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

[User]
[Marvel/MCU] why doesnt Thor put his hammer on more people?

In the first Thor movie he places his hammer on Lokis chest and in What If? He puts it on Captain Marvels chest briefly to hold her down. Why doesnt Thor do this more often? This seems like it should be his endgame in any fight. In Avengers he fights with Hulk on the helicarrier, why not put a hammer on his chest?

[Assistant] Because he first has to get that person on the ground long enough to place the hammer on them, which is easier said than done. He never laid Hulk out in the fight on the Helicarrier, for instance, despite trading blows with him.


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

[User]
ELI5: What exactly is a "Mhz" when talking about CPU's?

And why does it make my computer work faster when it is overclocked?

[Assistant]
Imagine the CPU is a producton line of people, making a car; one guy lifts the body and puts it onto the conveyor belt, the second guy fits the undercarriage, the third guy puts on the wheels, the the fourth guy puts in the seats etc.

Now, in a CPU, there is a conductor who basically goes "NEXT!" and every time he goes "NEXT!", all the people in the production line move their own task forward, but the conductor can't go "NEXT" before everyone is done, because then one part of the production line wouldn't do anything and that particular car just wouldn't be made.

That conductor is the called a "clock generator" and the "NEXT!" is known as as the clock signal. Each time the clock generator goes "NEXT!" is essentially known as a "Hz", pronounced "Hertz". A Mhz is 1 million Hz.

Overclocking is essentially telling all the workers on the production line to just work a lot faster, so the conductor can go "NEXT" faster and so more work can get done in the same workday. Of course, working harder makes your workers really hot, so you have to cool them a lot better than usual or they'll dehydrate and die, or in the CPU's case, it'll  overheat and cook.


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

[User] What is the difference between morals and ethics?

[Assistant]
A lot of thinkers will distinguish between the two, often in totally different ways. A lot of thinkers don't distinguish between the two at all. Neither word has some metaphysical ur-meaning that ought to supersede what's useful in the context of a given line of thought. Read for how they're being used in a given context.

One distinction that's fairly common: Morals are socio-cultural. Ethics are personal-universal.


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

[User] ELI5:Why do we need to install a program/videogame on our computer instead of just opening it.

[Assistant]
It's a couple of things, and it's all in the name of efficiency.

First, to make programs take up less space on the CD or be easier to download, a lot of them are compressed.  This is good for space, but it's very slow to uncompress something, so they can't run like that.  The installer has to uncompress everything to get it ready for use.

Next, the program needs to tell Windows what it can do.  That way, when you install a new sound program, you can click on your MP3 music files, and Windows will know that the new program can play those songs, and will use it to do what you're asking.

Once that's taken care of, the program needs a way to store settings.  You can't really store settings inside a program file like an .EXE, because these files are very complicated and require special software to modify.  So when you install it, the program makes a special file to store all its settings and temporary information.  Since it's not an EXE and it's not actually *running* in the computer, it's very easy to make changes to.

On the same note, the program needs a way to update.  Since you can't change the EXE file, you can't really update it without replacing the whole thing.  If the program is broken down into a bunch of smaller files, an update can just replace one or two of these little files to make everything work better.  With a single file, the update would have to replace the whole thing, even the parts that hadn't changed.  That would take extra time and be harder to download, so programmers like to avoid it.

Finally, a lot of the really basic things a program does, like making a window or a dialog box, or certain types of calculations, all require special computer code.  But a lot of this code is the same for every program, so instead of making every program come up with its own method for doing these things, the simple tasks are made into what's called a "library."  This is sort of weird naming, because they're more like books *in* a library.  Each book tells the computer how to do one simple task.  So, when Microsoft Word wants to make a dialog box so you can set the font size, the Word programmers don't have to write their own font picker.  They just tell Word to go use the library to find out how to do that task.  The limitation with this is that not every computer has the same libraries, and even if they're present, the program needs to know where to find them.  So when you install a program, it searches through your computer, makes sure it can find all the libraries it might need, and if any are missing it'll add a copy of that library so it can run properly, and so future programs can also use that library.

Despite all this, there *are* programs which run from a single file.  They're usually simple programs that only do one or two tasks, where they can be all self-contained and still run efficiently.  The more complicated the program is, the more likely one of the above situations will come up.  So the complicated programs have to spend some time preparing everything so they can do all the different tasks they're designed to do.


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

[User] [Back to the Future] How did doc calculate the rotation and translation of the Earth in his time machine?

[Assistant] His method of time travel didn't require it. The time machine basically only took a small "trip" outside the normal 1:1 timestream (through a relativistic door that was crossed at 88 MPH) and then basically "waited" for the requisite time to pass before re-entering. Travel to the past was accomplished by reversing this "door" causing the wait to basically be -1:1. Relative to the Earth, the time machine was stationary.


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

[User]
What makes some cancer "inoperable"?

what prevents a surgeon from just getting the thing out?

[Assistant] Sometimes the cancer can occur in places where it would otherwise kill the patient. Like a tumor deep inside the brain might require a surgeon to do too much damage getting it out, or risk breaking up the tumor and causing it to spread in the body (the cancer cells can take up residence in other places, including the wound channel on the way out). With something like lung cancer, the cancer might just be spread in too much delicate tissue (lung tissue is very volumous; they say that you have like a tennis court of area in your lungs), and they wouldn't be able to just cut it out without damaging too much tissue or destroying the organ.


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

[User] ELI5: Do people with Alzheimers know they don't remember anything, or do they just not question it?

[Assistant]
They don't, no. They slowly forget the world around them, to the point where it's not like a vague memory, or they know something happened but they don't know exactly, it's like it never happened at all.

To look at it another way - reincarnation is real. Can you remember anything about your previous life? Would you recognise the faces if you met them in this life?


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

[User]
[batman and robin movie] how did batman get a bat-credit card?

Surely he can't prove his credit rating or proof of address, or even that he could afford the repayments as he has no discernable job or income.

[Assistant] After Batman caught the Joker, Penguin, and Riddler after the infamous Gotham Central Bank heist of '67, the Bank director, Mr. Lehman, was so overjoyed that he awarded Batman an unlimited credit card as a sign of his gratitude. Remember, the thieves stole $63,000,000, so anything Batman could spend is chump change compared to what could have been stolen. And Batman is a cool guy, he's not gonna abuse the card or anything.


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

[User] ELI5: How can you make an emergency call when you have zero signal?

[Assistant] if you have literally no signal, then you can't. But if your phone can connect to a different provider's tower (roaming) it can place an emergency call and your phone may not show a usable signal. It will usually be able to do this even if you have roaming disabled on the phone.


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

[User]
ELI5: How are LEDs brighter and more powerful, yet use so little energy?

Ex: Police Lightbars, they're so bright but use so little of the cars battery. Much less than the classic rotating lights.

[Assistant]
You know a lot of light is invisible, right? Infrared, for example. You can't see it, but you can feel it on your skin with your eyes closed when you're standing near something really hot.

Take two lightbulbs that consume exactly the same amount of electric energy, but one produces only visible light, and the other products half visible light and half invisible. The second one will look much dimmer.

The old-timey incandescent filament lightbulbs, the ones that burn your fingers to the touch, they produce mostly infrareds! To the tune of 90%!

That's why so much progress has been done. Because there was so much room for progress.

LED lights produce mostly visible light. Do this is it. There won't be much progress anymore. We're there. We can focus on other things now. Cool, hey?


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

[User] Are hormones like Dopamine and Oxytocin exclusively responsible for certain emotions/moods? Is it possible to still experience these emotions/moods with none of these hormones at all?

[Assistant] A single neurotransmitter (NT) is rarely responsible for something as complex as moods and emotions. Instead, you would be looking at combinations of NT as well as involvement of different regions of the brain or different subsets of neurons within a region depending on the emotion- many of those regions will be able to influence the release of those specific NTs. Without those NTs, it is extremely unlikely that you would experience those emotions or moods in the same way as before, if at all.


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

[User]
I don't believe filibustering should be allowed in any governmental body, CMV.

Specifically in US politics, I feel that the filibuster is often portrayed as one person who felt so strongly on a subject that they stood up against the tides and fought it.  A David vs. Goliath story with the lone senator as the hero.

However, I feel that the filibuster is a failure of democracy because it makes the majority opinion irrelevant when any one person, in the minority, has the power to unilaterally derail any legislation.  Also, the modern day filibuster is rarely Mr. Smith goes to Washington style with one person standing and reading the phone-book for 12 hours - in the US senate, a filibuster can literally be phoned-in without the objecting senator even being present or talking, they can have their staff object on their behalf, and delay a bill for "debate" for weeks.

To be clear, I object to filibustering always.  I will admit that it has been used to stop things I opposed such things as ANWAR oil drilling and the Texas state senate abortion clinic reform; But I would rather they had been approved through the majority-rule system that the senate was founded on, rather than stopped by a method of unilateral blockading.

I may be sheltered to this argument, because until recently I thought that any sensible person would agree.  However recently I have seen many people hold the view that a filibuster is a necessary tool and part of the tradition of the American governmental system.  I am of open mind, so CMV, why should I approve of filibustering?

EDIT: *I really did not expect this much response! I'll read through these all on 7/24 when I have enough time to give them the individual attention they deserve.  Thanks to everyone who took time to put together a response.*

[Assistant]
Since you said that you oppose all filibusters, I'll only focus on the speaking filibuster instead of the modern Senate filibuster.

The purpose of the filibuster is not to stop legislation through brow-beating; it is to have all opposing points entered into the public record. By allowing the opposition all the time they desire to speak on the subject, it ensures that there is no relevant detail missed.

So why does it matter if the public record has a complete opposing argument or not? For one, it shows that certain consequences were known beforehand. For example, let's say that there was a proposed bill for a bridge across some river. One of the opposing representatives points out that the change in waterflow caused by the bridge would result in a dramatic decrease in the fish population. Since that consequence is in the public record, the supporting representatives could not pretend that they didn't know it would happen.

Furthermore, it also helps demonstrate what it is the supporting representatives reject. In the bridge example, those who voted for the bill would be on record as rejecting the importance of ecological damage. Anything that helps better define the motivations of elected representatives makes for a more clear choice at the ballot box and a better resulting government.

In short, the talking filibuster gives the opposition the opportunity to make it clear to the public why they think the majority should not have voted for the bill.


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

[User] Are there ocean dead zones where there is little or no life activity? If so why do they exist?

[Assistant]
Absolutely.

Consider a typical oceanic water column of about 3.5 km. The overwhelming majority of living critters are found within the photic zone, which ends at an average depth of about 200 m. Within this zone, all of the necessities of life are present: an energy source and nutriments. However, light from the sun cannot reach beyond this 200 m zone, so biological productivity decreases abruptly. Still 3.3 km to go.

Some critters will spend part of the day below the photic zone and have a daily vertical migration to get to rich food sources from the surface, before retreating to deeper waters where the likelyhood of predation is reduced. A lot of these daily migrators are plankton sized, and stay within a few hundred meter of the photic zone.

Below this, life is scarce. It is not quite a dead zone in the formal sense of the word, but the combined presence of some of the more basic necessities of life (nutriments and an energy source) is not there. Consider this a biological desert. The main source of food is dead organic matter (mostly plankton) raining down from the surface. This may be degraded by bacteria on the way down, which may take a few days. Significant food resources, such as whale falls, are scarce and just "passing through".

Next stop is the ocean floor, 3.5 km down. Here is the final resting stop for that rain of organic matter from the surface. This allows for the (relative) concentration of this organic matter in a single locale. There is more life here than in the intervening 3 km between here and the surface. The food chain for the most part depends of this rain of dead plankton; this is the land of bottom feeders and detritivores, with a few predators which pick upon the benthos.

Very locally, you'll find extraordinarily lush oases of life tightly clustered around hydrothermal vents. These are exceptional, and constitute a parrallel food chain where the input of energy is not from the sun (no matter how far removed) but from chemical energy transported by the Earths heat transfer system. A lot of these critters depend on symbiotic relationships with specialised bacteria and archea, and live off methane, sulphate, sulphuric acid, or some other energy source.

So, in retrospect, you'll find that most of the water column, from a few hundred meters of the photic zone to the ocean floor, is pretty much a biological desert with little biological productivity.


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

[User]
ELI5- why is it so difficult to take a decent picture of the moon on your phone?

Edit: I forgot to add a message. Its so pretty when you look at it with your eyes but when you take a picture of it through your phone, it is a pathetic white blob.

[Assistant]
The moon is far away, the moon is small compared with the whole area covered by the camera, your phone tries to be smart but it isn't as smart as your brain.

Why is your brain smarter than a phone? When looking at the moon over the horizon your brain will enhance the moon and make you think it to be much bigger than what it actually received on your eyes. Kind of a funky zoom feature.

Your phone software tries to get the object it thinks is important to be non-blurred. It could be possible that when looking at the phone it looks very sharp and big. And when pressing the button the phone moves a bit and the phone tries to refocus. And then boom, your picture is taken sharp close by while the moon is far away.

So get a tripod, lock the phone, disable the smartness and zoom in.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why, when my leg/arm/any limb "goes to sleep" does it hurt once the feeling starts coming back to, but if I am given a numbing agent, it doesn't hurt when the feeling comes back?

So, when you fall asleep leaning on your arm and roll over, it starts to hurt as the feeling comes back. But if you go to the dentist and they numb your mouth, it doesn't hurt once that starts coming back?

[Assistant]
Doctor here:

When you lean on your arm you compress the nerves. This irritates them. The pins and needles sensation is not primarily from a lack of blood supply, despite what other have written here, although it can be a contributing factor.

When the compression stops, the nerves begin to work again. They are irritated so they report this to your brain in the form of pain. After a while the irritation ends and things go back to normal.

When a numbing agent is used, it simply blocks the transmission of pain rather than compressing and irritating the nerves.

Theres more to it than this, but this is ELI5.

EDIT: some typos.


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

[User]
ELIF: Why do things float towards eachother in liquids?

  I first noticed it with cereal in milk, when you put it in there the cereal clumps. I wasn't sure if it was the iron in the cereal so I tried bits of styrofoam in milk, still went towards eachother. I've experimented with this a bit and I'm stumped. I thought it might be something to do with the surface tension in the water/milk/liquid but I added dish soap to the water once to lessen the tension and they still clumped.
  Then I was curious about it might be gravity pulling them together so I used two things of known mass and figured out the ammount they should accelerate and in practice they accelerate much faster. I am at a complete loss as to why this is and was wondering if anyone knew. Sorry about formatting weirdness I'm posting this from my phone.

[Assistant]
Try to imagine it this way:

You have a piece of cloth stretched out. If you place a ball in the middle of this cloth, you're going to create a dip in the cloth. Place another ball at the edge of the cloth now, and it's going to be "attracted" to the first ball.

The same concept applies, but you have the milk's surface as the cloth instead, and the cereals act as the balls. Each cereal actually 'dent' the milk surface, but it's just so small we can't see it. The effect is still there though, and thus each cereal would clump together.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does rabies work across different species and manage to cause the same symptoms?

[Assistant]
Rabies is REALLY old (its on every continent and pre-dates colonization). Aristotle wrote about it, and Mesopotamians had fines for owners of rabid dogs. In the Americas, there is fossil evidence of rabies in bats and skunks - but that particular strain wasn't as infectious for dogs. Viruses that are really old either go extinct or figure out how to be optimally infectious. Rabies is infectious enough to spread, since it can infect any mammal it maintains a reservoir, but it's way of spreading (feces,spit, blood) keep it from becoming an epidemic - so mammals don't develop immunity.

Rabies spreads so easily in mammals because of its shape and target - it goes after the spinal chord. This is also why symptoms are pretty uniform (lethargy or aggression). The virus is attacking the "oldest" (evolutionarily speaking) parts of the brain. Things that are viewed as "older" in this way tend to work similarly across related animals, in most cases. Your fight/flight center of your brain falls into this. Mammals also have similar body temperature ideal for the virus, this is why birds, snakes, and fish can't get rabies, but also why possums don't generally get it (they have really low body temperatures).

As an unrelated, but fun fact, Louis Pasteur (the father of pasteurization and our understanding of germs and diseases) invented the vaccine that we still use today and is the only reliable treatment for rabies. He administered a largely untested vaccine (it had been successful in animals) to a kid who was bitten, and the kid survived.


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

[User]
[The Thing] How exactly does the Thing consume/assimilate/duplicate more than one being at a time?

I.e., how can one "thing" duplicate multiple organisms?

[Assistant]
Genetic code is the language the Thing "speaks".  As it absorbs a being, it reads its DNA and assimilates all of the code into its repertoire.

The Thing doesn't see organisms as individual beings, but each as an amalgamation of traits which are coded by particular sequences of codons.  It can creatively recombine these traits into different configurations based on its needs, much as a master chef can improvise completely new dishes by mixing and matching components from thousands of memorized recipes.

It is a master artist and life itself is its palette.


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

[User] [Witcher] Is Geralt a particularly powerful witcher or just average?

[Assistant]
His mother is a Witch so he posses innate magical abilities. This means that he doesn't have to take Witcher Potions just to be able to use Signs.

A normal Witcher is an orphan without any magical abilities yet they still have to use at least the basic Witcher Signs to be effective monster hunters so a normally through mutations and a regiment of regularly ingested potions a Witcher without any natural talent in magic boosts his magical abilities high enough to use at least Signs - the crudest most basic form of magic.


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

[User]
CMV: Without foreign military intervention, the Hong Kong protests will fail

**BETTER TITLE: The Hong Kong protests are doomed to fail no matter what.**

The recent security laws set out by China targeting Hong Kong's unrest have earned the ire of protesters and the international community. Noble gestures against a tyrannical, bloodthirsty regime, but unless the West is willing to move past mere economic sanctions and surround Hong Kong with warships, they will be allowing China to enact another Tiananmen Square "incident". The Hong Kong crisis can only be solved through substantial military action - but who would want to do that?

The Communist Party of China will not accede to much more of the protesters' demands. Many mainlanders view the Hong Kong protesters as violent rioters and terrorists, and negotiating with them will be seen as the Party going back on its own nationalistic principles for a united China. Xi Jinping is no Gorbachev, and internal reform on this issue seems extremely unlikely. "One country, two systems" was already a massive concession for Beijing, let alone independence.

Hong Kong lacks a standing army, substantial natural resources, or geographic distance from mainland China (one advantage Taiwan has) to give the PLA any second thoughts of occupation.

The protesters seem unlikely to give up either, due to the Party's stubbornness and the unanimously favorable coverage of them by Western media. Any imprisonments or forced disappearances will be widely publicized unless the Communist Party forces their way into the city and imposes a media blackout. Even if the protesters cease their violence, the PLA will likely institute a violent crackdown anyway.

It seems the only alternative for Hong Kong to retain democracy until 2047 is for more powerful military actors to get involved, e.g. the United States, **which seems unlikely** given the promises set out in the Sino-British Joint Declaration and Hong Kong's current lack of strategic value to other countries outside of diplomatic virtue-signaling. The protests were allowed to happen in order for the Communist Party to be able to portray the protesters as violent secessionists.

In the end, there will be no peaceful solution to the Hong Kong problem. China or the West will inevitably have to send in troops to quell the issue, and one of those possibilities is much more likely than the other. Essentially, in the absence of a new world war, Hong Kong is doomed. CMV.

EDIT: Guys, I'm not necessarily saying we *should* intervene militarily - I'm just saying that Hong Kong has no chance without it.

EDIT 2: What will change my view is someone showing me any potential for peaceful reform. Y'all are attacking the wrong thing - and in fairness I should have made a better title lol

EDIT 3: View has been changed in that military intervention would not be an exception to Hong Kong's helplessness. But so far no one has really come up with an actual solution...

[Assistant]
Who'd be stupid enough to start a war with china? Cause foreign military intervention would be more than enough for a declaration of war.

And the result would be that china would have legal grounds for military actions as well. Right now, HK is protected by an invisible legal, economical and political wall. If you were to place military forces there, they would replace these invisible walls with a military wall, that china could crush much easier.


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

[User] CMV: I believe that school-age children should be allowed to be by themselves.

[Assistant] I think there's a good discussion to be had, but what people used to do shouldn't really matter. We used to use lead paint and pregnant women smoked, just because a lot of people turned  out OK doesn't mean it's safe. Let today's standards be determined by the safety needs of today, who cares what used to happen.


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

[User]
CMV: Universities should have professors dedicated to teaching only

It seems more and more frequently students are struggling with professors teaching poorly despite ever increasing tuition costs, the pandemic and online learning has only emphasized this.

It would make sense to me for universities to hire professors that only teach and do not have other responsibilities such as research etc. This would allow them to focus solely on teaching, providing the best learning experience for their students. Additionally they can have an increased amount of office hours.

This may also mean that they can teach multiple classes so students become used to them and they can relate various classes together (if applicable). Especially for undergrad, you may not even require professors and instead use lecturers (those without doctorates) to teach as the course information is usually not on the cutting edge of the subject and instead is well-planted in history and well known (for example calculus).

As an engineering student, I've had some good profs, one excellent out of this world amazing prof and a bunch that were difficult to learn from. It seems I am not alone in these appraisals.

Thoughts?

[Assistant]
Sounds like what you want is to attend a community college.

What attracts people to programs at university is the prospect of working with researchers in their field of choice.  And there just isn't enough work/money to give a very specialized professor ONLY responsibilities of teaching his/her own specialty and research.  So each specialist also takes some general classes to help justify their role/salary at the university, since their specialist classes may just be a handful of students.

So the current University approach:

* Makes sure the university has as many different researchers as it can afford to
* Gives the researchers a better work environment because of the plentiful amount of potential collaborators both in their discipline and across disciplines
* Supports an important University mission which is to push research forward
* Exposes younger students to these researchers
* Gives their students the widest range of options in terms of specializations

Your system would not allow the university to afford a larger staff.  You'd be replacing specialized researchers with non-researchers.  This is a drag on several important goals of the university from pushing forward research to attracting new students with their researchers.


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

[User]
Do solids and liquids have a sound barrier? If so, what happens when you break it?

is it the same thing as just striking the material in question? would a sonic boom in steel, for example, mean it would explode into shards?

[Assistant]
To generate a sonic boom, you need to have an object travelling through a medium faster than that medium's speed of sound. The boom is the collecting of sound waves into a conical shape along the leading edge of the object.

In the general case, a plane is travelling through air. The air has a speed of sound at a given temperature and pressure.

The speed of sound in water is much faster than air, and the viscosity of water makes it very hard to attain the necessary velocity.

The speed of sound in metal is even faster than water. The trouble with generating a sonic boom in metal is getting an object to travel THROUGH metal.


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

[User] How does my body keep stomach acid in my stomach, but let food and water through?

[Assistant] The answer is essentially that it doesn't. The gastric acid moves through the pyloric sphincter into the duodenum with the foodstuffs (now broken down into chyme). In the duodenum, bicarbonate is released which neutralizes the acid so that the low pH doesn't go through and destroy the rest of your GI tract. The stomach in response makes more acid.


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

[User] [JessicaJones/X-Men] Is Kilgrave powerful enough to control Professor X?

[Assistant] Kilgrave's powers work off of a virus as opposed to pure psychic abilities like Professor X.  They work on different mechanisms and neither has a specific defense against the other.  That said, as a telepath Professor X has an extremely disciplined mind.  That combined with his power not having a verbal component and working faster than Kilgrave's gives him the edge.


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

[User]
Why don't we just keep probes in orbit around objects, instead of doing fly-bys?

We have Cassini-Huygens orbiting Saturn right now, couldn't we have done this with other probes? New Horizons is going to Pluto, why not just keep it there to do science for a while?

[Assistant]
Two reasons, really:

One is that in order to get to Pluto in a tolerable amount of time (~10 years) NH has to move very fast, using a gravitational slingshot. This means that if we wanted to slow it down to orbit Pluto, we'd have to expend a huge amount of propellent (which we don't have) in order to get rid of all this spare kinetic energy in time to go into orbit around Pluto.

The second reasons is a little more technical. Pluto is tiny, with a very small gravity well into which we'd want to drop our spacecraft. In order to avoid overshooting, we'd have to start decelerating essentially immediately after slingshot to the planet, thus burning a lot more propellent and extending the duration of the mission substantially.

In the end, it comes down to tradeoffs. Do you bump up the cost of the mission hugely for these more complicated propellent systems, or do you fire a leaner, cheaper, faster system and try to maximize what you can get as you pass by? In the end, the decision came down on the side of the latter with NH.


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

[User] ELI5: Why can air be compressed but liquids cant?

[Assistant] Liquids can be compressed, but significantly less than air (and all gases) can be compressed. Its to do with the molecule structure. Compression forces molecules close together. In a solid, all these molecules are tightly packed together. So you cant really compress, because theres no room. In a liquid, theres a bit more room, so you can compress it a little bit. Gases on the other hand have a lot more area to move around, and so you can compress them a lot more than liquids.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why is processed food "bad" for you?

Sometimes there aren't many other options for a large section of the population, whether due to affordability or other reasons.

Additionally, how can we make healthier processed food choices?

[Assistant]
When food is "processed" it generally means that it is altered in someway in between its source and when you consume it. Many foods we eat today are "processed".

Juice is processed by taking fruits and removing the fiber (solid bits). The fiber in fruit is like a natural constraint. eg. it would be tough to eat 10 apples, but easy to drink 10 apples worth of juice. The juice is calorie dense compared to the fruit making it easy to over consume and gain weight. Milk and juices are often pasteurized, pasteurization, the heating of liquids to kill bacteria, being the process they were subjected to.  So its tough to generalize and say all processed food its bad for you. It really depends on the process its self.

High fructose corn syrup is the result of processed corn products (glucose) that result in the sweet maple like syrup that they put in everything (fructose). Corn syrup isn't necessarily bad for you in small quantities, but it is very calorie dense. So eating large quantities will result in weight gain.

White bread is also a processed food. They process the wheat by removing the tough outer shell of the wheat where all the nutrients and fiber are found. You end up getting all the calories from carbohydrates without any of the fiber or nutrients, and often people refer to this as "empty calories".

TL;DR all processed foods aren't necessarily bad for you and it depends on the process and your diet as a whole.

Edit: Clarified a few things.


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

[User] Are the effects of dark matter and dark energy observable on a smaller scale i.e. here on Earth?

[Assistant]
No, they're too weak to be relevant.

Dark energy is extremely dilute, while dark matter is very uniform.

We possibly hope to be able in the near future to detect dark matter through non gravitational interactions, but these have not been observed yet, and are at the very least ultra-rare.


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

[User]
[ELI5] All of the different graphics options for games?

I know what resolution and texture quality mean, but what exactly does

* Shader Quality
* Lighting Quality
* Filtering
* anti-aliasing
* Buffering
* FSAA
* V-Sync

**Edit:** Also, bloom.

And all the other random ones that you usually find.

[Assistant]
Each of these settings let's you adjust the trade-off between image quality vs. frame rate and what your system is capable of:

Shader quality: the level of detail of computed textures and surfaces

Lighting quality: detail and softness of shadows and reflected light

Filtering: details in layered textures

Anti-aliasing: the sharpness of edges, makes edges less jaggy

Buffering: better frame rates due to more precomputed drawings

FSAA: Full Scene Anti-Aliasing, draw each frame multiple times and blend the drawings together for even sharper edges

V-Sync: The refresh rate of your monitor. Adjust as needed to reduce image tearing, or just leave it disabled if no there's no tearing issues.


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

[User] ELI5: How can insects fall from proportionally insane heights and suffer no damage?

[Assistant]
Put simply, if you make something twice as big, it weighs EIGHT TIMES as much. If you go in the other direction (making something half as big), then it weighs 1/8 what it did before. So you can see that something that's REALLY small will weigh almost nothing.

Also, for really small things like insects, air acts like it's pretty thick. All those legs and body pieces slow them down, sort of like a parachute.

Insects don't weigh much, and the air slows them down quite a bit. That's why humans fall like a rock and insects sort of don't.

EDIT: More infos, gathered up from the comments.

They say falling doesn't kill you--its the sudden stop at the end. While ants top out at about 4mph in freefall (and humans go on to 125mph or more), what really saves their bacon is being so light. Since they weigh so little, there's a lot less of them that has to be slowed down when their little anty body hits the ground.


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

[User]
CMV: I believe the abortion debate is being dominated by extremes and practical policies/solutions are being drowned out.

This is a multi-fold view, so let me take some time to do my best to set it up.  I am also certainly not a medical or legal expert, so feel free to correct me if I mistate anything.

First, I understand there is a wide spectrum of beliefs and opinions on abortion.  There are people whod fall in the Pro-Life category whod be against the harsh Alabama Laws, and theres people in the Pro-Choice category who find abortion to be immoral.  Just because I believe the debate is being dominated by the extremes does not mean I think everyone is falling under one of those extremes.

It seems the extremes on the Pro-Life side are using terms such as baby murder and infanticide, which I dont find to be helpful to the conversation and finding a practical solution.  This seems to stem from somebody whos pro-Life believing a fetus deserves the same rights as a human being, at the expense of the mothers rights.

I am not sure where I would draw the line of where an abortion should only be done in the case of a health issue (although Id certainly say late term abortions should only be done in this case, and first trimester abortions shouldnt be restricted to this case), but I really cant see how a fetus could be considered a human in the womb, especially within the first trimester.  The fetus is still dependent on the mother/hosts body for survival, and its body could not survive on its own outside the womb like a normal humans could.

At best I could see someone claiming a fetus to be a potential human, as theoretically as long as there is not a miscarriage the fetus will develop into a human.  But at that same circumstance, a potential human is still not a human.  For example, lets say I take a single piano lesson and the teacher says You have the potential to be a great pianist, that wouldnt make me a great pianist.  I could still choose to simply not practice and fulfill the potential.  As for the fetus, its still at the stage where it could become a human but its not one yet.  Defining something as being human simply because it has the potential to become one becomes extremely problematic.  A sperm has potential to become human, so would that mean every man who masturbates commits mass murder?  Obviously not.

By that standpoint, I really cant see a case where you could make a solid argument that abortion is murder.  Thats not to say Im saying abortion is moral, but that its not murder and not infanticide.  Those charged attacks seem to be major extremes.

Now, approaching the other extreme of its just a clump of cells, Im not really sure I could get behind that either.  While at very early stages, it certainly appears that way, but by a late enough stage you have a fetus that is deliverable.  By killing the fetus you are taking away life, and a potential human thats one the verge of becoming human dies.  Using the pianist example, itd be like I spent 10 years of practicing piano, and was close to really achieving something special with my craft, then had second thoughts and decided to quit.  While I was still only at the verge of greatness in that sense, theres something a bit more inherently tragic about quitting after all of that work and development was put in.

Its not a perfect comparison, but I feel like if you asked someone which was more valuable a sperm, an embryo or a fetus, they would almost all answer the fetus.  Granted, add a human child into that equation, and your answer would likely be the human child.  So in that scale, there is obviously high immorality in killing a child (murder), but you could see the scale of that immorality decline the less developed the fetus is, based on how wed rank them in inherent value.  The amount of that immorality for abortion would be hard to judge and seems very subjective.

So, based on this theres some amount of moral greyness in abortion (I think each person in this thread would likely have a different answer on how immoral or moral it is).  I would think that would correspond with most people, whether pro-Life or pro-Choice, would likely be able to agree that lower abortion rates, keeping laws and access constant, would be a good thing.  Theres a certain amount of moral greyness in killing a fetus and an abortion is a result of an unwanted pregnancy (thus the entire experience is unwanted by the woman, thus if it could be avoided, that would be desired).  So I think we could agree that first abortions are linked to unwanted pregnancies, and we could agree that society would be better off if it had less of either or both.

So, why is the policy debate focused entirely on whether we should outright ban abortion or not?  Wouldnt it be more productive to focus on practical policies that help reduce unwanted pregnancies, and thus abortions?

Restricting, or outright banning, abortion seems to be implying either the woman should be punished for her sexual activity or that the fetus is a human being.  Id hope you wouldnt agree with the former, and I believe we adequately showed the latter isnt true, or is at least very vague.

So wouldnt it make more sense for both Pro-Life and Pro-Choice advocates to find policies that help reduce unwanted pregnancies?  An example of this could be better sex education, available healthcare and freely accessible contraceptives.  Some mix of policies such as these can help reduce unwanted pregnancies, thus reducing abortions, without having to go to the extremes of either banning abortions or denying the moral greyness and undesirability of having a high abortion rate.

It seems to me, things like the Alabama law are political theater, meant to rile up debate and voters to your side, but does nothing at addressing the actual problem.  I think you could find consensus that reducing unwanted pregnancies would be positive, and that implies lower abortion rates, and there seems to be more clear and easy to pass and enact policies available to do that.  So shouldnt the abortion discussion be focused on these practical policies, and not the extremes we see in the political realm right now?

EDIT:

To clarify a major point I see being drawn up.

I recognize extremes might not have been the best word choice, as it ends up implying the argument is a both sidesism which wasnt the intention.

The intention is more focused on how the debate seems to be framed around simplistic talking points which draw clear moral lines about a subject where the moral lines are shaky and grey at best.  Im saying, that the argument of abortion is murder is way to extreme and leads to acceptance of laws such as the Alabama laws.  But also not addressing the nuance that an abortion is morally neutral at best seems to further drive the polarization.  Abortion as a topic seems to be more focused on political, semantic theater and barely any of the coverage is focused on practical policies that could appeal to people pro-choice and anti-abortion.

Now, obviously for many politicians making the abortion subject a wedge issue through political theater is the goal.  I guess my appeal is to try to push it past being a wedge issue and to focus on the policies that would actually make a difference (while not necessarily being as politically polarizing).

[Assistant]
> So wouldnt it make more sense for both Pro-Life and Pro-Choice advocates to find policies that help reduce unwanted pregnancies? An example of this could be better sex education, available healthcare and freely accessible contraceptives. Some mix of policies such as these can help reduce unwanted pregnancies, thus reducing abortions, without having to go to the extremes of either banning abortions or denying the moral greyness and undesirability of having a high abortion rate.

I find your viewpoint very confusing. Pro-Choice people have always been the ones who advocated for better sex education, available healthcare and freely accessible contraceptives. Anti-abortionists are the ones who fight against such policies.

You seem to be working under the logical fallacy that both views are of equal value and the answer lies somewhere in the middle, but in fact the anti-abortion viewpoint has become more and more extreme, while the pro-choice viewpoint is just the same as it ever was.


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

[User] Eli5: How can a plants roots survive in a cup of water (root cuttings, propagation), when the same plant planted in soil can be drown if you over water it?

[Assistant]
Overwatering your plants kill them (mainly) for two reasons: lack of oxygen and/or root rot. It's also important to mention that plants breath (absorve oxygen) through both their leaves and their roots, since they aren't very good moving the oxygen through out their bodies: they breath through "pores" and the oxygen only serves nearby cells.

 Water (usually) doesn't contain as many bacteria, fungi or small animals (nematodes) as soil does. Fungi loves moist soil, if the soil is damp it will multiply and cause root rot, killing your plant.

Not only that, all those little animals and fungi also use oxygen and will compete with your plant for it. Damp soil means more animals and also less oxygen pockets. Plants breath easier in soil but in water there's not so much competition for the available oxygen, so the plant does not die, it grows more roots to take better advantage of the situation.


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

[User] What exactly is "weapons grade uranium/any other nuclear element"? What makes it different from other types of the same element?

[Assistant]
"Weapons grade" refers to concentrations of _isotopes_ in _fissile material_ (fission/atomic bomb fuel). Isotopes mean they have the same number of protons (which defines what kind of element it is  uranium is element 92 because it has 92 protons, plutonium is element 94 because it has 94 protons), but different numbers of neutrons.

There are two common isotopes of uranium. So the most common type of uranium (99% of it) found in the world is uranium-238 (92 protons, 146 neutrons). Less than 1% of it is uranium-235 (92 protons, 143 neutrons).  Only uranium-235 can work in an atomic bomb. It is just a little bit less stable than uranium-238 and so fissions (splits) more easily, with lower-energy neutrons. So to make weapons-grade uranium, you have to create a mass of uranium that is made up of 80-90% uranium-235. This is very difficult and requires huge factories and centrifuges and lots of energy to do. So "weapons-grade uranium" means "enriched uranium" which means "uranium where the uranium-235 isotope makes up around 80-90% of the uranium." U-238 will also inhibit a reaction, so the less of it, the better.

Plutonium is formed in nuclear reactors. It is created by letting uranium-238 absorb neutrons and then decay over a few days. The isotope of plutonium that is useful in weapons is plutonium-239. The problem here is that the longer nuclear fuel is in a reactor, the more likely that plutonium-239 you have made will also absorb another neutron and turn into plutonium-240. Plutonium-240 is very radioactive and doesn't fission very easily, so it both makes it hard to use plutonium-239 in a bomb and inhibits the reaction. So when you operate a reactor to make plutonium for a bomb, you take the fuel out relatively quickly, so not too much plutonium-240 is produced. If you are running a reactor for power purposes, you leave the fuel in as long as it is possible. Plutonium extracted from fuel that has been used in this fashion will have a large concentration of plutonium-240 in it, and thus not be as easy to use in a weapon. So "weapons-grade plutonium" means "plutonium that has no more than 7% plutonium-240 in it." ("Reactor grade" plutonium can have as much as 30% plutonium-240 in it.)


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

[User] Can a tornado exist without the cloud touching down? Can it essentially be invisible and still destructive?

[Assistant]
Technically all tornadoes are invisible. It is just the wind picking up dirt, objects, rain, etc. causing you to see the way the wind is moving. Tornadoes happen sometimes without being seen. They can be created in labs with no dirt and be invisible.

As for being destructive that is possible but you would likely see stuff still being moved.


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

[User] ELI5: When we form scabs that do not heal properly and turn into scars, why can't we rip off that scar tissue and try again to let it heal correctly?

[Assistant]
Okay, when a wound heals, it scabs over the top and heals from the bottom up. It fills in. Unfortunately the tissue it uses to fill in this deficit is fibrous and not very attractive. The larger the deficit, the more likely it will be to scar visibly. A scar IS a wound which has healed "correctly" and "properly".

If you mean to ask why we can't allow scars to heal more attractively, the answer is...we can. It is absolutely possible to surgically remove scar tissue from smaller wounds and align the now perfectly incised cuts up to allow them to heal with less of a visible scar.

If it's a larger scar, this isn't possible because human skin is held to muscle by connective tissue, so it only has so much immediate give in it and larger wounds would not be able to be fully closed, leaving a deficit and leading to scarring again.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why are venomous creatures so rare in cold environments?

Perhaps it is just coincidence, but why do venomous creatures seem to be almost entirely confined to the southern hemisphere, or at least warm countries. For example, the UK has only one venomous animal I can think of (the adder), as well as a couple of insects which are found pretty much worldwide. The Arctic meanwhile has no venomous animals at all. Is there a reason for this?

[Assistant] Cold environments generally have the advantage of less predators to avoid, less population and competition.  Thus defensive mechanisms like venom are less useful.  The most beneficial traits are ability to find food, attract mates, and survive the harsh weather.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does lighter skin get sunburnt more than darker skin if white reflects sunlight and black absorbs it? Shouldn't darker skin get sunburnt more than lighter skin?

[Assistant]
What causes sunburn is not just absorption of light somewhere in the skin, but rather absorption of light by DNA spcifically. Damage to DNA can result in cancer, which is why in case of sunburn the damage is detected by the cell, causing cell to commit suicide (to reduce risk of cancer). Dead cells will cause sunburn, but that is far better than cancer.

Dark skin has protein (melanin) that absorbs sunlight (actually, light skin has it too, but darker skin means much greater amount). That absorption results in a far lower chance of light reaching DNA and being absorbed by it. The protein then releases that energy as heat, which can be managed by just keeping the body cool. Even if a given melanin molecule gets damaged, it has no impact - since it is not damage to DNA it does not result in risk of cancer, o no need for cell to suicide, just make a new melanin molecule.

Also, note that sunburn-causing suicide mechanism is imperfect, so someone who habitually gets in situations where they are sunburnt is at higher risk of skin cancer. So, use sunscreen.


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

[User]
ELI5 how wet paper is so weak but if left to dry it returns to the same(or close) to the same strength.

What is the water doing that severely weakens the structure but if allowed to dry it seems to return to the same strength, or at least really close to the same strength as before.

[Assistant]
Paper is made from cellulose which forms long interconnected chains and fibers. These chains and fibers are held together by a special type of bond called hydrogen bonds. Hydrogen bonds are quite strong and provide a lot of the structural properties you see in paper.

Water is also capabale of hydrogen bonding. When water impregnantes the fibers, it interupts the hydrogen bonded cellulose-ceullose network, to create new cellulose-water hydrogen bonds. As a result, the fibers become disentangled and separated. This is why paper is so much weaker when it is wet.

If the paper is allowed to dry, those cellulose-cellulose hydrogen bonds are allowed to reform, and the paper  (mostly) regains its mechanical properties.


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

[User]
ELI5: If the brain can only survive 4-6 minutes without oxygen, how can freedivers hold their breath for 8+ minutes?

And what about people like David Blaine or Tom Sietas? Sietas held his breath underwater for over 22 minutes (world record). I know they train for it like months and even years, but doesn't holding your breath = no oxygen to brain?

Permanent brain damage apparently occurs just after 4 minutes of lack of oxygen to the brain, so why are freedivers left generally unscathed after 8 or 10 minutes without air?

[Assistant]
The level of oxygen in the body is dependent on two things - how much oxygen is in the bloodstream, and how fast it can be used by the body.
So in the case of David Blaine, he breathed pure oxygen for good period before his record attempt, and through practice increased the time that oxygen could last for by slowing down how much he uses that oxygen.

Free divers also are helped by the body slowing down in cold water their pulse rate, and how their body uses energy. These all slow down so free divers (after much practice) can hold their breath for longer than people on dry land.


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

[User] Can anyone explain stem cells LI5?

[Assistant]
Every cell in the human body has a specific job.  For example, the cells that make up the human heart perform a specific function, they make up the organ and pump blood through the body.

A stem cell is a cell that hasn't been assigned to do any job yet.  So, what you can do with a stem cell is assign it to do a specific job of your choosing.  So, lets say that you need a new heart.  Doctors could take stem cells and grown you a new heart that is 100% compatible with your body as if it was grown in your body.

That's a very basic explanation of what a stem cell is.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do some elderly people move their mouth a lot, as if they're chewing on something?

[Assistant]
The chewing motion is found almost exclusively in people who have lost teeth. On rare occasions, certains tranquilisers or antidepressants  may cause a side effect called tardive dyskinesia, an inability to control what are ordinarily voluntary movements. These movements are as likely to involve the nose as the mouth or jaws, though.

In most cases, the chewing motion is a neuromuscular response to the lack of teeth: an attempt by the oral cavity to achieve some from equilibrium. In particular, sufferers can't position their upper and lower jaws properly. With a full set of ivories, the teeth act as a stop to keep the jaws in place.


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

[User] Why does it take more effort to only close one eye than it does to close both eyes?

[Assistant] Closing the eye requires the use of the facial nerve, which works in a symmetrical fashion, meaning that it controls both sides of your face. When you close your eyes, your facial nerve acts to close both eyes. In order to close only one, you have to actively keep one eye from closing. This requires the use of more muscles, hence why it takes more effort.


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

[User]
ELI5 what is going on when a server (such as the playstation network) "goes down"? And what exactly are they doing when they're fixing it?

The playstation network is down and it's cold out and well, I'm curious: What exactly is happening when a server is down or "hacked" and what are they physically doing inside the computer (or internet, I'm sorry if this is a stupid way to word it) to fix that issue? Thanks!

[Assistant]
Imagine your playstation is a phone, and the "server" is like your friends phone.  You want to call your friend to play a game of 20 questions, and you call, but they don't pick up.  They might not pick up for a bunch of reasons, like
* they're sleeping (planned maintenance outage)
* their phone battery died (unplanned maintenance outage)
* they dropped the phone in a pool (hardware problem)
* some one stole their phone and is using it to do bad things (hackers).


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

[User] ELI5:Why some people with amnesia can't remember anything about their lives but can still speak their native tongue?

[Assistant] Memories, abilities, personality, speech and all the other things stored in the brain aren't stored in the same place.  Think of it like your computer hard drive, you don't store every single file on your desktop, you keep them in folders.  The brain has different locations (folders) that deal with different functions.  If one of those folders gets damaged then only those files may be lost and so, only that functionality is impaired.  Damage the speech folder and the person may not be able to communicate.  Damage the short term memory folder and they have short term memory loss.


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

[User] [Star Wars] Why are there only two schools of the Force instead of many like we see with religions in our world?

[Assistant]
There are many different ways of understanding and harnessing the Force.

Only the Jedi and Sith beliefs has spreading their belief on their agenda, though, letting them grow big, spreading all over the galaxy, as opposed to staying in a few systems.


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

[User]
ELI5: Classes, classism, and social mobility in the UK as opposed to the USA

.

[Assistant]
In the UK we have the generally accepted classes of working, middle and upper. The place you are put has very little to do with the money you earn and more to do with who you are and who your parents are.

For example, most high earning footballers would be considered 'working class' by themselves and others, it is a badge of honour for an actor to speak about their 'working class roots' despite earning millions of pounds. Working class is salt of the earth poor but honest kind of thing, but comprises everything from the unemployed to the plumbers that can earn a hundred or so an hour, so you can have very well off working class, they have big TVs and comfy sofas.

Upper class can be seen as royalty, aristocracy, and people along those lines, they send their children to Eton and Harrow and have large homes that have been passed through family, but don't always have a large amount of money, there are a lot of stately homes in this country that are open to the public as the residents can't afford to run the homes on their own income any more. They furnish their houses with antique furniture and heirlooms which often don't match but are probably worth more than your organs.

Middle class is more complex, they are often categorised as 'strivers', basically people who in the past were working class but seek to be upper class, this category is often massively divided up as it is fairly diverse, and can include anything from a manager of a bank branch to a doctor or above. These are the people who can become massively obsessed with cutlery order or the minutiae of etiquette. The working class don't care because it doesn't matter, the upper class know it, but don't really care if anyone else does. They buy their furniture new from designer stores and their homes look like show homes.

The US system is almost entirely money based and is very different

If you're interested in learning more I'd recommend "Watching the English" by Kate Fox, it is a wonderful break down of british culture and sums up the class system really well.


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

[User] What are the most notable researches or books within social science in the past 5 years?

[Assistant]
This question is way too broad.

One could barely list all the most notable works in a SINGLE discipline in the last  5 years, never mind all the social sciences.

What field/topic are you interested in?


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

[User]
Why do some neutron stars become pulsars while other don't?

Like in a binary pulsar system, why does on the one pulse but the other doesn't?

[Assistant]
It's likely that *every* neutron star is born as a pulsar. Whether or not we see a neutron star as a pulsar depends on 2 things:

1) Orientation. The radio & gamma ray 'pulses' that define pulsars occur because the radiation is being beamed out the magnetic poles of the star. The magnetic pole isn't necessarily the same as the rotational pole though, so every time the neutron star rotates, the beams sweep out circles and anyone in those circles sees the 'pulses'.

Just like a lighthouse creates a constant beam of light but any one location only sees pulses as the rotation beams the light toward you.

However, you only see the pulses from neutrons stars if it's oriented properly. Lots of neutron stars can form and be aimed such that the pulses never point toward Earth and we thus won't see it as a pulsar.

2) Age. Neutron stars/pulsars spin down as they age. Basically they lose angular momentum to the beams of light/material being ejected. When they're born, they're spinning hundreds or thousands of times per second. It seems like pulsars are only able to generate their trademark pulses if they're spinning faster than about once every 5-10 seconds, and they'll slow down below this rate after about 10-100 million years, at which point the pulsar 'turns off'.

**TL;DR** To see a neutron star as a pulsar it has to be young (less than ~10 million years old) and pointed properly at the Earth so you can even see the pulses. Not all neutron stars satisfy both of these requirements, so we don't see them all as pulsars.


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

[User]
[DC] Are the New Gods in each universe aware that theyre just a lesser piece of their real version?

As I understand it, new gods refract through the multiverse like light does through a crystal. Their versions in each singular universe are just different wavelengths of their real, multiversal selves that exist in the sphere of the gods.

So, are the versions in these universes aware that theyre not actually the real thing? Do they share a consciousness on any level? Or are they just limited to their histories in their own universes?

[Assistant]
So, basically, they're aware they're technically connected, but they're functionally independent. Like how your body is technically trillions of cells rather then one organism. There *are* situations where that distinction is relevant...but they're rare. Typically, outside of a doctor's office, you can treat everyone around you as one being.

Same here, just in reverse. Just like you are all intents and purposes one creature, the guy shooting an omega sanction at you is to all intents and purposes the real Darksied. The New Gods are *aware* of the technicalities of that statement. but they can typically ignore them. Each New God is functionally a separate being and continue to think of themselves as one except when the theoretical details of their existence become relevant.


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

[User] Why are supercomputers measured in flops instead of hertz?

[Assistant]
FLOPS (Floating Point Operations Per Second) give you an idea of how much a computing device can do in a second. Hertz is just frequency. While you can measure core speed in Hertz, that doesn't directly relate to the computational power of a piece of hardware. CPUs are actually slower now in terms of clock speed, but achieve more FLOPS due to architectural improvements.

Example: If you have a single core CPU running at 4GHz and you compare it to a Quadcore or a GPU at 2-3GHz the single core, the latter will beat the single core *if* the task is parallelizable.


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

[User]
[Tekken] How did a drunk brawler with no prior martial art training like Miguel managed to enter a tournament consisting of the greatest martial artists in the world?

Brute force?

[Assistant]
He registered.  Probably after some bar fight another drunk said, "hey you're tough, you should enter that King of Iron Fist Tournament".

They allow bears to fight, so it's not like it has some super exclusive entrance qualifications.


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

[User]
Why did the economic fallout from the 1918-1919 Spanish influenza pandemic not cause Depression-level economic devastation?

Right now, the trends and data indicate that Depression-level economic fallout from the covid-19 pandemic is a real possibility. The last time we saw a pandemic of this level was the Spanish flu in 1918-1919. But why did the influenza back then not devastate the economy like we are seeing now? Cities implemented social distancing nearly 100 years ago as well. So why did this not result in 20%+ unemployment rate and cratering of stocks?

[Assistant] The economy looked very different in 1918. Our modern economy has a much larger share of consumer driven activity, which is directly impacted by social distancing. 1918 had not yet mechanized nearly as much, farming was a much larger share of the economy, where social distancing has less impact on productivity.


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

[User]
I'm scared to move to the US due to issues such as healthcare. CMV.

Background: I'm a 24 year old danish male, finishing my masters degree in electrical engineering.
I've been living in Berkeley for the last half year or so. During this time I've been around California and seen a bunch of this awesome, untamed country. There's so much nice to say about this place - unfortunately also a lot of bad things.

I've seen a lot of things on reddit about the american healthcare system. I understand that this information might be as biased as some of the information americans receive about the "death panels in Europe". But some things keep popping up, such as insurance companies routinely dodging out of their responsibilities and people having to pay to ride in an ambulance.

This is an incredibly scary thought to me, that I could in essence be left for dead or be bankrupted by unfortunate medical events.

I've gotten two job offers while being over here. I'm considering taking one of them, but I feel like it may be better to just stay in tiny little Denmark and not have that risk hanging over my head.

Convince me that i'm being paranoid. Change my view.

[Assistant]
If your job comes with health insurance (which every company trying to hire electrical engineers from Cal will offer) then the best care in the world will be available to you. UCSF and Stanford are in the top 5-10 health systems worldwide.

The US offers the most expensive healthcare in the world. If you can afford it's great. If you can't, then you're totally stuck.


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

[User]
[Marvel/DC] What hero has suffered the most over their years of fighting crime?

Im thinking Batman, what with losing his parents, Bane breaking his back, the killing joke, and jason Todd.

[Assistant]
Jim Corrigan literally died and was denied Heaven. Same for Hal Jordan.

Aquaman's mother was killed, his son was murdered in front of him, and he had his hand chewed off by piranha.

Spider-Man's had dead parents, dead uncle, dead clones of parents, dead clone-brothers, an aunt who won't stay dead, dead girlfriends, dead father figures, bodyjackings, forced comas, near deaths, psychotic breaks...

Nightwing's had dead parents, been raped multiple times, been taunted by one of his rapists and his own friends over his being raped, sidekicks gone bad, dead friends, psychotic episodes, amnesia from being shot through the head, and lived through some of the same losses Bruce has re: The Killing Joke, Jason, and Tim.

Moon Knight has dead parents, sidekicks who die and come back, intense psychotic episodes, been bodyjacked by his own god, broken back, broken knees, and watched a bunch of multiversal versions of himself die.

Deadpool's got cancer, dead friends, friends turned against him, constant pain and injuries, been raped, died, screwed up his own relationships so badly people he'd give his life for walk away thinking he's a complete monster, that whole thing with his daughter, had lovers die.

I mean, compared to the average person, yeah. Batman's suffered. But compared to a random assortment of superheroes, his pain's really only about average.


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

[User]
[Star Trek Into Darkness] What is the normal purpose of a cold-fusion bomb?

Putting out volcanoes is surely an edge case, so, why did the Enterprise have one in its inventory?

[Assistant]
They didn't. They're just not hard to make - Scotty whipped that one up in about an hour from materials readily available on the Enterprise.

If they had already had one, they would have had time to come up with a better delivery system than flying a shuttle into a plume of ash and lowering it in with Spock.


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

[User] [Monty Python's Flying Circus] How much risk was there in deploying the Funniest Joke in the World with bilingual soldiers on both sides?

[Assistant] They wouldn't have let bilingual soldiers anywhere near the joke. The joke was translated by a group of scientists who were only permitted to see one word of the joke. In fact, one saw two words of the joke and had to spend several weeks in hospital! So, likely, only monolingual soldiers were allowed to participate in joke warfare.


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

[User] Any good mixologist knows that adding booze to carbonated liquid kills the carbonation, but reversing the order and adding the fizzy drink to the booze retains some of the fizz.  Why do two different results happen when mixing the same liquids in the same ratios?

[Assistant]
You lose a lot of the carbonation in the initial soda pour due to microscopic nucleation points on the bottom of the glass--and the ice you're pouring over. By adding the liquor first, these surfaces are getting filled (or smoothed off). You're "wetting" the glass, so to speak.

There's nothing special about alcohol in this regard. You can get the same results with juice.


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

[User]
[Star Trek] Why didn't the Borg stay in warp and skip over Wolf 359 to go straight to Earth?

It seems like it was an unnecessary risk to stay and fight.

[Assistant]
The Borg value efficiency. Fighting and destroying the federation's fleet is absolutely in their ability but they know they're not invulnerable.

So it is a lot more efficient to destroy the federation's response to their invasion before beginning their assimilation of Earth.

They can focus on one thing at a time. Much more efficient.

Also, breaking the morale of earth would enhance and make their process more efficient.


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

[User]
ELI5: smokers should relate to this. Why do we feel the urge to smoke after a meal or while drinking alcohol?

The title is self-descriptive. every smoker should relate to this.

[Assistant]
The urge to smoke after a meal comes from the fact that nicotine stimulates the emission of stomach acid which helps us digest.
As for the smoking while drinking, alcohol blocks the acetylcholine receptors, which are also our nicotine receptors. Thus, the more you drink, the less satisfying a smoke becomes.


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

[User]
Was there ever a better time for black people than now in US history?

I live in [segregated] chicago and it's hard to believe that this is the best time for black people in the US. Public housing is a mess, segregation is getting worse, and the low income areas are like visiting another country sometimes.

[Assistant]
I think location makes a huge difference here, as well as education/income status. For example, a black person living in Harlem during the 1920s during the Renaissance may have been better off than someone living in an inner-city project today. On the other hand, many avenues that people of all races take for granted today (e.g. universities, certain occupations, living wherever you want) would not have been available.

Also, the problems you mentioned affect poor people of all races moreso than black people specifically.


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

[User] ELI5 How do plant seeds still work after hundreds or thousands of years?

[Assistant]
Most plant seeds will not live that long. They have a finite amount of chemical energy stored within them and no way to get more; while their metabolisms are *nearly* zero, they aren't completely dead, and will still use up that energy.

That said, seeds are basically hardy batteries of chemical energy that the un-germinated plant uses *very* slowly until it's time to sprout. They can survive extreme conditions and don't really need to do anything, so they can wait a very long time. Under ideal conditions, such as the Svalbard seed vault, the cold slows the plant metabolism down much further, even pausing it. As long as conditions don't change, the timer on their expiration date is effectively paused.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does reading small text hurt our eyes instead of making them stronger?

[Assistant]
Your eyes have muscles to point them in the direction youre looking, and small text doesnt take up much space in your field of vision, so those muscles need to work hard to keep your eyes pointed at the small text.

The muscles just get tired working continuously, but its not like its a strength exercise thats going to build them up like your arms.


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

[User]
Could a (presumably larger) solar system have other planets or even moons within it that were also massive enough to be stars?

Not like a binary star system, a system with multiple planets including some (or just one) that were stars. I'm picturing something like our solar system, but with Jupiter as a small star. Would it even be able to work?

[Assistant]
It's a bit of a tautological question, since if one of the planets in a solar system is a star, then, by definition, it is a binary star system. There are plenty of examples of solar systems, in which one of the stars is much more massive than the other one, so the smaller star almost orbits the bigger one.

On the other hand, it's worth noting that in our own solar system the center of mass of Jupiter and Sun is located *outside* of the Sun.


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

[User]
[DC] dont ask how, but I currently have the corpse of Superman and unlimited funds. What are my options here?

Some guys from LexCorp came over and offered to buy it off me to make a super-battery. I read some forum posts from a few armchair biologists saying it could possibly lead to an army of Super Clones. What all can I do with the body? Whats the most profitable?

[Assistant]
Okay, Kryptonian protip here:  Unless Superman's body has been decapitated and dismembered, he's (almost certainly) not dead.  He's in a Kryptonian healing coma.  Assuming you had nothing to do with the sequence of events that put him into that coma, the most profitable thing for you to do is contact the Justice League, let them know the situation, and leave Superman someplace well-guarded and with plenty of sunlight.  Having Big Blue and his friends owe you a big blue favor is probably more valuable than any amount of money.

Of course, if you're the one that put him in that coma, don't do that.


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

[User]
[Ratchet and Clank] Why do people know what a Lombax is?

Were told over and over again in the Ratchet and Clank series that Ratchet is the only Lombax in the galaxy. Its clearly a galaxy that has lots of sentient species. Why do people recognize a Lombax? Why dont they just think hes a member of some species theyve never seen before?

[Assistant]
Because Ratchet isn't the only one, just one of the only ones left. The Lombaxes were galaxy-wide heroes for defeating the cragmites, and were only banished from the galaxy at most 15 years ago.

Remember, Ratchet was an infant when they were banished, and he's at most 17 in the first game. That's still within living memory for most people.


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

[User]
ELI5: If people "die", and "come back" then isn't it time to redefine death?

e.g. "He was legally dead for 8 minutes". Um. No. How so?

[Assistant]
People confuse the "Heart Stopping" with actual death.  I've heard doctor's actually say "He died three times on the table"... weellll ok, kinda.  Most people won't come back if their heart stops.  Completely stops.  Something has to happen to get it to beat (correctly), again.

I've been in medicine for quite awhile, and I've never seen someone actually "Legally Dead" for any period of time other than "He died at " (pick a given time).  Once you're legally dead, you're dead, barring weirdness (call it a miracle, if you want).

HOWEVER, it is time to redefine death.  We're finding out that stopping the heart, chilling the body, and doing a couple of other things (that make the patient look really, really dead) may give us enough time to start fixing problems.

Hell, already in medicine, we have different criteria for "death".  A popular one is "You're not dead until you're warm and dead", talking about hypothermia patients that arrive without a detectable pulse.
Cardiac death versus brain death versus organ death.  Really important when it comes to things like organ donation.


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

[User]
ELI5: What does it mean when a state makes reservations, declarations or understandings when it ratifies a treaty?

I was reading on how the US ratified the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crime of Genocide while making two reservations, five understandings and one declaration. Can anyone explain what does it mean by reservation, understanding and declaration during ratification of a treaty, etc.? Thank you!

[Assistant]
These are all basically stipulations on how the state will follow the treaty it has ratified. Different treaties will have different rules on how such tools should be treated, but such stipulations are usually respected.

Reservations are the state modifying the treaty, and their obligations under it. They can be a simple: "We aren't accepting this bit and that bit" or something else. There are usually limitations to what can and can not be reserved from--usually that the reservation can not be "incompatible with the object and purpose of the treaty"--and the US has been roundly criticised for its reservations under the Genocide Convention.

Declarations and understandings are basically statements of how the state will interpret the treaty. The state basically says that as to its understanding, this provision of the treaty means [X].

The document you'd want to consult when interpreting treaties is the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, which is--yes--the treaty on treaties. The Vienna Convention has lots of rules on how treaties should be interpreted, and--although many states have not ratified it--it is widely respected, and often turned to.


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

[User]
Nuclear winter is always mentioned as a consequence of nuclear war. Why did the extensive testing of nuclear weapons after WWII not cause a nuclear winter?

Does it require the detonation of a large amount of nuclear weapons in a short period of time (such as a full-scale nuclear war) to cause a global climate change?

[Assistant]
You've got it exactly right.

When any big blast goes off, a certain amount of debris is thrown up into the air and takes a while to settle back down.

The idea of a nuclear winter is that enough blasts throw enough stuff into the air to block out the sun.

The weapons detonated for testing purposes did not throw up enough debris and they were separated in time, so most of the debris from blast A had settled before blast B was able to throw up it's debris.


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

[User] Eli5 My three year old boy wants to know why do trains whistle? And different times in there journey? We hear train whistles from our house.

[Assistant] They usually whistle when entering populated areas and go over level crossings. Its an added security measure because many times trains are not very loud and can sneak up on you. The whistling makes it very clear they are coming.


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

[User]
what's all the extra noise in a diesel engine?

I've driven both kinds of cars. I understand that diesel fuel is made up of longer hydrocarbon molecules. I think. But is the engine shape really that different? What a racket? What is it exactly that's making such a louder noise than a petrol engine?

[Assistant]
Higher compression and knock.

In diesel the combustion is closer to detonation. In otto cycle it's deflagration.

In the old days you could hear car engines knocking under high load/hot temperature/low octane fuel.


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

[User]
CMV: I support welfare even if some people abuse it

Hey guys! A lot of Conservatives say they don't support welfare (want to cut it/abolish it) because they think they're giving money to moochers. Personally I don't agree with this, I support welfare even if a few mooch off it. My view is that while even if some people abuse social services, the majority (like >85%) make good use of it, people abusing social services is unfortunate but in my opinion the true tragedy is hard working folks not getting the help they need and making sure they do is worth the possibility of one or 2 people managing to scrape "on the government's tit". Please CMV!

[Assistant] If welfare is a good scheme for helping people out of poverty, why is it that we have to keep spending more and more on it? If the programs were successful, shouldn't less people need them as time goes on?


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

[User]
ELI5: Is there any science behind epsom salts efficiency as a pain reliever?

My friends have told me, and I've read online, that epsom Salt apparently is a very good pain reliever; however, I also see many other bs products promising similar stuff so I don't know what to believe.

[Assistant]
Yes, it's function is as an astringent. Osmosis and water solubility work the same in our body as in a test tube. Introduce very impure water to something with purer water in it, and the water seeks equilibrium by moving from the area of greater concentration and purity, to lesser concentration and purity.

When you soak in epsom salts you are surrounded by very impure water. So much so, that the water in your body is more pure, and the salts will pull water out of your body. When you injure yourself the pain is often caused by swelling of body tissues as blood flows to the area and tries to heal it. The epsom salts help draw water away through the skin which reduces swelling and provides some relief.

Many pain killers like Ibuprofen and Naproxen also relieve pain by reducing swelling, rather than by directly suppressing pain transmission like an analgesic would (tylenol)

Gargling with salt water when you have a sore throat is using the same action to try to draw water out of your swollen tonsils and throat, there by reducing swelling and providing some pain relief.

In science class a lot of students have done the experiment where you take a slice of something like a potato, and you put one slice in very pure water, and another in salt water. The pure water has a greater concentration than the water in the potato and so it moves into the potato, causing it to swell in size and become very crisp and stiff. The salt water has the opposite effect and draws water out of the potato making it limp and droopy.

When we want to cure something so it won't spoil we often use salts as they both kill many bacteria and fungus, and they also help to draw water out of the food helping it dry.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why does Euler's Number (e) have so many unique applications?

I am a CE student who is graduating soon. I use e every day for so many different applications, but they usually boil down to modeling exponential growth and decay, modeling complex sinusoids (which seem unrelated to me but somehow e applies to both through Euler's Formula), and transforms such as the Laplace. Could someone explain how the properties of e all fit together to make these applications work? The best answer I can come up with on my own is that Euler was a dark wizard who caused nature to revolve around e.

[Assistant]
I like your dark wizard theory, but the answer is, sadly, much simpler.

Imagine that you draw a curve on a coordinate system - never mind the equation right now, just draw the line - which has the peculiar property that, for any value of x, the y-value of the line is also equal to the slope of the line.  That would be a pretty interesting line, wouldn't it? Among other thing things, if the y-value is always equal to the slope, it would have the interesting property that f(x)=f'(x). Then you can imagine that you would want to use this function as a sort of fundamental building block to build *other* functions where some part of the function remains the same after integration or differentiation.

Are you following so far?  Do you see where this is going, or should we push it a little further?


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

[User]
Would masses of 1kg and 0,5 kg of the same radioactive material take the same time to decay?

First of all, is it even possible for something to decay 100% via radioactive decay, since half of half of half... seems like a convergent series with the decayed mass approaching one, but never really getting there... But then again, you eventually would get to one atom, and that atom (given that it's radioactive) has to decay sometime, right? That, I guess, would take an incredibly long time, but since this is purely theoretical it doesn't really matter. My brain already hurts, but lets continue...

So the intuitive thinking would be that the 0,5 kg mass will obviously decay faster, because it has less mass, duh! But I thought about it for a bit and came up with this scenario: you have a mass of 1 kg; lets say it takes a billion years for it to fully decay. Then you split that mass into 2 pieces of 0,5 kg. It would still take a billion years to decay, nothing has really changed, has it? I don't suppose it has to do anything with mass/surface ratio, does it? So now, you have two masses of 0,5 kg which will take the same time to fully decay as the 1 kg mass, a million years.

Now, I know that half-life is purely probabilistic, meaning that in theory, a radioactive material could retain 100% of its original mass after a billion years, even if its half-life is thousands of times shorter. That, of course, has such an astronomically small chance of happening, that it's basically impossible. So, how does radioactive decay and the whole half-life thing work when the number of atoms becomes low enough for our predicted function of mass over time starts getting significantly inaccurate?

Because each atom has a 50% chance of decaying in the half-life of the element, it's all fine while we have ~10 atoms because the higher the sample size, the more accurate the results. However, when we get to a smaller number of atoms, the amount of mass over time starts to deviate from our perfect-50%-each-period-of-half-life assumption and basically, we're lost, right? I'm guessing that as the mass approaches the really small numbers of atoms, the course of the decay could go either way. It can go slightly faster, it can go slightly slower. But, if we did this 1 and 0,5 kg masses experiment an infinite amount of times, the average time of full decay would be exactly the same, right?

So, I obviously want the question in the title answered, but I also want someone to clear radioactive decay and the half-life thing a bit. Please correct me on anything that is incorrect in this post, cause I'm still in highschool and have a pretty basic understanding of physics, with a bit of youtube videos and such on top. I tried to get some of this answered by googling but its all so basic and doesn't really get to explaining my question. Also, I didn't really try wikipedia because shits like me with a highschool understanding of physics can and do write all sorts of unimaginably incorrect things on topics they once read half and article about. Thanks.

[Assistant]
Logically, the 1kg mass will take one half-life longer for all of the original atoms to decay.

After one half-life, it will have the same number of atoms as the .5kg mass, and will clearly decay at the same rate as the other .5kg mass did originally.

However, at the end of the decay period, we are talking about individual atoms and probabilities, so it really isn't possible to say exactly what will happen.

A thought experiment - divide the first mass in two parts at the start of the experiment. Then you have three identical masses. They will all decay at the same rate, correct?

Where will the last original atom be? With two thirds probability, in one of the masses that was originally part of the larger mass. How long will that atom take to decay? Hard to say :)


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

[User]
CMV: The availability of credit is bidding up the cost of so many important things in the US.

And some consumers are so financially illiterate that they only think of what the note will be, so they just buy things they cant afford.

The most obvious example is phones. Do you know how expensive smart phones are? $1,000 is the new normal. And the smartphone sellers response: dont worry, you dont have to pay it up front. If you choose a 2 year plan your payment is only $50!

Been to a car dealer recently? New cars are more expensive than ever before. $30,000 in 2019 gets you what would have been $17,000 in 2004.  But no worries. You can just do a 10 year payment plan. Heck, make it 15.

Homes were the first example of this. Banks used to turn people away who couldnt put down 20% and do a 15-year fixed mortgage. Now homes are twice what they should be, but you can do a 30 year variable rate with no money down. Now all consumer products are turning to the mortgage model, which has been just a bottomless gold mine for financial institutions.

Meanwhile people like me who want to take a Dave Ramsey approach, are left paying huge sums out of pocket. Because the consumers are screwing themselves by permitting the industry just raise prices forever. And this is all without mention of student loans. Maybe it would help our economy to teach people in school not to use debt. Or maybe some regulations to help the consumer.

Is there any real reason apple cant sell their top iPhone for $500? Or is it just a matter of why would we?

[Assistant] What you are describing is certainly true for housing lots, but it's not quite true for cars or phones or for housing structures.  Credit isn't straight up making them more expensive but is moving people to more deluxe models.  The 2019 car is safer and less polluting than the 2004 equivalent.  The iPhone is more powerful than a $300 phone would be.  If not for easy credit the price would be lower but so would the features.  For a phone you are probably actually benefiting because you can easily buy a cheaper commodity smartphone.  For the car you aren't because the law mandates the better safety/cleanliness.


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

[User]
CMV: Overpopulation is the single largest concern facing humanity

I'm pretty firmly convinced that overpopulation is pretty much the root of all evil. Resource depletion, environmental degradation, etc. all seem to come back to the sheer number of people we have on the planet. All of the "ecological footprint" calculations state that *given a current population*, we would need x # of planets to sustain ourselves. Usually the logic flows to "so we need to be more sustainable", but I think it's at least partly "so we need to severely limit the number of humans on this planet".

Even where I live (one of the least populated per sq. km by country), I think we're overpopulated.

Yes, it's possible, theoretically, that if everyone became a vegetarian or whatever, we'd all buy ourselves some more carrying capacity - but this isn't likely to happen. What could happen though, is education/reproductive rights/euthanasia/cancelling of tax credits for having children.

[Assistant]
Overpopulations is not a problem. Birth rates are at an all time low and are still dropping, populations are expected to peak at about 10 billion before starting to drop a little. Thankfully the planet earth can easily sustain much more than ten billion people and the solar system as a whole can sustain many trillions of people.

The solution is urbanization and industrialization. Compact cities are significantly more efficient and free up even more land to be used to farms and factories.

Ten billions isn't significantly bigger than the 7 billion we have now and we have a lot of space to improve in efficiency.


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

[User]
[The Walking Dead] What has happened to the Nuclear power plants and Silos?

Why hasn't there been a melt down if they plants are abandoned?

[Assistant]
There won't be a meltdown at silos. Missiles aren't continuously going through a nuclear reaction.

As for nuclear power plants, either they were shut down during emergency procedures, or they had auto-cutoffs for one reason or another.