stuartml

How much DNA do humans really share with bananas? It is often repeated that humans share 60% DNA with bananas, but what is the important nuance of this statistic that gets left out? Genes, which are regions found in DNA that code for proteins, only make up less than 2 percent of your DNA. Scientists looked at that 2 percent and compared human and banana genes and found that 60% were a recognizable “match”, and even of those 60% match the protein similarity was found to be only 40% similar. So when it is mentioned that there is a 60% match, it is referencing the genes within the DNA. Even so, that is still a high percentage match for the genes, showing common ancestry. These are shared protein-coding genes that perform essential life functions such as cell growth, energy production, and DNA repair. All life forms originated from a single common ancestor. One evolutionary branch led to animals and humans, while another led to plants and bananas.

3,000-year-old honey found in Egyptian tombs is still edible. This is because honey contains about 80% sugars with close to no free water. It contains hydrogen peroxide released slowly by the glucose oxidase enzyme. It is also acidic, with a pH between 3.2 and 4.5 which is close to vinegar. This combination of factors makes honey hostile to microbial life.

Black hole time dilation is when the closer an object is to a black hole, the slower time passes relative to someone far away. This effect can also be seen to a much lesser degree on Earth. Physicists at NIST have tested this effect using clocks separated at different altitudes and proved the effect is real even at small scales. Black holes are much more extreme, if one astronaut spent one hour near the black hole, the other astronaut that watched from further away may experience years passing by.

Space is big, really really big. Let’s do some math: Earth has a diameter at the Equator of 7,926 miles. If one astronomical unit (AU) is 92,955,807.3 miles, and the distance between the Sun and the Heliopause is about 123 AU, that’s 11,433,564,297.9 miles ÷ 7,926 miles = 1,442,539…That means 1.4 million Earth’s could fit in a line from the Sun to the Heliopause. The Heliopause is the last boundary between material from the Sun vs other stars from interstellar space. After 35 years of travel, Voyager 1 crossed the Heliopause and entered interstellar space on August 25, 2012. Voyager 1 was launched by NASA on September 5, 1977.