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Tuesday, January 17, 2017

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!


AskScience AMA Series: Hi, I'm Kate Adamala, biochemist working on building synthetic cells. Ask Me Anything!

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.

submitted by /u/AskScienceModerator
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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?

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

Bonus questions: How long would this method take?

submitted by /u/Dalem5
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If we came across a friendly, but completely un-contacted tribe of humans, how would we begin to understand their language?

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?

submitted by /u/DieTheVillain
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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

*Leaving a star at the speed of light, specifically.

submitted by /u/PhantomLimbs
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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.

submitted by /u/CidRonin
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Will the universe just eventually be a giant black hole, or can other things stop the spread of them?

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.

submitted by /u/gesocks
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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

Does it use some functions?

submitted by /u/Groblinom
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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?

submitted by /u/thenerdbutton
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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.

submitted by /u/tophyss
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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?

submitted by /u/throwaway671954
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What could I do to personally prove the earth is round?

Posted: 16 Jan 2017 04:16 PM PST

Using as basic and common tools as possible.

submitted by /u/Anunkash
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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?

submitted by /u/Itsonthebus
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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?

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?

submitted by /u/spartan1711
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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)

submitted by /u/Bluebaby1399
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Are stars really far enough that we see them in the past? If so, are their positions and sizes different than what we see?

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

submitted by /u/gorend
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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?

submitted by /u/Kenley
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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: 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?

submitted by /u/H6Havok
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Monday, January 16, 2017

If elephants had gone extinct before humans came about, and we had never found mammoth remains with soft tissue intact, would we have known that they had trunks through their skeletons alone?

If elephants had gone extinct before humans came about, and we had never found mammoth remains with soft tissue intact, would we have known that they had trunks through their skeletons alone?


If elephants had gone extinct before humans came about, and we had never found mammoth remains with soft tissue intact, would we have known that they had trunks through their skeletons alone?

Posted: 15 Jan 2017 06:36 PM PST

Is it possible that many of the extinct animals we know of only through fossils could have had bizarre appendages?

submitted by /u/Kombaticus
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If we could use the Large Hadron Collider as a cannon pointed towards space, would the particle make it into orbit?

Posted: 15 Jan 2017 07:14 AM PST

How can TSA/Airport security workers stand next to X and T ray machines all day everyday without any ill effects?

Posted: 16 Jan 2017 07:08 AM PST

I know the people walking through the machines have nothing to worry about, but are there any precautions in place to stop the workers absorbing these rays? Do the machines focus the radiation into one area? Thanks in advance.

submitted by /u/DexterTheMoss
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Where does the energy in core-fusion come from?

Posted: 16 Jan 2017 04:39 AM PST

So the process in the sun is the following (as far as i know): a deterium- and a tritium-atom fuse into a helium-atom and one neutron. So where does this huge amount of energy come from? We have the same mass as before and there are no other energy-sources, as far as i can tell. Can someone please explain?

submitted by /u/Laternenpfahl
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How long will Voyager I last in space?

Posted: 15 Jan 2017 10:54 AM PST

I understand that Voyager is about to run out of power. My question is asking how long (in terms of millions or billions of years) will Voyager last? I heard that all elements radioactively decay so will the metal on voyager eventually decay?

submitted by /u/Big_G_Dog
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How do you measure the amount of molecules in a vacuum?

Posted: 16 Jan 2017 12:28 AM PST

How are Cosmologists Able to Estimate the Size of the Total Universe?

Posted: 16 Jan 2017 02:33 AM PST

Note the language in the title is 'the total universe,' so not just the observable universe.

From this article at Livescience

Mack noted that assuming inflation happened, the universe is actually 1023 times bigger than the 46 billion light-years humans can see.

How did this cosmologist, and apparently others, come to that conclusion? In other words, what clues are available about that which lies beyond the bounds of what can be observed by laws of nature?

submitted by /u/toomuchdota
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If I stood on Saturn and looked up would I see the rings?

Posted: 15 Jan 2017 12:50 PM PST

Why is it that we see a lot of Resistor-Capacitor (RC) circuits in electronic designs but not a lot of Resistor-Inductor (RL) circuits?

Posted: 15 Jan 2017 05:11 PM PST

I am reviewing RC and RL circuits and in my textbook they state that you rarely will see RL circuits used because of the inductor's inability to have a precise value as opposed to the capacitor.

If this actually true, why is it so? Is it because the inductor is comprised of a magnetic field whereas the capacitor is comprised of an electric field? Is working with a B field more difficult to have precise and expected values as opposed to working with an E field?

submitted by /u/agent_engineer
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Why does polarization and electric field have conjugate complex exponentials?

Posted: 15 Jan 2017 09:36 PM PST

I was going through a paper where the electric field and polarization have a particular shown here. It appears fairly familiar but one thing I don't quite understand is: why are the complex exponentials of E and P the conjugate of one another? As far as I'm aware, this is not necessary for Maxwell's equations. Is it simply specific to the authors' model?

submitted by /u/CallMeDoc24
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If you travel towards an object at very-close-to-c, will the object have aged once you arrive?

Posted: 16 Jan 2017 03:15 AM PST

If the answer is yes -- why? I thought time dilation was symmetric -- on board this spaceship moving at close-to-c it would seem as though the object is moving towards you and barely aging, and that the distance between you and the object would appear minimal so you'd arrive nearly instantly.

If the answer is no -- this seems impossible. You could start at A, go to B, pick up a package, return to A, and see neither A nor B have aged at all. From the perspective of someone on A, you'd have made a roundtrip in hardly any time and gone FTL. (edit: ok, this part is the twin paradox. Nevermind the round trip. If the answer is "no" please just explain why not. I thought that traveling towards something at close-to-c would make it appear as though that object's "clock" runs slower)

So, what am I missing?

submitted by /u/options_questioner
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If it is impossible to project a sphere onto a 2D plane without distortion, does that mean that every camera lens and telescope must have distortion because light is hitting it on different parts of a curved surface but we get a 2D image out of it?

Posted: 15 Jan 2017 06:26 PM PST

If a computer is mining Bitcoin in a room, is all of the power supplied to it eventually available as heat, or does some of the power go into the "information" the calculations produced?

Posted: 15 Jan 2017 06:44 PM PST

This occurred to me a while ago: heat generation is done, essentially, by using what for every other application is considered waste. So would it be possible to get the waste heat from computer calculations to function as a space heater, while getting a useful result out of the process beyond just the heat?

submitted by /u/neaanopri
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What causes a razor blade to lose its sharpness?

Posted: 15 Jan 2017 02:28 PM PST

What would happen if a neutrino interacted with one of the photoreceptor cells in someones eye? What would they see?

Posted: 15 Jan 2017 06:11 PM PST

What are the odds of this happening to anyone? Are there any documented cases of this happening?

submitted by /u/PM_ME_LECTURE_NOTES
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How would an atmosphere twice as dense as that of Earth affect the transmission of sound? Would it be noisier? Quieter?

Posted: 15 Jan 2017 12:09 PM PST

If two bodies in space were orbiting each other at say 1 light minute apart and one disappeared would the remaining body be instantaneously affected or would it take one minute to react to the lack of gravity?

Posted: 15 Jan 2017 03:01 PM PST

If the Universe is an outdoor pool, is the CMB the pool walls or simply the edge of a sphere within the pool corresponding to our 13.8 bn years eye sight? Could there be many such spheres in the pool, none of them seeing the actual pool walls?

Posted: 15 Jan 2017 01:54 PM PST

The heart of my question is the cosmic microwave background (CMB). I know what it is (thank you Internet), but what does it represent? Is it the end of what we see, or an actual border (but then: a border of what?).

If it's just the end of lightspeed vision, could there be a number of universes happily dangling around in a greater area (the "pool")?

Then comes the (I think) unanswered question: what is all this composed of? The Universe sphere we know well. What about the space between the spheres? What about the pool walls?Beyond the pool walls?

I apologize for the semantics, these are hard concepts for me to grasp. Thank you!

submitted by /u/Bucksan
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If we stuck one end of a tube in the ocean and the other end in space, would the vacuum be strong enough to pull up the water column?

Posted: 15 Jan 2017 09:42 AM PST

I assume the answer to this depends on the diameter of the tube, so alternatively, what size tube would be needed to get the vacuum of space to draw the water up?

submitted by /u/finemustard
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Why doesn't gargling Listerine immediately end Strep throat?

Posted: 15 Jan 2017 04:52 PM PST

Is the mean free path affected by the speed of the particle?

Posted: 15 Jan 2017 08:12 PM PST

To be clear, i'm asking if a slow moving particle and a fast moving particle will have a different mean free path(through the atmosphere)? Assuming that everything else is kept the same.

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How is addiction measured?

Posted: 15 Jan 2017 03:59 PM PST

Do babies in utero recognize language differences in multi-lingual mothers?

Posted: 15 Jan 2017 09:32 AM PST

In addition, does in vitro exposure to multiple languages have long term cognitive benefits in the same way post-birth exposure does? Does it matter whether the mother is a native speaker of the spoken languages? Thank you.

submitted by /u/Traulinger
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If astronauts had a gun fight in space, how far apart could they be while maintaining lethality?

Posted: 15 Jan 2017 02:24 PM PST

Sunday, January 15, 2017

How does the physical concept of entropy relates to the information theory concept of entropy?

How does the physical concept of entropy relates to the information theory concept of entropy?


How does the physical concept of entropy relates to the information theory concept of entropy?

Posted: 14 Jan 2017 11:18 AM PST

Differences in electric and magnetic dipole transitions?

Posted: 15 Jan 2017 06:37 AM PST

To my knowledge, a magnetic moment and dipole moment are simply based on the distribution of charges/currents in the particular case. Thus the 21 cm line in Hydrogen for example is magnetic dipolar because it is caused by spin interactions of the proton and electron. Thus any transitions from the excited state here would be observed to be a magnetic field (although one would still observe an electric field due to Maxwell's equations). Similarly for the 18 cm line in OH (radical), since it is due to an electric dipole (i.e. the extra unpaired electron and the nucleus), the emission from the excited to the ground state would be electric dipolar. But then I also know the 18 cm line has hyperfine transition causes by spin interactions, and so the emitted wave would have both a magnetic and electric component, correct? I was also reading:

If during the switch the atom can behave like an oscillating electric dipole, then this is usually (for visible/IR/radio radiation at least) more efficient than the oscillating magnetic dipole or electric quadrupole etc. This would be termed an electric dipole transition. However, for certain changes of quantum state, the atom cannot behave like an oscillating electric dipole and the transition can only proceed (less efficiently - often called a "forbidden transition" in astrophysics) by the atom behaving like an oscillating magnetic dipole - i.e. a magnetic dipole transition.

and I was wondering why it's more efficient for it to be electric dipolar as opposed to magnetic dipolar? Are not electric and magnetic fields inherently the same, and as long as they have the right frequency, wouldn't an electric field be able to bring an electron to an excited state even if it's a magnetic dipolar transition?

I suppose I am beginning to confuse the two types of transitions and how one can experimentally distinguish the two as being inherently different.

submitted by /u/CallMeDoc24
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How are non-quantized wavelenghts of light produced? i.e. How can a continuum of wavelengths of light exist with seemingly finite possible electron energy levels from which electrons can drop?

Posted: 14 Jan 2017 09:08 AM PST

When electrons drop from one energy level to another, they emit a photon of a specific wavelength. With a finite number of energy levels, it seems the possible number of wavelengths produced would be finite. Not accounting for red-shifting or blue-shifting, how do we get a continuum of possible wavelengths? (I'm not referring to perceived color, here)

The idea which led me here is this -- I know that light can pass through glass, because visible light does not have sufficient energy to raise the energy level of electrons enough to be absorbed. When they DO get absorbed, is any excess energy absorbed as heat (explain?), or is some emitted/passed as lower energy wavelengths? All the material I've found so far stops as soon as the photon is absorbed -- without really explaining what happens if a HIGHER energy photon passes through... and what happens when the energy level is high? It seems that if the electrons in glass dropped to a lower energy level, the direction in which the new photon travels would be random.

I feel like I'm missing something fundamental which is glossed over because it seems intuitive or obvious...

submitted by /u/onwardknave
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With 95% of the oceans unexplored, is it feasible many prehistoric species still exist ?

Posted: 14 Jan 2017 10:17 AM PST

I don't believe lake monsters or the such, but in vast oceans, could dinosaur-type creatures still roam the seas? Is this where sea serpent tales truly came from?

submitted by /u/TupacSchwartzODoyle
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Could gravitational waves explain "dark" energy and/or matter?

Posted: 15 Jan 2017 01:04 AM PST

Gravitational waves can compress space-time while traveling at c and therefore have energy (even though it's a tiny tiny tiny amount of energy). If you take the energy generated by every gravitational wave produced by every system in every galaxy in the universe could it possibly explain all the missing energy and/or mass?

submitted by /u/ISNT_A_ROBOT
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Is it possible to create a black hole using energy instead of mass?

Posted: 14 Jan 2017 09:25 AM PST

Instead of compacting mass until it collapses under it's own gravity, is it possible to compact energy (for example, light) until it collapses?

submitted by /u/_telemarketing
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What property of an atom makes it reflective?

Posted: 14 Jan 2017 08:46 AM PST

I've been digging around for this answer for a while now, and all I've found is that a smooth surface (on a near atomic levrl) makes ie reflect light, but what is it about the properties of the atom that allow it to reflect light, since light has no mass how does it bounced off the surface etc. Thanks!!

submitted by /u/yungchocolatebar
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Why do electrons orbit protons and not just collide with them?

Posted: 14 Jan 2017 09:17 AM PST

Consider a proton and an electron in empty space separated by some reasonable distance (ie not an atom). They would be attracted and travel towards one another. Now I know that they would eventually come together and form a hydrogen atom. But why? Why don't they just collide one another?

I could attempt a hand waves answer talking about s orbitals and the Pauli exclusion principles and allowed energy levels; but I feel like id be skirting around the issue.

submitted by /u/pseudonym1066
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When can we say normalcy ends and pathology begins?

Posted: 14 Jan 2017 09:55 AM PST