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[Harry Potter] How much did Dumbledore interfere with Harry's education at Hogwarts? Couldn't he have spared Harry from all the trials he went through?
| 68 |
He could have made life a thousand times easier for harry. That wasnt his goal though, his goal was to guide a broken kid into becoming a great person.
So look at it as tough love, it sucked but for Harry to be the person he needed to be he needed those insane challenges.
| 65 |
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ELI5: How does rabies induce hydrophobia?
| 276 |
Rabies causes extremely painful muscle spasms in the neck and chest when swallowing. So every time they take a drink or even swallow their own saliva it is extremely painful. In later stages of the disease even the thought or sight of water can cause the muscle spasms. So there is an aversion to the stimulus that causes the pain (water) and they become hydrophobic.
Edit. Spelling
| 249 |
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If Venus is hotter than Mercury why haven’t we explored Mercury more?
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If my research is correct it looks like we’ve only sent two probes to come close to Mercury and no landings. But we’ve landed on Venus. What’s stopping us from going to Mercury?
| 24 |
Mercury is harder to get to and harder to land on.
Slowing down isn't "free" in space. It takes as much energy to slow down as it does to speed up. The Earth is already orbiting the Sun at 30 km/s, so if you want to fall inwards to explore the inner solar system, you have to get rid of most of that speed. To escape the solar system you need to be going at 42 km/s, so you only need an extra 12 km/s. But to drop all the way down to the Sun, you'd need to drop basically the full 30 km/s. So moving inwards can be more expensive than moving outwards - and the further inwards you go, the more energy you need. Getting to Venus means you need to shed about 10 km/s of speed. Getting to Mercury means you need to drop by about 14 km/s. So it takes less thrust to get to Pluto than to get to Mercury (even if getting to Mercury is faster!)
This also means that braking to land on a planet isn't free either. Venus's thick atmosphere is actually useful here - because aerobraking actually is almost "free". You may need a heat shield, but that's usually much less weight and cost than using rockets. And after braking in the upper atmosphere, you can just use parachutes to float down to the surface. Even the thin atmosphere of Mars is useful here - parachutes might not be enough for a heavy rover to land safely, but you can at least get rid of a lot of your momentum with aerobraking and parachutes, and only use a little rocket-powered lander at the end. But on Mercury, there's no free lunch. You have to pack enough rockets to completely stop your motion relative to the planet, and then land yourself safely, and it all has to be fully computer-controlled because the time delay is too long for remote control. Note that all of the solar system bodies we have landed on have either had atmospheres, or are asteroids or comets with almost no gravity (so it's more of a rendezvous than a landing), with the sole exception of the Moon, which is bar far the closest large object to Earth.
So even though a lander might survive for longer on Mercury than on Venus, it generally takes more energy to get to the inner solar system than the outer solar system, and it takes more energy (and more precision!) to land on a planet or moon with no atmosphere than on one where you can aerobrake and use a parachute. This adds up to make Mercury one of the most difficult places to land in the solar system.
| 82 |
ELI5: If I cut something into 3 equal pieces, there are 3 defined pieces. But, 1÷3= .333333~. Why is the math a nonstop repeating decimal when existence allows 3 pieces? Is the assumption that it's physically impossible to cut something into 3 perfectly even pieces?
| 576 |
* The problem isn't math.
* The problem isn't the laws of nature either.
* It's just a quirk of the number system we invented.
* Imagine this:
* You have 10 marbles.
* Using all 10 marbles, make three equal groups.
* You can't since if you did three groups of three you still have a marble left over.
* Now imagine each marble is made up of 10 smaller marbles stuck together.
* Now try it again. You still can't do it because you'd still have one of those smaller marbles left over.
* Now image you had 9 marbles instead.
* You can easily split those up in to three equal groups.
* But what if you had to split them into two groups?
* You can't because you'd still have a marble left over.
* What if each marble was really a group of 9 marbles stuck together that could be broken apart?
* You still have the same issue of a marble left over.
* With any number system (Base 10, Base 9, Base Whatever) you're going to run into numbers that are hard to represent cleanly
| 2,106 |
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[Marvel/DC] Earth has had access to advanced technology for decades. So why isn't the consumer tech more advanced?
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Most of the consumer tech we see (cars, phones, TVs, etc) is still on par with modern tech in the real world. Why hasn't more of the advanced tech made its way into the private sector?
| 50 |
people like Lex Luthor know they should alwasy leave the public wanting more/
people like Reed Richards are so terrified of actual progress they don't invent anything that could put someone out of work
people like the Leader aren't interested in giving tech to anyone who's not directly loyal to him
People like MODOK can hike up prices because buyers like HYDRA can't really buy from anyone else
any other questions?
| 34 |
How do the scientists studying Kepler data for signs of planet transits determine they're not seeing sun (star) spots?
|
With the announcement of a bunch of new planets discovered in the kepler data, multiple articles have included a statement indicating the biggest problem they have is distinguishing planet transits from an eclipsing binary star. In looking around for some information on Betelgeuse recently found a paper describing how scientists have imaged really big "sun spots" on Betelgeuse. Since stars rotate, such spots would traverse across the surface of the planet. Spots on the sun also appear, disappear, and reappear over multiple rotations. Timing of such appearances could approximate the periodicity of a planetary transits. How is this possibility eliminated from Kepler analyses?
| 105 |
Kepler scientist here - a starspot can sometimes trigger the very first step of planet detection by the computer, for the reasons you listed that it is a semi-periodic drop in brightness. However, there are many steps in verifying a planet, and it will easily get thrown out in even the first step. A starspot on a star that rotates every 30 days would show a 15-day dip and then nothing for 15 days. A planet at a 30 day period would show a dip of just a few hours. So, they are easily distinguishable by eye.
tl;dr the measured transit durations are way different.
| 56 |
If you mix drops of blood from two people, could you tell with just the naked eye if their blood types match?
|
So I guess my real question is, could you see the blood agglutinate (clump) without a microscope?
| 40 |
Yes you can. The blood will clot at a macroscopic level (aka visible to the naked eye). For example if you mix type A and type O blood, the anti-A antibodies in blood sample 'O' will react with A antigen from sample 'A' and the mixture will clot. Obviously this will only happen if the two blood types don't match. Before transfusing we do a ABO and Rh blood typing using hemagglutinin tests (add patient blood to a card with antigen or antibody on it). We also do a crossmatch, which is when we directly mix the patients blood with the donor blood to make sure they actually match.
| 39 |
ELI5:Why does our body try to cool itself down when we have fever, even though the body heated itself up on purpose
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As I understand fever is a response of our body to a sickness. Our body heats up to make the disease in our body weaker, but when we get hot we start sweating which makes us cool down.
Why do we have these 2 completely opposite reactions in our body?
| 3,737 |
Your body has a internal thermostat, called the hypothalamus. This thermostat can be adjusted. Sweating occurs when your body temperature is above thermostat level to cool your body down. When you have a fever your thermostat is set higher than normal. This is why you can feel cold even though you have a fever, because even though your body temperature is higher than normal it is still below thermostat level. When your fever breaks and the thermostat goes back to normal level, you will start sweating as the body temperature is now above thermostat level.
| 3,175 |
How can a feather keep it's color for so long, when other parts of many biological things tend to fade after they are no longer alive or part of said thing?
| 17 |
Many feathers' colors come from their structure, rather than the more common route of molecules like melanin. These molecules break down, like when chlorophyll disappears from leaves in autumn. The microscopic ridges that structurally select for reflected light of a certain range of wavelengths may be more resilient. Apparently Lexus spent 15 years developing a paint that uses the same method, called Structural Blue, that shouldn't fade in the sun.
| 24 |
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Online degrees!!
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I have a bachelors degree in computer science and now working full time. I want to focus my masters studies in data science and ai but no local universities offer these type of degrees. I have looked through the net and found a few universities like the university of Liverpool offering a degree in this area online. Im wondering is an online degree worth it? Is it frowned apon when applying for jobs in this area if my degree is through online means? Please help
| 16 |
Online degrees are mostly frowned on upon, because the universities that provided them were mostly low-quality and for-profit. A public research university like Liverpool is going to have it's online degrees meeting the same criteria as it's in-person so the stigma isn't really going to present.
There are certain fields were physical presence and access to advanced tools is important, like the physical sciences, {biology, chemistry, physics} etc. CS is not one of them.
| 16 |
ELI5: Why does it seem like every FM radio station goes on commercial at the same time?
| 25 |
Monopolies. Clearchannel (or iHeart, or whatever it's called now) owns thousands of stations and dominates the audience share in almost every major market. In some cities, literally every station on the air is owned by Clearchannel. They benefit by synching commercial times so that you can't just change the station to get away from the commercial.
| 23 |
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[The Purge] How are rules enforced?
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As you know, all class 4 weapons are illegal. This includes biochemical weaponry, explosives, etc. But since the police and army are holed up inside bases during the Purge, what's stopping purgers from using explosives and RPGs? How does the government enforce this rule?
Also, the Purge offically ends at 7 AM. But will people automatically just stop? What if someone shoots another dude at 7:01? The authorities probably aren't even mobilized by then.
Just thought if something else: Since all emergency services are shut off for 12 hours, what happens if a fire breaks out? Whether it starts off as an accident in a kitchen or if arsonists target buildings. Who will prevent the fire from engulfing entire neighborhoods or the city?
| 15 |
> what's stopping purgers from using explosives and RPGs? How does the government enforce this rule?
works exactly like now. If you use this kind of stuff, you get in trouble the next day when someone finds out. Sure, if you used cleverly and killed all the witnesses you might get away with it, but that would be true on a non-purge day, too.
> But will people automatically just stop? What if someone shoots another dude at 7:01?
People won't automatically stop, but knowing that you could get in trouble after that time is probably a pretty good self deterrent. Just because the cops aren't there to save the victim's life at 7:01 doesn't mean they won't arrest you at 10:01.
> Who will prevent the fire from engulfing entire neighborhoods or the city?
Nobody. That's the risk.
Although, presumably people will have their own private options to deal with this if the fire gets large enough.
| 22 |
Some species produce defensive adaptations that make them look similar to other more dangerous species. Are there any species that have evolved traits reminiscent of humans?
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Probably a stupid question, and I really didn't word it too well, so here's what I'm getting at: The [milk snake](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_snake) evolved to look similar to the much more dangerous [coral snake](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coral_snake). Are there any examples of species evolving traits that resemble humans to some degree?
| 60 |
Generally, these defensive adaptations are because the mean predator and the mimicker are similar animals: flies -> wasp, bird -> hawk, or snake -> venomous snake. They also need to live in the same habitat.
There are few species that share the similar body characteristics than us. Furthermore, the only reason humans are "scary" is because we lived in packs. A human alone by itself is rather weak when compared to whatever else lurks in the savannah. So mimicking a human isn't really a good idea.
| 23 |
CMV: I think that the pronouns he/him, she/her, and they/them are enough.
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Before I start, I just want to say that I know/support people that come out as LGBTQ+, and I understand people who come out as trans, and assume a different gender, and what they are going through. However, when people start using different pronouns, such as zie, sie, or ey, it always got me thinking. When I learned about them, pronouns were always meant for simplicity, or to take the place of a name. It is purposefully a broad and general word, and its meaning up to its context. Therefore, he/him, she/her, and they/them seem adequate enough for me, which I feel in my opinion is a bigoted point of view. Aren't pronouns meant for simplicity? Please change my view.
Edit: when I said pronouns, I mean gender pronouns, rather then pronouns as a whole.
| 91 |
I predict in a few years, using "one" would catch on in popularity (largely because it already has a formal and historical use, and it will make the "one simply does not walk into mordor" meme funnier), so that's at least one more pronoun.
| 13 |
Married and Divorced individuals, can you CMV of this article about marriage that has been widely shared through social media?
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As the title states, I see a lot of people sharing this article through various social media outlets. I personally feel a lot of this has to do with the "hive mind" and sugar coats things. To me this article says, "disregard your own feelings and concentrate only on your SO." Aren't you responsible for your own happiness? Isn't your SO just supposed to compliment your own happiness (and vice versa)?
In short, I think this article ignores a lot of different variables that it takes to make a marriage work. I feel YOU have to be happy in the first place in order to make someone else happy. Just making someone smile and their life great can come at a sacrifice of your own happiness if you aren't careful.
Article: http://sethadamsmith.com/2013/11/02/marriage-isnt-for-you/
| 23 |
I think there is a third option, which is focus on the team. Often when people say to only focus on the other person, this is really what they mean.
Say there are 2 extremes - one will help you out but disadvantage your partner in some way, one will help your partner out, but disadvantage you in some way. Focusing on yourself 100% hurts your partner, and disadvantages the team as a whole. Focusing on your partner 100% hurts you, and disadvantages the team as a whole. The real option is to find a compromise that maybe doesn't help either of you out as much as the extremes would, but also doesn't hurt either one of you.
When you go further with the team analogy, helping you is making your stats the best. Helping your partner is making their stats the best. Helping the team is doing what it takes to win the game, and not focusing on stats at all.
| 10 |
ELI5: Why do animals intrinsically know to protect their eyes or cranium?
| 15 |
Presumably, animals that don't instinctively protect their faces are more likely to die (or be blinded, which is basically a death sentence in nature) before they're able to reproduce and pass their genes on.
| 12 |
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ELI5: Room Temperature Superconductors
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I was reading Michio Kaku's physics of the future book, where he mentions room temperature super conductors... I'm confused on how this would work because I thought superconductors only happen at around 0k.
| 127 |
A room temperature superconductor is sort of a holy grail of physics/engineering/science/etc.
If one were to be discovered, it would be a huge deal, because it would allow us to work with electricity much more efficiently and easily in many situations.
So far, nobody's found one, but the search is on-going. It would be a huge deal if one was discovered. Scientists have found superconductors that work at temperatures significantly higher than absolute zero, but still much colder than room temperature.
| 39 |
[Harry Potter]What happens if I eat unicorn meat?
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I didn't kill the unicorn, and it was served to me as a steak. Had no idea of what it was until after.
| 17 |
Unicorn meat is safe. The only magical property there is the blood. If you sear the meat that's all gone. Even medium well, that red juice is all protein really. If you ate it raw and had some of the blood. Your life should be shit almost instantly.
| 19 |
Found a gif on front page - Why does tape make fogged glass clear? (gif inside)
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http://i.imgur.com/5H21yiS.gif
| 70 |
Frosted glass scatters light because the surface is rough, so you get diffuse scattering, where light coming through the glass is redirected to random directions. The result is a blurry image.
Tape can fill in these surface imperfections and provide a smooth interface for light to pass through.
| 66 |
How were archeological and paleontological artifacts dated before the "radio-carbon revolution"?
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What methods did scientists use to estimate the age of artifacts before the advent of radio-carbon dating methods? I've read that radio-carbon dating led to a "revolution" in archeology, paleontology, and anthropology (probably geology as well, right?), but I'm totally ignorant about what methods were used before carbon dating, and if any of those methods are still in use today. Thank you!
| 34 |
A lot of dating came from and still comes from stratification methods.
Essentially, the deeper something is, the older it is. As you dig down you can usually see layers of dirt. Each layer corresponds to a different time frame, thicker layers usually mean longer periods of time. Edit: Though this isn't always true. A landslide could deposit a lot of dirt in a short time.
For example, when the asteroid that hit earth leading to the deaths of dinosaurs occurred it sent up a lot of dust/dirt into the atmosphere. Over the course of a few decades, that dust fell back down, coating the entire earth with a thin layer of black dust (laced with asteroid elements!).
With archaeology it's about the same thing. Maybe in the top layer the scientist finds a roman coin that has a date on it. So they know that particular layer of dirt is at least X years old. The next layer they find a pot that references an emperor a that was born 700 years before the coin's date. Now they know the pot is older than the coin (because it was deeper), but younger than the emperor that was referenced.
The next layer they may find a bronze tool. They know that the bronze tool is older than the pot because it's deeper. If the coin is 500 years old, the pot is at least 500 years old, but no more than 700 years old, the tool then is probably older than 700 years.
Done enough times over a wide enough area the researchers can get a pretty good idea of relative ages of things. Eventually, with enough data points, they would be able to say, "The coin is exactly 500 years old because it has a date, the pots were made until the death of the emperor they depict, so it's between 700 and 670 years old, and the bronze tools have been found at settlements that date back to 800 years ago, so the tool is between 700 to 800 years old."
They still do this often for geology and archaeology too.
| 16 |
What's the point of imaginary numbers?
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I understand on a basic level how they work, but why bother having them in the first place?
| 53 |
First, I'd like to make a point about the rather bothersome terminology: Imaginary or complex numbers are no less "real" or more abstract than any other naming system.
One way to think of how we develop number systems is based on solving equations. Counting numbers (0, 1, 2, 3, ...) are great and fundamental, but you could never solve an equation such as
x + 5 = 0
using just counting numbers. That's why we have to add negatives (..., -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, ...) to get the integers.
But with the integers, we still can't solve simple linear equations such as 2x - 1 = 0. This is why we have to add in fractions, getting the rational numbers - now it's possible to solve any linear equation.
But what about more advanced things, such as quadratics? You can prove that there's no solution to
x^(2) - 2 = 0
using just rational numbers - that is, the square root of 2 is not rational. This is why we need something bigger; somewhere that we can solve this equation is in the real number system. This contains everything that we'd normally refer to as a "number" without qualifications - things such as 0, 1, pi, sqrt(2), -5, and so on.
But we still can't solve everything - x^(2) + 1 = 0 has no solutions in the real numbers, since the left side is always at least 1. This is why we attach a symbol called i such that i^(2) = -1, and define complex numbers to be numbers of the form
a + bi
with a, b real numbers. Then we can make up definitions for multiplication, addition, division, etc. that are consistent with their usual usages for real numbers. The nice thing is that now the set of complex numbers has a property called "algebraically closed." This means that *any* polynomial with complex coefficients has a root which is a complex number; that is, we can solve for zero given any polynomial.
Some other nice properties that people have mentioned are Euler's identity, which says
e^(ix) = cos(x) + i sin(x)
This allows us to simplify some computations, as well as get some intuition on what multiplication means in the complex plane. More importantly, this gives us some powerful techniques regarding solving differential equations and representing physical systems in terms of such equations.
There are also problems that become easier when stated in terms of complex numbers, instead of real numbers. Computing real integrals can become easy when using an appropriate contour integral in the complex plane - this is a result of the fact that the differentiability of complex functions implies some *very* strong properties (much stronger than the corresponding facts for real differentiable functions).
Hopefully this makes a reasonable amount of sense and gives you some idea of why these are useful.
| 67 |
ELI5: When they say the stock market lost 20 Billion dollars in a day, where does that money go?
| 59 |
If someone determines that Jon Voigt did not previously own your car, so that it is only worth $2000 instead of the $10,000 you thought, then you haven't actually lost $8000, and that $8000 hasn't gone anywhere. It's just that the opinion of the public as to the worth of your asset is now less.
This is exactly how the sharemarket works.
| 114 |
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ELI5: How do spiders not get stuck in their own webs?
| 34 |
They are very much at risk of getting stuck in their own webs. They, however, take note of where they place the sticky strings (as some of the strings are not sticky) and only walk on the non sticky ones. Only the web builder knows the path of unsticking walkage.
| 23 |
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Is there a philosophical justification for suicide?
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I know there are many philosophers who renounce suicide, such as Kant who argues that we have a perfect duty towards ourselves. But are there any philosophies where suicide can be justified in any way?
| 17 |
Utilitarianism means suicide can be okay in some cases, the same for euthanasia. Utilitarianism is about maximizing happiness, so there isn't a concept of "innate humanity dignity" that ought not to be violated or anything like that.
| 18 |
Why do cows have four stomachs and what does each stomach do?
| 22 |
4 digestive departments of a cow's stomach region:
1. The Rumen – this is the largest part and holds upto 50 gallons of partially digested food. This is where the ‘cud’ comes from. Good bacteria in the Rumen helps soften and digest the cows food and provides protein for the cow.
2. The Recticulum – this part of the stomach is called the ‘hardware’ stomach. This is because if the cow eats something it should not have like a peice of fencing, it lodges here in the Recticulum. However, the contractions of the reticulum can force the object into the peritoneal cavity where it initiates inflammation. Nails and screws can even peroferate the heart. The grass that has been eaten is also softened further in this stomach section and is formed into small wads of cud. Each cud returns to the cows mouth and is chewed 40 – 60 times and then swallowed properly.
3. The Omasum – this part of the stomach is a ‘filter’. It filters through all the food the cow eats. The cud is also pressed and broken down further.
4. The Abomasum – this part of the stomach is like a humans stomach and is connected to the intestines. Here, the food is finally digested by the cows stomach juices and essential nutrients that the cow needs are passed through the bloodstream. The rest is passed through to the intestines and produces a ‘cow pat’.
Animalcorner.co.uk
| 11 |
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Can we repair damaged brain parts/tissues? Other organs have proved to be successful but how about the ever-complicated brain?
| 76 |
Other organs are simple. The heart is just a pump. Kidneys are just filters. The liver's a chemical factory (and the most regenerative internal organ in human beings). Lungs and kidneys are basically bags. They're not all that physically complicated and we manufacture things like them every day so we intimately understand how to make them and how they work. The brain is spatially and temporally complex. Temporally because of how it develops. Most of the connections and architecture are put in place in the first two years of development. After that the organ undergoes a massive reorganization whereby it losses a lot of neuronal connections. This can be thought of as an adaptive optimization phase (the organ builds lots of connections, evaluates which ones are most optimal and prunes the rest for efficiency). A bolt on addition to the mature human brain wouldn't be able to take advantage of this phase. Mature human brains have some limited plasticity, but it would probably be difficult to overcome this. Second, the spatial complexity. The brain has more neuronal connections than there are grains of sand on earth. It's not like we could wire in a replacement because of the scale of the problem (there are too many connections and they are too small for us to mechanically make). Those connections aren't just necessary for function, they're actually how the brain encodes data. So if you force the connections, you may alter the person or their memory. So the best case scenario is that you drop in a replacement and hope that useful connections get made. Finally, the brain is the most protected location in the human body. It sits behind the blood-brain barrier (think about it as the most exclusive night club in town, with the best bouncers). That means even getting things into the brain cavity (drugs, cells, etc.) is really difficult.
So basically repairing the brain requires rewiring the most complicated computer we've ever seen, and that we don't fully understand, on a scale we cannot work, blindfolded.
| 38 |
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Why is ω+1 not the same as 1+ω?
| 74 |
These are ordered things. Moreover, we don't care about the labels in them, so we can rewrite the labels as long as we keep the order preserved. Now, ω is 0<1<2<3<4<... So
* 1+ω = 1+ (0<1<2<...) = \* <0<1<2<3<... = 0<1<2<3<4<... = ω
where \* is just "something", and the last equals is just relabeling things. More notably, the order 1+ω does *not* have a maximum element. On the other hand,
* ω+1 = (0<1<2<3<...)+1 = 0<1<2<3<... < \*
Note that \* is larger than everything else, so we can't relabel these to get ω because ω+1 has a maximal element \*. So ω+1 and 1+ω are different.
| 44 |
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[Harry Potter] Obscurials and Harry?
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If the Dursleys had succeeded in keeping Harry Potter from Hogwarts and continued treating him as they did, would he have developed an Obscurus?
| 40 |
No. Becoming an Obscurial requires the self hatred to be centered around magic. Harry never knew why the Dursleys were treating him like shit. It would also require him to hate himself over it and try to suppress his own power.
| 24 |
ELI5: What is lacking from modern CGI that allows humans to still distinguish it from real objects on film?
| 43 |
You only notice it on people because you have tens of millennia of refinement in your brain to spot the subtlest differences in people to find something that isn't quite right and could signify danger. Subtle things from not moving quite right for the body they have, to slight shine off the face, to hair not falling quite right can throw up a flag in your head that indicates something isn't quite right here.
You don't see 99.99% of digital effects in movies. Cars, planes, buildings, and really anything artificial can be added in by a computer without you noticing. Cars in particular are easy because they're always shiny so a slightly too shiny CGI model just looks freshly waxed. Buildings are also reliable because they're not moving and the lighting never changes.
Basically no one is blowing anything up these days, its too easy and cheap to just add it in post. You don't notice CGI these days, you think its practical effects which is the biggest compliment you can give it.
| 49 |
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Can someone explain how an Exit Poll can work when there is so much mail-in and early voting?
| 16 |
There are other polls that give us an estimate of how many early votes have been cast for each candidate. Pollsters add those numbers to the estimated on-the-day vote from exit polls to produce a prediction of the total vote.
| 16 |
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ELI5: In the movies when someone asks for a secure line, what exactly does that mean, and how do you do it?
| 383 |
You have a conversation over the phone between two people in different places. The sound signals between these people is transmitted over the telecommunication network. It's possible for someone else to be connected to that network and listen to the conversation these two people have.
A secure line is a protection against that. It is done with encryption: the source phone will encode the sound signal so that it looks like gibberish, and the destination phone has the necessary key to decode the gibberish back into the original signal. Anyone else intercepting the signal would only have the gibberish, but without the key they can't convert it back to sound.
| 250 |
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[Monster Hunter Universe] How do normal people manage to get anything done without getting ripped to shreds by one of the many monsters roaming around?
| 31 |
"Normal humans" of the Monster Hunter world are extremely durable and strong, and even the non-hunters are still able to fish for things like Great White sharks easily (assuming that they are fisherman of course). The entire world is tougher, so of course the people are going to be as well! And the ones who aren't that strong live far away from the monsters, such as in cities and towns.
Secondly, most of the monsters that we see are not human hunters on their own. Most humans live in tightly knit groups, like the village or city. Most monsters try to avoid these areas, they are not able to take on such a large group of "prey" and the territory is totally unfamiliar. There is easier prey out there most of the time. And when one decides that humans ARE on the menu...
That is where the hunters come in. Not only are the monster hunters tasked with capturing monsters for study, but they are also commissioned with defending their base of operations from heavy duty monsters that have gotten a bit too comfortable with their human neighbors. The ones that cause a disruption or damage the human way of life are quickly disposed of. And really, the large monsters are not TOO common. It just seems that way because your job is to seek them out.
| 40 |
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ELI5 the difference between an illness and a disease.
| 21 |
An illness is when you feel bad. You have pain, soreness, dizziness, you might feel tired, etc. You are not sure why you fell bad, you just do. Basically, illnesses are feelings, a list of complaints.
A disease is when there is something actually wrong with you physically or mentally, whether you feel it or not. Things like cancer, diabetes, and depression are diseases.
In many cases, illness is caused by the disease. For example, diabetes (disease) can make you feel weak and disorientated (illnesses). Sometimes, a disease might not cause any illnesses. A person with cancer may not feel a thing for a long time. Also, sometimes illnesses occur without a disease. You might have a headache, but there nothing serious that is causing it, just stress.
| 11 |
|
If airfoil-style wings function unidirectionally, how can airplanes fly upside down (and sideways)?
| 58 |
While some lift can be generated purely by the shape of the airfoil, the primary factor in determining lift is angle of attack.
You simulate AOA when you stick your hand out the window of a car and "fly" it up and down while listening to some tunskies. More angle, more lift.
For what it's worth; the airfoil's primary purpose is to reduce drag. A very basic understanding would be that wing area, airspeed, and angle of attack determine lift, while the airfoil design determines how efficiently that lift is produced.
Different airfoils are designed for different things. For example, an airliner will have an airfoil which is most efficient at low AOA and mach .84-ish, because they spend most of their time flying straight and level at mach .84-ish. An ultralight, on the other hand, might fly best at 20mph and a relatively high AOA. A dogfighter might have a wing which is designed primarily to allow extremely high AOA upside down at the expense of efficiency.
Incidentally, the speed at which the wing is most efficient for straight-and-level flight is one of the important things to know about an aircraft. It's called Vc (V cruise) and/or Vbe (V best endurance), and is listed in the data about an airplane along with others like minimum stall speed and do-not-exceed speed.
EDIT: to your question, a plane with an asymmetric airfoil will fly upside down, but will require more power to do so. Some aerobatic planes have symmetric airfoils and fly the same upside down as they do right side up. However, such planes would not make good long-distance tourers because they will require more power and fuel for a given trip.
EDIT again: also, there are other considerations besides aerodynamics which factor into upside-down (negative G) maneuvers. Things like wing stresses. For example, a wire braced wing might just fold in half if you try to load it significantly upside down.
| 53 |
|
[The Force Awakens] Do Stormtroopers get the day off after Kylo Ren wrecks their workstation?
|
When you report in early in the morning and you find out your boss stubbed his toe and lightsabered your computer in half in a fit of infantile rage, do you get the day off or is it one of those things where they're like "We're paying you for 16 hours, we're getting 16 hours of work out of you." and make you fold laundry?
| 334 |
It seems that Stormtroopers in the First Order have multiple duties depending on what slots need to be filled (Finn, for instance, did both Sanitation and combat training missions), so most likely you'd be temporarily reassigned to wherever you were needed.
| 227 |
ELI5: Why do like 15 popcorn kernels not pop while the rest do?
|
There’s gotta be a way…
| 7,466 |
For a popcorn kernel to pop it needs to A) be undamaged and B) have between 13-14.5 % moisture content.
Statistics being what they are some kernels just don't fall in this range after being processed so you get a few duds.
| 7,606 |
Is wireless electricity possible?
| 41 |
Possible? yes. We've known that for what, a hundred years?
Practical/efficient? No, because the energy source has to expand in a sphere to transmit the energy, causing most of the transmitted power to be wasted.
| 38 |
|
Cmv: Star Citizen is a going to be a massive disappointment.
|
I got into the star Citizen announcement way back in 2012, back when it was a fresh new ip with a single solid vision - open world space combat sim.
Then over the years the feature creep started. Initially, it was good ideas and cool additions that made sense, but over time you saw the game become a massive unwieldy mess.
Over the years they've added
* A full single player campaign in a connected open world
* Changed engines midway through development
* Added a full cast with a Hollywood cast list for no discernible reason
* Promised complex missions across a variety of worlds with branching quests that can vary.
* Multiple explorable worlds with varied ecosystems and flora/fauna.
* A vast number of ships and vessels to purchase
* A full fps system in game with multiplayer..
Honestly. They're trying to build an 'everything' game. But it will all feel undercooked. And they're targeting the high tier pc gamer with their game, which is a tiny market compared to consoles.
I think that this game looks like its going to come out with everything feeling unfinished and incomplete, if not just unfun.
But I admit I'm not a die hard fan, just someone following the noise.
| 32 |
I don't feel that this can be a disappointment as great as No Man's Sky, because the folks making Star Citizen are releasing regular updates that are already disappointing and hype-deflating for many fans.
To produce massive disappointment, there must first be massive hype. Other big letdowns produced this hype by being *silent* about their failures. The devs for Star Citizen are making it clear that they are, in painful slow motion, failing to deliver.
When Star Citizen releases, its failures will not be a surprise. Everyone will already know how at-best-meh the game is.
And if everyone has already been disappointed by the game's process of development, how can they be massively disappointed by the game's release?
| 14 |
[State Farm] What would happen if two or more people with the same State Farm agent did the jingle at the same time?
|
Alternatively, what if someone did the jingle while their agent was busy with someone else. Would they just teleport away while their busy helping them? If so, that would seem like a serious issue if you need immediate assistance.
| 196 |
You think State Farm is merely flesh? Do you think State Farm resides in rude matter, confined to forms flailing around the physical universe?
No, State Farm is thought. State Farm is in the threads of the cosmos. State Farm has faces the way you have usernames. What is it to State Farm to show the same face to two people? To three?
It is nothing. State Farm is capable of far greater things. State Farm is constrained only by the cursed Dennis Haysbert.
Curse you, Dennis Haysbert.
| 109 |
ELI5: Can egg-laying animals (everything from insects to reptiles, etc.) have miscarriages? If so, what would that even mean, and how did we ever find out about it?
| 23 |
Yes. These are when the egg is fertilized but fails to hatch. You find out about it when you find an egg that has a partially developed embryo in it. That would have been something common when everyone raised chickens.
| 12 |
|
CMV: Modern hip hop takes less talent to be successful than 10+ years ago
|
I am trying hard not to be a grumpy old man (still just in my 30s). I want to respect the fact that my parents told me the same stuff when they heard my music blasting out of my bedroom. Their parents with them as well.
Every generation seems to question new music. But as a hip hop fan of the 90s, I can't understand how the stuff I've heard in recent years is at the same talent level (with some exceptions of course). Things like autotune is a good example that spans all genres. Mumble rap I learned about recently and had to confirm it was a real thing and not a joke...
Edit: word
Edit: if I were to change "talent" to "musical talent" would answers be the same? Seeing a lot of good points where marketing talent is huge. I'm just looking for pure musical talent comparisons.
| 2,256 |
Old hip-hop required that you have fucking bars to spit. Yeah? Yeah.
New hip hop honestly doesn't. But it does require that you have marketing skills. It requires you either have beat selection or production skills greater than ever. It requires you hone in on specific listening bases OR the general hip-hop community and pander using flows, rhetoric, or slang that appeals to your target audience. It requires that you have heavy brand appeal, and often a sense of fashion. It often requires that you can sing for a hook or even a full verse, something previously left to R&B features.
There's a lot wrong with modern hip hop, and it's a combination of popularization and the online era. It's less focus on bars for sure. However, there's a TON of talents necessary to do it. They just might be talents that grumpy guys like us don't respect when it comes to hip hop. But the biggest thing is that it's the biggest genre now. More music means more crap, as does more fans. But there's also probably more great rap than ever. But good music isn't what hits the radio and top 40 99% of the time for ANY genre.
| 1,070 |
ELI5: Why are there gusts of wind? Why don’t they just disperse and even out? Where do big pressure changes COME from???
|
Maybe you can ELI7 because I’ve taken three college level physics courses but I just don’t get this: where do temperature and pressure changes come from that are so powerful we get 50mph+ gusts? Why don’t those differences just disperse outward and equalize from wherever they’re generated? How can I be standing on one side of my yard and a gust of wind be displacing the trees 30ft away???
| 26 |
They do equalize outward from where they are generated. They get generated in areas with stark temperature differences, typically lakes or mountains, or as a result of weather (like rain). Water’s high heat capacity means it doesn’t change temperature as quickly as land, so air passing over it gets heated (or cooled) depending on solar intensity and time of day (a lake will stay warm at night but the ground wont).
So these systems are created over large bodies of water typically, radiate outward, but given the size of them “outward” tends to be well across the nearest landmass, while the other radial side goes out to sea and dissipates over a distance. And if not much is there to bump into it then the wavefront doesn’t really get stopped by much.
| 13 |
I've heard all about the positives of thorium nuclear energy, but does anyone actually know why we aren't pursuing it?
|
Theoretically, thorium molten salt reactors could create abundant energy, but does anyone know why the U.S. is not pursuing the technology other than policy and regulatory reasons? What are the technical downfalls?
| 20 |
Thorium reactor technology was abandoned during the Cold War, as they do not produce material for nuclear weapons production nearly as well as uranium reactors do.
So now we have 50 years of proven uranium based nuclear energy technology, vs. thorium still on the drawing board. It looks very promising, and *might* be better, but we don't know.
Also, hysteria and lack of science education has made if very difficult to develop *any* new nuclear power technologies. We can't even expand the use of existing ones.
| 18 |
[Marvel] Does Norman Osborn have Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)? He's always described as having been "driven insane" by the Goblin formula with the Goblin persona itself often described as being "a second personality" but what does that actually mean, psychologically / clinically speaking?
|
Please keep in mind that having DID or being neurodivergent* in some other way does not mean that someone is a bad person. Norman Osborn is (in my opinion) a bad person because he's killed multiple people and uses his wealth and technology to ruin lives, not because he's (probably) neurodivergent.
*The word "insane" is a vague enough descriptor with enough negative connotations to be more or less useless when it comes to talking about what's actually going on 'upstairs' for someone
| 20 |
It depends.
This is explicitly the case in the Raimiverse, with Norman blacking out and unable to remember his acts as the Goblin. In the mainline comics, however, Norman’s already a borderline sociopath and the serum kicks his homicidal and obsessive tendencies into overdrive.
| 27 |
ELI5: Why do guitar brands like Fender and Gibson release models and guitars that stick so strictly to a specific look?
|
I am sure people enjoy the feel and classic look of a strat, but they literally all look so similar.
Wouldn't they want to release newer, more modern body shapes and use more innovative ieeas?
| 19 |
If you can make and sell the same design of something over and over, there's no incentive to innovate. People like and want the classic guitar shape - familiarity, ease of playing and carrying, fitting into standard guitar cases, the look, etc
| 14 |
ELI5: why do some movies get completed and then not released for sometimes several years?
| 28 |
Depends. There are *tons* of factors that could make that happen. Unfortunate timing of world events, publisher release schedules change, lawsuits, or any number of other scenarios that could cause the movie to perform poorly if released at the time initially planned.
| 18 |
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CMV: A conspiracy theory is not necessarily false.
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Many definitions of conspiracy theory include that the conspiracy is false. Most are derided as false, but I believe some of them (at least portions of them) could theoretically be true.
1. **The Broken Clock:** Conspiracy theories are speculative in nature. Often they make logical leaps without evidence. There is nothing to suggest that these leaps are categorically false. One could accidentally come to the conclusion that is true but using incorrect logic, similar to how someone could mess up the math but, by happenstance, get the correct answer.
2. **Division of Conspiracy Theories:** Conspiracy theories are often grandiose, but they don’t need to be. We could divide these theories into multiple parts, and each “part” is in itself a conspiracy theory. While “the CIA is engaged in mind control” is a conspiracy theory, one of the parts of this theory is MKULTRA, which, before it was revealed as a real experiment, was a conspiracy theory limited to the lunatic fringe. The mistake in the logic is that when one of the smaller units is shown to be true, the theorists use this as “evidence” that the entire theory is true. Yes, MKULTRA was real, but the results were not close to mind control as described in the more grandiose theories.
3. **The Smallest Conspiracy Theory**: Based on the logic of (2), there must be some smallest unit that we could conceivably call a conspiracy theory. I would say that the smallest possible conspiracy theory is one person covering up a crime or some other truth they don’t want the general public to know.
4. **The Insufferable Pedant Corner:** A conspiracy theory is a theory about a conspiracy. “Conspiracy” is a legal term about the planning of a crime. You could parse the phrase to mean a theory about a plan to commit any sort of crime. Theranos engaged in a conspiracy to defraud investors, and the ones who claimed they were defrauding investors with little to no evidence were engaged in conspiracy theories. When the evidence was revealed, it was no longer a theory, and became a criminal case. Even then, because the law in the US specifies that defendants are innocent until proven guilty, you can make a case that a conspiracy theory isn’t true until proven beyond a reasonable doubt in court. But because court cases often end in mistrials or found not guilty by some technicality, there must be some conspiracy theories which happened, but were not ruled as such for one reason or another.
While most conspiracy theories are false, the ones most likely to be true would have a narrow scope and impact compared to the “standard” explanation. “United 93 was shot down” is more believable than “9/11 was an inside job” because the former requires fewer elements to have been fabricated.
| 41 |
Could you define how exactly to change your view?
There have been proven conspiracy theories in the past. Therefore, your statement is not so much a *view* as it is a fact. This post is analogous to saying "CMV: A house doesn't have to be built with bricks"
| 63 |
Why does radioactive dating not date things to when they were created inside a star?
|
How can we tell when a sedimentary layer, fossil, etc was created, when that substance's nuclei have been decaying since it was created via fusion before the Earth came about? Does the substance get reset so to speak, when it is melted? I would intuitively guess not, as heating substances a few thousand degrees celsius wouldn't have an affect on the nuclei.
| 16 |
For carbon dating of biological samples, we use the fact that carbon-14, which is unstable, is continuously formed in the atmosphere due to interactions between cosmic rays and (iirc) nitrogen. Therefore, living things which are cycling carbon through their bodies will have a certain ratio of carbon-14 and carbon-12. Once these things die, they are no longer cycling their carbon, and the carbon-14 gradually decays and changes the ratio. By looking at the ratio of carbons, it is possible to figure out how long ago something stopped cycling its carbon.
| 14 |
[Superman] How exactly does Superman's x-ray vision work?
|
I hear Superman has x-ray vision (as if he didn't have enough powers am I right?) but how exactly does this work? Is he hitting me with radiation if I get x-rayed by him? Furthermore I even heard that he is able to actually see as if he was in the room while using his "x-ray vision" rather than the "seeing bones" scenario one would expect...
Are there any theories on how he does this? I don't like the idea of him being able to see through my clothes even if he is protecting us...
| 27 |
We humans are already able to build machines that can read all manner of different types of energy and convert them into visual aids, for example thermal imaging, electromagnetic spectrum and so on. If used in the right manner these allow us to look through seemingly solid matter. It seems incredible, but it's just making good use of physics. Superman merely (merely, hah!) has this ability on a biological level, greatly refined.
| 21 |
CMV: A second EU referendum for the UK is objectively more democratic
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People who think we should have a second EU referendum are often accused of not accepting the will of the people, being "remoaners" and being "anti-democracy". I'm going to explain why I think that is not true and why I also think it isn't even subjective to say that having a second referendum is more democratic than not.
The starting point for my argument is that a more informed electorate will make decisions that better reflect their views, therefore the better informed an electorate the more democratic the vote. In the 2016 referendum it was clear that voting to remain in the EU meant keeping the same deal that was currently in place(with Cameron's minor negotiated changes). However, leaving the EU could have meant, and could still mean, a wide-range of outcomes. Would we remain in the customs union and single market? Would free movement of labour remain in place? ?Would we still pay fees towards the EU? These are all still unanswered questions. I think many people will have voted on the issues that mattered to them: immigration, powers over regulations and free trade being key issues for different sides.
This is analogous to people being asked to vote on whether or not we should have a cut in the marginal tax rate as pointed out by others before me. However, if the electorate voted for a 25% cut in their taxes, but were later startled by the fact that there was a 25% cut in funding for the NHS, schools and infrastructure that they were unaware would occur and no longer found this tax cut worthwhile, you cannot argue that this more democratic than if they had voted fully aware of these and had rejected the tax cut. Likewise, if it turns out the unexpected consequences of the exit deal struck between the EU and the UK is unpopular among voters, then it is undoubtedly unfair to impose this upon the population and claim it is the will of the people. Therefore, it is undoubtedly more democratic to have a second referendum than to not, once people are aware of what the terms of leaving the EU are. This should be encouraged equally by both leavers and remainers.
Sorry, this is quite UK-centric. But change my view!
(Edit: If you think I'm being stubborn please tell me, I am trying to keep an open mind, just yet to be convinced by any points raised)
EDIT 2: There's been similar arguments coming up so I'm going to do a quick response.
1. Is what I see as Reductio ad absurdum: It would be more democratic to have a 3rd, 4th, 5th...when does it end? This is beside the point that the second is more democratic, crucially because the choice that was preferred in the first was such an uncertain choice, whereas the second would be between two certain choices. A 3rd ref. is a very different debate and would be under different circumstances as it would be a vote to rejoin, and is less justifiable in the near-future. Also it definitely is uncertain since we still don't know what the terms will be for trade, free movement of capital, human rights, immigration etc.
Edit 3: Message me if you have had your opinion changed, this thread will die soon and I'm still as of yet to have seen a valid point that holds enough weight to it. This is a minority opinion and I want to see it truly tested.
____
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| 32 |
How often or how many times is enough?
Do we vote every day to make sure we still like the deal?
By your argument, why is two votes enough?
At some point, you'd have to just say, that's the will of the people and do it. You can't be changing plans every week.
Would one vote against be enough?
| 15 |
ELI5: When there is a fly in my room and it is continuously flying around in the same pattern, what is it trying to achieve?
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It's annoying but I feel sorry for the little guy. He seems to know no better.
| 188 |
Flies have, by human standards, virtually no brain. They are better understood as being like a tiny machine rather than a tiny thinker. So they are not "trying to achieve" anything, and are unaware of what they are doing.
Flies respond primarily to smells, and secondly to rather basic images. They seek things that smell like food, and seek to avoid getting swatted or eaten.
| 170 |
ELI5: Dimensions: How can there be more than 3 dimensions?
| 154 |
A dimension is simply a variable that is independent of any other variable. In this universe there are only 3 spatial dimensions (I.E. in the x, y, and z directions). However a dimension is not restricted to simply being a spatial one. An example of another one is time, for instance if you wanted to know the temperature at a certain location the answer depends not only on spatial location but time as well. So a universal temperature function would be 4 dimensional, as it is dependent on the x, y, and z location as well as the time the temperature is recorded.
| 61 |
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[Terminator]does the T-1000 have a solid CPU?
|
if "yes" where does it go within his body?
| 20 |
Not the way you're thinking of it; there isn't a single discrete processor that you could see, hold, or remove to incapacitate it.
The T-1000 is compose of millions of nanomachine, each one with its own independent processing power.
When these nanomachines come together, forming the single entity we regard as the T-1000, they create a kind of swarm intelligence; the tasks that would traditionally be carried out by a CPU instead shared by the combined processing power of the nanomachines as a whole.
This is why a smaller chunk of the T-1000 displays some limited intelligence, like the ability to recognize the T-1000 are re-merge with it, but cannot carry out more complicated tasks, like attacking one of its targets.
| 25 |
When space expands, do objects get bigger?
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It seems to me that in an expanding universe, objects would enlarge in tandem with space and so the apparent distance between 2 objects should stay the same over time barring any other movement. Obviously, this can't be the case, otherwise we wouldn't be able to notice the expansion in the first place, but do objects change in size at all? How does the expansion of space affect the size and internal structure of objects?
| 147 |
No. The expansion of space is only a "global" phenomenon - it's something which makes sense to talk about on the largest scales, but it's not present when you're talking about atoms and the solar system and the galaxy and such.
By the way, you'll often read that this is because gravity "overcomes" the expansion or something like that. That's a very common misconception. The expansion isn't some kind of universal force - it's something that's very specific to the description of the Universe on large scales, where all the matter looks like it's spread out uniformly. When you're not talking about those scales, when you're looking at smaller distances where matter is clearly not spread out uniformly, there isn't really a notion of expansion anymore.
| 30 |
Why can hormone therapy make a clitoris grow but can't make a penis grow?
| 12,011 |
A penis and a clitoris come from the same embryological tissue. Testosterone therapy makes a clitoris grow because it begins signaling the body to change the clitoris into a penis. Of course, that change is far more complex than simply "growing" into a penis, but it still causes hyperplasia of the clitoral tissue.
It won't make a penis grow larger because the body has already signaled the growth of a penis; there is no conversion to occur.
We can see the same change in men transitioning to female; estrogen therapy and testosterone blockers will cause a penis to lessen in size.
I hope that helps.
| 8,862 |
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Why don’t we just let major airlines collapse?
|
Hear me out. The airline industry has asked for $50bn in support to avoid bankrupty. Meanwhile these same companies have spend 80-98% of their free cash buying back their own company stock over the last 10 years. American Airlines alone has spent $12.5bn to buy back stocks. This of course is done to reduce overall divident costs and increase the share price.
On top of that, under the new US corporate tax code all of these companies have lowered their tax bills by billions of dollars. The idea of the tax bill was that this money would be used for investment in technology/R&D and go to employees. Again a lot of this money ended up being used to buy back stocks.
Individuals are expected to save up 3-6 months of emergency funds but yet these giant corporations can’t whether any storm. Let them fold and in a free market the void left in supply will be filled by somebody else.
| 268 |
It is cheaper for the government to give them the bankruptcy security than it is to deal with the crippling effects that the unemployment of their employees would cause.
It's important to remember that when we talk about large corporations, we are talking about profit margins of 1-2% per year for the extremely successful ones. Their billions of dollars is not sitting in a vault where dudes in top hats and monocles are bathing in it; ita tied up in assets, investments, and people.
That is to say, the company is one of the tools through which money is distributed into the economy, and this tool works as a value multiplier. Losing a 50bn chunk of the economy by allowing the companies to collapse would possibly 500bn or more in damage to the public.
We'd have to pay unemployment to their employees, we'd have to wash all debt for them, meaning lenders have less money and wont invest as confidently elsewhere, we'd have to store or destroy their fleets (who's gonna buy all the planes?), regional government will lose income from property tax on office buildings, etc. The list goes on.
So its not as simple as "well they're gonna go out of business, sucks for them". The collateral damage would be extensive.
| 303 |
How do magnets work on a sub-atomic level?
|
Basically, I know *of* most scientific concepts, but I don't know them. Is it the case that magnetic materials have an inordinate amount of positively or negatively charged particles and thus attract other substances? Does the entire concept depend on the Earth's magnetic field? Why does the Earth have a magnetic field?
| 28 |
Something that's very confusing about the electromagnetic force is that there are two kinds of charge, but only one appears (as far as has been observed) in a monopole (or "single charge") state. "Positive" and "negative" are labels for **electric** charge. The electron has a negative charge (it is a negative monopole), the proton a positive charge (a positive monopole). These are commonly tossed around in popular media and are comparatively commonly known.
There is also *magnetic* charge, though there are no magnetic monopoles. These are labeled "north" and "south," and while electrons possess electric monopoles, they also possess an intrinsic magnetic dipole (or "double charge") moment due to their particular quantum mechanical nature. Because they are electrically charged, electrons produce electric fields, and because they possess a magnetic dipole moment, they also produce magnetic fields. Since a monopole and a dipole are different, the fields they produce are shaped differently as well.
If you collect a bunch of electrons together, you will increase the amount of negative charge. The electric fields of all of the electrons add together, and a collection of 100 electrons produces an electric field 100 times as strong as 1 electron.
Dipoles behave differently. You can think of a magnetic dipole as a "North" monopole very close to (but not overlapping with) a "South" monopole. This means when you gather a bunch of electrons together the orientation of the dipole moments matters. If you place two dipoles side-by-side where the North side of one is next to the North side of the other, from far away it will look like a dipole that has twice the strength of either one alone. BUT, if you put the *South* side of one next to the *North* side of the other, from far away they will seem to cancel out and produce no magnetic field.^*
Without getting too much into the gory details, in most materials the dipole moments of the electrons in the constituent atoms tend to cancel each other out, but in certain metals (e.g. iron, nickel, and cobalt) many instead align to reinforce each other. Regions of the metal that have their dipole moments aligned are called **domains**, and in most natural deposits of these metals the domains all roughly cancel out. By applying a strong magnetic field aligned in one direction, though, you can grow the domains that are oriented opposite to the external field and shrink all others. Do this repeatedly (without getting the material too hot) and you will produce a permanent magnet. Ultimately, its magnetic (dipole) field is produced by adding up the dipole fields of the aligned electrons.
As a side note, the source of a magnet's magnetic field being electron dipoles explains why you can't just snap off the North side of a magnet and have a big hunk of North magnetic charge. The dipoles are all aligned, North to South to North to South etc, so wherever you break the magnet in half, you have a new North side on one and South side on the other, giving you two, new, smaller permanent dipole magnets.
^* To be strictly accurate, this arrangement would produce a *quadrupole* field, but that does not really affect the discussion as it decreases in strength much more rapidly than a dipole field.
| 12 |
If irrational numbers never terminate, doesn't that imply infinite information? I thought the amount of information in the universe was finite.
| 39 |
There are infinitely many numbers, uncountable many so. Decimals describe every single number, so there need to be enough decimal expansions to generate them all. To uniquely specify a real number you *need* an infinite sequence of integers or rational numbers, otherwise you only have an approximation. So, yes, you could say that every real number contains an infinite amount of information.
But it's important to know that numbers and math are things we invented and not stuff that actually exist in or because of our universe. They're a clever way to attempt to study the patterns we make up (patterns are psychological, a coping mechanism). This means that the universe is not a slave to anything in math, the universe just "is" and math is just a language used to describe it. We'll never be able to write down a real number exactly, because there are only a finite number of particles, but that doesn't matter because math is not a slave to this universe either.
| 46 |
|
[Death Note] If Light does nothing during L's broadcast...
|
If Light had decided to do nothing or maybe wait awhile reacting to L's broadcast with criminal stand in, how much would have changed? I'm thinking maybe he decided to wait a few days to a few weeks before writing down the name. That should have given Light enough time to find out that the broadcast was only being shown a certain times at certain places.
| 53 |
The broadcast allowed L to pinpoint Kyra's location to the Kanto region of Japan. "Pinpoint" is optimistic, though, because with a population of 45 million, you aren't going to find Kyra just from knowing he's in Kanto. Even the additional piece of information that Kyra must be a high school student is near useless. What's L going to do, check millions of students in Kanto?
The key which allowed L to have a chance of catching Light wasn't the broadcast trick, it was the fact Light changed his killing schedule after hacking his father's computer to find out L knew about him being a student. From that, L deduced Kyra had to be connected to a high ranking police officer, DRAMATICALLY reducing the list of suspects by millions. The important part is that Light *knew* L would realize he changed the schedule on purpose; he wanted L to get close to him so he could find out who L was and kill him.
So the issue here isn't that Light was afraid of L catching him. Having access to his father's intel meant Light would always be a step ahead. If he *wanted to*, L wouldn't have caught him, ever. For instance, if he had waited say two weeks then changed his schedule slightly (say, all killings on Thursdays that were happening at 8 PM now happen at 6 PM), L would just think the student had a slight change of routine; since it wouldn't match Light's routine, he would never be caught, even if L looked into every single Kanto student. So in the beginning of the story, Light getting caught was never an issue. He was under no danger. But he wanted to *defeat* L, not simply *evade* him, which required taking controlled risks to have L approach him.
| 84 |
Eli5: What’s the stuff that falls off the hot metal in metal forging?
|
It’s super satisfying watching metal get shaped into whatever it’s going to end up being but there’s always like thin layers of metal breaking off the second it gets crushed again ? I’ve always wondered this hmm.
| 4,230 |
That's called scale. Its an oxide, and basically a layer of rust from the heat. It doesn't "look rusty", but it indeed is a layer of iron oxide. Every time you heat the metal, you loose some metal to oxidation because of the composition. Its mostly iron with some carbon and other things. Forging temperatures require oxidizing flames (as in forced air) of sorts to make the flames hot enough to make metal malleable, and those oxidizing flames oxidize the metals themselves.
| 2,272 |
[Quantum Leap] Was it ever explained how the center responsible for tracking Sam Becket's historical changes were immune to those changes?
|
Sam's buddy Al and the computer systems were able to track timeline changes. Al, like Sam, remembered the way things were AND how time changed. How were they immune to the changes so that the new timeline didn't overnight their memories?
| 69 |
Sam is separate from the timelines he changes starting from the moment he leaps into the Quantum Accelerator. Not including his swiss cheese memory, Sam only remembers things from his starting timeline. Sam's mind rarely ever in the present for the changes to take hold, which is why it doesn't overwrite his memories.
&#x200B;
AL, on the other hand, is linked to Sam via Brain waves through the Quantum Accelerator and that's why he's the only one who can see and hear Sam. Sam is sort of an anchor point for Al and the AI ziggy. The only reason Al knows how things are changed is from the Ziggy telling him.
For example, when Al is fighting with a Congressional committee to fund Project Quantum leap, Sam is trying to rescue a young woman studying to be a lawyer in the 1960s. The moment Sam saves her thus altering history, the head of the Congressional committee instantly changes into the present-day version of that girl who is now the head of the congressional committee.
| 20 |
What if a blind person took some kind of hallucinogenic drug?
| 33 |
Anyone on hallucinogens can hear things that aren't actually there, you don't have to be blind.
That said, a large portion of a hallucination has to do with perception of experience, as much as changes to visual/auditory cues. A good portion of the 'trip' would be in how they think about things/perceive the world, rather than what they see.
| 13 |
|
[MCU, Thor:Ragnarok] What gives the Asgardian "gods" their godly powers? How does Thor control thunder? Who decided Loki was the "god of mischief?"
|
So it seems like the royal family of Asgard ends up with titles naming them as the "gods" of things. Thor is the god of thunder, Loki is the god of mischief, [Spoiler: Ragnarok](#s "Hela is the goddess of death."). Who gave them these titles?
And on that note, where are these gods getting these special powers? Was Thor always able to control thunder, and that's why he was named god of thunder? Is it just a natural talent he has? [Spoiler: Ragnarok](#s "Hela's big power seems to be the ability to summon unlimited weapons out of nowhere. Why is she the goddess of death, and not the goddess of weapons or swords or metal?")
And on that note, Loki being the god of mischief seems to be different than Thor being god of thunder, since Thor *controls* thunder; Loki just has a penchant and skill for mischief. Why is it that Loki's thing seems to be a earned title or reputation, whereas Thor's directly describes his powers?
| 364 |
There is nothing to say that all of the titles had to be given in the same way, so long as there was a tradition for people from the royal family being called 'God of something', then time and circumstance would eventually cause the something to become popular with the Asgardian people.
Anyone could give them the title. People caught in Loki's early mischief probably coined his title. Thor could have been named the God of Thunder by Odin as part of the ceremony of receiving Mjolnir or he may have picked it up from people like the Warriors Three after showing off his power in battle. Or they could have named themselves, like Hela might have.
Speaking of Hela, did you forget that besides blades she also [Spoiler: Ragnorok](#s "raised and commanded an army of the dead? That's pretty death related.") And considering how powerful she was, she could have called herself the Goddess of Tea Cosies and very few people would survive disagreeing with her.
| 210 |
ELI5: Dark Matter
|
What is it? I understand that current believe is that most matter in the universe is dark matter and only about 4.6% of matter consists of atoms(quick wikipedia lookup). However nowhere do I see explained what dark matter actually is. I see theories about it's existence but still, what is dark matter?
| 20 |
We can calculate how gravity will affect an apple, or the Moon, or entire solar system and equations work, orbits are predictable, ect ect. When we look at galaxies and clusters and very big objects and try to calculate how they should behave we get wrong results (stuff was spinning at wrong speeds). So either laws of gravity is wrong, or not fully understood, or there is additional something in the universe that affects it. We can't see it, can't catch it, but it must be there, because gravity is affected by it.
Best we can do right now is strap a placeholder name to it, throw a couple of equations explaining it and call it a day.
TL;DR It's either some sort of exotic matter we can't see, or quality of space we do not know of yet, or our inability of comprehending gravity.
| 15 |
[Zelda: Majora's Mask] Why does the moon have a face? Has it always had a face? And why is it an angry face?
| 114 |
There are some hints that the Moon in Termina has always had a face. The people know something is different with the moon (angry face) but never freak out nor question why all of a sudden it has a face. Most of them just seem to wonder why it is slowly getting bigger and has changed expression. The Mayor's chair also depicts the moon with a face on it, meaning that how the moon has always been depicted to them.
The Moon is angry due to Majora's influence. The Moon also cries and those tears are an item that Link can collect during his quest. So the Moon is self aware that it is closing in on Termina but sad that it cannot do anything to prevent it.
| 77 |
|
ELI5: Why do sockets have different designs internationally?
|
A question that came up from this post.
http://imgur.com/gallery/6x2QEDB
| 35 |
When electricity was first getting going, different companies an different countries all did different things - none is empirically better, they all work, but they look different.
Once that gets started, its very hard to standardize, because you would need an adapter for, or to replace completely, every electrical device you own. And to replace all the old-style sockets in all the older houses... All of which is an expensive pain.
So the different systems persist.
| 15 |
How much cheating should be "tolerated?"
|
I'm a graduate student at a top institution (top 10 in US), and have been painfully honest my entire student life. Somehow I convinced myself that others shared this sentiment, but this last year has shaken me down to reality, especially now that I'm grading as a teaching assistant.
I feel great pain for the honest students; I'm grading a final right now, and I realize that they cannot always compete with a group of five or six taking the final as a group. My proof is "slim," but those of you that grade understand what I'm saying---it's obvious when someone is cheating, especially when rare mistakes occur repeatedly in batches. Not only that; I heard in the background of one student's audio PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT SOMETHING RESEMBLING THE EXAM just before I distributed it. I want to believe that the students are honest, but this is ignorant of the evidence in front of me.
To those with more experience, when and where do you draw the line, and how do you respond? I cannot just ignore a grading rubric, but I cannot see the point of grading this exam and assigning students a totally meaningless grade.
| 38 |
Ideally, all cheating should be dealt with. But in reality it is only worth pursuing if there is clear, demonstrable, uncontrovertable evidence. Pursuing hunches or suspicions gets nowhere if you can't find that evidence, and if you sink your time into chasing down every suspected infraction you will never get anything else done.
There are huge issues with this year in particular, as the tools simply have not been in place to police the remote assignments we have been forced in to running. However, a well designed assessment can make this kind of cheating much harder, and a well designed mark scheme can give leeway for penalties in terms of referencing, structure, and originality. You can design-away so much of the problem that all cases either become marginal/irrelevant, or so completely obvious that dealing with it is relatively straight forward.
| 48 |
(Star Trek) Why is Romulan Ale Illegal in Federation Space?
|
In my time as a Tactical Officer aboard the USS Artemis I have been to my fair share of systems, and every shore leave I would collect a bottle of alcohol as a memento. Now I've had everything from Klingon bloodwine to Saurian brandy to Aldebaran whiskey but I could never obtain a bottle of Romulan ale! I've never fully understood why Romulan ale was illegal, why is it illegal and how would I be able to get a bottle of it?
| 39 |
Trade embargoes. They're an allegory for the US trade embargo against Cuba that makes importing Cuban cigars, an otherwise perfectly legal product, illegal.
As soon as the Federation and the Empire became allies during the Dominion war the embargo was lifted. For some reason it was put back in place shortly after the war ended.
| 51 |
[Police Procedural TV Shows]When they find a suspect a raid the house with a tactical team, why does the main character lead the way with just a bulletproof vest and a pistol while the rest of the team has body armor and automatic weapons?
|
Even if the team has their personal gear and just doesn’t have any extra body armor or helmets, seems like they would at least have an extra weapon better than a pistol.
| 22 |
The tactical team are backup in case things go south, or the lead detective (or whatever job they hold) is faced with unexpectedly high levels of opposition. They're also an intimidation tactic - their presence means it's less likely any numbers inside the location will fight back. They can also pick off, or pick up, any runners while the lead officer goes straight for the priority target. Generally speaking they're not going in there to kill all suspects; they want to take people alive, so charging in with an assault rifle is detrimental to their actual intention compared to having something smaller and more controlled.
But the person in charge wants to be in first because (a) they know what they're looking for and don't want some armoured-up SWAT guy accidentally standing on something vital and (b) they have a better chance of assessing the situation quickly because they're not encumbered with full tactical gear.
| 38 |
[Fallout 3] Why would the Lone Wanderer infect Project Purity with the modified FEV?
|
The only people that wouldn't be killed by it are vault dwellers and the Enclave, and the Lone Wanderer knows they were born in the wasteland and would be killed by it. So why would the Lone Wanderer destroy the Capital Wasteland for the sake of the Enclave?
| 19 |
Eden brings this up when you ask him about it
> Anyone or anything that has been affected by mutation will be eliminated. You will likely be immune, thanks to your upbringing in the vault. Likewise, the good people of the Enclave will be unaffected as well.
Presumably it’s not just being in the wasteland when you’re born that would cause you to be affected. It’s remaining there and being exposed to the radiation long enough for it to mutate you. The Lone Wanderer was born there, but pretty much immediately brought to the vault and shielded from radiation after that. That’s not necessarily a guarantee they’ll be immune, or that Eden was being honest, but spending the majority of their life in a vault might’ve been enough. As it turns out they’re not immune, but they did have reason to suspect they might’ve been.
| 28 |
In a game program, do bullets check if they hit an enemy or do enemies check if they are hit by a bullet?
| 27 |
Generally it's the bullet which checks.
The reason why is that bullets are too small and too fast for most collisions systems and require special handling. Having the enemy perfoms the check means that you have to embed the whole bullet handling logic in every enemy wich add complexity and code duplication.
In the typical case, each frame all the objects positions are updated, then, for every bullet, the engine traces a line from the position of the bullet at the start of the frame to the position at the end of the frame and check if it intersects anything.
| 24 |
|
ELI5: How do employees of marijuana dispensaries in the US handle their taxes if their income is based off the sale of marijuana?
|
With the federal restrictions affecting how dispensaries due business (such as not being able to have bank accounts), how do its employees handle their taxes when the income is coming from the sale of marijuana?
edit: thanks for the all the replies, I think I was coming from the idea of what would happen if someone had to be audited or have their taxes looked more closely. Would it affect them at a federal level for working at a dispensarie.
| 1,181 |
They report that their employer paid them to operate a retail shop. The IRS wants to know what you got paid, not what the shop sells. OK, there are some banking issues, so your boss had to pay you in cash. From the IRS perspective, also not a problem, they want to know how much you got paid, not how it was paid to you.
Of the many legal snarls surrounding pot, employee income taxes isn't one of them.
| 483 |
If you cannot provide for a child, you should not be allowed to have one. CMV.
|
I believe that if a person or persons do not have sufficient means to provide for a child, they should not be allowed to have a child. (In no way am I arguing that these women should have an abortion; I am speaking more in terms of utilizing the option of adoption.) People who cannot support a child financially are only being selfish and do not have the best interest for the child in mind. The cost of raising a child, especially in the early stages of life, is very expensive. (ie, only those with job security would be able to afford raising children.) Also, if a person does not have the maturity or ability to maintain a sufficient job to support a child, they are definitely not mature or responsible enough to be in charge for another life. Caring for a child is more than just love.
People who keep their children, despite not being able to provide for them, take money from the government. This money, however, ultimately comes from hard working adults in the country who are capable of earning their money and being responsible for its uses. Every year, money is taken out of the taxes from every worker in America; this tax money is used to fund food stamps and similar programs. The hard working citizens should not have to pay to feed the selfishness of those who cannot sufficiently provide for their family. In the end, the people who cannot provide are just stealing from the people who can provide. Not only that, but in some cases, it could almost provide a false sense of security for those who do not generate an income. These people soon become reliant on money from the government, regardless of where it comes from. This could allow them to feel like they do not need to work as hard at finding a way to provide on their own because at the end of the day, they will have a “secure” plan to fall back on.
A person having a child when they are unqualified to do so is also setting a poor example for their children. It is sending the message that is “okay” to promote a situation that elicits poor decision making and selfish behavior. Not only that, but children deserve much more than the love and affection their parents give them. They also deserve to grow up in a stable environment and deserve to have parents who can give them anything their hearts’ desire, within reason. That is not to say that children should get everything they ask for, but significant necessities such as an education should be top priority for parents. Putting significant necessities aside, there are also the bare necessities to consider. Food, shelter, and clothing are essential for any person. If they can barely provide these things for themselves with the little to no income, how are they expected to be able to provide these things for a child?
At the end of the day, the only thing a person can do is consider what is best for a child. I strongly believe that because children rely on their parents for the majority of their childhood, the parents raising the children should be stable and have the necessary means to provide for them. If this is not the case, it is up to the parents to make the decision that will allow their children to have the life they deserve. CMV.
| 44 |
You've made some pretty tenuous assumptions in your argument, especially because the main implication of your argument is that there ought to be forced adoptions by more wealthy people of the children of less wealthy people.
1) Everyone who is unable to find gainful employment is irresponsible or immature, and is therefore an unfit parent. Corollary: all employed parents are better parents than those that are unemployed. (For your ideas to be useful and right as you've outlined them, this can't just be true some or even most of the time - it has to be true ALL of the time. Do you think this is the case?)
Another corollary: people who become unemployed deserve to be punished and are to be looked down upon. Should we care why they became unemployed? Does it matter? Are all unemployed people equally irresponsible? If not, how can we tell who is responsible and who isn't?
2) Forced adoptions could be administered and enforced in a way that is more fair, and more just, AND less expensive than simply having taxpayers pay to support an otherwise unsupportable child.
3) A forced adoption will result in an unambiguously better outcome for the child.
I think you really need to think hard about the assumptions that underlie these idea, and what level of certainty it's even possible to have about them.
You should also consider the fact that many of the things you talk about already exist. The state does frequently administer forced adoptions from unfit parents - it's just that the criteria for "unfit" are a lot more complex than simple economic factors. The point is- employment is simply not a good enough sole factor for this purpose.
| 23 |
ELI5: If you change the file extension of a non-text file (like a video or a picture) to .txt and then try to open it in notepad, a bunch of gibberish appears. Why does this happen?
|
Eg: A .jpg renamed to .txt
\[žð°@UQ5´ëÞPém”€móïûýûñ’\`„Ž›C|Éå:8>©ß(h¥¬(‹\_}6?OëÄAæ T.Ëß –¤6 ¾OßåÀ‰Ÿ2¾ñâNŒUæ=-Î ²Ú A$k{oïø‡·þÝ9EåÄ%}Aøïq\*=É \~ïÄÃã!W:'Øk{|É·¥T¾ï@5\^§úŒ\]B{,6÷>‡óàR
| 21 |
It's because notepad will interpret the data as if it is text. Data is represented by bytes. No matter the type of data, it's still bytes. A byte is a number. If you want text, you might expect an A to be represented by the number 1. But if you have a jpeg, you would need, say, 3 numbers to represent the colors of a single pixel. But cause it's all numbers, each application has to interpret them based on what it thinks they represent. If you open a jpg file in notepad, you are telling it "interpret these numbers as text", whereas if you opened a text file in paint, you would say "interpret these numbers as a jpeg".
| 36 |
[Marvel] Why are mutants considered fundamentally different than other super-people?
|
Why does it matter how they got their powers? I kind of get that they didn't choose to have their abilities and a lot of others did, but not *all* others chose to have them. Why are they treated as a distinct group?
| 27 |
Many mutations are dangerous to both the mutant and those around them - most of the mutants we see have had *years* of training and conditioning. The majority of mutants don't have that discipline, and to make things worse mutations tend to appear suddenly and, occasionally, violently.
That shit's scary. It makes people jumpy just being in a group of strangers, since at any moment one of them might start blasting lasers from his eyes or farting lava from her steaming, uh, caldera.
| 28 |
ELI5: What's the difference between a muonic atom and an electronic atom?
| 153 |
Muons are particals that function like electrons, but where electrons ha e almost immeasurably small mass, muons have a bigger mass that is clearly measurable. It's still a stupid small number though and really hard to write.
Anyway, a muonic atom has muons where one or more of it's electrons should be, so it winds up heavier overall.
They're pretty rare though.
| 61 |
|
CMV: Rape would cause much less psychological trauma if it were socially viewed on the same level as violent assault as opposed to being seen as equally bad or worse than murder.
|
I think that the way western society views rape (sticking to rape of women, here, for reasons I will explain below) blows it out of proportion and causes it to be much more detrimental than it needs to be.
What I mean by this is not that rape isn't a terrible, awful thing, but rather that the way it is viewed as an almost mythologically terrible crime by many causes some victims of rape to impose some or all of the "completely life ruining" aspects of rape upon themselves when it doesn't need to be that way. Among "mythically terrible aspects" I include such things as: years (as in half a decade or more) of vivid nightmares reliving the experience, immediate onset of severe depression, inability to go outside for fear of everyone around oneself, similar severe psychological symptoms.
I say this as a male victim of rape. As I said, I'm trying to keep the discussion to females as victims rape because that is where I perceive most of the "mythically bad" aspects of rape lie, but I include this as a comparison to explain my reasoning: Although I recognized immediately that I had been raped, albeit with relatively little physical harm, I didn't assess it to be all that awful and with support from my partner, I recovered very quickly and very completely.
Maybe if I had been hurt badly, I would see things differently, but I do not personally think that a person who is raped in a manner that does not require immediate medical attention to survive should experience life-shattering negative psychological consequences beyond what a victim of assault should and that many victims of rape only experience such terrible things because they believe they should be experiencing them and so self-impose some of the worst psychological consequences.
CMV.
Edit: In response to the first couple of commenters, all of whom seemed to come away with the impression that I do not think rape should cause any serious effects, please understand that that is not what I am saying.
My view is rather that rape isn't all that different from a violent assault in actual awfulness and shouldn't cause psychological effects that are all that worse than violent assault, but that societal pressures build rape up to be the singularity of evil and thus some victims of rape self impose helplessness and wind up making their symptoms/recovery process worse and longer lasting than it should be or would be if rape were viewed as similar to violent assault rather than as the sole singularity of evil.
TL;DR: Rape is terrible, but I don't think it's literally the worst thing that could possibly happen to anyone ever, and I think that viewing it as such makes people more prone to issues and less able to recover than they really should be.
_____
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| 855 |
If you think that the trauma experienced by rape victims is partly due to societal pressures, then how do you account for similar reactions across cultures - for example in Asia, and Africa. Don't you think that this implies that rape is inherently traumatizing?
| 264 |
CMV: Qualities that we are born with or cannot change about ourselves are not things to be proud of.
|
Personally, I don't see the point in being proud of something you have no control over. I've never really thought to myself that I'm proud to be straight, white, or male. Sure, there are times I'm thankful I am those things, but I can never change them. We should be more focused on our personal accomplishments—things like graduating high school or college, meeting fitness goals, using your skills to make things, getting the high score in a game. Those are milestones we can set for ourselves and be proud of when we are committed enough to accomplish them.
| 34 |
People aren't generally proud of their qualities which they can't change, they're proud of overcoming the adversities they face because of those qualities. Usually they're shamed for their qualities, the antonym of shame is pride.
Pride Parades for example, full of people who are part of the LGBT+ community or are allied with them, are not marching because "Yay gay", but are marching because of the challenges they faced and still face. Remember, gay marriage and adoption hasn't been legal for that long, and there are still discrimination issues, such as Trump removing LGBT+ healthcare protections. The same applies to minority groups of all varieties.
People that are "proud" of unchangeable characteristics that haven't been historically or currently discriminated against, like being a straight white man, are invariably social conservatives who want to remove protections for minorities.
| 14 |
[Star Wars] Why do droids have emotions?
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I mean: what's the point? Most of the times it makes them unusable, unstable or just simply annoying. Droids should be mechanical slave labor, right? Being emotional kinda makes their existence pointless.
Examples: C3PO is constantly worrying, panics a lot, stubborn and kinda cowardly. Why would anyone program an AI to feel fear? It's cruel, to be honest.
R2D2 is rude (according to C3PO...), heroically brave and acts like a "buddy", an individual, mostly towards Anakin and Luke. A whole person who can't even properly speak and should fix spaceships... and a lot of astromechs are like this, not just him.
Trade Federation droids: panicking all the time, show human-like fear and confusion, and clearly understand the concept of death - many times they even run for their lives. They are totally useless, a polar opposite of what soldiers should be like.
So: what the heck is wrong with programmers in this galaxy? At this point I absolutely understand why clone troopers are better than battle droids.
| 282 |
Emotions could be a signal for droids to switch between different functions.
For 3PO, he's usually stuffy and pretentious in his base line protocol function; he's panicky when there's danger and he's switched to self preservation function.
For R2, he's usually chilled and a bit snarky in his astromech function, but he's bossy and commanding when there's danger because he can step up and take control of various interfaces and machinery.
It's possible that emotions are the most reliable way for droids to know when to change their priority function. Rather than a programmer trying to fight out every possible scenario, they program emotions and the droid switches functions based on how they are feeling.
We don't know if programming emotions is difficult. Maybe it's not a problem, barely an inconvenience.
| 182 |
[Warhammer 40k] Can Groots become a Warboss?
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Serious question. Given that Mekboyz can become Mekboss and the Painboys can become Painboss... can Groots given time and EXTREME amount of luck and extremwly amazing circumstances grow to become a Boss?
| 19 |
I think you mean "Grots". (Aka Gretchin)
In Ork society size is everything: an Ork who is continuously successful in battle will keep getting larger and stronger... and if he's good/lucky enough he'll eventually become a leader of some kind... and ultimately if he's baddass enough he'll become Warboss. (and by that point he'll be *huge*)
IIRC Grots don't benefit from this continuous growth and even if they did, they'd still be significantly smaller than Orks anyways. As a result, Grots can never get the same amount of respect as Orks do: at absolute best they might be seen as useful to keep alive (i.e. the Grot is a good at his job) but otherwise they're expendable. I'd say it's pretty impossible for a Grot to ever become a Warboss.
| 36 |
[DC Comics] Does the Joker have a Chief of Staff who organizes his schedule? You know, someone who handles employee payroll, oversees the legal department, negotiates with lower-level gangsters, etc.?
|
Is that part of Harley’s job?
| 53 |
No? Joker isn't running a corporation, he's running a loosely knit gang of mostly mentally unstable people.
There are no employees.
There is no payroll.
There is no legal department.
The negotiation with lower-level gangster is: disobey the Joker and die horrifically. Obey the Joker and you might not die horrifically.
| 77 |
[Doctor Who] I'm a Time Lord; I want to be a dog
|
Can I regenerate into a dog? Is that allowed?
| 15 |
It's pretty unlikely. Regeneration's a bit like throwing down your five cards in Poker and asking for new ones. Your DNA gets shuffled like a deck of cards and then dealt out. Whether you get a full house or a pair of twos out of what you're dealt, there's still the reality that you'll still end up with a set of five cards afterwards just like you had beforehand, even if they don't look the same. You won't suddenly have 2 cards, 2 scrabble tiles, and a Monopoly piece.
Probably the best you could do would be a half-Gallifreyan half-dog hybrid and the dog part may or may not need to be based on a sapient species.
The hybrid stuff is based on the extended materials such as audio books and so on, there have been some cases where Time Lords have regenerated to include traits from other (sapient) species. Gandarotethetledrax became half Silurian/half Gallifreyan. Another Time Lord, Zero, became half Gallifreyan/half Avian (bird people species) but that also involved an exotic poison. So the couple of cases we have involved sapient species.
| 16 |
Eli5: What is physically stopping something from going faster than light?
|
Please note: Not what's the math proof, I mean what is physically preventing it?
I struggle to accept that light speed is a universal speed limit. Though I agree its the fastest we can perceive, but that's because we can only measure what we have instruments to measure with, and if those instruments are limited by the speed of data/electricity of course they cant detect anything faster... doesnt mean thing can't achieve it though, just that we can't perceive it at that speed.
Let's say you are a IFO(as in an imaginary flying object) in a frictionless vacuum with all the space to accelerate in. Your fuel is with you, not getting left behind or about to be outran, you start accelating... You continue to accelerate to a fraction below light speed until you hit light speed... and vanish from perception because we humans need light and/or electric machines to confirm reality with I guess....
But the IFO still exists, it's just "now" where we cant see it because by the time we look its already moved. Sensors will think it was never there if it outran the sensor ability... this isnt time travel. It's not outrunning time it just outrunning our ability to see it where it was. It IS invisible yes, so long as it keeps moving, but it's not in another time...
The best explanations I can ever find is that going faster than light making it go back in time.... this just seems wrong.
| 3,235 |
So way down here at non-relativistic speeds we look at F=ma and think if we double the force we are going to double the acceleration, and if we do this enough we will eventually go faster than 300k km/s. This makes sense to us, it's very intuitive, and it fits with our day to day relative of how the world works. It's also wrong (ok, not really wrong, more imprecise, or limited in its extent).
Relativity changed our understanding of how the universe works, and it turns out it's a much weirder place than we are used to. It turns out there is this universal constant called c. Now we first learned about it from the point of view of it being the speed of light, but that's not really what it is. c is the conversion factor between time and space in our universe. So it turns out that if you double the force you don't exactly double the acceleration. At low speeds it's very close to double, but as you get closer to c it takes more and more energy to move faster. When you get very close to c the amount of energy needed gets closer to infinity. Since we don't have infinite energy, we can't ever get to c, we can only get closer and closer.
This has nothing to do with our perception. We can mathematically calculate relativistic speeds, we can measure objects moving at those speeds, and we can prove to ourselves that Einstein was right.
| 4,362 |
[General video games] Why are "minibosses" usually bigger than regular bosses?
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I understand they're called "mini" because they're just minions of the regular bosses, but if they're bigger, why aren't they stronger? Why aren't they the bosses?
| 18 |
Why are you able to beat them all when you aren't biggest? You're making the assumption that being bigger inherently makes you more powerful. That doesn't seem to be the case.
It may be because these larger mini-bosses rely more on their size than skill, where as the smaller guys train harder.
Maybe the big guys just happen to be far less experienced and would eventually ascend to the leadership position if they didn't get killed off.
| 41 |
Does the ISS ever have to adjust its velocity and if so, how does it accomplish it?
| 79 |
Yes, while ISS orbits between 330 and 435 km, there is still a little bit of atmosphere left. This causes some drag that slows down the station, causing it to fall into a lower orbit. If left unchecked, this would cause the ISS to spiral down to Earth (potentially burning up in the atmosphere).
So the station has to be periodically boosted. For this it has its own on-board engines that can give it a kick, but the ISS has also been successfully boosted by spacecraft that were docked with the station.
| 47 |
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ELI5: Why do some zits have solid cores, and others just have puss like liquid?
| 701 |
A zit that's full of pus is an active infection in your skin. It's probably also red and tender to the touch.
A zit that has a solid core is just a clogged pore. It might be raised and red, but it probably isn't tender or painful.
EDIT: Now what was that extra S doing there?
| 419 |
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CMV: Victimhood is not sacred.
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Victims of horrific crimes (i.e child abuse, rape, domestic abuse, genocide) do not have an unequivocal right to be the victims for posterity. A victim of a horrific crime could just as well be the perpertrator of another horrific crime. There is an expiration date to the victimhood that defines a person.
Contentious example: Israel and the illegal settlements in Palestine. While it is regretable that the Jewish faith has been the target of hatred and violence for centuries, that does not excuse you from commiting simillar discrimination against another race of people. The 'anti-semitism' rebuttal to any discussion on this issue is uncalled for. There is only so far you could push the history of oppression till you become the oppressor.
Another contentious example: Women's Right's Movements. While it is regrettable that women have been treated, for all intentions, as second-class citizens in the past, the progress made in women's rights, including universal suffrage, equal rights to education, on top of other improvements, have dramatically improved the condition of women in today's society. Pushing the 'we are the weaker sex' rebuttal, or labelling any opinion that does not support the movement as 'sexist', does not help the discussion in anyway. Using the history of victimhood as the main sticking point in today's discussion on women's rights is unproductive.
In conclusion, the sanctification of the 'victimhood', wherein the victim must be right and protected, cannot be a defining principle for discussions. There has to be a limit where the extent of harm comitted against the individual has been adequately compensated by society, whereby the victimhood becomes a null issue.
Of course, this opinion does not condone any aggressive attacks or insults on a victim. Therein, while the victim should not claim victimhood, there should not be an active attack on the victim's experiences. An attack comes in the form of vitriol and insults on the victim. This is distinguished from discourse, wherein the intention of the statement is not to insult or mock the victim, but further understandings on the victims experiences.
| 20 |
>There is an expiration date to the victimhood that defines a person.
What is that expiration date and why does it have to exist?
Yes, victims can also be perpetrators. This is particularly common with abuse. But why does that necessitate an expiration date on victimhood?
If a person who is 60 now was abused frequently as a child and never got the therapy they needed to cope, and they still suffer PTSD because of it, and who they are was fundamentally altered as a result, why does their "victimhood" need an "expiration date"?
| 15 |
[LOTR] How strong is the Witch King of Angmar compared to other threats?
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I was reading the thread on Gandalf vs the Balrog and was thinking of the other strong forces in the books and couldn't figure were the Witch King ranks. The Balrog takes everything Gandalf the Grey has to beat, Yet when the Witch King faces Gandalf the White, he breaks his staff and mocks him and only the arrival of the Rohirrim saves Gandalf and Minis Tirith from him. So, my question is was he stronger than the Maiar remaning in Middle Earth? What about Shelob and the Dragons we know of? I wonder if the old heros like Hurin or the elf lords like Glorfindel would be able to stand against him.
| 47 |
IIRC, in the book the Witch King doesn't shatter Gandalf's staff. In fact, Gandalf tells the Witch King he cannot enter Minas Tirith; they have a little verbal back-and-forth, but the WK does not enter the city. Rohan shows up then just like the movie, and the WK takes off to deal with that. So, Gandalf seems to be able to make the WK hesitate at least.
| 28 |
ELI5: When colour fades from fabric and other printed materials, where does it go?
| 16 |
Nowhere, color isn’t a material, it’s just a propriety of how done materials reflect light, if those materials change in some way, be it chemically (like with bleach) or by exposure to ultraviolet light, they reflect light different and the colors fade
| 19 |
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[Star Wars] what happens if a jedi gets themselves or another person pregnant?
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I mean what does the jedi council do with them? Ive read posts over the years that explain that though Jedi are forbidden from emotional attatchment they are allowed to bone.
If a lady Jedi gets pregnant and returns to the temple what do they do with her? Will she just be out of action until the baby is born? Is the baby kept by jedi day care if it’s force sensitive?
| 115 |
In regards to a lady Jedi, provided that the pregnancy was not born of an actually romantic coupling, they would be given the option to stay with the Order and give birth to the child who would be tested for Force sensitivity to see if they could be a potential trainee-if not, they were either sent to a social works center on Coruscant or the mother could choose to take it and then follow the below. Should the kid be able to use the Force, the mother would likely be asked to maintain detachment and give up custody to the crèche where Younglings are cared for. If the lady Jedi did not wish to give up their child if or if not they were Force sensitive (something of a misnomer but still), or remain in the Order, then the Jedi would likely strongly suggest otherwise but while it’s not viewed highly, they are free to leave if they wish.
As for *getting someone pregnant*, we already have an instance of this: Anakin and Padme. Neither of them were remotely worried about the Jedi’s involvement in their children aside from the fact Anakin would have been kicked out for his marriage, which further supports the idea the Jedi would not need to be involved unless actual feelings were and that they respect the parents right to say no.
| 109 |
[Star Wars: ESB] What would have happened if Luke had rescued Leia and Chewie?
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Everything up to that point is the same. Han gets frozen in carbonite. Boba Fett sends a few warning shots at Luke, so Luke has to go in a different direction, and Fett gets away with Han safely tucked away in his cargo hold. Luke then encounters Leia, Chewie, and C-3PO being escorted by Lando and the Stormtroopers. In an amazing feat of daring and marksmanship, Luke kills all the Imperials, and Lando convinces them that he is indeed on their side, despite his earlier actions.
What happens next?
| 25 |
Basically you're asking what happened if Luke didn't duel Vader, lose his hand, and learn that Vader is his father?
Pretty much nothing different. They still rescue Han. He still goes to complete his training with Yoda, and probably learns about his father from Yoda on his death bed.
| 29 |
ELI5: What do tax havens get out of being tax havens?
| 79 |
Money and employment. A tax haven doesn't mean zero taxes, it simply means lower taxes. For multi million or billion dollar companies and individuals saving a few percent is a lot of money. As a tax haven, the region can develop a much larger financial services, legal and administration centers - since running businesses through a tax haven requires these personnel. This, of course, benefits the country and economy of the tax haven.
| 127 |
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ELI5: How can Las Vegas charge two different ticket prices for clubs depending on whether you're Male or Female without being sued for gender discrimination?
| 151 |
Because gender discrimination laws aren't as strict as, say, racial discrimination laws. If you have some sort of business reason to discriminate based on gender, you're usually allowed to do it. (It's generally believed that clubs make more money if they have lots of women in them.)
| 67 |
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[MCU] Thor beats Surtur, Surtur beats Hela, Hela beats Thor. What is this, rock-paper-scissors?
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How is that possible?
| 57 |
Thor wasn't fighting Surtur at his peak power when he had the weight of prophecy behind him. Hela got blindsided by 'big as a mountain' Surtur, and Thor, and Loki, and a Valkyrie. And even then Surtur didn't so much beat her as he blew up Asgard entirely.
No, there's no paper-rock-scissors going on here. Well, not outside of Korg anyway.
| 126 |
ELI5:Is Evolutionary Psychology bullshit, or is it real science?
| 91 |
In theory, it's perfectly reasonable. But in practice it's often pretty badly done. People tend to draw conclusions based on a survey of some western college students and their own preconceptions, then make up some elaborate untestable speculation about it. So...it depends, mostly it depends on how rigorous the research is and whether people generalize their conclusions too far.
I think the important thing to remember is that just because you can make a plausible sounding story about something, doesn't mean that story is true. And also that you can't just survey modern western people and be sure that what they do is relevant to humanity as a whole across the broad sweep of time. And finally, humans are really freaking complicated, so understanding their behavior is difficult. Don't put too much faith in EP pronouncements that neglect to consider all these things.
Source: working on PhD in animal behavior, though not related to humans in any way.
| 68 |
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ELI5: How did the American Southern accent develop?
| 18 |
It's more the other way around, and relates to the question "When did American English break from British English?". At first American and British English were the same, but then British English developed into what it is today. American English has not changed as much, and is actually closer to British English of 200 years ago. American Southern has been even slower to change (because of the relative isolation of the speakers), and is even closer to British English of that time!
| 16 |
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[Star Wars] Is Vader's helmet aesthetic made unique JUST for him, or is his type of "face" common in the galaxy helmet market?
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Vader is an iconic character, but I always wondered if his mask/face was uniquely custom made just for him by the Emperor, or if its a pretty standard looking life preservation suit. We don't really see many sample size of horribly disfigured humans with Vader-like setup, so I don't know how special Vader's is.
Also, I don't mean if someone has the exact suit as Vader's. I mean more like, do helmets with faces like Vader's exist in the galaxy. Like the huge eyes, triangular mouthpiece.
| 76 |
I would guess that the emperor probably wouldn’t want anyone to look like darth Vader so he probably got his custom made especially since his helmet probably has some type of respiratory system to help Vader stay alive due to his burns
| 85 |
[MCU] How would time-travel to the future work?
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In the MCU, time-travel works in that changes in the past simply create alternate timelines. So, what if I travelled to the future?
Let's say I hide an infinity stone in 2154, only for it to somehow be stolen to complete the Infinity Gauntlet. Following the Snap, would I be able to retrieve the stone in 2154, moments before it is stolen?
| 54 |
There are already examples in the MCU of forward time travel. Ant-man basically traveled five years into the future, and that was basically the exact technology they used to go into the past. The effect is that the traveler shows up x years into a future where they've been missing for x years.
Agents of SHIELD went to the future using a Monolith, but those seem to use extradimensional energy so it spit them out into a future where they had all lived and died in the past already and they got to find out what they did wrong to create the apocalypse (small-a) timeline. They used the same method to go back and prevent it.
| 41 |
ELI5: When markets crash, where does all the money go?
| 43 |
It was never there to begin with.
Say Jon has 50 shares in Company inc.. On the market, these 50 shares are worth $500, because lots of people want to pay $10 for a share in Company inc.
But Jon doesn't have $500. Jon has 50 shares.
Suddenly, news breaks that the CEO of Company inc. makes all of her major business decisions by rolling a set of dice. People worry that this will eventually drive Company inc. into the ground, and so people don't want to pay as much for a share in Company inc.
Jon still has 50 shares. But now Jon's shares are only worth $2 each.
Multiple this scenario by a few hundred million and you have a stock market crash.
| 43 |
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[Star Wars] What are Thrawn's beliefs regarding the Force?
| 30 |
He is not dismissive of it like most Imperial officers. In the Legends timeline, the use of the Force was critical to his plan to use cloaked warships to bypass planetary shielding in order to make it seem as though he had developed shield piercing weaponry.
| 41 |
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