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

[User]
What would happen (in terms of gravity) if you stood in a spherical room, underground, in the center of a planet, such as Earth?

i have been thinking about this for a while, and i have no idea what would happen. would you float, like in space? would you be pulled to all of the walls at once? would you float into the center of the room, and be stuck there?

i have asked most of my friends this question, and everybody just gives me one of the answers above.

[Assistant]
In a spherical room at the centre of the Earth, there would be no gravity at all. You'd float anywhere in the room. This is because inside any spherical mass distribution, mass that is at a larger radius than you're at combines to pull on you in such a way that doesn't affect the gravity you feel at all. Or, in other words, only mass below you contributes to the gravity you feel. So, if you're in a spherical room at the centre of the Earth, there's nothing "below" you ("below" = at a smaller radius), so you feel no gravity.

The *reason* why it works like this is a little harder. First, imagine you're exactly at the centre of the room. All the walls pull on you equally, so you float there. This is hopefully clear. Now, if you move to the side, you get closer to a portion of the Earth (call it portion A), and further away from another portion (portion B). Now, this would be easier with a diagram, but portion B is actually larger than portion A. So B is a "large and far away" mass, and A is a "small and close mass". It should be obvious that these two objects pulling opposite to each other might cancel each other out, and if you work through the maths, it turns out that they do. This works anywhere in the room, and in fact you could have an entire hollow Earth and feel no gravity anywhere inside it.


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

[User]
ELI5: how original parts or models of machinery is made.

How are machines parts made so exactly. I assume there is a master model that all lives are made from but how are those master models created so precisely and how are they measured.

[Assistant]
There's a variety of manufacturing methods used to create machine parts.

The "simplest" is to create the parts from stock material in a workshop, piece by piece, using lathes, mills, etc to precisely machine down each piece to the required specifications.

When designing a machine, the entire thing will be modelled in CAD, with each part being inspected for conflicts with other parts.
From this CAD model, parts will be assigned tolerances, which will determine the minimum and maximum size each part can be and still work.

As for measurement, measuring tools are calibrated against known standards, so that each tool agrees with each other. There is some tolerance in this process, which needs to be understood.

This is a very simplistic look at design and manufacture.


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

[User] How are NOAA's storm chaser planes able to fly through hurricane Irma and not go down? I'd think the propellers and/or the windows would take a serious beating. How are they designed to handle the intense wind and rain and keep the crew safe?

[Assistant]
Hurricane winds are by and large horizontal in nature while thunderstorms have vertical winds like updrafts and downdrafts. These are far more dangerous because aircraft lift is a function of angle of attack which changes as the wind hits the wings at different angles.

Aircraft that fly at over 200 knots is analogous to wind hitting a static plane head-on at 200 knots. This is the case seen by aircraft in hurricanes.


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

[User] Why does Israel have such a huge impact on the United States' foreign policy affairs?

[Assistant]
Ok, so this is probably going to get buried, but here goes.

A lot of what's being said is that the US allies with Israel because of cultural similarities, and the large, pro-Israeli lobby in the United States.  These factors cannot be overlooked, but they miss some of the larger picture: Israel plays such a large role in America's Middle Eastern policy because Israel is America's only consistent ally in the region.

Going back to 1683, the Muslim, Middle Eastern, powers were beat up on by the Europeans.  The Ottoman Empire was the cultural Muslim stronghold, and over the centuries it was taken apart and carved up piecemeal by the Europeans.  To give you some idea how bad it was, imagine if Canada and Mexico annexed all of the US east of the Mississippi.  So when WWI came around, the Ottomans allied with the European powers who would help them - Germany - and got demolished.

Britain and France took over control of the Middle East after WWI, and managed to royally piss off a large amount of people living there; the Muslim Brotherhood started to take off about this time as a reaction to British and French aggression.  When WWII came, the Middle East tried to ally with Nazi Germany to throw off the Western Imperialists.  That went about as well as could be imagined.

After WWII, the state of Israel was created by UN mandate - crucially, the Arab League did not agree.  The entire Middle East banded together in an alliance to destroy it, but the entire armed forces of the Middle East were defeated by 400,000 Jews with bolt-action rifles.  Every single leader who took part in that fiasco, on the Arab side, was killed or deposed.

The regimes that arose following that disaster naturally hated Israel; they also hated the West that had colonized them for generations.  Note that it is the governments that hated the West, not the people.  This led to the Middle East allying with the Soviet Union.

Of course, the specter of the Middle East going communist probably caused Washington to shit its pants.  They scrambled around for allies in the region, and they found one: Israel.  Add in a couple more wars, revolutions, and alliance switching later, and the only constant for America in the Middle East is Israel.  The Arab states switch sides in whatever game of geopolitics is happening based on what's best for them - what's best for them is often not best for the US. Israel, on the other hand, faces danger at the hands of these Arab states every day, causing it to ally with whoever it can get its hands on.

tl;dr  The US-Israeli alliance is one of convenience, though the problems in the Middle East are so intractable that it may as well be permanent.


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

[User]
[Star Wars - The Mandalorian] Is the Razor Crest the ship's name or class/model?

Is Din's ship named the "Razor Crest" or is that the ship's model, ala yt-1300? I feel like characters in the show have referred to it as "a razor crest" but other times more as the ships name, and outside sources seem to refer to it as a name.

[Assistant]
It's heavily implied to be a Razor crest model gunship. Pre-imperial regulation. Din doesn't seem to care to name his tools personally and keeps some level of detachment from his equipment. For something to be named it must be worthy of a name by deed.

Granted the only indication that it is a model and not a ship name is the character from the first episode naming it as such and the lego tie in set naming a razor crest model gunship.


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

[User] ELI5: When a baby is born with an extra limb, or the recently craniofacial duplication, how do doctors know if it's a birth defect, or a poorly separated twin or 'absorbed' twin?

[Assistant]
There are a couple of ways to Diagnose this.

E.g. if its an absorbed twin its fused differently with the rest of the body as it would be if its outgrowth of the body. Often the twin tissue/organs are weirdly connected to the rest of the body and lack certain but normal connections.

Otherwise the cellular make up of the absorbed twin is also likley different, with certain cell clusters being present as residues of the former twin. E.g. stem cell clusters were they should not be, or randomly differentiated cells. Aka the cellular make up of these limbs makes no sense.

Lastly if they are non-identical twins the genetic make up of the extra tissue will be different.

Though human chimeras (aka a human with two different sets of cells) can go undetected, if the twins cells are seamlessly incorperated into the body. Because in this case its just a regular human.

Funny/tragic anecdote: a british women ones gave birth to a child but wasn't the genetical mother. The father however was. They got in a bit of trouble for some legal reason, until it was discovered that the womens womb was made up of different cells.
As an embryo she absorbed a twin whose cells formed her reproductive system.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] What could the Jedi have done to prevent the rise of the empire while still maintaining the Senate's respect of the Order?

Let's limit actions to after the birth of Palpatine. So nothing like assassinate Chancellor Palpatine Mace Windu style since it's an extrajudicial killing without hard evidence. I'm thinking of things like being more careful before doing missions like going to Galidraan, Sifo-Dyas having enough discipline to obey orders and not create a clone army, sending more help with Qui-gon to Naboo after they learn of Maul on Tatooine, going back for Shmi, etc.

[Assistant] Unfortunately, probably nothing. There was no one thing they did wrong - it was a cascade of some poor decisions and errors, as well as an insanely well put together plan by Palpatine that stretched over decades. The flaw wasn't in any particular action, but in some of the founding principles of the Jedi Order itself, something that would have had to be changed ages ago.


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

[User] [MCU] Tony Stark ran into a crisis wherein the palladium core of his arc reactor was poisoning his body. Why not replace it with a low-tech alternative instead? Even a magnet connected to a car battery was initially effective.

[Assistant]
He used it as a fail-safe to prevent the reverse-engineering of his suits.  Stark is convinced at the beginning of Iron Man 2 that he has a monopoly on his arc-reactor technology, the only thing that can keep his suit sufficiently powered.  Only Rhodes and Potts have access to a spare.  So he'll tolerate being poisoned as long as it means he's the only super-powered individual during his lifetime.

But then Whiplash comes along and throws a wrench in the works.


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

[User]
[Inglorious Basterds] Why not just kill him?

#Spoilers ahead, obviously

So, at the end of the Movie, the Lt. gives Hans his signature mark. But why? The guy can play it off as (for example) something the Nazis did to him. It's established earlier that the Basterds aren't known outside of the Nazi forces, and even if he met someone who *did* know what it meant, he could still claim that - I don't know - they did it in retaliation.

But beyond that... **why didn't they just shoot the guy**? The only people who know about the deal are Hans, the Lt., an unnamed General and the other american whose name I can't remember. Nobody will ever know, or care, that they betrayed a despised Nazi officer.

[Assistant]
Lt. Raine is a career hardcase; "I've been chewed out before". To be a guy like that and have a field command instead of running a kitchen patrol somewhere in the asscrack of Nebraska or bouncing a ball off your cell wall for a decade in Fort Leavenworth, you have to know how far you can push it, where you can take liberties, and where you need to pump the brakes.

Raine knows he can shoot Landa's henchman, even though a deal was specifically made for that henchman's life; Supreme Headquarters doesn't give a fuck about some random enlisted guy. He also knows he can mutilate Landa, even with the promise of safety; Supreme Headquarters want's a top ranked SD officer who can give them the dirty details, and whether or not he can win a beauty contest is irrelevant. But if Raine shows up with two corpses and no prize then he's going to wind up in 12 gallons of hell, no matter what excuse he cooks up.

I imagine Raine really, **REALLY** wants to make that Nazi wear his balls as a hat. Operation Kino was all but a total party kill for what was left of the Basterds, and leaving that smug asshole not just alive but profiting off the action must have rubbed him quite raw. And since a big part of Landa's reward was being able to fuck off and pretend he was *never really a Nazi* with the Allies backing his claim to be a career-long Allied double agent, no doubt Raine was super keen on getting some kind of retaliation. Thus, he carves his masterpiece...


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

[User]
ELI5 Do we all taste the same things?

Do we all taste the same tastes and just do not like particular tastes? Or do we taste everything differently and thus do not like the same tastes?

[Assistant] This is called qualia.  It's about subjective experiences.  It is completely unanswerable.  There is no way to know how another being experiences reality.  We can't go inside someone's consciousness to see.


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

[User] [Ghostbusters] Do we all turn into horrifying monsters when we die?

[Assistant]
Good news: most ghosts aren't the immortal soul of a person trapped on the wrong side of the veil. They're manifestations of psycho-kinetic energy (PKE), a part psychic, part electromagnetic phenomenon caused by humans interacting with the world. It's basically the psychic equivalent of a footprint in the sand; the person who left the print is long gone, but the trace remains. Normally these traces are undetectable, and you can only experience them in places (natural and artificial structures that channel energy) and times (the Tunguska Incident and the two big spikes seen in Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters 2) when the energy is high, and they tend not to be playing with a full deck, mentally speaking. The Librarian from the first film likely does not have a full set of the original, living librarian's memories, for instance.

There are exceptions. Occasionally a human can persist beyond death as an spiritual entity distinct from a common ghost. Vigo the Carpathian is the most prominent example; the entity in Vigo's painting was, for all practical purposes, the man himself, 100% in thought, will and intention.


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

[User]
[spiderman] Would Spiderman's spider sense alert him in a virtual reality game?

So I've heard that this Spiderman fellow has a spidey-sense that warns him of danger. If I stuck him in a VR helmet in an immersive game, would he be able to sense "danger" in the game if he was immersed enough, or was tricked into thinking it wasn't a game?

[Assistant]
No, because there is no danger in a VR environment.

In the past Spider-Man has been "tricked" into thinking that he's in danger (Mysterio likes to use illusions to trick him), but he was ultimately able to figure out the real danger vs the false danger by relying on his spider-sense which reacted to the real danger but not to the false danger.


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

[User]
CMV: Employers shouldnt discriminate against people with tattoos/piercings.

Studies have shown that most consumers could care less about this sort of thing. Its one thing to have incredibly distracting piercings or visible offensive tattoos, but having a stud in my eyebrow or non-offensive tattoos should not hinder my ability to get work. Having body art should not be seen as unprofessional. If someone goes to a job interview and presents themselves well with a clean-cut wardrobe, good hygiene, etc. I dont see why an employer should decide not to hire them because of body art. Simply having tattoos and piercings says nothing about a persons responsibility, work ethic, ability to learn or attitude.  Discrimination against tattoos and piercings in the work place is old fashioned and needs to end.

[Assistant]
>Studies have shown that most consumers could care less about this sort of thing.

'Most' isn't very reassuring to a business owner, a 10% drop in customer satisfaction can be the margin between solvency and bankruptcy for many businesses.


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

[User]
ELI5 why do pimples (zits) on the inside of your nostrils hurt so much more than any others?

Guess what prompted me to ask this question. Ouch. Fucking zit.

[Assistant]
Real answer:
The tissue inside your nose isn't very thick and has tons of specialized nerve cells right at the surface, which means that when a pore swells with infection (a zit), the skin is pulled tight and the pressure under the already thin tight skin pushes against all those nerves, causing signals to fire and increasing the painful sensation.
Plus there just isn't much space in there.


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

[User]
[Marvel] Exactly how fast does Mjolnir travel when Thor summons it? Does it have a summoning range?

Whenever we've seen Thor summon Mjolnir, sometimes it takes a moment to travel to his hand. Does it have a set speed? Can Thor increase or decrease its speed at will? If he went to Earth and forgot it on Asgard, how long would it take to get back to him?

Also, is there a set limit for how far he can summon it? If he did forget it on Asgard, is it now too far and he'd have to get closer to Asgard?

[Assistant] To add into the other comment about Thor 2, that film gives us the only clue as to Mjolnirs actual flight speed  it gets from a high orbit back to the UK in about five seconds. That was probably from an altitude of about 400 miles at a quick guess, so say at least 250,000mph.


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

[User] [Diablo 3]Why does Tyrael tearing off his wings make him, an angel, into a human? Humans are the offspring of humans and demons, him tearing off his wings should just make him... a wingless angel? How does that give him demonic blood?

[Assistant]
He's not *really* a human. He symbolically cast off the trappings of his old life, and literally de-powered himself in order to live among the humans. He has no demon blood in him (otherwise he would have died when Malthael took the black soulstone), it's really just a human mask on top of a very weak angelic core. When he dies, Tyrael's energy will be reborn like all angels, though the new being will not be Tyrael as he was.

As for why he LOOKS human, you can see that angels have a basic human body plan aside from the glowing wings. And even some demons, especially Lilith, look remarkably human with just a few accents. So the basic human form is really a blend of angelic and demonic traits that they've had since their creation. Humans probably have more of Inarius' looks than Lilith overall.


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

[User]
[Hunger Games] What would the QuarterQuell twist have been in the 75th hunger games if Snow didn't change it?

Obviously the concept was changed after Snow decided that he wanted to get rid of Katniss. What else might they have done?

[Assistant] I thought at a previous quarter quell the number of tributes was doubled.  He could have tripled them instead, only selected one gender, only reaped from kids who were eligible for the first time.  There's lots of way to punish the districts.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do people stress eat?

[Assistant] Eating, among other pleasureable things like having sex releases the hormone dopamine, also known as the pleasure hormone, that like you might have guessed makes you happy. The dopamine then relieves some of the stress, making you feel better by eating.


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

[User] eli5 What does "Overqualification" mean when it comes to employment?

[Assistant]
Basically your skills and experience are way beyond the requirements of the role.

This can be seen as a negative by employers because they think youre going to treat the position as a stopgap, or will get bored, or wont be a great fit in a junior role where youd previously been in a senior one. Basically theyre worried that, one way or another, youre not going to be around for long and theyll have to go recruiting again.


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

[User]
Many people seem to find foreign accents sexually appealing.  Why might this be the case?

And some sub-questions:

- Within my North American context, the accents I've most typically seen described as sexy are Russian/General Slavic, French (France-French, though, not Quebecois) and Australian.  Spanish/Latin also makes an appearance, but far more often among women than among men.  What might be going on here?

- What about corresponding phenomena in other countries? Are there accents that those living in other parts of the world find both foreign to their context but sexy nonetheless?  Are the guys in Romania going nuts over girls with that Flemish lilt?  Do French women like a man with an American twang?

- Why would French or Russian be so frequently cited, while Japanese or Hindi (and countless others) hardly ever seem to come up at all?

I want to be clear that I do not intend for any question of comparative **value or merit** to inhere in this - I just wonder what's going on.

Likewise, if this is not an appropriate question for this subreddit, I apologize.

[Assistant] If you're hearing someone with a foreign accent, they are likely to be wealthy, educated, bilingual, and adventurous. If you're the one traveling, they will be in a position to appreciate your worldliness. Culture shock is an endless source of conversation and conceals how boring the two of you may be.


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

[User] [The Thing] Why didn't the Thing assimilate Clark when it was alone with him for over an hour?

[Assistant]
In the book it did. Clark was the first assimilated and then the first to be outed as a Thing and electrocuted. Like the other dozen or so Things he wasn't important, the only one who was was Blair. In the movie there are less people and Clark is still immediately cast into suspicion because of the time he spent alone with the dog. The reason it didn't assimilate Clark might be because it knew that instance of itself would be almost guaranteed to die. Palmer and Norris were allowed to operate with a lot of agency (relatively speaking) while everyone was suspicious of Clark. He ended up serving a much better role as a decoy than another pair of hands.

Tl;dr: The Thing has a self-preservation instinct and Clark would've been a liability.


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

[User]
How much is time slowed around a black hole?

If gravity is space/time being dragged by the mass of an object and black holes have an amazing amount of mass. How much does time slow down in or around a black hole?

[Assistant]
Exactly at the event horizon, time is effectively stopped-- or as close to stopped as makes no difference.

If you're far from the hole and you throw a clock in, it will tick slower and slower as it falls. As it reaches the event horizon, its time will be so slowed that the next "tick" will take longer than the lifetime of the universe.

Note that this means you can never observe something fall "into" a black hole! Objects can get arbitrarily close, but if you wanted to watch something pass *through* the event horizon, you would have to wait an infinite amount of time.


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

[User] [Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater] Why did they let Snake keep his radio both during and after Volgin's torture?

[Assistant]
*FAN THEORY TIME*

The Boss convinced Volgin to let Snake keep the radio during the torture on the basis of having it broadcast to Snake's support team during the torture, so as to let them *hear* every last horrible thing happening to the FOX agent (and effectively *also* be tortured by proxy).  Needless to say, Volgin not only agreed, he got a little bit hard upon hearing the Boss's torture-ception proposal because he's a murderous, sadistic freak.

As for letting Snake keep the radio *after* the torture, that was just a *major* oversight by Volgin and Johnny (which the Boss and Ocelot were more than happy to let go uncorrected).


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

[User]
ELI5: What, or Who determines whether the Dollar/Euro/GBP etc rises or falls in value?

I see in the news everyday the fluctuating value of the USD, especially againt the Australian Dollar now, and I am wondering who or what determines this?

Edit - Thanks for all the responses! Really quite helpful =)

[Assistant] The demand for those currencies.  If people buy more Australian products, or more iPods (or let's be real, Treasury Bonds,) or more German cars, then they need the currencies of those countries to make their purchases.  The increase in demand for a currency increases that currency's value.


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

[User] [Fallout 3] Why does Talon Company keep hassling me? I just want to keep my head down and do good things. So confusing.

[Assistant] If by "doing good things", you mean killing raiders and slaver parties, then you're making a lot of enemies and costing some very nasty people a lot of caps. Some of those people reckon it would be cheaper to put a bounty on your head and get you killed sooner rather than later, and Talon Company mercs are more than happy to try and claim it.


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

[User]
How relevant are the classic philosophical texts to answering philosophical queries today?

Philosophy, like many other disciplines, has a rich history of influential thinkers writing important works. Philosophy has Aristotle, Plato, Descartes, Leibniz, Hume, Kant, Mill, Nietzsche, Russell, Wittgenstein, Popper, to name a tiny fraction of what I consider the biggest name Western philosophers. Physics has Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, Einstein etc. Mathematics has Euclid, Leibniz, Newton etc. All of this is to be expected.

But also like other disciplines, in the age of modern academia philosophy research has become vast, with academic papers becoming the main way research is initially published. And as with other disciplines, textbooks (on and offline) summarise historical ideas and debates.

But unlike with other disciplines, students are often encouraged to go back and read the original classic texts. And these texts are sometimes seen as a necessary point of engagement for many questions, and subsequently are often referenced directly.

My question is: In general, how important is it for philosophers today to read and engage with the classic texts to produce good research? Is it ever/often sufficient to understand their ideas from textbooks, and then focus one's engagement with contemporary philosophical papers? Or another way to put it would be: for an essay on topic X, is it more valuable to read the classic books on X, or to read the same number of pages of textbook entries summarising the classic books and contemporary papers on X?

Time is money after all, especially in an academic's life.

[Assistant] It would vary from text to text, of course, but at the very least the historical philosophers would probably shine some light on contemporary questions. That being said, since the historical philosopher's insights might have been incorporated into the body of knowledge that contemporary philosophers bring to bear on a question, there might be nothing gained from reading the historical philosopher -- even though, technically, he or she does illuminate the question. But you can see why it would very from text to text, then, because in some cases, contemporary philosophers might not be fully appreciating the insights of historical philosophers.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why does the anesthesia given during wisdom teeth extraction make you loopy upon waking while other surgical anesthesia does not?

Perhaps this is just me but having been "under" several times I only felt goofy and euphoric after my wisdom teeth were out.

[Assistant]
All anesthesia can make you loopy upon waking. Ketamine is a particularly bad example of this, which is why it is no longer often used as an anesthetic for surgery even though it has other great properties, like being less prone to unsafe changes in blood pressure than many anesthetics. But the bottom line is that ANYTHING that disrupts consciousness can make people confused/loopy/combative. This happens in post surgical recovery units all the time. It might not be as well publicized or depicted in social media where people in videos act strangely after the dentist, but this is likely because after people have general surgery, they are not as likely to be allowed to leave as soon as your average dental patient.

Edit: it has been pointed out to me that ketamine has fallen out of favor as a general anesthetic in the USA, but is still very much in use worldwide, especially in developing countries.


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

[User] [Fountains of Wayne] Did Stacy's mom know that the boys in the neighborhood thought she was the hot mom?

[Assistant] Outside of the fantasy sequences, the real mom doesn't appear to be thinking about the boys at all in the music video. The "I could tell she liked me by the way she stared and the way she said you missed a spot over there" in the song lyrics appear to indicate that the  speaker is misconstruing any interactions between them.


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

[User]
Given the pace of technological advancement, what popular science fiction media are anachronistic and how could they be updated to fit our modern view of what science fiction is?

I was watching Black Mirror (The History of You) yesterday and was immediately struck, that while the focus of the show was a 'grain' implant which allowed the user to record and playback anything they had seen or heard, there was plenty of low-tech around as well which I felt would not really be there in that world.  For example, the main character hailed a cab which looked futuristic, but was driven by a person.  I felt it should have been self-driven.

What other examples can you think of where current developments have rendered science-fiction tech obsolete, and what changes would have to be made to fit it into a modern sense of scifi?  Can it be done without seriously affecting the story?

EDIT  Here's another one:  In Alien, Ash the android is a perfect replica of a human being (so good nobody knew he wasn't a human) and yet the ship's main computer, MOTHER, whose keyboard terminal is only accessible in a dedicated room, can only communicate via a 1970s monochrome CRT.

[Assistant] 90% of Isaac Asimov's robot series is incredibly obsolete - he predicted that it would be easy to make robots that move, but difficult to make them speak. Things seem to be moving in the other direction.


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

[User]
CMV: Female Dating Strategy is as toxic as incels

Edit 1 :FemaleDatingStrategy subreddit**

Edit 2 :Not as toxic as incels for sure BUT both toxic in the end of the day.

Edit 3: Wanted to post this in unpopular opinion but it was removed for some reason.

They have the same ideology of being against the opposite sex (stems from different reasons, sexual frustrations, being hurt by the opposite sex) and not many people are calling them out on it and both are sexist.
An example of the posts on there, "women can thrive without men but men cannot thrive without women" why are you even stating that why not just empower everyone, there is absolutely no need for you to get genders into this. Youre empowering each other calling yourselves queens, thats great. But do not bring men down because that is seen as powerful. It is not and it just reveals the insecurities and you are constantly comparing yourself to men. Just focus on yourself and improve that.
It is a very toxic echo chamber where everyone is encouraging toxic behavior and that idea that all men are trash has been mentioned a couple of times which is annoying at this point.

[Assistant] We know that incel ideology has been responsible for acts of domestic terrorism and murder in the USA. Can you show me that the same is true for FDS, or will you agree that it isn't nearly as toxic an ideology?


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

[User] ELI5: What is the difference between selecting debit or credit on the same checking account card when making store purchases?

[Assistant]
Debit purchases are "online" purchases. The transaction will rather immediately be processed from your account.

Credit purchases are "offline" purchases. The transaction will be processed whenever the business processes their credit transactions. Typically every 2-3 business days.


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

[User]
ELI5:Why do batteries especially phone batteries eventually stop holding as much charge?

My phone batteries and computer batteries always seem to stop lasting as long.

[Assistant] Imagine batteries as buckets that you can fill up with liquid energy. The nice thing about rechargeable batteries is that you can fill the buckets up many many times with liquid energy, and pour out a little bit at a time into your phone or your computer or really whatever electronic device you want to power. However, the liquid energy can be thought of as having a small amount of grime/dirt in it. Each time you add more liquid energy to the bucket, a small amount of dirt/grime (corrosion within the battery) sticks to the inside of the bucket and rusts it a little bit. Now, rechargeable batteries are made to handle this corrosion, but eventually the buckets are no longer able to hold a charge as they have been corroded to the point where the liquid energy drains out the corroded holes instead of where you intended to send that energy.


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

[User]
[Fallout New Vegas] How did the Mojave BOS do so well for itself that they were able to refuse using recycled Energy munitions?

If the Courier helps the BOS out enough they fill a footlocker with recycled energy munitions everyday. The BOS Mojave chapter are doing so much worse for themselves compared to the other major branches (almost no trade or manufacturing capability that we can see) and yet their Knights and Paladins scoff at the reused ammo, so how can they afford to use only fresh cells?

[Assistant]
The Mojave branch used to be doing a lot better for themselves. Controlling Helios one and Mccaran, manufacturing their own tech, trading back and forth with other outposts along with House and possibly the NCR.  It's almost certain that they had a huge supply of all types of pre war tech including massive amounts of energy munitions.

Although they lost almost everything during the NCR-Brotherhood War they would have taken whatever they had left to their bunker but with such low manpower and barely any land to defend their munitions are simply left sitting in a storage room. It's not like they're still at war and constantly using up their stockpile. If a trusted outsider proves themselves enough what's the harm in giving out some of their munitions so they can put it too actual use.


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

[User] [SCP] with the constant loss of scientists and tactical teams, how is it that SCP keeps their personnel numbers high enough to maintain operational effectiveness?

[Assistant]
Basically, we only read the reports where something happens- we don't see the reports for "we find the SCP and take it into custody with no problems" or "the scientist ran some routine experiments and got the expected results". A lot of experiment and report logs are "abridged" for seemingly this reason.

It seems like they're suffering constant losses because we're only reading the stories where something goes horribly goes wrong, but generally they sort things out reasonably well.


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

[User] ELI5: Why is the Fort McMurray fire uncontrollable?

[Assistant]
It is just after winter, so nothing was really green yet (evergreens still are green, but haven't come out of dormant state yet). That means everything is still dry. It is really hot, 30C (unusual for early may). The relative humidity was low. And high winds make the fire move quickly.

Forest fires happen a lot. It is just that this one happened to be near a large city, which are very rare in northern Alberta.


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

[User] ELI5: How did talk show host Oprah Winfrey become so rich and powerful?

[Assistant]
Oprah managed to very shrewdly work herself into a market that didn't have anything else like her.

She started as a really low-brow talkshow. Not quite as bad as Jerry Springer, but definitely one where the worst kinds of people would be featured. This built her an audience during a time when these shows were very popular.

As time went on, she evolved. She lost weight, and became an inspiration for a lot of folks. She converted her talk show into something more intelligent, and that spoke to a lot of people. Many people out there want to have some source of validation in their lives, and talk shows fulfill that need really well.

Due to her very large audience, Oprah dominated ratings and really got to have everything her way. That business sense allowed her to build a financial empire rather than being controlled by producers who wouldn't care so much about the integrity of her show.

Of course, there are a lot of oprah bashers out there that will chime in and talk shit about her, but even though she isn't perfect she at least tried to champion many causes that need more people to back them.


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

[User]
ELI5: What makes C++ a better language than C? Or in other words, what are all the advantages of Object-Oriented Programming?

My main hurdle is that I don't understand *why* it's beneficial to combine data with code.  I'm having a hard time understanding why a programmer would want to make the paradigm switch and what the advantages are.  I have a small background in C and every explanation I've heard for C++ leaves me scratching my head.

[Assistant]
Object-oriented helps keep track of things in a logical, reusable, and extendable structure.

Think about a video game.  In a video game, there are plenty of characters on the screen.  Every character has a model and a location in the world.  With classes, you can make a "character" class that holds all that character-specific data in an easy-to-use template.

**TL;DR 1:** It's like keeping all the contact information for your friend in a single contact card on your phone.

Every time you create (aka, "instantiate") a character in the game world, the class constructor will automatically fill in all the data and keep it together in a single, logical object.  In C, this same data would probably be stored in one or more arrays.  While that works most of the time, if there's a logic bug in your program, you might find yourself reading the wrong data (off-by-one errors) or possibly reading a location that isn't real data at all (reading a character's location after it was already removed, for example).  These bugs can be nasty and hard to find.  With objects, the data for each character is contained in a single object, so all the correct data is in a single place, and only exists if the object still exists.

**TL;DR 2:** Since the entire contact card is displayed at the same time, you won't accidentally dial Taco Hut when trying to call your friend.

Secondly (and this is very important for large projects), it helps keep code organized.  You might know where all the arrays and variables that keep track of a character's inventory are, but unless he worked with you in designing it, Steve might not.  If Steve has to make a change to your code to add his code for equipping larger backpacks, he'll have to hunt down all the inventory code or ask you to explain it.  While proper code organization can prevent problems like that, object-oriented code *forces* you to write it organized in smaller logical chunks, making such techniques less necessary.

**TL;DR 3:** By it's very nature it keeps your contacts organized, so when you loan your phone to a friend, they can always figure out how to navigate the contacts screen easily.

Finally, techniques like inheritance and encapsulation promote code reuse and more general solutions.  Instead of writing code multiple times for chests, characters, and vehicles to all store items, you can write a single "inventory" class and extend it.  That gives the three very different objects a common interface that the item team can rely on when they need to add or remove an object from an inventory.

**TL;DR 4:** It promotes common, generic formats.  You can add an email field to a contact card and your email program will be able to recognize it, regardless of whether it's a phone contact, an email contact, or something else entirely.

Basically, it's a layer of organization on top of the base code that helps keep track of things, especially in huge projects.  It's also easily extendable, allowing you to reuse a lot of code rather than re-typing it all.


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

[User] [Godzilla] The physiology/chemistry/physics behind Godzilla's atomic breath?

[Assistant]
The kaiju are basicslly natural nuclear reactors that feed off radioactive energy. No doubt they form a gland or organ that can store this power or generate it.

Now depending on what version of Godzilla you use it can vary what exactly his breath is. It's possible he is super heating gas in his throat and creating some form of plasma. That or he condenses a massive amount of radiation within his mouth and then propels it with incredible force.


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

[User]
What is the difference between a quantum and a photon?

Also, where actually does Boltzmann and Planck fit into the grand scheme of concepts like "The UV Catastrophe?"

[Assistant]
A "quantum" of anything is just a small, indivisible, discrete piece of it.  Something is "quantized" if it only has certain values it can take, like an electron in orbit around an atom.

A photon is a quantum of light.  We think of light as being continuous, almost like a fluid, in our everyday experience, but on small enough scales, light can be thought of as particles.  On those scales, there's no such thing as "less light" coming from something.  It either gives off 1 photon, or it gives off no photons, but there is no in between.

Planck fixed the UV catastrophe (which was a problem with classical theories predicting blackbodies emit EM radiation with infinite power) by quantizing EM radiation.  He posited that instead of treating light as continuous waves, you could treat them as particles of a particular energy - and doing so gives the *correct* equation for blackbody radiation.

Boltzmann didn't play a huge role in quantum mechanics - his contributions were mostly in statistical mechanics (and thermodynamics).  However, a lot of his ideas from stat mech were applied to quantum systems later on.


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

[User]
[Doctor Who] Why can't The Doctor visit fixed points in time?

Such as Rory/Amy when the are touched by the weeping Angel. And He warns he will not be able to save them.

[Assistant]
He can visit fixed points in time, he just can't changed them in any significant way which given his nature torments him so he tries to avoid them.

What you mean is the convolution of multiple paradoxes around the time-space in Manhattan created by Angels feeding of people they trapped in time-loops and Rory's sacrifice (again) which made the Time Vortex around that place impossible to navigate in and actually dangerous to the integrity of space-time itself.


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

[User]
[Assassin's Creed] [Assassin's creed:Rogue] Forgetting game mechanics, could the Morrigan actually go toe to toe and defeat most of the other ships in the game, let alone the Assassin Flagship Storm Fortress?

It's stated that the Morrigan is a heavily modified "Sloop of war". So yes, I guess it's modifications give it an advantage but should these modifications have allowed it to survive and defeat the Storm fortress, let alone the other legendary Man-o-war ships you face.

Not much of an expert on old ship Types so I can't really know. Thought you'd at least need a frigate to survive such battles.

[Assistant]
A Sloop of War was typically the smallest class of warship at the time. Given to Heavily Modification, the ship is ultimately limited by it's size and ability to displace water while taking on armour, guns, and mast strength for sail speed.

A single one might be able to take on a Frigate if lucky. A Frigate sized Man of War had roughly double the guns of a Sloop (give or take). Since our sloop is heavily modified we can give it some leeway for perhaps having some larger bore cannons, and able to fit more weight without significantly loosing speed, maneuverability and sinking.

That would likely be it, and it would need to utilize a capable captain who would've been able to position the ship such that it had optimal wind favour and able to minimize it's exposure to the guns of the Frigate.

Our Sloop of War is going to need fantastic captaincy, as well as lucky shots to quickly incapacity the gun decks on the frigate in order to have a hope of surviving.

If you're taking about the ridiculous Ship of the Line size man of wars.... Those could have up to triple the cannons of even the Frigate. So we're vastly, vastly, outclassed on our own by pitting a Sloop of War against the top ships of the Navy.

On its own, in a 1-on-1, it's odds are ridicously low, but it would still possibly stand some chance assuming it's again able to utilize it's superior maneurvability to favorably minimize it's exposure to the the Ship of the Line cannons. But, in some of the later challenges where there might be two or even three supporting ships against your lone Sloop you would not stand a chance. Not even a slim one.


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

[User] [Star Wars] In terms of pure, raw power, what do you think the most powerful force ability is?

[Assistant]
I don't know what you mean by raw power. Lord Vitiate's ritual on Nathema is pretty damn destructive, but it doesn't blow anything up in any spectacular fashion.

The ritual killed every living thing on Nathema at once. Every man, woman and child, every insect, everything that was even touched by the force died, and the planet was reduced to a lifeless husk. Lord Vitiate was made immortal by this act, but at the cost of millions of lives all in one ritual.


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

[User] ELI5: How can we suck out oil from the ground without it caving in those areas?

[Assistant] Mostly, oil-bearing rocks are somewhat spongy rock, not underground pools. The oil may be under pressure, in which case, drilling into it will reduce the pressure, but not to zero. In other cases, drillers have to pump water or gas into the rock to extract the oil, which maintains the pressure.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why can't we sleep when we're nervous? For example, the night before a big exam, the thing we need most is sleep.

Or before a new job, a marriage proposal, etc.

[Assistant]
Our body only has one response when we are nervous: activate the fight or flight mechanisms by pumping adrenaline and other chemicals into our blood stream to make us more alert. The body doesn't differentiate if we are nervous because of a exam, a new job, a proposal, or a if there might be a large animal that can attack you at night in the woods.

The side effect of being more alert is that it's much harder to calm ourselves to sleep. Now that we're more civilized, there's a much lower chance that you're nervous about being in danger but the response still exists because it has kept our ancestors alive in dangerous times.


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

[User] Are 'Discourse on the Method' and 'Meditations' different books? If so, which one is better suited for an assignment which asks to explain the proof of his own and the God's existence?

[Assistant]
The *Discourse* was intended as the introduction to three science books but is nowadays mostly read on its own. It is great because it is very short and introduce many important themes in cartesian philosophy. In here you find the famous *cogito ergo sum*.

However the *Meditations* is the book where his metaphysical/epistemological system is more fully developed and it's what you should probably read. Since it is the first peer reviewed philosophy book it also often come with an appendix of objections and answers which is important if you're a scholar but that you can easily dismiss. It's a bit dry but it is easy and fairly short as well.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do we empathize with animals more than we do with other human beings?

I noticed that I feel empathy for dogs to a greater extent and more easily than I do for other human beings. From an evolutionary perspective, maybe it is because humans are competition? Maybe because animal/dog nature is less evil compared to human nature? What are people's thoughts? I know there probably isn't a clear-cut, simple answer, but I wanted to generate some discussion.

[Assistant]
I think it has to innocence and simplicity. A lot of people feel the same way about children. There's this idea that animals and children don't "deserve" any harm that is coming to them. If someone were to beat up an adult man (and yes, it can and does depend on gender), a reasonable assumption could be made that they did something to cause that to happen. But with a child or an animal, they are seen as innocent, and therefore are not at fault. Even if they did do something, it is noted that they did not know any better.

Interestingly, this can be seen in horror films and such. People tend to react more negatively to violence against children and animals, but not to adults. Which is why if a child is involved, the horror often moves through them instead of harming them. Does that make sense?


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

[User]
Why are the eyes of burn victims often left intact?

I know it's not always the case, but when you see people where their face has practically melted off, how are the eyes still functional? Aren't they fragile to high temperatures?

[Assistant]
Eyes are covered and filled with fluid which is mostly water. Water has to absorb a lot of heat to increase in temperature as compared to most other materials. Because water can carry a large amount of heat, we use it in heating system and cooling system (like radiators).

Skin, muscles, and connective tissue have much less water thus as they are exposed to high temperatures they themselves increase in temperature much faster than the water logged eyes.


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

[User] ELI5:Why do dogs love to ride in cars, but cats generally hate it?

[Assistant]
I thought it was because dogs bonded to a group (other dogs originally, then people) while cats are territorial and geographically oriented.( starting  small, then  expanding their territory)

In a car the dog sees his clan is present and does not worry about  the new and rapid relocation, but a cat is getting torn from it's established territory. I.e. Major freak out time.


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

[User] ELI5: How do scientists predict, down to the exact degree, what the temperature will be for the next week?

[Assistant]
They will generally use high-resolution, regional weather models. These are essentially computer programs that solve a set of equations that aim to represent the physics of the atmosphere and ocean. These equations are extremely complicated so these models are also very complicated, which is why meterological agencies generally own very powerful supercomputers to solve them.

There are two main reasons why there is so much uncertainty in weather forecasts. Firstly, the equations being solved are chaotic which means they are extremely sensitive to initial conditions. Whilst weather stations allow us to gather data about the weather *now* so we can plug it into the models to find out the weather in a few days, we only have a limited number of weather stations, which means we have to 'guess' some of the initial conditions. These initial guesses introduce more and more error as the model steps forward in time. Part of the way we get around this is by running a set (an 'ensemble') of models with slightly varying initial conditions to represent our uncertainty, and then look at how widely or closely the outputs agree with one another.

Secondly, whilst we understand the fundamental physics of the environment, these equations have no exact solutions which means that any numerical solution we obtain through a computer is going to be an approximation. The complexity of the physics a computer can solve as well as the spatial (how small a grid cell a computer can model, the smaller the grid cell the better the results) and temporal (how small the time-step is, the smaller the better) resolutions are limited by how powerful your computer is.


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

[User]
Would burying the deceased without the use of coffins have a significantly positive effect on Earth's environment?

Do coffins themselves eventually decompose? If so, approximately how long does it take? How much could discontinuing their use reduce the amount of time needed for animal decomposition?

[Assistant]
Yes. To boost profits, the funeral industry has convinced people that they want their loved ones "preserved." This has led to caskets that are built to withstand an apocalypse: layers of concrete, bronze, and plastic, all sealed airtight with a hefty butyl rubber gasket. Ironically, the actual embalming of bodies isn't sufficient to keep them from decaying inside the casketthe egyptians had to remove all of the organs (where decomposition naturally begins) to make that happen. The (toxic) formaldehyde used by a typical funeral parlor only keeps you fresh long enough for the funeral. So your relatives consist of bones sloshing around in flesh-mush inside silly, impregnable 6-foot-deep fortresses.

Using a simpler, faster-decomposing coffin, such as a lightweight construction of wood, cardboard, cloth, or nothing at all, would save resources and avoid leaving bunkers full of human soup buried all over the place.

Source: Alan Weisman, *The World Without Us*, ppg 304-305. Great book.


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

[User]
CMV: Minimum wage should NOT be a living wage

I don't believe that minimum wage should be a living wage. I hold this view because it is my belief that money trades hands when the service/goods someone is providing exceeds the value of x dollars the buyer is offering. It is absurd to me that the government has passed legislation that dictates how much I value service/goods. Because of those beliefs, it seems wrong to me that someone should be given a living wage for sup-par work, or work that someone does not value at a specific living standard.

For example, let's say I own a large grocery store. At the front of my store, I have a greeter. The person I've hired as a greeter is unskilled, has no degree, bare minimal education, and I don't have the resources to train him. However, he has a friendly attitude and I think it might be nice for people to be greeted when they come in to my store.

Saying "Hi, welcome to HeyCallMe-Megamart!" does not take special skills, does not require a degree, requires minimal communication skills and does not require training. My new employee is doing work that nearly anyone could do. Therefore, I do not value his work at anything above ~$8 (if even that.)

Why should I have to pay this employee what is considered to be a living wage?

[Assistant] Because he/she is doing work? If you value him/her enough to keep them there for eight hours a day, you should value them enough to pay them enough so they can eat decent food and sleep under a roof during the other 16 hours a day. If you don't value the work enough to make the work worth living on, you don't value it enough for it to be done. Someone has to pay to keep that person alive, to feed and clothe and house them; if it isn't their employer, either they're independently wealthy (unlikely for a greeter), or they're living off food stamps and public housing, and all the taxpayers pick up your slack. Why should we all pay so that you can get the benefits of 8 hours per day of work?


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

[User] ELI5: Why have we settled on 16:9 as the standard aspect ratio?

[Assistant] 16:9 is the aspect ratio that can most easily handle all of the other historical aspect ratios (like 4:3 for broadcast TV, 2.2:1 for Panavision (movies), 2.39:1 for Cinemascope) with a minimum of picture loss and a maximum of the screen used. When they were developing the HD standard and needed to come up with an aspect ratio, a committee member actually cut out rectangles of equal area in the various historical and candidate aspect ratios. when they were laid over one another with the centerpoints matching, the smallest rectangle that would contain all of the other rectangles had a ratio that was very close to 16:9.


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

[User] ELI5: What on earth is Metaphysics?

[Assistant]
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy that deals with the abstract concepts in relation to the actuality of the universe: Time, history, cause, existence, identities, etc.

Similar to how metahumor is the humor found within the concept of humor itself, metaphysics is the physics pertaining to concepts.


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

[User] ELI5: Why are we so dependent on Taiwan for microchips? Why couldn't these be manufactured elsewhere, in addition to Taiwan?

[Assistant] They are manufactured elsewhere, TSMC is just the biggest company. Chip foundries are extremely specialized and require a lot of investment into equipment and facilities. Companies are working on building more to keep up with demand, but that process takes several years. There is just too much demand for the handful of chip foundries around the world.


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

[User]
[Batman] Bruce Wayne never witnesses his parent's death. Does he still become Batman?

On that fateful night, Bruce is sick and wants to stay at home. Thomas and Martha enjoy a date night in the city. They still run into Joe Chill and they die. The police come knocking on the door ,Alfred lets them in. They inform Bruce on what happened.

 How will this change Bruce's life?

[Assistant]
It'd be a less traumatic experience for sure, but probably not enough to entirely derail his path going by comic world logic.

I think the biggest thing that would change is that he probably wouldn't hate guns as much as he normally does, since a big part of that hate stemmed from the vivid experience of hearing seeing and feeling Chill fire his gun into his parents as they were in front/next to him.


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

[User]
ELI5:Why are we spending so many resources to lower transistor size in microchips? Why not just increase chip size to fit more transistors since silicon is so cheap?

I don't get why instead of pouring money and research into making microchip transistors and components smaller, you would just make the chip itself bigger to fit more components?

Take a computer for example, the size of the processor is extremely small considering it's the heart of the machine and compared to the size of other hardware like hard drives.

Plus from what I understand Silicon is very common and cheap and lowering the size of transistors in the chip demands higher purity of the Silicon, so it makes more sense to me to just make the entire chip larger instead.

Edit: Great discussion going on here! It's all very interesting.

[Assistant]
There are at least three good reasons.

The first is that smaller transistors require less electricity, as by being smaller, it just takes less energy to make them switch.  Owners frequently spend more on electricity to power a chip over its lifetime than they spent on buying the chip in the first place, especially if they're running it full time (like you might if you're a corporation or running a data center), so having smaller transistors is a competitive advantage.  You get to either provide more processing power in the same power envelope or the same processing power for less cost, either of which is good.

The second is mobile devices.  Power consumption is a huge deal there, so the first point is even more important than it is in larger devices, and in addition the physical size constraints are significant.  Every cubic millimeter dedicated to components is a cubic millimeter that's not being spent on battery capacity or making the device itself smaller, so smaller is better.

The third is that there's a limit on just how large a chip can be for a given clock speed, literally due to the speed of light.  Light can only travel about 30cm in a nanosecond, electrical pulses don't actually travel at the full speed of light, and current chips have clockspeeds in the 3GHz range, which means a clock tick is about 1/3 of a nanosecond.  Depending on how the chip is designed, you need to make sure that signals can travel some portion (possibly all the way) across the chip and then perhaps back again within a single clock cycle so that you can access all the cache and so forth, and it needs to do that with enough time that the transistors have time to reliably reach their new state if they flip.  If your chip is too large, that's just literally impossible, and you have to reduce the clock speed to make it work.


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

[User]
[Spiderman PS4] Did Peter's lateness from helping to arrest Kingpin contribute to Otto's personality change?

In the tutorial sequence, Peter gets calls from Otto asking him to come in to run safety checks on their equipment. When Peter finally comes in to work at the lab, he sees Otto using the equipment himself, moving the robotic arm and matching its movements to his own arm. From that point on, Otto slowly becomes more angry and obsessive, and it's revealed that the neural interface he uses to move the robotic limbs causes brain damage that lowers his inhibitions and changes his personality.

Was that day where Peter failed to show up and run the safety checks the first time Otto used the neural interface? If Peter had been there instead of helping the cops to arrest Kingpin, could he have noticed the dangerous effects of the interface earlier and stopped Otto from becoming Doctor Octopus?

[Assistant]
Did it contribute? Probably, yes. Can we blame Peter for it? No.

Before Otto started work on replacement limbs, he had a whole walk-in closet full of issues - not the least of which was being unappreciated, having credit stolen from him, being labelled a failure, and watching Norman Osborn succeed while he could not. Then theres the fact that he was hiding a disease that would rob him of his motor skills - effectively crippling him, trapping his mind in a useless body.

Peter being on time would have put a delay on the inevitable. What Otto becomes is no ones fault but his own. If Otto had reached out and explained his problems, maybe he would have been able to cope with his situation. But Otto is a very prideful and vengeful person, and acting on those desires led to his demise.


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

[User]
[Marvel/DC] As buff as everybody is, how are they able to fight crime? Shouldn't they constantly be sore/weak from the gym?

The types of physiques superheroes rock take serious, dedicated bodybuilding routines. You have to have hardcore workout sessions most days of the week in order to simply maintain those muscles.

Some characters like Batman slap on all the plates they can fit on a barbell in order to workout. How does Batman have the ability to work out with world record lift numbers and still have the ability to respond in case Bane attacks later that night? I doubt any MMA fighters do serious lifting on their fight days. They want to be at their peak and stay fresh for the fight.

[Assistant]
Batman spent years training before he even started fighting crime so he was already pretty dam buff. After a certain point you don't have to work out as hard and just make sure you are actually exercising (which Batman does) to maintain that physique. Also, keep in mind that just because you worked out a muscle a day before doesn't mean you'll wake up sore. That usually happens when you first start working out.

If they are in pain because of their workouts they can still soldier on as most superheroes are shown to have a pretty decent pain tolerance. I.e. Batman getting stabbed/shot, Spider-Man being buried alive, Green Lantern having his arm broken and so on.


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

[User] ELI5: How does Disney Channel manage to stay on the air and be profitable for so long when all of the commercials shown on there advertise for upcoming Disney Channel shows?

[Assistant] The Disney Channel is a full-time advertisement for the Disney brand. Children are immersed at a very young age into the Disney universe. They grow up continuing to be exposed to Disney content. Disney knows this creates demand for their products that FAR outweighs any potential revenue from third-party advertising on their tv channel.


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

[User]
[DC] Why doesn't Superman (or other Kryptonians) use the Daredevil lie detector technique more often?

Daredevil uses his super hearing as a tool to listen to one's heartbeat to see if someone is telling the truth or not.

It recently occurred to me, why doesn't Superman do that too? I know he can and he probably has at least once, but why doesn't he do it on the regular?

I wonder if it's an ethical thing with him. Even Foggy (in the Netflix series) found Matt's use of it questionable. I think Clark might also find that "crossing a line."

[Assistant]
He does. But he doesn't really question people. Even criminals he tries to encourage to do better because he wants to save them too. He always looks for the best in people.

It doesn't work on Batman, after he used it once Batman figured out a way to mask it (mostly so he could do the whole disappearing when Clark turns his back on him thing.) He still calls out Bruce though because he knows him well enough to know when he's not telling the whole story.

The super hearing thing isn't even Superman's best lie detector, he can see across the entire spectrum of light which let's him see slight temperature changes in your skin. His sense of smell is also just as good as his other senses, enabling him to detect minute changes in hormone levels as well.

You cannot directly lie to Superman. You may be able to fool him, but only because he is giving you the benefit of the doubt because he wants you to do better, wants you to BE better.


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

[User] ELI5: Why are vegetables and fruit so important for your diet?

[Assistant]
Both veggies and fruits have a ton of vitamins that humans don't naturally produce. Several vitamins originate in plants, with the amount we get from eating meat being diminished by the animal in question using them.

Vegetables have tons of fiber, which is good for your digestive health because humans can't digest most fiber. This helps keep you more regular, as it increases the amount of solid excrete you make.

Leafy veggies are low calorie and high in vitamins, so you can eat a lot of them without it having a significantly effect on your weight, which is why people on weight loss regimens are told to eat more leafy greens.

Starchy veggies like potatoes have more calories while still being rich in vitamins, so they are a good alternative. However, once they've been processed they lose a lot of that health value, which is why potato chips and french fries aren't really great for you, especially commercially produced ones that are basically soaked in vegetable oil.

Vegetable oil, despite being made of vegetables, is pretty awful for you. Olive oil is almost always going to be better for you.

For fruits, they are in a strange spot. Most berries are basically balls of sugar, but they do have plenty of vitamins as well, so you should eat them but primarily as snacks. It is not going to be healthy once you pass your first bowl of strawberries, and fruit cups are generally a generous but good amount of fruit to eat. Citrus fruits are famous for being good sources of vitamin C(a deficiency of which causes scurvy), but you can get vitamin C just as well from broccoli, kale, and brussel sprouts.

Anyways just eat veggies.


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

[User] ELI5: How do etch-a-sketchs work?

[Assistant]
Contrary to popular belief, the stylus you use to draw doesn't draw the line.

The inside "screen" of the toy is coated in aluminum powder, and when the stylus scrapes it out, it reveals the darkness inside the toy. When you shake it upside down, the beads inside the toy coat the screen, making it look "blank" again.

EDIT: Funny how you marked it technology.


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

[User]
What does it mean for a speaker to be "blown"? And how does it happen?

I've always heard that turning the volume up too high can blow your speakers, but never really understood what that meant... Please ELI5!

[Assistant]
*Blowing* a speaker is basically an umbrella term for catastrophic physical failure.  This can take the form of a circuit overheating and melting (or burning), or sometimes it's because of mechanical damage.

The mechanical damage happens because of the way sound works.  Sound is created by making something vibrate, which in turn pushes air outwards in ripples.  You can describe sound in terms of frequency (how many ripples is a given length) and in terms of *amplitude* (how high are the ripples?).

To make sound louder, you need to give your air waves more amplitude, which means the membrane of your speaker (the part that vibrates) has to flex further and further out.  Eventually, it flexes out so far that it breaks.


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

[User]
ELI5 How An Unopened Can of Soda Thrown Into An Industrial Smelter Could Cause A Significant Thermal Explosion?

One of my shop teachers back in high school said he used to work in a recycling plant and the biggest boogie men of the industry was having an unopened can of soda hitting a smelter at max temp. He told us the resulting explosion would be enough to take out the entire recycling facility. Is this even possible?

[Assistant] When the can melts it's contents instantly turns to steam.  The expansion ratio is about 1700 to 1.  So imagine in the middle molten metal when that can melts through there is an instant volume increase as big as 1700 soda cans.


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

[User]
[Cyberpunk 2077] How is maritime travel still possible?

It is stated in a shard (and I believe other places) that during the 4th corporate war, Arasaka, in their benevolent wisdom, flooded the world's oceans with self replicating mines. This has basically made maritime travel nearly impossible and made the necessity to build a wall around Coronado Bay. Why then do we see multiple ships in the game? These range from simple cargo ships to an Arasaka super carrier. Even if Arasaka had the ability to disengage their mines (which they don't, since the mines believe their updates are a virus and reject them), that still leaves out Cargo ships which we know have in fact brought cargo from places like the USSR.

[Assistant]
There are ways to temporarily clear a path and get ships through, and there are also safe zones near coastal areas where more hardened defenses keep the replicating mines away.

Maritime travel is basically impossible, but it still can be done at great cost and effort. All this did was limit non-essential travel and increase the need for in-country manufacturing as most transport is done by air and therefore more expensive.


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

[User] ELI5: Why is Africa so underdeveloped compared to other continents?

[Assistant] One of the bigger reasons is that a bunch of European powers (France, UK, Spain, Italy, Germany, Portugal) went and colonizied it. They pretty mich sucked out a lot of resources, killed a bunch of people and made everybody else poorer and more desprate. After the Europeans left, the main peace keeping force at the time (their armies) was gone and people tried to size power. This pushed most of the continent into civil war or dictatorship that are just now statrting to recover.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do some batteries "re-charge" themselves a little bit after they already died and you wait for a while?

[Assistant]
Batteries create electrical charge off of a chemical reaction occurring within the case. However as the reactants are not gaseous, it is very hard (teetering on impossible) to react all of the stuff together on the first go. Meaning, if you mix two liquid reactants together by pouring one into another, it is impossible to tell when the reaction is fully finished and there could be "holdouts" or clumps of reactants that have yet to come into contact with anything to react with.

Batteries "regain" charge because there is still some holdout reactants within the case.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do really long exposure photos weigh more MB? Shouldn't every pixel have the same amount of information regardless of how many seconds it was exposed?

I noticed that a regular photo weighs a certain amount of MBs, while if I keep the shutter open for 4, 5 minutes the resulting picture is HUGE.
Any info on why this happens?

[Assistant]
The jpeg format we store photos in is designed to store a good photograph efficiently. A good photo has large areas of smooth, even gradients, and Jpeg does a great job of *compressing* these to take up less space.

A long exposure photo will have more random 'roughness' in the picture. It will be much more *noisy*, with small, random changes in individual pixels. Jpeg is not designed for this, so it takes more space to store the noise.


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

[User]
ELI5: The Armenian Genocide.

This is a hot topic, feel free to post any questions here.

[Assistant]
The Armenian Genocide was the systematic killing of approx. 1.5 million Armenians in 1915 by the Ottoman Empire. It occured in 2 stages. First all able-bodied men were either shot, forced into front line military service (remember 1915 was during WWI) or worked to death in forced labour camps. Second, women, children and the elderly were marched into the Syrian Desert and denied food and water until they died.

Turkey don't recognise the genocide because when the Republic of Turkey was formed after the war they claimed to be the 'Continuing state of the Ottoman Empire' even though the Sultanate had been abolished. This essentially means that they take proxy responsibility for the actions of the Ottoman government during the war and so they would be admitting that the killed 1.5 million of their own people. This is obviously really embarrassing for them.


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

[User]
ELI5: why do we sometimes sweat excessively when sleeping?

Last night, after an hour and a half of sleeping, I woke up and my bed sheets were soaked with sweat, as in you could actually see patches, not just damp.
How come I don't subconsciously throw the duvet off myself iny sleep, or even wake up before I start to sweat excessively?

[Assistant] There's a lot of reasons, one person mentioned being overweight already, you could possibly have eaten a huge meal before bed and that could cause it, you might have had a nightmare and then the sweating would be due to excess nervous stimulation (sympathetic response), or you might be like me and life in a place where it is really freaking hot and you don't have AC yet. This list is probably pretty inexhaustive because there are a lot of reasons people sweat.


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

[User] [Star Trek]was Odo conscious before he the Bajoran discovered him? If yes how did he not go insane from boredom, floating in space for decades or centuries?

[Assistant]
Changelings view the universe different from solid lifeforms and vague sense of time.

Odo, who was a new Changling when he was found, was probably barely sapient in his container and would remain so until he ended up landing somewhere.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why did Rand Paul say that the GOP "hawks" created ISIS?

and is there any truth to it?

I understand that the buildup to what we currently know as ISIS took place over several decades, but how much of that was due to US involvement? And was it just the GOP, or were the democrats involved as well?

[Assistant]
Paul is strongly anti-interventionist. In other words, he generally doesn't support the US going to war overseas. In the case of ISIS, while its roots are complex the leadership itself came together in an Iraqi prison camp post-invasion. The GOP charged in back in 2003 without much of a plan beyond removing Saddam. Paul's point of view is that the GOP 'hawks' shoot first and ask questions later, and this just makes things worse.

Whether he is correct, and how much Obama's policies since 2008 have affected it, is very contentious. You have hawks like McCain who blame Obama for withdrawing and leaving a power vacuum, but then again McCain's foreign policy pretty much consists of shooting at things and working out the details later (see Ukraine, Iraq, Syria etc etc). So how much Obama is to blame given the policies of his predecessors is difficult to judge.


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

[User] ELI5:ELI5: If Cancer is spread via the lymphatic and blood systems, can't we disconnect all the ones that travel to and supply the tumour, thereby preventing it from spreading or growing?

[Assistant]
That's exactly what you do to surgically excise a tumor.

Some tumors grow in locations where surgery would be impractical or extremely dangerous though. Which is where treatments like targeted radiation come in.


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

[User] [Culture] What exactly are Displacer units, and how do they compare to forms of FTL travel found in other popular SciFi verses?

[Assistant]
Displacers encapsulate matter in a containment field and then shunt it through hyperspace to another location in realspace. The energy requirements rise dramatically with the amount of mass and the distance displaced. Culture Displacers were precise enough to accurately deliver chemicals into a biological body for medical purposes, but the largest shipboard and orbital based ones were powerful enough to move a small starships across a system. Some Culture ships could even execute "snap" displacements where they're moving at high speed relative to the target, sometimes with less than a second in range of the target.

Shields that extend into hyperspace (standard in the Cultures' galaxy) can block displacement since they block hyperspace.

The biggest drawbacks of displacement as a form of FTL travel are that it relies on a separate unit (external to the mass being displaced) and it quickly scales to be massively more difficult than  simply putting a hyperspace field engine on the object and having it move itself directly.


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

[User]
What is dust? Why is it, no matter how much I clean, just as much (or more) reappears by the following day?

This is driving me mad.  It makes my home feel nasty and dirty all the time.

[Assistant] Dust is, quite simply, everything you know and love slowly disintegrating over time.  A lot of it is skin cells from people and pets (dander), pollen from plants, and small particles of everything that wears down over time.


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

[User] ELI5: How does quantum computing work?

[Assistant]
Regular computers store the values of 0 and 1. To represent a series of numbers, they must store them all, like this.
000
001
010
011
100
101
110
111

Quantum computers store numbers as 0, 1, or 'superposition', which is 0 and 1 at the same time (Q). This means that they can save the same range of numbers as QQQ.

This not only saves memory storage, it dramatically speeds up some math problems. Imagine needing the answers to all of the above numbers multiplied by 00, 01, 10, and 11. In a standard computer, you need to do each math operation, with a quantum computer you do one operation. QQQQ x QQ.


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

[User] [Black Panther] How did the Wakandans or the king stop themselves from becoming an empire? They've utilized vibranium for centuries. They could have easily conquered their neighbors and beyond. What stopped them?

[Assistant] What would they gain by conquering their neighbors? Wealth? They had all the wealth they needed. Security? Security from whom? As you say, they could have easily conquered their neighbors, so they weren't really under threat. Glory? Well it would be fair to say that this has been the motivation for many conquerors throughout history, but then glory is going to mean to different things to different cultures. It may simply be that in Wakanda, any king that indulges in foreign affairs is viewed as neglecting the needs of the people, and will be judged poorly by history.


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

[User] ELI5: Why are 9mm bullets less dangerous than 7.62 or even 5.56 ones? Shouldnt they deal more damage with bigger size?

[Assistant]
9mm bullets are dangerous.

However they are a handgun round.  They're less aerodynamic and have less power coming out of the barrel.  They're not designed for long-distance flight.

7.62/.308 and 5.56/.223 are rifle rounds.  They have more power out the barrel and are designed for long- distance, accurate engagement.


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

[User]
[His Dark Materials] How come bigger dmons are not more frequent?

I don't recall seeing anyone with Giraffes, Elephants or Hippopotami (is this plural correct lol)

[Assistant]
Remember- you can't stray too far from your daemon. This means its final form can be very inconvenient.: we have an example of someone who's daemon is a dolphin and thus had to live at sea because otherwise his daemon would be beached.

These people have it worse. If you're unlucky enough to have an elephant as a daemon, you probably won't be around much, because there's a *full grown elephant* everywhere you go. Imagine how must destruction you would have caused today if you had to keep a full grown African elephant within a few hundred feet of you at all times.

People with such daemons either take the difficult task of separating or, more likely, go into some remote place where they're not causing quite as much chaos. Either way, they don't show up.


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

[User]
[LOTR] Why isn't there more scientific advance in Middle Earth?

And I don't buy the usual "because they had magic they didn't need to develop technology" thing. That is fine for the Elves of which every one could sing out a magic bow out of a tree, ok.

But Men? Except 5 Wizard (which just look human but weren't) and some bloodlines living longer and the Righteous King having a healing touch there wasn't any magic for mortal men.

So why in a continuous thousands of years old civilisation was there no good technological advance? More then so seeing as at many times humankind was at war and scientific progress is seven times quicker during war.

[Assistant]
>scientific progress is seven times quicker during war.

This is a sort of Sid Meier's Civilization way of looking at scientific progress that doesn't apply to our modern world, or to the Third Age. Science is a process that the Third Age simply didn't have. The process of hypothesis, test, confirm/deny, re-hypothesize simply wasn't conceived of at the time.

Second, they had access to things that science just couldn't account for. The Tower of Isengard was a single, impossibly huge piece of rock, shaped by unknown means into a great fortress. The Palantiri were stones that allowed sight and hearing across vast distances, with no discernible mechanism. The list goes on. No science can explain them, certainly not the science to which the Dunedain had access. They are just things that are, parts of the world that are inexplicable. The people who made them understood something about the world on a fundamental level that is impossible to explain to another person.

All that is to say that craft, not science, is what happened in this era. Craft is more than a method, it is a process of doing and understanding that is not necessarily falsifiable or transferable. It requires a certain creative spark which not all Men possess. After the fall of Numenor, Men are weakened greatly in their strength of spirit, and their talent for craft wanes over time. This has to do with a lot of things -- the constant presence of strife, the shorter life-spans (and thus less time for study and contemplation), the growing concern with power, its maintenance, and its acquisition, etc.

Another aspect is that craft has a certain spiritual element to it. It is creative in the way that art is creative -- it requires something of the artist. Feanor, after crafting the Silmarils, said that there were some things he could only accomplish once, and they were such things. Even the Valar were unable to remake the Two Trees after Melkor destroyed them. When Men declined after the fall of Numenor, their capacity for craft declined with their spiritual and temporal might, for various reasons.


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

[User] If the type of element is directly correlated with its number or protons/neutrons/electrons, why aren't there infinite elements and why is 'discovering' a new one a big deal?

[Assistant]
There are not necessarily infinitely many elements that can exist, because eventually there will be a point where the system is so heavy that it wont be able to sustain bound states if you add anymore nucleons.

Discovering a new one is a big deal because weve already discovered all the ones that arent extremely difficult to produce.


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

[User]
ELI5: How do we know what the Milky Way looks like?

If we're part of the Milky Way how do we know what it looks like? How do we observe a galaxy that we're part of?

[Assistant]
Three things
1 - We understand the orbital mechanics of galaxies.  We understand what shapes are possible and what are not possible due to the current laws of physics.

2 - We can look at other galaxies and see examples.  For example, we see that spiral is a common shape for a galaxy.

3 - Most importantly, by looking at the stars surrounding us in the night sky, we can get an approximate picture of what the galaxy looks like.  If you're on a highway and see a lot of cars in front of you and few behind you, you can estimate what the scene might look like to a helicopter even if you're on the ground yourself.  Then using #1 and #2 we can match up what we see with what we expect to see and get our final picture.


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

[User]
[harry potter/DC] what would happen if Harry put on the helmet of fate?

I'm not incredibly versed in the harry potter universe but if the helmet of fate was still able to posses it's wearer would Harry be able to resist it?

[Assistant]
No. Nabu is orders higher than the greatest wizards of the Harry Potter universe combined. He is a Lord of Order, responsible for universal balance.

Even with Harry's special protections, there's a strong chance that Nabu would totally overwhelm him in order to carry out his duties as Doctor Fate.


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

[User] ELI5 why does fiber cause gas?

[Assistant] Fiber refers to carbohydrates, such as cellulose, that aren't digestible by humans, and pass through the digestive tract relatively unaffected, at least on a molecular level.  This contributes to fullness / satiety, and it helps make sure that there's solid matter moving through the GI tract, which helps keep you regular. However, many types of bacteria in the intestines do have the ability to break down these carbohydrates.  The end products of these processes are generally simple compounds such as water, methane gas, and carbon dioxide.  And all that gas building up in the intestines builds up until the body has a release.


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

[User]
ELI5:Why do large commercial planes have two steering wheels and two pilots?

How exactly does it help to have two people steer a plane at the same  time?

[Assistant]
Virtually all multi-seat planes have two sets of steering wheels; even the lowly Cessna 172.

Note that the controls *cannot* be used independently: moving one set of controls will also move the other set.

With those preliminary concepts aside, the basic answers are: redundancy and specialization. The co-pilot might perform special tasks to take some work off the pilot (radio communication, monitoring certain instruments, etc).


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

[User]
Why do some nations that produce enough food to provide for their whole population end up importing that same food?

I believe this is the case for Canada with wheat.

[Assistant]
The reasons can be very simple. Canada has free trade with the US. The border between the two countries is very long and most of the population of Canada lives very close to the border. As a result, the transport cost of transporting a good across Canada may be larger than the administrative costs of importing it from over the border in the US.

The price of a good (e.g. wheat) may favour Canada at one place along the border and may favour the US at another place on the border.


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

[User]
ELI5: Is it Loud Inside Our Bodies?

ELI5: Weird question but the body does a lot of cool things, while eating for example, but just in general keeping us alive, pumping blood and oxygen around it.
It just kinda made me think, if we were inside our bodies, would it be loud or just kinda quiet, I dont know if there is a scientific explanation.

[Assistant] So there are some people that have a malformation in the inner ear where they have a small hole in the bone and they state that its like being on a busy street all the time. (Its called canal dehiscence syndrome)


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

[User]
What can be known with little or no evidence?

Some things, like math or "I think therefore I am", can be known a priori. Is there anything else? Is reasoning futile without good information. Why or why not?

[Assistant]
Tautologies, e.g. "All bachelors are unmarried".

One need not consult experience to determine whether all bachelors are unmarried. Now of course -as one may object-  experience is required to understand the concepts "bachelor," "unmarried and so forth. However, the a priori/a posteriori distinction as employed by Kant refers not to the origins of the concepts but to the justification of the propositions. Once we have the concepts, experience is no longer necessary.


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

[User]
Does Supersymmetry include antimatter?

So would we in theory have an anti-selectron and an anti-squark?

[Assistant]
Sure. Everything has its antiparticle unless it is its own antiparticle (like the Z boson), and every known particle has a superpartner, that includes antiparticles.

The Higgs sector gets more complicated. You get at least one pair of Higgs bosons and three that are their own antiparticle - and their superpartners.


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

[User] ELI5 why carbon monoxide is so poisonous to breathe when carbon dioxide is not.

[Assistant]
Carbon monoxide binds very strongly to hemoglobin, the molecule that carries oxygen in your blood. When it does so, it stops hemoglobin from binding to oxygen, and limits your body's capacity to get oxygen in the process.

Carbon dioxide, which is almost completely non-reactive, doesn't do that.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why isn't our sun and solar system slowly being sucked in to the black hole at the center of the Milky Way?

There's been some news about black hole discoveries recently, but we don't here much about the black hole in our own galaxy. What effect does it have on our solar system?

[Assistant]
Black holes aren't the cosmic vacuums that some media has made them out to be.

Once you get very close some odd things happen due to the immense gravitational forces, but at a distance they behave like any other large object.

The Sun more or less orbits the massive center of the milky way galaxy.  The black hole at the center is massive (almost certainly the most massive object in the galaxy by far), but only a small percentage of the total mass of the galaxy.


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

[User]
Why does my ear suddenly start ringing and stop just as abruptly?

The other day I suddenly lost hearing in my right ear, and it began ringing loudly. This went on for about a 45 seconds, and then it stopped and all was normal. What happened?

[Assistant]
It's called spontaneous tinnitus, and it's something that everybody experiences from time to time. It doesn't usually last as long as 45 seconds; it usually resolves itself in about ten seconds, on average. It's possible that it just felt longer than it was.

The short answer to your why question is that nobody knows exactly what causes tinnitus, but it seems to have a variety of different possible causes. Some people experience tinnitus when they're in a silent environment, for example; that's thought to be neurological. With no actual sound for your auditory cortex to react to, you perceive a background hum or ring.

Tinnitus is also associated with things like the impaction of ear wax and inner-ear infections, but that's not what you're talking about. You're talking about the spontaneous kind that comes on suddenly in one ear, and just as suddenly resolves itself.

Nobody knows what causes that. What is known is that it happens to everybody, and it's entirely normal. It isn't, by itself, a sign of anything.