AskScience AMA Series: Hi, I'm Kate Adamala, biochemist working on building synthetic cells. Ask Me Anything! |
- AskScience AMA Series: Hi, I'm Kate Adamala, biochemist working on building synthetic cells. Ask Me Anything!
- What is the consistency of outer space? Does it always feel empty? What about the plasma and heliosheath and interstellar space? Does it all feel the same emptiness or do they have different thickness?
- Given current technology and information, what will ultimately be the death of our solar system?
- If we came across a friendly, but completely un-contacted tribe of humans, how would we begin to understand their language?
- If you were light leaving a star and you were able to turn around, what would you see?
- Do we know or have a estimate of the next system Voyager 1 will enter and how long it will take?
- Will the universe just eventually be a giant black hole, or can other things stop the spread of them?
- How can a habitable zone be defined?
- If they really wanted, could the scientists at the large hadron collider destroy the earth?
- How does computer generate random numbers?
- What happens when a computer displays an image with a higher resolution than it's own maximum?
- Why does scientists look for earthlike planets if we are seeing them with billions of years delay?
- Why can't you make a fusion chain reaction?
- What could I do to personally prove the earth is round?
- Can a diverging lens form a real image under any circumstance?
- Since energy is neither created nor destroyed and all objects with temperature radiate heat how come objects dont eventually radiate all of their energy and reach 0K?
- Do astronauts who live on the space station experience the time implications of general relativity?
- Why do multiplying decimals offer a smaller number than adding them?
- Are stars really far enough that we see them in the past? If so, are their positions and sizes different than what we see?
- Are all functions power series?
- If some people are "face blind", are there people who are "voice deaf"?
- Since our galaxy is orbiting around a super-massive black hole, shouldn't pictures of our galaxy have a point in the center where there is no light?
| Posted: 17 Jan 2017 05:00 AM PST I'm an assistant professor at University of Minnesota, running a lab aiming at building and studying synthetic minimal cells. We literally prototype biology: building artificial cells to study natural life. I teach How to Grow Almost Anything, an international online class for Fab Lab bioengineers. My recent TEDx talk - Life but not Alive discusses the possible uses of synthetic cells: in personalized medicine, basic science research, biotechnology and space exploration. We constantly look for new ideas and applications. And spoiler alert: it is safe. Artificial life is not going to take over the world. I'm looking forward to your questions! Kate will be around from 1-3 PM ET (18-20 UT) to answer your questions. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 16 Jan 2017 02:05 PM PST |
| Given current technology and information, what will ultimately be the death of our solar system? Posted: 16 Jan 2017 04:36 PM PST |
| Posted: 16 Jan 2017 08:02 AM PST Given no interpreter or translation material, what is the process of cataloging and translating and previously completely unknown language? [link] [comments]  |
| If you were light leaving a star and you were able to turn around, what would you see? Posted: 16 Jan 2017 04:25 PM PST |
| Do we know or have a estimate of the next system Voyager 1 will enter and how long it will take? Posted: 16 Jan 2017 06:27 PM PST Since plotting and projecting is so common in astronomy that someone would have taken the time to make the calculations. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 16 Jan 2017 07:41 PM PST |
| How can a habitable zone be defined? Posted: 16 Jan 2017 04:40 PM PST Hello i hope im on right place for my question here. I know that the definition of a habitable zone is complicated and depending on many parameters like size and light of the sun. Atmosphere of the planet and lot of other things. But what i wonder about can u not maximal definr how far a planet minimal have to be from the sun? How is it possible to say anything about maximal distance? I mean isnt biggest part of earths temperature coming from its core? Wasnt earth one a pure hot lava planet? Couldnt there be just some planet with a hoter core then earth which no mather how far from its sun provides itself with heat from its core and reaches just perfect Temperature conditions for liquid water by its own? Or a planet with heavy continous vulkano activity allowing some areas on the planet to be constandtly in that tempersture lebel thanks to magma? Would be happy to get some explanation why for example there couldnt be a hot planet as far from sun as pluto. [link] [comments]  |
| If they really wanted, could the scientists at the large hadron collider destroy the earth? Posted: 16 Jan 2017 10:46 PM PST |
| How does computer generate random numbers? Posted: 17 Jan 2017 02:27 AM PST |
| What happens when a computer displays an image with a higher resolution than it's own maximum? Posted: 16 Jan 2017 01:04 PM PST For example: If I have a 1280x720 (16:9) screen and I pull up a 1920x1080 (also 16:9) image, the whole image is shown. If my screen has a limited number of pixels, how does it display an image with more? What aspects of the image are lost and how does the computer know what to compress (or which pixels to remove) to keep the image viewable? [link] [comments]  |
| Why does scientists look for earthlike planets if we are seeing them with billions of years delay? Posted: 17 Jan 2017 03:21 AM PST What I don't understand is most this, even if we find some earthlike planet it may be probably already dead because of our distance and light speed. Then what is the purpose of searching them? Search for life with this huge distance? Edit: We could also say thousands of years. [link] [comments]  |
| Why can't you make a fusion chain reaction? Posted: 16 Jan 2017 10:56 PM PST I know that making two nuclei fuse requires lots of energy. However, it looks like a single fusion releases far more energy than is required to cause additional fusions. Eg., looking at the deuterium + deuterium reaction, it requires ~100 KeV of collision energy to start, but releases ~4,000 KeV when it happens. This energy seems like it would go into nearby deuterium nuclei, which would then fuse together too, heating up more deuterium nuclei, and so on. Obviously, this doesn't happen, but why not? [link] [comments]  |
| What could I do to personally prove the earth is round? Posted: 16 Jan 2017 04:16 PM PST |
| Can a diverging lens form a real image under any circumstance? Posted: 16 Jan 2017 09:54 PM PST Also, only real, not virtual, images can be protected onto a screen, right? And it can be photographed? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 16 Jan 2017 05:47 PM PST |
| Do astronauts who live on the space station experience the time implications of general relativity? Posted: 16 Jan 2017 08:58 PM PST Essentially do the astronauts on the ISS age faster than we do down here? I know the ISS is in low earth orbit so maybe the implications are immaterial at that height, but what about the astronauts who went to the moon? At what threshold above earth would time be noticeably distorted from the different perspectives? [link] [comments]  |
| Why do multiplying decimals offer a smaller number than adding them? Posted: 16 Jan 2017 11:04 PM PST It sounds like a really bad question, but the more I thought about it the less I understood what was going on. It was triggered by me messing around with the square root function on my calculator and then realizing the square root of a decimal is higher than the original number. Conventionally, multiplying something should always return a "larger" number compared to adding them. So I found this pretty counter intuitive. (e.g 0.5 + 0.5 = 1 but 0.5 * 0.5 = 0.25) (but 5 + 5 = 10 and 5 * 5 = 25) [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 16 Jan 2017 10:37 PM PST |
| Are all functions power series? Posted: 16 Jan 2017 12:44 PM PST I know alle polonomials are finite power series and that the exp, sine and cosine function can be written as power series, so I wondered if maybe all functions could be written as a power series. I hope this question makes sense :D [link] [comments]  |
| If some people are "face blind", are there people who are "voice deaf"? Posted: 16 Jan 2017 07:07 AM PST I have heard people are able to differentiate between people's voices much better than other sounds. Are there people who lack this ability? Would they ever realize this? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 16 Jan 2017 04:29 PM PST I've been looking at pictures of The Milky Way and noticed that in most of the pictures, the center is glowing with light like in this picture. Since our galaxy is orbiting a super-massive black hole, shouldn't there be a point in the center where we would be able to see the black hole? [link] [comments]  |
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