen people take MDMA regularly; like twice in a week or more, they don't have the serotonin to enhance their \"psychedelic experience\". So what was at one time this amazing, euphoric experience of feeling one with others and empathetic can turn into a nightmare where people feel they can't escape it, until the effects ware off. \n\nSome studies suggest long term regular (within months at a time) can cause long term permanent problems with serotonin regeneration (see [here](_URL_0_) )\n\nTldr:\nUsing pure/ good MDMA not so often (once/ twice a year, spaced out from months apart) shouldn't cause problems. Using it regular can result in depression and possible brain damage due to serotonergeic damage. ",
"I remember when I got into it 10 years ago they didn't have any legitimate studies or pages highlighting the negative. To tell you the long term effects, I have chronic depression, suicidal ideation (and one attempt on my life thus far that miraculously didn't work), pychosis, mood swings, and severe anxiety.\n\nShort term? Super fucking bad psychosis. I've run the gamut from aliens reading my mind to my friend being Satan. These will persist after the drug wears off, too.\n\nThis shit basically gave me schizoaffective disorder and now I pop psych meds like candy to stay as functional as I can",
"It can cause lasting damage (mainly to the brain, but it can affect your nervous system) if too much is taken at once or in quick succession for both drugs. \n\nThey both are also similar drugs and what they essentially do is fill your brain with the drug, serotonin, which tells the brain about happiness and current well being. Now the reason most drugs are dangerous is that as you take more and more, your body produces less. For molly and ecstasy, your brain stops producing those drugs REALLY quickly. If you do take these drugs, at least the next day off because it will make you depressed because your brain will barely be able to make Serotonin. \n\nIt took me about a week to get back into my regular mood after using them but I like to think I'm a happy guy but that's only how I felt. So again, if anyone ABUSES this drug, especially in quick succession, then it really can mess with people's brain and cause permanent or long-lasting damage. I honestly think everyone should try to do every type of thing (From psychedelic drugs, types of books, different sports, another persons' point of view, etc.) at least once in their life.",
"One of the major issues with it is AKI (Acute Kidney Damage). Increase in blood pressure and over firing of sympathetic means your kidneys don't fill most people will drink water but it goes straight to your bladder without full release and you get an increase in BP (Mixed reasons). The result is glomerulus damage, AKI. Some people of stated other neuro issues so I won't repeat them, but chronic long term complications that we see have to do with chronic kidney failure as a result of the reasons stated above. \nI can go into the science of it but since this is just an ELI5 I won't. Let me know if you're interested",
" > This double-blind placebo-controlled study examined the effects of a typical recreational dose of MDMA (1.7 mg/kg) in 13 MDMA-naive healthy volunteers. MDMA produced an effective state of enhanced mood, well-being, and increased emotional sensitiveness, little anxiety, but no hallucinations or panic reactions. Mild depersonalization and derealization phenomena occurred together with moderate thought disorder, first signs of loss of body control, and alterations in the meaning of percepts. Subjects also displayed changes in the sense of space and time, heightened sensory awareness, and increased psychomotor drive. MDMA did not impair selective attention as measured by the Stroop test. MDMA increased blood pressure moderately, with the exception of one subject who showed a transient hypertensive reaction. This severe increase in blood pressure indicates that the hypertensive effects of MDMA, even at recreational doses, should not be underestimated, particularly in subjects with latent cardiovascular problems. Most frequent acute somatic complaints during the MDMA challenge were jaw clenching, lack of appetite, impaired gait, and restless legs. Adverse sequelae during the following 24 hours included lack of energy and appetite, feelings of restlessness, insomnia, jaw clenching, occasional difficulty concentrating, and brooding. The present findings are consistent with the hypothesis that MDMA produces a different psychological profile than classic hallucinogens or psychostimulants.\n\n- Vollenweider FX, Gamma A, Liechti M, Huber T. \n“Psychological and cardiovascular effects and short-term sequelae of MDMA ('ecstasy') in MDMA-naive healthy volunteers”. \nNeuropsychopharmacology. 1998 Oct;19(4):241-51.\n\n\nEffect list\n\nPOSITIVE\nmild to extreme mood lift, euphoria\nincreased willingness to communicate\nincrease in energy (stimulation)\nego softening\ndecreased fear, anxiety, and insecurities\nfeelings of comfort, belonging, and closeness to others\nfeelings of love and empathy\nforgiveness of self and others\na sense of inner peace and acceptance of self, others, and the world\nincreased awareness & appreciation of music\nincreased awareness of senses (taste, smell, touch, hearing, vision)\nincreased tactile sensation (pleasure from the sense of touch and being touched)\nlife-changing spiritual experiences\nsensations bright and intense\nurge to hug and kiss people\nanalgesia, anti-nocioception, decreased pain perception\nNEUTRAL\ndecreased appetite\nvisual distortion\nrapid, involuntary eye jiggling (nystagmus)\nmild visual hallucinations (uncommon)\nmoderately increased heart rate and blood pressure (increases with dose)\nrestlessness, nervousness, shivering\nchange in body temperature regulation\nupwellings of unexpected emotion, emotional lability\nstrong desire to do or want more when coming down\nNEGATIVE\n(negative side effects increase with higher doses and frequent use)\ninappropriate and/or unintended emotional bonding\nanxiety or paranoia (less common than opposite)\nagitation (less common than opposite)\ntendency to say things you might feel uncomfortable about later\nmild to extreme jaw clenching (trisma), tongue and cheek chewing, and teeth grinding (bruxia)\ndifficulty concentrating & problems with activities requiring linear focus\nshort-term memory scramble or loss & confusion\nshort periods of swooning, or disconnection from the external world, usually at very high doses or during brief blasts of intense rushing while coming up.\nimpaired ability to focus eyes / blurred vision (related to nystagmus and dilation)\nmuscle tension\ninsomnia, inability to fall asleep when physically tired\nerectile disfunction and difficulty reaching orgasm\nincrease in body temperature, hyperthermia, dehydration (drink water)\nhyponatremia (don't drink too much water)\nnausea and vomiting\nheadaches, dizziness, loss of balance, and vertigo\nsadness on coming down, sense of loss or immediate nostalgia\npost-trip Crash - unpleasantly harsh comedown from the peak effect\nhangover the next day, lasting days to weeks\nmild depression and fatigue for up to a week\nsevere depression and/or fatigue (uncommon)\npossible strong urge to repeat the experience, though not physically addictive\npossible psychological crisis requiring hospitalization (psychotic episodes, severe panic attacks, etc) (rare)\npossible liver toxicity (rare)\npossible neurotoxicity (controversial)\nsmall risk of death; approximately 2 per 100,000 new users have extreme negative reactions resulting in death (rare)\n\nA lot of effects in recreational drugs are often indirect, unhealthy heart taking strong stimulants, that don't occur in healthy individuals or not actually related to the drug and may come about because it was cut with something dangerous or the dose you took is \"incorrect\" because in a black market it's hard for a company to put a brand on a product and ensure the integrity. Heroine has received credit for a lot of deaths recently that when looked at later on people realize it comes from people combining alcohol+heroine and then falling asleep and puking and dying in that. There's also a Reefer Madness that occurs with the government/police's favorite drug of choice at the time. Either weed makes black men rape women in the fields and it takes 8 cops to bring them down or bath salts turn people into literal zombies. So it can be hard to actually isolate real effects."
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3c6499 | why are the mega-rich praised for committing their fortunes at deaths to charity when the majority of charities have been proven to be fraudulent with no benefits to those they supposedly commit to serve? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3c6499/eli5_why_are_the_megarich_praised_for_committing/ | {
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"It is a common urban legend among the miserly that charities do not benefit those they serve. But it is absolute bunk.\n\nFew charities spend more than 20% of their operational budget on administrative staff, and all give tangible services. Food banks give out hundreds of thousands of tons of food a year in every state. [AIDS is down more than 50%](_URL_0_) since AIDS relief became a charity subject.\n\nIt is a problem of perception. We often don't realize when we actually succeed at mitigating problems because solutions are slow and gradual. But charity initiatives always help, even if they don't necessarily help as much as we'd like."
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7o5hqv | why are spiderwebs so durable and what are they made of? do we have a synthetic equivalent? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7o5hqv/eli5_why_are_spiderwebs_so_durable_and_what_are/ | {
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"It is made of spider silk, a sort of protein. \n\nAnd we do not have a synthetic equivalent - but we really would like to. That stuff is pure magic and a true SciFi material that would allow us to replace steel cables with something much lighter, thinner and stronger, would open whole new ideas reagarding super strong, super light fabric. It probably would even let us construct a [Space Elevator](_URL_0_) if we had the ability to mass produce it. "
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626pxp | how am i able to play complex chords and intricate riffs on guitar with my non-dominant hand, yet can't even write my name with it properly? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/626pxp/eli5_how_am_i_able_to_play_complex_chords_and/ | {
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"text": [
"Because you practiced and learned muscle memory. Spend 2 hours a day writing your name with that hand and youll be able to do that too"
]
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32wqo5 | wombats faeces are cubed. how is that possible?? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/32wqo5/eli5_wombats_faeces_are_cubed_how_is_that_possible/ | {
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"You totally only posted this as an excuse to say a square peg coming out of a round hole.",
" > Wombats have a long digestive process which takes about 14-18 days (Philip Ross, 2013). Most of the moisture and nutrients are absorbed, leaving a compact and smelly cube of scat. The resulting hard and compact excrement as well as the lack of muscle contraction in the wombat's rectum fails to shape the poop in the usual cylindrical poop fashion, hence, resulting in the cubic nature of the poop (Philip Ross, 2013). So no, wombats do not have a square butthole.\n\n_URL_0_",
"They basically have the equivalent of that thing that crushes cars into cubes in their rectum."
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1frvtg | why does every newly discovered virus out there always seem to cause the same "flu-like symptoms"? | Aren't there lots of different kinds of viruses? Shouldn't they have lots of different kinds of symptoms? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1frvtg/eli5_why_does_every_newly_discovered_virus_out/ | {
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"Wall of text version (skip ahead for ELI5)\n\nThe symptoms of a virus are just the way the body attacks it. A fever is trying to kill the virus with heat, for example. \n\nAlso, many flu viruses are almost the same, except for one key difference: glycoproteins. \n\nGlycoproteins are basically a key that covers the outside of a virus. When a virus wants to enter a cell to make more viruses, it sticks its key into the cell's lock, which lets it enter the cell. \n\nYour body produces antibodies that latch onto these glycoproteins and tells your white blood cells to kill the virus. However, each kind of antibody only works for one kind of glycoprotein. So viruses make different glycoproteins that we don't have antibodies for yet. If a virus has different kinds of glycoproteins vs. another virus, it is a different kind. \n\n**ELI5: Your body attacks many different viruses the same way, and viruses can be different while doing the same thing to your body.**",
"This is a really interesting question. It turns out that to continue existing, viruses need ways to propagate themselves. Nearly all viruses eventually die when they're out in the environment, they need ways to propagate themselves that tend to go directly from person to person.\n\nViruses are very small and have no way to move themselves. So they can't just swim through the air to another person, or something.\n\nSo, they rely on the victim's body to propagate the virus. The virus triggers **specific** symptoms in the victim's body that help it propagate. Probably the best example is the sneeze or cough, which sprays little bits of fluid everywhere, all of which are infected by the virus. Another good example is diarrhea, which again sprays little bits of fluid everywhere, which is all infected.\n\nBy doing these things, the virus spreads itself among a human population, and consequently becomes a common disease. \n\n"
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2a12gn | why can i smell food better farther away than when i'm eating it? | And maybe this is just me. But popcorn for instance. Fills the whole house with its buttery goodness. Can't smell it as well when its right in front of me. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2a12gn/eli5_why_can_i_smell_food_better_farther_away/ | {
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"Your nose becomes aware to new smells and over time lessens the ability to smell it. Same reason pubescent boys drench themselves with cologne. Everyone around the person can smell it fine but the boy is used to the smell and thinks it isn't working so they spray five times when once was always enough. It's a evolved mechanism."
]
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2j19md | when a guys pee hits the toilet water and causes splash droplets that spray out of the bowl are the droplets pee or toilet water? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2j19md/eli5when_a_guys_pee_hits_the_toilet_water_and/ | {
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"I would imagine the line between piss and water gets fuzzy pretty quickly. ",
"In chemistry labs in college we were always told to pour acid into water not water into acid. The reasoning is that the substance you are pouring into is likely to be what splashes out. Of course I wouldn't perform a taste test in the acid or urine scenarios. ",
"I'm pretty sure it's random every single time. ",
"It's at least partially urine.\n\nI've recently started taking a medication for diabetes that causes my body to lose some of my blood sugar through my urine. Ever since then, I've noticed the tile floor has shiny little dried sugar dots from the dried splashes. \n\nOn a side note, I'm now totally grossed out when I think about all the bath mats I've ever stepped on barefoot.",
"If there isn't urine in the toilet it would have to be toilet water. Since your urine had a forward velocity, it will continue forward until stopped and it won't stop until after it contacts the water. The other side to this coin is that once you've been peeing for a second or two, there is now urine in the bowl and this pee will splash out.",
"people pee so hard that it actually sprays back out of the bowl!? I really need to step my game up.. "
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2tnpm2 | von neumann machines | They were mentioned in an AskReddit thread earlier today. ELI5? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2tnpm2/eli5_von_neumann_machines/ | {
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"text": [
"Simply put they are machines that travel through space, land on a planet and build more of themselves then repeat that process"
]
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[]
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|
38v4ih | if sweating is supposed to cool you down, why is high-humidity heat more unpleasant or draining than "dry heat"? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/38v4ih/eli5_if_sweating_is_supposed_to_cool_you_down_why/ | {
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"The sweating tell doesn't actually cool you, it is the sweat evaporating off your skin which slightly absorbs some heat. In a high humidity environment, evaporation won't occur as easily, which makes you more uncomfortable. ",
"Both of those are true because your body tries to cool itself by having water evaporate off the skin. Your body creates sweat so that the sweat will evaporate, taking heat with it and leaving the skin cooler than before. When the air around your body is *already* high in humidity, then the air is saturated and won't \"take\" or absorb the sweat as easily. So the sweat sits on your skin, instead of evaporating away, and you don't get any cooler.",
"The way that sweat works is that it evaporates into the air around you, carrying heat away from your body. Problem is, the air can only hold so much water, so in humid environments, the air already has a lot of water vapor in it and has no room for your evaporated sweat. In dry climates, your sweat evaporates much more readily and cools you more efficiently.",
"High humidity makes it harder to sweat, not easier. Sweating can be thought of as two steps: water pushed to the surface of the skin and water evaporated. Because of the energy involved in changing water from a liquid to a gas, evaporation can cool your skin even if the air is warmer than your skin. In a high humidity situation it is harder for water to evaporate, so a given amount of sweating will cool you less.",
"Think of humid air like a wet towel. Drying yourself off with a wet towel is much harder than drying yourself off with a dry towel.",
"Sweating cools you down when the warm water you just excreted out your skin evaporates away from you.\n\nIf the air is humid, it won't evaporate, the warm water will just stay there on your skin.",
"In measuring temperature there are actually several temperatures that are measured and put together to get the \"Effective\" temperature. \n\nFirst is dry bulb temperature. It is just a thermometer. It tells you the actual air temperature. But it doe not take every effect into account.\n\nSecond is black body temperature. it is the temperature based on radiation in the area. So if you take this outside and it is 80 degrees air temp it will be greater than 80 degrees since the suns radiation is also causing heating. If you go into a very shady area the temp reading for black body temperature goes way down. And at night it will be close to the actual air temp.\n\nThe third temperature is wet bulb temp. It is a temp taken using a thermometer that is wrapped in a cotton/gauze that is saturated with water and has a small fan blowing over it. It takes a temperature based on how much evaporative cooling can occur. The more humid, the higher the temperature.\n\nThe three temps are put together in a calculation to get a \"real Feel temp\" that can be used for determining heat stress and work loading for hot environments.\n\nExample: air temp is 75F, it is noon, and very humid. It would be felt as very hot since you are getting a lot of heat from radiation and the sweat can not evaporate and cool you. \n\nYou go into a house with a dehumidifier running and go into an internal room without windows. You would feel much better and think it was much cooler inside and comfortable. But the plain thermometer says that air temp is 75F. Same as outside.\n\nWind,breeze, or fans all create air movement. This allows the air to pick up more moisture as it passes over you in a given humidity. So fans help to cool you buy helping the water on you to evaporate. The latent heat of vaporization (how much heat energy it takes for water to go to vapor vice liquid) is very large. So vaporizing water removes a lot of heat. Dry air allows more vaporization and therefore more cooling.\n\n[How to measure Wet Bulb/Globe Temp](_URL_0_) "
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yxtls | why do we dismiss the idea of life on a planet just because nothing on earth could live on it? | If a planet is like Jupiter and made mostly of gas, what's to say there isn't a form of life on it that thrives off of helium and hydrogen? Is there some essential ingredient to life that the planet lacks? Or do we just ignore it because we couldn't colonize it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/yxtls/eli5why_do_we_dismiss_the_idea_of_life_on_a/ | {
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"No, we don't dismiss planets, or even moons of planets because nothing on Earth could survive there. \n\nWe do know a couple things about how life formed on the Earth and tend to think you need the same things for life to form anywhere else. Water is an important thing. The reason we look for planets with water is that water is an incredible solvent. That means it can break big things into little things given enough time. \n\nWater also means that the little things get mixed up with other little things and can bond with them. Free flowing water allows for more mixing. Hydrogen is common in the Universe. It is the stuff stars come from. Oxygen can come about in the right conditions, so water is not that uncommon. Comets even carry water and there is even an argument amongst science guys as to where the water on Earth came from. Some think from those comets one drop at a time. \n\nLiquid water being a good solvent and a good mixing bowl means that the things that are needed to make life had a good chance of interacting. \n\nWe know approximately how far away from a star liquid water should be found. We also know what it would take to keep a planet-like sphere warm enough to keep the water liquid. We don't know what it would take to keep the mixing pot working in a gas giant. Simply, there doesn't seem to be a way to get the pieces to stay together long enough erode enough in a planet that does not have liquid water. Granted, we are finding new places where life exists that were never thought possible, but we focus the search on the few where we believe it should be found. ",
"We're pretty sure to have life you need water. [This article on the NOVA site explains more](_URL_0_), but basically to have life first you need a way to replicate -- you need some way for the life-form to be able to reproduce. In all the life on earth, that's done through proteins which can make copies of themselves in a complicated chemical reaction. It could be that you could use something other than proteins for the replicating bit, but whatever it was would still need to reproduce itself through a chemical reaction, and for that you need water. Stuff can dissolve in water and mix together and form new compounds. You can't dissolve stuff into another solid and while stuff can dissolve into a gas it tends to spread out too far too quickly to mix together and make new stuff. ",
"[SSG_Schwartz](_URL_0_) made a great ELI5 post so I will elaborate a little further and talk about some of the specifics of your question.\n\n > Life from hydrogen and helium\n\nWithout getting into really weird scenarios involving nuclear reactions, the only other way for atoms to interact is via the set of reactions that we call \"chemistry\". Basically this involves various type of electron bonding/sharing, charge-charge interactions and other weaker interactions that occur when molecules get close enough to each other.\n\nThe problem from that perspective is that hydrogen is very limited in what it can do for several reasons:\n\n1. It's a gas even at extremely cold temperatures which means that it's generally very chaotically organised - we think that life should be well organised\n2. It tends to lose its one electron very easily which means that it's limited in its interactions - we tend to think of life as requiring a variety of chemical options\n3. Life needs energy but hydrogen is extremely happy to act as the reductant in almost any situation - we have trouble coming up with a respiration model that uses hydrogen\n\nBecause of the points above, it's unlikely that we would see an organism based on hydrogen or that breathes hydrogen because hydrogen just doesn't lend itself to that sort of chemistry.\n\nHelium is even worse. As a noble gas, it doesn't want to be involved in much chemistry at all and is quite happy hanging on to all of its electrons. It doesn't form bonds easily and is a gas at most temperatures which means that it's even more useless for life-based-on-chemistry than hydrogen.\n\n > Is there some essential ingredient to life\n\nAs SSG_Schwartz mentioned, water seems pretty essential because of its amazing properties as a solvent.\n\nOn top of that, carbon is pretty amazing and unique because of the diversity of chemistry that it can be involved in. Carbon is virtually unique because it can form up to four bonds with other molecules and is almost equally happy accepting electrons from something like hydrogen as it is donating them to oxygen. \n\nThe primary difference between carbon and similar elements like silicon and germanium is that carbon is lighter and is thus more abundant in the universe. In fact, because of the CNO cycle of stellar fusion, carbon is directly produced in stellar cores rather than being the result of stellar explosions.\n\nSo we think that carbon is a great contender as the basis for the majority of life because it is abundant, has lots of different chemistry and is a solid at most normal temperatures which means that it tends to be quite well organised in terms of structure.\n\n > Or do we just ignore it because we couldn't colonize it\n\nThe problem with colonising a gas giant are many. They include but are not limited to:\n\n* the atmospheric pressure at the surface being on the order of 30,000 times Earth normal which would crush virtually any vessel\n* the extreme winds in the upper atmosphere which would make the adjective 'cyclonic' look tame by comparison\n* the very strong magnetic fields which would play havoc with instrumentation\n* the lack of reachable solid surface which means that any installation would have to float/fly in the atmosphere\n* the lightning discharges from the extreme winds\n\nGas giants just aren't a friendly place for protoplasmic carbon based life forms :)"
]
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"http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/evolution/liquid-of-life.html"
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qz1sf | what makes denim such a durable fabric? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/qz1sf/eli5_what_makes_denim_such_a_durable_fabric/ | {
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"From what I understand, it's two layers of fabric woven together to create a very sturdy weaved pattern. The white and blue threads are woven together diagonally giving the fabric its signature texture.",
"First of all, the threads are *very* tightly woven, and generally speaking, the closer together the threads, the stronger the fabric, and also the weave pattern is on a diagonal which gives extra strength because the cross-threads are ''interlocked'' into the diagonal pattern, you know like if you build a brick wall and place each row of bricks so that each brick is above two halves of the bricks below, it is much stronger than if you placed each brick directly on top of the brick below"
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55qv7h | difference between pond, lake, and lagoon? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/55qv7h/eli5_difference_between_pond_lake_and_lagoon/ | {
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"Lagoons are shallow bodies of water which got separated from a larger body of water by some barrier or reefs. You will often see them on islands, where there is also water around the land, close by. A pond is a body of still water. It can be natural or man-made. They are not nearly as deep compared to lakes.",
"It's easy !\n\n* Pond : Small, freshwater, often unrelated to flowing water sources like brooks, rivers and streams (though not always - sometimes they are as the result of our source of these flowing waters on land); Shallow, and not navigable by anything bigger than a model boat.\n* Lake : Large, freshwater, often the result or source of flowing waters. Navigable by boats - small lakes are navigable by rowing craft and small sailing skiffs, the Great Lakes in the US, and Lake Victoria by vessels as big as aircraft carriers and battleships !\n* Lagoon : Marine/Saltwater, protected from flow of the open seas by a geographic barrier, and often very shallow, which means they are not always navigable. Very often a lagoon forms inside the area created by a large coral reef (known as an atoll), but sometimes as the result of the sea carving a hollow in a granite island. For types of lagoon , have a look [here](_URL_0_).\n\nHope this helps"
]
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[],
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||
dti011 | the chances of there being other forms of intelligent life in the universe | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dti011/eli5_the_chances_of_there_being_other_forms_of/ | {
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"Imo intelligent life like human life (equally capable) is _extremely_ low. Reason being we don't appear to have evolved at the earliest possible moment - our sun had at least several generations of other suns before it. In other words if intelligent life evolving is somewhat common then there would be other civilizations in our galaxy that have had a head start of _billions_ of years. Given that we've been technologically advancing as a species for some 10,000 years and can today envision within the next hundreds of years some vaguely plausible ways of having a space probe / seeding ship travel at 25% speed of light then the whole galaxy being 100,000 light years across is plausibly totally navigated within half a billion years (400,000 years to farthest point, 100,000 years to generate many probes and improve technology to such a degree).\n\nTherefore if intelligent life is at all common it's likely it would have evolved long before us and also likely it would have navigated to the majority of the galaxy.\n\nUnless we're the first. Or the only. Or if future technology unavoidably creates a civilization ending event (self mutating artificial viruses?) And the civilizations that came before us have died already. Hopefully we've somehow passed that point already."
]
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||
fl1rp9 | not sure how eli5 this can get, but how is that two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen combine into something (water) that's heavier than air even though they're lighter than air separately? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fl1rp9/eli5_not_sure_how_eli5_this_can_get_but_how_is/ | {
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" > water is heavier than air\n\nOh but that's the typical riddle: which one is **heavier**, 1 Kg of water or 1 Kg of air? Answer: naturally, they weight exactly the same, 1Kg. \n\nWhat to want to look at is not the *weight* but the weight *per unity of volume*. While it's true that one molecule of water (H2O) is lighter than one molecule of oxigen (O2), 1 meter cube of liquid waters packs way more water molecules than there are air molecules (oxigen and others) in 1 meter cube of air. That's because in air there's much more empty space between molecules, as it's typically the case with any gas. This makes the cubic meter of air much much lighter than the cubic meter of water.",
"If I understand correctly, the answer is basically that water is more compact (by space) as a result of the atoms joinging. How do I mark this as solved? Thanks for answering, everyone."
]
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22f3ys | why do my eyes water when i drink fizzy drinks really fast? | When I drink fizzy drinks fast my eyes water up! Why is that? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/22f3ys/eli5_why_do_my_eyes_water_when_i_drink_fizzy/ | {
"a_id": [
"cgm6ia7"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Cause the fizzies go up into your eyes"
]
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[]
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|
9z6y8r | why is the us so socially conservative compares to most other western democracies? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9z6y8r/eli5_why_is_the_us_so_socially_conservative/ | {
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"A lot of America's wealth comes from primary industries: mining, drilling, farming. Those jobs don't require much in the way of education. People with less education tend to be socially conservative. The way the American senate is designed means voters in low-population states have more power. Low population states tend to be rural and therefore socially conservative. \n\nSo there are a lot of social conservatives, and they have a disproportionate amount of power.\n",
"Might as well add geographical issues, we are large and border by two oceans so the population doesn't have any easy way to see alternatives in other countries. Likely why cities are more liberal than rural areas, you don't know what you don't know."
]
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6sojim | why is satan bad? isn't he just an angel who rebelled against serving god for eternity, made humanity gain massive intellect and the only representative of those who oppose the ethically questionable actions and ideas of god? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6sojim/eli5_why_is_satan_bad_isnt_he_just_an_angel_who/ | {
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"That is a complicated question to answer, because the role of \"Satan\" changes depending on what part of the bible we are reading. In the Garden, he was the snake that tempered Adam and Eve to rebel against God, in Job he was more of an advocate to challenge God's ideas acceptably, in Revelations he is the King of the Lake of Fire, etc.\n\nThat all said, the general idea is that God is perfect; he is all knowing, all powerful, all loving and never incorrect. By definition, disagreeing with and defying an entity that can not be wrong makes you incorrect.",
"Not to mention the 'kill list' in the Bible compared between the 2. . Satan only killed Job's family and that was w/ permission from God during the bet. God is somewhere around 20 million plus.\n\n_URL_0_"
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[],
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"http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Examples_of_God_personally_killing_people"
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53f7dp | where does the blocked sperm go with male contraception like vasalgel? | All these articles have come out recently talking about how male birth control uses a polymer injected into the sperm tubes that blocks sperm, but allows other substances to pass through. Where does the built up sperm go if it's not ejaculated? Would this not be painful/uncomfortable? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/53f7dp/eli5_where_does_the_blocked_sperm_go_with_male/ | {
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"text": [
"The built up sperm gets reabsorbed by the body. Very similar to what happens when a male gets a vasectomy. No, it's not painful at all...you won't know the difference."
]
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|
cm61p9 | how did culture's such as ancient egypt and ancient china write names? | I may be wrong but the Egyptians used hieroglyphics which were pictures that described the word. Each word had a unique symbol. How would they write names if they did not have an alphabet? I belive China also did something like this. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cm61p9/eli5_how_did_cultures_such_as_ancient_egypt_and/ | {
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"They would name people after their words, such as King Tuts name literally meaning “the living image of Aten” This is why a lot of cultures names have a word meaning associated with them",
"Well, consider modern names. Peter sounds like a name, but it's really an anglicized form of the Greek word for stone. Gabriel comes from Gavri'el, meaning \"God is my strength.\" Names come from words.",
"Most cultures give people names that mean things. \nIt's just english and many europeans cultures took the sounds, but not the meanings. \nFor example David means \"beloved\" in hebrew. \n \nChinese and Egyptian are no different. They just skip the import and give everyone's name obvious meanings. \n\nTutankhamun means \"The Living Image of Amun\" (he used to be called TUtankhaten \"The Living Image of Aten\", but that's a long and interesting story) \nNefertari means \"beautiful companion\" \nMao Zedong given name means \"Brilliant East\" \nXi Jinping given name means \"Immediate Peace\" \n \nDo note: in Chinese naming convention, it is a common practice when giving two word names to have the first word denote the generation for that family. \nFor example: the current Prime Minister of Singapore is Lee Hsien Long, his brother is Lee Hsien Yang."
]
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4vfvln | among animal species, why do humans have a need to be clothe, especially in public | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4vfvln/eli5_among_animal_species_why_do_humans_have_a/ | {
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"I'm pretty sure it's just a societal thing. If you look at pictures of indigenous tribes in Africa or South America some of them don't dress for modesty at all but for tradition and whatnot. Basically, our society and culture has decided that the naked human body is something that should be covered up when in public so that's what we do. ",
"Go stand outside in a place like Winnipeg in winter fully naked and tell me it's about culture."
]
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9h5qvz | why is africa less affected by hurricanes and earthquakes than other continents? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9h5qvz/eli5_why_is_africa_less_affected_by_hurricanes/ | {
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"text": [
"North Atlantic winds are generally east-to-west, so storms move westward, building in intensity as they go. This is why most storms hit the Americas, not Africa.\n\nSouth Atlantic winds are generally west-to-east, but conditions there are not favorable for forming hurricanes. The Atlantic Ocean is larger in the south, and the Antarctic tends to cool the water somewhat, at least for now; one potential consequence of global warming and ice loss in the Antarctic is worsening storms.\n\nSimilarly, the Pacific Ocean is not conducive to hurricane formation for similar reasons, and storms would generally be blown away from Africa.\n\nMost tectonic fault lines in the African region are near its borders, which is why it's relatively flat and comparatively free of earthquakes - but it does still suffer many earthquakes every year.",
"It just isn't; the conditions aren't quite right.\n\nAfrica *does* get cyclones/hurricanes on occasion, but it's mostly just from the Indian Ocean into Southern and Central Africa, just because of how the prevailing winds flow.\n\nAs far as earthquakes; most of Africa is one solid plate, and so the fault lines are along the boundaries of that plate, so you get Earthquakes in North Africa where the African and Eurasian plates are in contact, and in East Africa where you have a giant rift valley going from Djibouti and Eritrea all the way down to South Africa, but that rift valley is (in the grand scheme of things) kinda quiet."
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3p56qr | why does keeping a pillow between the legs near the crotch feel comforting(is it just me?)? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3p56qr/eli5_why_does_keeping_a_pillow_between_the_legs/ | {
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"text": [
"Not just you, I do the same thing. However, not sure why either. Only thing I have been able to conclude, is it helps support your knees and joints from being bent and stressed in awkward positions for an extended amount of time. Ever try sleeping on your side without one? I've woken up with lower back pain, and leg and knee pain before.",
"...because it creates a gap between your legs and that gap helps your nuts. It relieves all that pressure on your nuts.",
"Improved spine alignment. Pillow especially helps if you often wake up with a lower back ache."
]
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||
2kgbib | what exactly is shadow banking? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2kgbib/eli5what_exactly_is_shadow_banking/ | {
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"Shadow banking is the collective term for organizations that offer bank like services, but aren't regulated as banks. \n\nBecause banks take deposits from the public, they allow multiple people to have a claim on the same money. This is a very important role banks play in the modern economy, and because of this role, the government has a huge number of regulations that are special for banks. However, complying with these regulations is expensive. Traditionally, the margin that deposits provided meant that banks had a pricing advantage against other competitors (these advantages became the source of the term banker's hours). \n\nHowever, as the costs of compliance rose and liquidity in a few markets improved, the cost advantage of accepting deposits stopped being large enough to keep all competitors out.\n\nEventually, non-bank firms began to offer bank like products (not deposits which would entail taking on regulation costs) but loans and guarantees. These firms are not regulated by banks but can offer loans as though they were banks. \n\nAn example of a shadow bank that anyone can participate in are lendingclub and prosper, which have grown dramatically during the bank crisis when credit became hard to get for many. \n\nMost shadow banks are firms like insurance companies or hedge funds that thanks to credit default swaps (a way to trade just the credit risk of a loan without the rest of the loan) and futures and swaps (ways to trade the interest rate risk of a loan) to become very important providers of credit to the economy (either through banks or by themselves). \n\nTL;DR. Non-bank firms that provide loans (or products that allow others to provide cheap loans). Because they aren't banks, they have much less regulation than a bank would. ",
"*In finance, a dark pool (also black pool) is a private forum for trading securities that is not openly available to the public. Liquidity on these markets is called dark pool liquidity. The bulk of dark pool trades represent large trades by financial institutions that are offered away from public exchanges like the New York Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ, so that such trades remain confidential and outside the purview of the general investing public.*\n\n_URL_4_\n\n_URL_0_\n\n\"Shadow banking, as usually defined, comprises a diverse set of institutions and markets that, collectively, carry out traditional banking functions--but do so outside, or in ways only loosely linked to, the traditional system of regulated depository institutions.\" - Ben Bernanke\n\n_URL_1_\n\n‘Shadow Banking’ in China\n\n_URL_5_\n\n*Shadow banks are financial intermediaries that conduct maturity, credit, and liquidity transformation without access to central bank liquidity or public sector credit guarantees. Examples of shadow banks include finance companies, asset-backed commercial paper (ABCP) conduits, limited-purpose finance companies, structured investment vehicles, credit hedge funds, money market mutual funds, securities lenders, and government-sponsored enterprises.*\n\n_URL_2_\n\n_URL_3_\n",
"Shadow banking: money market mutual funds, investment banks, private equity, venture capital\n\nNormal banking system is limited:\n\nCapital requirements reduce leverage and discourage excessive risk taking: The fact that all deposits are insured means that your money is always safe even if the bank fails. This makes banks more inclined to take risks because they are like \"Eh, what the hell, the government needs us so they will just bail us out anyways...let's take financial risks and hope to profit\"\nRestricted banks participation in risky investment\n\nVolcker rule in Dodd Frank law limits proprietary trading by banks \n\nBanks should not use low cost funds (made available by deposit insurance to speculate in risky activities)\n\nShadow banking systems are exempt from these regulations.",
"Pay-Day Loan operations, as well as your neighborhood Loan Shark are a form of shadow bank. Patronize either at your peril."
]
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"http://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dark_pool_liquidity.asp",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_banking_system",
"http://www.philstockworld.com/2010/11/23/humongous-shadow-banking-chart-designed-by-ny-fed/",
"http://www.newyorkfed.org/research/staff_reports/sr458.pdf",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_liquidity",
"http://thediplomat.com/2012/10/the-rise-of-shadow-banking-in-china/"
],
[],
[]
] |
||
150ryc | why can admitting to murdering someone yield an arrest, but admitting to doing illegal drugs doesn't? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/150ryc/why_can_admitting_to_murdering_someone_yield_an/ | {
"a_id": [
"c7i7tn8",
"c7i7yw7"
],
"score": [
16,
3
],
"text": [
"Because generally \"doing illegal drugs\" is not a crime. It's possession or distribution that is the crime.",
"I am not sure about the laws in every state, but in New York, under [New York Penal Law Article 220](_URL_0_), there is no crime related to personally doing drugs. The illegal activities related to drugs include possession, sale, injecting another person with a drug, possessing drug paraphernalia, and manufacturing drugs. However, doing drugs in and of itself is not illegal. The reason that people are arrested when doing drugs is typically due to possession."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"http://ypdcrime.com/penal.law/article220.htm"
]
] |
||
6db79s | audio equipment has objective measurements of audio quality like frequency response & signal to noise ratio. why is this not used as part of the specifications for speakers etc? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6db79s/eli5_audio_equipment_has_objective_measurements/ | {
"a_id": [
"di19c27",
"di19vrk"
],
"score": [
4,
2
],
"text": [
"They are... For good speakers. Not good speakers don't bother proving to you that they aren't very good.\n\nIf you buy a good speaker or microphone, it will likely come with a frequency response curve showing how accurately and at what power level it produces each frequency.",
"It is used, particularly in reviews. [Look at this amp review](_URL_0_ ) it's full of graphs and charts of response curves."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"http://www.audioholics.com/soundbar-and-satellite-speaker-reviews/yamaha-ysp-1/page-3"
]
] |
||
b9ys8r | how in the hell does electromagnetism work? | Seriously, I’ve been baffled to this day about charges, what “positive” and “negative” actually mean, and how magnets can repel or pull towards one another just based on proximity. How do the molecules know they’re close to each other? Is it some basic chemical principle that says “okay, you do this”, or is it something much more complicated? Somebody explain this in the simplest terms or link me a video please | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b9ys8r/eli5_how_in_the_hell_does_electromagnetism_work/ | {
"a_id": [
"ek7vqie",
"ek86az8",
"ek8eqqw",
"ek8nlob"
],
"score": [
13,
2,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Certain particles have charges. Charges can be one of two types, called positive and negative. There's no real reason positive charges are called positive or negative charges are called negative, that's just convention. A charge is surrounded by an electric field, and a moving or spinning charge is surrounded by a magnetic field. Particles of opposite charges make fields that point in the opposite direction, and particles with larger charges make stronger fields. Charges have a force exerted on them by electric fields, depending on the strength and direction of the field, and moving charges have a force exerted on them by magnetic fields, also determined by the strength and direction of the field. There isn't really an underlying reason for why they experience a force this way, other than \"that's the way the universe works\".",
"At a certain point you have to draw a line and say that's the way the universe works. People with more scientific background can draw that line several levels down from the normal person, but they still just have to accept some things. You can keep asking \"Why?\" forever. Richard Feynman explains it well here. It starts out with him sounding cranky but he explains it well in the end.\n\n [_URL_0_](_URL_1_) ",
"The separated poles of magnets are pulled together by an invisible field which we call a magnetic field. It’s a force that similar to gravity extends through space. Similarly when you have opposite charges there is an invisible so called electric field between them. Electric fields cause charged things to move like for example charges flowing through a wire. Magnetism and e fields are a duality together they are em or electromagnetism. The same thing as light and radio waves. \n\nThere are simple experiments you can perform to see the shape of these fields.\n\nCharge is a fundamental property of matter. There are two different opposite charges matter can have. We arbitrarily labeled them positive and negative. \n\nI am no expert here but I love reading about this stuff. Here are two great links to my favorite resource. They talk about these topics are well worth the read.\n\n_URL_0_\n_URL_1_",
"If you want to know how charges work on a fundamental level you really have to understand how the universe works on a fundamental level, which involves a heavy dose of quantum mechanics. I don't this will make charges any less weird than you already think they are but...\n\nIn our universe things comes in packets (quanta). Everything has to be sent in packets and you can't have partial packets. For light this would be photons, if something emits a certain wavelength of light it can't emit partial photons, it can only be sent in complete packages. Say something is sending 3.6 packets per second on average then how it works is that there's a certain chance 3 packages will be sent and a certain chance 4 packages will be sent a given second. In quantum mechanics as long as there's nothing that says it can't happen there's a probability that it will happen. Every possible option has a chance of happening, there is a probability that 0, 1, or 2 packages will be sent a given second.\n\nElectric charge is a physical property of matter in our universe just like mass. The smallest package of electric charge is the elementary charge which is also the charge of an electron. There's is also a principle that says that the total electric charge in the universe can never change. Because of this a single positive charge can't just be created out of nowhere. However there is nothing that says a positive and negative charge both can't be created simultaneously, since if you have +1 and -1 then the total charge haven't changed. \n\nMoments after the big bang there was a lot of insanely high energy photons flying around everywhere and colliding. If two photons collide and they have enough energy to create a particle with equal mass-energy then the initial quantum state with the two photons is just as valid a state as the quantum state of a electron-positron pair. If the energy, momentum, charge is all identical for both states, well then there's nothing that says it can't happen. Quantum mechanics tells us that if both are valid states then there must be a probability for the initial state to transition into the other state. That's how almost all particles with electric charge were created just moments after the big bang. \n\nThe net charge in the universe is 0, so every positive charge has a negative charge counterpart. I guess you can think of it as that the positive and the negative charge always want to recombine and become neutral, but actually the electromagnetic force they feel pulling them together is just another fundamental interaction of nature and it's just how the universe works. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO0r930Sn\\_8",
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO0r930Sn_8"
],
[
"http://amasci.com/elect/charge1.html",
"http://amasci.com/miscon/voltage.html"
],
[]
] |
|
2h55iz | what is the benefit of being paid salary vs being paid hourly? | As far as i know, someone making $50/hour is making as much money as someone making $100k/year, so why is salary considered to be more prestigious? To me it just seems like a trick used by employers so they dont have to pay overtime. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2h55iz/eli5what_is_the_benefit_of_being_paid_salary_vs/ | {
"a_id": [
"ckpglsl"
],
"score": [
6
],
"text": [
"It really depends on the business & how they structure compensation.\n\nIn some places, \"salary\" just means you're going to be working unpaid overtime. In other places, you're actually given flexibility in your hours & get your full pay for a 30hr week (if all your work is complete).\n\nIn some fields, you know you're never going to work less than 40 hours - in those cases, going to salary (without other benefits changing the deal) is a bad deal.\n\nLike I said, it really depends on where you're working. Maybe being being a salaried employee makes you \"management\" and qualifies you for bonuses and perks. Maybe hourly employees have a really good union & you'd be crazy to switch. Like many things in the business world, job titles & benefits are going to vary wildly between companies."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
1vvmtn | how come supercars (like the $2 million bugatti or others) aren't talked about for their safety features? do they not have to do the test crashes that "regular" cars have to do? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1vvmtn/eli5_how_come_supercars_like_the_2_million/ | {
"a_id": [
"cew7ts7",
"cew7xuk",
"cewecbi"
],
"score": [
7,
6,
2
],
"text": [
"Safety isn't a selling point for a supercar. No one buys the safest supercar, they buy the fastest, flashiest pussy magnet they can afford.",
"You hit a wall at 180+ mph the safety features of the car really don't matter",
"When you're traveling at 200+ MPH, you'll probly die anyway. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
2qz1h1 | why do monitors advertise screen ratios of 16:10 instead of 16:9? | Looking through monitor specs and this has been bugging me. Why don't they reduce the ratio? Is there a reason behind this? Thanks :) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2qz1h1/eli5why_do_monitors_advertise_screen_ratios_of/ | {
"a_id": [
"cnavhi9"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Slightly more vertical resolution with 16x10, 1200 pixels instead of 1080. Yes you get black bars when watching 1080p video but more vertical space for everything else."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
40ktph | how does a company mark the level of spice in a salsa? | As someone who eats a lot of salsa, I recently purchased 3 jars of Hot salsa. One of them tasted very mild and another was much spicier than I expected. Do companies have a way to test the level of caspcians before sealing? I don't care about differences from brand to brand, but rather these were the exact same jar of salsa with poor quality control. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/40ktph/eli5_how_does_a_company_mark_the_level_of_spice/ | {
"a_id": [
"cyuyolj"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"Yeah, that just sounds like bad quality control.\n\nIdeally, the recipe should call for a certain number of a certain kind of peppers. Assuming they use the same kind of pepper, they can get a pretty good idea of the [Scoville heat scale](_URL_0_) of the salsa (based on the heat of the peppers used).\n\nWithin the company, though, they probably have their own trademarked \"scale\" with fun buzzwords like \"scorching\" and \"nuclear!!!\" and so on that are mostly based on their consumer base. If you're the average grocery store brand, your \"hot\" salsa is going to be about the same as a \"mild\" for some specialty brands. But consistency is the key. If you make the same salsa with the same peppers, it should be the sameish heat."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scoville_scale"
]
] |
|
42woab | instead of building a space elevator from the earth upwards, why don't we build one that starts in space and reaches downwards? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/42woab/eli5_instead_of_building_a_space_elevator_from/ | {
"a_id": [
"czdo8qh",
"czdo9o0",
"czdoav4",
"czdod8x"
],
"score": [
5,
3,
2,
3
],
"text": [
"Any space elevator would be build from the top down. After all, it's held up by the object it's anchored too in orbit, so you can't build it from the ground up.\n\nThat said, the idea has been proposed.\n\n_URL_0_",
"If such a thing was not tethered to the Earth, it would need to be orbiting at high speed to not fall down to the Earth. The issue with that is twofold. First, the elevator would be difficult to use because it is always moving relative to the surface. Second, the density of the atmosphere would be lower at the top of the elevator than the bottom. That means more resistance to said movement at the bottom than at the top, so it would spin out of control and probably just burn up.\n\nEdit: mentioned in other post but a geostationary orbit would require the center of mass of the elevator to be over 25000 miles up. Not feasible at all.",
"Some potential space elevator designs are based on a top-down approach. A cable is extruded from a heavy asteroid that acts as an anchor, and this is fitted into a receiving collar in the ground. \n\nBut the problem with having an unanchored cable hanging from something in orbit is atmospheric drag. To orbit, you need to be moving sideways, and if you're in near-earth orbit to prevent your cable from being massively massively long (26000 kilometers distance from the surface to get to geostationary orbit at the equator!), you need to be moving sideways FAST. An example of this is the International Space Station, which is always moving across the sky because it's in low earth orbit.\n\nWhen your top is moving really really fast, that means the bottom end of your floating space elevator is sitting in atmosphere that's going a whole lot slower than your orbiting mass anchor point that's above it. This causes tremendous drag, and that slows down your orbiting mass and sucks it into the earth. \n\nThe results would not be pretty.",
"That is actually how most proposed ideas of building a space elevator would work.\n\nYou have to keep in mind that a space elevator would not really be a tower or similar, but more like a cable; a cable for an elevator car to climb up and down on.\n\nSince building a cable or rope from the ground up does not really work very well, you would have to lower it down.\n\nThere are also ideas that have the elevator end not on the ground level but a bit further up, including designs such a spinning bola, that would work like a wheel, with the hub in orbit and the end of the spokes dipping down into the atmosphere."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyhook_(structure)"
],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
624mxe | why are body fluids salty? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/624mxe/eli5_why_are_body_fluids_salty/ | {
"a_id": [
"dfjpnuu",
"dfjpv54",
"dfjt7ni"
],
"score": [
2,
3,
2
],
"text": [
"Can you confirm they are salty?",
"Our ancestor species lived in the ocean, which is salty, and grew to thrive in their only available habitat -- salt water.\n\nAs the next speciel started to climb out of the ocean and live on land, their bodies developed mechanisms to keep salt water inside, so that they could stay alive.\n\nWe still have those mechanisms.",
"Because they literally are salty. Having ions, like Na+ and Cl- etc, in the interstitial fluid and blood of pretty much every animal is SUPER important for osmoregulation of cells and transport of substances across cell membranes"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
3fk32l | how does a small bullet that doesn't pass through the brain or heart kill a person? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3fk32l/eli5_how_does_a_small_bullet_that_doesnt_pass/ | {
"a_id": [
"ctpbtv8",
"ctpcas9",
"ctpg2a6",
"ctpkq36"
],
"score": [
7,
23,
3,
2
],
"text": [
"Like a .22? Hitting arteries, internal organs etc. You take a hit to the liver your going down unless your close to a trauma center. apologies for not going into more detail. Basically shock and blood loss is what kills you. ",
"Bullets inflict a lot of damage through a process called hydrostatic shock.\n\nWater cannot be compressed, and most of your body is made up of water. So when a projectile like a bullet hits you and penetrates your skin, it exerts tremendous pressure on your cells. A 'wave\" of pressure radiates from the projectile and that pressure can do a lot of damage to organs and blood vessels.\n\nIt is also likely that the exit wound will be much worse than the entry wound (in part due to the hydrostatic effects). The exit wound could be so significant that you bleed out from the amount of tissue destroyed.\n\nIf the bullet hits a major blood vessel or organ you can bleed out. If it strikes a lung you can get a pneumothorax condition (collapsed lung) and suffocate. If it perforates your stomach or intestines you can get systemic infections. if it strikes the spinal column you could have severe nerve damage including loss of ability to breathe and/or beat your heart.",
"Bullets don't just pass straight through people. They usually tumble, mushroom, and/or disintegrate. [It looks like this.](_URL_0_)",
"Your body and organ systems are inter-related, especially your blood and circulation, kidneys, heart, brain, and lungs. Any failure of one of these organs typically results in subsequent failure of the others either one-at-a-time or all at once.\n\nAdditionally, there are at least 10 or so spots (not on the head) that you can be stabbed with a pencil by a 10 year old and bleed out in under a minute. And in many cases, even if you don't bleed out, you can get other problems: throw a clot from any part of the damaged area that will stick in one of the aforementioned organs, have a deadly drop in blood pressure, or suffer organ damage from hydrostatic shock. Those are just the ones that will kill you in under 5 minutes."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[
"http://i40.tinypic.com/2mywakg.jpg"
],
[]
] |
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