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[ "To date there is no single set way to construct a quantum computer. So this is somewhat of a difficult question to answer. However, some of the leading candidates include the electronic spin in trapped ions or neutral atoms. (_URL_1_) In this case the qubit is either stored within the polarization state of a photon, or the spin state of an atom. Another leading example are superconducting microwave circuits in which the qubit is stored in a microwave photon. (_URL_0_) So to answer your question is difficult but to date we do not know the best way to construct a quantum computer. But a good candidate is the polarization state of a photon. A photon can be vertically or horizontally polarized. Or the photon can be placed into a superposition of both vertically and horizontally polarized." ]

[ "_URL_0_ The wikipedia article is excellent and better than any of the answers in here so far. If you have specific parts you don't understand, ask away and I can help explain them to you." ]

[ "Mostly I think the gap will occur because our dependence on computer technology. Most of our information is stored on servers rather than paper and if future species cannot access these servers then all knowledge and technological progress humans achieved would be lost." ]

[ "Obviously it depends on how it is implemented, but archaeology is always short of money, and while I understand a certain visceral reaction to The Coliseum Brought to You by Macdonalds, I don't see a real difference between this and the feudal lords, wealthy businessmen and colonial authorities that have traditionally funded projects. In other words, I don't see how Home Depot is worse than Saddam Hussein." ]

[ "You are right that the location of the JWST makes a service mission incredibly difficult. It is impossible for any current (or past) manned spacecraft to reach the L2 point and thus carry out any repairs to a broken design. Nevertheless, the design for the JWST does include the ability to dock with other spacecraft so perhaps it would be possible for a robotic spacecraft or a future, longer range, manned spacecraft could reach and repair it. The technology to do so does not currently exist though. Cost might be prohibitive especially for a manned mission." ]

[ "Sputnik's transmissions were on, if I recall, 20001 kHz. This is smack dab in the middle (...somewhat) of what is known as the shortwave radio spectrum, which is from 3000 to 30000 kHz. Shortwave radios were common back then, especially compared to now. To intercept the signal, it's pretty simple. One would need an antenna, which for this purpose should be about 50 feet long. Further, they'd need a radio receiver that could operate in \"sideband\" or \"CW\" mode. Sideband is half an AM transmission; CW is morse code. They'd need to tune to this frequency and, at the right time...they'll hear it! Decoding the signal is a bit more of a challenge. I'm not a Sputnik expert, but I recall reading it wasn't a legitimate *data* signal, such as things we have today. It sent data using pulses of varying lengths. As far as I know, at least. The Judica brothers' recordings could be legit. It's not at all impossible to listen for that type of stuff; in fact, it is very, very easy. Hope that I answered this question. :)" ]

[ "Amphibians, at least, produce saliva. I'm pretty sure some fish do as well. So in answer to the \"last common ancestor with no saliva\" part, it was at least a fish. But almost all animals secrete some sort of substances all along their digestive track, and saliva is just a specialized version of this in the mouth." ]

[ "This looks like a question more suited for an ask science or ask biology sub. Better luck there." ]

[ "No. Given any triangle, you can run a slicing line perpendicular to one side that passes through the opposite corner, splitting the triangle into two right triangles. But given an arbitrary tetrahedron, if you run a slicing plane perpendicular to one edge, you can make it pass through *one* of the opposite corners but not necessarily the other. That means that after your first cut, one of the pieces is no longer a tetrahedron -- it's got five corners -- and now you're in trouble. further cuts only make the shape more complicated. Generally speaking we use regular trigonometry to deal with three-dimensional objects: you just need more than one angle to describe the positions of key points." ]

[ "Because of the rotating Earth's [Coriolis effect](_URL_0_), the surface of the ocean responds to wind in a funny way: it moves *sideways* to the wind direction: to the right of the wind in the northern hemisphere, to the left in the southern hemisphere. This is known as \"[Ekman flow](_URL_1_)\". In the tropics, the winds are tradewinds from east to west, so they cause Ekman flow in the ocean away from the equator. In the middle latitudes (40 degrees north or south), the wind blows from west to east, Ekman-pushing water toward the equator. As a result, in the \"subtropics\" region between 15 and 35 degrees in both hemispheres, the water gets pushed together like a trash compactor. As it converges, the water has nowhere to go but down. It descends, but the floating trash can't sink, so it gets trapped at the surface in the subtropics. In other parts of the ocean, the winds push water in a divergent pattern: those areas don't accumulate garbage." ]

[ "Matchlocks eventually became quite effective, certainly by the time of the Battle of Pavia ( 1525) they could be decisive. They required far less training than bows or crossbows, and though they might not penetrate heavy armor, most armies became far more lightly armored by the late 15th c. anyway- the Swiss halberdiers, like most, found mobility was far more important and wore little armor, if any. But there's also the question of how effective the gunpowder was. It took quite some time to work out how to make something consistent and reliable; for example, to figure out that the best source for saltpeter was the earth under the outhouses of taverns that served wine, not beer. The very simple little, short medieval hand cannon, pointed more than aimed, were better at handling a propellant that might vary a lot in how fast it burned, how much gas it generated. De Vries: Medieval Military Technology" ]

[ "Very poorly. Assuming you ask about the time period after we found out they were possible, before that they obviously weren't a thing, but before we found out why people died left right and centre. However, we soon found out that some combination of blood clotted, others worked fine." ]

[ "Record companies underhandedly pay radio stations to keep their artists' songs in rotation. Interesting article [here.](_URL_0_)" ]

[ "They don't. There really isn't a good way to actually drill a hole in someone's head and check out their serotonin levels. Instead, they look at the symptoms, compare it to other cases, and then make a prescription. If the medicine works, great! If it doesn't, they discontinue that script and try something else. It is not reasonable to assume that \"most\" cases are misdiagnosed. The \"scientific evidence\" they have is in matching the patient's symptoms against other cases. This is how most medicine works. If you walk into a clinic and say, \"Doctor, my knee hurts,\" he won't just cut your knee open to see if the bone is broken unless he has some reason to do so. Psychology and psychiatry are admittedly ambiguous and highly dependent on the patient's self-reported symptoms. That does not mean it is quackery." ]

[ "We know exactly. He kept a detailed daily schedule. [here it is](_URL_0_)" ]

[ "Two social psychological concepts come to mind here. State dependent memory encoding and Erickson Arousal theory of learning. State dependent learning states that what ever state of mind you are in during encoding is the state of mind where recall would be optimal. Erickson arousal theory states that learning is most optimal in a medium arousal state where you are not too comfortable or too stressed. Extrapolating from these two my guess would be that learning at night in a tired state of mind is optimal for a middle arousal and probably optimal for most recall. Especially if you are tired all of the time like myself lol." ]

[ "The random function in C basically follows this algorithm: > To get the next random number, multiply the last random number by something, add a number to it, and then take the last few digits. If the first number every time is the same, the rest of the sequence will be the same. To overcome this, we seed this function i.e. provide it a random starting point usually by setting the initial number to the system time (in integer format)." ]

[ "Okay. So let's say that you want to bake a cookie just like the ones that grandma makes. You could try to eat her cookie, and then using your knowledge of baking sort of reverse engineer it, but it would be an incredible hassle and very hard to do. But if you had the recipe she used, it would be very easy to figure out how to make it and then make your own. A finished game is like a cookie. The source code is complied and turned into the finished product, sort of how the recipe is baked into a cookie. Because of how the source code is transformed into a working game, it is very difficult (not impossible, but difficult) to reverse the process and figure out the code." ]

[ "I wish I had a 5 year old that I could get to pronounce zooxanthellae :) Corals are like tiny farmers that farm tiny plants. Sometimes, the tiny plants can't survive because something happens that hurts the plants, and then both the plants and the coral farmers die. There are a lot of things that can hurt the tiny plants. They can get poisoned, it can get too hot for the plants, tiny weeds can crowd them out just like in a garden, or they can even get sunburned just like us if they suddenly get too much sun. Since long before you were born, the entire planet has been getting a little bit warmer every year, so we're worried that even more tiny coral farmers are going to die since it will be too warm to grow their plants." ]

[ "Doesn't happen to people in real life, no. I always assumed that the cartoon version was a joke along the lines of turning the person into a light bulb and showing the bright bones like the filament of the light, glowing brightly." ]

[ "The problem with the question is that there are no definite fixed spots in space to compare ourselves against to judge whether we've moved or not (or returned to where we were). At the very least, the solar system is moving around the galactic center, but once we complete a full revolution, again, we have no way of judging whether that's the same spot or not." ]

[ "Let's say you want to travel to Chicago from Atlanta by car. Can you predict your exact position at any given time? No. You can predict where you are going to be in the next few seconds but as you look further ahead you lose accuracy. Sure, you could say, \"I'll be near Indy around 6pm on this road, but you don't know how fast you'll be going or what lane you will be in or how many cars will be around you.\" It is a similar idea. We can predict weather occurrences fairly accurately up close, but as we look further ahead, we lose accuracy." ]

[ "Because obsessive helicopter parenting is a recent development in a relatively small part of the world's population. Letting your kids sleep alone while regularly checking up on them is only neglect in hindsight combined with a lack of perspective." ]

[ "> Why are the lanthanides (and actinides) down there? Because it's easier to print on a page than [this](_URL_0_). > Why are some masses in parentheses? Some large elements are really unstable and aren't observed in nature. Instead of putting a weighted average of the atomic masses of the isotopes we observe in the wild, we just list the atomic mass of the most stable isotope we've produced. > And what's with the elements like Uuo and stuff? Some elements have been made and observed but haven't received their fancy pants names from the IUPAC yet. They just have systematic names denoting their number on the table as a placeholder. > How are elements being made with a specific amount of protons? We launch smaller elements (of the appropriate size) in particle accelerators and ram them together. > If we have that control over protons how come we can't make materials like gold or silver? We can, but it's more expensive than just digging an equivalent amount out of the ground." ]

[ "If everything on your computer ran in one single sequence without any possibility for interruptions or changes, yes, it would run the same every time. However, your computer typically has multiple processes running simultaneously. A program itself might be doing multiple things at the same time (in Java for example, you can make threads to do this). And they have to interface with and respond to hardware calls with varying timing and states. Even a simple UI typically has extra threads running to remain responsive to the user while still doing whatever it is the program is supposed to be doing. Put all this together, and it gets really complex. Getting data at an unexpected time can overwrite data or put the system into an unknown state which may lead to a glitch or crash. And trying to reproduce it may be difficult if subsequent runs don't time things exactly the same." ]

[ "[This video explains quite well how it works online, specifically Youtube](_URL_0_) TL;DW: Youtube only sends information about changes between frames of a video. Since there is usually very little difference between 2 frames the server can just say \"ehhh take what you had last time, shift this part a tiny bit that way, job done\". For example, if you are watching a black screen, it doesnt have to send any new information, simply instructions to repeat the frame over and over. With images, there is no way to predict the future content in advance so every single pixel is sent." ]

[ "If you woke up in the middle of your sleep cycle. I can’t explain the science behind it well. There are basically different cycles we go through in our sleep and if we get woken up in the middle of one, we feel really tired. That’s why there are some sleep tracker apps that will track your movement and estimate where you are in your sleep cycle so it can make your alarm go off at a time when you won’t feel like you got hit by a truck. Actually happened to me now... I’m up 2 hours earlier than usual because I heard the trash truck outside. But it happened to be at the perfect point in my sleep cycle so I actually don’t feel that tired" ]

[ "Overtiredness. \"Once overtired, stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline flood your bloodstream. These are often referred to as ‘fight or flight’ hormones because they increase your state of awareness, speed up your heart rate, raise your blood pressure and cause tension to build up in your muscles. Despite being physically fatigued, your mind is alert. You feel keyed up or agitated, ready to take flight or fight.\" Source: _URL_0_" ]

[ "William was the husband of Mary aka the eldest Daughter of James II." ]

[ "I suggest reading David Fromkin's A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East. Mr. Fromkin describes how and why the Allies, through the Sykes-Picot agreement, drew the lines of the Middle East. He also points to imperial ambitions and Europe's lack of understanding of the region's politics, religion, and culture. _URL_0_" ]

[ "Leading theory is that certain salts can suck enough moisture out of air that they actually dissolve in it. So take some of this \"perchlorate\" salt in the soil at the top of a cliff, and blow moist air over it, and over time it'll form a small puddle that washes downhill and leaves a trail of that salt behind." ]

[ "Radiation doesn't just blast the surface with cancer rays, it also whisks away the atmosphere. Mar's atmosphere is very thin and complex life that we have on Earth cannot survive (it is called the Armstrong Limit)." ]

[ "~~The cut of the uniform suggests that its a British Army, probably from the mid 19th century. The cap he's wearing looks like Scottish Glengarry, so he might have served in a Lowland Scottish regiment at some point.~~ Ok, he's not Scottish, although the cap is very Glengarry-like. Based on the cut of the tunic, the button pattern and the \"Austrian knot\" on the sleeve, he's wearing a Canadian Militia Pattern 1876 tunic. The Snider-Enfield rifle he's carrying and his uniform suggest the photo was taken in the late 1800s. _URL_0_" ]

[ "Reminder: This is AskHistorians, not AskRandomPeopleWhoCanGoogle. If you do not have in-depth knowledge of the level expected of a historian, whether amateur or professional, do not post. Thank you." ]

[ "Because phone companies use planned-obsolescence to slow down older devices artificially in order to push newer devices. OR Because newer software is more taxing on the hardware than older versions was. Both of these have some truth in them, I recall several instances where it was claimed that around the release of newer generation hardware, many smartphone manufacturers utilise the first method, while the second option is almost a passive process as apps become larger and more complicated. Edit: I should note that the intentional sabotaging of older generation devices is often referred to as a conspiracy theory, with little corroborating evidence. It is likely that poor optimisation and growing complexity of apps and growing reliance on constant connectivity is the main driving force behind the increased strain on your hardware." ]

[ "Simply put for the same reason drinking water when you're not thirsty isn't as refreshing as when you're REALLY thirsty. Anticipating the bodies' needs doesn't trigger the same reward responses in the brain as fulfilling a need that is already present. Your muscles don't NEED to stretch right now, so you can't anticipate that need and expect the same reward as when you muscles are telling your brain they really need to move right now." ]

[ "Particle physics is the branch of physics that investigates the smallest components of matter and energy. Every piece of matter in the universe is made up of atoms. Inside those atoms are electrons, protons and neutrons. Inside of the protons and neutrons are various kinds of quarks. Particle physicists explore the nature and interactions of those particles." ]

[ "Can you define what you mean by Partisan?" ]

[ "Usually not. During construction at least, adding a basement is the cheapest way to add square footage to your home. Adding a second story to a home isn't as easy as it sounds - with a second floor, the first floor has to be engineered to hold up the weight of the second floor. Also, in some areas, basements are beneficial as storm shelters." ]

[ "Instinct, basically. The chipmunk has developed instinctual behaviours to harvest and hide food when the days start getting shorter. Same thing causes birds to migrate. The ones that didn't develop that instinct couldn't live through the harsh winters that occurred in some areas and died out." ]

[ "Because when fingers are moved, fingers tend to move, which in turn results in the movement of one's fingers" ]

[ "There are a few different technologies. I assume you are thinking of the touch screen on your phone screen. That works because the screen is electrified just a little bit, not enough for you to even notice. When you touch the screen it messes up the electrical field. The computer can measure how the field changes to determine where it is being touched. Why doesn't everything work on the screen? Some things dont mess up the electrical field enough for the phone to respond. Im not sure about stuff like metal which is conductive. It may be that the response is measurably different and the computer registers it as an error. Someone else might know." ]

[ "It is your task to design a life of your choice and complete it to the best of your ability." ]

[ "[Elephants](_URL_0_) point and understand when we point at things too." ]

[ "The water is often not treated at the source as thoroughly as it is in more affluent countries. For example, drinking water from a glass at a restaurant in India could give one [giardia](_URL_0_), an intestinal infection that causes excessive diarrhea & gas. Source: contracted giardia from drinking water from a glass at a restaurant in India." ]

[ "I can't quite give you all the answer, but basically the longer a signal can travel, the lower it's birate or quality is. For example there's a \"channel\" that is very low quality but can be hears all over the world. All you can send is morse code. It's utilised by militarys." ]

[ "What do you mean here, can you provide specific examples? Most of South America is still extremely catholic and conservative, including when it comes to sex and sexuality." ]

[ "Less added sugar, less carbs. When you eat a diet where you get your energy based off of carbs you are running on glucose, basically your body is always in an insulin rush. This makes you fat. If you get most of your energy from good fats insetad of sugars youre body will shed it's fat. So more meat based fats or pure plant based fats (olive oil, coconut oil etc, not vegetable oil), butter and fat are better for you than the things they've tried to tell us are healthy (vegetable shortening, vegetable oil, margarine). People in East Asian cultures tend to eat more protien and vegetables. Even rice isnt normally enough net carbs (carbs minus fiber) to push them over. In the western world everything is carb based, if it's not we add wheat or corn into it for no reason. We also have added sugars in processed foods. If you don't want to be fat only buy food from the outer perimeter of your grocery store (meat and produce) and skip the aisles of processed foods." ]

[ "Most shapes are straight lines and very easily drawn. Perfect round edges are ridiculously hard to make manually." ]

[ "The first thing that comes to mind is the story of Constantine's conversion. The story goes that right before a great battle for control of Rome where he's heavily outnumbered, Constantine has a dream. In it he sees a cross and is told \"With this sign, you will counter.\" He paints the symbol on his troops shields and is victorious in battle. This leads to his conversion to Christianity and the end of the Roman persecution of Christians. That's the oral story I've heard from my Greek grandma. I'm sure someone who specializes in Roman history can give you more details. EDIT: Also, from a high hill or mountain you can get a pretty good idea of what the ground looks like from high up." ]

[ "The current global food output is estimated to be able to feed 11 billion people. That number can be stretched if more people become vegetarian or we stop wasting so much food but might higher than that number and we will need some serious changes to our food industry." ]

[ "Every time you make a copy of a cell, there is a chance for errors. For example when you photocopy a first print, it is pretty crisp and close to the original, but there are a few minor discrepencies. Now if you photocopy the copy, it gets more distorted, and so on until some letters get hard to read, it gets difficult to discern a comma from a period, etc. Add to this, that our cells have a thing called telomeres, which cap off the ends of our DNA. Think of it like the period at the end of a sentence. Well each time you make a copy, that period gets a little smaller, and smaller, until its gone and then your DNA can't copy properly anymore, because it doesn't know where to end. So your cells get confused about the information on those strands of DNA, like trying to read a page of a book with no periods at all!" ]

[ "A 'profitless company' would technically just be one which doesn't make any money because the cost of paying out salaries and expenses is more than what they earned in revenue from selling products/services. Perhaps you mean a *non-profit* or *not-for-profit* organization / corporation? Normally when a company has left-over money after paying all employee salaries and expenses, that (profit) money will then get divided up and distributed to shareholders in the form of dividends (for example). With a non-profit organization, after paying all employee salaries and expenses, whatever money is left-over instead gets reinvested back into the organization to help it better complete its mission/goals. That's the only big difference between a for-profit and not-for-profit corporation." ]

[ "Consider two airlines: The first never overbooks. People regularly cancel and the airline is unable to rebook those seats quickly enough, so their planes tend to fly with lots of empty seats. The second overbooks. People regularly cancel. Since they have overbooked, they can keep the planes full. The first one has to charge more for tickets since they have wasted space each flight. The second keeps their planes full so can charge less for tickets. They state up-front about overbooking, that buying a ticket doesn't guarantee a seat on the flight (but does give them a seat on the next flight), and customers prefer cheaper tickets to more expensive ones that guarantee a seat." ]

[ "I agree with /u/somedave that the answer is No. If we met the total energy demands of the entire world with fusion (4x10^20 Joules per year) then we would produce something in the region of 100,000 kg of Helium as a byproduct. Compare this to an annual Helium usage of the order of 10,000,000kg and you see there is no way it is covered. With no way to produce resonable quantities of He, we will run out one day but that day is 100's of years away. The most likely way to avoid this is to get better at recycling it and/or to discover high temperature superconductors that allow us to use a different coolant." ]

[ "I'd be simpler just to build a [fusor](_URL_1_) with deuterium. _URL_0_" ]

[ "Here's the 50,000 feet view. Each cell has its own DNA. In a cell, different parts of DNA become activated to make proteins. Some proteins made by DNA modulate what kinds of proteins DNA makes. Also, other biochemicals modulate DNA. [Cells start off basically the same](_URL_0_), but then as they divide, some are on the inside and some are on the outside. This differentiates the chemical environment the cells are living in, so now the DNA of the inner cells begins to be activated differently from the DNA of the outer cells. So that's how it starts anyway." ]

[ "Mutation + gene duplication + billions of years = amazing things. The part you seem to be asking about is the duplication part. A genome doubles in size by accident, and suddenly you have a lot of room for new evolution." ]

[ "I don't have a single number, but almost everything is in English. I've seen a few papers in Italian and Russian, but the overwhelming majority are in English. English is pretty much the unofficial language of science. Thanks to the internet and increased sharing of research, it's becoming more and more dominant every year. There's a couple odd side effects from this. For one, it's pretty difficult for non-native speakers to write a paper. I know of a few labs that have hired undergrads just to edit papers for them. Also, all science words are in English. It's a little strange to hear people talking in another language, and switch to English for all the science terms, like PCR, Western blot, electrophoresis, etc." ]

[ "In [communication theory every transmitted message has at least a source and a sink](_URL_0_). The sink is the place where the information is actually put to use. As outlined [here](_URL_1_) the source of the information is the genome, and after encoding and decoding steps during translation and transcription the protein performs the actual function intended by the source. Or to put it another way, the protein is where the transmission of information ends, so the information sinks out of the tramission system to perform a task." ]

[ "And if you happen to be drinking Mexican Coke, which comes in glass bottles, it tastes better because it's made with sugar instead of corn syrup." ]

[ "The US limits the amount of sugar that can be [imported](_URL_1_), leading to a [higher sugar prices in the US](_URL_0_) than in the rest of the world. That difference in price means that for many products made in the US, corn syrup is less expensive than sugar, but elsewhere sugar is less expensive than corn syrup. The reason for this is, Florida has a number of wealthy sugar farmers, and Florida is a key state for [both party's](_URL_2_) election hopes." ]

[ "When you touch something the cell walls of your nerves are stretched (think pushing on a balloon). Protein complexes in the cell walls of your nerves are stretched as well. This stretching opens a channel down the middle of the protein and let's ions from outside the cell in. The change in voltage of the cell results in the nerve firing a signal which travels to your brain where something something processing something something consciousness." ]

[ "Awesome question; most don't stop and think about these things! So basically, **Unmyelinated nerve fibers** are found in the **dermis**, or commonly known as sensors in the skin. When those sensors are irritated, it is called an itch. Itches are signals to our selves that something is wrong and it should be checked out immediately. The sensors in the eye and most mucus membranes are very very sensitive. So it is easy to cause tiny scratches or abrasions in the top layer of the skin. When you rub your eyes, the brain is satisfied that the problem was investigated, but consequently causes small cuts that get irritated more when its exposed to air!" ]

[ "No there isn't. The largest known black holes are billions of times as massive as the sun. There are potential lower bounds for the mass of black holes, both for how small something can be and still turn into one (about 1.4 times the mass of the sun), and also a lower limit below which it would evaporate due to Hawking radiation because it would be hotter than the cosmic microwave background (about the mass of the moon)." ]

[ "Well it's a mixture of things. Some of it is kind of like an inertia, expanding from the big bang still. But the rules that govern the size and shape of the universe allow for it to continue to expand, depending on the relative amounts of mass and energy in the universe. From what we're seeing, there's more energy out there than mass. We're seeing that there's more mass than our normal kinds of matter, but that there's another type of energy that's different from our normal kinds of energy. *This is perfectly fine*. Science is very open to the possibility that there are new types of matter and energy, and we're only seeing the first signals of their existence. Dark matter appears to attract to itself and to normal matter, since dark matter tends to cluster around galaxies like normal matter does. We tend to find it in \"dark matter haloes,\" diffuse \"clouds\" of dark matter that extend beyond and through the galaxies themselves." ]

[ "\"Within a week, the average global surface temperature would drop below 0°F. In a year, it would dip to –100°. The top layers of the oceans would freeze over, but in an apocalyptic irony, that ice would insulate the deep water below and prevent the oceans from freezing solid for hundreds of thousands of years. Millions of years after that, our planet would reach a stable –400°, the temperature at which the heat radiating from the planet’s core would equal the heat that the Earth radiates into space, explains David Stevenson, a professor of planetary science at the California Institute of Technology.\" Further reading: _URL_0_" ]

[ "I wouldn't think so, but to be honest I don't believe there really wouldn't be much benefit over what we have. Apart from the reasons znerg (clothes, hair, and layers of dead cells on top of your skin) brought up, we use a LOT more energy than plants do. We have organs and muscles that beat/expand/move, we exercise, etc. We have to utilize food sources to ensure we have enough energy for all of the systems in our bodies. Chloroplasts probably would not generate enough energy for us, especially given the fact that we would only be able to generate energy during the day." ]

[ "[Data centers](_URL_0_). As for how they can afford it, simple, you make sure your revenue outweighs your costs, leaving you with profit, though you likely won't make any profit within the first year or so. Money is gained a few ways, either the premium customers pay enough for the free customers, personal info sold for advertisements pays enough, and/or people use your ecosystem (iOS devices for iCloud, for example)." ]

[ "I've heard that there are YouTube servers in various places. Say I live in Hawaii and a video is uploaded in Chicago. The advertisement videos are already stored on the Hawaii servers, but the actual video is stored on the Chicago server and has to be downloaded after enough people view it. I might be wrong, but this is what I've heard" ]

[ "Sometimes Canada won't extradite criminals to the USA because of the death penalty. (See Charles Ng)" ]

[ "This has essentially been answered by the preceding comments, but what hasn't been contributed is this: _URL_0_. Muster and enrollment records, transfer lists, honours lists, etc, for the period of 1730 through 1898. Worth having, OP, if you're writing or researching the topic academically. To succinctly summarise, though, as /u/LeftBehind83 said, organised corps of troops would likely not have been represented at all three conflicts. The logistics simply weren't there at the time - bear in mind how long it took to cross by land and sea, at the time. Multiply that tenfold for large numbers of troops, supplies, etc. Individual soldiers, however? As you'll see from some of the records in that link, transferring between certain companies, regiments, battalions, etc, was not unheard of for individual British troops of the day, especially officers." ]

[ "It is the supreme law in our country. It dominates all other laws, as well as defining how the government is structured and how leaders are elected. No law can be written by the Federal (national) government unless the Constitution permits laws of that kind. Any law that conflicts with the Constitution is void. Any rights granted by the Constitution cannot be canceled by any law. People don't claim that it is perfect, only that it is the top law." ]

[ "This is a very common question. You can use search to find [all the other really good answers](_URL_0_ ). This is instant, and faster than ust typing in your question every time. It's a way of cheating elections. Read the others, and then ask a more specific question." ]

[ "A bank has to make money since it has a responsibility to share holders to try and earn them money. A credit union is not for profit, so it can usually charge lower rates because they do not need to maintain as high of a margin. It uses the money it could have earned and basically returns it to the customer by charging a lower rate for loans and possibly provide a higher rate for depositors Banks and credit unions exist because individuals have a hard time raising money by themselves for big purchases such as houses or cars." ]

[ "This is a very common question. You can use search to find [all the other really good answers](_URL_0_ ). This is instant, and faster than ust typing in your question every time. It's a way of cheating elections. Read the others, and then ask a more specific question." ]

[ "The common methods? Nuclear pants *are* the common method. Neutron research facilities tend to be built at them. Another way is use a particle accelerator to create unstable nuclei that decay by neutron emission. The [Spallation Neutron Source](_URL_0_) collides protons into mercury to produce neutrons." ]

[ "The key thing here is [Noether's theorem](_URL_0_), one of the most beautiful results in all of physics. Noether's theorem connects symmetries of nature to conserved quantities. For example, when physics is independent of spatial position, momentum is conserved. Or when physics is unchanged by rotating your view, then angular momentum will be conserved. And when the laws of physics don't depend on time, then energy is conserved. But when you take quantum mechanics into account, Noether's theorem does depend on unitarity. If unitarity is violated, then symmetries no longer imply conservation laws, and energy no longer would need to be conserved." ]

[ "It doesn't. Shelf life is all about the pasteurization process used, and not all dairies do it the same. HTST, filtration, UHT, etc. If the same dairy packaged the same milk into two types of packaging, as long as they were both sterile and packed properly, it would last the same amount of time." ]

[ "Are you drinking the same coffee each time? Generally, coffee in mugs is either homemade or comes at a restaurant, while coffee in paper/styrofoam cups comes from fast-food chains or coffee shops. Different restaurants/chains may stock different grades or brands of coffee, which then affects the taste. The cup material may be completely unrelated to the taste." ]

[ "Talk to your representative and lay out your concerns. My understanding is that calling, and calling often, is the best tactic, as it's the only way where you absolutely *know* you have their full attention, even if for that brief moment. Or, you know, do what nobody actually does; pay attention during the various elections, and actually vote. People seem to be under the strange delusion that the only vote that matters is the one for President." ]

[ "Explain it like you're five? So somebody like an American version of Justin Bieber isn't swept into office because of his fan base." ]

[ "For that to happen, the Phillipines Government has to request aid in evacuations. The US would then respond to assist in the evacuation To my knowledge the [Phillipines Government](_URL_0_) handled the evacuation on their own. If they had asked for help, the US and other countries probably would have assisted." ]

[ "Greetings everyone. In the few minutes this sub has been up, it's attracting sub-standard responses. Just a reminder of a few of the rules: * no responses covering events/conditions post-1994, per this sub's \"20-year rule\" prohibiting discussion of current events * no anecdotes * no speculation OP: your question implies that you're asking about both *current* policy and historical reasons. If you want to pursue discussion on the former, do consider x-posting that question to another sub, e.g. /r/politics" ]

[ "because of left over chemicals from the plastics and the leather or faux leather treatments are evaporating into a mostly sealed environment" ]

[ "A few reasons, first you may remember from high school chemistry the ideal gas law. PV=nRT, where P=pressure, V=volume, n= number of moles, R is a constant and T is temperature. If you spray a pressurized gas (the propellant in the can), which is typically butane or propane, as the gas comes out of the spray nozzle it's pressure decreases as the volume the gas expands. On the other side of the equation, n and R remain unchanged, so the only variable that can change is T. In math terms compressed gas = PV/T = nR decompressed gas = PV/T = nR Since nR is the same in both equations, it can be rewritten as PV/T (compressed) = PV/T (decompressed) That's for the gas part. The second is, a lot of spray perfumes and deodorants use alcohol as a base. That alcohol evaporates when it's sprayed onto the skin, so there is an evaporative cooling effect as well." ]

[ "\"Core\" is close enough. It's generally from the center of mass which is usually the physical center of the object assuming it's fairly uniform." ]

[ "I don't know how OPERA works, but I know with [IceCube](_URL_1_) it works by making a series of measurements of the location of the muon over a period of time after it is ejected, thus reconstructing its path. I would assume this is at least in some sense how OPERA works as well. Then, you can look in the direction it came from, and for IceCube's purposes, see where out in the universe they came from, and for OPERA's purposes, see if they came from the high beam in Geneva. That said, that's just speculation regarding OPERA on my part. I don't actually know that. *Source: [School newspaper article I wrote during undergrad](_URL_0_) (sharing the link in case people want to read about IceCube, which you should, cause it's freakin' awesome!) It had some pretty sweet graphics too, which unfortunately didn't make it into the web version.*" ]

[ "No, because the vast, vast majority of such images would have no discernible stars in them at all. There are stars in our sky but that is because we are embedded in the disk of a galaxy. A random place in the *universe* is overwhelmingly likely to not be in a galaxy at all. And even if it were, we do not map anything but the stars in our own galaxy and the brightest stars in nearby galaxies. If you did end up landing in a random galaxy and did have stars in the image, we would have nothing to compare them to, unless by astounding luck you found yourself in the Milky Way." ]

[ "This is a difficult question to answer since your eye does not work like a CCD with a refresh or frame rate per se. There is a small delay when after recieving a photon a retinal cell cannot recieve another (since the molecule needs to be \"recharged\"). I actually don't know what this time delay is perhaps a better biologist should jump in here. But, your eye is capable of detecting single photons so assuming that the shuttle is passing slow enough for some photons to enter your eye and assuming that at least some of your retinal cells are \"charged\" (need a better word here) then you will definitely be able to detect that *something* traversed your field of vision (assuming the great big swoosh doesn't tip you off)" ]

[ "Instinct. Geese have the instinct in them. They know every winter they must go south. The chickens do not have the instinct for them to go to through the door. The geese have this implanted in their genetic code. Your chickens, however, do not." ]

[ "Many international flights have layovers in countries not in the intended destination. Instead of forcing all of these passengers to first be cleared with the government of the layover country, which is time consuming and costs money, they simply designate an area for these people to board their separate flights without going through that security. Transits zones, though physically in the country, are not considered officially entering the country and one does not need any documentation to stay there. If one wishes to leave they must either seek clearance with the countries government to officially enter the state or board an international flight. Snowden does not have a working passport and is unable to either leave this portion of the airport or board another flight. He's in legal limbo and he is stuck in an airport for the time being." ]

[ "...can someone reply to my post here? I'm off to sleep, but want to find out the answer in the morning. This methane-sinks business sounds dubious as hell, I'd love to see the math on that though. I'm just biochem, need a physicist in the house!" ]

[ "Watch the first 2 minutes of the feynman lecture on fire. The universe is the wood, the death bubble is the fire (it expands at the speed of light btw), and the post-death bubble universe is very different (like how becoming two gasses (C02 and H20) is very different than being a piece of wood. There was some concern that the Large Hadron Collider would create one of these death bubbles. Obviously, it didn't. lecture is here: _URL_0_" ]

[ "Paternity test is done by collecting cells from the inside of your cheek, not by drawing blood. So no, you couldn't alter the test's outcome." ]

[ "Suppose you, as a lawyer, have successfully put away hundreds of criminals. Within the boundaries of the law. Now, you're caught doing it illegally *once* (e.g. bribing a jury). **Every** criminal you ever put away can now appeal their original sentencing, claiming that they fell victim to the same jury bribing that you were caught with. (\"He did it every time, he just got caught *this* time\"). Ironically, the fact that you were *very* successful at your job will also lead to people now assuming that you always cheated. (\"No one can be *that* good.\") Doesn't matter if it's true, this almost invariably leads to reasonable doubt, which has a good chance of the criminal being released. The same principle applies to violating basic rights (I don't know what to call Dent's interrogation. Does it fit under torture?)" ]

[ "To my knowledge, to the ancient Greeks, there were two Mount Olympus' (Olympi?). The physical Mount Olympus was not the actual Mount Olympus that their pantheon resided in. The two essentially paralleled one another. So sure, climb Mount Olympus I suppose, the Greeks didn't necessarily think Zeus would be sitting up there throwing bolts down to keep you out." ]

[ "This question is getting a lot of traffic after being [tweeted by @reddit](_URL_5_), so I thought I'd welcome those of you that haven't visited /r/AskHistorians before to the subreddit. Please do bear in mind that in order to keep the quality of answers here high we have [strict rules on comments](/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules) that are actively enforced by the moderators. We don't want to stifle discussion, but remember that: * Answers must be informed, detailed and backed up by historical sources. This applies to **all** top level comments (direct replies to the original post) as well as responses to follow-up questions. * All other comments must be on-topic and historical, i.e. the current olympics and political discussions about the pros and cons of socialism are both off-limits and will be deleted. Otherwise, feel free to add answers, expand on existing answers or ask follow-up questions, and we hope you'll stick around!" ]

[ "Id = Instinct, doesn't think \"what is this going to cause later\" Ego = Goes between Id and reality, tries to keep Id happy but does consider what things are going to cause, how realistic Id's desires are. Superego = criticizes, brings morals into account, this is your conscious. Have you watched or read Pinocchio? Jiminy Cricket is Superego. Another way to look at this is by imagining an angel on one of your shoulders and a devil on the other. The angel is superego, always wanting what is right. The devil is id, who just wants, regardless of consequence (id does not consider consequence). You, stuck in the middle trying to sort it all out to keep both happy, you are ego." ]

[ "ELI5 version (Using Power Rangers): Primary: The smaller parts that make up the zord (i.e. ball bearings, connecting rods, etc.) Secondary: The specific structures of the Zord (i.e. arm + leg = alpha helices, torso = beta sheet) Tertiary: Zord Quaternary: Megazord p.s. in case you didn't know the zords are their animal robots that they drive" ]

[ "They have lots of kids. Anti birth control, and pro-havingasmanykidsasyoucan. Lots of religions have some aspect that promotes making lots more people, like the Catholics ban on birth control, for example. They often have a positive effect on the numbers of that religion in the long term, as those religions simply have far more kids, who have a greater chance of growing up in that religion too." ]

[ "Probably the best example is the shrimp species that forms colonies in sponges. The behavioral ecology you are thinking of is called \"eusociality\". [wiki article](_URL_0_)" ]

[ "Female hysteria was a totally made-up disorder. It was dreamed up by societies that believed women were supposed to be pure and weren't supposed to have any sexual desires. Sexual desires and the symptoms that do along with them were \"abnormal\" and were characteristics of hysteria. In the 19th and early 20th century, some specialists started \"treating\" hysteria by stimulating women and bringing them to orgasm. After an orgasm, you're relaxed and calm, so it \"worked\". These \"treatments\" were originally done by hand, and so vibrators were developed to give the docs a rest. Interesting tidbit: \"hysteria\" means \"wandering uterus\". At one time, people thought the uterus wandered throughout the body, and the treatment of stimulation and orgasm brought the uterus back into its rightful place." ]

[ "Probably the first time they got their naughty bits snagged on a thorny bush." ]

[ "Do physicists think dark matter really exist or is it something they've made up temporarily to explain something they don't really understand?" ]

[ "Thank you for your submission! Unfortunately, your submission has been removed for the following reason(s): You can find the basic answer with a google / wiki search. Please start there and come back with a more specific question. If you disagree with this decision, please send a [message to the moderators.](_URL_3_)" ]

[ "They are musical keys in music. A \"Key\" is a set of notes that work together. For example, C Minor is the key that holds the notes C, D, E♭, F, G, A♭, B♭. An experienced musician will be able to pick up on the key, or more commonly just ask the other musicians what key they want to play. After the key and tempo have been established its pretty much free reign in the limits of the key of the song." ]

[ "Back then people still needed jobs, now they dont and can practice harder for longer. And science helps by showing then methods on improving motions. You cam find cool videos on youtube" ]

[ "Taxes. Consumers in the US basically pay the cost of production. Consumers in Europe pay for a good chunk of our social programmes through it. I'm not familiar with the German rates (although their cost is pretty similar, so comparison will probably work) - US gas tax is 18c/gallon. UK, it's about $5. Orders of magnitude difference. The tax doesn't just go to transport infrastructure, although much of the US' is lacking in maintenance." ]

[ "Most of the mark up is done by those who hold distribution rights within your country. Interestingly with the US minimum wage it takes about 8 min of work to earn enough to buy the song. In Australia at your minimum wage it would take you about 7 min of work to earn enough to buy the song. So they are more or less equal in value with you Australians paying slightly less." ]

[ "The tags are required information to be sold legally. The end user can remove them as they see fit." ]

[ "_URL_0_ Excellent article that gives more detail: * Everyone uses it, and want to keep to one brand, so someone in better times gets used to using Tide, all of a sudden can't afford it, either steals or buys it on the black market, rather than buying something cheap. * Since everyone uses it and sales volumes are huge, most stores weren't locking it up at all, and there are literally hundreds of bottles for the taking, so easy target for thieves. * It's all but untraceable once stolen. No serial numbers or databases like phones, car stereos, or TVs." ]

[ "The lake is not now and has not been pink for about 10 years. When temperatures and salt levels are right for it, a certain type of algae will accumulate beta carotene (a bright pigment that also makes carrots orange). Then a pink microorganism will grow in the salt crust. So it was very colorful while those conditions were met." ]

[ "Remember when you played with play dough as a kid. If you mixed all the colors up you just end up with a big brown lump?" ]

[ "In the same way as a human with a parachute survives falling from 10,000 feet at terminal velocity - their terminal velocity is much slower, so the landing is safer. If you scale an object up to double all its dimensions, its surface area is multiplied by four but its mass is multiplied by eight. This increases its terminal velocity because the force from gravity trying to speed it up (linked to mass) increases faster than the drag trying to slow it down (linked to surface area)." ]

[ "The surface tension isn't what killed Buster. It's the water's resistance to movement that deccelerates the object hitting the water. Surface tension refers to the cohesive forces of water, and its contribution in this scenario is very low." ]

[ "I can't speak for the UK, but in the US, food and fashion are two things that aren't patentable or copyrightable. You can copyright or trademark a label or brand name, respectively, but not the contents or appearance of the food stuff itself, even if it's a picture on a box (which you'd argue, if you could, would be part of copyright for the label)." ]

[ "Your question reminded me of this frikkin awesome documentary of about planned obsolescence. [Video snippet](_URL_0_), and the whole documentary, I can't find... but Im sure someone else may be able to. ELI5 version: Because companies want you to keep them in business." ]

[ "Domestic sheep are descended from Mouflon, wild sheep that have normal coats and need no shearing. Many mammals have a double layer coat, with long coarse guard hair on on the outside to protect from wind and rain, and softer undercoat made up of short hair for insulation. Sheep were selected to have longer undercoats, and that is what the fleece is." ]

[ "How do you know a year has passed without looking at a calendar? I imagine they sense the temperature/climate changes like anything else." ]

[ "I think when they say spider webs are \"strong,\" it refers to the engineering definition of strength. It just means it can take a high amount of stress before it yields. It's still amazing, but it's a lot more mundane than they make out, like you wouldn't really be making swords out of spider silk." ]

[ "It's because they don't weigh enough. If I crumple up this newspaper and toss it onto my kitchen floor, it doesn't get damaged. But if I throw this coffee cup on the Gotta go." ]

[ "I can give a very cursory answer, but you might get a much better answer by cross posting in /r/askanthropology. Hunting deer doesn't require a lot of equipment - it is not so difficult even for just an individual with a bow and arrows. Larger game, like mammoth, were probably group efforts. We also have evidence of other tactics people would use, such as bison jumps on the Great Plains. You find a suitably high cliff or other drop and chase a part of a herd of bison off of it. You then harvest what you need from the dead and wounded bison. Just generally, people are very creative in hunting large game." ]

[ "A reminder that [speculation is not appropriate](_URL_0_) for askhistorians. While it may seem intuitive that babies were breastfed, not all women can breastfeed and not all babies can latch. Breastmilk has not been seen as the superior means of feeding infants and babies universally through history, either. It should come as no surprise, either, that practices have varied from culture to culture and over history, in terms of nursing substitutes, weaning methods and age, and first foods." ]

[ "A big problem when getting hit by lightning is that the water in your cells will instantly boil. This exerts a very high pressure on the surrounding areas. A human is made of flesh which can withstand this pressure by being flexible. However a tree is made of wood which breaks when you exert pressure on it. It is possible to break bones when hit by lightning but the material properties means that this is a very rare thing to happen as electricity have an easier time traveling close to your skin and because your bones contain less water then the rest of your body." ]

[ "Waster is a good conductor, which means that the electrical current from the lightening is able to travel over the surface rather than go underneath. Same way a Faraday cage protects things inside. Most fish don't surface that often so they're generally safe under the water. Unlike humans that need to surface frequently to breath." ]

[ "I feel like, as always, poor Mussolini has yet again been left in the shadow by Churchill and Hitler. What do we know about Mussolini's sex life? I only know some basics, namely that he was married and had two relatively well-known mistresses (Margherita Sarfatti and Clara Patacci)." ]

[ "I would recommend Hannibals Dynasty: Power and politics in the western Mediterranean by Dexter Hoyos. It goes in to fantastic detail about the groundwork Hannibal's father (Hamilcar) laid out for his son-in-law Hasdrubal and his heir Hannibal. The bulk of the book is about Hannibal and his exploits. All the dirty tricks, nasty assaults and deviously executed political ploys to ensure Barcid domination are explained in easily accessible terms. The best part is that the book assumes almost no background information of Carthaginian culture so when you finish it you'll have a firm grasp on the basics of the Republic of Carthage." ]

[ "Well the weakness and fatigue is simply because your body is busy fighting the disease so it has less energy left to do other stuff and because its own cells are getting damaged in fighting the disease. Things like sore throat is caused by the inflammation of the tissue in that area. The body causes that inflammation because it helps your immune system's cells fight in that area. This video does an awesome job of explaining the basic concept of the immune system: _URL_0_" ]

[ "A lot of strength gains you make while lifting weights is due to central nervous system adaptions. Your brain learns how to use your muscles more efficiently. It's pretty common that these adaptions are made more quickly in the dominant arm." ]

[ "The console downloads pretty much everything but it can be left encrypted; your console has the file but it cannot make sense of it. When the game releases they just send the key and it can be decoded." ]

[ "Your employer takes money out of your paycheck throughout the year to pay your local, state, and federal taxes. The amount they take out, however, is just an estimate how much tax you will probably owe at the end of the year. There's no way for the state, local, and federal governments to know what you actually do with your money. You might move, buy a house or a fuel efficient car, be paying off student loan debts, get a pay raise (or decrease) etc... all of these things affect how much tax you owe and pay. You won't know how much money you make for a given year until Dec 31 of that year. So when you file your tax return, you basically tell the IRS all of the ways in which you made and spent your money from Jan 1 - Dec 31 of the previous year. It is based off *that* information, how much tax you owe. If it turns out you paid too much, you get a tax refund. If it turns out you didn't pay enough, you will owe the IRS." ]

[ "Someone spells it wrong then it catches on, like many changes in language. [Specific info on the etymology of 'cum'.](_URL_0_)" ]

[ "Speech-Language Pathology graduate student here. Substituting /r/ with /w/ is common in kids because /w/ requires less muscular control, especially of the tongue. Motor control develops over time, and most kiddos outgrow this by age 5." ]

[ "Yes; you might find the idea of the [kugelblitz](_URL_1_) intriguing. Generally there will be a gravitational attraction between any two things for which the system as a whole possesses [invariant mass](_URL_0_), and note that Newton's 3rd law (1) implies that if a massive object exerts a force on light, the light in turn must exert a force on the massive object. (1) Technically Newton's 3rd law is a complicated subject matter in general relativity, but let's put that aside." ]

[ "It's not voodoo magic. It's kind of like brushing your hair. When you get up in the morning, your hair (assuming you have more hair on your head than I do) is all tangled from tossing and turning and all that other jazz. This is what regular light coming from, say, a light bulb looks like. It's all tangled and scattered. What do you do to fix your hair? You comb it, of course. You brush it again and again, until it's all straight and perfect and just the way you want it. The laser unit does the same thing to the laser light, only instead of a comb, it's got a set of mirrors that comb the light back and forth until it's just right--at which point the light is allowed to shoot out from the tip of the laser and entertain you while you use it to drive the cat crazy." ]

[ "Your car has a battery in it, which it uses to start the engine and run the radio and other things. When the cars engine is running, there's a part called the alternator that takes over from the battery and powers all of that stuff. In fact, it produces more power than the car needs, and it uses that extra power to recharge the battery. This all works fine until you let it go too long with the engine off and only the battery powering things like radios or lights - it reaches a point where there isn't enough power left in the battery to start the car, and then you need a jump start." ]

[ "Imagine a bathtub full of water, the water represents electricity. The bathtub has a faucet, which represents the generation of electricity. Imagine now that there are little holes in the bottom of the bathtub, all plugged up. When ever a home needs power, unplug the drain and let the water flow out. Now imagine that there are thousands of holes, all unplugged. The bathtub will drain very quickly - even if you turn the faucet on, full blast, only a few of the holes near the faucet will still get water flowing through, the rest of them will be dry until you plug up some of the holes again. It's generally the same concept with power." ]

[ "From an evolutionary point of view it's one theory is because it's more beneficial. It doesn't matter if there are 132 or 133 tigers in that bush, but the threat level changes greatly if it's 1 or 2. (Both have a delta of 1). As for science (I only know it from signal processing aspect in detail with HF-tech and Bode-diagrams and shit) I'd assume because things like Sound or light energy wise are exponentially by nature (since they are being distributed in a 3-D space and such so increasing the radius has an exponential effect on the area it has to cover). If you want sound to be received twice as loud you don't need to double the energy but square it. But I hope someone who is an actual physicist and not just some dude who plugs in the formulas like me can point out where I was wrong or not so accurate." ]

[ "We don't *have* to cook our meat. We also could walk around with a heavy parasite load, like most animals do." ]

[ "In short, what ultimately stops cell processes after death is lack of oxygen. Without oxygen ions to fix electrons on the cellular level, cells are unable to function or reproduce, and they begin to decay. For some cells that require constant oxygen (such as neurons) this can happen almost immediately (within minutes) after death. For other cells that are not quite as oxygen thirsty (such as in the transplant organs) this can take between 30 or 60 minutes. Structural cells which require even less oxygen, such as in bone and connective tissue, can survive for around 24 hours after death before cell death occurs." ]

[ "Every time you make a copy of a cell, there is a chance for errors. For example when you photocopy a first print, it is pretty crisp and close to the original, but there are a few minor discrepencies. Now if you photocopy the copy, it gets more distorted, and so on until some letters get hard to read, it gets difficult to discern a comma from a period, etc. Add to this, that our cells have a thing called telomeres, which cap off the ends of our DNA. Think of it like the period at the end of a sentence. Well each time you make a copy, that period gets a little smaller, and smaller, until its gone and then your DNA can't copy properly anymore, because it doesn't know where to end. So your cells get confused about the information on those strands of DNA, like trying to read a page of a book with no periods at all!" ]

[ "No. Once 3/4 of states ratify a constitutional amendment, it is the law of the land throughout the United States. Consult [Article V of the Constitution](_URL_0_) for more information." ]

[ "Could you perhaps present us with your original source so we can see what the author writes about it? I *think* I know the answer, but I would like to know what exactly the author wrote. Also, could you remove the bonus question? We do not allow discussions of events after 1993." ]

[ "The dimples cause turbulence in the air as the ball flies. This turbulence causes the negative pressure behind the ball to be less severe, allowing it to fly further. Additionally the dimples will magnify the lift caused by the spin of the ball. If the ball is struck properly, it will have backspin and provide upward lift. If the ball is not hit properly, as in it's sliced, the spin will not be a perfect backspin and the slice will be magnified similarly by it's more sideward spin." ]

[ "[Angular momentum again](_URL_0_). It's the same reason solar systems have (most of) their planets lined up in one plane rather than orbiting all over the place (and why spiral galaxies are flat spirals). A rotating cloud of matter tends to collapse into a plane perpendicular to the axis of rotation." ]

[ "To understand existentialism you have to know the history of what came before it. Modern philosophers believed that things had an basic nature (An \"essence\"), and from that we derived their existence (ex: Descartes said \"I think therefore I am\"....first he deals with the thinking, from that he gets existence). Existentialists took the opposite approach, they stated \"[Existence precedes essence](_URL_0_)\". Instead of having a fundamental abstract natures that ultimately define how we are to exist, we start with the point that we exist and must create meaning from that." ]

[ "Can someone explain this suitcase? I'm unfamiliar with it." ]

[ "During the Cold War proper, the Soviets supported several wars of liberation, in an attempt to dismantle the old European empires, and establish socialist states in former colonies. They funded the Aswan High Dam and sold lots of weapons to Naser in Egypt. They also used foreign aid and military sales to gain influence around the world." ]

[ "Giving you an actual statistical chance is meaningless, and difficult to do; there are a thousand and one things to keep in mind, most importantly: Your branch of service, your front, etc. That being said, your chances of surviving are considerably higher than an unfortunate in 1941-1942. The RKKA never achieved complete tactical parity (that is, being able to go \"1:1\" with the Germans) like the Western Allies did, but by 1943, with manpower crises and a series of stunning defeats in the Wehrmacht's lap, they were getting close. Most people largely agree that it would be around the summer of 1944 where the RKKA would achieve its maximum level of tactical ability. Your chances of surviving though are still horrifyingly low. WWII Casualty figures are, as a rule, incredibly hard to verify, but the *official* figures put the Red Army at suffering near to 9 million casualties. 9 million. I think this should illustrate the point well." ]

[ "_URL_1_ _URL_0_ The egg shells are porous (lots of tiny holes, holes so small that we can't see them without magnification). These pores allow air (CO2 and O2) to move in and out of the egg. Close to the shell are membranes with lots of tiny blood vessels that allow these gases to diffuse across the membranes, and carry these gases to/from the embryo." ]

[ "Here is a super cool review. To sum it up, it has been found that the Histones that wrap up bird DNA is very similar to the Histones wrapping up the Reptilia DNA. It is thought that their Histones probably had its own quirks but were definitely there. _URL_0_" ]

[ "This question has been asked before, so you may want to check out these links for supplementary information _URL_2_ _URL_0_ _URL_3_ _URL_1_" ]

[ "This submission has been removed because it is [soapboxing](_URL_1_.), [promoting a political agenda, or moralizing](_URL_0_). We don't allow content that does these things because they are detrimental to unbiased and academic discussion of history." ]

[ "They come from a time when most people didn't have the numerical literacy to count much past ten, and didn't really understand how base ten compound numbers worked. Besides matching your fingers, ten didn't hold any greater significance to them than twelve did. Different languages started compound numbers at different places. Germanic languages have named numbers through 12, Italian stops at 10, Spanish 15, and French 16. Some languages in the Hindi family have unique numbers through 100." ]

[ "Based on how we read the date out. We say \"February 25th, 2012,\" so we write it as \"2/25/2012.\" As opposed to \"25th of February, 2012.\"" ]

[ "In the old days glasses were expensive, and you didn't bother getting them if your job didn't rely heavily on vision. Most manual labor jobs don't, but most office/intellectual jobs do. So you would not often see glasses on a factory worker or farmer, while they'd be commonplace on a professor or office clerk or writer." ]

[ "To simplify by analogy: Think of level of obesity like the amount of water in a bucket. What determines how much water is in a bucket? The size of the bucket, or the amount of water that was poured into it? The answer, of course, is both. Big buckets can hold more water than small buckets, but if you pour only a little water in one bucket and a lot in another identical bucket, the second will hold more. Likewise, some genes make you more likely to be obese, but only if you have enough food around to get fat on in the first place." ]

[ "They are cleaning their head, mandibles, and limbs. Unsurprisingly, they don't hang out in the cleanest of places." ]

[ "Are they [leaf cutter ants?](_URL_0_) then they are collecting it to harvest fungus which grows on the little leafs." ]

[ "While I don't want to discourage any new answers to this question, this answer from a few weeks ago might be helpful: _URL_0_" ]

[ "I have taken an interest in the Pacific Campaign and the history of naval aviation and am now looking for recommended reading. On my shortlist so far: Title | Authors ---|--- *Pacific Crucible* and sequels | Ian W. Toll *Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway*| Jonathan Parshall & Anthony Tully *Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics, and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887-1941* | David C. Evans & Mark R. Peattie *Sunburst: The Rise of Japanese Naval Air Power, 1909-1941*| Mark R. Peattie I have heard very good things about Mr Toll's work, which should cover the whole campaign; *Shattered Sword* I heard is the definitive book on Midway; *Kaigun* and *Sunburst* are apparently on the technical side, which is right up my alley. I'd be very interested in suggestions for the same kind of books about the American side!" ]

[ "ELIM5: too much oxygen damages cells, particularly those in the brain and lungs. ELIM12: oxygen is a reactive molecule. That's part of why it is useful for metabolism. If you are sick, increasing your oxygen exposure can be useful. But, anything in the wrong concentration can be dangerous." ]

[ "It's because of sensory adaptation. If we're honest about the situation then we realize that going INTO a casino or a smelly car is just as likely to grab out attention. Sensory adaptation is what happens whenever your brain is exposed to the same stimulus for an extended period of time. So if you're inside for an hour your brain stops telling you about how gross it smells because that is not useful information - you already know. If you walk outside, then all of a sudden your brain has new information to report: holy crap it smells great out here, I feel great, I'm so happy to be alive. Conversely, if you're outside for an extended period of time your brain stops telling you that it smells nice. If you then go inside your brain then blasts you with that new information: holy crap is smells gross out here, I feel gross, I'm so unhappy to be alive. Both of these sensations are a kind of 'alertness.' One is just more enjoyable than the other." ]

[ "In addition to the wonderful answer by the other poster, the episode of the askhistorians podcast entitled \"cleanliness and hygiene in the early united states\" from may of 2016 includes an interesting overview of this topic." ]

[ "The earliest examples I know are the Roman [Insula](_URL_0_). While there might be earlier examples, apartment buildings as we know them need strong courts and laws to exist for speculators to build them, and Rome might be the first to have that." ]

[ "The whole reason for the concept of Toy Story is because of the limitations of the technology at the time. Somewhere in Pixar there was a conversation like \"Damn, our animation methods struggle to capture the complexity of human movement realistically, and when we render our characters they look like they're made of plastic. They look like toys.\" \"Fuck it, let's just have the characters be toys. Keep the humans off-screen whenever we can.\" Later, as the tech got better they could do insects for A Bug's Life, which move complexly but don't have skin and hair. Then they figured out hair/fur for Monsters Inc, then water for Finding Nemo. Notice how even in those films, adult humans are pretty much never seen. Then they could do people, but in a very cartoony way for the Incredibles, and then finally the more realistic human characters in Ratatouille and Up. But toys are by far the easiest thing to animate and render, so they did that first." ]

[ "Hi there -- while we've approved this question, we would like to remind potential respondents of our [current events](_URL_0_) (AKA \"20-year\") rule -- it's fine to discuss events through 1997 (inclusive) and their effects, but not events after 1997. Thanks!" ]

[ "So if you spill a bit on you, you can see it and don't go traipsing paint around the clients house." ]

[ "The same way that astronomers find out almost everything. They use [spectrography](_URL_0_). Absorbtion colors - the specific colors of light that get emitted when light is absorbed by matter - tell you exactly what element or molecule did the absorbtion and emission. This process works with suns, atmospheres, planets.. you name it. For example, there are geologic surveys of the Iraqi desert and the surface of Mars that tell you about the composition of the surface." ]

[ "No, if it were possible, you'd just get ununnonium and it'd decay and you'd be left with its fission products. What you appear to be asking is why the table ends where it does. The reason why it does is simply because Uuo is the element with the greatest number of protons that has been discovered. [The Island of Stability, to satisfy your curiosity further.](_URL_0_)" ]

[ "There's some science behind it, but in basic basic terms, it's not like the substance turns on when the lights turn off. I'll explain with made up units. I know there is a unit of light called candela, but this is ELI5. So I'll just say units. You're in a room with no windows or doors. Let's say the room is lit with...8 units of light; a decently lit room. You have a glowstick in your hand that gives off 1 unit of light. The glowstick won't look like it's glowing because the 8 units of light in the room make the glowstick look like it's not glowing at all relative to the room. You turn the lights off in the room. Now the room has 0 units of light. But your glowstick still has 1 unit! Now your glowstick looks like it's glowing relative to the room's light. Basically, it's always glowing. It just doesn't look like it when the room is lit." ]

[ "Since we started to regularly cook meat over fire before eating it, our stomachs have become accustomed to dealing with lower levels of bacteria, and other dangerous things, because the heat from the fire will kill many pathogens." ]

[ "Your question is like: > Why do people keep telling me to take a pill my doctor prescribes when in ye olden days people didn't have access to the same pills? Clean water is way easier to get now than it was then. Since you have access to clean water you should use it. In the same way, getting a doctor to prescribe a pill is way easier now than it was then. Since you have access to the doctor and the pill you should use it. Plus beer now isn't the same as so-called [small beer](_URL_0_). They drank small beer back then which didn't have much alcohol. So, yeah, back then their best choice was often to drink low-alcohol beer because clean water wasn't easily available. But you have access to clean water which is way better at the job." ]

[ "Two answers to that; 1. Yes. Bloomberg estimates 150,000 tonnes a year of usage and world reserves are 13 million tonnes (USGS, 2008. That is just stuff we know of and where we know we can extract it at a profit. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley estimate we can build 1 billion 40 kWh batteries with current reserves. But, there is _vastly_ more than just the low hanging fruit we know of. 2. Lithium isn't the only game in town. Battery technologies undergoing research right now replace lithium and instead use aluminium, sodium, and a range of really interesting flow and solid state systems. TL;DNR: Yes, but we probably won't need it all anyway." ]

[ "There are some countries that depend on oil being above a certain price so that they don't lose money. In order to stop some of these countries from doing bad things, the bigger countries are making more oil so that the bad countries will need to be nice so that they can sell oil again." ]

[ "The common cold is caused by any of up to 200 viruses (not bacteria). If you could not get rid of it because you lack a functioning immune system, complications that exist even for those with a functional immune system, such as pneumonia, would be more likely to occur." ]

[ "Because your body's resources aren't dedicated to moving you around, talking, seeing, etc. Also because you're not moving around, touching your injuries and generally making things worse." ]

[ "Probably the first time they got their naughty bits snagged on a thorny bush." ]

[ "Hi OP, this is a cultural question, so it would greatly assist anyone considering answering if you could specify which culture you're asking about. For example, the name of a cultural group / country / geographic region, plus a rough time period. Otherwise, this question is simply too broad, as it encompasses almost the entirety of human existence. Thanks! Also, it may be worth cross-posting the question to /r/AskAnthropology or /r/AskSocialScience for their insights on this subject." ]

[ "As a general term, the word ‘meta’ is talking about the next level of information up, I guess, in a sense of the usual level of what’s happening in a given context, and then ‘meta’ would be not just looking at that, but looking at looking at that. For instance, ‘meta’ in a gaming context might not just be discussing how you can best play, but discussing what everyone else is thinking and building your strategy for that. In an online forum, the usual level of what’s going on is the everyday discussions and threads- ‘meta’ in this context might be looking at the sorts of discussions and threads that are happening. In a research context, individual pieces of research will look at one question and come up with an answer. ‘Meta’ in this context would be a meta-analysis, where you analyse all the answers and note general trends and such. Hopefully a few examples helped- but TLDR; ‘meta’ is going up a level of information; not just talking about something, but talking about talking about something." ]

[ "And the million dollar question you have to answer: does that add anything to the storyline of the film for the avg filmgoer? No. Just like movies never say goodbye when hanging up the phone, never lock the door, cock the gun even on a gun that doesn't cock, hacking by typing furiously at the keyboard, looking at a screen so bright the reflection off the glasses is blinding, 10 bad guys fighting the hero will take turns attacking, bad guys have absolutely no aim when shooting, bad guy has to explain the entire evil plan for 5minutes before attempting and failing to kill the good guy." ]

[ "Fellow sufferer. It comes and goes and is hard to actually see on less they scope you and see red or swollen tissue. Mine is mostly stress related. I followed putting my cat down with being doubled over with full blown IBS. For me the cure is milk of magnesia and laying on my back with my knees up. Good luck - it's not a fun malady and can be maddening to cure. First and foremost try to live as stress free as possible. To that end I found yoga and Tai Chi to be helpful." ]

[ "_URL_0_ Prof.Brian Cox, funny and informative, liquid methane behavior starts around 1 minute in." ]

[ "If you deploy a parachute immediately following reentry, it will need to be able to handle the dynamic pressure (and thus very high forces) due to supersonic flight. This can be done but the hardware will be very heavy. Alternatively, you can wait until later (because the vehicle is still slowing down to its subsonic terminal velocity) and deploy it then and solve the problem of deceleration with a much lighter and simpler parachute." ]

[ "That's because your device has to \"prep\" a lot of configurations such as encryption keys, protocols etc. Think of it as switching the battery in your car, you first gotta unplug it, check which wire goes well, reassure you did it correctly and then proceed to turn your car on. It took you time to do all that, you really can't just instantly switch the power supply of your car." ]

[ "So pain has evolutionary origins that far far predate humans, and the nervous system setup in that area is also pre-human, part of the reason human childbirth is so painful is the abnormal size of our head, which is a very recent development, we have not had time to fix it using evolutionary processes and even if we did, modern medicine and other pressures are working against us. Human babies are born in a fetal state, much earlier developmentally than many other primates, because their heads would be too big to get out later in development." ]

[ "The kind of extreme poverty you're talking about is actually pretty rare. Dying of hunger and thirst are usually caused by a period of bad weather, and are in a sense more like localised events than sustained realities of x country. Generally speaking people don't live in places that can't sustain life. /u/the_original_Retro already made some good points regarding the gender politics in some of the poorer regions, but that's only one part of the issue. The most simple answer is that in most cases having children is a net benefit. If the amount of work a child can do exceeds the value of the food and water he/she consumes then it obviously makes economic sense to have children. In many cases it's required to have children to be able to sustain a family. The other big point is to think of children as a sort of pension insurance. If you don't have children nobody will look after you once you are unable to work. Without children you, in a very literal sense, can't retire." ]

[ "The big thing about the Free Cities is that they had 'Imperial Immediacy'. This meant that, in theory, they were subject only to the authority of the Emperor, rather than any intermediary ecclesiastical or secular Lord. Eventually, this meant that they were--in essence--Imperial Estates, much like the other princes of the Empire. I'm not an expert in Holy Roman constitutional law so can't go into too much detail, but eventually this let them sit in and vote in the Imperial Diet, with the rights and privileges thereof. In the Diet, they sat as a third college alongside the Princes and the Electors. Hopefully this answers what you were looking for. I'm away from most of my library at the moment, but I will post sources as soon as I can double check what says what. I believe that Peter Wilson's *The Thirty Years War: Europe's Tragedy* begins with a good summary of Holy Roman Imperial institutions, so I'll leave that there for now while I properly source/provide additional reading. Edit: Source; disclaimer." ]

[ "Is this a homework question? It says in our [rules](_URL_0_): Our users aren't here to do your homework for you, but they might be willing to help. Remember: AskHistorians helps those who help themselves. Don't just give us your essay/assignment topic and ask us for ideas. Do some research of your own, then come to us with questions about what you've learned. This is explained further [in this [META] thread](_URL_1_). You can also consider asking the helpful people at /r/HomeworkHelp." ]

[ "We don't, but is Jurassic Park a better film with a T-Rex that roars, or one that clucks like a chicken or coos like a pigeon?" ]

[ "They hire a guy and record him saying a bunch of popular names." ]

[ "If the earth had always been spinning the other way? Pretty much nothing interesting, other than the sun rising in the west." ]

[ "If you have Netflix there's a very good documentary titled \"the world without US\" It explains your exact question." ]

[ "Google deep dream was developed as a test of Google's image recognition software. Basically, they're running it backwards - rather than taking a picture of a dog, and asking the software \"Is that a dog\"; they take a random picture and ask the software \"show me what looks like a dog\". By seeing what the software draws, you can determine what characteristics it uses to determine a dog. For instance, back in the early days of image recognition, the department of defense thought they'd trained a computer to recognize tanks in pictures. It turned out they'd actually trained the tank to recognize sunny days, because the tank pictures were all taken on a sunny day, and the no-tank pictures on a cloudy day. Google deep dream, for instance, discovered the Google Image recognition thinks dumbbells have a human arm attached to them. Then they released it to the public because it makes cool pictures." ]

[ "The really big picture is easy to explain: You are witness to the dying of an empire, and participate through different \"heroes\" in slowing its inevitable demise to something that resembles attrition." ]

[ "Because they contain a large amount of combustible material and not much water. The reason most plant material (I know fungi aren't actually plants) does not burn easily is because it contains a large amount of water. For any substance to burn you need three things: * Fuel * Oxygen * High temperature While there is a lot of water in the material, the temperature is held down to around 100C by the water. You need to boil or evaporate that water before the temperature of the material can rise high enough for the oxygen to bind chemically with the fuel material. Some plants have a low enough water content that they burn readily. Examples are some fungus fruiting bodies, pine needles and eucalyptus leaves." ]

[ "What kind of cheese is it? I mean, there is some types of bacteria that are phosphorescent..." ]

[ "Rule 1. First, examine at the atoms directly attached to the stereocenter of the compound. A substituent with a higher atomic number takes precedence over a substituent with a lower atomic number. _URL_0_" ]

[ "Their surfaces aren't exposed to the oxygen or fire. Same reason food cooks from the outside towards the center or a block of wood burns outside first then burns towards the inside." ]