[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
After the big bang why did some of the energy turn into matter?

I bet this is kind of a stupid question, but oh well.

[Assistant]
Matter and energy are two sides of the same coin, when we're talking about "stuff" - photons, quarks, Higgs bosons, and all the other constituents of Nature. It's not as if the Universe was pure kinetic energy, for example (that wouldn't even mean anything - you need something to possess that energy).

Just after the Big Bang, the Universe was a soup of energetic particles running around and interacting. Some of these particles were massless, like photons, which you might think of as energy (though they're matter like anything else), and some of them were massive particles like protons and electrons. As the Universe expands, it cools, and as the Universe cooled after the Big Bang, the exact particle content changed, because when the temperature of the Universe dropped below the mass of a particle times the speed of light squared (divided by Boltzmann's constant), that particle would no longer be spontaneously created and so it would become much less abundant. So at the highest temperatures, when energies were higher than we can reproduce in the lab, we can only speculate about what kinds of particles existed, but after a little bit of time things became more familiar. By about a second after the Big Bang, the Universe consisted mostly of photons, neutrinos, and electrons (and their antiparticles, positrons), with some other things running around in much, much smaller abundances - protons, neutrons, dark matter, and so on.

Another question you might ask would be, if protons and neutrons and dark matter were so rare back then, why do we see so much of them today? The answer is that photons, being massless, *redshift* as the Universe expands, so that their energy density falls more quickly than the mass density of normal matter. So over time the density of matter becomes significantly greater than the density of radiation, as it is today.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Minecraft] Where did I come from?

One day I just woke up and I was in a grassy field. I have no idea how I got there.

I've done what I could to survive and have searched far and wide but I haven't found any of my species. Are there other people like me? How am I here? Why?

[Assistant]
Crazy enough, there is an answer. You can see it if you collect ender pearls and combine them with things from the Nether.

>!The seven billion billion billion atoms of the player's body were created, long before this game, in the heart of a star. So the player, too, is information from a star. And the player moves through a story, which is a forest of information planted by a man called Julian, on a flat, infinite world created by a man called Markus, that exists inside a small, private world created by the player, who inhabits a universe created by...

>!Shush. Sometimes the player created a small, private world that was soft and warm and simple. Sometimes hard, and cold, and complicated. Sometimes it built a model of the universe in its head; flecks of energy, moving through vast empty spaces. Sometimes it called those flecks "electrons" and "protons".

>!Sometimes it called them "planets" and "stars".

>!Sometimes it believed it was in a universe that was made of energy that was made of offs and ons; zeros and ones; lines of code. Sometimes it believed it was playing a game. Sometimes it believed it was reading words on a screen.

>!You are the player, reading words...


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
eli5: Are there primary scents just like there are primary colors?

I was thinking of an app idea that has a hardware attached scent dispenser. This way, I can send a scent for my friends to smell across the country. However, to accomplish this I thought that perhaps there are ways to create any scent just like you can create any colors using primary colors.

[Assistant]
Well, there's good news and bad news.

The good news is that, *yes*, just as your eyes have a limited variety of cones in them and infer other colors based on how those colors activate combinations of cones, your nose has a limited variety of olfactory receptors in it and infers other odors based on how those odors activate combinations of olfactory receptors.

The bad news is that while there are only 3 types of cones in our eyes, our best guess for the number of types of olfactory receptors in our noses is "about 400".

For each of those 400 different types of receptors, you'd need to find a chemical that activates that one and mostly doesn't activate any of the others.  There's no guarantee that such chemicals will exist in all cases, so you'll probably end up needing more than 400.  (For example, if you can't find a chemical that activates "only receptor #298" then you may need one that activates "only receptors #1 and #298", another that activates "only receptors #2 and #298", and so on.)


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
ELI5: Where did all the minivans go?

Minivans were all the rage in 2006. They had decent gas mileage and could perfectly hold a family with a pack of kids.

Now manufacturers hardly produce minivans and more are pushing larger, gas-hungry suburbans like the Ford Flex. What gives?

Edit: I forgot a word.

[Assistant]
People are buying crossovers more these days, so that's what manufacturers are making and selling. It's not so much push from the manufacturers as it is pull from consumers.

But there are still good minivans out there. Honda Odyssey and Toyota Sienna are the gold standards, and still sell well.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] Eli5: how do companies like google make sure that data in their servers are not lost in events of disasters that physically damage the computers?

[Assistant]
Many, many copies.

You would typically store any data in 3 or more locations, geographically spread. So even when 2 full data centers disappear, you still have one. It may also be spread across many different machines inside each locations, so even when individual disks or computers inside one data center fail, you still have a full copy in that data center.

Note these are not "backups" like smaller/legacy companies might do. These are fully working hot replicas, and each of them continually provide the data when needed. There may be "backups" for some data in addition to replication.

If you do this right (as Google does) you have the added benefit that if you have to take one data center or location down for maintenance you can just take it down, you don't have to really prepare for it. Everything is designed to continue to work with the remaining ones. Similarly, when you just lose connectivity to one data center it matters not, there are copies elsewhere. The systems are designed to synchronize everything after that data center comes back.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: The words "September, October, November, and December" contain the latin roots for the numbers 7, 8, 9, and 10. So why do those months hold different positions in the calendar?

[Assistant] Because they originaly were 7th, 8th and so on month. Roman calendar had only 10 monts, before January and February were added. That shifted the order of the months by two but the names stick. Thats why September is 9th and not 7th now.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] [Tolkien] Would Smaug still take over The Lonely Mountain if the Dwarves built the city with lower ceilings?

[Assistant]
They wouldn't have had a major city. High ceilings are necessary for ventilation and giving the hot air a place to go.

That said, if they had specially built the place to be too small for him to enter, he'd have had troubles entering. He is an exceptional digger though.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
ELI5: How did Hitler come to power?

I'm wondering mostly about the persuasive techniques/propaganda/psychology that was used to convince so many people of his ideas. Thanks!

[Assistant]
Germany was broken after WW1. Their economy was in ruins, their people were looking for leadership, and they were looking for a reason to be proud of themselves again. A disparaged population is a moldable population.

Hitler came along and promised to restore Germany to it's former glory. He did it with compelling speeches, but more importantly, he did it by doing it. In less than 10 years, he turned Germany into an economic and manufacturing powerhouse.

The citizens gave him more and more power, until one day, he was a dictator.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] When someone receives a donated organ, do the cells of the new organ change their DNA to that of the host? What becomes of the DNA in the cells of the donated organ?

[Assistant] No, the DNA stays the same as it always was. That's why it's so important to find as close a genetic match as possible to limit the need for anti-rejection drugs. If the immune system of the new host finds the new DNA it will try to destroy the organ.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] [Star wars] I get two lightsabers and press one against the other. I press down with an INCREDIBLE amount of force. Will this cause the blades to go through each other?

[Assistant]
There isn't a whole lot that the galaxy at large knows about lightsabers.  The secrets of their construction were closely-guarded secrets by the Jedi, and trying to find any information on their forging from other, darker sources is even more futile.  Are they simply glorified blaster bolts frozen in place?  Are they arcs of white-hot plasma contained in a magnetic field so tightly that it's a single blade for all intents and purposes?  None, save those that use them, know for sure.

In the first scenario (frozen blaster shots), it's unlikely.  Regardless of their makeup or construction, these are still beams of pure energy.  They'll lock, they'll repel one another, and will likely cut through your hilt before they do each other.  And on the other hand (arcs of plasma in a mag-field), pressing down with an INCREDIBLE amount of force will cause at least one magnetic field to rupture, causing white-hot energy to erupt all over your face.

Good luck.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
Do any of the Gallilean moons of Jupiter or the large moons of any other gas giant have stable geostationary orbits?

Writing a novella and I had the idea for space elevators at these moons, but I wanted to check the hard science first, and I can find very little to no research on this online.

[Assistant]
Assuming you mean geostationary orbit around the moons themselves, not the gas giants:

All the large moons in the solar system are tidally locked to the planet they orbit.  That means their rotational period is the same as their orbital period.  In this case, it is only possible for a satellite to stay stationary with respect to the moon's surface if it is located at one of the Lagrange points of that moon.

For any of these moons, a space elevator could be built from the moon's surface and passing through the moon-planet L1 or L2 point.  This would be much easier to build than a space elevator around Earth for example, because of the lower forces involved, although it would be longer in terms of distance.  In fact, there are semi-serious proposals to build a space elevator from the Earth's Moon to the Earth-Moon L1 point.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] If I wounded my palm and made a circle of exposed tissue and did the same to some other part of my body and stuck my palm there -- both circular wounds overlapping -- when they heal, would such parts fuse together?

[Assistant] We do this all the time in medicine.  2 common procedures would be the gastropexy, or the rotating pedicle flap.  If you want a solid scar to for you have to prevent movement of the graft.  Stitches are required.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
G-force, pushing vs. pulling? can you tell?

Hi!

I just listened to a podcast discussing cars, and I couldn't quite grasp their statement, which was:

Some people prefer engines in the back (Porsche f. ex.) instead of the front (most normal cars) not just because of the driving physics (weight distribution, traction etc.), but because they enjoy the feeling of being pushed rather than being pulled.

Made me think - is there any noticable difference? Is it possible in a blind test to determine if you are being pushed or pulled?

For experimental purposes, let's eliminate factors such as rear wheel drive vs. front wheel drive vs. four wheel drive, suspension, etc.

Every voice in my head says there is no way to tell the difference, but it would be nice to hear your thoughts.

[Assistant]
Any rear-wheel drive car is still _pushing_ you, regardless of where the engine is.

To flip it on its head, if a rear-engine car were front wheel drive, would it still be pushing you?

It's not a question of where the engine is converting chemical energy into kinetic energy, it's where this kinetic energy is being applied to the road.

Even so, the reason rear-wheel-drive layouts tend to 'feel better' is that as the car 'squats' back due to inertia, it puts weight over the driven axle, whereas in a front wheel drive car, it unloads the driven axle. Things like that, and the ensuing understeer/oversteer behavior bias of FWD and RWD makes RWD the more 'fun' or 'preferable' configuration for the type of people you describe.

Where the engine is, however, doesn't change whether the driven wheels are pushing or pulling you. That doesn't make any sense.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] What differences (if any) are there between Darwin's theory of evolution and today's current theory on evolution?

[Assistant]
Very little of his work has been abandoned, we have just added and expanded. There are two big changes. First we learned how inheritance worked. Darwin did not know and guess there was some sort of blending involved. Turns out blending leads to really slow change. The other biggest change is called Neutral Theory. And this Darwin did anticipate a bit. Neutral theory says that sometimes a allele will go to fixation randomly.

OK, let me unpack that sentence. An allele is a variation of a gene. So if eye color is determined by a gene there is a blue allele, a green allele, a brown allele. (In reality eye color is more complex than that, most things are.)  Fixation means that you get enough organisms with that allele that it will stick around a long time.

So let me put back together Neutral and Selection. Suppose we have a population of organisms that magically start off genetically identical. With the next generation there are mutations, gene variations, new alleles. OK? Our question is which of these will we see in say 20 generations. Let us look at three particular alleles, A, B, and C. C slightly increases metabolic efficiency (how much energy the organisms gets from food), B slightly hurts it, C just does things different with no advantage or disadvantage. OK so far?

So what happens? An ultraselectionist like Dawkins will say everyone gets A since it is the best. Kumra tells us no. There is a greater chance of seeing lots of As, it is unlikely (but possible) to see Bs, and we might see some C. Evolution is not simply selection. So why would we not see all As? Well maybe A is in the area where a big storm kills everyone. Maybe A was asleep when a predator came around. Maybe lots of things. How can we see the deleterious Bs? Well maybe B is part of an important family (hemophilia in the European royals). Maybe B mates with someone with a really good allele for another gene and it gets carried along.

Last bit. Let us now look at a different population and we find some alleles X, Y, and Z. We can't simply look at trait T(Z) and say it was selected for. Maybe it was, maybe not. Maybe it just sort of wandered into place. If we want to say there is selective advantage to something we need to actually show the advantage. Simply existing does not show it.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
Can someone tell me why propositional logic is important and why Aristotelians and the Stoics spent so much time on it?

I have started reading Anthony Kennys A new History Of Western Philosophy, and am still getting the grasp of philosophy itself, and some of the disciplines of it I do not understand why it is important and why we would need to conclude an answer for it, such as propositional logic and what use it would be to know it.

Also, it seems that some disciplines are so ambiguous that after thousands of years have not come to a conclusion, so why argue on a topic that will never have a complete and definitive answer?

[Assistant] The use of logic is that it is the art of making inferences well. The use of making inferences well is that they only accomplish their function when they are made well, whereas the impair their function when made poorly. The use of inferences is that they're one of the basic elements of thinking. And the use of thinking is to understand and communicate about the world.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
ELI5: How are allergies able to be acquired as people get older?

I've have friends who have just started to be allergic to some foods that they weren't allergic to before. How does this happen?

[Assistant]
Allergies are caused by our immune system mistaking food or innocuous particles like pollen, for invading pathogens.

How does this happen? Well, all cells and viruses have chemical markers on their surfaces call Antigens. Our own cells can recognize each other by reading their antigens, and our immune cells are the same. When an immune cell encounters another object, it will read its antigens, and if it doesn't recognize them as friendly, it will attempt to destroy the object.

The immune system is also adaptable, and it has a memory. When we get chicken pox for example, after defeating it, the system will keep a record of the chicken pox antigens, so when the disease is encountered later on in life, our immune system already knows how to fight it.

Things that cause allergies also have antigens, and sometimes our immune system will encounter an antigen on some food, and mistakenly think its an invading pathogen. The immune system then mobilizes, attacks the foodstuff, and then keeps a record of its antigens. When the food is next encountered, the immune system will recognize it, and unleash its power to attack the food. The side effects of this battle is what we know as an allergy.

Because our immune system can make a mistake at any point in our life, we always retain the chances of developing new allergies.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: Why does it seem that people always have more sad thoughts/are in their feelings in the nighttime compared to the day?

[Assistant] There's a hormone your body produces called cortisol.  This does a LOT of things, but importantly when there's plenty of it it makes you feel like you're more energetic which often corresponds with mood.  Your cortisol levels change throughout the day, with their highest levels in the late morning and their lowest levels at midnight/in the early hours of the morning.  This is also a very noticeable thing in people with depression - they often feel significantly worse in the mornings.  This won't be the only reason, but it probably is one.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Star Wars] How are Banthas able to survive on Tatooine?

Their woolly coats and large size make no sense. What do they eat? They have tusks but no real identifiable predatory body parts and we've never seen them run so what do they eat if they're herbivores?

I realize words like herbivore or mammal don't need to make sense on an alien world but I see no alternative.

EDIT: This is speculation from Legends but maybe the Rakata engineered them when Tatooine was still lush like how Jolee hypothesized the Wookiees were "gardeners" on Kashyyyk. Maybe the Banthas and Wookiees are distant relatives via Rakatan genetic engineering? Still doesn't explain how they keep thriving now that it's a desert unless they were made to be very hardy.

[Assistant] They forage for scrub brushes and black melons in the desert. Their shaggy fur helps reduce sunlight on their skin and sand blown into them. It's a great heat regulator as its fairly light and airy unlike a wookies fur. The horns are used in mating rituals and defense against dewbacks and small krayt dragon attacks as well as IIRC woolas a dog like animal native to tattoine. They're similar to camels of our world in that they conserve energy and water for long periods of time despite appearances of being ill equipped for the desert.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] How is a cold virus able to target specific areas of the body, ie the throat?

[Assistant]
There are many, very different types of cold viruses, and each of them bind to different receptors found on cells in various locations (including the throat).

For example rhinoviruses bind ICAM1, adenoviruses bind CAR, coronaviruses bind ACE2, infuenza viruses bind sialic acid, etc.

Different cells will have different levels of those receptors (and they are not only found in the respiratory tract) as they have actual functions in the body, the viruses are just hijacking them. But a cell lacking those receptors or another species with different enough receptors cant be infected.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
ELI5:Why do natural gas plants have a burning smokestack? Or flare stack?

I think I get why they do it. Its a safety issue. But why cant they extract the gas and use it for energy? It has to be incredibly wasteful, both economically and as far as conservation goes.

[Assistant]
Natural Gas plants work by purifying "sour" gas (high H2S) from the ground into "sweet" (low H2S) gas. H2S is the main pollutant from the process, although a few other trace gases may be present. The requirements for sweet gas are around 4 parts H2S per million parts gas. Very little of the major components of natural gas (methane and ethane) are removed with the H2S. The little bit that is unavoidably removed with the H2S is, as you said, used for energy elsewhere in the plant, namely in the sulfur making process described below.

The H2S that is removed is usually sent to a different process to make sulfur to be sold as a byproduct. This process requires multiple reactors, catalysts, piping, etc to work. Each reactor can only achieve about 70% conversion of H2S to sulfur. Thus a high recovery requires multiple reactors. Even afterwards, however, there is still some H2S remaining. EPA requires that H2S emissions be no higher than 5 parts per billion or so.

At some point, it becomes more cost effective to just burn off the little bit of H2S to make SO2(which is less environmentally hazardous, although still strictly regulated) and H2O, rather than building another reactor sequence in order to extract what is an increasingly deminishing return of sulfur. Basically, the flare stack is used when the cost of installing another reactor would be greater than the additional added value that that reactor would produce over the lifespan of the plant.

Edit: The sulfur making process requires high temperatures. To create it, H2S is reacted with SO2. To make the SO2, a little bit of H2S must be combusted at the high temperature, and then the reaction can proceed. This is where the little bit of methane and ethane can help, because they can be combusted at the same time to create the high temperatures needed for the reaction.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] [Mass Effect] How would modern Earth firearms do against personal N7 armor and shields of Mass Effect.

[Assistant]
Modern weapons would likely have an extremely difficult time penetrating Mass Effect's shields. They are designed to keep out tiny metal flakes travelling at extreme speed. While bullets are larger and have more mass, the force applied by their impact is pitiful when compared to the punishment the shields used to. (Remember - even a tiny amount of mass can make a huge punch given obscene speed). The shields would last much longer against modern weaponry.

In the Mass Effect universe, shields are often a soldier's main defence. Armor is strong, but if you lose your shields you are at risk. The combat hard-suits of Mass Effect are actually not much of an improvement over what we can make today. The difference is articulation and maneuverability. The actual armor is actually just layered ceramic plates, with some futuristic tech shoved in such as medi-gel. Not too much of a leap from today.

The armor would probably go down under sustained fire from modern weapons, but the medigel would keep the soldier alive. That is, assuming that our ballistic guns could penetrate the shields at all, which would be quite difficult.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Harry Potter] Is the taboo on Voldemort's name a great tool to weaken the deatheaters?

with the taboo in effect to summon agents of the dark lord to the location of the speaker, we can know when and where a group is going to be.  This sounds like a brilliant opportunity to lay an ambush. How effective would saturating the environment where you know a death eater strike force is going to be with large numbers of IEDs rigged to go off as soon as they apparate in.

[Assistant]
Note that they don't just appear on the Trio's table immediately after they say the name- it takes a while. Presumably, they apperated nearby and scouted the area.

Basically, they're not stupid. You could use it to lay a trap, sure, but it would have to be cleverer then "dig a big hole and yell voldemort in it".


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
ELI5: Will eating a multivitamin everyday keep me relatively healthy, even if my diet is not that great?

They provide all my essential vitamins so why would this not work to some extent?

[Assistant]
1.) your body only can absorb so many vitamins and minerals at a time. Most of all that is in a multivitamin goes to waste (literally). Thats why your urine is such a dark yellow when on a multivitamin routine.

2.) when you say a not great diet. That presumably means youre putting in bad or too much of something in your body. You can have all the vitamin c you want, but its not going to stop you from developing hypertension.

3.) Diet is only one portion of what makes someones lifestyle and body healthy. You have to consider exercise, mental health, etc.

That being said, vitamins are perfect for people that cannot consume a specific food group. I.e. vegetarians should try to introduce iron rich food into their diet, vitamins can supplement that.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5:Why do so many languages, even when some use a completely different alphabet from English, use the same punctuation at the end of their sentences?

[Assistant]
Western influence.

Some languages have independently invented their own versions of various punctuation. For example, there are several different variations of the period. However, Western influence is causing some cultures to forego their traditional full-stop mark for the period as we know it in English.

For some other characters where the concept previously did not exist in the language (like the question mark in Japanese), they just purely imported it from English.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: It seems clear that subatomic particles aren't solid little spheres, what are they?

[Assistant]
Bear with me, physicists, this is super ELI5...

Subatomic particles are both an infinitely-small dot, and a spread-out fuzzy cloud representing the chances that this dot will be seen at any given location.  But that gives the wrong idea that the dot is the real particle, and the cloud is just a description of it.  But in every sense that matters, the "cloud of maybe" *is* the particle.

Yes this is deeply weird.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
How can gold atoms created during a supernova assemble to form lodes in the earth crust?

When I visualize a supernova, I imagine all created atoms are dispersed pretty much evenly across the blast radius, how come several billion years later, they all are concentrated in specific spots in the earth's crust? (Off course,  this goes for a lot of other elements.)

[Assistant] Gold doesn't naturally form in nuggets, rather, it is carried in other chemical bonds within hot water until the conditions become good enough to precipitate the gold out of solution. To have the hot water, you usually need to be near a volcano. If you look at California and Alaska, they have a massive amount of volcanoes and other magmatic products, and, they also have a lot of gold.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[General Fiction] Why dont vampires just feed on other vampires?

I mean they feed off blood of people but what would happen if one vampire drank another vampires blood? Could they continue to survive by just constantly doing that instead of just feeding on people all the time?

[Assistant] The specific answer to this question depends almost entirely on the type of vampirism we're talking about, but speaking broadly, vampire blood carries very little of the actual "nutrition" that vampires gain from feeding. Whether it's "life-force," hemoglobin, or simple calories, the vampire digests their meal into another form that is useful to them, but not itself easily digestible. You can think about it like asking why human diabetics don't simply eat the blood of other humans instead of taking insulin; they'd absorb very little of what they actually need, if any at all.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: Why does everyone seem to hate the sound of their own voice?

[Assistant] When people hear themselves speak, the voice they hear is transmitted to their ears through the vibrations of their bones.  This is a different sound than what is communicated by air.  So one spends his/her entire life thinking they sound one way when the rest of the world hears them in a different manner.  Realizing that what they have "heard" their entire life isn't their true voice (as perceived by others) can make one dislike what they hear.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: What was worst case scenario if we hadnt addressed Y2K?

[Assistant] A bunch of software controlling really important things like the banking system would have bugged out and caused a ton of problems. It likely would have resulted in huge re-engineering costs (bigger than the pre-re-engineering that happened) and people would have had to deal with service outages and interruptions in lots of things.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
Do solar panels produce more energy the closer they are to the sun?

In my Green Technology class, we are researching UV rays but cannot find how far the rays can travel without losing their efficiency. Does distance affect the energy produced significantly?

[Assistant] Distance affects the flux of solar radiation on the surface of your panel. As the solar radiation spreads in 3D, the further away you are, the less rays\m^2 you can intercept. So yes, distance is a big factor when comparing panels orbiting earth to panels orbiting mars (for example).


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[ELI5] Why do you see water on the road when it's hot outside?

Why do you see water on the road when it's hot outside even though there's not actually water there? And also related, why does it look wavy near the ground when its really hot outside? ELI5 please.

[Assistant]
You know the way light reflects off a mirror or off the water?  Well, light also reflects off of air - *if* there's a layer of air that's much hotter than the layer of air below it.

You know how when you look at the air above a stove and it's all wiggly?  That's the air making the light bounce funny because of the change in temperature.  When you look at the road, it makes the air all funny, too.  The cool thing is that if you look at it low enough - or if the road is far enough away - the light bounces so funny that it never hits the road at all - it shoots right back up into the sky!

When it looks like water on the road, that's just the sky reflecting on the hot, bouncy air, just the same as it would on running water.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[The Matrix]The Machines built 01 and began massive exporting commercial goods. Then requested to join the UN. And were rejected. What if they were accepted? If it that point in time humanity accepted personhood of AIs, what would happen next?

Would there be peace or would the AIs sophisticated technology eventually overwhelm mankind anyway?

What we actually know about the machines and their true motivations that point in time is limited. How would the machines and Mankind interact over the long term?

[Assistant]
Peace, without a doubt.

If the machines wanted to overwhelm humanity, they could have done so long before the events of the movies.  It's clear from the movies that humans living happy, fulfilled lives is one of the machines primary goals.  It seems like it's second only to their own survival.

The original Matrix was a paradise, and that only stopped because it became unstable.  It's clear the machines would prefer humans be happy and provided for if that were possible.

The Oracle and the Architect are constantly trying to understand humans better.  They seem to have an end goal of peaceful coexistence with humanity.  Even though the Architect doesn't think thats possible, he's still trying in his own way.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] [Terminator 2] is there an in-lore reason why the T-1000 always changes back to the policeman?

[Assistant] In popular culture, at least, police officers were considered trustworthy and authoritative.  If you're looking to move through American society with a minimum of fuss and a significant amount of power, you can't do much better than doing so as a cop.  People tend to avoid confrontation and obey orders when given by a uniformed police officer.  So it's an effective disguise.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
ELI5: How does a film studio track movie downloads and obtain addresses from an IP?

Do they send a letter to a whole bunch of internet providers saying 'hey this IP downloaded XYZ where do they live?'

[Assistant]
IP addresses and owned by internet providers. So when they see an specific IP has downloaded something its a quick search to see what ISP that IP belongs. Then they can make a request to see which customer that IP was assigned at the time of the download.

Note: ips are a terrible way to determine who downloaded the illegal IP since most home networks have many devices / could have guests who dont live there. Its ridiculous to assign blame to the average internet customer to be able to police their WIFI in all aspects.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] [Handmaids Tale] Why aren't the women who are fertile venerated and respected? Sure, I get why this tyrannical government forces them to have babies but why aren't they respected and treated as heroes?

[Assistant]
But then the woman chooses their sexual partners and the fathers. They can't be trusted to make the correct
choice. It's the men in power who must makes this decision. The men in power are the real heroes for maximizing the usage of the scarce fertile females.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: why is it so hard to make a virus killing drug?

[Assistant]
Viruses aren't alive in the "drug can kill them" sense. They're just complicated balls of proteins and DNA floating around. You can't kill what isn't alive, the only thing you can do is destroy it. Unfortunately, any chemical that destroys random proteins and DNA will also kill...you.

So the only thing you can do is design a \*very\* specific molecule that is exactly matched to the virus proteins and nothing else. Which is exactly what your immune system does, but it takes time and it's very very specific to one particular virus...it won't work on anything that doesn't have matching proteins.

Basically, every virus would need it's own drug and that drug would be stupid complicated...manufacturing protein drugs is very difficult, they're really big complicated molecules. It's \*far\* easier to keep you alive while your immune system figures it out, or train your immune system in advance (this is what vaccines do).


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
ELI5: What happens in my brain when I remember something that I had previously forgotten?

For example when you are trying to think of a song, you spend 10 minutes searching your brain for it then the next day the name randomly pops into your head.

[Assistant]
Nerve cells connect with each other via synapses. We know that these synaptic connections become stronger if the nerve cells are very active (fire often). The synapses become weaker if the nerve cells fire less often. This phenomenon is called synaptic plasticity.

The theory is that if we memorize something, new synaptic connections between nerve cells form. Depending on how often we use the same memory, the synapses will become stronger or weaker.

If a synaptic connection is lost or weakened, the memory is lost as well. For long term memory, it seems that connections are never really lost, it can just become more difficult to access and retrieve the information. This is because our brain constantly changes. In order to retrieve the same information reliably, you need to have the correct context of the information and the correct 'brain state' that allows you to make those associations.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
ELI5: How will self-driving cars be able to determine the amount of friction there is on the surface of roads?

How would it recognize ice/snow patches or wet surfaces that require the driver to compensate for?

[Assistant]
Cars are already pretty good at this. Traction control and anti-lock brakes have been effective safety features for a long while
Basically, they'll calculate the difference between the amount of power being supplied to the wheel, and how much resistance the wheels are providing.

If the car is putting 1000 lb/ft of torque on a 2000 lb car, it can expect the tires to move 0.5 ft (assuming absolutely no resistance). If the tires move an entire foot, then it's easy to establish that there isn't enough resistance between the tire and the surface.

Not exactly a LI5 answer, but it's difficult to explain effectively.

Also, cameras and Doppler radar can determine the material on a road surface (light reflections, radar signal responses, moisture sensors, temperature guages) and the streets *should* be fitted with certain types of sensors that communicate with vehicles on the road to tell them upcoming conditions.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[General Myth] Legendary Pain Olympics

Jesus was on the cross for about six hours. Odin hung himself from a tree for nine days, and also gouged his own eye out to place it in the well of Mimir.

Which gods, heros, or mythological figures have endured the most pain? Separate medal categories for voluntary vs involuntary pain.

[Assistant]
Marvin, the Paranoid Android, existed for thirty-seven times longer than the universe itself, and was utterly miserable for all of it.

In particular, he had this terrible pain in the diodes down his left side (which somehow ended up being the only part of him **not** replaced or upgraded in all those billions of years).


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5 - If chicken or pork is sold pre-cooked, why does the package say to cook it to an internal temperature of at least 165 degrees?

[Assistant]
The factory does its best to make sure food is packaged ASAP after cooking to ensure no bacteria gets on it. If you aren't careful and/or let this food get back into the "danger zone" for a length of time, bacteria can start to grow again. So:

* Giving the food one last reheat makes extra sure you've gotten rid of that bacteria and the food is safe.
* Telling you to do that makes the company less liable (both legally and ethically) if you ignore the warning and get sick.
* Warm food tastes better.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[halloween] Michael Myers seems to be a most interesting figure to almost anyone you ask. His doctors, his (surviving) victims and even the stupid teens that seem to be abundant in the horror-verse.

Why is he so interesting? In most cases, wouldnt the psychiatrists just call him a lost cause? He never says a single *word* and doesnt seem too eager/ keen to repent. Im sure he knows what hes doing is wrong, but he just doesnt care. Is there even anyone that he *wouldnt* kill?

[Assistant]
Michael demonstrated violent homicidal tendencies that manifested with absolutely no warning. By all indications he is fully capable of seeing, analyzing, and learning things (*to a much greater degree than one would expect of a person with his lack of experience*), yet has no inclination towards any form of social interaction, displays no overt sign of emotion, and has willfully chosen not to speak for decades. These tendencies would be fairly unique in the annals of psychology.

His doctors do not consider him a candidate for reintroduction into the world outside. Loomis recommended simply executing him or at least locking him away forever. Anyone who attempts to study his condition seems to be gradually driven insane, as though he holds some sort of inherent harmful influence over others.

While Michael has chosen to pass up victims before, it seems to be a choice born of pragmatism, not ethics.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Star Wars] If Darth Plagueis' power to bring people back from the dead was a motivating factor for Anakin joining the dark side then why didn't he bother to try developing that power at any point?

He was supposed to be the most powerful force user of all time as the chosen one right? If anyone had either the motivation or power to wield such an ability it would be him right?

[Assistant]
It wasn't to bring people back from the dead. It was supposed to be the power to prevent death in the first place.

Either way, Anakin lost the motivation to seek out this power when Padme died. He was fully in the Dark Side and wasn't bothered about saving anyone. Just killing people. It was only after he realised Luke was his son did he start to waiver, and even then he likely didn't bother searching for the legendary power of Darth Plagius the Wise. Most likely Palpatine made it up to manipulate and control Anakin. Even if he didn't, Palpatine likely had that secret on lockdown. Wouldn't want any powerful apprentices going around with even more powers and control over life and death now, would we? So Vader doesn't see a point.

Perhaps you mean before he turned to the Dark Side? He didn't know where to even begin. He *needed* Palpatine to provide the knowledge to him in order to learn the skill, and it was obvious that the Jedi didn't know (or wouldn't tell him) what he wanted to learn. Anakin had the potential, but not the know-how.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: If x amount of money were introduced (discretly, with no one noticing) to the market, how does the market "know" that that amount of money has been introduced (thus adjusting prices)?

[Assistant]
It only "knows" when the money is spent.

Imagine a really simple economy - Alice, Bob and Chuck.  Alice bakes two loaves of bread every day, and Bob and Chuck both earn $1 per day, which they each use to buy a loaf of bread.

Now, one day (as if by magic) Bob and Chuck both get $2 per day instead of one.  Bob gets to Alice first, and buys both loaves of bread for $1 a piece, spending his full $2.  Now Chuck is upset because he has money, but no bread.  Supply and demand are out of sync - at the price of $1 per loaf, there is more demand than there is supply.

Alice has two choices:

- Bake 4 loaves instead of 2, and keep charging $1 to extract all $4 from the economy

- Charge $2 per loaf instead of $1, extracting all $4 from the economy

Alice, being a smart baker, decides just to raise prices.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
If testicles must be outside the body to prevent overheating, why can sperm live inside a woman for up to 5 days?

The testicles hang outside the body to prevent overheating, but as I'm going through the process of trying to conceive I learned that sperm can live for up to 5 days inside the woman's body. I don't understand.

[Assistant]
Sperm-creation functions better at slightly lower than body temperature, but once sperm are created they are pretty hardy (if short-lived) little cells.

Think about piloting a submarine underwater vs. building one underwater.  The first is a lot easier than the second.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] [Red VS Blue] Ok this has been bugging me for years! In Revelations its revealed that the Reds and Blues didn't actually time travel, what happened?! How did their armour improve?!

[Assistant] While they were knocked out project freelancer picked them up, upgraded their armor, and dumped them in the new area before to many questions were asked. The whole point of those two squads was to keep Church hidden, but none of the crew grabbing them knew what or why they were moving them so they didn't care that Church was missing from the group.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: How do Companies Like Kfc, Mcdonalds or even Coca Cola protect their recipes? wont modern science be able to breakdown whats exactly in the food they serve?

[Assistant]
Yes you can break down the exact components of something like Coke and see what is in there.

It won't help.

I could tell you a house is made of several hundred boards, a few thousand nails, hundreds of pounds of gypsum, various types of metals (copper, iron), some plastic, and some other stuff.

Does that help you *build* a house? No. What is secret is the *process*, the actual recipe. *How* to make it. *When* to put in certain ingredients. It's much more about what it's made of. It's about consistency, texture, stability, and many more things.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: Why does no one have bizarre colors for their natural hair color?

[Assistant]
Because then it wouldn't be bizarre.

Think about this, if people had blue hair, and you saw people all your life with blue hair, and you had friends with blue hair, and it was quite common for people to have blue hair, would you consider it a bizarre color for hair to be?


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[HP Lovecraft] How was the Necronomicon written if it drives people insane?

How was the Necronomicon even written if its contents drive people to insanity?

[Assistant] Those who've seen the eldtrich horrors aren't necessarily insane. They're just accustomed to a truth our world wasn't built for. They might look insane to you or me, but that's only because they've seen things we can't even imagine.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5:Why is it beneficial to "breath in through your nose and out through your mouth"

[Assistant]
It is a good way of psychologically getting someone to clam down.

You would actually lower youre heart rate faster by breating in and out through you're mouth slowly, (you wouldn't see an athlete attempting to breath in nasally near the end of a race it would have no benefit) but by telling someone to breath in through nose and out through mouth, you're easily getting them to concentrate on their breathing which can help calm them down, and thus feel better if they were previously in a paniced state!


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] Is it true that a shooter absorbs an equal amount of force into his body as is being projected in the bullet?

[Assistant]
There is a lot of confusion in the answers here about pressure, force, energy, and momentum. Working backwards through that list:

* Momentum is conserved, so both the shooter and the object hit by the bullet absorb the same amount of momentum. That means if you were floating in space and fired a bullet into someone with the same mass as you, you would both be pushed apart from each other and the change in velocity would be the same for both.

* Energy is also conserved, but as a scalar. The chemical energy in the gunpowder is converted into heat and kinetic energy, but that doesn't have to be shared with you and the bullet. In fact, because the bullet weighs less than you do (and less than the gun does), it receives much most of the kinetic energy after the bullet is fired. This also explains why the bullet can do a lot more damage when it hits something than recoil does to you.

* Force integrated over time is momentum. Since momentum is conserved, that means the integral of force is the same for you and the bullet (with opposite directions). But a high force experienced for a short time can have the same integral as a low force experienced for a long time. The gun acts like a spring so the force you experience is lower than the force the bullet experiences. This is the same reason that cars have crumple zones - an accident is much less dangerous if you spread out the force over a longer time.

* Pressure is force over area. This is one more reason a gun doesn't hurt you like a bullet does - the force is spread out over a larger area than on the bullet. This is also why a catcher's mitt protects the catcher's hand.

So, momentum is conserved, but a shooter absorbs the momentum through a force spread out in time and area. That is why the shooter isn't hurt by firing the gun.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: Why do we have to close our eyes to sleep ?

[Assistant] Closing our eyes  protects them and stops them from drying out and also we don't need to be able to see when we are asleep. There are however, some people who don't close their eyes when they are asleep (and they are definitely asleep) so it is possible to sleep with your eyes open.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Dragonball Z] Question or two about Freeza in RoF.

So Freeza trains for a few months and goes from just under a Super Saiyan to being able to fight on par with SSGSS Goku. How was he able to attain such power without even unlocking God Ki?

This is huge. Freeza, the egomaniacal mutant of his race had attained a power unfathomable to anyone besides Beerus And Whis and has risen to the power of gods. Had he bided his time and kept training instead of rushing off to face the Saiyans as soon as he unlocked his golden form, would he even have an equal in this universe? His hubris was his downfall for sure but I firmly believe he could have risen to beyond Beerus and Whis, perhaps even Goku and Vegeta.

[Assistant]
I didn't watch the Movie yet, but according to the preview Manga, Frieza states; that he never had to train to attain his power, because he is a natural Prodigy, even among his own Race. So he continues to state that, with a bit Training, he would easily surpass ~~thoose filthy Monkeys~~ the super saiyans.

What really bothers me and correct me if i'm wrong but, aren't the Dragonballs only able to ressurect someone who has been dead for less then an earth year? so how do they ressurect Frieza?


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
Can Wolverine die?

like what if he fell into a pit of lava, what would happen? or if his head was chopped off, would he just grow another?

[Assistant]
Yes, he can die:
- He's not immortal, he just ages slower, eventually he will die of old age.
- Destruction of every living cell in his body kills him.
- He can die of starvation, dehydration and suffocation.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: Why do pimples form and why are they so prevalent with teens going through puberty?

[Assistant]
Your skin (particularly around the face, but not just there) is full of tiny holes called pores. Pores serve a variety of functions but the point of your question:

Pimples occur when the pore becomes clogged with dirt, oil, or an in-grown hair. Pimples are common in teens due to the excessive natural oils generated during puberty.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
During the experiment conducted by Ernest Rutherford in which the nucleus is discovered, an alpha particle is shot at a thin foil strip. An alpha particle is a helium nucleus, so how did they not know the nucleus existed despite being able to isolate one and fire it?

As far as i understand it the gold foil experiment was conducted when the plum pudding model was the accepted theory by the science world, including Rutherford himself. But how can the nucleus not have been discovered before when you consider that the alpha particle is a helium nucleus. How can they not have known what an alpha particle is despite them being able to isolate and fire one at the gold foil?

[Assistant] They knew that radioactive materials gave off radiation, but they did not know what that radiation consisted of. There were three types of radiation that were observed: one was charged and heavy (can be stopped by paper), one was charged and light (can be stopped by metal), and one was neutral and light (can only be stopped by thick layers of lead). They called these alpha, beta, and gamma. It was later discovered that the alpha particle and the helium nucleus were identical, just like beta particles and cathode rays were identical (now called electrons).


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] [Starwars ]How is the Rule of two so effective? With how wide the galaxy is, shouldnt there be more people practising the sith teaching/ dark force?

[Assistant]
Ambition and power are inherent to Sith ideology, this naturally leads to internal strife, having too many Sith eventually leads to internal conflict.

The force also isn't reliant on numbers, much better to have one powerful Sith amassing power in secret rather than having thousands fighting not only the Jedi but each other.

The apprentice is there to keep the master in check, if the master stagnates or gets too complacent, they will be succeeded by the apprentice.

On the other hand, a Sith master without an apprentice, is a master of nothing as they have nothing to test them.

There are no doubt other dark side users, but to be a Sith Lord is to wield power. Weak dark side users aren't worth the Sith Lord's time, and more powerful ones are recruited and tested by either the Master or the Apprentice.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
CMV: The current population boom in many parts of the Western USA is unsustainable

Not in terms of land or lumber, but mainly water and arable land. The eastern USA is blessed with many freshwater lakes and rivers but in the Western USA it's a different story. Having millions of people live in what are basically deserts like in Las Vegas and Phoenix means that water is a scarce and precious resource. If someone were to sabotage the Colorado River and divert it so Las Vegas and Phoenix were left high and dry, it would be a very bad situation. Also, in a national emergency, those populations would have a hard time growing their own food because of the local climate.

I havent even mentioned California which has it's own troubles with drought and water usage over the years. There are many areas of the Eastern US that have abundant arable land and freshwater, but because the towns and cities there aren't big and trendy no one moves there. Americans rely heavily on semi trucks and water treatment plants for their daily food and drink, especially in places where their climate is arid and inhospitable for farming.

[Assistant]
Human population isn't the problem for water supply, and in some cases per-capita urban use is declining fast enough that total urban water use isn't increasing (for example, Denver).  Also, water shortfalls are often covered by buying rights from farmers, which doesn't change total water use.

The water used for agriculture in Colorado (9 billion gal/day) is enough to supply the domestic water needs of the entire American west (at 100 gal/capita/day, enough for 90 million people).  The problem, for population growth, isn't water availability as such but where it's already put to use.  That problem can be resolved when the willingness to pay for water is enough to buy the water rights to existing supplies.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
Are the smallest components of mass able to rotate?

I know that the velocities of the smallest particles can change their direction, but I don't know if these particles themselves are able to rotate.

My thought-process was this; when an object rotates, the object is made up of smaller components which are then sent moving in different directions. But the smallest particles we know of aren't made up of anything smaller, they are single entities.

Since they are only made up of one part, and cannot have different parts to be sent in different directions, it seems to be that they are unable to rotate.

So, are the smallest sub-atomic particles able to rotate? And if they are, does that mean they are made up of smaller particles that we have yet to understand?

[Assistant] We can't exactly look at them and check.  However, they *act like* they rotate.  They have an intrinsic angular momentum that behaves just as we expect, can couple to other angular momenta, and the whole sum is conserved, etc.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
Can Blackholes absorb matter larger than itself?

Was having this debate with a friend and he said that blackholes cannot absorb anything larger than themselves. Personally I felt like he was wrong since not even light can escape from one. I would appreciate an answer, thanks!

EDIT- Thanks for all your amazing answers. I tried to respectfully explain to my friend how he's wrong but he wouldn't have it. I said please provide a source that proves that "blackholes can only absorb things smaller than themselves" and he simply said, The Universe in a Nutshell by Stephan Hawking.

I have decided to avoid getting into debates with this friend again because he's always right. Even topics he knows nothing about he's seemingly an expert. When trying to tell him how he's "wrong" he laughed, smirked and said that I have no idea what I'm talking about. Anyways short rant over but thanks for the great answers guys.

[Assistant] Any matter that crosses the event horizon becomes part of the black hole.  This can cause a black hole to grow to well more than double its initial mass.  The enormous black holes at the centers of galaxies did not start out that big.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: If sound doesn't travel in space, what happens to sound waves as they leave the earth? Is there some sort of invisible barrier around the earth where the atmosphere turns into space that sound can't travel through? If so, what happens to sound when it reaches that barrier? Does it bounce off?

[Assistant] Sound waves start when you compress a small region of air, say with a speaker.  The compressed region tries to expand, compressing the region next to it,  that region expands, compressing the region next to it, ... .  When you go away from the Earth, each chunk of air has a little less air in it.  That means that when the compressed air expands, it runs into fewer molecules.  That means less compression in the next region, and less expansion, and less sound energy in the next region.  Eventually, the region can expand without hitting any air molecules.  Then the sound ends.  All the energy was turned into a little more mass of air a little farther from the center of the Earth.  Gravity will pull those molecules back, eventually, but it's hardly a "bounce off" situation.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Borderlands 2] Why doesn't Roland's shield work in the cutscene following the death of Angel?

Title is slightly obscure so I can mark as spoiler (unless that's not how it works, I'm really bad at the whole "flair" thing) but when you kill Angel, Handsome Jack appears and shoots Roland in the back. However, wouldn't his shield stop the bullet? I don't quite recall but I'm fairly certain he has it active through the entire fight. How does it not stop the bullet?

[Assistant]
There are definitely weapons in the Borderlands universe that bypass shields. At least, there's one sniper rifle. Wouldn't be too hard to imagine that Handsome Jack, with all the development power and capital of Hyperion, could have a pistol made that bypasses shields.

It could also be that Roland switched it off, thinking (incorrectly) that there was no more danger. Or it could have been broken in the fight. There's a few different possibilities.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Blade Runner] What are C-beams, and why do they glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate?

And why is this an unbelievable sight?

For bonus points, explain why attack ships were on fire off the shoulder of Orion.

[Assistant]
C-beams are "cutter beams", a type of directed-energy weapon which slices ships apart. It's unusual to see them glitter because, like lasers, they don't generally shine at right angles to the beam path. Near the Tannhuser Gate, however, there's a high enough concentration of interstellar hydrogen that a small portion of the beam will scatter so that an observer can see the beam path.

Oh, and the attack ships were on fire because some idiot put metal in the galley microwave.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] What would happen if you just took a commercial plane and drive it straight up into the atmosphere trying to reach space?

[Assistant]
If you actually tried to fly it straight up, it would stall.

If you tried to fly at the maximum rate of ascent, eventually the air would get too ~~think~~ thin for the engines to work, or for the angle of attack on the wings to have much of an effect, so you'd be effectively limited to a certain altitude (what that is depends on the aircraft)


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] [Silmarillion] Dragons are foul creatures of Morgoth that have killed countless elves and men, so why does Trin wear an image of one on his helm?

[Assistant]
'cause they're also really frickin' *cool*.

Seriously, though, it's less about any sort of honoring of the whole concept, and more about "THERE'S A SCARY THING ON MY HAT TO MAKE YOU SCARED!", which is pretty on-brand for Men, no matter what age of Middle-Earth it happens to be.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] [ELI5] Why are our eyes sometimes blurry within the hour or so after we have woken up from a night's sleep? Why is it sometimes one eye more than the other?

[Assistant]
If you sleep with your head into the pillow or your arm over your eye, the pressure temporarily deforms your eye.  Your eyes' lenses can't focus correctly onto the back of the eye when they are deformed.  This means everything is blurry as if you needed glasses.  Your eyes move back into their normal shape over time.

Glasses or contacts are needed permanently when eyes default shape isn't correct to make up for the error.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Deadpool Movie] Is Deadpool aware that he's being portrayed by actor Ryan Reynolds?

During a few of his fourth-wall-breaking-moments, he makes it clear that he knows the actors who've played Professor X, and that Hugh Jackman is Wolverine. And he knows he's in a movie.

But does he know that he's not himself?

[Assistant] Deadpool occasionally takes time out of his busy schedule of mercenary work and pro-bono murder to take on acting roles under the stage name 'Ryan Reynolds.'  His face is mostly replaced with CGI, hence why Green Lantern was such a bomb.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
How does the number of chromosomes change upon species differentiation?

I would like to know how the change in the number of chromosomes as an species evolves can be explained against the idea of "irreducible complexity", and what evolutionary advantage it brings to justify it being incorporated into the genome of the entire species.

Bonus question: do species always evolve to have more chromosomes, or does the number sometimes reduce?

[Assistant]
The key event in speciation is the appearance of a barrier to interbreeding. This can (and usually does) happen without any change in chromosome number, but adding or losing chromosomes can be a very effective way of achieving reproductive isolation, because gametes with different numbers of chromosomes (generally) can't combine during fertilization to form viable offspring.

Duplicating an entire genome gives you two copies of every gene, keeping everything balanced while providing the opportunity for each copy to "subfunctionalize" and specialize in a variation of the original function. This helps explain how very complex mechanisms can arise from simpler ones without "breaking" the original system, challenging creationists' "irreducible complexity" argument that evolution is incapable of solving this problem. Genome duplications have occurred twice in vertebrate evolution (and a third time in fishes), and as a result mammals often have 4 genes corresponding to a single homolog in fruit flies.

That said, DNA is heavy and bulky, so new species that make twice as much of it aren't always at an advantage. Plants don't have to worry about this as much, so variations in chromosome number are far more common in plant speciationoften in a single plant genus you can find species with 1n, 2n, 4n, 8n, hybridizing between 4n and 8n to get 6n, etc.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] Eli5: How does your eye get longer to cause myopia?

[Assistant]
Your eyeball is squishy and your eyeball hole is not necessarily round.
Sometimes growing up your eyeball hole gets even less round, due to genetics and/or up-close activities like reading and screen time.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Jane the Virgin] Why didn't Jane sue her gynecologist for the artificial insemination?

This would be gross medical malpractice, it's a giant life changing event because you either have to have a kid or you get an abortion, both events with humongous consequences.

Why wasn't her doctor sued?

[Assistant] Her gynecologist turned out to be the sister of her eventual baby daddy. Jane was extremely Catholic (hence the virgin part) so abortion was never on the table. She knew she would be spending the next 18 years with this dude in one capacity or another so suing his sister probably wouldn't be a good start. Of course, it's actually much more complicated than that because it's a telenovela, but that's a start.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
ELI5: Eye boogers, what are they? Why do they happen? What is their purpose?

A lifelong question of mine.

[Assistant] It's just dust and oil that your eye naturally builds up. It gets cleaned off and blows away when you're awake because you're blinking, but when you sleep, it all collects in your tear ducts and hardens into eye boogers. Since your eyes have to stay clean, they have a built-in self-cleaning system, and eye boogers are just the built-up result.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: When sunlight passes through a window pane, why are objects on the other side hotter than the pane itself?

[Assistant] The Sun sends our way a constant supply of light, which is a stream of particle-waves called photon. Photon carries the energy and when it it absorbed, it transfers it's energy to the object which absorbed it. So when photons pass through a glass pane, most of them are let through (that' why you can see through the pane) so they don't transfer thei energy to the pane, but they carry on, until they hit something that absorbs them and only then they hand over their energy (absoption of photons is also reason, why black materials heat up faster. black simply absorbs every 'color' of photon, so morr photons hand over their energy)


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
why are so many popular scientists staunch materialists/physicalist/naturalists?

I've noticed a lot of modern and popular scientists seem to be hardcore materialists and I'm using materialist synonymously with naturalism and physicalism. The modern scientists I'm referring to are those like Sean Carroll, Richard Dawkins, Dan Dennett, Sam Harris etc.

[Assistant]
One thing to note is that your sample isn't very representative. You only have four people, and only two of them are actually scientists. All of them are popularizers of atheism. It's no surprise that they are "hardcore" naturalists. They promote naturalism in opposition to the supernaturalism of theism. You can't really learn anything about scientists in general from that sample.

That being said, although scientists may or may not be "hardcore materialists", most scientists are naturalists. Naturalism has proven to be an effective paradigm for scientific research.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Star Wars] Can someone help me rationalize 2 "hyperspace scenes" from the last 2 Star Wars movies?

1) Ships are moving faster than the speed of light in order to access the hyperspace dimension. Yet, Han Solo is able to pull the Millenium Falcon out of hyperspace at just the right second to sneak onto Starkiller Base undetected while not crashing into the planet. What was the margin for error here? Is there anything that Han Solo did to make this easier to calculate? It seems like the most unlikely thing ever pulled off in Star Wars.

2) In Rogue One, Cassian Andor and K2SO are piloting their ship out of Jedha as the destruction wave from the Death Star is threatening to engulf them. K2SO insists on making the right calculations for a hyperspace jump but Cassian Andor randomly pulls a lever in order to get them out of there quickly.

If jumping into hyperspace from a planet's atmosphere is possible, why don't more ships do this whenever there is a "blockade" surrounding a planet? Also, how long did Cassian keep them in hyperspace? And why don't more ships just pull the hyperspace lever in any random direction when they're in exceptional danger?

[Assistant]
Han Solo expands on this by noting precise calculations from the nav computer are essential to not plow in to a planet.

Also, a lot of hyperdrives will not engage within a gravity shadow, due to safety cutoffs of the navcomputer. This is why the Empire uses gravity well generator starships called Interdictors to stop fleeing ships.

Doing so is possible, but the calculations are necessary to be safe. Han basically had the calculations lined up with knowing the oscillation frequency of the shield and the coordinates of Starkiller. But, the margin for error was very slim.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5 Why does a candle go out when you blow on it?

[Assistant]
The fire triangle keeps fire going, fuel, oxidant, heat. You've got the air to provide the oxidant and the wax to provide the fuel, and the heat released from the reaction maintains the temperature in the air around it, making it self-sustaining.

When you blow on the candle, you remove the heat more quickly than the reaction can resupply it, and the reaction is disrupted.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
CMV: A "tight-aggressive" style of criminal justice, where serious felonies are harshly punished but minor crimes get a slap on the wrist, is the best style.

Currently, the US imprisons far too many people for minor, non-violent drug offenses. As of now, over 2 million people languish in prison in the US, almost 1% of the adult population. To make matters worse, oftentimes, prisons become training grounds for low level criminals or sites of gang recruitment. Handing out long prison sentences to nonviolent drug offenders may actually make the streets more dangerous. It makes no sense that you can get 20 years in prison for smoking a joint, a completely victimless crime.

I think the criminal justice system needs serious reform. I am borrowing a term from poker: tight-aggressive. In poker, this means you play few hands, but play them aggressively. I think this style works in most areas of life, criminal justice included. We should punish the worst criminals (murderers, rapists) very harshly and aggressively. I am okay with life in prison or death for such criminals. However, minor crimes such as small-scale drug possession, shoplifting, simple assault, minor traffic infractions, etc. should receive rehabilitative justice instead. Examples include drug recovery centers for drug possession, anger management classes for simple assault, traffic school for traffic offenses, etc. I do not think there should be jail time for such minor crimes, particularly the first offense. We should rehabilitate those that can be rehabilitate, and eliminate those that cannot be.

[Assistant]
>We should punish the worst criminals (murderers, rapists) very harshly and aggressively

>We should ... eliminate those that cannot be [rehabilitated].

What makes you think that murders and rapists can't be rehabilitated? Without quibbling over details, there's plenty of empirical evidence that recidivism rates for such crimes aren't anywhere close to 100%. Is it possible that you think that they *shouldn't* be rehabilitated, or don't *deserve* to be rehabilitated?

Is there a sufficiently low recidivism rate for eg murder that would change your mind about your policy?


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
ELI5: supercharger vs. turbocharger

I've heard of turbo lag and understand that turbos inject air into carburetor.  Don't know much past that.  How do they work? What are the differences?  Which is used in different scenarios?

[Assistant]
Supercharger is engine driven, meaning it forces air into the engine using a belt driven charger.

Turbo is air driven, forces exhaust air in the charger to force more air into the engine.

Turbo lag is from the time your push the petal until the turbo "spools" up with air and forces the air into the engine intake.

Superchargers do not have lag since they are driven by belts which react on demand.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Harry Potter] How did Slytherin keep winning the house cup? Doesn't that mean it's students are good (at school stuff)?

I feel that Slytherin students are dedicated and hardworking, and earn their house points. They can't all have come from their house-master Snape, there must be some distribution amongst all the teachers. Doesn't this mean that Slytherin students are the best students?

[Assistant] Slytherine is known for having *ambitious* people.  And you know what school aged kids often care about?  Trophies.  Many Slytherine students likely took winning the cup as their challenge.  Plus they are sneaky enough to not get caught breaking the rules.  Also there is defense against the dark arts where Slytherine students likely excelled.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
Would today's nuclear fail-safes prevent a disaster like Chernobyl in a similar situation?

Specifically, a disaster functionally identical to the Chernobyl disaster, but with today's security mechanisms.

[Assistant]
It wouldn't even take *modern* failsafes.  Chernobyl 4, the one that blew up, was built in just about the poorest way possible.  There were multiple "Don't do this" things that were done that led to the explosion.

First problem was that it was just a poorly designed reactor.  The way it was set up was that the water pumps for cooling the reactor were powered off the electricity generated by the reactor.  If the reactor shuts down, that cooling pump stops.  The way this reactor was designed, it continues to generate heat even in an "inactive" state.  There are backup pumps for the cooling, but they don't kick in until 15 seconds after the main pump shuts down, and they take more than a minute to reach full capacity.  In that minute, the temperature of the coolant pipes shot up, so when the cooling water came back on, the water flashed to steam, which expands to 16 times the volume of the water, so the overpressure blew up the pipes, and actually cracked the building surrounding the reactor.  This also caused damage to systems outside the reactor core, which also exploded, and that's what led to the core of the reactor being exposed to the outside air.  It was so hot that it took 10 days to put out the fire, and the fire is what caused radioactive particles to be blown all over the place.

Second problem was that they were operating the reactor at low output, which (due to the poor cooling rod design) was significantly more unstable than at high power.

Third problem was the lack of communication between the people operating the test and the rest of the staff of the plant.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] [Batman] If Batman had a sibling, would they become a crime fighting duo?

[Assistant]
Depends very much on the nature of their relationship and the sibling's capabilities, but overall, probably not.

Firstly, the nature of their relationship.  Batman's descent into obsession (some would say *madness*) after his parents' deaths was partly due to the fact that he was now alone.  He had no one to help him through his grief and his sense of abandonment.  If Batman had a brother or sister he was close to, then it's quite possible that they'd be able to help each other come to terms with their parents dying.  In such a case, Batman would never exist in the first place.  On the other hand, if Batman was not close to his sibling, and they did not help each other through their grief, then it's possible he would still become Batman.  However, if they weren't close as children, then it's hard to imagine Batman trusting his brother or sister as an adult.  In such a case, Batman would still prefer to work alone.

There's also a possibility that the siblings would turn against each other.  "Why didn't you do more to save mom and dad?"  In such an event, it's hard to say who'd be the hero and who'd be the villain.  It's possible there would be no heroes in this scenario.

Additionally, there's no guarantee that a sibling would turn out to be as capable a crimefighter as Batman.  Sure, they'd share a lot of the same genes, but Batman's a one-in-a-billion crimefighting prodigy, in terms of both his mental and his physical capabilities.  So even if Batman would be willing to let his brother or sister join him on his crimefighting quest, it's up in the air whether the sibling would be up to the task.  Even if Batman accepts his sibling in a lesser role (such as a sidekick like Robin), if the sibling isn't up to the task of taking on supervillains like the Joker, then he or she might end up as a liability, to be used as bait or torture fodder against the Batman (see Jason Todd, Barbara Gordon, etc).

So, on the whole, it seems rather unlikely for there to be Bat-siblings running around Gotham.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[ATLA] When earthbenders raise a column/wall of earth, where is that mass coming from?

Do they pull it straight up from the ground, so that there is a hole in the ground underneath? Are they stretching the earth, so that the resultant column and the ground beneath it are structurally weaker than they normally would be? Or are they completely duplicating the earth, creating matter where there was none before, so that the resultant amount of mass is greater than it was before?

[Assistant]
I imagine that they're displacing the earth. So somewhere underground there's a gap roughly the same size and shape of the column or wall they rose.

Sometime after the fight is over, it probably collapses back into place.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] What is the smallest farm that could entirely support a human being?

[Assistant]
The calorie yield for potatoes -which will in most conditions have the highest- may reach about 15 million per acre per year.

Assuming a human needs 360*2000 = 720000 calories per year, then we need 0.048 acres = 194.249 m^2.

Of course, a human can not live on a diet of pure potatoes, but this calculation should give you the order of scale we are looking at.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
The Bullet ant's sting is capable of making a human thresh around in unbearable pain for many hours. How do smaller animals react when stung by this insect.

Any insight would be appreciated, thanks guys!

[Assistant]
The venom of the neotropical Bullet Ant (*Paraponera spp.*) contains three neurotoxic components that block synaptic activity in the insect central nervous system. The most active component, poneratoxin, is capable of blocking synaptic transmission at a concentration of 10^-8 M. Given that the average bullet ant has a venom reservoir of 1 g, a successful sting can result in a final concentration of between 10^-5 to 10^-4 M for small insects. This could cause immediate and irreversible blockage of transmission, leading to paralysis and death, especially if it is injected into the central nervous system.

Combined with the action of the other two components, *Paraponera* venom is quite disruptive to the insect nervous system, which would be expected for such predators.

---

**Citations**

* Piek T, *et al.* 1991. *Pharmacological characterization and chemical fractionation of the venom of the ponerine ant, Paraponera clavata (F.)* Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology Part C: Comparative Pharmacology 99(3): 481 - 486.

* Piek T, *et al.* 1991. *Poneratoxin, a novel peptide neurotoxin from the venom of the ant, paraponera clavata.* Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology Part C: Comparative Pharmacology 99(3): 487 - 495.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Mathematics] If I roll a six-sided die 6 times, what is the probably that it will land on a particular face at least one time?

My bad probability calculations would say that the chance of landing on a certain face per roll is 1/6.  We roll six times, so do we add 6 of these to get a probability of 1?  Surely not.  I can roll a die 6 times without landing on a particular face.  It is possible.

So what is the true probability that the die will land on a particular face at least once if I roll it 6 times?

[Assistant]
the trick is to flip the problem...instead of thinking "what is the probability it will land on this face" instead think, what is the probability it WON'T land on some face.

so, what is the probability of NOT landing on some face (we'll say...2) for a single roll....obviously it's 5/6...because 5 out of 6 times, it will land on some other face

so given that, what is the probability it WON'T land on that face 6 times in a row?

(5/6)^6

because the probability of two independent events A and B occurring is A*B, so we end up multipleying 5/6 by itself 6 times, once for each roll

so we have the probability of it NOT landing on that face for 6 rolls, the the probability of it landing on that face is just 1-(5/6)^6

since the probabilities of ALL outcomes must add up to 1, and the only two possibilities are 1) the face doesn't come up, or 2) the face comes up at least once, then we just subtract the probability of the face not coming up from one.....so 1-(5/6)^6, or about 66%

66%


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
CMV: Though Sanders' heart is in the right place. His Presidency would be ineffective and ultimately counterproductive to the left.

I'm beginning to take the possible Sanders presidency seriously after his Fox Townhall. He showed he can appeal to a conservative base before, but this really emphasized just how well. I think the question of his "electability" is now settled. He is still an outsider, but this coming election seems to be the perfect storm for a candidate such as Sanders to take the Dem primary and ultimately the Presidency. The field is quite large and there are enough centrists and establishment dems to split their vote and dilute their chances. Sanders offers a different message along with a big, memorable personality. He already has a solid plurality and tons of momentum. The situation has all the ingredients which let Trump, another outsider with a unique message, to win the primary and presidency in 2016.

I have deep reservations about Sanders.  Firstly, he has a strong and proud independent streak. This is great for the sorts of people who want to break up the current power system, but it is a terrible way to build a coalition to accomplish anything constructive. In order to get any meaningful legislation through Congress, he will have to get past the conservative leaning Senate. Obama was excellent at finding the right compromises to get the ACA through congress. He only managed this by winning the support of every single Democratic senator, including the very conservative ones. I see no reason to trust Sanders would have the same level of nuanced diplomacy or willingness to compromise on his vision to get these things passed.  I see a Sanders lead legislative agenda to be a lot of symbolic bills that fall flat in congress with little to nothing of any consequence getting done.

Secondly, he seems to value principle over practicality. In 2016 he should have conceded the primary much earlier and work harder to build a unified anti-Trump message on the left. His excuses for why he didn't concede ring somewhat hollow to me. He proposes a lot of big ideas for how government should work, but has very little idea how to build specific, effective policies for accomplishing these goals.  His big ideas in the 2016 primary felt more like Don Quixote tilting at windmills rather than a levelheaded policy wonk describing practical ideas for making the country a better, more fair and just place.

Thirdly, he's continuing a dangerous trend of leadership of personality (dare I say cult of personality). I'm a strong believer in the rule of law not men. Trump has set a terribly dangerous example of a person using power above and beyond the letter and intent of the law. I can easily see Sanders continuing this tradition if he gets frustrated by a conservative Senate and a very conservative Judiciary.

Ultimately, I see a Sanders presidency to be as another angry, ineffective period that will shake things up but accomplish little progress. It will further destabilize the institutions of government. Frankly, a frustrated Sanders may also further the attack on the rule of law. A unilateral demagogic presidency is an awful form of Democracy, and I feel that Sanders is going to be exactly this sort of leader if he has a chance.

All that said, I am willing to change my view. I had doubts about Obama's rhetoric in 2008, but he managed to moderate his more out-there ideas when he actually had the responsibility of power. Or perhaps he could turn out to know the difference between campaign rhetoric and the messy, ugly, sausage making compromise required to get things done in Washington DC. It's also possible that he has more practical policies this time around. Frankly after hearing a few terrible ideas from him in 2016 I tuned him out as a good source of policy ideas.

It's also possible Sanders will be a better coalition builder for his stated agenda than I give him credit for. He could brow-beat the centrist Democrats to support his ideas just like Trump managed to do to the Republicans: by capturing the hearts and minds of the base and use implicit or explicit threats threats of primary challenges. He may also have more luck calling out bad actors on the right in a way that their conservative base will listen to.

[Assistant]
If you want somebody to negotiate with the Joe Manchins and Susan Collins of the world, it's true, Bernie probably isn't your guy. But if you really care about what he stands for - single payer health care, better working conditions, financial sector reform, action on climate change - then no candidate is going to make meaningful action on those issues if they have to get centrist Democrats and Republicans to sign off on it.

What makes Sanders so great is that he's willing to stand for bold new ideas that take on established interests. You can't negotiate the health insurance industry into putting itself out of business by signing on to Medicare for All, and the banks aren't going to break themselves up just because you ask nicely. You can't work with those companies to solve the problem because they represent the problem.

You bring up a great example: the ACA. Obama started from a moderate position - a Republican policy - and then spent months negotiating with the centrists and the health care industry, and what came out of it was mostly a bloated ineffectual mess. The ACA helped some people but the US still has the highest healthcare costs and medical bankruptcy rate in the first world by a long shot, and even the modest achievements are getting picked apart by the Republicans now that they're in power.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5:why is it so hard to emulate older video game consoles on a PC when the PC's of today have much better and faster hardware?

[Assistant]
Imagine it this way: your Xbox speaks French, your PS3/4 speaks German, and your computer speaks English.

All of the programs (games) written for Xbox and Playstation are written in French and German.  This way, they can get the optimal use out of those systems.

But your computer doesn't know French, so it can't play an Xbox game.... unless you wrote it a convenient French/English dictionary.  Still, it takes time and effort to go through this dictionary and find the right words, so your computer needs a lot more brainpower to translate and do the functions in the correct time.  And that dictionary had better be *really* clear, or the computer is going to mistranslate a word and mess everything up.

Not a perfect metaphor, but it works.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] [Dredd] What are the chances I get arrested if I kill some homeless guy in broad daylight, the judges only deal with 1% of all violent crimes, are their resources spread too thin to notice, would people even care enough to report it?

[Assistant]
Odds are, yes, if no judge is in the area no-one will notice or care. Mega-city one is a notoriously dangerous place for exactly this reason- anything that happens outside a judge's notice is quite often consequence free. There's simply to many people in too much city to investigate all but the most urgent cases, and a homeless guy isn't the most urgent case.

This is the reason judges spend so much time patrolling rather then responding. The only real way to get people not to kill each other is to hammer home the fear that a judge might show up at any moment, or be watching from a vantage point. It's a variant on the panopticon- they can't be everywhere, but they can make people fear they might be everywhere.

But yes, if they're not, you can perform horrific acts of violence to your hearts content. You'll be far from the only the one.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Harry Potter] Can I change my house?

I was sorted into Slytherin in my first year because I was a smarmy, pompous dillhole. After a few years of maturing, I'm in my fourth year and realize that the pursuit of knowledge is very noble, and I think I would be better suited to following this surrounded by Ravenclaws. Can I change my house? And if so, who do I talk to? Dumbledore? The sorting hat?

[Assistant]
No. Besides, you're taking the house thing far too seriously.

Slytherin is about ambition, and the best wizards are those who are knowledgeable *and* ambitious. Use both of those talents together and you can be better than either alone.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
ELI5: Why are "brownie points" so important to people?

What I mostly mean by "brownie points" is things like Xbox Lives Gamerscore system. People love getting a high Gamerscore for no other reason then to say they have it. Is there a psychological reasoning behind it?

Reddit itself also has a bit of a brownie point system and people attempt to exploit for no reason other than they want to.

[Assistant]
These trigger a slight release of serotonin, a neurotransmitter chemical in the brain that makes us feel like we just got a reward.

This happens because we are social creatures, so our brains are wired to make us feel good when we impressed those around us or when we achieved something.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
ELI5: Why is bandwidth measured in BITS when everything else people are familiar with is measured in BYTES?

Is there a good reason why connection speed is measured in megaBITS per second while nearly everything else consumers are familiar with is measured in megaBYTES or gigaBYTES?

I can't see any good reason for this other than to mislead less knowledgable consumers (which is going to be 90% of the population when it comes to technology)

The only other (lame) excuse I can think of is maybe this shit started in the days of dial-up modems. Even if that's so, doesn't it seem like maybe it's time to change to a measurement that would actually be relevant to most people?

[Assistant]
Actually it is because the focus of the two technologies is completely different. Transmission is bit by bit, there may be grouping of bits for error checking reasons, but otherwise each bit has to be sent individually. In contrast memory and storage need to be indexed, by grouping bits of 8 into a byte, you gain significant improvements in performance and reduced cost.

So bandwidth is actually sending bits, so focuses on bits, storage is indexed by bytes, so is measured in bytes.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Metal Gear Solid] Why should I join MSF/Diamond Dogs?

So I'm out on standard patrol one uneventful night. Suddenly, I feel a slight sting in my leg and I can't seem to keep my eyes open. I wake up in a prison cell, and this blond guy with sunglasses tells me I'm in a place called "Mother Base." He says I should join something he called "an army without a country," whatever that is.

Anyway, I have a wife and kid back home. My mother is sick, and I only joined the military to pay for her medicine. This blond guy says everyone in the brig he's ever talked to has agreed to join. He said it's not forever, just a temporary enlistment. What is he offering that would have me turn my back on my country? How can I go back and face my comrades, and who is going to take care of my family?

[Assistant] You've literally been kidnapped by a frighteningly effective mercenary and he's offering you guaranteed pay with minimized risk. Most of the diamond dogs rarely leave mother base and provide support for the boss through research and development.