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[Doctor Who] Did the 4th Doctor give Davros the idea that the Daleks could suppress the universe rather than just just the planet Skaro itself? | 25 | He did yes, he told him of the entire future of the Daleks. How they would conquer and kill billions. Before the Doctor's interference Davros believed it impossible that there even was life on other planets.
I guess you can blame the Time lords overall. They sent in the one man who they knew wouldn't have the will to do what needed to be done, without any weapons or backup, it's little wonder the Doctor messed things up. It's lucky he even got out alive, hardly anyone else did.
If the TL's wanted the Daleks stopped a quick, simple execution of Davros BEFORE he created them was what was needed. They bottled it as did the Doctor. End result, trillions dead, including ironically all of them eventually.
What a mess up from the oldest civilization in history. | 18 |
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ELI5: how can law Enforcement track people using their phones? | Watching movies i get this question a lot
If a person throws his phone away , how does the police know who is the owner of the phone? | 16 | Phones don't just magically give you the ability to call people, it is a service that you pay for. If you toss your phone away, the phone you pay the cell company for service, then someone who finds the phone can ask the cell company who pays the bill. That will lead back to you.
Of course there are temporary prepaid phones which can be bought with cash leaving no paper trail, and these make tracking down the user of the phone much more difficult if not impossible. This is why the police were peeved at Saul selling such phones out of his car in Better Call Saul. | 17 |
ELI5: If before the universe there was nothing, then the universe was created, shouldn't there be a field of nothing at the possible edge of the universe? | 15 | A common misconception about the expansion of the universe is to imagine it's expanding in all directions in three dimensions. You envision a balloon that we're inside. The balloon is getting bigger, and you say 'there must be an actual balloon around this space'.
In reality, the universe as we know it *is* the surface of that balloon. The balloon is expanding into the fourth dimension. Like two dots on an inflating balloon, any two objects in the universe that aren't locked together are getting farther and farther apart. The speed of this separation is always proportional to the distance between the dots, with more distant dots moving away faster. Space is essentially being created everywhere at once, from our perspective.
Because of these observations, we know that the universe is expanding in the 4th dimension. But we have no idea what that looks like beyond that. Maybe, somewhere, not up, not forward, not left or right, but some fourth direction perpendicular to all of these there is a great wall of the universe. But we can't see it.
In the three dimensions we perceive and move in, the universe is boundless, like the surface of a ball. | 27 |
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CMV: Pickles don't belong on a burger | I just don't get how people like pickles on burgers. When you bite into a burger with pickles all you taste is pickle. When there is no pickle you get an even distribution of flavors. You can taste the condiments, the beef, the bun, the lettuce, tomato and onions. When there are pickles, the flavor profile changes to 80% pickle and everything else is muddled.
I do like pickles on their own. Going to a movie theater is not the same without getting a giant pickle to eat. But in that case its OK that the pickle is such a strong flavor because that's what I'm eating... a pickle.
I've never had a burger I liked with pickles. None of the major fast-food chains nor homemade burgers. Am I doing something wrong or do people really like the overwhelming pickle flavor on burgers?
Edit: I should also mention that I *WANT* to like pickles on my burger. Hence CMV. I appreciate everyone's recommendations so far! | 31 | IMO, you need some kind of acidity to cut through the fat of the meat and cheese and balance the flavours, be that tomatoes, pickles, and/or condiments.
OP, is it the taste of the dill you don't like?Maybe try slightly pickled red onion. Easy to make for a homemade burger at least and adds a nice zing. | 35 |
Do your cells stop dividing the second you die? If not, how long do they divide after you are dead? | 24 | Well that will vary for each cell. Most will die once they no longer have enough oxygen for aerobic respiration and thus can't power their necessary functions. If your someone like Henrietta Lacks scientists have kept your cells growing long after death. | 13 |
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ELI5: Why and how does a panic attack occur? Is it describable by words? | 16 | Basically it's your 'fight or flight' mode going into overdrive. The psychology is a bit more complicated, but essentially because of a mental condition such as a phobia or panic disorder, your brain decides that there is an immediate and very serious threat to you even though there isn't. Your brain then tells your body to prepare to either fight or run away.
This involves the release of adrenaline and the stimulation of the sympathetic nervous system. Your heart rate goes way up, you start breathing much faster and you sweat.
The fast breathing (hyperventilation) is quite important in a panic attack. Your body is preparing you for the sudden strenuous exercise involved in fighting or running away, but of course you don't actually end up doing any strenuous exercise. This means that you expel loads of carbon dioxide out through your lungs without much of it being produced from exercise. A loss of a lot of carbon dioxide changes the pH of the blood, and this can cause some of the other symptoms of a panic attack, such as lightheadedness and dizziness. You may then interpret the combination of all of the symptoms as "feeling like you're going to die".
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[Bladerunner] - Why do replicants need to be retired? | As i understand it, they have a manufactured artificial lifespan, so whats wrong with just letting them live out their remaining 12 months?? | 31 | Remember, Roy and his cadre of escaped Nexus 6 replicants weren’t trying live a quiet life under the radar. They were living stealthily while working on a specific mission to seek out Eldon Tyrell and force him to expand their lifespans… and when he told them he couldn’t, the result was that Roy slowly shoved his thumbs into Tyrell’s eyes up to the palms and crushed his skull like an eggshell, then he went on to murder J.F. Sebastian (whose only crime was trying to help them… and possibly being the genetic base for their senescence).
Replicants are super-strong humanoids with artificially limited lifespans and the emotional experiences of a toddler. Beings who were made flawed on purpose, many of which have been actively traumatized during their short lives as workers, soldiers, servants or sex toys.
And you want to let them run loose for an indeterminate length of time before they die of system failure? This seems like a perfect recipe for suicide attacks and generally violent chaos. With no future to live for, replicants live for revenge against their creators.
For every Sapper Morton keeping it quiet, there’s an Iggy, a Roy, a Trixie or a Priss… they are stronger, faster, more clever, less restrained, and they are *righteously angry*. | 75 |
Does a container with a perfect vacuum in it float? | 103 | It would if the container weighed less than the volume of air it has displaced. Lets assume we have a 1 meter cube of pure vacuum, this would displace just over 1kg of air, and hence, if the container itself weighed slightly less 1kg, it would float.
However, at sea level, air pressure is about 100000 pascals, or 100000 Newtons/m^2 . So each wall of our cube would be experiencing 100000 Newtons of force on it, trying to crush it inways, equivalent to 10 tonnes, 2 times the bite force of a T. Rex or the thrust of an F22 Raptor.
So if you can make something that weighs 1kg, and can withstand 10-60 tonnes of weight, you've got yourself a floating vacuum.
FYI, for these calculations it makes essentially no difference if we're talking absolute vacuum, or a practical, 99% vacuum. | 67 |
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[MCU] What do the Wakandan elites and general population think of Bucky during and after his stay with them? | Was he well received? Respected and reviled in equal measures? Did he develop any intimate relationships with anyone in the country while he was there? | 57 | I doubt most even knew he was there. Those that did know he was there, knew that T'Challa was rehabilitating him as part of his new vision of Wakanda that is more interested in helping the world than isolating their country.
He definitely developed some kind of friendly relationship with ~~Okoye~~ Ayo, at least enough that he was comfortable asking her for some pretty big favors.
He also probably became friendly with Shuri as her technology helped with his rehabilitation and replacing his arm. How much so is up in the air at this point.
As for T'Challa himself, its likely they are on friendly terms but since T'Challa is extremely busy being the Black Panther and also leading his people, its unlikely he spent much time with Bucky other than the occasional checkup. | 50 |
How do we hear sounds in our head that aren't being made? | For example, how can we hear a song in our heads if it isn't actually playing? | 38 | We hear using our brain, not our ears. Your memory stores sounds; like your voice, or a song you heard.
When that memory is brought back to your current state of consciousness (like a song being stuck in your head), you remember it through the part of your mind that hears. Just like you remember what a place looks like visually, by bringing up a mental image in your head. | 16 |
[General] What would happen to a Dyson Sphere if the star attached began to die? | When I think of a Dyson Sphere I imagine a boundless sort of energy. But I also think that it would be dangerous if the star died.
So what would happen to a Dyson Sphere if a star died? Could a sufficiently powerful empire prevent a stars death and continue the Dyson sphere? | 57 | Stars take a really long time to die (predictable out to millions, billions or trillions of years in advance depending on the type of star), so in most sci-fi settings the Dyson Sphere could probably be evacuated even if they didn't have FTL technology. A good thing about stars running out of fuel (the most common way for a star to die) is that their output increases as fuel runs out and heavier elements start fusing in greater quantities so that would give the Dyson Sphere more power to work with in preparing for the star's death.
A lot of sci-fi settings would have the technology to stabilise the star via technobabble or possibly just collecting more fuel to feed into it (basically just tossing gas giants, brown dwarfs and possibly other smaller stars into it). Even in a really hard sci-fi setting there's several methods to extract the heavier elements in a star (collectively known as stellar lifting) to prevent those elements from eventually poisoning its fusion reaction which can substantially extend the life of any star. A good side effect of that is you're effectively mining the star for massive amounts of potentially very valuable material, likely more than existed in the star system outside of the star initially (e.g. our sun has a mass of just iron in it almost 5000 times greater than the total mass of Earth which is the largest rocky planet in the solar system).
I'll note that any civilisation that can build and use a Dyson Sphere's output is practically by definition powerful enough to substantially alter the star the Dyson Sphere is built around. Any Dyson Sphere should have a good degree of control over its star as far as stars can be controlled. | 77 |
[Star Wars] Why don't AT-ATs have shields? | I know they have armor strong enough to repel vehicle-based blaster cannons, but it seems like the sieges AT-ATs were designed for would include extra-heavy artillery weapons and bombing runs that they're woefully bad at defending against. And wouldn't a shield stop yokel terrorists from cutting open the hatch with a ~lightsaber~ plasma torch and dumping a thermal detonator inside? | 32 | >Bombing runs they're woefully bad at defending against
In the Battle of Hoth, the Empire has nearly complete air and space superiority. That's why the ion cannon was so important- without it, the transports were space dust.
They were only destroyed with a highly unusual and improvised attack strategy that happened because the rebels just so happened to have tow cables on their snowspeeders. | 24 |
When I recite my ABCs, am I firing neurons from my childhood? And/or am I firing the same network that dates back to my childhood? | 36 | Your brain is made up of more-or-less the same neurons as when you were a baby. And you're *probably* using similar neurons, an overlapping network, when you think now about things you learned then. But these neural networks change every time they are used for something; they grow, shift, shrink, etc. So it's certainly not the *same* network. But surely it overlaps in significant ways. | 22 |
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[Star Wars] Did Vader find any satisfaction in stuff he used to like when he was a good guy? Did he still "like" fixing stuff, flying, etc? | 81 | He kept a custom fighter, and went out of his way to lead the fighter defense at the Battle of Yavin, which would indicate he still had some desire to fly. He wouldn't otherwise have been expected to "lead from the front" during that battle, anymore than Tarkin would have been. | 95 |
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ELI5: How do we safely film deep sea animals | Not our safety, but that of what they are filming. Some of these things never see the light of day and James Cameron over here is blasting it in the face with what must feel like the light of a billion suns, how does this not damage the eyes of the animals that have them? | 196 | We don't really know, but the things we see on camera don't seem to mind. The ones who really dislike light are gonna run or hide long before the light gets close enough to be really bright. From what we understand about vision in identified species, even if camera lighting does blind or disorient them, the ill effects should mostly be temporary. Even if the creatures we study are harmed, the assumption is that the ocean is vast enough that a few individuals having a bad time shouldn't cause a major issue for the population at large. These risks are outweighed by the benefits of this research, which can include conservation programs that help the whole ecosystem. There's also the long tail of medical+engineering+other technologies that tend to be discovered when we gain better understandings of new species. So no, perfect safety of the individuals under study is not a requirement for research to happen, but we figure the end result is worth small-scale risks. | 121 |
ELI5: Does a company care about whether it's stock price is high or low? | 280 | Yes, for many reasons.
I'll assume that by "company" you actually mean the executive leadership and board members. A random employee may care indirectly (if the stock price is really low they might get laid off) but the stock price has very little direct effect on them.
The board and CXOs are typically compensated mostly in stock. So for them an increase in stock prices directly translates into extra money for them. For example, every time the price of Activision Blizard goes up by $1 Bobby Kotick's net worth goes up by $4million.
Companies may also need to raise additional financing. Sometimes this is in the form of a "secondary equity offering". Sometimes it's through debt. The stock price matters for both of them.
For the first it's pretty obvious. During an IPO a company typically only sell some of the shares. If they need more money they can later sell more shares. The higher the stock price the more they can get for those shares.
When companies try to take on debt the debtors try to figure out how likely they are to get their money back. If the company has great credit and they're almost guaranteed to pay everything back on time (AAA), they can get a good interest rate. If the company is likely to default creditors will demand compensation for that risk in the form of increased interest.
A major factor in estimating the default probability is to look at what percentage of the companies total assets would be needed to cover the debts. That is, if a company has trouble repaying debt, they can sell stock. The lower the stock price the more they need to sell to cover the debt. If the price gets too low they can't pay their debts even if they sold the entire company.
In addition to a low price making it more expensive to borrow money it can also trigger "debt covenants". Most loans have clauses that will force automatic asset sales if the stock price gets below a certain level. | 461 |
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Why does a person die when their neck is snapped? | Is the brain unable to tell the heart to continue beating, so the brain dies of oxygen deprivation? If so, would this mean that a person who is hanged appears dead immediately but actually remains alive and alert for another minute or two?
Or am I way off? | 33 | >Is the brain unable to tell the heart to continue beating, so the brain dies of oxygen deprivation?
Nope. The heart is so cool it has its own nervous system (impulses originating in a structure called the S.A. node) that keeps it beating regardless of all else but oxygen supply to the heart. Death from a broken neck is generally caused by severing of the phrenic nerve which controls the diaphragm muscle which facilitates breathing.
>If so, would this mean that a person who is hanged appears dead immediately but actually remains alive and alert for another minute or two?
Hanging (and some other forms of neck breaking) also puts pressure on the carotid arteries (blood vessels which supply blood to the brain) which causes unconsciousness in seconds and death in minutes. That is long/standard drop hanging though and there are some forms (short drop) which are designed to just cut off air supply to the lungs at the trachea (or just severe the phrenic nerve) resulting in strangulation which involves 10min or so of consciousness.
When a good guy breaks a bad guy's neck in a movie they would indeed lie there unable to move or breath for several minutes unless the breakage caused the bone or swelling to interfere with blood flow to the brain or pain caused them to pass out. | 46 |
ELI5 - If the body's internal temperature is roughly 37 degrees Celsius, why does it feel really hot when the outside temperature is 37 degrees Celsius? | Sorry not in Fahrenheit for our American friends. What is 37 Celsius in Fahrenheit? | 106 | Our skin is a natural heatsink. The heat from our core warms up the skin which is cooled down by the surrounding air. Sweating speeds up this heat transfer process. But if the air tempature and body temperature are both 37°C, this process slows down and we are venting less heat whilst constantly producing more heat, making us feel hotter.
Does it help if you imagine trying to cool boiling water down with boiling water? | 51 |
CMV: Ostracization of bigots is better than giving bigots a platform | So I would like to think that most sensible and reasonable people find discrimination to be abhorrent, so I'm open to having my view changed if we agree on the goal but just differ on how to get there. For me, I feel like, just like bullies, the best thing that we can do as a society is to not engage with racists / people who are anti-LGBTQ / misogynists etc. Ignore their attempts to get a rise out of you. Unfriend them. Don't give their inflammatory opinions any oxygen. And yes, I think we should deplatform them. The alternative of giving them a platform just allows them to find like-minded people to grow their twisted ideologies and recruit others. If they're given a platform, they will think their views have validity. But if confronted with ostracization, they'll learn that there are consequences to their beliefs, and that's the first step to questioning them. I don't think we should give them the same privileges that they themselves wouldn't give to marginalized groups. We should stop tolerating extremism. | 20 | The problem with ostracizing them is that it doesn't address the problem, it just hides it. Forcing someone into the shadows won't force them to question their beliefs, it makes them feel like they are correct to feel persecuted.
We should engage with abhorrent views. Wherever they come up, they should be addressed. We cannot prevent people from forming likeminded groups, but we can make sure that anyone who sees their messages also sees the rational, reasoned arguments against them. That way we can prevent as many people as possible from being radicalized.
For an example, look at the flat earth movement. They are ostracized and ridiculed now. That has not stopped the movement. It pushed them onto the fringes. Now, people are introduced to it in indirect ways to shift their perception of the world until they come to question everything that disagrees with their new beliefs. The solution is not to hide their arguments, it is to continue to debunk them so more people don't fall down the rabbit hole. | 49 |
Why does orbital penetration reduce the energy of an orbital? | I've read that by approaching the nucleus, the electrons lose energy. So i'm guessing that the 2s orbital is lower in energy than 2p since it is more penetrating, likewise for how 1s is lower energy than 2s. I would like to think this has something to do with Coulomb's Law but I'm not too sure why or how electrons lose energy near the nucleus? | 31 | In a 1 electron system, the energy of 2s and 2p is identical. However, in a multielectron system the 2s is slightly lower in energy. The attraction between the 2p electrons and the nucleus is screened by the 1s electrons, i.e. the negative charge of the 1s electron cancels out some of the positive charge from the nucleus, so the 2p electron feels less attractive force. Note that this only happens because the 1s electron is in between the nucleus and the 2p electron. The 2s electron, on the other hand, has some orbital density very close to the nucleus, so it is less affected by the screening effect of the 1s electron. | 13 |
ELI5: how does private equity work? | I understand private equity is just a group of people buying a company, but oftentimes the debt to purchase the company is put on the company itself. How does this work and why is this possible?
How can you take out a loan to buy something and make that same thing pay it back?
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If private equity often signals the death of a company anyways, why sell yourself to private equity firms? | 130 | Lots and lots and lots of misinformation in here. The basic idea is this: private equity simply refers to firms that invest in private companies (i.e., not public). The goal of private equity funds is to purchase a company, make it more valuable, and then sell it at a later date to another buyer (like another PE firm or strategic corporate buyer) for a profit. In purchasing a company, most often PE firms will use debt to fund some of the purchase price (leveraged buyout or LBO). Think of it like a mortgage, but instead of an individual buying a house a PE firm gets to buy a business. If they put too much debt on the business and the business starts to do poorly, they might not be able to make their interest payments and default on that debt. That’s a really bad thing for all parties involved, including the PE firm. The PE firm owns the equity of the business, which is subordinated to the debt. So if the debt holders can’t be made whole, the equity holders lose all of their money. The way PE firms make money is to grow the business and sell at a higher price than they bought (while paying down debt and building equity like you would do in a house).
A bunch of people posting here only know what they read in the news about situations like Toys-R-Us and the like, but the truth is that in the vast majority of PE investments they want to make the business grow and be more valuable for the next owner. Bankruptcies and liquidations are not good for equity holders. | 67 |
[Fallout: New Vegas] How could the Bright Brotherhood possibly have failed to reach the moon and yet survived? | In the good ending, it is said that the ghoul cultists helped some civilians get away from the fighting during the final battle, obviously meaning that they survived their attempted voyage to the moon yet did not actually reach the moon.
From this, I personally like to surmise that they crashed but miraculously all survived, and Jason interpreted this as a sign that they should remain on Earth and work to improve their kind's relations with normal humans rather than fleeing from them, but the question still remains to speculate on regarding the circumstances, and location, etc., of their somehow non-fatal crash. | 61 | They may have had enough fuel to get into orbit, but not to escape Earth orbit and slingshot out to the moon. However, your theory that it was purely a leadership justification for an accident is more likely. | 32 |
How do we take pictures of our galaxy if we are in our galaxy? | So we have pictures of the Milky way but we are in the Milky Way?
Edit:Rip my inbox
Thanks for the replies everyone!!! | 4,041 | Assuming you mean plan view, we don't.
All images like that described as showing our galaxy are either digitally (or manually) produced images, or images of other galaxies similar to ours.
We can see the milky way in our sky, and being on the outer limb of one of the arms we see it as a broad band of stars dominating one hemisphere of sky. It's in profile. We have no photograph taken that shows the milky way in plan view. | 3,115 |
I believe a lot of people with 'scientific understanding' rely on a dogma just as much, if not more-so than religious people. CMV | **I have responded** please see update 1&2
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Let me just define my meaning of 'scientific understanding'. The typical view of someone who uses scientific theory and experiment as a factual representation of the universe and reality. The person with dogmatic beliefe then, has a concrete belief in an objective reliance of scientific theorem. Let me also warn you that this is a very pedantic post.
Looking at the following thought process:
I subjectively observe a table.
I have a distorted 'picture' of that table in my mind
Meaning, the picture I have of the table then..
has less information than the 'real' table
So I then say that reality exists and I observe it with subjectivity
However, if I am always confided to the distorted/subjective reality
I can then say that to me, 'outside reality' doesn't exist
As I have no tangible link to it
And the only reality I can verify exists,
...is the local reality of my own experience
I believe you cannot objectify reality without assumptions. And the closest we can get to objectify reality is it's structure not the content. Therefore, all information and knowledge are objective derivatives of subjective (and distorted) data/input.
These peoples 'Scientific understanding' then, relies on the *faith* of a subtle yet hugely significant unfalseifiable set of assumptions. Such as claiming an objective reality is real outside our own mind. This faith is dogmatic as proof (in my opinion) doesn't exist. Therefore...
*I believe a lot of people with 'scientific understanding' rely on a dogma just as much, if not more-so than religious people. CMV*
Just for clarification, it's my belief that people *can* have scientific understanding without dogma. These people I would describe as people who are aware of the assumptions they and others may adhere to. And that they have an abstract metaphysical understanding of where their understanding sits with the current scientific theorem. (*e.g. someone who accepts a new observation on the sun, yet realises the sun may be a projected input into their mind feeding into their experience not unlike the movie 'The Matrix' - so the sun might not be 'real'*).
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TLDR & ELi5: ~~Those who followed 'scientific understanding' over 'religious understanding' during the times when we believed the earth was ~~flat what the sun revolved around - held on to a belief the earth was flat just like some people also held on to the belief of religion.~~ A proper scientific understanding, is open to conflicting 'truths' and is aware of the assumptions of the current meta-scientific-theorem.
Edit: Note, it is not the 'science' that provides the dogma, it is the way some people interpret it/use it in their thinking/cognitive dissonance.
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***Update:***
Firstly I was overwhelmed at the comments; in how I could have portrayed my view better as some people misinterpreted me, in how many great comments came about and in how there was a genuinely good discussion.
Secondly, I must admit, I did use religion inappropriately here. I knew this type of title would get a lot of attention. Luckily it paid off, and people were able to get my meaning. My main point was that I find that science relies on a set of assumptions which a lot of people aren't aware of - or fully understanding of. [My thread here](http://www.reddit.com/r/neurophilosophy/comments/1erbfj/cognitive_relativity/) goes into more detail on the view. But my view comes with a frustration of being poorly presented and the struggle can be seen today and in the linked thread. But there's a great deal of comments here that I can sieve through and either a) change my view b) better portray my view. So for that many thanks, I regret I have tested peoples patience enough, but I cannot commit to any comments changing my view yet. Please understand it will take some time to read through, today or another day - I will try to award a delta where appropriate.
Opposing points:
> My use of the word 'dogmatic/dogma' wasn't completely appropriate.
* I wanted to illustrate that some people 'believe' in science with faith. Specifically, that reality is exclusively objective or rational. This is complimented usually by their inability to properly identify their subjective bias and the assumptions they and science make.
> My use of the phrase 'scientific understanding' was slightly confusing.
* There are people who have a scientific understanding which I would (as per my view) categorize as proper scientific understanding like [here](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1hxgyq/i_believe_a_lot_of_people_with_scientific/cayzhj5) by user /u/rmill3r. As well as the type mentioned in the above bullet point.
> Scientific 'belief' is 'better' than the religious 'belief'
* This was not an intended talking point - I just used it as a comparison that would catch the eye of science-minded people. Therefore I will not address which is 'better' because a) I can't fully represent a religious person as I am not b) the terms for 'better' are subjective and differ. However I do have somewhat of an opinion on this and I think for evolution and survival, it is necessary to favor a scientific belief over a religious for the physical sake of survival only.
Before I revisit the thread with the intention of dishing out any deltas that may be warranted, let me leave with some links for people interested in this topic that may be new to it.
Existentialism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentialism
Ontology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology
Systems Theory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_theory
And most importantly Cognitive Dissonance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
Also be sure to look into the awesome comments I know I will read some more than once and I may message people to discuss their views further and share the love for this kind of discussion.
**Update 2: Please note a lot of people are confusing *'practising'* science with *'believing'* in science.** Also I have responded [here](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1hxgyq/i_believe_a_lot_of_people_with_scientific/cazlk5p?context=3).
| 224 | You are correct in your understanding of scientific knowledge as incomplete and approximate. The perspectives on the universe rooted in scientifc knowledge are models of understanding, NOT precise descriptions of essential truth. However, you are incorrect in thus equating it with dogma.
The scientifically-based models are rigorously tested and fit observed evidence to this point. More importantly, those models are not only up for review and change, but the *entire goal of scientific research* is to make changes to that model, usually by filling in details.
Dogma is, by definition, laid down by authority. It has no connection with observed evidence. Dogma also by definition is incontrovertible, beyond debate.
To say that treating scientific knowledge as fact is a form of dogmatic thinking is unsound reasoning, treating a degree of inaccuracy implicit in an incomplete or subjectively observed scientific model of the universe as equivalent to the absolute lack of evidence or rigor characteristic of religious dogma. | 406 |
ELI5: How does soap actually disinfect germs? | 15 | And for the germ-killing (*antibacterial*) soap...
Most germs (*bacteria*) are built like medieval cities, with the good stuff inside and walls (*cell membranes*) to protect them. These walls have gates with gatekeepers (*ion channels/porins*) to let only specific things and people (*nutrients and wastes*) pass. If this wall is compromised, things would be really bad.
Germ-killing soap almost always work by doing damage to the walls. Some are general "wall-breakers", and others (e.g., gramicidin) insert arbitrary gates into the walls... so workers that were supposed to stay in goes out, and all becomes splattery goo. Ack. | 11 |
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[40k] If the emperor told everyone not to worship him when he was alive then how did the whole cult of the emperor get started? | 198 | The early Horus Heresy books touch on this.
Basically, the universe is a pretty sucky place to start, and in the aftermath of the HH it got even suckier. Humans sort of needed a something to put their faith in, and it was hard to put that faith in progress and reason when things were just straight up getting worse all the time. So instead, they put their faith in the massive, gold plated, immortal, incredibly powerful godlike being who created the Imperium in which they lived, ruled it, and then died defending it.
In conclusion, DIE HERETIC! | 224 |
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ELI5: Why 5G towers and remotely read electricity meters and the EMF they emit are NOT dangerous. | I don't believe they are, but I'm after a convincing argument to use with those who do, that isn't condescending and they might consider.
I work for a power company and get a lot people complaining that they don't want one of those remotely-read (via cell network) electricity meters so close to their kids' bedroom because of "the harmful EMF from the meter".... (while calling from a mobile phone, in their home, which surely also has wifi and a microwave oven).
Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is tinfoil hat shit, right? I know about ionising vs non-ionising radiation, and my understanding is that therefore the EMF these people complain about is harmless and their claims that their kids "have a condition that makes them vulnerable to EMF" are bullshit.
I need to know how to explain this kindly, and hopefully turn a few conspiracy theorists and technophobes.
Googling it just gives me questionable articles that suggest maybe there is some danger. I need cold, hard, truth about why your precious kiddos aren't in any danger from you installing a smart meter. | 39 | There's two types of electromagnetic radiation (EMF): Ionizing and non-ionizing.
Ionizing waves have high energy and a short wavelength. Since their wavelength is so short, they can interact with matter on the molecular level. A photon, a packet of light energy, will sometimes collide with an electron and knock it off its atom. This results in the atom having a net positive electrical charge. This slightly changes its chemical properties and can cause DNA molecules not to replicate properly, increasing the odds of cell going cancerous. The immune system is pretty good at dealing with a few cells that mutate like this, but enough exposure overtime will increase the likelihood of developing a tumor. The high energy of the photons can also cause burns.
Ionizing electromagnetic radiation includes ultraviolet light, x-rays, and gamma rays.
Non-ionizing radiation is exactly what it sounds like. They have low energy and long wavelengths. Too long and too low to knock the electrons off their atoms. Though it can cause regular old burns if concentrated in one spot, by say a laser or microwave oven.
Non-ionizing radiation includes radio waves, microwaves, infrared radiation, and visible light.
5G operates in the microwave band, close to the frequencies used by WiFi routers. These devices use relatively low energy that's spread out over a wide area. So where as a laser focuses it in one spot, these are more like a light bulb. There is no known health risk associated with it. Any claims otherwise is strictly psudo-science.
It's also worth mentioning that you are constantly surrounded by both natural and man made magnetic fields. The Earth generates a pretty darn big one. High energy particles also continuously bombard us from space. Any time you run current through a wire, you also generate a magnetic field.
The more legitimate concerns over 5G are security related. Much of the infrastructure is being manufactured by Huawei, a company that has direct ties to the Chinese Communist Party. So there's worries it could be used to bug the telecom systems of rival states. But that's more a geopolitical concern than one that's going to affect the average users. At least in direct terms. | 49 |
How much healthier is fresh food vs frozen food vs canned food? | Also, what is the actual difference? Are there fewer vitamins? If so, where do they go, or how do they get destroyed? | 80 | It's possible for frozen food to be healthier than fresh food. These days, it is often frozen within hours of harvesting, whereas "fresh" vegetables will spend anywhere from hours to days simply refrigerated in stores.
Canned food which has been heat treated contains less essential amino acids, and often has had salt or sugar added to it. Canned peas often come loaded with sugar for example.
(Source: food chemistry classes) | 61 |
I always see representations of the solar system with the planets existing on the same plane. If that is the case, what is "above" and "below" our solar system? | Sorry if my terminology is rough, but I have always thought of space as infinite, yet I only really see flat diagrams representing the solar system and in some cases, the galaxy. But with the infinite nature of space, if there is so much stretched out before us, would there also be as much above and below us? | 1,922 | In the solar system, all of the planets are on the same plane, but there are lots of smaller objects which have orbits which are at angles to the plane of the planets.
As for the galaxy, it is also roughly flat, and has a diameter about 100 times larger than it's thickness. Within the galaxy, the stars have planetary systems which are aligned randomly at all different angles to the plane of the galaxy. | 861 |
When we talk about "technology", why do we talk about high techs like computers & gadgets, artificial intelligence, bioengineering. But not plumbing, scissors, baskets? | Technology can be defined as "the collection of techniques, skills, methods, and processes used in the production of goods or services or in the accomplishment of objectives."
We speak of hammers, saws, pickaxes only when we discuss them in the context of *primitive* or non-modern period. But when we speak of it in today's context, we don't consider them as technology. Why? | 63 | This seems like a loaded question. What do you want to know about hammers, saws, and pickaxes from a social scientific perspective?
The definition of technology that you provide is nice and general and pretty consistent with the way it is used across a broad variety of kinds of research. For example, historians, anthropologists, and archaeologists would all use the term technology in reference to the kinds of "primitive" tools that you mention because the development and use of such tools at particular times or by particular groups is of especial interest to those disciplines. In the field of organizational behavior, one might see the term technology applied to management or human service techniques as a way of explaining how organizations accomplish their goals of getting people to do what they need them to do. Generally, sociologists and other social scientists who study modern or contemporary society are going to focus on those technologies that are most socially transformative. Arguably, a lot of "high technology" fits the bill. That being said, one could make a strong argument that some important low technologies, like plumbing, are grossly understudied.
All of these things are technology. Whether or not lay people call them that is a separate question. Sometimes people make the distinction between "high technology" or "high tech" and "low technology" or "low tech" in reference to the difference between computers and robotics, on the one hand, and simple, mechanical tools on the other. But these terms still draw on a broad understanding of technology. | 17 |
[SCP] [Jojo's Bizarre Adventure] What would the SCP Foundation do about all the Stand users running around? | If of course they existed in the same universe. | 15 | The Stand Arrow becomes SCP-#### and stand users become SCP-####-001, 002, 003, etc.
Having a stand user on staff would be a double-edged sword. On one hand, the tendency of stand users to run into and fight each other would be instrumental in the mission to hunt them down. On the other hand, it might be detrimental to attempts to keep other stand users contained. | 20 |
What does it really mean when they say that COVID-19 is "airborne"? How is it any different from other viral infections like the flu? | Recently, I've seen a few posts and articles pop up saying that the virus is airborne and that it lingers for a while. But isn't it known that in droplet infections, the minute droplets linger around for a bit before settling down? Haven't we already been treating it as such? | 25 | Airborne means that the individual viral particles can survive in the air without the need to be suspended in tiny water droplets.
The flu is not airborne and that means the flu needs to be transmitted in liquid droplets ie from a sneeze or a cough.
The implications for it being airborne mean that it has a higher chance of transmission and regular face coverings that are not N95 approved might not be suitable to filter out those airborne particles | 40 |
ELI5: Why does New England have cold an snowy winters even though they are on the same latitude as southern Europe? | 134 | Latitude is only one part of the formula that determines local climate. One very important factor is the Gulf Stream: a flow of warm water that goes north from Florida before crossing the Atlantic around Newfoundland and then follows the European coastline. The warm water helps make the climate of Europe mild, but because the stream is a ways off from the coastline in northern North America, New England (and more so, the Canadian region of Labrador) are left comparatively cold.
Incidentally, New England also has a rather humid climate, which encourages snowfall when it is cold. | 99 |
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Can you explain how forces such as the strong nuclear force to gravity is mediated through particles? | E.g. gluons mediating the strong force between quarks. Gravitons (I know they have not been detected yet) etc.
EDIT: 'ARE mediated through particles' :( | 338 | Forces are not literally mediated through particles. Forces can be approximately described as being mediated by "virtual particles" in the approximation framework known as perturbation theory. For example, electrons interact via the electromagnetic field, and ripples in the electromagnetic field are called photons. So it makes sense that you could approximately describe the interaction between electrons in terms of exchanges of ripples in the electromagnetic field. Similarly for the strong force or gravity. | 71 |
ELI5 How do "Lock Ons" work in military jets. | 1,339 | "Locking on" is a very general term; there are a bunch of different ways you can track a target (which is the goal of all of them).
Simplest is passive tracking: identifying and following the target by looking for it against the background, for example looking out for a cyclist on the road. They don't have any lights or reflectors and you don't have a torch, so you just have to look closely and rely on background light to see things. When you're "locked on" here, what you're really saying is that you're confident you can keep track of the cyclist. This is how daylight TV-guided missiles work: they have a sensor which detects contrast (or in more advanced systems, shape and colour and contrast and...) just like we do. Very similar is passive tracking of emissions: just the same as before, but the cyclist has lights now. You can see the light they emit much more easily, so you can a) find them further away and b) track them better, because they are more visible. This is what the Sidewinder does (with infrared light from jet engines, and in more advanced versions from the heat on the leading edges of wings and things), and the HARM (an anti-radar missile for killing surface-to-air missile sites) does with RADAR emissions. When all these things (say they) are "locked on", it just means their software is confident that they can track the thing they've been assigned and not get confused. It's a sliding scale, essentially.
More complicated (and more binary) is "locking on" with an active radar or missile. Back to the cyclist: it's dark now, so to find the bike, you first use a big torch set to wide beam to look around, scanning a wide area. Once you spot the cyclist, you switch to a narrow beam pointed straight at him, and move it so you follow his motion. You're now "locked on" because you've switched from not actively following a target, to actively tracking their movements. Several different kinds of missile then use this: "beamriding" missiles have a detector in the *back* of the missile, and stay within the torchlight (or rather, radar beam) until they hit the target; "semi-active radar homing" does a clever trick where the missile follows the reflection from the target independently. You keep the target in the beam, and the missile follows the now-quite-bright target - equivalent to your mate on another bicycle hunting the first guy, by looking where you shine the torch. Locking on isn't obligatory with either of these methods: you can (and early SAM operators had to) just sweep the beam manually, and manually track the target. Obviously this is pretty difficult against a target who doesn't want to die, and is a lot to ask of a modern fighter pilot, so we have computers for it now.
The most complicated variant is "active radar homing" missiles, which pack a radar transmitter and receiver of their own into the front of the missile. Rather than relying on you to keep the target lit up, your mate on the bicycle now has his own torch, so once you've found the target cyclist, he can follow it for himself, as he closes in. You're free to start looking for other targets. "Locked on" here means that the missile's radar has acquired the target from the plane's radar and can track it, rather than just that the plane's radar is tracking.
**EDIT** (for Americans and others who rejected our fair and rainy isle) : "torch" means "flashlight". In some parts of Yorkshire many people's torches actually have a small coal fire behind the lens to provide the light, and young boys are often employed in winter to stoke people's torches up when they leave the pub. | 1,622 |
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How did heavy metals arrive on Earth during planetary formation? | I understand that most heavy metals are created during supernovae and ejected during the explosion, but I'm not quite understanding as to how so much of anything metallic - especially elements higher in the periodic table - came to be part of the primordial dust cloud - a cloud composed of still so *very much* hydrogen that plenty of stars could form in our neighbourhood - that we have such a mix of elements here, and likely on any planet? | 17 | Our Sun is second (possibly third) generation, meaning that it was formed from the remains (stellar nebula) of previous supernovae. Earth and the other planets are little bits of the origin stellar disk the Sun formed from, and that's how we got a lot of our heavy elements. Presumably some came in the form of later bombardment as well. | 18 |
ELI5: Why do childhood years seem to last longer than adulthood years | I'm almost 24 and feel like the last 3 years of my life didn't happen. Recently, I can picture myself turn 40 all of a sudden. The last 3 years of my life felt like 3 months compared to 3 of my childhood years. | 155 | As a kid, you do more fun things, and thus remember more fun. As an adult, you're mostly just trying to get by, you go on autopilot, and suddenly five years have gone by, you're almost 40 and one of the Ghostbusters is dead | 113 |
ELI5: Due to the extra chromosome, do people with Down Syndrome only accept blood from other people with Down Syndrome? | 115 | No. Red blood cells don't have chromosomes anyway.
The real problems with blood transfusion has nothing to do with DNA, but usually involves blood types. To give an ELI5 view, blood types refer to ways of classifying blood characteristics. For example, the one most people focus on is the ABO system, which refers to antibodies in the plasma and antigens on the blood cells. If you mix give somebody the wrong blood type, it can be a problem. For example, a person with Blood Type A typically has antibodies specifically against the antigens Blood Type B, so person with Blood Type A identifies these new blood cells as foreign and starts attacking it. Something similar can happen with other blood typing groups, but this (and the Rhesus factor--another antigen that might be on a person's blood cell) is the big one.
Therer are other risks as well, usually when there's something else mixed in the blood. Cytokines are common, which can cause a fever and inflammation, but it's usually pretty mild. There's also occasionally infections or contaminants that can make somebody sick.
But Down Syndome itself doesn't affect blood, donated or received. | 70 |
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I believe it's unfair that CEO's make millions while the lowest paid workers barely make enough to get by. I believe it's unfair to make that much money while your men make minimum wage. | Like the title says, I believe presidents (of companies), CEO, and other high ranking members of management in companies make wayy too much money while the bottom of the rung employees make minum wage. Some say that is the way capitalism works. I think it's unfair. Personally, If I was the CEO of a multi billion dollar company the only way I'd pay myself millions was if my employees were banking good money. People call me a communist every time I say this. CMV
EDIT: holy cow front page. With that said thank you all for your valuable input I know understand more of the role of a CEO and why they are worth so much. It just bothers me that they can screw up, get payed millions to leave, while tons of bottom workers get nothing.
For those of you asking "what are bottom workers worth?" it kinda saddens me you see your fellow man as a commodity with a price tag rather than a human trying to make ends meet. Front end employees are the ones running your business 100% of the time dealing with costumers and building your company image. Surely they are worth more than minimum wage.
Again several people asked rethorical questions asking about the fairness of life. Life isn't fair, that doesn't mean we can just sit there and do nothing. Thank you all for your time. | 146 | That's not how money works. Money is not an absolute, it's an arbitrary and changing unit of worth.
Minimum wage is a floor meant to insure no one makes less than it, but it is an arbitrary number. Prices of goods and services are then set relative to wages. If everyone suddenly makes double, the cost of everything will go up as well. The workers will be no better off, and inflation will have killed whatever long term savings they might have had.
So there will always be people making the minimum. Often it's for low skill work, things that most people can do or that not produce a lot of return. If a worker is only generating $10 of work per hour you need to pay him less than $10/hour or you will be losing money. If it's something anyone can do, why is it "fair" that the company pay more than the dollar value of the work?
As for executives, they have a much more demanding job. Few people have the training and skill to administrate a large company at a high level. They are in high demand, the responsibility is huge, and there is not a large source of workers who could be substituted to do the job.
Is your complaint simply that both these things exist at the same company or that they exist at all? Because the two are not linked, minimum wage workers are not minimum wage because of executive pay or the other way around. | 75 |
[Star Wars] Why did the Emperor offer no resistance when Vader threw him into the reactor? | When Vader picks him up, it's like the Emperor almost immediately gives up. Was there some force-work at play, here? Was he being electrified by his own lightning? | 25 | Force lightning is a very powerful dark side technique. It requires a great deal of emotion to power the attack. This is also the moment when the Emperor had just seen his apprentice defeated, and his plans for Luke fail.
Basically, he was literally out of his mind with rage when Vader picked him up. Being betrayed and then thrown down the pit only increased his rage, essentially locking him into undirected Force Lightning.
It's a pitfall of the Dark Side, a lack of control. | 51 |
Many people seem to believe that society is changing faster today than it did in the past. Is this a cognitive bias, is the world perhaps changing in different ways and we have forgotten the significance of past changes, or is there some truth in this statement? | 77 | One thing nobody seems to have mentioned yet is population growth. There are *seven times* as many people alive today as there were 200 years ago. Overall, the standard of living for most people has improved over the last two centuries, so a proportionately-larger number of those people are literate and educated (to some extent, at least).
If Albert Einstein (to pick a random example) was a one-in-a-billion intellect, then there were only one or two people at his level when he was born. There are 6 or 7 of them out there right now.
As societies around the world grow in technological sophistication, the number of scientists and engineers grows faster than the population growth. This makes the exponential growth of technological innovation outpace even the exponential growth of the population, and is arguably why we aren't all starving right now, despite people's gloom-and-doom predictions of the Earth's "maximum carrying capacity" only a few decades ago. | 16 |
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ELI5: How exactly does counting cards work and how does it level the playing field against a casino or improve one's chance of winning? | 76 | Counting Cards is all about keeping track of probability.
Let's say you're playing blackjack. And the first five cards that are dealt are relatively low (let's say less than seven).
If you keep track of this, you know that the probability of drawing a high card is larger than normal because several low cards have already been played. This information will help you decided whether or not it's smart to hit or pass. | 28 |
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What is the difference between scotch, whiskey, bourbon, and rye? | 57 | They are all "whiskey" (despite differences in spelling) in that they are spirits made from grain. Generally, the names refer to where they are made, scotch being made in Scotland and Bourbon being made in Kentucky. "Rye" means that rye (a type of grain) is used. Rye can be made anywhere, but tends to be more common in Canadian whiskey.
Despite the similarities, differences in the process (the use of peat fires in making scotch gives it it's distinctive smoky flavor) and the ingredients (corn giving Bourbon a bit more sweetness) make pretty significant differences in the end. | 26 |
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[Daredevil] Why is Daredevil unable to see ninjas from the Hand when he can see what kind of tools are inside of a medkit from across the room which are all inanimate objects? | 232 | Sound absorbent materials.
Daredevil "sees" via a form of echo location. Sound bounced off the medkit in a way that made it identifiable.
The Hand's clothing, however, absorbs more sound than it reflects. Not unlike how stealth aircraft work. At best it confuses his "sight". At worst they're invisible to him. When he can focus on their breathing though he can pick them out. | 180 |
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ELI5: What cause that "heart throb"/"tighten up lung" feeling when you are extremely sad/ heart broken? | First hand experience on Monday and still going through it from an out of the blue break up.
Edit: thanks guys for not only sharing answers but also stories and advices. Sadly the thread is locked so I cant reply to some of you.
"To day is gonna be a great day and you know why!!!? Cause EVERYDAY is a GREAT day!!"-MarkE Miller
EDIT2: just checked inbox and thanks again for the love through pm guys! | 3,214 | Effectively your body thinks that you are in fight or flight mode because it doesn't have a great mechanism to deal with heartbreak. Your autonomic nervous system takes over for your body (essentially autopilot) and tells the rest of your body "HOLY SHIT SOMETHING BAD IS HAPPENING WE NEED TO BE WORKING DOUBLE TIME TO RUN OR FIGHT OUR WAY OUT" and then your heart pumps faster and that starts hurting your chest. The shortness of breath is for a similar reason but it's because your body is trying to breathe a lot more than it needs to. | 2,560 |
When you wake up by yourself after a period of time (be that 7 hours or 12), is that the amount of sleep your body required? | 59 | The simple answer to your question is: no, not necessarily. A lot of it depends on the timing.
In terms of the biological factors involved, sleep timing can be largely understood in terms of two processes:
1) Your circadian rhythm, which times your 24 h rhythm of sleepiness, hunger, hormone release, etc.
2) Your sleep pressure, which increases the longer you are awake and decreases the longer you are asleep.
In addition, environmental influences, such as light and noise, may alter your sleep patterns and your likelihood of awakening, but let's forget about those for the moment. Sleep timing can then be understood quite well in terms of the above two processes.
Your circadian rhythm promotes wakefulness during the biological day and sleep during the biological night. That means that even if you have a very high sleep need, you may not be able to sleep well during the day. This is something that often affects shift-workers.
For similar reasons, it may not be possible for some people to sleep in, even with a large sleep debt, due to the wake signal provided by the circadian rhythm around the normal waking time. This also means that if you manage to fall asleep earlier than you usually do, you can sometimes sleep all the way to your usual wake time.
Now, to get to your specific example, sleeping for 12 hours continuously suggests either or both of the following: (i) sleep was initiated much earlier than usual; (ii) there was a pre-existing sleep debt.
It is also worth noting that one night of increased sleep duration is insufficient to compensate for a sleep debt built over weeks. | 34 |
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How do scientists know how much dark matter a galaxy has or doesn't have? | 16 | You take a galaxy and measure the rotation speeds of the stars. When you plot them on a graph of orbital speed Vs their radial distance, you'll see that it doesn't add up. There should be more mass present to account for all that speed. Then you figure out how much mass should be there for the stars to be going that fast and voila. (Simplified version) | 15 |
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[Dresden Files] Lots of wizards died in the war with the Red Court. Like lots. Why didn't we see wizards doing amazing things with their death curses? | It seems like good opportunity to do something great, but no one seems to do it. One of the Denarian carriers, Cassius, pulled out that "Die alone" death curse so it doesn't need to be just pure destruction. Donald Morgan was a formiddable wizard. Why didn't he do something amazing in his last minutes? | 30 | Death curses are not the effect of a wizard dying, contrary to popular belief. It is the final spell expended by a dying wizard, fueled by all his remaining life force and magic. So, for a death curse to have any effect, the wizard must have time to formulate his curse and choose his target. If death was instantaneous, or the wizard is somehow incapacitated from conscious thought before dying, then he could not cast his death curse.
In the war against the Red Court, the wizards were fighting an enemy with superior strength and speed. Most likely, after the first few death curses, the vampires adapted their tactics appropriately. Also keep in mind, more than a few nobles of the Red Court were spellcasters, in addition to whoever the Black Council sent to aid the Reds. They have more than enough experience to formulate such tactics.
As for Donald Morgan, who was he going to target with his curse? The only appropriate target was the traitor that he just killed mere seconds earlier. | 13 |
ELI5 Why do TV shows have different directors for each episode? | 325 | The first reason is purely practicality. TV production is much more fast paced than film production, and there are almost always multiple episodes in different stages of their production being made. Therefore it is much more efficient and usually better for the end product to have different creative forces (writers, directors, etc.) behind each episode.
The second reason is simply to provide variety to the show. On any kind of art it can be very helpful to bring in fresh perspectives to the project. A lot of television show runners want to keep the audience excited with new, varying styles, and a lot of the time different directors are even better at certain types of episodes than others (think an episode with a lot of car chases and explosions vs. one based mostly around dialogue).
This all really varies with the show. An extreme example is the show LOST, where different writers an directors were even paired with their own characters. Each time an episode focused on a certain character, those writers and directors were much more likely to work on that episode. | 278 |
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Why can plastic only be recycled a few times while glass can be recycled indefinitely? | Specifically: why do the plastic molecules become shorter with each melting down/recycling (thus degrading the material) while glass molecules don't and can therefore be recycled an indefinite number of times without degrading? | 372 | Plastic is a blanket term of polymers. For example, the single-use water bottles are PET (Polyethylene terephthalate), note the poly- prefix meaning that the bottle is built out of huge molecules that consist of lots of ethylene monomers chained together.
These materials are prone to degradation, which is essentially the breaking of these chains making shorter chains, catalyzed by heat or radiation like UV. This will change the properties of the plastic, becoming brittle, etc.
Glass and metal are much simpler, they're just crystalline (or amorphous) materials and need not be arranged a very specific way | 327 |
Voyager 2 has reveled that the interstellar medium near the heliopause has a temperature of around 30,000-50,000K (29,000-49,000C). How and why doesn't Voyager just melt with such tempatures? | Is the vacuum of space the same temp or is it just the infrequent and tiny particles that are this temp? I thought space was rather cold when away from a star. | 177 | Most of the gas in space really is quite hot. Most of the volume of the "interstellar medium" - the gas distributed within a galaxy - is an ionised plasma at around 10,000 K. In intergalactic space, the gas is a hot blob of plasma that has largely been ejected from galaxies through supernova explosions, so it's at ~1,000,000 K. It's only really in dense cool molecular clouds that you get to room temperature or below.
*But* this is an extremely thin gas, and it doesn't transfer heat to solid objects very efficiently, because the rate of collisions is so low. On a human scale, it doesn't feel like a gas/plasma at all, but more like an insulating vacuum. How much a probe heats up or cools down comes down to: how much heat does it produce, how much heat is lost through radiation, and how much heat is gained from radiation. You get heated up by nearby stars and your own internal power source, and cooled down by thermal radiation.
Once you are far away from the Sun, you really don't get don't get much heat at all from the background of Milky Way stars. So the general tendency is to cool down - you emit more radiation than you receive. This is quite a slow process: for a human in a space-suit it's slowed down by your body converting food & air into heat. A human in a space-suit without heating might die of hypothermia, but it'll be over days - they won't be snap frozen like in Mission to Mars. For a probe or satellite, you can even get the opposite problem - the power source might be producing too much heat, and you need to think about how to design it to make sure it cools down.
**tl;dr** interstellar space is full of hot gas that feels cold, but not *that* cold. | 173 |
ELI5: What is special about ARM computer processing? | I keep hearing about the new Macs with ARM processors, as opposed to x86. I don’t understand what either of those mean. | 19 | Processor architecture means the way the processor carries out instructions. x86 is designed to be able to do a bunch of specific complex instructions and ARM is designed to do a limited group of very simple instructions.
But a long time ago people realized that there's no limit to what complex things we'll want to add to the list of automatic complex instructions, and that every complex instructions added to the architecture slows down its ability to do ANY instruction. But you can also do any complex instruction by breaking it down into very simple instructions.
These things put together mean that the more complex things you want to do with a computer, the faster it will be able to do those things if you just build them out of many simple instructions rather than fewer complex instructions.
The problem is, computers were already mostly using x86 when people realized that, so for a couple decades we've been using the less efficient system just because it's what everyone uses and the companies that make processors don't want to have to change.
It's like if you're drawing. It's easy to make straight lines, and triangles, and circles, and squares. And with those shapes, you can draw literally anything else. But if someone gave you a magic pencil that could automatically draw a face, drawing faces would be SO much easier. But if it can only draw the same face then you either have to settle for the fact that all the people you draw will always have the same face, or you'll only be able to automatically draw one face and still have to do the rest by hand any time you draw a group of people. And it'll be completely useless any time you draw a bridge. But if you have a pencil that automatically draws basic shapes, drawing ANYTHING becomes a lot easier. | 27 |
CMV: There is no fair and practical way to pay reparations for past crimes like slavery or what happened to the Native Americans. | **Edit: I also meant to say that I don't mean this as a way to look down on people who might call for reparations. I think 98% of the time people call for it it's well intentioned, and their heart is in the right place. It just doesn't seem viable as an actual policy.**
The way I see it it would be more or less impossible (in a practical sense) to determine who is owed how much and who should pay for it.
In regards to who should be paid, it seems like one would have to do rather extensive DNA testing and historical lineage tracing on every individual American in order to determine who is eligible for payment, and how much. For example, would a Native American whose ancestors helped Europeans kill off other Native Americans be owed as much reparations as Native Americans who were solely victimized by the Europeans? Doesn't seem like that would be fair. Is a black person who moved here last week and who is descended from the slavers who took and sold slaves during the transatlantic slave trade owed as much in reparations as a black person who has been here for ten generations and whose lineage is on the salve, not slaver, part of that equation? Again, doesn't seem fair to pay them the same amount. And if race and ethnicity accounts for prejudice and a need for reparations, presumably a person who is 95% African and 5% white is owed more than someone who is 50/50, or 30/70, right? So then the government would need to maintain an ethnic DNA database for the entire country which, on top of not seeming all that practical, strikes me as rather dystopian.
And then theres the issue of determining how much they are owed. I don't see any fair or practical way to do this, either. For African Americans, for example, I've seen people say that we should pay them the total estimated number of hours slaves worked x the national minimum wage and just distribute it evenly... but not everyone's ancestors worked the same amount, and again you're running into the same problem as before - black people who never had slave ancestors and in fact had *slaver* ancestors would end up getting paid for the work slaves did. I've also seen people say we should just look at how blacks as a demographic are doing compared to whites or the national average and just pay them the difference, but this seems to run under the faulty assumption that sans any historical discrimination blacks and native Americans would be making exactly what the national average is. We know that this cannot be the case because two historically discriminated groups, Jews and Japanese people, actually do disproportionately well compared to the national average, indicating that culture impacts overall success as much if not more than past discrimination.
Who should pay is another problem that runs into a lot of the same issues as who should be paid. Are you just going to get the money from rich people? So then that would include rich blacks and native Americans, who would be bankrolling reparations to their own people and for injustices that their ancestors also suffered? Doesn't seem fair. Just take the money from white people? So then whites who have no slaver ancestors and who never harmed natives in any way (and indeed perhaps never benefited from American colonialism at all - perhaps they moved here last year from some other country) would be responsible for paying? Just make people pay who had slavers and genocidal killers in their ancestry? Well that group wouldn't just include whites but also Hispanics, blacks, and Native Americans. Do you think reparations would fly if we did all the calculations and found that the Comanche actually come in owing money (rather than getting paid) because of past injustices they committed against other tribes? Or how would it go over if we figured everything out and certain individual natives actually ended up having to pay white people because their ancestors massacred and raided white settlements and took whites as slaves? You don't think people might flip shit if certain black folks who might be poor today get dinged for being on the slaver side of the slave trade? And for that matter there's no assurance that the descendants of white slavers hundreds of years ago are doing well enough to be able to cough up what they "owe" anyways. They might be broke as shit, what do you do then? And all of this is operating under the assumption that it's fair to make someone pay for what someone they didn't know and are only vaguely related to did perhaps hundreds of years ago, which is not a given.
And what about other marginalized groups? If you trace things back far enough in US history, basically the only group that hasn't been at the short end of the marginalization stick is a small caste of direct British descended wealthy white landowning men. Everyone else is fair game for possible reparations. Women, LGBT, Asians, Jews, basically every other European nationality/ethnicity that came over later, etc. If we're gonna hand out reparations to blacks and native Americans there's no reason we shouldn't be handing them out to people descended from non-landowning men, or women (so... everyone), Irish who dealt with NINA, Jews who were discriminated out of Harvard, Chinese forced into bonded servitude, Japanese interred during the second world war, all the discrimination, both legal and social, that the LGBT community has suffered. It goes on and on and on.
So, how the hell does anyone look at all the complications and confusion and work that would be required to do something like reparations even somewhat fairly and think that it would be a good idea to try? CMV. | 53 | You could just avoid the problem by not paying individuals. Communities exist. Build schools in underserved communities. Give grants to historically black colleges. Build communities centers in Harlem and other historically black communities. Improve living conditions on native American reservations.
There is no need to get bogged down in making sure that people who are 64 percent Cherokee get more money than people who are 62 percent Cherokee. If the community has been historically oppressed, give that community funding that it can use to build structures that will improve that community. | 25 |
[general modern era fantasy] how are magic users trained by the military and integrated with the rest of the armed forces? | 20 | Intelligence and medical fields mostly. Modern weapons are easier to use and don't require decades of training or any sort of innate ability. Battlefield scrying, precognition, infiltration, and defenses against those are much cheaper and easier with magic than tech, no need to launch multiple trillion dollar satellites when you just need a couple of guys and their support team. It's the same in the medical field, healers don't need much equipment to restore a broken limb and can do it right on the battlefield, major injuries are easily repaired, and gone are the days of soldiers going home with missing limbs, the only problem left is the psychological impact of said injury. | 18 |
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ELI5: How can some severe long-term alcoholics/smokers/drug addicts maintain full and healthy organ function? | How is it possible for people to be alcoholics/smokers/drug addicts for decades, but develop no liver / heart / lung / jaundice problems and live to a ripe old age? Why do some bodies cave in, and others seemingly remain indestructible?
Edit: To clarify, I don't mean no visible problems, I mean having a full medical and scans, and coming back clean after being on 4 bottles of wine a day for years, or no problems with lung function after decades of 60-a-day smoking, for instance. | 2,844 | when you take toxins into your body, you increase the *chances* of developing a disease related to those toxins. we say things like, "smoking causes lung cancer," and that's not exactly wrong, but it's not a 1-to-1 relation, either. just as some people who never smoke or work in dangerous environments will develop lung cancer, some smokers never will.
part of this is just chance, and part of it is that everybody is different. there may be other environmental or lifestyle factors, too, like exercise level, mental stress level, diet, etc. that help mitigate some of the damage.
but the numbers don't lie: most addicts will suffer predictable physical damage related to their substance of choice. | 1,548 |
CMV: Neither Republicans or Democrats are bad people. Both of them hold valid views and opinions and neither are stupid or evil in any way. | I don’t know if this sort of post is welcome here, especially since it involves politics. However, I made a few comments on r/politics today and I received 80 downvotes in total — the most I’ve ever gotten on Reddit. I wanted to know whether or not I’m in the wrong and let out my thoughts. Also, feel free to look at my comment history.
Anyways, I’m going to make some logical assumptions here. Around 45% of the population consider themselves to be a part of the Democratic Party and around 45% of the population considers themselves to be a part of the Republican Party. Based on those numbers alone, how can anyone say that half our population is either racist, stupid, bigots, or neo-nazis with a straight face?
I’ve heard of some people refer to large portions of populations holding hateful beliefs such as Nazi Germany and the Southern parts of the United States. What we’re experiencing now isn’t remotely comparable though, and even back then, what was going on in those places were incredibly complex. I could go into more detail, but essentially everything isn’t as black and white as it’s painted out to be.
I’ve taken the time to actually listen to *some* of the opinions and stances both the left and right have taken, and most of them seem reasonable. I don’t see how anybody could degrade someone so much for not agreeing with the opinion they have.
I can take the abortion debate for example. Any pro-lifer will say that people that are pro-choice are child murderers and anyone that’s pro-choice will call someone who’s pro-life a stupid sexist. No, it’s not that simple. Both sides have valid reasons to believe the things they do.
From every side of the political isle, and from members of r/politics to r/the_donald. We assume the worst in people and paint everyone who has an opposing view as a monster. I’m tired that we aren’t treating everyone as *people*. It’s something we __must__ do. Everyone deserves respect and should be treated with human decency. | 60 | So, the view you want changed is that neither side is evil and/or stupid?
How could one change such a view? What evidence of evil/stupidity would you find convincing enough that you could apply it to 45% of the population in either direction? | 48 |
I'm writing code slower than 2 years ago | Hello r/AskProgramming.
I'm writing code for more than 7 years now and started doing that professionally 3 years ago. I have experience with mostly Java, JS, C#, PHP. Within these languages I have a common problem. I'm writing code slower than before.
What I'm doing different is I'm trying to create functions that can be used more than one place, trying to write cleaner code and do everything properly. My code is definitely higher quality than before and more useful in the long run but it takes so long to finish a project. Even the smallest bit of code is taking a lot of time and consideration.
Did I get so obsessive with clean code or is it the new normal now? What are your opinions about this? | 41 | Writing clean code is hard work. Naturally, this will take longer than writing non clean code. Of course, clean code is good.
There is a point of being over compulsive about it. The pragmatic programmer talks about this. You need to know when it’s “good enough” and move on. There is a balance.
In the long run, it will take LESS time. Code needs maintenance, code always has bugs. This has a cost to work with. By writing clean code you have front loaded this work and reduced the long term work.
You can speed up writing clean code by first writing a clean DESIGN. Coding with a detailed design is almost trivial. You work out what is reusable, generic, what goes where etc. It also reduces any thrashing , rework etc. | 42 |
[Fantastic 4] What does the Human Torch smell like? | What does he smell like when he's flamed on? Is it possible for fire to burn without emitting a smell? Does he smell like a burning person? Is that distracting to any of the other members of the F4? | 23 | Well, technically he isn't on fire. What Johnny Storm does is pyrokinesis of self-generated plasma, which is more similar to lightning than actual flame. As a result, it would probably not smell of anything in particular, though the air around him may smell like ozone if the plasma destabilized the O2 in the air around Johnny into free Oxygen molecules. | 19 |
ELI5: If we can use the rectum for effectively absorbing suppositories, how come we don't get blood poisoning from all the bacteria and waste minerals in our faeces? | It doesn't make sense to me. | 2,155 | Our digestive tract has a pretty strong barrier (lots of IgA antibodies that act like a web to trap) that prevents bacteria from crossing into the blood. Bacteria (or viruses) have to pass either between or through epithelial cells in order to enter the blood. There are numerous immune cells present to prevent this from happening. Drugs that are absorbed in the intestines are generally lipophilic (fat-loving) and can cross the fatty cell membranes of epithelial cells (think about "like dissolves like") and get into blood.
This is a gross oversimplification, if you want more detail just message me! | 1,289 |
In his critique of Libertarian Liberalism, Clouscard said "everything is permitted but nothing is possible", can someone explain what he meant by this? | 55 | While a completely free market is, in the abstract, the "freest" and least constraining economy, it ultimately ends in less wealth for most people, and thereby fewer actual options and less actual freedom to act | 98 |
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ELI5: How do fossil fuels actually exist without being disturbed, are new amounts always slowly being made? | also when someone finds a fossil, how was it not disturbed for so long | 55 | Well who would disturb them? Fossil fuels and fossils are more often than not pretty deep in the ground where nobody but humans and our technology can get at them.
If you're referring to geological events disturbing them, they certainly do. There are deep sea fossils on the tops of mountains because they were disturbed by geological activity. | 24 |
ELI5: Why is orange juice much cheaper than oranges? | The cost of a bottle of orange juice is much lower than the cost of the oranges needed for me to squeeze out a similar bottle of juice. This is true even for those 100% never-from-concentrate juice. Do the juice manufacturers use the pulp and rind for something else? | 25 | Aside from the fact that juice manufacturers can buy in maybe bulk, thereby getting discounts, and aside from the fact that through futures (contracts that guarantee specified supply of oranges at a set price, irrespective of supply and demand spikes), oranges that you buy at the site are not the same as oranges for juicing.
Store oranges are bred with size, color and hardiness in mind, whereas juicing oranges are bred for moisture content alone. Those moisture content oranges are cheaper to produce, and are produced at much greater quantities, altogether, this keeps the price low. | 22 |
[Star Trek] Where are all the gays? | All the worlds problems and interpersonal shit have been solved for centuries, so why are there no gay characters on Star Trek? They should make up like one tenth of every Star Fleet crew statistically, right? I mean there was that one episode where Riker fell in love with that androgynous alien but I dont think that counts. | 93 | Fully integrated into society and considered thoroughly unremarkable.
Lieutenant Hawk, the helmsman of the Enterprise-E during its first year of service, was married to another man, to name one instance. | 188 |
ELI5: What do they actually do to a virus to inactivate it? I've been trying to Google this in all different ways and all I get is "the virus is dead or weakened" but what have they actually done? Removed its DNA? Physically destroyed the capsid? Thanks | 79 | A killed virus is not pathogenic because (as you might have guessed) it’s dead - the goal is to get the immune system to recognize pieces of the “body”.
An attenuated vaccine is grown in cells that are different from human cells - monkey kidney cells, for example. Viruses adapt extremely quickly and when they’re grown in these non-human cells they evolve to become extremely good at infecting whatever it is they’re being cultured in, but at the same time they become less good at infecting human cells giving our immune system the upper hand for long enough to defeat the virus while developing immunity.
Inactivated viruses are typically altered chemically, with formaldehyde for instance. The exact way this alters the virus is poorly understood but it’s known that the process weakens the virus’ ability to bind to the host cell receptor that it needs to gain access to the cell it’s trying to infect. | 49 |
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[MCU] Would a full blast from the power stone destroy Caps shield? | Thanos has only the power stone, but it's his goal to destroy the shield. Can it be done?
He can use it any way he wants, and has unlimited time and chances to do it.
If not, how many more stones would it take for him to do it? (Probably excluding the reality stone, assuming he just use it to change it's molecular structure or change reality to make it split in half).
| 23 | Yes. No question.
Vibranium is one of the strongest metals known, yes. But just because nothing on EARTH has managed to damage it doesn’t mean that nothing ELSEWHERE can. It’s reasonable to assume that even vibranium’s ability to absorb kinetic energy has to stop somewhere, based on yet undetermined factors (mass of the sample, energy input, potential redistribution, etc.).
The Power Stone, however, is the physical embodiment of energy itself. Just as the Space Stone gives you access to all the space in the universe, the Power Stone gives you access to all the energy in the universe. And whether or not Thanos himself survives the attempt, there’s no way in hell the shield does. | 47 |
ELI5 how private prisons generate revenue. | 349 | The state has a budget for the prisons that is X. The state wants to save money so it takes bids on taking over the operation of said prisons. Whomever has the lowest bid usually gets the contract. The state saves whatever X - winning bid equals.
The company then looks at the books and shaves off whatever they can. Exercise facilities, libraries, food, ect tend to get cut. Then they charge a huge markup on commissary items which is sort of like an in prison store that inmates can purchase items from, like clothes, food, ect. Add to that the profits made from prison labor where the inmates are paid pennies a day to make various things and it starts to become a VERY profitable business. You have a stable cheap workforce whom can only spend their money at your overpriced store.
TLDR: Slavery. | 481 |
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[Narnia] What are the Deep Magic the Queen was citing and who wrote them? | Aslan famously roars at the Ice Queen "Do not cite the Deep Magic to me, Witch! I was there when it was written."
So who wrote them? Was there a negotiation process? Since some Deep Magic favours the Witch and can even bind Aslan. Is there a full list? Why are there in place to begin with? | 36 | The Emperor-beyond-the-Sea wrote the deep magic. There was no negotiation, as He rules everything, not just Narnia, but every world. The magic doesn't favor anyone, it simply is. His motives for putting it into place are inscrutable, unknowable for people like us. Which is kind of the point. The shattering of the stone table represents a breakdown of everything that Narnia was, all that old magic and laws and everything being literally set in stone. Aslan's resurrection, shattering the stone, was immediately followed by a joyous romp. This heralds the new Narnia: Freedom, happiness, and life. You could say that the deep magic was written purely to lead to that moment. | 43 |
[Pokemon] Why do Unown Pokemon based on the English alphabet if the Pokemon universe seems to use a different alphabet | Like in sword and shield all the text is a made up alphabet. Shouldn't the unown be those letters?
Edit: Why ARE** | 22 | Unnervingly enough, the actual pokedex entries specify they're based on an *ancient, long extinct alphabet.*
In the pokeverse, the English (well, Latin, but whatever) alphabet is long dead and almost completely forgotten except for a few tablets and the Unown. The implications of this for what exactly the pokemon world is are...worrying. But without going into post-apocalyptic speculations, there's your answer.
They *are* based on the English alphabet in-universe, but the pokeverse doesn't use the English alphabet anymore. Precisely why there are pokemon based on this one writing system and no others is lost to time. | 46 |
How does the body generate heat? | Whenever you get an infection, the body turns up the temperature, which we call a fever right? So how exactly does it generate this excess heat | 163 | Many chemical reactions in your body are exothermic (produce heat as a byproduct). When you have a fever, it’s not necessarily because you’re creating more heat (though many inflammatory processes are exothermic). Your fever is actually achieved because your body’s thermostat (the hypothalamus) is set to a higher temperature, allowing your body to reach a higher temperature (retain more heat) without activating cooling measures. Your body controls how much heat is retained or expelled mainly by controlling dilation/constriction of your blood vessels close to your skin. (As the vessels dilate, or get wider, the blood moves through the vessels slower and more blood touches the surface area of the vessel allowing more heat to transfer out of the vessel and dissipate off your skin. The inverse is true, that as the vessel constricts, the blood moves through it faster and retains more heat.) | 205 |
If you had a national UBI policy how do you prevent landlords, energy companies, insurance etc from raising costs to capture some of that Income? | I keep hearing about Universal Basic Income, and how universally give folks a set amount would help.deal with inequality etc. But wouldnt landlords, energy companies and others that have non discretionary costs simply up their prices /rates to capture some of that money, negating the inequality purpose of UBI? | 57 | While landlords especially could raise their rates to capture some of the UBI income, the landlords whom don't raise their rates would have an advantage against those who did, and could more easily find tenents. Those who do raise their rates will need to compete with landlords who have better properties, but chose not to raise their rates. And since rent in the area has been raised, there is more incentive to build housing, which will also drive down prices.
If a $1000/mo UBI is passed, landlords will not all raise their rates by $1000/mo. Rent will increase, but by some amount less than $1000/mo.
Insurance will be handled similarly, but since they can more easily take on new customers, they will be even less able to raise their insurance rates.
This is, of course, excepting the possibility of all the landlords in an area getting together and deciding to raise all their rates at once, while also ensuring that no other housing will be built. | 22 |
ELI5: Does mixing ingredients separately actually affect how the end product turns out? If so, how? | I was baking Christmas cookies and I realized that it always has you mix ingredients separately, and then blend them all together. Why is this? If you're just mixing them all together in the end anyway then what difference does it make? | 25 | It's because the order and method you mix things can have a huge effect on the outcome. For example, let's take the most common mixing method, the creaming method:
First you cream together the butter and sugar, because the sugar punches microscopic holes in the butter that aid in leavening. Any additional ingredients at this stage would inhibit that. Then you slowly add the eggs, just a few at a time, because eggs have a lot of structure and take time to get fully incorporated. You sift all of your dry ingredients together because powders like to clump up, and once those clumps get wet they're much harder to break up. You add your dry batch last to minimize gluten development, because any mixing after the flour is added will create gluten and could make your product tough. If you have additional wet ingredients, you alternate adding portions of your wet batch with portions of your dry batch to allow the flour time to soak up the added moisture.
If you were to take all the ingredients of a butter cake and just toss them in a mixer, you would end up with a lumpy brick. If you follow that method, you'll get a tender, airy cake with a consistent crumb. | 30 |
Before nuclear fission/fusion was discovered, what did people think powered the sun? | 29 | One of the leading theories was gravitational collapse. Which, as it turns out, is how stars get hot before they begin fusion reactions. Calculations showed that gravitational contraction could heat the Sun for millions of years. And until it was discovered that the Earth was billions of years old, this wasn't a problem.
Nevertheless, the theory of what powered the Sun was only a supposition, not a widely believed fact, until the fusion theory came around. | 51 |
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ELI5: If hydraulics are used because liquids aren't compressible why do they use pneumatic brakes in large vehicles like buses and lorries? | 26 | There are two primary reasons. One applies more to trucks, the other to passenger buses.
1) - Trucks - most trucks have multiple, interchangeable components (cabs and trailers). Each component has it's own braking system. These systems all have to be interconnected so they can be controlled from one location (the brake pedal in the cab). This means frequently connecting/disconnecting brake lines. Disconnecting lines in a hydraulic system is a pain. Fluid leaks and has to be replaced, then pressure has to be restored to the system. In a pneumatic system, however, it's easy. Only air leaks out, so no mess. And the system is pressurized off a compressor attached to the engine, so that's primed as soon as you start her up.
Basically, think about a pool vacuum vs. a house vacuum. You can easily add/remove attachments from a home vacuum, all the tubes are filled with air. Try changing out a pool filter hose without getting water everywhere. Plus, if too much leaks out, you might have to re-prime the filter pump.
2) - Buses - Hydraulic brake systems are forced closed by pressure. What this means is when you push the brake pedal, you add pressure, which engages the brake. Pneumatic brakes are forced *open* by pressure. While the vehicle is running the system is pressurized, holding the brakes open. When the pedal is pressed, a valve is opened, the pressure is released, and the brakes swing closed.
Basically what this means is when a hydraulic system fails and loses pressure, the brakes are stuck open, and the vehicle can't stop. When a pneumatic system fails, the brakes are stuck closed, and a vehicle can't go. Either system is fine, because you always have an e-brake... but when it comes to a bus carrying 30 children to and from school everyday, a lot of people like the idea of a bus that won't even move if the break system is faulty. | 17 |
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ELI5: Why do so many drugs/medicines have the potential to cause liver damage? Is the liver just a weak organ that can't handle much? | 17 | Liver filters your blood. So everything you take passes through it.
Most drugs are toxic in high concentrations. They become poison. So when they hit the filter, they hurt it because it sucks up the poison.
It's not weak. It's one of the few parts of us capable of regeneration. | 34 |
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ELI5: What is the evolutionary benefit to a species, such as the Praying Mantis, to have the female kill the male after copulation? | 26 | By eating the male, the female gains a lot of nutrients, which will enable her to have healthier and stronger offspring. In this way, there is a higher chance that the genes of both the male and the female are carried on. | 30 |
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[WH40K] Is the belief in the Emperor doing more harm or good for the Imperium? | 22 | Definitely good, at least in the state the Imperium is in. It provides tangible protection against Chaos, and through fervent faith and mass hallucinations, has turned the tide in more than one battle. | 29 |
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[DC] "Batman only cares about human life; he has no problem killing aliens." | I have been reading this statement over on [Who Would Win.](https://www.reddit.com/r/whowouldwin) Is this true? And I'm not talking about programmed biological machines like xenomorph or parademons, or some kind of supernatural force of evil; I'm talking about aliens with free will, along the lines of Klingons.
Some people seem to have it in their head that if, say, Gamora attacked Gotham, Batman would just cut her throat without a second thought. "Boy, good thing she wasn't human, or that might have been a tough battle!" Is this right? | 59 | Not instantly, she's not a monster and this isn't war, but probably. You have to realize that when Bruce kills xenos and robots it's usually either during war, like the parademons in Earth 2, or huge "do or die" mob scene invasions. When push comes to shove, he'll do it, but it's not his first choice. | 39 |
How is the right amino acid brought to ribosomes? | So what I know is that the mRNA is brought to the ribosome with a code for an amino acid. I also know that the tRNA with a matching codon and correct amino acid are brought to the ribosome for assembly. But how is the right amino known? Does the ribosome read the mRNA and call for a tRNA or do the tRNA keep trying to fit the codon in the ribosome till it fits then goes and brings the amino acid. Thanks i have a test on this is a couple of hours. | 59 | > But how is the right amino known?
Put simply, it doesn't 'know'. All the amino acids are attached to tRNAs and they all diffuse around until they meet a ribosome that requires that particular one, as determined by the codon of the mRNA. It can't "call for it" it just waits for it. | 13 |
Answers to the omnipotence paradox | What are some good arguments refuting the omnipotence paradox?
EDIT: The paradox suggests a problem on the divine attribute of omnipotence. Can god create a task even he can't perform? The most famous example is the stone paradox. What if god created a stone so heavy that even he can't lift?
| 19 | You either understand "omnipotence" to just being able to do everything that's logically possible, or you say God can do things that are logically impossible. You will very rarely find someone who will entertain that God can do the logically impossible, and typically that will involve just us being wrong about what really is impossible in the first place (e.g. Descartes).
>>I answer that, All confess that God is omnipotent; but it seems difficult to explain in what His omnipotence precisely consists: for there may be doubt as to the precise meaning of the word 'all' when we say that God can do all things. If, however, we consider the matter aright, since power is said in reference to possible things, this phrase, "God can do all things," is rightly understood to mean that God can do all things that are possible; and for this reason He is said to be omnipotent. (Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I:25:3)
For your specific example, a stone that God couldn't lift wouldn't be logically possible, because God could lift any stone. Now if God can do logically impossible things, He could create a stone He could not lift, but then He would also have no problem lifting that stone too, since being logically contradictory is no barrier. | 33 |
[Sonic Adventure 1 and 2] Why are city streets and otherwise public areas and architecture built with strange elements that are impractical for normal people? | Like why are there loopty loops on a highway or lack of safety measures in an indoor amusement park that normal people can't traverse? Why is the government approving these measures? I swear Twinkle Park must have dozens of safety violations. | 17 | In Sonic Adventure 2 we see an actual finished highway (Tails' chasing after the president), and while it's got a few similarities to racing tracks it doesn't have any loops in it.
What's clear is that Speed Highway and Radical Highway are in the process of being built and/or repaired.
This can only mean that, in this world, Highways are prefabbed pieces of concrete. Rolled up into a circle for transport and unfurled once they reach their destination.
Sonic and friends just happen to be running through the area mid-construction. | 18 |
ELI5: Why do we always look at our hands when we feel something is psychologically/cognitively wrong? | 183 | Probably because they are the easiest, most movable, spatially aware part of our body that we can look at to see if something is abnormal. Short of doing some physical activity to gauge control and perception, hands are very telling of coordination loss. | 83 |
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Why don't we get heat stroke when we take a long hot shower or bath? | 146 | You can get heat stroke. There's a reason that most hot tubs and saunas recommend not being in them for more than 15 or so minutes at a time.
That said, you'll expel some heat via your breath just as other mammals do via panting. In a shower your body will continue to sweat. Some of that water will still evaporate, as will the hot water hitting you from the shower itself. Generally in a shower only one side of your body is being hit with water, so you'll radiate heat from the other side.
But, if you stay in a hot, humid shower or a hot tub long enough you'll eventually begin to experience symptoms of heat stroke. Shortness of breath, lightheadedness, tunnel vision, etc. Exertion will make it worse. | 72 |
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CMV: If legalization of prostitution increases human trafficking, we should not legalize it. | I am not against prostitution in general. If regulated with the likes of marijuana, I feel it can be a great contributor to the economy as well as provide protections for workers and give them opportunities to unionize, have legal methods for pay disputes, etc.
What would make me be against legalization would be if this increased human trafficking. I can’t find it inside me to justify the economic gains if people are being bought and sold into modern slavery.
What will change my view is if you can show legalization of prostitution does not increase human trafficking or otherwise increase the number of workers in the field against their consent. I would prefer actual data. | 29 | Why do you think it *would?*
With legalization comes recourse for sex workers. When prostitution is illegal, sex workers can be abused by their "employers" and unable to report it to the police because they'll be arrested as well. Is prostitution is legal, a person who has been trafficked or otherwise taken advantage of can go to the police without fear that they will be put in prison or have their possessions/money taken from them. | 11 |
[Marvel] Why didn't the X-Men try harder to save the kid with deadly powers instead of sending Logan to kill him? He didn't want to hurt anyone and they have helped other mutants to learn to control powers potentially as deadly to others in the past. | [This is the incident I am referring to here](http://imgur.com/gallery/I71V6)
I can understand their fear at the world finding out a mutant has caused so many deaths, but in this case the kid had no control and clearly didn't want to hurt anyone.
It's not like they haven't helped other mutants learn to control their powers which could otherwise cause death and destruction, why not at least try to help the kid first it seemed he would have been willing and only resort to putting him down as a final option in the event he "turned bad" and actually wanted to hurt people rather than try to learn to control it first?
Tragedy aside, for people supposed to be sympathetic to the plight of their fellow mutants this seemed to be an extreme knee-jerk response to the situation. | 54 | This story took place in the Ultimate Universe continuity where the characters have rougher moral edges generally.
However, this specific event wasn't an X-Men mission, but an off the record favor Nick Fury asked Logan to do for him.
Later, when Fury threatens to assimilate Xavier's school into SHIELD, Wolverine reveals to the X-Men what he did for Fury, and threatens Fury to leave the school be or else he'll let the world know that Fury unilaterally sent a hitman to kill an American boy. | 47 |
ELI5: How do producers of movies like Jackass and Borat acquire consent of the people they film? | 103 | They use a consent form. Basically they sign the right to use their name/image/voice in the film.
They generally do this by telling them what they are signing. But sometimes they say anything (such as this is a school project) to get a signature and go on their merry way. That's when lawsuits generally happen. | 56 |
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Do photons (and other C travelers) experience an acceleration to C or is the velocity instantaneous? | Or does it not even make sense to define an acceleration to such things? If so, why? For examples sake, say I have an interaction that results in an emitted photon, at what point is it traveling at C? And where does this energy to travel such speeds come from, simply from the system as it goes to ground state which in turn is the energy to fuel the emissions? How can that be enough? | 352 | There is no acceleration, because photons always travel at c. This is just an intrinsic property of massless particles in general.
> And where does this energy to travel such speeds come from, simply from the system as it goes to ground state which in turn is the energy to fuel the emissions? How can that be enough?
Photons do not have kinetic energy, so it takes no energy to send them flying off at c. Instead, energy imparted to a photon changes the wavelength of the photon, and the energy of the photon is simply however much energy the system has lost in producing the photon. | 130 |
ELI5: How do beekeeper's hives stay populated while we harvest a good portion of their larvae's food? Do they really produce that much excess honey? | 16 | basically, yes. normally hives literally expand to breaking point. then large part of the population splits off, which is called a swarm, and go find a new home. we're artificially delaying that process by taking the honey, and we artificially add sugarwater, which they turn into honey, at times of shortage. | 13 |
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ELI5: We all know plastics aren't biodegradable and that's bad, so why can't we just use chemical science to break them down ourselves? | 201 | We can, but the problem is you end up with a soup of toxic chemicals that cant be economically reused. It all comes down to money - it is cheaper to burn or bury the plastics than to resuse them - it may also be greener to bury them as at least the CO2 is locked up for a longer time. | 264 |
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ELI5: why does any number times 0 equal 0? Who came up with this and how do you logically explain it? How does nothingness erase something ness? | Hi everyone. I hate mathematics, but have always been curious why multiplying something by zero, negates the number entirely? I think of math starting out of basic necessity for trading of goods back in the day, and then clearly evolving from there. Someone at some point, had to define that 2 x 6 equals 12. So why wouldn’t 0 x 6 equal 6? | 8,330 | You put a box of 6 eggs in your shopping cart. 1 box x 6 eggs = 6 eggs. You put another box of 6 eggs in the cart. 2 boxes x 6 eggs is 12 eggs. You remember that you have eggs at home and put both boxes back in the refrigerator case. There are 0 boxes of 6 eggs in your cart. 0 boxes x 6 eggs is 0 eggs. You’d probably be pretty annoyed if the store charged you for 6 eggs at checkout, which is what your example suggests. | 20,362 |
[Game of Thrones] How does Cersei's claim to the throne work, succession wise? | I get that she basically just took it by force after Tommen's suicide, but what's the legal justification? Officially it should go to the Baratheon heir, right? And since the Iron Throne is patrilineal, if we assume Lannister ownership shouldn't the heir then be Tyrion? But he's a kinslayer by this point, so then it's Jamie? How does Cersei swing this other than threatening to re-enact the Mad King's rampage? | 31 | She really has no legal claim, holding it entirely by force.
The simple fact that she’s the person sitting on the throne gives her a veneer of legitimacy, but that’s all.
Oddly, the people of King’s Landing - who have in the past risen up in violent riots, and threw shit at her in the streets - seem to be okay with this, despite the fact that she got there by murdering the beloved High Sparrow and Margaery Tyrell, along with hundreds of others. | 82 |
ELI5: When countries like Russia, China, and America 'buy gold' to bolster their economies, where do they buy it from? | It's like there is some vast gold store that only major countries can shop at or something. Russia just bought like 800 tonnes. Did they order it from a gold warehouse? Did they contact their local Gold seller and have it delivered? | 122 | They buy from each other. In NYC the federal Reserve has a massive vault with many compartments. Each labeled with a different countries name so they buy from each other and shift the gold.bars from vault to vault. Source: took a tour of the reserve and saw the vault even held some of England's gold. | 46 |
I believe a global government or New World Order would be a great thing. CMV. | Ignoring the conspiracy connotations and totalitarian aspects associated with a "NWO."
A global government, working for the benefit of everyone, not just their own nation. Not necessarily dissolving local and state governments, as they can handle trivial (comparatively) issues, but all major decisions being brought to the global government (something similar to the UN), which has elected officials from every country.
CMV. | 21 | What about varying resources, geography, demographics etc? How can any singular government be sure about what is best for everyone on the planet when we're so varied? What if every nation decided it would be ok to take away the oil in Kuwait without permission based on a vote? Little Kuwait wouldn't stand a chance in that type of system. What if a country refused to abide by this government and did whatever it saw fit? How would the NWO be able to control these outsiders? Man, it's starting to sound more and more like the UN in here. | 13 |
Is Malthus's hypothesis of the global carrying capacity legitimate? | In my opinion, I believe that the human race reacts to limiting factors much like viruses breed in protection against vaccines; the human race's pursuit of constant adaptation will eventually lead to extremely effective solutions to these limiting factors. However, I also believe that this process will indefinitely repeat itself. What do you thnk? | 56 | Malthusian hypothesis was legitimate in his lifetime. Pre-industrial populations behave just like Malthus predicted. He was essentially correct in his observation. However, technological developments already happening in his lifetime changed things dramatically.
Current predictions for population growth don't expect population growth to continue and life standards return to subsistence-level. Population growth turns to decline when people reach certain living standards. | 29 |
Wage increase is suppose to increase cost of living. Is the opposite true; does an increase in cost of living also increase wages? | 15 | You can't reason from a price change.
It depends on what caused the increase in the cost living.
If it's caused by an increase in aggregate demand, then yes wages will rise.
But if its caused by a decrease in aggregate supply then wages will decrease.
The same goes for the premise of your statement btw. It depends on what caused the wage increase. | 25 |
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[Daredevil TV Show] Why did Matt Murdock get heightened senses from the car accident while most blind people apparently do not? Also, why did they take so long to manifest? | I doubt every blind man in the MCU has the ability to hear heartbeats and stuff like that. Was it the chemicals that did it or is he just unique?
And his senses didn't really go into overdrive until he was in the orphanage. Why is that? | 61 | It was the Chemicals.
He was used to all the sounds and sights of home, they couldn't overwhelm him because he felt safe there. The Orphanage was not home, it was a constant stressful reminder that his father died. | 81 |
ELI5 what would happen if there only existed one currency in the world. | 306 | It most likely will never happen. Look to the Euro-zone to see what happens on a smaller scale. By having the Euro, individual countries lose control of their money. Spain can't print Euros because everyone else will get angry at them. Countries that are run poorly (such as Greece) drag down the countries that do well (such as Germany). There's so many problems with a shared currency, countries are prideful and diverse, and giving up control of your money is a very hard thing to convince countries. | 103 |
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CMV:Political Correctness/Tolerance in Europe is destructive for society. Political Correctness/Tolerance is possibly worse than elitism(May not be the right word). | Alright, so there are two main views I currently have.
The first is that the current levels of Political Correctness/Tolerance most countries have, especially in Europe, is detrimental to society, seen as how ISIS is actively allowed to recruit in the streets and how the government of certain countries are afraid to punish Muslims for committing Rape (I believe there were stories about Denmark for instance.) and hate crimes (The most recent that come to mind are attacks on Israelis in Europe by Muslims). Simply put, it is allowing horrible, even socially destroying, ideas to be nurtured.
Alright, this view is a bit more challengeable I would say and quite more extreme. The current levels of PC/Tolerance are even worse for society than elitism. This is because PC/Tolerance actually causes society to digress instead of progressing. Elitism, I will define it as people being given less leeway for having flaws/not contributing to society. The extreme version would be how the Nazis were elitist in that only Blond Blue Eyed ~~Aztecs (The race they used escapes me at the moment, but it started with A)~~ Aryans! were upheld while all others were seen as inferior, with people with disabilities being persecuted and especially those of other races/religion. That is naturally too extreme however. The elitism I am talking about is elitism of ideas. This would mean a hard crackdown on ideals such as the ISIS, Communism, Anarchy groups and the like as they are threats to society's overall morality and peace of mind. I understand this has problems in itself, especially for those who advocate more "liberal" ideals and identities such as LGBT as it promotes close-mindedness but given that the current state of the world, it probably would not affect them too much and probably wouldn't warrant a government crackdown as it doesn't pose an imminent threat to peace or society. The bigger problem I would see is strikes and such movements that protest the government can be labelled as "disruptive" but eh, governments seem to do that right now regardless of Tolerance or Political Correctness anyhow. Simply put, the Elitism I describe is more of a society that points out and punishes flaws in the thinking or actions of people compared to the one of now.
Edit: Some words.
Edit 2: I don't mean all of Europe but generally this is the case for most of it. There are some exceptions like France however. Seems to be Western Europe mainly. But whatever, you get the picture.
Edit 3: I'll be falling asleep soon, I'll try to reply when I get back on.
Edit 4: **Just to make it clear, I don't say we should switch to Elitism but that even Elitism would be better than Tolerance**
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That is exactly the reason every authoritarian regime ever has used to justify imprisoning or killing political dissenters and others who were/are against their rule. | 86 |
[NARUTO] when a ninja summons something, does it get removes physically from where it is? or does the ninja summons a copy of it? | I've been watching naruto shippuden lately and I wonder that? specially with animals rather than weapons, IE. the toads supposedly live all in a mountain, when naruto summons a toad, that toad disappears from wherever it is or is it a copy of that toad? I mean, many summons are sentient and seems to have their own life, it feels like a pain in the ass that you are probably going your way and then you simple disappear because a ninja summoned you | 25 | They physically move locations. The fact that its a pain in the ass is why they form contracts. The scroll represents a pact between the ninja and the creature's clan. The clan agrees to be summoned and come to the ninja's aid in return for whatever. For instance Orochimaru mentions to Manda that he will give him a certain amount of people as sacrifices for his help. While for the frogs its seems that they're willing to help you if you earn their respect. That being said its a two-way street, the creatures can summon the ninja if they need help as well. Its important to note that who you get depends on the amount of chakra you put in as when Naruto was in danger he summoned Gamabunta while when not in danger he usually summons the chief's son Gamakichi | 19 |
CMV:, Cable television is now obsolete and providers will solely be internet providers soon. | Content producers and consumers no longer need third party cable. You can go directly to their service online and watch their content. There's no need for cable any longer. I wouldn't be surprised if all streaming service providers just forced ads regardless of subscription so big companies can abandon cable tv too. Regardless the era of long advertisment breaks is over. They get roughly 30 seconds during commercial break of streaming services instead of 4 minutes from cable. That's 1/8 of what it used to be. (That's also subject to change because advertisers) So why pay for cable which is 65 plus dollars a month without internet, when you can pay 20 for Netflix? You can also watch what you want when you want as opposed to waiting. Probably the best thing is the freedom of choice. many cities and areas are locked in with one shitty cable provider so your forced to get what they provide and have no others options so they can charge ludacris prices and it's either take it or leave it.(Sadly true for internet too) Now the streaming services must compete and keep prices low for the consumer. There is literally no reason for the consumer to chose cable over streaming services. Cutting out the middle man saves time (ads), money (cheaper), and is overall a more enjoyable consumer friendly experience. | 41 | As of May 2021:
> In total, the country's top pay TV providers now account for 78.7 million subscribers in the US, with the top seven cable companies having 43.1 million. Other traditional pay TV services have about 28.9 million subscribers, while vMVPD providers like Hulu + Live TV have about 6.7 million.
I don't think you can reasonably say cable tv is "*now*" obsolete. | 16 |
ELI5: Internet piracy is illegal while brick-and-mortar stores selling used music/movies are legal. Why is this? | I did a search for "piracy" and "piracy used stores" and found similar discussions but nothing addressing this specifically, so I apologize if I still managed to miss something.
Every logical argument I've heard against piracy is that it hurts content creators by depriving them of sales. Doesn't a used music/movies store do the same thing? There's an awesome store in my city that sells some new, mostly used music and movies from every genre imaginable on every medium imaginable from cassette tape to blu-ray. The bulk of their used inventory comes from people trading in their own music and movies for store credit or cash. Stores like Gamestop do the same thing for video games. Going off the "denying the content creators of sales" argument, I would think this would be even *worse* than piracy because when you buy Game of Thrones used on blu-ray, not only is HBO not profiting off that sale but some other third party *is* turning a profit. How is this allowed?
To be clear, I'm talking specifically about "merchants" in the traditional legal sense - namely, someone regularly dealing in the kind of goods being sold. This separates established used stores from eBay sellers or thrift stores that may sell used DVDs but don't ordinarily deal in them and aren't set up for that express purpose. My bias is that I have no bias - I don't care one way or the other about piracy. I don't pirate media personally, but really just because I'm too busy to enjoy anything I would download. Lord knows I put Limewire through it's paces back in the day.
| 15 | > Doesn't a used music/movies store do the same thing?
No. The content creator already profited from the original sale. The fact that they don't profit from each subsequent sale is irrelevant.
Contrast with piracy where there is no original sale and the content creator gets zero profit. | 14 |
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