AskScience AMA Series: I'm Kevin Esvelt, head of the Sculpting Evolution group at the MIT Media Lab and an inventor of CRISPR gene drive - AMA! |
- AskScience AMA Series: I'm Kevin Esvelt, head of the Sculpting Evolution group at the MIT Media Lab and an inventor of CRISPR gene drive - AMA!
- Do people that speak different languages get different located wrinkles?
- How do scientists measure the universe's expansion rate?
- Does the sea/ocean floor have distinct biomes and ecosystems?
- What makes treeline altitude (highest trees can grow) vary from place to place?
- You regularly hear about solar flares potentially damaging satellites in earth’s orbit, but never about them damaging the ISS. Do solar flares pose a threat to the ISS?
- Can we control or predict the direction of an emitted photon?
- What makes elements with the same number of valence electrons (like Carbon and Silicon) chemically different? What causes them to act differently at all?
- How come when through my polarising sunglasses coach windows have a shadowy lumpy pattern?
- Relationship between the Thickness & Magnetic field penetration of a type-II superconductor?
- Why are planet rings flat?
- How do ant colonies handle rain?
- Is it possible for a sound to break the sound barrier? Why or why not and if it can, what would happen?
- How does consuming caffeine compare to absorbing it through your skin?
| Posted: 02 Jul 2018 04:00 AM PDT Hi, my name's Kevin Esvelt and I'm a scientist working on molecular, evolutionary, and ecological engineering. I played a very minor role in developing CRISPR genome editing and was evidently the first to realize it could be used to build gene drive systems capable of engineering populations of wild organisms. If you haven't read about gene drive - and even if you have - I highly recommend reading this hugely informative essay by Dylan Matthews of Vox. Relatedly, I'm a strong advocate of more open science, beginning with using gene drive research as a small and high-profile field trial of pre-registration in tech development. Finally, we in Sculpting Evolution try to carefully consider our moral obligations and publicly admit mistakes. We'll be on at 2pm eastern (19 UT) - AMA! EDIT: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver did a segment about this just last night! [link] [comments]  |
| Do people that speak different languages get different located wrinkles? Posted: 01 Jul 2018 03:39 PM PDT Since one language require certain facial/mouth movements, while another language require other facial/mouth movements – does that mean different locations on their wrinkles? [link] [comments]  |
| How do scientists measure the universe's expansion rate? Posted: 02 Jul 2018 06:25 AM PDT |
| Does the sea/ocean floor have distinct biomes and ecosystems? Posted: 01 Jul 2018 09:06 PM PDT On land, we see a huge variety of different natural environments - from mountains, forests, plains, rivers, and lakes to human settlements and cities. The diversity of flora and fauna varies wildly on the scale of even a few kilometers. After watching some Subnautica videos, it struck me that I have always thought of an ocean as a very uniform environment, with maybe coral reefs or thermal vents being a rare exception to the norm. While Subnautica is clearly an over-exaggeration, I don't think that my view is that close to the truth either. Is this actually the case? Or does the ocean floor exhibit as much variety in different ecosystems as dry land does? If so, what are some examples? How about above the sea floor? Can we identify different 'biomes' even in the 3D mass of the water? [link] [comments]  |
| What makes treeline altitude (highest trees can grow) vary from place to place? Posted: 01 Jul 2018 07:53 PM PDT In Colorado it's about 10,800'. In California it's about 8,500' in places. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 01 Jul 2018 03:35 PM PDT |
| Can we control or predict the direction of an emitted photon? Posted: 01 Jul 2018 10:07 PM PDT That is to say, can we emit a single photon from a emission source and control its direction of emission? My understanding of the two-slit experiment and the concept of how a diffraction pattern can emerge even while emitting photons one at a time is that the diffraction pattern emerges due to it being the probability of any one photon impacting the senor at that location. More probable impact locations represent the maxima and improbable locations represent the minima. Is it possible to emit a photon with such a specific direction such at we could predict it's impact point? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 01 Jul 2018 07:36 PM PDT From what I understand, the valence electrons of the atom are what determines how it interacts chemically with other elements, are there any factors, besides maybe electronegativity, that make them different from each other? [link] [comments]  |
| How come when through my polarising sunglasses coach windows have a shadowy lumpy pattern? Posted: 02 Jul 2018 01:24 AM PDT Looking through my polarising glasses on a long coach journey I can see a weird semi-regular pattern of shadow / black smears on the window? I haven't seen this through any windows previously. My first guess is that it's to do with how the glass was formed, I know there's techniques they use to make it strong in the centre but weak at the corners. But this I guess work. [link] [comments]  |
| Relationship between the Thickness & Magnetic field penetration of a type-II superconductor? Posted: 01 Jul 2018 10:17 AM PDT As I'm learning more about the "Meissner effect" relevant to type-II superconductor's, I'm curious if there is a proportionality between a material's thickness, and the magnetic field penetration? The greater thickness = Greater expulsion? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 01 Jul 2018 06:16 AM PDT It seems like they would orbit in random paths. Do their gravities pull eachother into a disc or is it something else? Also are there planets with more than one ring that are at a different inclination for eachother? [link] [comments]  |
| How do ant colonies handle rain? Posted: 30 Jun 2018 03:25 PM PDT Ant hills or the ones that completely underground with a small entrance. What happens when it rains? Is there a sealing mechanism? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 30 Jun 2018 08:24 PM PDT So if you put a cannon on the back of a car going 50 mph and fire the cannonball out going going 50mph, the cannonball would just drop. Now if you put that cannon on the front of the car and fired it while the car was going 50mph, ignoring wind resistance, the cannon ball would then be going 100mph. I think. So if you put a speaker on the front of a jet and the jet went fast enough to break the sound barrier then you turned on the speaker. Would the sound move forward faster than the speed of sound or is it it always a constant and the sound waves would just immediately collapse and trail behind? [link] [comments]  |
| How does consuming caffeine compare to absorbing it through your skin? Posted: 30 Jun 2018 08:09 PM PDT If a person were to drink a mug of coffee while another person (who has the same sensitivity/tolerance for caffeine as the other person) rubbed his or her skin with lotion with a caffeine level equivalent to that of the mug of coffee, how would the effects differ in regards to intensity and duration? [link] [comments]  |
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