Explain like I'm five: respuestas sencillas a preguntas complejas
Abro este tema para que tengamos un sitio donde preguntar nuestras inquietudes y que se nos de una respuesta que, ante todo, sea comprensible y sencilla, aún siendo incompleta y parcial. No buscamos "aprender" algo de forma ideal, sino satisfacer nuestra curiosidad aún a costa de hacerlo de forma vaga o imprecisa.
Este hilo está basado en el reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/
Os pongo algunos ejemplos que creo que pueden ilustrar bien lo que se busca en este hilo. Las respuestas pueden ser graciosas o muy muy simplificadas, lo que se busca es entender la idea principal que hay detrás de la respuesta, ni siquiera la respuesta en sí. Disculpad porque están en inglés, pero son bastante graciosas:
> What makes it so your body can stay in a coma for years and just randomly wake up? Why are comas so unpredictable for how long you are asleep for?
Imagine you're playing Dwarf Fortress. Your fortress is big, complex, and detailed levels stretch from surface to the underground caves. Suddenly there's a cave in that collapses a wide area of tunnels three quarters of the way down your whole fortress. This is a gigantic mess. The majority of your dwarves will be tasked clearing rubble, digging new tunnels, redigging old tunnels, basically repairing the whole fortress. It takes too many dwarves to spare any for trading or diplomacy or military, so you close up the fortress while the long repairs are underway.
Normally this would spell death as the fortress is not farming or hunting food for itself, but other fortresses in the area donate foodstuffs while the long repairs are underway. They don't know the progress of the repairs, but they're hedging that your dwarves can get it done. If they do, if they manage to get things just to the point where the fortress can operate again, the gates will open and the dwarves will pour out to get things running again.
Sometimes they can't. The chasms are too big, the remaining stone too weak to build with. This fortress is never going to be up and running again. It's dwarves will live only as long as the food supplies last. But we can not know that, we can only judge by what we can see from the outside.
> Stephen Hawking's new theory on black holes
All right, let's say you have a friend named Simon, who's a normal weight and loves junk food, and a friend named Albert, who's extremely fat and also loves junk food. Since you're buddies with Simon, you'd be able to guess what junk food they're gonna eat next based on what they ate before and you'd also be able to guess what they had eaten based on the wrappers and boxes left over. However, even though you're buddies with Fat Albert, he's just so huge that when he gets near enough something to eat, he swallows it wrapper and all. You have no idea what he'd eat next or what he ate before because he swallowed anything and everything near him. BUT NOW, all of a sudden, you realize that Albert is not only fat, but he's a messy eater. Because of this, you realize that there are crumbs, smudges, and pieces of the food left around his mouth. So you're like, OH! Now I know what you ate. Maybe in time you could use that to learn his eating habits just like you know your buddy Simon's!
So in this case, you're Mr Hawking, and you realized that the black hole, Albert, although he seemed not to leave evidence of food (information), actually might leave that evidence at the edge of his mouth (the event horizon = the edge of the black hole). You can use that to figure out all sorts of things!
Pues eso, básicamente id preguntando cualquier cosa que siempre quisisteis saber, pero imaginábais muy difícil de comprender por todo lo que hay detrás. Dependiendo de lo complejo de la pregunta, podremos precisar más o menos, pero siempre será una explicación sencilla obviando los tecnicismos siempre que sea posible.
Si tu interés es profundo o quieres aprender realmente sobre toda la nomenclatura y procesos de tu pregunta, quizá deberías preguntarlo en el hilo de "dudas sencillas sobre X" o incluso si tu pregunta tiene cierta relevancia y es muy compleja, abrir un hilo para ello.
Aviso desde la moderación a navegantes
Este es el hilo de dudas simples, ELI5. Lo que se logra preguntando dudas complejas aquí es que otra gente con dudas más sencillas no las transmitan por pensar que pueden quedar en "evidencia" dada la "sencillez" de su pregunta; y nada más lejos de la realidad.Para algo concreto más allá de lo simple, recomendamos crear un nuevo hilo. Intentemos fomentar que la gente que tenga dudas simples de matemáticas vengan a este hilo. Quienes tengan dudas simples de física a este otro. Y quienres deseen una explicación sencilla de algún fenómeno a este otro. Intentemos hacer de Ciencia un subforo accesible y donde todos sientan que pueden aportar.