We share half our genes with the banana. Granted the scientists are (probably) only talking about editing the 0.3% of the genome that makes humans different from each other, but with so much of our DNA shared with other eukaryote celled life, adding leaves may not be that difficult.
Looking up weights and DNA structures and such things in humans in wiki articles, I have calculated that 0.5% - 2% of the phosphorus in the human body is used in DNA. It seems reasonable to me that it would be at least within an order of magnitude of 1% in plants as well.
For this reason I doubt the phosphorus in DNA would make a significant contribution to evolving a shorter DNA sequence.
Or that the mix of Earth and Theia in the moon is very non homogenous and they took most of their samples from the Earths part.
Actually, now that I think about it, wouldn't the result of the collision cause most of Earths contribution to be on the surface of the moon? If it was otherwise, then Earth would have had an ring much like Saturn at one point which then collected into whole to become the moon. That couldn't be true since we would have easily seen evidence on the moon. This theory of mine would mean that almost any samples taken from the moon would would be originally from Earth.
The giant impact theory predicts that Earth did, at one point, have a proto-ring of debris from the collision. That proto-ring slowly accreted into the moon.
I'm not sure what evidence we would expect to observe on the moon to indicate whether it accreted from a proto-ring or was captured intact - could you elaborate a little?
There was commerce between the Romans and ancient china that took around 10 years one way. I don't remember what was being traded, except for the silk from china, but it shows that distance and time are not absolute limiters for trading.
Here's a good article about traveling to Alpha Centauri[1]. It posits that it would take 85 years best-case-scenario technology and 81k years using current technology.
Absent the discovery of new physics that allows us to travel through wormholes or something of that ilk, traveling to the other side of the galaxy for a vacation will, sadly, not be happening. Instead long-distance space travel will likely involve putting humans into cryosleep and then waking them up when they reach their destination; hundreds of thousands or millions of years in the future.
Why send humans at all? By that time I'd assume we'd have reasonable AI; just send it along with a bunch of frozen embryos anywhere you please. The AI can incubate and raise the children. It could even terraform the planet until it was habitable. You wouldn't even need to explore; just send out probes willy-nilly. If they never reach a suitable location, then it's no big loss.
A fire-and-forget method of human space colonization is not only far more feasible, but also far more economical.
This is pure speculation on my part about possible applications to measuring the Higgs.
Since it is the Higgs Field(?) that gives matter its mass, I suppose in the future, though this may be pure science fiction, that after our understanding of the Higgs is enough, we may be able to use it to change the mass of things, which would have an extreme amount of potential in transportation as well as other things I am not thinking of right now.
Getting 10 questions right may not be statistically more significant than just answering randomly. I would calculate this myself, but I'm going to bed, however, just eyeballing it makes me think this is quite possible.
For me personally, if I have the opportunity to ask questions, I will think of questions to ask and as a byproduct, think about the lecture more critically. If I am unable to ask questions, I am less likely to think critically. Of course, I have just realized this and now that I am aware of this, I can possibly put a stop to this and get more out of video lectures and even real life lectures where questions are discouraged.
Gravity propogates at the speed of light. However, using gravity to send information will allow you to send information through most objects like Earth or the Sin without any satilites to redirect it around the object.
I tried not to be that guy and already gave some alternatives for regression.
“Polynomial regression” implies to me that the basis functions are polynomials. I‘ll assume you meant “good basis for a simple fit, maybe by least squares”. More local functions like “radial basis functions” can work well. Or use splines or sigmoidal functions, which saturate to a flat line or linear trend. In some applications Fourier or wavelet bases might be appropriate.
Gaussian process regression is a Bayesian treatment of some basis function models, potentially with an infinite number of basis functions. Artificial neural nets usually use local or sigmoidal basis functions, potentially in a more complicated way.
