Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2017 February 10

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February 10

How do flamingos resist alkali?

It is well known that flamingos can stand in Lake Natron (pH exceeding 12) and other caustic soda lakes. I've seen nature documentary footage where it was noted that if the flamingo develops a sore, it may progressively worsen; nonetheless, most of them resist alkali on their legs all their lives. They also eat Spirulina that is in the lake, which makes me think that their digestive and even respiratory systems must likewise possess remarkable resistance to alkali. Is anything known about the basis of this resistance - how many genes needed to adapt so that the exterior of the bird would not be denatured?

Also, is there a way to directly translate from harmful effects of liquid alkali to something like ammonia inhalation? (e.g. [1]) How do I figure out the "pH" of, say, 1000 ppm ammonia in air? Any guesses whether flamingos would be incredibly resistant to ammonia inhalation? Wnt (talk) 00:40, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

• Their filter-feeding technique squeezes out the water, minimizing their ingestion of the water. It also appears that they have salt glands. Abductive (reasoning) 05:05, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

• I don't know how reliable the source is, but this web page[2] offers up an explanation; salt glands to excrete the salt and tough skin on their legs. Even more interesting is this:[3] a theory that flamingos, like whales and dolphins, have the ability to let half the brain at a time go to sleep. --Guy Macon (talk) 00:39, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

• I Found out something else that is interesting: American flamingo#Osmoregulation --Guy Macon (talk) 00:43, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

These things are interesting, but not really satisfying for what I'm looking for. I'm concentrating mostly about their ability to resist high pH. I was thinking of marooning some humans under primitive conditions on Saturn, with about 0.1% ammonia vapor at 10+ atmospheres and a small percentage of supplementary oxygen, and I'm wondering how extensively modified they would need to be, and whether flamingoes could provide the required genetic technology. Wnt (talk) 02:09, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Just give your humans a few million years under a sealed biodome with a gradually changing atmosphere, and they will either all be dead or will have evolved like the flamingoes. I'm not sure to what extent flamingo DNA would speed the process. Dbfirs 11:02, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Well, you know, gene therapy. The stratum corneum is kind of simple ... mucosal membranes might be much more difficult, but I don't know how flamingoes do it. Or if flamingoes do it. Wnt (talk) 12:00, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Knowledge of Jupiter

New Scientist linked to a quite entertaining declassified CIA experiment to psychically probe Jupiter in the run up to Pioneer 10's arrival. One thing that's interesting is that both "experimenters" claimed to have come to a surface of crystals and volcanoes. Now we know that's nonsense, but would someone in 1973 have realized this? Was the nature of gas giants known to scientists in that era? Smurrayinchester 13:17, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

I haven't looked too deeply into it, but using some of the filtering options in Google Scholar, I did this search using a date range likely to bring up contemporary research for your question. --Jayron32 13:23, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

We have quite a bit about Project Stargate, Harold Sherman, Ingo Swann, we even have Russell Targ as an editor, though last I noted mostly one irate about the excessive degree to which people go to put him down in his article. I think an aspect of this to watch for though is that some (not all!) of the people involved, both as experimenters and as subjects, were members of Scientology, which had some interest in promoting its ability to create unusual powers. That said, I am partially receptive to the notion of paranormal phenomena and don't want to be too hasty to rule anything out. That said, well, "there is an enormous mountain range about 31,000 feet high..." -- where does this come from? I mean, according to the idea of remote viewing, where do you get a scale bar? Where do you get the light to see them? If it's precognition, well, it's getting pretty late for anyone to put out those measurements, and there would have been easier data to remember.

As for what people knew, well, they knew Jupiter had a Great Red Spot, that it was an immense storm, that it was a windy planet. They also could deduce that solid material falling into Jupiter had to go somewhere. In 2001 (novel), not much later, Arthur C. Clarke talked about a diamond the size of the Earth at Jupiter's core, an idea which still has some resonance ... and still is based on a lot of guesswork. I didn't notice anything in the accounts that would have been hard to guess then and not hard to guess now, because the outer planets themselves really haven't been studied in very different ways since then (the Cassini probe has looked extensively at Saturn's rings, but if it has made any breakthroughs beyond a few features of Saturn's atmosphere I can't think of what they are) Wnt (talk) 15:47, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

I'm not sure criticism of Targ is unjustified. One of the bedrock principles of science is Reproducibility. Together with falsifiability they are the sine qua non of science. ANYTHING which fails those two basic principles cannot be called science. In the Wikipedia article, criticism towards Targ's theories are based solely on the lack of ability to reproduce his results in properly controlled experiments. A pseudoscience red flag is if positive results can only be obtained by the person making the claim, and cannot be independently verified by others. --Jayron32 16:03, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Oh boy! What a fun question!

I have a bunch of planetary science books from the early 1950s... and as an enthusiast of planetary science, science history, and covert activities of the Central Intelligence Agency, this question got me thinking!

First, let's clarify a few points: CIA did actually study psychic ability for a time. Whether they ever believed in its "truth" is beside the point: in matters of intelligence, things don't have to be factually true in order to be useful.

Now, on to the interesting planetary science: how much did we know about Jupiter in the early 1970s, prior to the Pioneer and Voyager missions?

All my books on Jupiter are too recent to be of use here, so I had to search a wider set in my library.

I cracked open my copy of Sagan and Shklovsky, Intelligent Life in the Universe (1966), which devotes a lot of effort to describe Jovian planets. There's no mention of a solid surface, crystals, or volcanos... they cite theorization by Soviet astrophysicists regarding a plausible biological mechanism for producing methane ("...Jovian cows..." are actually postulated by G. A. Tikhov, and he has a lunar crater named for him, so he must have some kind of credibility!) ... but Sagan and Shklovsky seem to believe in a more mundane probable cause.

I think mainstream scientific thought, prior to the space travel era, assumed that Jovian planets would be pretty homogeneous balls of hydrogen and helium... and they were pretty close to the mark on most points, because observational astronomy provides enough data to constrain a lot of the physical parameters of planetary science. One of my books, Strange World of the Moon (Firsoff, 1962) nails precise details of geology and chemistry seven years before rock samples were acquired by American manned missions during Project Apollo. Now, if I were an intelligence agency in the 1960s and I saw such great science pouring forth from my nuclear rival, seemingly decades more advanced than our own science, I'd expend some effort to figure out every possible way they might be edging forward.

I'll keep digging through my shelves to see if I have any older Jupiter books to compare...

Nimur (talk) 15:52, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

I have raked around and found my copy of The Planets by Patrick Moore, 1962 (I remember saving up and buying it as a boy). Moore describes two models and says it is not known which is correct or whether both are wrong. The earlier theory by R. Wildt (presumably Rupert Wildt) has a "rocky, metallic" core 37,000 miles in diameter surrounded by an ice layer (I think in those days "ice" in effect meant "water ice") 17,000 miles thick, and then a hydrogen-rich atmosphere 8,000 miles thick. He explains that at the base of the atmospheric layer conditions will be gaseous technically but the material will behave "in the manner of a solid". The later theory (which Moore seems to favour) is by W. Ramsay of Manchester University and proposes mainly hydrogen throughout and where it will be solid by a depth of 2,000 miles and metallic by 5,000 miles depth. Moore says "... neither can we hope that rocket probes will be able to clear this matter up in the foreseeable future, since Jupiter is so remote that for the present it is well beyond the range of even small unmanned vehicles". Thincat (talk) 17:40, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

To go on a bit, Moore says there have been suggestions that the Great Red Spot is due to a "gigantic volcano which pokes out above the cloud layer". He completely dismisses this idea because the GRS "is known to shift some 2,000 miles to either side of its mean position". He hypothesises it may be "a solid lump 'floating' in Jupiter's atmosphere". Thincat (talk) 18:37, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

More Moore: It is known that the different belts of Jupiter spin at different rates. "This sort of behaviour provides additional proof, if it were needed, that we are not dealing with a solid, rocky surface". (BTW he gives no suggestion that the GRS might be a vortex). Thincat (talk) 19:32, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks Nimur and Thincat, that's really interesting stuff! Smurrayinchester 20:26, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

• The answer is that it was basically known long before that. The radius of Jupiter is easily observed, and its mass can be calculated from its gravitational pull on its satellites. This allows its density to be calculated, and from the density it is easy to infer that the great bulk of it is hydrogen. Looie496 (talk) 14:44, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Why are my contributions not visible on the main pageJohn(Y-B-F-L) (talk)

My information is entirely factual.John(Y-B-F-L) Bates Yellow-bellied flycatcher Downy Woodpecker Hairy woodpecker — Preceding unsigned comment added by John(Y-B-F-L) Bates (talk • contribs) 15:07, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

As you can see Here, another editor removed your changes because you did not provide a reference so other people could verify what you had written. See Wikipedia:Cite your sources for more information. If you need technical help with doing so, both Wikipedia:Help desk or Wikipedia:Teahouse, experienced users that frequent those desks can help you along. --Jayron32 15:13, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Another thing: "the main page" refers to Main page, which is currently protected to prevent vandalism. Any edits you might have attempted there would not have been saved. You can suggest changes to the main page at Talk:Main page, but please do so in a "please change X to Y because Z" format. Ian.thomson (talk) 15:19, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

@John(Y-B-F-L) Bates: Honestly, a longer-term editor probably would have gotten away with an unsourced bit about the song - as you can tell, there are a lot of unsourced things that still exist in our articles! But when someone new shows up people tend to be more wary of mischief and confusion. Sourcing your idea is not really that easy: I found this saying that song is the best character to use, but it isn't specific. A hard thing to understand at times is that Wikipedia is very wary about "WP:original synthesis": for example, suppose you listen to two bird calls and see there's a four-second difference. That's great, but ... is that every bird of each type, or is the different call just from a subspecies or local population in your area? With your experience you might think of a way to find this fact -- or someone else here might -- but without a source specifically saying this is the difference, the best I could do would be to say something along the line of "The call of this bird is how to identify it. This call is available here and you can compare it to the call of that one there." And you can do that, it's valuable. You just have to build up what you can with what you have in hand. Wnt (talk) 16:59, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

@John(Y-B-F-L) Bates: You also cannot cite yourself as a source. We don't know who you are, how knowledgeable you are, or your motives. Matt Deres (talk) 17:35, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

To be technical, you could cite yourself, but first you'd have to get published in a source with a reliable editorial fact-checking process, per WP:RS... though even then there's potentially a whole conflict of interest thing which I don't even want to get into because its application is kind of random. Wikipedia has a lot of policies, you may have gathered. Wnt (talk) 11:56, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Superglue turning white and white extending beyond superglue (on black plastic)

I had to get inside an electric transformer to fix a broken connection. The casing was glued so I cut my way in. To repair the casing, I used superglue. I've seen superglue turn white as it dries before and have had some success turning it clear again using a hair dryer (I read this was because of water absorbed by the superglue). In this case though, the white extends beyond the superglue onto the black plastic. The hair dryer made no difference to the whitening in this case. Any idea what the white is? ----Seans Potato Business 22:07, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Think you're observing the fumes depositing themselves. Cyanoacrylate#Forensics.--Aspro (talk) 23:15, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Can you make out any fingerprints ? StuRat (talk) 23:30, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

The OP has been repairing it. Any prints would be smudged beyond recognition.--Aspro (talk) 23:41, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Not necessarily. It depends on if the last few touches left a good fingerprints. StuRat (talk) 02:24, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

I don't think it is this but worth a check - could the plastic have been stressed turning it white? Or are you sure it is a surface effect? Dmcq (talk) 11:34, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

I've had the fingerprint effect when I've been using cyanoacrylate, but you could get the same effect on any stress ridges. I suppose it could also be a reaction with the old glue. You could try cleaning it off with acetone, though that might dissolve the plastic too. Cyanoacrylate marks can sometimes be removed with water and light abrasion (it's probably the abrasion more than the water because its solubility in water is extremely slow). Vegetable oil or petroleum jelly might work better to remove or hide the white marks. Dbfirs 12:09, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

I believe (!) that when you broke the casing you created a set of stress cracks that lead away from the cut. as the Cyanoacrylate paste disspersed into these cracks it might have dissolved some of the polymer casing and the resultant patterns were made. the white is usually an indication of inclarities due to dissolved water but more likely are a result of crystals formed in the glue as it dried over the polymer. 109.67.54.194 (talk) 17:05, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

As far as how to improve the aesthetics, I suggest you wrap black electrical tape around it, unless it has a problem with getting hot, which that could make worse. StuRat (talk) 17:48, 12 February 2017 (UTC)