Space & Astronomy
Exploring "Why" questions about Space & Astronomy
480 articles
Why hasn’t soccer caught on in Canada or the US, despite being huge in practicallu every other country on the planet?
This isn't an answer, but something very closely related that has puzzled me. Youth soccer is incredibly popular in the US. Nearly every school district has a youth soccer league, at least where I'm f
Why does your skin show your sun tan / burn so much more after you shower but not if you were to just jump in the pool?
When you shower, you scrub your skin with soap and a wash cloth or loofah or something similar. This exfoliates the top layer of skin, leaving the tanned layer underneath. You don't do quite as much s
Why is it some Surahs or chapters in the Qu’ran start with a series of Arabic letters?
It's completely unknown. Many Arabic and Islamic scholars and teachers have discussed the issue, for many many centuries, but the reason for their existence and their meaning was never revealed by Moh
Why does my battery stay on 100% for 30 minutes and then as soon as it drops below 100%, start decreasing much more rapidly?
To make it short, battery percentage is only an estimation. And often, a phone that shows 100% isn't really at 100% of the battery, more like at 95-98% because the charger trick charge it. Staying at
Why, in virtually every picture of the Earth taken from space, is North shown as being at the top of the picture?
Just by convention. That's what most people are used to seeing. Same reason why when you take a picture, you hold your camera so the top is on top.
Why are male beauty pageants significantly less famous than women’s such as Miss Universe?
Across the human species, men are more visual in their attraction to mates than women are. Staring at a bunch of female hotties is something that appeals more strongly to a bunch of males than the oth
Why is it that in Science Fiction, Military Space-faring vessels are almost always controlled by the Navy?
Because the Navy is the branch of military that is most often associated with travel, and ship, and such. Not to mention naval terms are often used because the other branches don't really have terms f
Why is it that books can stay on store shelves for years and be unharmed, but the second I buy them and put them on my bookshelf, the pages start to yellow?
Book stores have specially calibrated air conditioning that keeps the books in perfect condition. They do this so that when the books leave the store they begin to weather so it looks like you've read
Why does a hard drive have less space than the manufacturer says
A small portion is used to store the structure of the drive itself. But the big reason is that when the manufacturer says 256 GB, they mean 256 * 1,000,000,000 Bytes, or 256,000,000,000 bytes. When yo
Why are we able to find planets in distant galaxies but we’re not 100% sure if Planet X and Planet Y are right here in the solar system?
Just want to make a clarification: we can detect planets in distant solar systems, but not in other galaxies.