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mxxgwc | What prevents antibiotics from essentially nuking our entire gut microbiome? | I understand that antibiotics do wipe out some of the good guys, but why isn't that damage permanent, as opposed to the 'bad guys'? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Oh it definitely does nuke it. The longer you're on antibiotics for, and the broader the spectrum, the more likely you are to kill off so much of your gut bacteria that bad bacteria can colonise. One of the worst ones is clostridium difficile which is really hard to get rid of. You're making a well evidenced bet that you can kill off the bad bacteria before you get rid of so much good bacteria that they can't return to normal. But on long courses, inappropriately broad antibiotics and repeated use, you can definitely hurt your body Most of the time, the bacteria in your gut is held at bay by your immune system and just chilling out doing their own thing. Bad bacteria have your immune system actively fighting it plus the antibiotics.",
"There's lots of studies that show it may cause long term damage and correlates having a high BMI with taking more antibiotics in your childhood. Antibiotics do indiscriminately good and bad bacteria inside you; that's why diarrhea is often a side effect of them and that's why people who are on strong antibiotics over long periods of time are prone to c-diff infections and require fecal transplants. Antibiotics have been known to cause changes in how animals grow; that's why livestock in the US is fed low doses of antibiotics in their feed.",
"That’s why they dont give you higher doses of antibiotics—a large enough dose will nuke your gut microbiome so they give a smaller dose for a longer time to kill the invading bad bacteria but hopefully leave at least some of the good bacteria intact.",
"My husband's doctor had him eat probiotic yogurt every time he gets on antibiotics, to help the gut bacteria. So yes it can kill your gut bacteria. Also something you might not know but I got lucky enough to find out first hand, food poisoning can also kill your gut bacteria to the point of causing huge problems. They also recommend probiotics for that too."
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mxya2x | What is spacetime and how can a celestial body sit on it to curve it? | I've always been shown spacetime is like a sheet and a planet rests on it. This creates curviture which makes it so things going in a linear line now fall inwards towards the object, and also causes light to take a longer path while not affecting its speed. I get that, but space is a 4 dimensional thing, and not all objects are on the same plane. How then can this sheet effect happen on all celestial objects? And how come it's a sheet and not a blanket that envelops the planet? How come the pressure that curves spacetime is on one pole and not the other or at the equator or not everywhere at once? For the sheet example, the planet would be falling down and the sheet catching it, but it's space, so everything is going in a linear line in whatever direction, where's the point of contact to space time and why is it there? Edit: omg are there sheets everywhere around the planet creating a spacetime shell? What's in between the shell in the planet? Gahhhhh so many questions. The sheet thing I saw helped a lot at first until I thought about it. | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Whenever you see spacetime depicted as a flat sheet, that's just a lower-dimension visualization of the idea to try to help build an intuitive sense of what's going. It is admittedly a somewhat misleading visualization, but we have no way to accurately depict a 4-dimensional object. The ScienceClic channel on Youtube has [an attempt at a more accurate depiction]( URL_0 ) (although still somewhat abstracted), which if nothing else I suspect will adequately demonstrate why a lot of people just give up and depict it as a flat plane.",
"I prefer to visualise it as a gigantic (infinite in all directions) mattress foam and the matter as very highly and tightly compressed bits within it. That force of tightness warps the foam near it. The rubber sheet is a simple approximation that help you visualise it in 2d, my one helps me visualise it in 3d. Another way is to think of a magnet burried in a pit of iron filings. The whole pit feels the magnetism to some degree, but only the area in close proximity to the magnet is that average density of filings warped/compressed. Both of those analogies work for me."
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mxyopo | Why do you get tired/ no energy when you’re depressed? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Just from my perspective, so YMMV. It's like you're caught in a river and you're holding onto a branch and you're watching other people wander by on the bank, and they're looking at you funny because you're not able to keep up with them. And you ask for help, but mostly people will shout encouraging words at you and keep moving on. Occasionally, someone stops to help you hold on, so you're a little better, but eventually they get really fucking tired of helping you hold on and they give up and go on with their own lives. You get exhausted just from holding onto the branch and doing your absolute best not to let go and let the river take you. That's depression. Struggling every minute of every day to hold on while everyone else ignores it out of a need to observe decorum, or you get encouraging words from people who are just passing by, or you get yelled at for not pulling yourself forward against the river by people who've never even put a pinkie toe in that river.",
"Clinical depression, the illness, involves a chemical imbalance in your brain. You don’t have the right amount of neurotransmitters moving in the right quantities to the right places. People with depression still feel emotions - you can feel happy for a little while and have depression - because depression itself is an illness and not an emotion. The reason people often feel more tired when they have depression is due to this same chemical imbalance. The brain’s rhythms and cycles are all out of whack due to the illness. Most chronic illnesses have this effect on the sufferers.",
"It's a common belief that \"depressed\" means \"really sad\". This is incorrect. It's \"depression\" as in \"pushed down\", like how that little wooden stick that a doctor pushes your tongue down with is a \"tongue depressor\". When you have depression, *everything* is \"pushed down\". Your energy? Pushed down. Ability to do even simple tasks? Pushed down. Emotions? Pushed down. Your brain's \"processing power\"? Pushed down. So \"you get tired when you're depressed\" because tiredness is part of what depression *is*.",
"Because motivation is the credit card you can use to buy fuel. Problem is no gas station in this state accepts yo Discover-card-carryin ass, so you gonna be walking a bit. Either that or lying down. Or looking for a garage to take a CO nap in. People say, \"Just get something better than a Discover card!\" But we can't all qualify for your aristocratic American Express. There are arms races, and there are emotion races. Here it is.",
"Ah depression. Depression makes you tired indeed, but why: Because your body and mind are always in negative state, you have weight changes, loss of energy, difficulty thinking and talking, isolating yourself from friendships, difficulty concentrating on normal tasks, lack of interests, more anxious and your mind has more negative thoughts now than ever before. It’s exhausting to live with this person you don’t want to be. I still have those days when I have to force myself out of bed. And I can’t rally the energy of motivation to do anything. A friend say things like: ‘just stop it and deal with it or there are worse things in life.’ It makes me cringe to just think about her saying that. But to my five year old self I would say: Depression and anxiety are teammates and I’m the opposing team. Their one and only goal is to drag me down. They make me paranoid, they make me feel useless and steal all my energy and motivation. However, sometimes they go on a trip and I have the time of my life. I never know how long the vacation will last, but I get stuff done while they’re away. Because I never know when they’ll come back. It may be a few hours or a few days.. I just never know. I do know that I have to be prepared to go back into battle when they return from vacation. And the best thing to do that is talk about it with people you love and care about. Not with ‘friends’ who say you’ll just have to deal with it. Because you can’t move forward when you are surrounded by negative people."
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mxyppd | How do herbivores create and store so much fat? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"If you consider wheat to be a grass, then humans tend to get fat off of grass, as well. Most dietitians warn against consuming a heavy grain diet. Things like beer and bread get stored as fat. Carbohydrates tend not to make you slim.",
"I typed in the title of the thread in Google and the results were pretty interesting. Herbivores can get fat from eating carbohydrate, just as you can. The atoms that constitute fat are constructed from the chemical elements carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen (C,H,O) which also constitute carbohydrate of which grass is made up"
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mxzhmh | Why do crowds, clapping to a beat, always eventually overlap each other ? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I believe it’s due to humans’ natural pattern following. Over a period, people subconsciously ‘line up’ with those around them, for example when clapping, simply due to the wiring of the brain.",
"When people are involved there are always a bunch of complicated psychological effects at work influencing how individuals react, plus the emergent effects of large group interactions. But, the basic idea is really simple: Any combination of regular cycles with different periods will always eventually overlap. For example, let us model the clapping as if you were counting a number sequence. One person claps every 3 units, while a second person counts every 4 units. They both start at 0 but the first claps on 3, the second on 4. They are out of sync. The second cycle the first person is at 6, the second on 8. Third cycle has the first at 9, the second at 12. But since the first person is clapping faster than the second, their fourth cycle comes in at 12 right in sync with the second person's third cycle! No communication between those people are required, that is just the nature of cycles of different periods. The only way they wouldn't eventually overlap is if they were clapping with exactly the same frequency but out of sync, which isn't something that is likely to happen unintentionally."
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mxzwpr | how do bacteria from probiotics survive the stomach acid | Many people take probiotics( gummies, yogurt, kefir etc.) to aid in their digestion and gut health. To my knowledge, bacteria has to reach the large intestine to have any benefit. Before reaching the large intestine, bacteria has to go through the stomach. There is HCL secreted there which would give the stomach contents a pH from 1.5 to3.5. How does the bacteria survive that low of a pH? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A lot of the major \"probiotic\" species are actually pretty acid-resistant. However, you are completely right in that a lot of commercial supplements probably...don't survive. Also, not a doctor but I am a med student and there's very little evidence that these probiotic supplements do anything useful.",
"I don't know if it's opinion or fact but my physician told me that things like probiotic yogurts are practically worthless because so few of them survive the stomach, you're much better off taking probiotic capsules which have time to reach the intestines before letting loose their load."
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my0bc1 | How is it that some gifted minded folk on the autism spectrum can tell you which exact day it was on any given date? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Dates repeat. A year can start on any of the seven days, and it can be a leap year or not, which means there are 14 possible calendars. There is an algorithm, called the doomsday algorithm, that lets you easily compute the day of the week from a date and year. The impressive l part is doing it in your head, quickly."
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my0krq | Why do we feel most sore from a workout after we have slept and sometimes worse after 2 nights of sleep? | Shouldn’t our bodies immediately react to whatever trials we just experienced? I can feel a cut right away, but ripping muscles can wait? If we didn’t sleep for 72 hours, would it hold off until then? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The inflammation that occurs after some sort of workout doesn't necessarily result in neural feedback straight away. But in the time you've slept a lot has happened and your damaged muscles will now be swollen and inflamed, thus painful. Not sleeping may slow this down a bit but if you didn't sleep for 3 days it should eventually be worse because you are also slowing down the healing process and your brain won't be working optimally to process information coming from your body. If you however do something that is significantly above your current capacity, you will notice the damage (pain) in a matter of hours. Eg, me learning how to water ski.",
"DOMS Delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS) is muscle pain that begins after you’ve worked out. It normally starts a day or two after a workout. Pain felt during or immediately after a workout is a different kind of muscle soreness. It’s called acute muscle soreness. Acute muscle soreness is that burning sensation you feel in a muscle during a workout due to a quick buildup of lactic acid It usually disappears as soon as or shortly after you stop exercising. URL_0"
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my12y6 | Why do we lose eyesight? | What exactly happens inside our eyeballs? Why I (near-sighted) can see better by squeezing my eyes? Do our genes, constitution (physique), environment have anything to do with it? Is it preventable (not talking about surgeries)? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Eyes are complex mechanisms, and are as prone to having problems as any other part of the body. I don't think physique has much or anything to do with eye health, but nutrition, genes, and environment can all have an effect. As for why a nearsighted person can see better by squinting, it's because it blocks out the top and bottom of the \"cone\" of light coming in. Nearsightedness means the light hitting your retinas is slightly unfocused, and the effect is more pronounced at the edges of the lens. Since the light going straight through the center of the lens doesn't need to be adjusted much, it makes a clearer image. The tradeoff is that since not as much light is coming in your eyes, it's a lot darker. This is the same way a camera obscura works: block out all the light that would wash out the clear picture, and that's all that remains. :)",
"The simplest way of focusing light is using a tiny hole. Imagine a projection screen behind this tiny hole. Now imagine you're a point on this screen, and you're looking through the hole at the world behind it. What can you see? Only a very small part of the world. If the hole is infinitely small, you can only see a single \"point\" in the world. Only the light coming from this point can reach you. Now imagine you move a few inches and look through the hole from a different point on the screen. What can you see through the hole now? Again a tiny little bit of the world, but a different bit this time. The little hole makes it so that every point on the screen only receives light from (ideally) a single point in the world. And that's exactly what it means to bring an image into focus: that each point in the world corresponds to a single point on the screen (or on the retina, film or sensor, or whatever surface you are projecting the image on). The trouble with this system is that the smaller you make the hole, the less light comes through it, and so as the image gets sharper, it also gets fainter. Lenses focus light in a different way, by bending it. But the trouble with lenses is that their ability to bring things into focus is restricted by their focal length. So they cannot bring the whole world into focus, but only things that are a certain distance away. Anything closer or further than this distance will turn into a blob rather than a nice sharp point (and this blob gets smeared out further as you get further away from the lens' optimal distance). A solution to this is to combine the two methods: put a hole in front of the lens (or vice versa). This is what your pupil does in your eye, and what a diaphragm does in a camera. The smaller you make the *aperture* of the pupil or diaphragm (i.e. the size of the hole), the larger the *depth of field* of the image, i.e. the range of distances that are brought into sharp focus, around the optimal distance of the lens. But also, the fainter the image becomes. So eyes and cameras alike have to trade off sharpness for brightness and contrast. If there's plenty of light, they can use a small aperture and get better sharpness throughout the image. If there's less light, they may have to widen the aperture and sacrifice some depth of field. The reason you are near-sighted is because the size of your eyeball isn't optimally aligned with the optimal focusing distance for your eye's lens. This means that the range of distances at which your eye can bring things into sharp focus is reduced (or shifted), compared to a normal-sighted person. But as we saw, putting a smaller aperture in front of a lens increases this range. When you squint, this is exactly what you're doing: you're making a smaller aperture than your pupil was providing. By sacrificing more brightness than your eye was willing to do, you gain more sharpness."
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my1pl7 | How was money inserted in society? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I want goats, and have chickens. You want chickens, but have horses. I don’t want horses, so you need to find goats. Goats aren’t super easy to find, so you give me a shell, telling me it’s worth 5 goats. I believe you. This is obviously a very simple summary of how we transitioned from a bartering system to a monetary system. Money is something that we just agree has value, even if it doesn’t in and of itself."
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my1v1e | How do compress socks work? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I'll try: Your heart pushes your oxygen-rich blood down into your feet, from big arteries to small ones to little capillaries, and then it goes into the tiniest veins and starts back up, into bigger and bigger veins and finally back to the heart where it gets a push to the lungs for more oxygen. Now, in order to keep the blood moving, especially going back up, the walls of the veins have to be pretty strong and tight, and there's also some flappies that help it not wash back down. But they still have to be stretchy and flexible for movement and hydration changes, etc. But like your whole body, the vein walls and flappies get a bit saggy and stretched out with age. It's still easy to pump the blood down, but not so easy for it to climb back up. Compression socks help support the vein walls so the blood moves back towards the heart. As the blood pressure builds, the socks push back, just like the young vein walls used to, and the blood moves up. You don't want creases in the socks that can cut off the flow too much, in either direction, so be sure to smooth them out and check them occasionally."
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my20cv | What is below/above us | I tried Google, but it wasn't being very helpful, so I will try here. What is above/below our solar system? I know that the planets do go up and down on their axes, but under the entire solar system, what is directly above/below us. Satellites, drones, and rocket ships seem to always be going out, but never directly up or down. When I googled this, I got told that below us was a vacuum, but all of space is a vacuum. All in all, I'm just very confused and would like some human explanation. Thank you. Edit: I love how many knowledgable people there are on this sub, thanks for all the answers! | Earth Science | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You’re a spec on the surface of a pea, enclosed in a larger sphere (not really but run with it) that has objects strewn throughout in all directions. Depending on the time of day, year, etc as the earth spins on its axis and orbits the sun as our galaxy spins on its own axis, “up” for you could point almost anywhere in the universe depending which way we’re facing... URL_0 The vid starts with earth and talks about all the objects in the sky and their relative positions. You can even get apps to do this now... pan around the universe.",
"Within our solar system, not much. Almost all of the matter in our solar system is roughly along the ecliptic. That's the roughly but not quite flat plane that the planets and asteroids are in. Beyond that, there's the Oort cloud, which is a sphere of comets that surrounds our solar system, but that's thousands of times more distant from us than Pluto. Outside our solar system, there are other stars in every direction within our galaxy, and then other galaxies in all directions.",
"So above us are the constellations most of humanity sees from the northern hemisphere. Below us are the far lesser seen southern hemisphere constellations. The north star remains nearly stationary in the sky because it is nearly directly where our planet's north pole points during it's orbit. I'm assuming there are regular old stars above and below us, probably with their own systems of planets. Can't really remember where in the arm of the galaxy we are or where our North pole points through it. Apparently the closest star to us, Proxima Centauri, is 4 light-years away and too faint to be seen with the naked eye, so while there's probably some asteroids or other celestial objects between us that's still a lot of vacuum"
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my2isf | Why too much screen time causes eye strain? what is the difference between looking at the screen and looking outside | Only thing I notice we blink less while looking at the screen, is that the only reason? Or are there other reasons? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The reason actually has nothing to do with brightness. It’s because your eyes are designed to function in a 3D world- screens mimic this world but are decidedly 2D. The eye strain comes from your eyes trying to see depth when there is none to see."
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my3d3n | What causes that unbearable and uncomfortable pain when you swallow too much bread at once? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I agree with other people saying friction, but I also think there's an element of just swallowing something too large, which doesn't feel great."
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my3vn2 | Why do we want to practise for a game and we feel inclined to do so but we don’t have the same will to study for tests? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Both are rewarding, but only one is likely to be fun while you work towards it. Studying history isn't very fun (to most), so even though there is a reward, you aren't as motivated. Practising for Minecraft battles is more fun, and also rewarding at the end. You'll of course want to pick the option that's most enjoyable. This is amplified in teenagers who can be somewhat short-sighted about life. Why work towards success when you can have fun now? Edit: Also you aren't a doofus. Nothing wrong with not knowing something, especially when your whole goal is to learn that something.",
"If you felt inspired by your history teacher you'd feel differently about studying. You're always going to prefer doing things you enjoy. The trick is to inspire yourself to be interested in studying for your test"
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my5tsf | Why do we only breath through one nostril? | I thought we breathe through both nostrils, but I felt the air coming from my nose and it only was going through one nostril. Why? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"This is called the nasal cycle, it involves alternating congestion and decongestion between each nostril. It allows you to be able to breathe out of either one without both having to work constantly decongesting.",
"Only about 85% of people breathe this way to a noticeable degree. Some of us cannot notice a difference in airflow without doing a minute of nose blocking to identify that, yes, my right nostril has slightly less flow at the moment. As one of that 15%, it is very noticeable when one of the nostrils is not working about evenly."
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my60ec | Why does water boil faster in high alltitudes? | ELI5: why does water boil faster in high alltitudes? I know it has something to do with pressure and that the tempature drops 1 ℃ for every 300m. But what is the physical reason that water evaporates faster with changing height? Does it also imply its boils slower and hotter when you go below sea level? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The higher air pressure at lower altitudes literally holds down the water molecules and stops them from evaporating at lower temperatures."
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my6b8w | why do mattresses get heavier over time? | Tagged as Physics because it involves change in mass. | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because they accumulate dust, skin cells, etc over time because they’re basically giant sponges. Same reason pillows get heavier too, here’s a quote from a quick google search (about pillows, but it applies to mattresses too). > Pillows get heavier over the years because of dust mites and dead skin that accumulate in them, which makes them less comfortable and also less healthy. Because old pillows can cause problems for your health, it's important to replace your pillow before it gets too old.",
"My initial reaction to this question was, 'do you really want to know?\""
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my6zzk | The whole Pentagon selling dormant IP addresses thing | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A LOT of info is still missing about this incident but you can think of it this way: Yesterday it *appeared* that the DoD gave a MASSIVE (like 5% of all IP addresses) amount of digital real estate to a “company” that basically has no known employees, income, or even a street address. A lot of people are curious *why* this happened.",
"Let's say the DoD owned 600 thousand square miles of property (about 5% of all arable land on Earth, larger than Texas, California, and Montana combined) and then one day somebody suddenly announced that all mail addressed to this property should go through him. This was odd because previously, nobody could send mail to the property. Nothing changed as far as who owns the property, or who can access it or anything but now a new person is responsible for delivering mail to it. We don't know what that means. When we tried to contact the new person, it looks a lot like he's actually somebody's imaginary friend. Which makes everyone nervous because imaginary friends are often created to take the blame for getting in trouble. All this happened just minutes before the old president left office and after he fired the person in charge of the DoD.",
"When the Internet was created it was intended as a smaller research network. A stop gap between ARPANET and the future OSI network still under development. So they handed out big chunks of the IP address space quite liberally. The Department of Defense who have their headquarters in the Pentagon building did get assigned a lot of different address blocks for their research. After all the Internet was designed from their requirements for a self healing and redundant global network so there were a lot of different research groups within the DoD working on developing the Internet. Now fast forward to about a decade ago. The small research network called the Internet is now not so small any more. And despite all our efforts and workarounds we are running out of IP addresses. But most of the addresses assigned to the DoD is still unannounced. That means that the DoD have legal ownership over the addresses but have yet to tell the rest of the Internet where these addresses might be reached. That puts a bit of pressure on them to release some of these address assignments to the public, or at least sell them off at a profit. However the DoD refused most of this. It is possible that these addresses are used internally with some systems and that it is hard to assign the addresses to others as this would require changing the addresses of these internal systems which can be a huge job. Some companies have even started using these addresses internally in their own systems assuming that the DoD will never announce them. And in this context internal may involve networks with tens of millions of users and devices. Fast forward to the 20. of January a company called Global Resource Systems LLC announces that a number of these addresses can be reached through their systems. Little is known about this company, in fact the only think we know is their name and address, and the address is likely just a mail forwarder. The date is however a bit curious because this was the day of the presidential inauguration. Washington Post released an article about this and their efforts to find out why this was happening. But they were unable to find out any information. There was not even anything proving that GRS had any rights to announcing these addresses or even if they did it on purpose or if they had just misconfigured their systems. However a group called Defense Digital Service within the DoD did come back to Washington Post and confirmed that they were behind the announcement and cited it as \"security research\" without going into much detail. We still have no idea what any of this means."
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my74ad | how do muscles contract | Googling leads to a lot of abbreviated words like ADP and ATP which confuse the hell out of me. Anyone got a simple version? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's been a while, but I'll try: So, deep inside your muscles, in little muscle fibre strands, are these things often called \"thin filaments\" (actin) and \"thick filaments\" (myosin). Think of these like two millipedes facing towards each other's rear ends. Just think of ATP and ADP as energy used by cells. So the aim of causing the muscle to shorten so it can pull (like your bicep when you pull your forearm in to your chest) is to get these two thin and thick filament millipedes to walk in opposite directions. If you think of them as only head to head, if they both walk forwards they'll overlap, and the space they cover could go from 10cm (or, say, 4 inches) to half that, once they're side by side. In a muscle, if you can shorten the space the muscle covers, you pull. So what happens in the muscle, is that the thick filament has pulling arms, essentially, which attach to certain spots on the thin filament. This is like the legs of a millipede walking it forwards. But these pulling arms need those attachment spots to pull/walk forwards. The thin filament has its attachment spots hidden because it's twisted. The ATP/ADP is the energy used to untwist the thin filament and reveal these spots. The ATP/ADP is then used to make the pulling arms pull the thin filament. This works so much better when I can draw a diagram. The point is that the thick filament looks to pull the thin filament so the fibre strand shortens - thereby creating a pulling action."
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my7bpr | Why do we have nightmares? | SO I don't know if this is a dumb question, but I always thought about nightmares as something illogical. Now I'm not a biologist, a doctor, or any kind of professional, but I do know that the more our hearts is used the shorter we live. That being said, I remember having nightmares where I wake up, and my heart is going at a 120 km/h, I'm sweating and it sometimes genuinely feels like I'm dying. Why does our brain do this? Isn't our brain's #1 thing is to survive? I feel like speeding up our heart rate would kill us sooner. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I’m not a shrink or anything but having nightmares in my experience means that you’re subconsciously really worried about something or you’re physically unwell. Probably bad indigestion and/or fever.",
"There is no clear answer yet. We don't really know why we dream, nightmare or normal. Some hypotheses say it's processing of memory or even emotions but other say it's just a wierd side effect of some other processes. But for your concerns about the heart, I can assure you that a short spike of adrenalin caused by the fight-or-flight reflex is not damagin the heart or shortening your life."
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my7huz | Why are living 2 headed reptiles so much more common than living 2 headed mammals | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"One important reason is that mammalian embryos grow inside of a mother. This protects the embryo from environmental factors that could affect its development/influence mutation. It also means that when there are issues with an egg/embryo the mother's body can respond and remove it. Because reptiles lay their eggs and leave, whatever gets laid gets laid, and whatever happens to those eggs happens. Another reason is that while mammals tend to have just a few babies at a time, many reptile species can lay dozens or even hundreds of eggs at a time. Statistically speaking, there are just more chances for a two headed animal in a clutch of 100 snakes than in a pregnancy of 1 deer. [Source.]( URL_0 )%2C%20Dr%20Adams%20explained.)",
"I feel like many of these answers are about why reptiles are more likely to *have* this mutation (polycephaly), but not why reptiles and amphibians are (*slightly*) more likely to live to adulthood when they have it, which is how I interpreted your question. I'm sure a deep answer would involve more biochemistry than I actually know, but I got this impression from what biology I have: On a very high level overview, reptiles have gone for a different set of evolutionary trade-offs than mammals. Their bodies are a less tightly regulated (homeostatic) than ours; like, consider that they're cold-blooded and we aren't. Something going wrong with a mammal's internal regulation is just much more likely to cause a cascade of failures, leading to death. It might not even be having two heads specifically that means a 2-headed calf almost never survives more than a few days, but rather, whatever error caused their embryo to develop that way in the first place.",
"“ It is also possible for two separated embryos to incompletely fuse to form a two-headed animal. Two-headedness results from factors that cause malformation of a developing embryo, which can be both genetic or environmental. But it does not tend to be inherited, since two-headed animals do not usually live long or reproduce. In mammals, \"fact-checking\" by the mother's body also tends to prevent the implantation of embryos that carry errors like this, Dr Adams said.” URL_0",
"Among some of these other good responses, mammals generally have to make a trip through a birth canal sized for the baby's head. Two heads means that both mother and baby are likely to die and never be observed by humans. This isn't an issue hatching out of an egg.",
"Do two-headed animals have separate thinking because of two brains?",
"Frankly, I'm always surprised that we see as many two-headed mammals as we do. Maybe it's just because I'm a country boy, born and bred, but I've certainly seen my share of two headed calves, lambs, etc. They tend not to last that long, but they're certainly not as rare as some people may think.",
"Reptiles are born to survive on their own immediately so they are much more resilient. Most other animals are more fragile at birth and have to be cared for by their parents who wont waste their time with an unhealthy baby.",
"In addition to the other answers, live birth of a two headed mammal is unlikely because it would have to come down the birth canal of the mother (excluding c-sections, which of course are not natural, but there are some pedants on here). The difficulty in achieving this would likely result in the death of the mother and/or offspring during childbirth.",
"Reptiles have more offspring in one go, thus increasing the chances of mutations. Most human women have one child at a time with a slight chance of twins. Three is rare and four is one in a million. Meanwhile snakes have up to 24 eggs laid in one batch. 1-2 vs 24.",
"Mammals are born headfirst and probably would die in birth if they had two heads, as they probably wouldn't fit through the pelvis. Sadly, the mother would also die in the process of that.",
"If I recall right the polycephalus gene is a heterozygous gene so if they survive they can pass the trait on, but if need to double check this,I was told this but never verified it.",
"Speaking as a mammal, I would also add that a two-headed creature hatching from an egg stands a far greater likelihood of arriving into the world with both parent and offspring alive than a two-headed mammal that has to be birthed. Head first.",
"Curious as to dual yolk eggs. My wife gets farm fresh eggs from a local vendor and - no joke - I’ve had a dozen eggs each with dual yolks. I felt bad for the hen as the eggs were massive. Are these eggs viable to produce twin chicks?"
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my83fy | Why water expands when frozen but solid objects shrink when frozen and expand when heated? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Additional heat means that the molecules are bouncing around more, exerting an outward force on the object and causing it to expand. When freezing, the molecules slow down enough that they can settle into an orderly pattern (at least for crystalline solids). In water's case, when the molecules slow down enough, their crystal structure is shaped in such a way that the molecules are a bit more spread out than they were when they were just chaotically wiggling around. This is due to the shape of the water molecule and the way in which it bonds to other water molecules."
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my844m | How far from the Earth atmosphere you should be, so that you're not pulled by gravity? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"From a nitpicky standpoint, the answer is 4.54 billion light years--the age of the Earth. Gravity doesn't stop. It tapers off. If the universe were empty except for you and the Earth, you could orbit it at any distance. For practical purposes, the Earth has what's called the Hill Sphere at about a million miles (1.5 km) away. That's where Earth's gravity can't hang on to something trying to orbit it.. Outside of it, you're not orbiting the Earth but orbiting the Sun near the Earth. Our planet's gravity still has an effect though. There are places called Lagrange points that are stable points between the Earth and Sun. The L3 point (That's Lagrange point #3. There are five of them) is clear on the other sun at about the Earth's distance from the Sun.",
"Technically you are always pulled by Earth's gravity, no matter how far you are. But the farther away you are, the weaker the pull. I guess the better question would be \"how far from Earth you should be so you are more strongly pulled by other objects in space than by Earth?\"",
"Gravity doesn't stop. Gravity scales with the inverse square of distance; traveling twice the distance from the Earth's center reduces your weight fourfold. You'll notice that, to experience true weightlessness, you would need to travel infinitely far from Earth. This shows us that gravity never ends, it just gets weaker and weaker but never stops."
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my84es | Internet of Things Security Weakness | So I recently read that a thermometer in a fish tank caused a network security vulnerability because it was connected to the IoT. Why? How can it be that something like a smart appliance is a gateway back to more sensitive areas of the network? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Your device connects to your network, and in the process receives its own address on that network – a private IP which is only accessible to other devices on your network only. So your computer can send things to your IoT device if they're on the same network. However it cannot be used to communicate to it from outside the network. But, once in a while your device might also need to receive communications from outside the network, lets say from the servers of the vendor of the device. So, often a common way to do that is to map its address to the public IP address of your network, which makes it so that communications can be received by your IoT device by dialling up that public IP address. This is called port forwarding - if your network's public IP is 0.0.0.1, your IoT device could say that if you try to connect to port number 4321 of that IP, it will send that traffic to the IoT device (so 0.0.0.1:4321 directs the request to the IoT device). Unfortunately, it seems a lot of vendors of smart appliances or other IoT devices don't always focus on security. Which means that once an exploit is discovered and since typically the port number used during port forwarding will usually be the same (so my smart thermostat might use port 4321 and yours probably will too by default), it's easy enough for someone who knows your home network's IP to use a commonly known exploit to that smart thermostat and direct it to 0.0.0.1:4321. Also once you're able to access the one device it might be possible to use it to connect to other, non-port forwarded devices on that same network, since the smart appliance could be your gate into the network. But here we're talking about an extremely bad security vulnerability. I am grossly over-simplifying this but that's kind of the gist of it.",
"Things with internet access are running software. Software often has bugs which, if severe enough, will allow an attacker able to communicate with this thing to run their own software on it. If this thing is inside your home, the attacker basically has their own agent inside your home. Now it's able to do anything inside your home can... get access to your file shares on your PC, try to login to your router and change settings on it, trying to impersonate the router itself, all sorts of nasty stuff that can lead to a worse situation. If you're a business and you've let one of these things in, the potential for financial damage could be WAY worse. The problem with \"IoT\" devices is they usually need to be cheap because, well, that's how people choose what things to buy. Given the choice between something with internet access and one without, that price difference really needs to be as small as possible if you want it to sell. This means the software budget is probably pretty low, so a security audit, extensive testing, etc probably doesn't happen or is low effort. Then you buy it and you're giving one of these things your wifi password. (there are safety precautions you can take, which basically amounts to treating these devices as untrusted and segregating them. But this requires more expensive network and wifi equipment, or maybe buying two different wifi access points, which the typical user doesn't do, and even some businesses don't)"
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my860x | Why do we move different ways to different types of music? | More specifically, why do I nod back and forth to rock music, sway side to side to gentle music, and jut my chin out in figure 8s when a song is really groovy? Are these particular responses socialised, or are they wired-in? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Well certain responses are coded into the music to a certain extent. For example, a slow song in 6/8 (DAH da da Dah da da) is more likely to make you sway, since that's the easiest way to move to the music and still match the energy level of the song. Same with other chill music: you want to move with the music, but unless you're an experienced dancer, you probably just match the energy level. With more groovy music, theres actually something called \"rhythmic dissonance\" going on, where the music basically makes it harder to hear as the usual beat pattern, thus making your mind try harder and making you groove more. The easiest example of this is the \"back beat\", when the 2nd and 4th beat are emphasised instead of 1st and 3rd. There is a certain amount of cultural stuff to it for sure, but its based on the structure of the music we all grew up with. Which itself is somewhat socialized/cultural, since other cultures have different musical structures and stuff."
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my89a9 | Why do fish like pets? | There are lots of videos of fishes that look like they enjoy pets, I mean we all enjoy pets. But why do they like it? Humans underwater seem odd and that seems like the only way they would get pets. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I have large cichlids at home and I can regularly stick my hand inside the tank and they will let me touch them. When I'm cleaning the tank they come near me and even nibble my hands and investigate everything I'm doing. I would push them off but they seem to enjoy the interaction so they will come back and even line up so I will choose who to pet. When I am in the living room, they will follow me around. That's just me though. My wife or daughter would come downstairs and they will ignore them and be scared of them. So my guess is some fish can recognize faces and their owners just as dogs do. I have had them for a while and to be honest they wouldn't do this the first few years. My guess is I was a stranger to them until I started feeding them more and interacting with them so they started to associate me with food, with not being a threat and also friendly.",
"It took me way too many rereads to understand this. I kept thinking you meant fish having a pet themselves rather than being pet (because that doesn’t cross my mind when I think fish)! 🤣",
"It seems to be generally believed that every living critter itches, so it might definitely be a matter of them finding our hands abrasive enough to take care of that and it becomes a kind of relationship like that. In the wild, most fish find a way to deal with things like parasites and dead skin/scales like other fish or rocks/coral, so it might be a similar situation.",
"This is a surprisingly difficult question, because it brings up other questions that we don't have answers to. For example, there are plenty of videos online of lizards being affectionate and excited to see owners and getting scritches and that kind of thing. And yet a lot of people who don't have experience with these animals, and even many who do, will tell you that lizard brains aren't advanced enough for that kind of behavior. My roommate had a pet snake, and from what I saw, I would say she was incapable of enjoying scritches or liking/disliking certain humans. Yet I'm sure someone can easily provide me videos of such behavior. For the longest time, the general opinion among humans was that lizards just don't have the brain bits needed to feel that kind of thing. And it would be logical that fish can't either, nor can insects or arachnids. But we are slowly learning that the animals around us may be more advanced than we thought. Sure, an ant will never go ask a human for scritches under its chin. Dolphins will, spiders probably won't, a lizard can, maybe frogs, there is a line somewhere that says \"these animals are capable of that kind of thing, and these animals aren't\". But we don't know where the line is, or what it even looks like.",
"Maybe they learned that after pets comes food. They were trained to \"like\" pets, maybe accidentally trained by an owner who would feed them after pets."
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my9i28 | Why do movie theaters still use projectors? | They aren't shooting movies on reels, movies are edited digitally, so wouldn't a cable display to a large screen provide a better resolution? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"No, Projectors can be just as high resolution as Screens. Also, sitting from far away the resolution doesnt matter as much as you would think. Making a screen that large is also incredibly difficult, there is a reason you cant buy a 600 inch screen yet.",
"A projector can provide the same resolution as a screen, well beyond the extent that it matters in this setting. However, making a seamless screen that's fifty feet wide is far more expensive than making a projector that can project an image like that.",
"Even if it does. Think about how even your home TV can have a burnt out led. Imagine all those pixels being on the screen and and if even a few start to go out. It'll cost so much to replace and make a horrible watching experience. A projector is mostly just replacing the bulb and a smaller unit to repair.",
"There are some issues with building large screens. It would be a pain to transport to the movie theater and get into the building for a start. And the way signals travel over the much larger distances in a larger screen is a huge problem. You can get screens built up of multiple panels but there is usually a bezel around them for structure and cables and these creates visible gaps. This type of screen is sometimes used in large public spaces where a projector would be hard to do. But in a movie theater which is already set up for projection it is much cheaper and better to use a movie projector.",
"Viewing angle. Projection screens have sort of a reflective/diffracting coating which reflect the projected media widely, making the viewing angle nearly infinite. Unless you want ten seats all right in the center of the pavilion layout.",
"I would also like to add, continuing to use a projector retains some of that \"classic feeling\" of theater. Plus the technology evolved to fit the need. A theater already has a projector room and a big screen out in the front, so they invented newer digital projectors where you fit a hard drive provided by the studio to show a film. It was much cheaper for theaters to replace their reel projector (and get rid of a lot of the moving parts and maintenance associated with that) with a digital one, than to buy an absolutely enormous LCD screen to put out front. Not every theater has that kind of money. Plus, this technology was hitting theaters a good time before we had the giant displays we can make now. There may also be a case to make about restricting access to the floor the projectors are on (and thus keeping the hard drives more secure) rather than putting them right by where there's usually an emergency exit.",
"It's not practical to build such a big screen; you would need to tile several smaller screens, and the seems between them would be visible.",
"Sime display manufacturers, like Samsung, are working on it. However, building a 4K or even 8K display in theater size is not exactly easy. You cannot really use the same techniques you use to build display panels for home use, since those are pretty much limited to the practical size for a glass pane, plus the failure rate would go up quite quickly along with the area. You cannot make them out of multiple TV screen modules either, since that would leave visible seams. The alternative is LED matrix displays. Not the stuff you see in a standard \"LED TV\", that is just an LED-backlit LCD that faces the above issues, but the stuff you see in billboards and stadium screens and stuff like that. To build those screens to the size where you can show a movie in full resolution however, they need to be huge - though display manufacturers are trying to develop smaller LED pixels to bring that technology both to cinema screens and even to the television. However, we need to ask ourselves, where is the advantage? Projectors are a proven technology, they are reliable, they are... well, not cheap, but much more affordable than LED walls. The reason billboards and stadiums use LED matrices is simple: They are outside in bright sunlight, they need the brightness. A projector has a lamp that needs to illuminate the entire screen, so the light from the screen tends to be fairly dim - to get good contrast out of that, the room needs to be much dimmer than that. But cinema rooms are designed to work under that limitation - no windows outside, subdued lighting that is dimmed and then shut off to only leave emergency illumination before the movie begins, dark carpets, dark seats, all walls except the screen also dark. If there is one thing a cinema screen does not need, it is to be bright. And that darkness is part of the cinema experience as well, it helps you tune out all the other viewers and directs your focus to the movie that is playing. So there is absolutely no incentive for a cinema complex to retrofit one of its theaters for this new unproven technology."
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my9w83 | Why do electric water kettles make so much more noise than just heating the water (in close to the same time) on the stove? | I've observed this with multiple electric water boiling kettles. All I have seen are much noisier than boiling the water on the stove, and usually not faster. | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Which stove are you using? I have an electric hotplate stove and it takes ages to boil a litre of water compared to an electric kettle But coming to your question. The sound you are hearing is the boiling water releasing dissolved gasses that violently bubble to the surface. Electric kettles have a heating coil at the base which boil the water, and if you look closely, the bubbles originate from there This is a guess, but if water was heated evenly at the bottom, it may produce less sound compared to the electric kettle where water above the coil gets heated really fast causing violent bubbling. The sound is furthered by cooler surrounding water rushing in and having have the same happen to it"
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my9w9e | Why do countries/territories have a zigzag boundaries and not a straight line and how did they set it? | Earth Science | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Often they follow a natural border like a mountain range or a river, so that one side is one country and the other side is the other country and a bridge or similar is how the border crossing is handled.",
"The term usually used for such non-simplistic geometry is 'organic' The reason is how countries were formed or originated. In very simplistic terms, more often than not people of a village or area came under control of a ruling party/administration, or joined together to form a single entity. These villages and areas are inhabited based on needs of the people, so they may have some mining going on in the nearby hills and mountains, or some fresh water like river and lakes, or farmland etc. There may also be geological features such as aforementioned rivers and mountain ranges that limit the people So when they become united, these resources and features demarcate the boundaries, creating these organic \"zigzag\" boundaries, instead of neat geometrically pleasing straight lines - nature does not work on a geometric grid However, you may still find some countries with straight line boundaries. And almost all of them have them because in their colonial past, the colonial powers decided not to do their homework properly and simply drew lines on a map to carve out territories between themselves. Many of these borders are an issue to this day",
"Sometimes its based on geographic features, such as rivers or Mountain ranges. Other times it's based on the English, French, and Spanish empires deciding where a good boundary for thier respective territory would be.",
"Generally speaking boundaries are set either by politics or by natural features. The boarder might Zig zag around cities claimed by different people or Nations. It also can Zig Zag to fit natural features like rivers or mountains which don't often take logical shapes on the map. One exception is the border between Canada and America which is straight except around natural features like the great lakes and some complex treaty agreements. As if Canadians and Americans had a lot to say about certain parts of the border but not a whole lot about the rest of it, they agreed to use the 49th parallel to draw the large part of the boarder. The 49th parallel, the latitude line 49 degrees above the equator, called parallel because it runs alongside the equator in the same direction.",
"Depends on the country. If it’s an old British colony, it’s because some lord decided that’s the way it should be. In Europe it’s more to do with war. In some places it’s geographic like a big river or mountain range divides them.",
"[Wendover Productions]( URL_0 ) has a lot of neat videos on different borders",
"Boundaries that are generally straight lines, you’ll find, are based largely on latitude and longitude. The Contiguous US-Canadian border, except for the Great Lakes and New England, is largely on the 49th parallel."
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mya3hb | How do woodpeckers not destroy their brain when pecking wood at those insane speeds? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Their tongue wraps around their skull and cushions their skull. It’s pretty cool there are some neat diagrams online. But yeah it gives an extra layer of squish so they don’t get concussions every 5 seconds",
"Despite the absurd amount of force involved in pecking (1000 g), woodpeckers have a lot of ways to avoid brain injury. It is possible that they get somewhat brain damaged over time, but they have to stay smart enough to keep track of their food caches and their social relationships, and avoid predators. Many woodpecker species have complex food storage behaviors and social networks, and none of them want to get eaten. First, there are some behaviors they do to be safer. One of them is to do test-pecks in a new surface before pecking at it with a greater amount of force. Woodpeckers have been observed doing this and then abandoning places that they don't want to peck, maybe because they are too hard. Another behavior they do is changing the position of the beak between pecks so that the force is not repetitively concentrated in one area. They also brace themselves against vertical surfaces, like tree trunks, securely with their tail feathers that end in stiff points, as well as feet that are great at clinging to vertical surfaces with two toes pointing forward and two toes pointing backwards. Woodpeckers tend to peck in short bursts with breaks in between, because the force that pushes back on their heads and bodies generates heat, and they need to dissipate the heat (also, they don't have fluffy, insulating down feathers, so that might help with that too). Aside from behaviors, there are many body features that help the woodpecker avoid brain damage. One thing that is different between birds and humans is in the skull, both the upper and lower jaws are not fused to the cranium (the dome of the skull surrounding the brain) and can move separately. For us, only our lower jaw moves separately (think of how if you pick up a human skull, the lower jaw will just fall off unless it is wired into place). This means that some of the force can be dissipated before reaching the brain area because the area behind the jaws/beak can move and absorb some of the impact. To make the absorption of force by the jaw even more effective, woodpeckers have an underbite, with the lower beak sticking out more. That means the lower beak takes more of the impact, and the stress/force is [concentrated in the lower jaw]( URL_2 (from [Wang et al. 2011]( URL_0 )) and is mostly not transferred into the brain area, but rather down the thick, muscular neck and into the body. Additionally, like us, they have a hyoid bone in their throat. For humans, it is a bone that certainly wouldn't help us if we started bashing our heads into trees; it just serves as an attachment point for the muscles inside our mouths and throats to work. For woodpeckers, on the other hand, their hyoid bone forms [a thin, bony seatbelt that wraps all the way around their skulls]( URL_1 ), so when their skulls are thrust backward by the impact, the hyoid bone helps keep it from moving too much. The hyoid bone in birds is inside the tongue, which is why the common explanation is that \"their tongue wraps around their skulls.\" It's less of a cushion and more of a seatbelt. A small percentage of the force does reach the cranium, but woodpeckers have adaptations for that too. The brain cavity is smaller than you would expect for their brain size, because there is less fluid around the brain. Cerebrospinal fluid (the juice your brain is marinating in) is an effective cushion against small forces, but with large forces involved, the brain is literally slamming into the cranium and having more brain-juice-filled space for the brain to move through only increases the amount that the impact will hurt your brain. So, woodpeckers have less brain juice than usual so the brain is more contained from moving around and getting hurt. The brain is also oriented differently than ours so that the area that bonks into the skull is as large as possible. For us, (with a usual concussion from this direction of impact), the impact is concentrated in a relatively small part of our brains because our brains are narrower at the front. They also have relatively small brains for birds, so maybe there's less to break in the first place. (That said, they are not stupid by any means, like I said earlier.) The brain case itself also has a thick area of compressible spongy bone at the front and back (for impact and ricochet). Kind of like how modern cars let the front and back crumple to keep the passengers inside safer. (Except in this case, the bone springs back instead of being \"totaled\"!) Now, if it's so dangerous to peck in the first place, WHY do they even do it? Because they can carve out homes that are more secure from predators into trees, cacti, and so on. These cavity nests are highly desirable to many kinds of birds including species of ducks and songbirds that are incapable of making them themselves, which happens to mean that the woodpecker's ability to peck is not only important for their survival, but for the survival of many, many species. Woodpeckers also peck to get insects, sap, and other highly-nutritious goodies that would otherwise be completely inaccessible. If you're the only bird around who can get to the insects burrowed deeply into wood, then you have an amazing advantage compared to everyone else trying to get enough food to survive. The final reason they peck is social. You may have seen videos of \"stupid\" woodpeckers that are pecking on metal signs, gutters, flashing, satellite dishes, and so on. They probably don't \"think it's a tree.\" Instead, they are simply making as much noise as possible. Both male and female woodpeckers will find resonant (noisy) objects like hollow trees or metal signs and peck. This behavior is called \"drumming\" and it is used like birdsong; to mark territory and attract mates. Male chimpanzees also engage in frightening drumming displays (usually on the roots of trees) for similar reasons. I won't speculate into the reasons behind human drumming behavior, which are likely more complex, but also involve social communication (may Neil Peart, best human drummer of all time, rest in peace). TL;DR: woodpeckers try to peck safely with their body position, the timing, and the force of their pecks. They also have special adaptations in the bones of their skulls to make sure the brain doesn't get concussed. Pecking helps them to get food and raise babies, which means it is a helpful adaptation."
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mya3vi | How does Bluetooth work? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"At the very basic level, Bluetooth is using high frequency radio waves. Perhaps surprisingly, it's using much the same frequency of radio waves as the typical microwave oven uses. But Bluetooth uses so little power, it can't heat anything up really. Your car and your phone both have a radio transmitter and radio receiver, and they use those transmitters and receivers to send information to each other in a sort of conversation that follows what amounts to a very specific set of rules. For instance, when you paired your phone to your car, they had a conversation like this: > Car: Hey! Is there anyone out there? > > Phone: Hi! I'm here! I'm a mobile phone. Here's my ID#, and I'm called \"Haerveu's Phone\". > > Car: I understand. Here's my ID, and I'm called \"Haerveu's Car\". If you'd like to pair with me, send me a special code I've given to my driver. > > Phone: I understand. My user told me the secret code is \"1234\". > > Car: That's the code! We're paired now. You can send me music or use my antenna or speakers if you like. > > Phone: Great! Yes, I agree we're paired now. I'll let you see my user's contacts if you like. > > Car: Great! We're done now? > > Phone: Yes, we're done now. Later, if you say you want to play some music, they have a conversation like this: > Car: Hey phone? > > Phone: Yeah? > > Car: Our user wants to play some music. What do you have? > > Phone: Well, here's a list of all the music I have. > > Car: Could you send me the track called \"XYZZY.MP3\"? > > Phone: OK, I'll send it to you in chunks. Here's the first chunk.... {bunch of stuff}... got it? > > Car: Got it. > > Phone: OK. Here's the next chunk... {bunch of stuff}... got it? > > Car: Got it. > > {and so on...} > > Phone: OK. That's all. > > Car: Got it. Thanks!",
"It's the exact same thing as wifi, but with slightly different software to make it use way less power for devices with small batteries like wireless headphones.",
"Bluetooth is wireless communication that has a set of very specifically defined commands. In order to say your device is Bluetooth compatible it must be able to support that set of specifically defined commands."
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myb1jn | How do submarines navigate underwater | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Submarines, and all military ships, use an [Inertial Navigation System]( URL_0 ) that uses accelerators, gyroscopes, and a computer to accurately plot the course and location of the ship. A good INS can go months without radio or satellite contact and still be accurate."
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myb8vo | How do waterfalls and rivers never run out of water? | Earth Science | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The quick answer is: they do! A lot of river and waterfalls have times of the year that they are just dry riverbeds or have just a trickle. Depending on the climate, they are usually fed by either a steady supply of rain water or by slowly melting ice chunks from the heavy snow season.",
"A lot of people are saying \"they do!\" which is true, but I do not think it is really what you are asking. Under ideal conditions, a waterfall or river you see flowing is actually constantly being replenished with water. This is called the water cycle. Water comes from the sky as rain. It falls onto the ground. Some of that water ends up trickling together into one stream and eventually those streams all come together into a river. The water in the river flows downwards towards the ocean because of gravity. Once that water gets to the ocean, the sun is better at evaporating it. When it is evaporated, it becomes water vapor. It floats up into the sky, where it gets colder and turns back into water. This water is rain, and it falls again, replenishing the rivers and streams constantly.",
"They can! Many rivers dry up when their sources decline, either seasonally or due to outside factors like losing tributaries or human intervention. Rivers that never run out of water are typically fed by sources that also don't run out of water, like underground springs or a great number of sources that are constantly being replenished by rain, snowmelt, etc. Some rivers are fed by massive lakes upstream, that store far more water than the river can carry.",
"They do. More often than you think. Not usually the major ones, they are just less majestic.",
"They do run out of water. Where I live, most rivers are completely dry for a large part of their riverbed from mid/late Summer into Fall, because there hasn't been enough rain to replenish them."
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mybp8a | . Why do we ice an area that’s swelling? Why are we preventing the bodies natural healing abilities from happening here? | Twisted ankle? Blood rushes to the area and starts to swell. Is this a bad thing? If so, i can understand icing the area. But what’s wrong with an area swelling? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There's actually a large amount of debate on the subject. Where there's less debate on where you get a solid benefit from preventing swelling is, when the swelling is causing damage or mobility issues that cause secondary problems. For example with the ankle, if the swelling is causing additional pressure on the joint/other undamaged areas, eventually causing damage to areas not previously damaged. Or, if the swelling in say a knee injury is bad enough that you can't even really flex it, if you don't treat it then you're barely going to be able to walk for a while - which means related muscles, ligaments, etc aren't getting use and will atrophy. When the swelling goes down, weaker muscles/ligaments/etc in related areas will likely lead to more strain on the area that's trying to recover, delaying injury.",
"Reducing swelling can help reduce pain and return some movement to a joint. With the ankle, as the example, if it's not significantly injured (such as fracture or torn ligament) you want to get back onto walking gently on it pretty soon. If you don't get back onto walking gently on it it stiffens up and hurts more. This all only applies if it's just a strain/sprain, which will heal on its own and not be worsened by gently walking on it. With other things, such as a dislocated shoulder, you want to keep that swelling down as much as possible because you have to relocate the joint, and swelling makes it harder to do that."
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mycp62 | How come iPhones are able to show a 'dead battery screen' if they have no more power? | Usually, when an iPhone dies, it shows an empty battery. How is it able to show that screen when it just ran out of power? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It has just enough power to show that screen. If you don’t charge it, it will eventually show nothing. It just doesn’t have enough power to turn the device on fully.",
"The battery isn't completely drained, but it's drained to the point where starting up and operating normally would discharge the battery beyond safe limits. However, manufacturers decided that consuming a very small amount of power to briefly show a indication that the device is functional, just with a dead battery is a very useful troubleshooting tool"
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mycqsg | If there is no gravity in space, how can u drink or eat without getting it stuck in your esophagus? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Your esophagus is a muscle that moves things down to your stomach. It's called peristalsis. I don't think gravity is required.",
"Most of your body functions are purely driven by muscular pressure rather then gravity. This is how you are able to eat and drink while laying down or even upside down. So for example your esophagus is lined with muscles that will close it and open it in sequence pushing down the food and drink. There is just a few things differently about the digestion system of people in freefall. Most notably gasses will not bubble up and go back up the esophagus. The gasses are just too mixed with the stomach acid for the muscles to separate gasses and liquids. So astronauts do not burp.",
"First, there is always 'some'gravity. Second, when swallowing you use muscles and not gravity. You push water and food through the gullet",
"Have u ever squeezed toothpaste out of the tube? If yes, then that's the exact type of movement done in the esophagus. And since it is mostly a mechanical movement(squeeze-stop-relax) it doesn't require gravity/gravitational assist. You can feel this squeeze-stop movement if you swallow while lightly touching your throat If you answer to the 1st question is \"No\" then bruh u need to start squeezing some tubes."
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mydoq7 | Why are cross-species breeds like ligers, zebroids, and tigons (nearly) sterile? If the species are similar enough to make children, why can’t the children have children? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Species boundaries aren't real, hard \"yes/no\" binary divisions. There's way, way more fuzziness in the natural world, like sterile but otherwise health hybrids, groups where species A & B can breed, and B & C can breed, but A & C cannot. Categorizing animals into genera and species is useful, but it's a human grid put on life, not something fundamental to life itself."
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mydw4b | Would the Earth's rotation slow down if we got everyone on the planet to run to the east at the same time? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"On a technical level yes the rotation of the earth would change but the amount would be so small as to be undetectable.",
"check out kursgezagt on youtube. they got a video called what would happen if everyone jumped at the same time. basically to conclude. nothing would happen. 7 billion humans couldn't exert nearly enough force to run the planets rotation into any level of slower.",
"In theory, yes. The slow down would only last as long as the people continued running. When they stopped running their energy wold be transferred back to the Earth and it would speed up again.",
"There's a webcomic called Xkcd that looked at a similar scenario. If we got all the people on the planet together and they jumped what would happen. Turns out the planet weighs significantly more than us so not much. URL_0 Link if you want to read the comic."
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mye2lk | If we resist the urge to pee for long enough, we no longer need to go. How come? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I don't think that has ever happened to me... afaik the more you resist the more painful it becomes and the more you have to go.",
"If your body thinks now is a good time to go to the bathroom it will let you know to remind you. If you hold it in you tell your body that now is not a good time and if it’s not actually important your body will stop bothering you."
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myeneg | where does our weight go when dieting. | When you diet and successfully lose weight, where does it go? How do we “lose” it (for example you were 200 pounds you lost 3 pounds to now be 170) and your waist size shrinks. What exactly happens I understand burning fat and water weight etc but I just don’t understand like how we....expel it? Thanks in advance! | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Fat is almost literally burned. Fats are primarily hydrocarbons (hydrogen + carbon), and when reacted with oxygen the hydrogen becomes water (H2O) which can be urinated or exhaled, while the carbon becomes carbon dioxide (CO2) which is exhaled. In other words: you breathe it out.",
"When you burn a log, where does it go? You get heat, light and byproducts like carbon soot and smoke. You really need to think about weight loss as energy storage and energy exchange on the level of physics - conversions don't always give you the same mass as they started with (think logs to burnt logs) because lots of the physical stored energy has become 'conceptual' energy (like heat in the fire). Fat is stored energy that has been taken from food and restructured into a useful storage container. Processes in the body release that and generate movement, heat, etc, plus waste products of carbon and water (breathing out), and waste. So physically, we could gather up and measure carbon, water and shit as the visible out-products of fat burning. But the mass of that wouldn't be the same as the physical mass of the fat that has now disappeared, because it has gone from being physical visible energy to conceptual 'in use' energy."
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myeq9u | Why plants die in a very wet soil, but can survive and grow new roots in the water after cutting? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"very wet soil that stays wet can quickly grow mold or fungi that kill the roots of the plant. Different plants can handle different ranges of soil moisture, but that's often what kills plants when soil can't drain."
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myevp7 | Why do we protect our bank account info yet readily write and hand out checks which has the same information on them? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There is a LOT more personal information accessible if one's online banking password is compromised. An attacker would have access to that person's email/physical/mailing addresses and phone numbers, full information about balances and the entire transaction history of the account, along with being able to make electronic transactions as they please (using a virtual debit card number would be lucrative in particular)"
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myex22 | How do the Inuit people hunt polar bears? | I saw after reading about the Inuit when I was younger that the Inuit hunted polar bears in the past. I only recently saw a diagram on how big a polar bear is. For the unknowing they are very large animals. So I was wondering how they would hunt them, as in what tactics they would use or other information in the topic. Thank you for your answers in advance. Yours truly u/memesrule12345610 | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"What time range you looking for? Currently, they just shoot them so there isnt anything too interesting there. The idea seems to trap them in open areas against the water or ice, and then making your shot. I imagine it was similar in the past, except with bows/spears."
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myfozi | Why can't we make a storage that can perform all the tasks RAM does while being used as a disk drive as well? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"We can. You can buy several terabytes of RAM and there are (server and workstation) CPUs and motherboards that can use them. Just make sure it never has a power interruption. It also costs several thousand dollars for the same drive space as a 30$ HDD or 100$ SSD so...",
"We can, the issue is actually cost, it's more money than it's worth in terms of selling to the general public.",
"> Why can't we make a storage that can perform all the tasks RAM does while being used as a disk drive as well? Where does this assumption come from? Your system already uses part of your hard drive as emergency-RAM in the the form of virtual RAM (a swap file). The other way around is called a RAM-disk where RAM is used as a volatile storage drive. Prohibitively expensive and pointless with the advent of NVME SSDs.",
"RAM loses its contents when the power goes off, so imagine losing everything if you unplug or the battery dies. If you have lots of RAM you can set aside a portion to use as a temporary disk drive.",
"You can use system RAM (DRAM) as a disk, it will just lose all its data after it powers down (volatile) unless you have some kind of battery backup. There are niche products that do this, but I'm sure that's not what you mean. You can also use storage as system memory, most operating systems in fact already do this, it's called Swap or Page file. But they reserve this only for situations where the memory required is too large for RAM or not needed right now, because storage is so much slower than RAM. That DRAM behaves this way is not really a deliberate decision. If we could make a storage technology that was as fast as DRAM, but non-volatile (doesn't lose data without power), we would probably use it. But all the technologies we've used so far for memory and storage, it just seems to be the case from a physics perspective and the way these circuits are designed, that in order for it to be as fast as DRAM it has to sacrifice volatility. Generally speaking, the longer you need to store the charge in a specific place (which is what you're doing with long-term storage) the longer and more energy it takes to change the charge state (which determines read/write speed). In terms of bandwidth, an NVME drive is not far off DDR4 RAM - 4GB/s compared to about 25GB/s. But in terms of latency, even NVME is several orders of magnitude behind, measured in milli or micro seconds, compared to nanoseconds for RAM, which in turn is about 100 times slower than L1 CPU cache."
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mygbtm | When the world around us is dark our brain tries to make sense of things that aren’t clear. Why does our brain always assume things to be terrifying or threatening, and never nice and pleasant? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because assuming the worst is safer. Imagine the situation that you're on the Savannah at night. You look into the tall grass and see what might be the vague outline of a tiger, or what might be just a shape in the grass. If it is a tiger, then the person who interprets it as such is better prepared to survive the encounter. However, if it's not, then the person who thought it was a tiger has no disadvantage, as they just got spooked, but nothing else happened.",
"Our ancestors that were naturally more prepared for the worst were able to more easily survive the worst. If the situation turns out ok then there was energy wasted but you're alive either way. If the situation did turn out to be bad then the energy spent preparing to react keeps you alive long enough to create your very own frightened offspring",
"> When the world around us is dark our brain tries to make sense of things that aren’t clear. Why does our brain always assume things to be terrifying or threatening, and never nice and pleasant? assume threat, is threat = possible escape assume threat, is no threat = all is fine assume nice, is no threat = all is fine assume nice, is threat = possible death Which looks like a more promising survival strategy here (i.e. a trait that would be passed down to further generations), assume threat or assume nice?",
"Feel free to fact check me on this explanation, I'm just trying to parrot what I learned in my health psychology class in college 5 years ago. Apparently we still haven't really evolved past our \"caveman brains\"; i.e. we are still hardwired to perceive and potentially respond to any sort of threat, whether real or imagined, for our survival. Back in the days of early humans, especially as nomadic groups, they were constantly threatened by the potential presence of danger; large carnivorus animals, other humans outside of their nomadic group, etc. Our brains rely very heavily on our visual and auditory information to process a potential threat, so if you're in the dark where youe vision is limited and you see something large in the shadows? Yeah you're gonna assume immediately that it's a threat to your survival. Your amygdala kicks into high gear to act as your \"fight or flight\" response; either you prepare to fight the threat or run away from it. This is more amplified when our sight is diminished, because the brain perceives the possibility of danger significantly increasing when it doesn't have the information it needs to assume otherwise. We have not evolved past the point to have our brains chill tf out, hence there are so many people who have anxiety and panic disorders with little to no threat to their survival. This type of chronic anxiety would be far more beneficial in our early days because of those constant real threats, but nowadays, unless you live in a dangerous area or are exposed to danger on a daily basis, this defense mechanism worsens a person's ability to determine threat vs non threat. Our brains also have not evolved beyond the fact that for many of us, we have plenty of food every day and are at little to no risk of a famine. The human body is still designed to prepare for famine, and even though we have enough food to keep our bodies going, it *still* wants us to eat our high-calorie items available everywhere in order to save up energy in case of a famine, except that energy turns into body fat. The brain really can't comprehend a situation where it would pretty much never be in a famine."
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mygx6v | How does the international space station not get hit by satellites/space debris? | To my understanding, we got a lot of satellites, lots of man made space debris, and some space rocks and stuff orbiting our earth along with the ISS. How do they not run into each other like ever? Is it just by chance? Or maybe, does the ISS just like continuously recalibrate it’s route? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I wad curious after reading your question and this is what I found on Google. The ISS has Whipple shielding to resist damage from small MMOD; however, known debris with a collision chance over 1/10,000 are avoided by maneuvering the station.",
"things don't just whip around randomly in space - they follow orbits, and orbits are very predictable. Kepler defined the basic laws governing orbits 400 years ago. Things that we launch have orbits designed to isolate them from other satellites. True, there is a lot of junk out there and that is a problem, but that leads us to the 2nd point: Also, space is BIG. Even the area just around the Earth that we have most of our satellites in is huge, much bigger than the volume of the Earth itself. If you and your friend stood at opposite ends of a football field and threw dozens of tennis balls at each other, what are the chances that two of them would ever collide?"
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myh4qy | Why do we put our hands in front of our mouth when we gasp? Is it to instantly protect the mouth? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A gasp and the hand-over-the-mouth are actually two separate gestures. A gasp is a reflex. When we are startled, either physically or emotionally, we draw in air. This reflex comes from the moment of our birth, when it is very important that we gasp for air. We gasp, our lungs inflate, we live. Reflexes never leave us, so a gasp is carried on throughout our lives. The hand-over-the-mouth is what is called a *self-silencing* gesture. It’s literally the same motion that a person uses to clap a hand over a toddler’s mouth when they start telling grandma how old she looks. We do this to ourselves to tell ourselves to be quiet. Another self-silencing gesture you’ll see (or notice yourself doing) include pressing fingers to the lips in a ‘shh’ motion. There’s also self-comfort (hugging yourself, rocking back and forth) and a whole variety of other physical gestures like this that manifest when we are trying to control ourselves - consciously or otherwise."
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myh6kb | Arab Spring. | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"During the 2010s, there were massive protests against various governments in the Arab world, over things such as low standard of living, and lack of democratic representation. Numerous regimes were brought down, such as in Libya, Yemen, and Egypt, and protests also broke out in other countries as well."
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myh96a | When you’re drunk and something shocking ‘sobers you up’ is this a physical thing? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Yes and no. You don’t actually get magically sober. Believe me when I tell you that if your body could magic you sober, you would *never* be drunk. It would use this magic superpower literally all the time. But when you get a shock and it “sobers” you, there absolutely is a physical process involved. You release adrenaline into your system. This helps counteract the alcohol for just a short while. This is your short-term superpower drug. The other thing that happens is that your brain does what it does best: focuses on danger. Alcohol melts your lipid membranes and makes it hard to lay down short-term memories, but it doesn’t actually numb your entire brain. Your brain is largely wired to recognise and respond to threats, so that “sobering” moment is your brain turning everything it has to focus on the current threat.",
"Your body can do amazing things. It's much stronger than you would believe from your day to day experience with it. This is because it is always limiting itself. Run it in overdrive all day every day and you will get injury after injury from all the abuse your body would have to deal with from running in overdrive. So your body is taking it a little easier to prevent injury in longer term. However if there is immediate danger there won't be a longer term unless you make it out of the immediate danger. Your body pumps itself full of adrenaline which is the alarm signal for everything in your body to focus on short term. Things you only need later like digesting more food get put on low priority and things you need right now, like power in your muscles to run or fight get full priority. Similar things happen in your mind. Complex processes are on low. Primal reactions instincts and anything fast gets put on high. A normal person gets turned into a temporary superman. A completely drunk person gets turned into a somewhat functional person seemingly sobering up suddenly.",
"Not a doctor. But I would assume you don’t actually sober up but the adrenaline that kicks in stimulates you, sharpens your alertness and probably counters the depressant part of being being drunk."
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myh9vu | What is the difference between invasion and colonization | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Invasion is simply the act of sending troops into a country or area. Colonization is the long term creation of an economic and political system meant to extract wealth from a region or people group for a different area.",
"Invasion is a prelude to raiding or colonization. When you invade you enter an area that you do not have a right to occupy. Usually this is done by force but other methods could be used. Colonization is staying in a place that you have successfully invaded with the intention of becoming permanent residence. Raiding, you invade, take treasure and depart."
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myhwg1 | - The new flip phones | So the new phones that literally fold the screen in half. Doesn’t look like they have a clear line to separate the two sides - how does it work? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Plastic screens instead of glass, and flexible P-OLED displays that can be bent during use (and also happen to be really expensive)"
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myi7k4 | What is it in the brain that is different/ actually causes disorders like ADHD and Bipolar? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I am not sure if this is what you're looking for, but my ADHD was described to me by my neurologist as my brain's ability to process and commit memories is far below my actual intelligence, therefore there's a bottleneck when taking in information which causes me to get distracted, lose my place on my page, zone out, not remember specific details of what just happened, etc. I scored in the 8th percentile of short term memory formation and 4th precinctile of long term.",
"The brain is the most complex machine known in the universe, so we don't even entirely know 100% why many mental illnesses and developmental disorders arise. There's a number of reasons a brain could be rendered 'different'. Errors can occur at both the genetic and cellular levels. Lack of oxygen or other fetal trauma can disrupt brain development."
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myiel6 | Why are we scared of spiders? Is it a genetic thing, and if so, how did our ancestor learned to fear spiders that are probably 1/10,000 of our size and body mass? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Tens of thousands of years of people dying to spider bites weeded out those who did not fear them, and left those who fear them as the survivors, thus entrenching that fear in us genetically.",
"Generally the fear of spiders is seen as something learnt rather than an inate fear most humans have. Lets imagine at 1 year old you see your first spider and your curious. You reach out at which point your normally calm dad screams, snatches you away and calls for mum to help. Mum comes running downstairs, captures the spider and takes it away and then gives daddy a hug and tells him its all ok. Your young brain learns that when you see a spider if you scream mummy will help you and hug you and make you feeo safe so you do it the next time. (obviously the above is a bit of an oversimplification)"
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myiumv | how are we sometimes able to wake up a second before the alarm goes off? | It’s always sudden too, “bam wake up”. One second later, beep beep beep. (Cell phone alarm in my case) | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The body has an internal clock, simply stated. It is aware of the time of day almost to the minute. We don't have access to that clock consciously, but it's there. You can sometimes make it wake you up if you're focused enough on waking up at that hour while you fall asleep. This is assuming you're not exhausted enough for the body to ignore your requests.",
"Its not an internal clock. You are in a light sleep, where you are vaguely aware of your environment, but as you are sleeping you dont lay down any real memories. When the clock goes and wakes you up, you have the memory of being \"aware\" just before the clock, that would have been lost normally.",
"You set an alarm to wake you up. There are two possibilities - it wakes you up or you wake up before it. If it wakes you up you don’t remember it because it just did what it was supposed to - why would you bother remembering something that’s supposed to happen. If you wake up significantly before the alarm you just go back to sleep. If it’s only a little bit before the alarm you’re not falling back asleep before the alarm or are and experiencing time smear from light sleeping. The alarm is eliminating the cases where you’d wake up just after the alarm would have gone off.",
"Don’t know if it’s a curse or a blessing, but I have always been able to wake-up about 10mins before my alarm goes off. This happens even if I’ve been traveling through different time zones. I always thought it was due to the anxiety of knowing I have to be up for work or what ever I’m doing that requires me to be up at a certain time. i.e. catching an early flight or having to take my daughter to one of her soccer game... On occasion I will wake up 20-25 minutes before my alarm which pisses me off because I could be sleeping during that time.",
"Our brains like to put things in sequence for us, even when they didn't actually happen that way; we are bad at multitasking and simultaneity. In this case, you can wake up to the sound of an alarm and your brain will tell you that you woke up just before the alarm went off.",
"This used to happen to me, but with the phone ringing? Like i would wake up, and maybe 5 seconds later the phone would ring. That always confused me.",
"If you ask my wife how many times my alarm has woken her up in the last 20 years she will say less than 10. Relevant information: I get up at different times (job requirements) and always set an alarm. It only goes off for about 1/3 to 1/4 of the time, and when it does go off it is for less than 2 seconds 98% of the time. I sleep very well. I am also a strong dreamer in my sleep. A lot of my dreams are semi-lucid and almost always know that I am dreaming. As to how I wake just before my alarm. I am very aware of my sleep cycle. The last thing I do before falling asleep is look at the clock and calculate how much sleep I will get. Be it 4.5 hours, 5.5 hours, or 6. Only rarely do I get more than 6.5 hours. By doing this I know how much sleep I am allowed. I fall asleep in less than a minute. I wake almost instantly and I have trained myself to get the most out of sleep that I can. As to how I go t there... It is a long post and if you are really interested, just ask."
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myji06 | how did Einstein predict black holes by using math | Mathematics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Within astrophysics, there's something called escape velocity. The idea is that, based on the amount of mass a body has and how big it is, the strength of gravity means there is some minimum speed you'd have to throw something at for it to escape the planet or star's gravity. If you could throw a ball at about 11km/s from earth, it could escape the earth's gravity. Anything slower and it'll eventually fall back to earth. (Rockets don't need to go that quickly because they are constantly being powered, not just thrown.) We can use escape velocity to explain what the atmosphere can be like in different planets. Gases that move quicker than the escape velocity of a planet will 'boil off' into space. If you add mass to a body, the escape velocity gets bigger. If you make the size smaller (i.e. the body more dense), the escape velocity gets bigger. If you add enough mass and pack it in to a small enough space, you reach a point where the escape velocity is actually faster than the speed of light. This is the discovery Einstein made about black holes. It's that they are so massive and so dense that even light isn't moving quickly enough to escape.",
"By looking at the light warping around massive objects he created formulas describing how space warps. He tried putting a big number into the mass and a small number into diameter and noticed the formula predicted that the light wouldn’t escape. When he first discovered this he thought he was wrong somehow because stopping light was impossible. It’s a popular example on why you shouldn’t make assumptions."
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myk4td | What's cold fusion? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Nuclear fusion is the merging of two atoms. This releases massive amounts of energy, but requires an extremely hot environment, like a star. Cold fusion is the merging of two atoms in more manageable conditions. It's highly sought after, but so far seems impossible."
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mykn2y | What exactly makes something flammable? Like why are rocks not flammable but wood is? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"When something burns, it is reacting with oxygen. The molecules that make it up are being broken apart and combined with oxygen to make other stuff. Wood and organic matter is largely made up of hydrocarbons. These are things that contain a lot of hydrogen and carbon. These molecules can therefore break apart and combine with oxygen to make water (H2O) and carbon dioxide (CO2). Rocks are made of stuff that generally doesn't like to break apart and combine with oxygen. Think of it like this. Imagine a landscape. It's got hills and valleys, and stuff tends to roll downhill. Hydrocarbons are like things which have gotten stuck in small valleys near the top of the hill. If you give them a wee push, they can get out their bowl and roll down to the bottom of the hill. This push is called the *activation energy*, and is like bringing a match to a pile of wood. Rocks are already at the bottom of the hill. They can't roll anywhere. Other things might require a large activation energy. These are like things stuck in deep holes near the top of the hill. The have got further to fall, but it takes a lot of effort to get out. Then other substances might be like stuff precariously balanced on the top of the hill. They're unstable, and just a tiny nudge could set them off.",
"Flammability boils down to chemical reactivity. Inert substances like rock tend not to become involved in chemical reactions, including burning, at normal temperatures. Most materials will eventually burn, but at much higher temperatures than wood or paper",
"\\ > **What exactly makes something flammable?** Its ability to react with oxygen in a violent and sustained way (like a fire). \\ > **Like why are rocks not flammable but wood is?** The reason is the stability of the chemical. Nature is lazy, it wants stability, it wants equilibrium. All atoms want to go to their most stable form. However, in order for something to change, the molecules are in need some extra energy, and in some cases, something to combine with. A molecule that is very unstable will need very little energy, while something that is very stable will need a lot of energy. This is why something like an explosive will go off from something as small as a spark, while something like a gold bar will just stay like that for eons. Gold is very comfortable the way it is, the explosive is not. Another thing to consider is the chemicals around the unstable molecule. Like ok, a molecule might unstable, but even if you give it the energy, sometimes it might do nothing because it doesn't have anything to combine itself with in order to become more stable. For example, gasoline is rather unstable. Gasoline loves to react with oxygen, and it will do so if given some energy (a spark, some heat, etc.). But if you take the oxygen away, you could keep giving gasoline as much energy as you want. It will still not burn, because you no longer have the oxygen in the mix. So, back to your question, rocks are not flammable because their molecules are already very stable, and they can't combine themselves with oxygen in order to become more stable, let alone have a violent and sustained reaction with it. Wood is flammable because not only are the molecules in it more unstable, but if given the energy, they can react with oxygen violently. Also, in case you were wondering, yes, rocks will absolutely burn if the circumstances are right. Here's a video of a brick reacting with fluorine and burning: [ URL_0 ]( URL_0 )"
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mylhio | Before the invention of modern surgery, were minor illnesses like appendicitis a death sentence? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Yes, pretty much. Go along any old graveyards and you'll see ample amounts of dead children and teens. If you're living somewhere like me, you'll see some with the \"cause\" of death. Many times, it's passed suddenly away in his sleep, or was taken too soon. A lot of the time, people just had these unknown ailments that did them in. Some premodern surgery could crudely save lives, but ultimately, a lot of people died from things that wouldn't be a major issue nowadays in modern society",
"Yes. Another major cause of premature death was, believe it or not, tooth decay/infections.",
"For appendicitis in particular, yes. I believe the appendix wasn't properly identified as an organ until the 15th century, and the first appendectomy wasn't performed until the 18th century. So yes, people would probably end up dying from appendicitis before that, with an unknown cause of death.",
"Also, before anesthesia, surgery was . .traumatic is an understatement. \"Decoding The Void | Radiolab | WNYC Studios\" URL_0",
"The old way they removed bladder stones was to stick metal rod up your penis to locate it and hold it in place then they'd cut through your taint and yank it out. With nothing to clean the wound or numb the pain. This could kill you outright of course but the wound could also stay open the rest of your life as it did with Samuel Pepys who had a yearly feast to celebrate surviving the surgery.",
"The short answer is yes, this is in part why the average life expectancy has increased so much in the past century. Most people find this hard to believe but the chances of dying before the age of 5 in the early 20th century in the US was as high as 1 in 3.",
"Simply yes. Surgical operations were performed for a long time in human history, probably since ancient times or even earlier, and when Lister formulated rules of surgical hygiene in 20th centaury mortality rate of operated/treated patients was on average close to 40%, either due to complications after treatment, lack of proper equipment, lack of hygiene or understanding of our body or the diseases, and I can't imagine it being any lower in times before, when our understanding of how human body works was even smaller and our tools were even more primitive.",
"I'm glad you qualified by saying modern surgery. Frankly, most premodern surgery was worse than the disease... If you had a minor ailment and wanted a slow painful death, go see your barber and have him operate on you. (Though there is a evidence of some pretty major surgeries being successful all the way back to ancient Egypt) As an example, one of the King Henrys (or maybe the Georges... my memory is a bit spotty) was badly wounded in battle. Someone ran him through the gut and he lost a pretty big chunk of tissue. Well, being the king, he was able to afford the best 'doctors' in the land. Long story short, They eventually decided to replace the lost tissue from that of a cow. So they just stuffed it in him and sewed him up. Of course it wasn't long before it putrified in him leading to a days-long agonizing death. Side note: When that's what passed for cutting edge medicine, homeopathy was far and away the better option. Too bad that distinction is lost on modern believers... Also, what made a good surgeon has changed throughout the years. Before anesthesia, speed was a key aspect of a good surgeon. If you're going to get your leg chopped off, you don't want someone who saws slowly... Which, brings to mind the story of the most lethal surgery in history... A surgery on a single person with a 300% mortality rate. I can't do it justice in just a few words so Google it if you're interested...",
"The short answer is: yes and no. The amount of information that has been gained and lost throughout human history is legitimately incomprehensible. There are references to powerful, ancient kingdoms in some of the earliest recorded texts we in modern times have found. Take for example this [surgically implanted silver plate fused into someone’s skull roughly 2,000 years ago.]( URL_1 ) The cure for fucking Scurvy [has been documented, forgotten, and rediscovered innumerable times throughout history.]( URL_0 )",
"Yups. The book and the movie The Physician (on Netflix) is based on somebody who lost their mother due to \"side pain\".",
"Yep. And for modern surgery, they needed not only information about the human body, but two vital components were good anesthesia and antibiotics.",
"Also, in many parts of the world where quality healthcare is not accessible it is the same. I live in a small village in West Africa and people die of “stupid stuff” all the time. In fact, even when children get minor colds their parents are terrified because they don’t know if it will kill the child or not.",
"Not necessarily a death sentence, but yes people did die to them a lot more than today. Appendicitis has a death rate at around or somewhat above 50% without surgery or antibiotics. Many serious disease is survivable without treatment, though the odds are of course much worse. Getting an infection from even a minor wound could be pretty bad. Sometimes people might die from accidentally slicing their hand when working in the kitchen and then having the wound get infected.",
"The only person to die in the Lewis and Clark Expedition had appendicitis. They died pretty earlier on too. So yeah. That is why it was so common to amputate limbs. If they didn't, you died from some tiny cut that for infected.",
"Appendicitis is a very severe condition but it's easily treatable with modern medicine. Go back to the early 20th century and a fairly minor cut could easily be a death sentence. Without antibiotics wound infections would often be deadly. The world will become a lot more dangerous if antibiotics lose their efficacy.",
"Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series covers this topic pretty well. The protagonist, Claire, is a combat nurse who goes back in time to the 1700's and has a really difficult time convincing anyone of germ theory. Plenty of characters dying of things that would be easily prevented or cured after 1940 (The introduction of Penicillin)."
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mymbsm | Our brain can't feel pain, so why do we feel headaches then? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It isn't your actual brain thats being afflicted with a headache it's the muscles in your head/scalp"
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mymob9 | How are names conveyed in sign language? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Typically you convey your name by spelling it, using the signs for each letter. For people who are longtime users of ASL or other sign languages, they often come up with a “name sign” as a quicker, more personal way to refer to themselves - or are given one by friends or family, kind of like a nickname. A name sign might be as simple as the first letter of their name, or it might reference some aspect of their personality or some other trait about them.",
"By using letters to spell it out. My name is four digits so it’s easy. I feel sorry for others One thing I remember from being taught sign in primary school is that each finger on your left hand is a vowel (thumb = a, index = e etc) Touch the tip with the tip of your right index finger and that’s a vowel"
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mymv6m | why is it so exhausting to listen to a compulsive talker | I would expect that having to listen to a never-ending monologue is just boring. But it's so much more than that: it's exhausting and stressful, and it takes hours to recover energy after. Why is that? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I read a book by Susan Cain called Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, and she explains a a bit about the psychology of introversion and extraversion. Everyone has a threshold for how much external stimulation they can tolerate before they need a break. In introverts that threshold is relatively low, and in extroverts it is relatively high. Think about it this way: someone with a low tolerance for spicy foods isn't likely to go out of their way to seek out particularly spicy foods; they might enjoy a little buffalo sauce now and then, but too much becomes painful, the receptors that perceive heat become overstimulated. But someone with high tolerance for spicy foods isn't satisfied with buffalo sauce (it's not even very hot!), They'll go out looking for Carolina reaper sauce for their wings. Because they can tolerate more heat, the less spicy stuff just doesn't give them the same kick. But there is a limit where it becomes too spicy, and just like the first person, once the food gets too spicy it becomes too painful. We can apply a similar principle to intro/extroverts. Introverts have a lower tolerance for external stimulation. They like socialising well enough, but long interactions can be too much and become exhausting, because interacting and actively listening requires focus and energy. The introvert becomes overstimulated, it becomes tiring. Extroverts, on the other hand have a much higher tolerance, so they need more stimulation to reach the same level. They can talk and talk, and have long conversations without feeling overstimulated, because their tolerance for that type of stimulation is higher. The main thing is socialising requires effort and focus, and everyone has a limit to how much effort and focus they can offer",
"I can only postulate, I don't think there are studies to reference on this, but I would guess that it's because you are holding yourself to certain expectations while you listen. You're actively trying not to be rude, which could be anything from yawning to letting your eyes glaze over. Everything you do around another person is a form of communication and it takes effort (even if most of it is pretty unconscious) to make sure we're not angering people or embarrassing ourselves.",
"I think the other two comments have solid points, but I'd like to put forward a theory based entirely on personal experience. Maybe compulsive talkers are less likely to allow you the same platform to just, get stuff off your chest. I personally know someone who could talk your ears off all day, but it wasn't exhausting until I realised they never really asked about me, my interests or even my opinons on what theyre talking about. Not to make it sound like compulsive talkers are being malicious, i think they probably just don't notice, but i can see how it would breed resentment of compulsive talkers on the whole in the long run",
"This is a bit of a guess but I work with a compulsive talker and have often reflected on this. I think it’s cause you don’t really get to think your own thoughts. Some people have suggested in this thread that it’s the energy used to not look rude but the guy I work with knows no one is listening. He just likes to talk and accepts that other people aren’t gonna give him the same energy back so I mostly ignore him but it’s still exhausting. But even tho I mostly ignore him it’s like when you’re trying to count or do math and someone is saying a random string of numbers. You can try to ignore it but it’s still there and you gotta put energy into separating their thoughts and yours and that gets pretty exhausting. Eventually, if you can, you just gotta accept that you can’t really think your own thoughts. Then as the day goes on since you haven’t really been able to think your own thoughts it feels like you’ve been sort of putting on a show all day. And then when they’ve been quiet for a while and you start trying to think your own thoughts and get interrupted in the middle its just more crushing. It takes more mental energy to try and put a sort of bookmark on that thought which you always have to keep a sort of mental hold on or you’ll lose it. So it ends up being this weird form of mental multitasking that becomes more exhausting as the day goes on.",
"Energy Vampires such as Collin Robinson. They drain your energy through boring you or through enraging you."
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myn06o | If new layers of sediment are continuously getting deposited, how is the Earth not getting bigger? Where does the material that forms new layers come from? | Earth Science | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Volcanos, and plate tectonics. Some mountains push up very very slowly. Like 1\" or less per year. Then erosion carries that to the sea and it sinks. And compacts into part of the contential plate. Over millions of years this cycle would continue. If the pressure in the core gets to high and a weak spot forms then a volcano erupts. But it's not new matter for nowhere. It's just matter being recycled.",
"just like the water cycle there is a \"stone cycle\". Erosions takes stone from mountains or river beds and transports it elsewhere. There it gets pressed down over millions of years, until it gets deep enough down to reach our core and become magma. This magma then gets transported up again through the crust via volcanoes or magma plumes.",
"The sediment is being dragged from other places. A river starts up in the mountains, picks up sediment, and drops it off in the ocean at the end. Sediment is not being magically created out of nowhere. It's just being moved from place to place.",
"Erosion. Water and wind are wearing down layers of the earth from some places, so no area just keeps growing. The stuff it wears down doesn't just disappear, it shows up as the materials for sediment. Also sometimes the movement of tectonic plates causes a lot of stuff to be thrust up to the earth's surface, other bits bring a lot of stuff down below the crust."
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mynoi2 | How are there only 12 notes in music? Why can’t there be more? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There can be more. The 12 note scale is from western music. Other cultures have used different scales. See Arab tone system: URL_2 Indian 22 note scale: URL_1 And even western music used to have more than 12 notes. In the baroque era, before equal temperament tuning had become the standard, notes like D sharp and E flat did not share the same pitch. URL_3 Also checkout microtonal music: URL_0",
"Because 12 distinct notes in various octaves is easy to tell by ear and write down. We could have more, but they'd be close enough in tone to the notes we have now that their uses would be very limited, and would get confused for other notes any time the pitch is shifted slightly.",
"Good answers here. In case your confused, even in the western system there aren’t only 12 notes. An octave is split into twelve tones but there are multiple octaves we can easily hear. Standard piano has 88 keys which are all really different notes. Physics says that we perceive low, middle and high Cs as variations of the same note. Explaining this is too much for eli5."
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myo3eh | Whales swim in the salt water ocean, do they need fresh water like most living creatures? How do they get it? | And dolphins too | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Sea mammals do need fresh water like all other organisms though because they are submerged in water they need less fresh water than land critters. They don't need to sweat or pant to regulate their body heat and when they need to urinate they don't need to expel a mostly liquid stream to avoid getting waste on themselves. Their urine is very concentrated. Because they are so good at holding onto water they are able to get the majority of the fresh water they need from the food they eat. AFAIK they can drink sea water if needed, as I understand it they very rarely need to drink though.",
"Marine fishes have two options for osmoregulation(fancy word for making sure the animals body has the right salt:water ratio) : accumulate enough salts to make your inner organs have the same salt concentration as the outer water. This way getting fresh water doesnt matter since your body is adapted to the salt. Other option, is to have good kidneys that can get a lot of the salt out through piss more salty than the csgo community. This way the animal doesnt need to modify its entire body to work with salt water. First option is used by marine sharks, rays, etc while the second is used by marine bony fishes. I didnt learn about marine mammals in particular, but I'd say its the second option. Correct me if im wrong. PS: Yes OP, basically all mammals and most organisms do need fresh water. EDIT: shoutout to u/mynameismrguyperson for the extra info that technically sharks dont accumulate the sea salts, rather they build up urea(main waste in urine) and a fancy chemical called TMAO that is sort of equivalent to accumulating sea salts. EDIT: URL_0 Turns out Im wrong and mammals are not at all similar to fishes in osmoregulation tactics. TLDR They drink less salt water and simply make fresh water from all their own metabolic( a blanket term for all the chemical reactions in the body) processes.",
"Herbavoires are very adept at eliminating salt content from their food, which is just as salty as the water. Carnivores eat fish and other bits and bobs of the sea that have salt content similar to their blood content so they do not need to do as much filtering (they still do but not the degree of herbavoires)",
"Most sea mammals (and all salt water animals actually) have very efficient kidneys that can get rid of the salt in the water.",
"I recently visited Seaworld and asked the trainers about this. Both whales and dolphins need fresh water. In the wild, they get it from the water content in their food. In captivity, the trainers supplement them with freshwater ice cubes. The ice cubes serve as both a training reward and a source of fresh water. I had a chance to feed the dolphins,, and the trainer told me not to break up the fish, because it would lose some of the water content."
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myotk3 | Why do people talk more about the spread of HIV being a concern for people in the LGBTQ community more than anyone else? | If it's transmitted through sex, shouldn't it be the same for everyone? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"First, during a same-sex sexual act, the chance of conception is zero. As a result, it is less common to use a barrier method that would also block HIV. Second, anal sex transmits HIV better than vaginal sex. Third, the base rate of infection is already higher due to the two factors above, so the danger of transmission is higher.",
"Statistically the most likely route of infection is through unprotected anal sex. Per the CDC's website, odds of infection per 10,000 exposures. Receptive Anal Intercourse 138 Insertive Anal Intercourse 11 Receptive Penile-Vaginal Intercourse 8 Insertive Penile-Vaginal Intercourse 4 Receptive Oral Intercourse Low Insertive Oral Intercourse Low So as you can see, receiving unprotected anal is 138/10,000.. where as receiving u protected vaginal is 8/10,000. Huuugeee difference. Studies have found that men who have sex with men (MSM) have higher counts of casual sex partners. So factoring both a higher chance of infection from the type of sex, compounded by the number of people engaging in that risky behavior leads to the fact that LGBTQ populations are generally at higher risk.",
"It's complicated. Basically, back in the 1970s, the gay community didn't see a reason to use condoms, because there was no chance of pregnancy, and the only STDs that were common back then were pretty treatable. So a lot of gay men would have sex without using condoms, with many different sexual partners. So when HIV began to be a thing, it took years for people to realize it, years where many gay men unknowingly were spreading it to each other, because not only did doctors not know what it was, but it took years for it to activate. A lot of people died, and no one knew why. (And many people didn't care, thinking that a disease that was primarily killing gay people was fine by them.) So, even though since then, the gay community has used a lot more safe sex practices and worked harder to keep HIV from spreading, there's still the stigma that gay men are more likely to catch HIV. Some gay men are more likely to sleep with many different partners, which means they are more likely to spread an STD than people who are more monogamous. And anal sex is slightly more likely to spread STDs than vaginal sex.",
"> An estimated 1.2 million people in the United Statesa had HIV at the end of 2018, the most recent year for which this information is available. Of those people, about 14%, or 1 in 7, did not know they had HIV. > How does HIV affect different groups of people? There are different ways to answer this question. > > In 2018, gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men accounted for 69% of all new HIV diagnoses in the United States and 6 dependent areas. In the same year, heterosexuals made up 24% of all HIV diagnoses. **HIV diagnoses by transmission category:** - Male-to male-sexual contact 66% - Heterosexual contact 23.8% - Injection drug use 6.6% - Male-to-male sexual contact and injection drug use 3.6% > If we look at HIV diagnoses by race and ethnicity, we see that Blacks/African Americans are most affected by HIV. In 2018, adult and adolescent Blacks/African Americans accounted for 42% of all new HIV diagnoses. Additionally, Hispanics/Latinos are also strongly affected. They accounted for 27% of all new HIV diagnoses. **HIV diagnoses by race/ethnicity:** - Blacks/African Americans\\* 42.2% - Hispanics/Latinos† 27% - Whites 25.2% - Asians, American Indians, Alaskan Natives, and Hawaiian Natives 25.6% > The most affected subpopulation is Black/African American gay and bisexual men. > There are also variations by age. Young people aged 13 to 24 are especially affected by HIV. In 2018, young people accounted for 21% of all new HIV diagnoses. All young people are not equally at risk, however. Young gay and bisexual men accounted for 83% of all new HIV diagnoses in people aged 13 to 24 in 2018 (includes young gay and bisexual men who inject drugs). Young Black/African American gay and bisexual men are even more severely affected, as they represented 42% of new HIV diagnoses among young gay and bisexual men. \\* *Black refers to people having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa. African American is a term often used for Americans of African descent with ancestry in North America.* † *Hispanics/Latinos can be of any race.* & #x200b; The reason it is a prominent subject among the LGBT community is 1. We are a small community, and because of our shared preference, we have a limited pool of people who could be our match. US surveys have suggested 10% engage in non heterosexual sex while 4% - 5% of the country identify as LGBT. 2. There is certainly some stigma, but it is not necessarily uncalled for. Back in the 70s - 90s, many celebrities and prominent personalities were diagnosed with HIV/AIDS and came out as homosexual, this hyper-publicized association has lead many to generalize the situation and continue to ostracize the LGBT. 3. Sadly, because it IS a major concern for the LGBT, our friends, family members, and even others who interact with us on a frequent basis. & #x200b; Source: URL_0"
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mypvw7 | What makes our brains like certain specific things as opposed to others? | So an example would be that I love canvas art and seeing brush strokes and tool marks and texture as opposed to not really liking perfect looking beautiful digital art. I can recognize the digital art is very good and the person is talented, but my brain doesn't like it. What makes that decision on what's "feel good"? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's a mix of genetics and psychology affecting how we absorb, process and use information. Our brains are wired around certain things because it simulates past experience or how or unique brains work and what we need in order to thrive. The psychology that processes visuals and textures is stimulated by setting the qualities of physical art, and you possibly have a bias for work that took time to physically perfect vs learning to use tools that have less relevance. These tools also lead to instant gratification and more systematic perfection and you prefer authenticity and you see perfection in imperfection."
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myq3nz | What happens when a double yolk hatches? Do you get twins? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Could in theory become two very runty chicks if they made it, in practice they'll unfortunately likely die as not enough space and nutrients to support both of them. Also, just to clear this up: double yolk eggs happen naturally in about 1 in 1000 eggs, there's nothing genetically engineered about them.",
"Unfortunately what happens is that both chicks die before they get anywhere near the hatching stage. There's not enough room or nutrients in there to support both."
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myq92d | what is mould and how does it get into sealed spaces? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Mold's are a type of fungus. They reproduce with spores that are airborne. Mold is everywhere and in the air all the time but it takes certain conditions for the spores to grow, usually in cold and damp spaces. It gets into sealed spaces because the air in the space was at some point contaminated."
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myqd04 | Why does fungus make toenails thick? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Fungus grows in moist environments, and toenail fungus growth *inside* the nail, because the nail isn't a solid mass - it's scale-like pieces of keratin, layered atop each other. So the thickening of the nail is the result of the fungus separating the keratin layers as it grows.",
"It's worth mentioning that your nails thicken as you age (a whole other ELI5 that probably exists already). With fungus being more common in older people (from my experience), it can be harder to distinguish the thickening from age versus thickening from fungus.",
"My father had terrible toenail fungus, and my mother had it on two toenails. My husband now has terrible toenail fungus. I don’t (so far!) I obviously share shower and bathroom facilities with my husband... but I also wear open toed shoes or sandals most of the time, take off my shoes and socks after a workout, and always let my feet dry. Despite my admonishment, my husband will still wear the same socks 2 days in a row if “they’re not dirty.” 🤮",
"It’s definitely worth making sure that it is in fact a fungal nail. Years of micro trauma or one big trauma can change the angle (Lovibonds angle,) at which the nail grows giving it the appearance of an infection. Telltale signs of fungus can be that it’s sponge like and may have little black tubes like something has burrowed into it. Also smell. A sample may be required to confirm but can often yield a negative result especially if applying topical anti fungal treatments. This shit is exactly why I gave up being a podiatrist.",
"Wait, I have had very thick toenails for atleast 10 years. Are you saying I got fungus?",
"Home remedy for toenail fungus that won't hurt your liver: spread some mentholatum salve on the nail every night for at least 6 months. It usually works.",
"I had nail fungus on my big toe; took about a year to get rid of with two kinds of prescriptions. But now, the big toe nail keeps falling off. Also, prior to the nail fungus I had my nail removed for an ingrown nail and my nail kept falling off. Is that nail is just prone to fall off/ get everything under the sun?!!",
"Does having this usually cause deformation of the nail even after it’s cured?"
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myqdzm | Why does (almost) all living being need oxygen? What does the body do with oxygen? How does it separate oxygen from other components of air? And why do we die without oxygen? | I know that's a lot of questions but just realised I don't really known anything about Oxygen. Also, why can't we use any other components of air to breathe? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Our cells need oxygen to burn their fuel. All energy we use comes from reacting carbonhydrates (sugars, fats) with oxygen, so if we don't get oxygen our cells can't do their job, and some jobs are essential to keep us alive (mostly brain, heartmuscles, lungmuscles, the quickest problems arise in the brain) We seperate oxygen from air in our lungs. We have some molecules in our blood that absorb the oxygen from air and then transport it through the entire body",
"Most living organisms need oxygen to grow , reproduce , but most importantly...they need it for energy ! Glucose from food is reacted with oxygen to release energy in the process of respiration! This energy is used for many functions like muscle contraction , etc Our body cannot be in equilibrium state , if equilibrium is achieved chemically in our body , we will die To maintain a non equilibrium state , we need energy !",
"All organisms with nuclei in their cells use oxidation based on oxygen to degrade glucose and other molecules (also fatty acids and nitrogenated bases by different mechanisms) to get chemical energy usable in the cell. They use a chain reaction in the walls of the mitochondria to do so and as a result they get ATP and water (for the basic glucose degradation, there are a lot of side chains, more advanced biochemistry) Some protists (unicellular organism without nuclei) use other oxidisers and can be killed by exposure to oxygen."
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myqlrc | Why are horses rideable? Why wouldn't they just stop being obedient and throw off riders? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The ones that weren't trainable and kept flinging the riders off either weren't kept or weren't used to breed. You have offspring from the ones you're able to train successfully, which will incrementally give you more obedient horses."
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myr2n5 | Is consumption actually the "engine" of economic growth? | I've heard many theories, whether if it's consumption, investment, value creation... I'm confused - thanks. | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It depends on your viewpoint. In general all of them drive the economy. If you cut one of them out completely the system stops working. (Like, you can invest as much as you like, if people don't buy things companies won't sell things) What the \"engine\" is depends on your definition of the engine."
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myr9cd | what is the science of pain | why do we feel pain physically?? like when you get bit, injured, cuts like that | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"We have specialised sensory receptors called nociceptors that respond to extreme and potentially damaging stimuli such as high temperature. When these nociceptors detect a potentially harmful stimulus, they send electrical signals to the brain that are interpreted as pain.",
"We have evolved to feel pain to avoid us from doing actions that will hurt us. If you for example grab a hot object your nerves will rapidly send an electric pulse trough your spine and into your brain. Your brain interprets this as pain, it hurts because this will cause you remember not to do the same action again. Small bugs as far as science today knows do not experience pain as we do. Their brains are too small to remember pain, it has been proven they do notice something is wrong but haven't evolved to have pain like we do."
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myrgaz | is spending really better than holding/investing for a good economy? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Investing is a form of spending, but saving in and of itself adds nothing to the economy because that cash is essentially removed from existence. It’s not buying things, that pay for salaries, that pay for things, that pay for salaries, etc. That’s called the velocity of money. If everybody saves, everyone ends up losing their jobs because you’ve lost your customers. The caveat here is this is within reason. You don’t want your population living paycheck to paycheck either for a variety of reasons."
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myrh31 | Why do we 'surge' back up towards the surface of the water after a deep jump & is it directly proportional to the depth of our jump? | Any time I've jumped off of a cliff or diving board into water, I've experienced that distinct feeling of my body cutting downwards through the water before there's this 'pause' or 'snap' moment, which is followed by my body automatically 'surging' or being pushed back up towards the surface. If the jump is shallow, I'm propelled right to the surface of the water. The few times it's been deep, I've noticed I got close to the surface of the water but had to manually swim to the very surface to break through the top and catch my breath, but I 'm not sure if that was an anomaly. I am curious about these forces/mechanics (in ELI5 terms -- I don't have a physics background). What causes that surge, and does it happen to all objects (Ex. inanimate matter like rocks - including larger ones like boulders) or only bodies that have water inside them? Is the distance the body travels downwards identical to the distance it covers as it surges back up, or does this depend on the height? I.e. Will the water always push us back up to the surface regardless of the height from which we jump or do taller heights mean we'll only partially make it back up via the 'surge' force and be required to manually swim our way back up to break to the surface of the water? Ex. If someone got injured when they hit the water and was unable to manually swim upwards, would they stay below the surface and drown? I hope that makes sense. | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In a way, yes, buoyancy works like an inverse of gravity, the weight and pressure of the water wants to take something less dense (most human bodies) and push it towards the surface. So the water will start to push your towards the surface. This combined with your own swimming is what rockets you back up. Now this doesn’t work exactly like gravity, because you don’t keep accelerating faster and faster, yes the buoyancy force with push you back up, but the water that has to get out of your way and the friction from the will counter the bouyancy force and slow you down to a more constant rise."
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myrplx | Why we can remember details of certain moments in our lives, despite those moments not being milestone ones. | Why can we remember details about a certain particular day and exactly what happened on it, even though that day was just another ordinary day? It makes sense to remember the details of a birthday or a graduation day or a wedding day, etc., but why do we remember the non-important ones? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I believe we remember things most clearly when we had/have a strong feeling with it or because of it.",
"I have spent a lot of time digging these seemingly unimportant memories and I have tried to find a reason as to why they stick, and i have found that each and every strong memory that i have, as insignificant that it might seem, it has contributed a lot to how i think, and perceive things right now, how i process information. like if i have a memory that when i was 7, kids didnt let me play with them, it may have contributed to the fact that i think people dont want me to be around and dont like me in general. people are acting as normal but what im making out of it is that they dont want me, and that is because of that moment in childhood, and i think this is the reason that the memory sticks so clearly.",
"I’ve wondered that, too. Some of the most mundane moments from decades ago are still so clear. Why? Why that moment? And yet a sibling will remind me of a major event that I have no recollection of. I don’t get it either.",
"Also scents. Your sense of smell bypasses something most memories have to be processed through. (I’m obviously too tired to Google it to articulate it well)."
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mysjv7 | If some countries have no mosquitoes/ or any common insect, why is there a saying that killing all mosquitoes (an example) will bring major imbalance to the ecosystem and food chain? | Earth Science | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There are only two places in the world that are completely and utterly mosquito-free: Antarctica and Iceland. Most are vegetarian. They drink flower nectar, plant sap, and fruit juices, and never drink blood. Killing these species is not necessary, in fact, it’s counterproductive. Without mosquitoes, thousands of plant species would lose a group of pollinators. Adults depend on nectar for energy (only females of some species need a meal of blood to get the proteins necessary to lay eggs).",
"This could be asking two different questions, so I'll answer both of them: **\"If not all ecosystems have mosquitos, doesn't that mean that ecosystems can be balanced without them?\"** The answer to this question is \"kind of\". Ecosystems are not really specific things, they're just the interactions between all the things that live in a place. Any place with more than one interacting species in it is an ecosystem, but may be a very simple one. If you got rid of all mosquitos, you would still have lots of ecosystems, and they would adapt to find new balance points by evolving over millions of years. What is really meant by \"major imbalance\" is \"the ecosystem will change and we don't want that\". Humans would typically prefer that the ecosystems of Earth be preserved as close to what they are now as they can be. Get rid of one part of an ecosystem, and other parts of it will collapse too. Get rid of mosquitos and any small bird that' specialises specifically in eating mosquitos will also die out because it has no food. Thus, there were knock-on consequences that changed the ecosystem. Wiping out all mosquitos wouldn't end life on Earth, but it would change it in a way that humans didn't like, and we call that change imbalance. There's nothing inherently wrong with imbalance like this, except that we would prefer it didn't happen. **\"If there are already parts of the world without mosquitos, how will removing them from just part of the world imbalance the ecosystem of the world?\"** This one is more about humans. Humans rely a lot on flowering plants for food, and flowering plants need pollinators to produce fruits. These are typically insects, that drink the nectar from one flower and transport its pollen to another flower, thereby fertilising the flower and causing it to start to become a fruit. If this doesn't happen, the fruit doesn't grow, or only a few fruit may grow by sheer chance of self-pollination, which means a reduced crop output. Take tomatoes for example. If all the bees were to die, then we wouldn't be able to produce tomatoes on a commercial scale anymore, and now the entire world can't buy tomatoes, even the parts of the world that didn't have bees to begin with (which import tomatoes from those that do). Local ecosystems need to be kept healthy so that crops can produce enough of a harvest to supply the entire world. Also, as a general note, it's almost impossible to predict what the consequences will be of getting rid of a particular species, even one like mosquitoes which doesn't seem to be doing that much. It's good to have a general warning against unbalancing ecosystems. It's like the whole \"if you go back to the past, don't step on any butterflies\". Not all butterflies destroy the future, but it's not possible to know which ones will until it's already too late."
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myth46 | Migraine vs Headache | What's the difference? Does it matter medically? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Migraine is a a condition that can include a headache, or not. If it does, it tends to be a headache on steroids with other symptoms. You can get visual migraines, for example, that affect your vision, but don't produce a headache. But a full-blown migraine is a vomiting, nausea, bed-bound, lights out due to significant photosensitivity, days long, debilitating, hard to treat, nightmare. We don't really know what causes it, but it can be associated with hormonal fluctuations, and there were some studies recently that linked it to a specific bloating in brain blood vessels (then again, watch this space, because this is the sort of thing that will be contested by other studies). A headache is broad. You can get your usual sleep-deprivation headaches, or dehydration headaches, or tension headaches. You can also get cluster headaches which are their own kettle of fish. These typically occur around/near your eyeball and include neurological symptoms like tearing, swelling, drooping of eyelid, stuffy nose, sweating..."
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myvipi | If soap and water cleans you, why is the towel dirty ? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because it gets wet and musty and it exfoliates your skin. So, bacteria will grow in the moist skin particles.",
"The towel collects your dead skin cells when you dry yourself off. Moisture from the towel plus dead skin cells can breed bacteria and other yucky stuff.",
"Dead skin cells, moisture and time means your towel sits and stews and gets funky after a while. My MIL would never use warm water or bleach her towels, and after while they had a funk that wouldn't go away. You may be mostly clean after bathing, but your towel gets a good bit on it still, and after a while, may be harboring mildew that is not only smelly, but could even upset your skin if your body is sensitive to molds(rashes in places you've dried? That's a trap)"
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myw5fb | Can sound waves be blown in a different direction by the wind? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Yes. Sounds generally travel through the air at about 340m/s, and tend to expand outwards. But if the air is moving, the sound waves can get carried along with it. This means they might move faster in one direction than the other, and might travel further with the wind than against it. But, even in a hurricane, the wind is only something like 30m/s. So instead of travelling at 340m/s, the sound would move at 310m/s or 370m/s depending on the direction. So it makes a difference, but maybe not as much as you'd expect.",
"They are waves... the move through the air... Its like following a ping pong ball on the surface of a stream... The ball will go up and down with the waves ... but it also moves downstream with the current. Soundwaves are the ping pong ball... awind is the stream"
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myw6vg | Why is it that a gun shot to the head means automatic death, what is it that actually kills a person in that situation? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It is not automatic. There are plenty of examples of people having survived gunshots to the head. But most fatal gunshot wounds kills due to making the victim bleed out. This takes a few minutes. However a gunshot to the head can damage the brain making it unable to work. In that case the victim will loose conciousness immediatly and if the brain is unable to repair the damage in time they will eventually die. The problem from a marksmans perspective is that the head is a much smaller target then other vital areas. Especially since the fatal shot would have to be to the brain which is smaller then the head and even then not all parts of the brain is required to stay concious. So aiming for the head is a very high risk high reward decision.",
"If you're after a really famous example, Phineas P. Gage survived an accident that was basically a gunshot wound, except the bullet was a long metal rod.",
"It doesn't mean automatic death - but the chances of death are way higher if anything messes with the brain. In other organs and things like muscles, some damage is survivable because it might degrade ability but not necessarily stop all function. With good medical care, the body survives long enough for healing and some ability to recover. The brain is a bit different, it is so delicate, interconnected and complex that damage even in small parts result in very massive effects and these effects are often not recoverable or survivable.",
"The utter obliteration of your brain. Some people can still survive though. Not all areas of the brain are needed for consciousness. It could also get stuck in the skull, but that only happens with smaller and less powerful caliber bullets."
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mywhsb | How exactly were cave paintings made and how have they stayed in relatively good condition for tens of thousands of years until our time? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"For starters, we wouldn't know of cave paintings that *didn't* make it to modern times. If a cave sweats enough to wash away the paint or some other phenomenon happens that erases the paintings we would never know a specific cave ever had any cave paintings. For the paintings that *did* last to modern day, caves are surprisingly well protected from weather patterns. Unless a painting was close to an opening, there's next to no moving water to wash it away, there's very few plants, if any, that can grow (to break apart the pigments), short of a cave collapsing on itself or animals rubbing against it, there isn't that much that will get rid of the paint...so it tends to stick around for a long time.",
"Cave paintings were typically made using paint made out of dirt or charcoal mixed with spit or animal fat. The reason they endure for so long is because the pigment of the paint was partially absorbed into the porous walls and because the binding agent (the spit or fat) dried and stuck to the wall.",
"Can't answer the first part but for the latter surviving paintings to tend to be found inside dry caves where the absence sunlight and damp helps preserve them."
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myx5h0 | What does it mean to "cope and seethe"? | I was discussing US politics on a discord server, and at some point during talking I mentioned the inequality in pay that women and minorities face and are challenged by to which the person I was talking to kept telling me to "cope and seethe" and to "dilate harder". Now im fairly up to date with slang and I browse most of the meme sites but I couldn't find any explanation on what the phrase means outside of it supposedly having a connection to the right? If anyone could give me a short explanation of what it means so I dont get caught off guard next time would be much appreciated! | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's not really slang. Coping means living with a situation which is not under your control - usually unpleasant things. Notable examples: Not agreeing with election results, beeing disabled, your crush doesn't love you back, ... Seething means boiling or foaming and is usually used in connection with feelings of agitation like anger or rage. So, as already stated, \"cope and seethe\" means: be angry if you want, but that won't change anything.",
"It is the equivalent of \"deal with it\" basically I am benefiting from this so there is no reason to change it.",
"Never heard it before but intuition tells me they mean it literally, [cope]( URL_1 ) and [seethe]( URL_0 ). Cope is commonly used to mean you're lying to yourself about something you disagree with so you don't have to face the truth, as opposed to the dictionary sense. Seethe would be used as in the third dictionary description there. they're basically saying, \"keep lying to yourself and stay mad.\" The people who use cope like that are usually the whiny redpill incel types, which would be in line with them being dismissive of racial and sexual inequalities."
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myxjrn | Why do dentists recommend brushing your teeth before bed and after waking up when the only thing you have been doing in-between is sleeping? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Bacteria reproduce over time. Bacteria also cause damage to teeth by metabolizing sugars and creating acids. Brushing your teeth interrupts this process 4 ways. First it wipes away the acid and bacteria. Second it changes the pH balance and environment of the mouth to slow reproduction. Third it reduces the time exposure of those acids to your teeth. And fourth, it reduces or eliminates the sugary food based fuel bacteria need to survive.",
"it’s to get rid of everything so it’s not just sitting and resting in your mouth while you sleep. Imagine a piece of bread just in your teeth for 8 hours, you don’t really want that there. I brush after meals myself."
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myyz1k | What is "Agent Orange" and what is it used for during the Vietnam War | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's a defoliant containing high concentrations of dioxin. The idea was to poison the jungle and remove the cover of canopy in strategic areas, depriving the enemy of freedom of movement. My father served in Vietnam as an infantryman. He was doused in this shit, and the litany of health problems it created finally killed him about two weeks ago. There's a book called [*Waiting for an Army to Die*]( URL_1 ) about the use of Agent Orange and how the US military and government resisted accountability and getting sick vets the medical help they needed from being poisoned while in the service. Dioxins in the soils in Vietnam are still causing serious health and birth defect problems today, particularly near former Army bases and storage depots. Ridding the soil of dioxin is not easy; you have to dig up the soil and [heat]( URL_0 ) it to 335C. It's a toxic legacy and yet another brick of shame in the foundation of America's foreign policy.",
"As I understand it, this was a defoliant, chemicals sprayed all over the shop by the US Army during the Vietnam War. Something like 4 million people were also sprayed with it and have gone on to suffer diseases or birth defects. Their theory was it would get rid of forests where the vietcong were hiding and also destroy their crops so they had nothing to feed soldiers, I mean it is absolutely fkin mental and even worse for me as a brit is that it looks as though we used it first in Malaya, this world sometimes is just depressing, why do we just want to destroy as much as possible",
"Weed killer that killed all plants and we dumped it on everything so there was nowhere to hide",
"It is a defoliant ie it is a compound designed to kill plants. In tropical regions a lot of the warfare is carried out in thick jungles which provide cover to fighters because of undergrowth and bushes. Agent Orange is designed to kill these plants off quickly basically to make the enemy easier to spot. It was also used on crops planted and suspected to supply enemy fighters. Unfortunately, it is also a pretty toxic compound and exposure to it leads to diseases and health issues. Although it wasn't designed primarily for use against people, it has long lasting effects on the people in the area where they were used."
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myzt9h | the difference between polarized and non-polarized light . | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's like the difference between hair that's been combed and hair that hasn't. Light is made up of waves that wiggle up and down. Except they don't need to be up and down. They could go side to side, or on a diagonal. Most light sources spit out light that wiggles in random directions. Polarised light is just light that has been 'combed' so that all of the light is wiggling along the same direction. You can also get circularly polarised light, where the wiggles actually move round in circles, not up and down, and it can be clockwise or anticlockwise, but it's the same basic idea."
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myzuwx | Does having more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increase plant growth? Why or why not? | Earth Science | explainlikeimfive | {
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"To ELI5. Yes, it's possible, but not a huge factor in increasing terrestrial plant growth. If you had as much food as you wanted, but only a little water, it wouldn't help you to be given extra food. The CO2 is the food in this example. Other resources (like, nitrogen, phosphorus, etc) are usually far more limited in the environment. So plant growth is going to be limited by other factors. Additionally, plants can only make their food through photosynthesis efficiently in a specific temperature range. So as the global temperature increases, it becomes much harder for plants to make their food without accidentally losing their water in the process. Some plants get around this (C4 plants, CAM plants), but they are already adapted to hot, dry conditions."
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myzvxg | How does GoogleTranslate turn random gibberish into anything? different? | Most people have tried this, I would think, but if you go into Google Translate and select Detect Language, then type in some random stuff like “aiaiaiaiaisiaiaiaiaiai” most of the time it’ll come up with something. That doesn’t make that much sense to me, seeing as I would expect it to just be reading from a table of known words and translating directly for each of them. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"> I would expect it to just be reading from a table of known words and translating directly for each of them Most languages do not translate perfectly into another language. It isn't a matter of \"word a\" translates into \"word b\". This is why you can pass a sentence through multiple language translations and end up with completely non-sensible sentences. This is also why you can watch shows translated from one language to another *by different sources* and end up with different words/slightly different meanings. It isn't a table of of what each word means in each language, but rather it's a mix of certain usages of words, grammar, inflection, and other factors. As a result, translations aren't perfect, and something that's complete nonsense in one language may actually form something in another language.",
"Old translation software used to do that but no modern translation software does that. It's all probability based now and looking for patterns because it also assumes you made a typo on the word. Also the old way of doing it just worked really badly and was pretty much always wrong. It's the same reason why you have to hire actual translators fluent in both languages rather than just relying on a dictionary when you try and do serious translation work. For example: URL_0 To put it another way, translation software rarely actually comprehends what it is that you're trying to communicate. It just looks for the closest matching set of words that typically belong together. In this case it's doing something similar, it's looking for a language with a sequence of words that match the gibberish as closely as it can."
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myzx9p | What do tax havens get out of being tax havens? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Money and employment. A tax haven doesn't mean zero taxes, it simply means lower taxes. For multi million or billion dollar companies and individuals saving a few percent is a lot of money. As a tax haven, the region can develop a much larger financial services, legal and administration centers - since running businesses through a tax haven requires these personnel. This, of course, benefits the country and economy of the tax haven.",
"Well the companies which \"locate\" their head office there for tax reasons, have to keep their money in that country. So where do you stick it? In a bank in that country - and then those banks want to do something with all of YOUR money so they're going to invest it, loan it out - you know, bank stuff. So they'll need investment bankers, lots of office workers etc. Countries like Luxembourg, Switzerland, Ireland, Cayman Islands etc. seem to have a _lot_ of banks for their population size: lets check Luxembourg: > At the end of March 2009, there were 152 banks in Luxembourg, with over 27,000 employees. Yeah, for less than a million citizens? No, that's managing everyone else's money. TL;DR - the banks there get to do bank stuff with your money and make more money and employ their people.",
"By receiving large capital, these tax havens are able to generate other economic activity within their country (or state). So if you are an off-shore bank owner and regularly receive large amounts of cash, you are able to provide more loans, etc. The bank owner would also conceivably have a paid staff from the area who will use that money earned to pay for other goods/services... so a tax haven in short helps to generate other beneficial economic activity for the area.",
"Most people providing answers are overestimating the jobs and economic activity created within tax havens. The real benefit is driving that capital through your economy and collecting taxes on it. Even if your tax rate is relatively low, you're attracting the tax money that would have gone elsewhere. It's the same philosophy of Walmart and Amazon: thin profit margins add up to huge profits thanks to the economy of scale."
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mz026d | How does water prolong a cut plant’s life? How does it still end up dying? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Plants need water to live. They take in water and other food (nutrients) through their roots, which they use along with light to make food. When you cut the plant from its roots, the plant can’t survive in the long term. In the short term though, the cut part of the plant can continue to take in water for some time, which will prolong its life. Adding “plant food” type packets will also help, because they have some of the nutrients the roots used to take in. The plant can’t live off these forever though, and eventually it will die."
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mz0rck | Why are plastic bags so loud but ziplock bags quiet? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"There's [different kinds of plastics]( URL_0 ), like low- and high-density polyethylene, as well as polypropylene. Each type has different properties, like stiffness / stretchability which influences the noise (or lack thereof)."
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mz0smz | Why is cereal/grain an iron inhibitor? I.e. millet has a lot of iron, but it won't be absorbed? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Not all iron in all foods is equal. Iron doesn’t just float around freely. Instead, the Iron ions found in various different kinds of organisms is always bound up in various different kinds of organic molecules and proteins, in order to serve various different kinds of biological functions in each organism. Therefore, some sources of iron are easier for our bodies to extract and utilize than others. The iron generally found in animal-based food products and animal blood is bound to protein called “heme”. Heme is found in the myoglobin protein in meat, milk and eggs, and the hemoglobin protein in blood. It is very easy for our digestive system to break the iron out of heme and absorb the iron. This is because, we, as animals, use heme iron ourselves in our own bodies, and so we the same enzymes as other animals have to make and breakdown and recycle heme. The iron found in plant-based foods, on the other hand, is more often bound to organic acids like phytic acid, which are less easily broken apart in our digestive systems. And this makes it harder to extract iron from plant foods. However, eating plant-based sources of iron together with sources of Vitamin C and with some small amount of heme iron from animal-based foods dramatically increases the efficiency of our digestive system to extract plant-based non-heme iron."
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mz11f4 | I heard blobfish "don't really have bones or muscles" how the heck does that work? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"They actually do have bones, they just are not the hard brittle bones that we think of. In addition, many fish (like sharks) use cartilage in replace of bone to help hold themselves together. As for muscle, they also have muscle, just not a lot or very dense muscle. Both of these are adaptations to live in the deepest parts of the ocean. Unlike surface or reef fish, there isnt a lot of food for deep water species, and so the blob fish basically just sits and floats around until some bit of food passes by that it can eat. It isnt actively hunting ot chasing prey, so there isnt a need for it to be extremely muscled and fast. Additionally, there really are not any big predators at those depths, so the blob fish also doesnt really need to be fast to escape from anything. In fact, having a musclular body would likely be a disadvantage as it would mean the fish needed more energy and food in an area of the ocean where food is scarce. A lot of the confusion about the species comes because our specimens come from catches where the fish are brought to the surface, this is essentially like an alien grabbing a human and pulling them up thousands of miles into deep space. By the time your body got the the aliens, you would look super different than you had on earths surface. There is actually a video here that shows them in their natural habitat, and they are actually much less blob-like. URL_0",
"A lot of animals don't have bones. Blobfish don't need them because they live in deep, very high pressure water. The external pressure prevents them collapsing into the slimy mush puddles you see when they're brought up to the pressure of the surface. Blobfish do have muscles, they just have much less musculature than other fish of their size, because they don't really need much. They just eat whatever floats infront of them, no need to swim around that much."
],
"score": [
7,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://www.earthtouchnews.com/wtf/wtf/blobfish-might-be-a-gooey-mess-out-of-water-but-check-out-a-living-one-video/"
],
[]
]
} | [
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| [
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|
mz21sk | How does long exposure photography works? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gvy5hm8"
],
"text": [
"The shutter inside the camera is simply held open for a longer time than normal, which is around one 60th of a second. The long the shutter is open, the more light that is allowed in, especially good for taking pictures in dark areas, or of the night sky. The downside is that if the camera is moved (bumped, or natural movement when hold a camera), even a little bit, you get blurry photos, so a camera stand or mount is usually required. According to [Nikon USA]( URL_0 ), a 20sec exposure is good for taking pictures of stars. Any longer and you'll get blurry images because of the movement of the Earth."
],
"score": [
6
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://www.nikonusa.com/en/learn-and-explore/a/tips-and-techniques/photographing-the-night-sky.html"
]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
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|
|
mz2kxt | What exactly is a mushroom? How do they differ from plants or animals? And what makes some safe for human consumption? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gvy8tpk",
"gvyqmms",
"gvyrrog",
"gvz7oji",
"gvzdx9s",
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"text": [
"A mushroom is the fruiting body of some types of fungus. The reason the fungus living in the soil underground or in a rotting log grows them is to distribute spores which are like mushroom versions of seeds. Fungus are an entirely separate branch of life from plants and animals. Some of them develop a poison which can kill people who eat them. Some don't. Producing a poison takes extra energy, so ones that don't probably developed in areas where there were less animals likely to eat them.",
"mushroom are an separate branch of living organism as animals and plants are. They are really fascinating because they don't work like animals or plants do. For instance, they don't have male and female but still have genders: their reproduction cycle (for the multicellular shrooms) is as it: 1. the mushroom liberate spores, which are \"sexualised\" (usually noted + or -) 2. the spore hopefully land on a fertile soil and begin to duplicate and grow 3. the spore create a mycellium which is a colony of cells linked together. 4. When mycelli (plural of mycellium) encounters and they have an opposite sex, they mix toghether and create a cite where some species make an aerial part called \"mushroom\" by normal people 5. mushroom release spores and the cycle goes on This is part of what makes the fungus reign interesting. And there's many more source: what I remember from my high school biology courses so take it with a grain of salt.",
"A mushroom is a fungus. Fungi are actually far more closely related to animals than plants according to genetic analysis, but they evolved into large multi-cellular organisms independently. So a lot of their traits and features, while solving the same problems, are slightly different answers than the plant or animal versions. Two key differences that are on the easier end to explain: -Most organisms can construct a structure known as \"cell walls\" to make their tissue more sturdy. Animals do not have cell walls, we lost them during evolution. Plants construct cell walls of cellulose (fiber). Fungi have cell walls similar to plants, but instead they make them out of chitin (the same substance that makes bugs crunchy). -Plants produce sugars from sunlight and air using a process known as photosynthesis. Fungi and animals lack all of the adaptations needed to do this. Instead, fungi mostly gain their nutrients by breaking down and digesting the dead leftovers around them.",
"Thanks to all for great explanations! This was such a refreshingly hospitable and thoughtful thread!",
"If you have Netflix there's a show called Waffles and Mochi that does an episode on Mushrooms. Its a kids show but its solid content.",
"They are safe for human consumption if they don't have poison or irritants in them. Some can be made safe through cooking or something in order to neutralize the toxins. You should stick to the few species that are known to be safe. But generally, they don't have much in the way of nutrition, so it's similar to plants' roots or stems: they may be safe to eat but people usually don't have a reason to eat them."
],
"score": [
106,
24,
10,
7,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
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} | [
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| [
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mz2yhb | why are true appetite suppressants unavailable and “immoral” to quote my Dr | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gvybpea",
"gvybo8q"
],
"text": [
"Doctors should not be making their professional decisions for morality's sake, and if you ever suspect your doctor is prioritizing morals over a practical question like \"what would make my patient healthier\", you should look for another doctor. That being said, many of the drugs which suppress appetite have quite undesirable side effects and some can be addictive. Leaving morality entirely out of it, it might be quite reasonable to deny a patient those drugs if the risks outweigh the benefits.",
"There are a good handful of prescription weight loss drugs. Some alter your digestion, some alter your neural activity to reduce the hunger response. If you are clinically obese and/or have other weight related health issues, you may want to consider seeing another doctor."
],
"score": [
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
mz35jq | Why do coin batteries seemingly die, then after a days rest return with renewed vigour? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gvyjlp8"
],
"text": [
"Battery voltage depends on how much load is being placed on the battery. One that's 3.0V at rest will fall to, say, 2.9V with a light load. Under a heavy load, it might fall to 1.5V. The reason is there is a rate limit to how fast the chemical energy can be converted to electrical energy. If a battery is placed under a heavy load, the reaction goes as far as it can before it \"falls behind\" demand. You're basically stripping off the \"surface charge\" and have to wait for the \"deeper\" charge to replenish the \"surface\". If you then let the battery rest for a while, the chemical reactions can \"catch up\" and restore voltage. The voltage drop is also influenced by the battery's own internal resistance (which is always more than zero), so if you put a battery under load the voltage will instantly drop some (due to resistance) and then slowly fall more as you deplete the surface charge."
],
"score": [
18
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
mz41tm | the current solar flare situation and AM FM radio | I work for a AM/FM broadcaster, we are getting some odd light static over our receiver in studio we use to monitor the on-air FM broadcast from just north of the city, I'm convinced it just the old coax connections out in the elements but my boss mentioned the solar flares going on right now, I am somewhat aware of EMF and the sun and the damage it can cause, but I'm not aware of its relation to FM or AM. anyone wanna take a swing and explain this to me :P | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gvyk5id"
],
"text": [
"Solar activity shouldn't interfere too much with FM broadcasts. FM is broadcasted on higher frequencies, which means the signal is line of sight. It goes directly from the antenna to the receiver. The sun's activity has little impact on this. AM is typically broadcast on much lower frequencies. The signal is often not line of sight, but is reflected off of other object, and sometimes even off of the atmosphere itself. The sun does influence this, because solar activity will ionize certain layers (hence the name the ionosphere) and this changes how well radio signals at certain frequencies will reflect back down to earth. This is quite important for amateur (ham) radio operators. During periods of sustained low solar activity, many of the frequencies (called bands) which we use don't work very well, since the ionosphere won't effectively bounce our signals back down to earth. But during periods of higher activity, those same bands are then \"open,\" meaning they work well. You can then talk to people all over the world! So it sounds like your boss is *probably* wrong about the static on the FM, but is correct that solar activity does impact radio propagation generally. Source: I've been a ham radio operator for decades."
],
"score": [
15
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
mz4o8l | Where do dopamine and endorphins come from and where do they go? | I know they're neurotransmitters, but are they produced and released by the brain or by the hypothalamus? Do they go to the rest of our body or just stay inside the brain? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gvzjbla"
],
"text": [
"They are produced by neurons (hence “neuro” in neurotransmitters) and they are released by the same cells that produce them. All neurons make neurotransmitters. Dopamine is produced in the Ventral Tagmental Area, which is part of the brain. Endorphins are mostly made by the pituitary gland. Neurotransmitters can be locally acting (surrounding cells only) or they can travel through the circulatory system and be systemically acting. Dopamine is pretty local in its effects (even though you feel them all over, it’s “all in your head” so to speak.) Endorphins have to physically travel to nerves in order to bind mu-receptors and block pain. When endorphins do this they are acting as a “hormone,” or a long-distance chemical messenger that affects cells throughout the body. Dopamine is generally considered less of a hormone and more just a neurotransmitter since its typical use is in cell-to-cell communication within the brain, although I think it can have global effects as well."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
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| [
"url"
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|
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