Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2012 February 2

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February 2

I'm baffled!

What's the difference between a baffled and an unbaffled flask? And why would someone be motivated to use one over the other? Only after typing that did I see how much that sounds like a homework question. I'm reading a protocol and it calls for the use of baffling in one part, and to avoid it in another. But I don't know what the damn flask is, or why the writer cares. Someguy1221 (talk) 05:04, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

See the third item here, which was the first entry found on a Google search of "baffled flask". Our article Laboratory flask describes them as a "culture flask", with an explanation of their purpose, and they also seem to be called a Fernbach flask. Long story short, when you swirl liquid around in a baffled flask (which has baffles on the inside) the liquid is aerated more than would occur in an unbaffled flask. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.193.78.57 (talk) 05:22, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Oh, OK. I think I see it now. I found the google results but couldn't tell what in the flask was the baffle. Thanks. Someguy1221 (talk) 06:11, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

plastic biliary stent

hi, what happens to a plastic biliary stent after the stent's expiry date, say 8 months after placing it in a patient? Will that be removed or it gets degraded by itself? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.224.149.10 (talk) 05:11, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

I'll assume this is a serious question. You need to ask yourself to what does the term expiry refer. To the stent or to the integrity of the sterile packaging it is in before insertion. Richard Avery (talk) 08:27, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

To the stent after insertion. Plastic stents are for temporary purpuse unlike metallic ones. So, I wanted to know what happens to it after the purpose served or after maximum duration a plastic stent serves. Should that be removed surgically from the patient or will the stent be degraded? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.224.149.10 (talk) 11:24, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

This site [1] suggests that biodegradable stents were being developed as of 2002, but were still pretty experimental. Also [2] from 2006, [3] from 2011. It looks like they're often poly-L-lactate. There are more refs out there. I didn't see any indication patients are actually getting these yet, but I may well not have looked hard enough. Wnt (talk) 19:33, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

What a fascinating subject. Here is a relevant site which talks about the likelihood of clogging of 'plastic' stents and the need to remove them within 8 months. There is also a more delicate issue about their use in patients who may have limited life expectancy and 8 months may not be achieved. Richard Avery (talk) 19:44, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Also see Bioresorbable stents. Red Act (talk) 22:52, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Thank you friends. That helped a lot. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.224.149.10 (talk) 05:11, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Orbital "what"?

This anonymous editor is being pointy but is making a good point: [4]. I've repositioned my tinfoil, as 1000 km is way too low for a perigee and I have stuff in the basement. Presumably this is height above the mean surface of the Earth, so let's go look at the underlying article on the ISO. There, the infobox definitely says the "orbital height" perigee is 1000 km - but if I put "orbital height" into the internal search engine, I get nuthin'. Am I reading this all wrong, or do we have a potentially big problem? This is a concrete example of confusion (or incomplete definition of terms) between orbital distance and height, but I don't know how to fix it without an article to wikilink for the term used. And more widely, how many Earth-orbit figures have been mixed up between centric and surface distances? Thanks! Franamax (talk) 05:47, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

It is apparent that all of the entries in List of space telescopes use heights (presumably above some mean ground level?) in specifying orbital parameters. The data are from NASA's National Space Science Data Center; this is the entry for the ISO. For what it's worth, the NSSDC pages are using "periapsis" and "apoapsis" for the minimum and maximum orbital heights, though that usage contradicts the definitions in our article apsis. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 06:05, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Oh, so the problem is just a little worse than my nightmare scenario? This would be a good opportunity for the more space-minded of the SciDesk regulars to get one of those rarely used {RD collaboration} thingies for improving articles, or just throw up some more sources so I can try to figure this out. It looks like an embedded problem, how many other NASA-sourced figures use the same assumptions? Franamax (talk) 08:41, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Orbit phases, from the ISO Handbook, has a diagram illustrating the orbit in cartoon form. These parameters specify altitude, which is more useful to observational scientists than other orbit parameters. Nimur (talk) 16:23, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Surely that would be the explanation. Meanwhile, I'm reminded of an old Bob and Ray bit in which they proposed orbiting a satellite 6 feet above ground, which they would fund by selling advertising on it. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:32, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

The end of time?

This woke me up with a start last night. Given a universe in which time is a dimension, what would happen if for some reason that dimension disappeared, and there were still humans around to experience it? --TammyMoet (talk) 10:53, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

It's not really clear what you mean by time "disappearing". Nevertheless, time is a vital part of the way the human brain works - when we think, our brain is effectively bouncing from one energy state to another according to the laws of physics and the structure of the brain as chemical and electrical signals bounce through the brain cells (much the same way a computer works by sending electrons through a series of transistors). Without time, our brains wouldn't be able to think or perceive anything, and so we wouldn't be able to experience a universe without time in any way that we currently think of as experience, so the question's kind of moot. If you want fictional explorations of the idea, Kurt Vonnegut's books Slaughterhouse Five and Timequake (and to a lesser extent The Sirens of Titan) are about how humans might experience various oddities in the flow of time (S5 is about a man who becomes "unstuck in time", TQ is about people being forced to relive a decade, SoT features a character who flies his spaceship into a point of space where all times and places co-exist), and they're all good reads*, but they're not scientifically accurate unless you suppose our thoughts and memories are controlled by an external soul instead of the brain. * Lets not get into a debate about the literary value of Timequake. Smurrayinchester 11:08, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

One known way for time to end is via a gravitational singularity. Humans will no longer exist if they enter that kind of point. Big Crunch describes one ultimate fate of the universe. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:13, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

I would recommend reading Flatland and its "related works" for more info about dimensions. Time is not a dimension AFAIK. Disclaimer: I am not Stephen Hawking Von Restorff (talk) 11:52, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

• You are completely wrong in your suggestion of this work, Von Restorff. Flatland is not about dimensions. It is about social classes. It's just a boring book with mere historical value. 88.14.194.205 (talk) 14:45, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

• Lol. It is also about social classes, but also about dimensions. Did you read it? I wouldn't describe it as boring, but I do not know what kind of books you like. Most of the related works have little to do with social classes btw. Von Restorff (talk) 00:24, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

• (I'm 88.14). I didn't say anything about the related books, which appear to be much better. And no, Flatland is no good work for someone trying to understand something about dimensions. Flatland is so much about dimensions as Terminator is about time travel. Neither has made any contribution to the topic or have anything to say about the physical side of it. Both have a different leitmotiv. WKB52 (talk) 13:29, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Sure it is. See Dimension#Time. Time may not be dimension in a Euclidean space, but time and spatial dimensions are closely related in a Minkowski space, or in spacetime in general. Red Act (talk) 12:41, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

True, time and spatial dimensions are closely related, but time is not a spatial dimension. Von Restorff (talk) 13:22, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Anything can be a dimension in the appropriate abstract space. See configuration space for a general formulation of spaces in which each dimension could be any measurable quantity you like. Staecker (talk) 13:05, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Exactly, that is what I mean, we've basically redefined the word dimension and added a new meaning to it when people came up with the idea of a temporal dimension, but time is not a dimension like the others, we just use the same word for something completely different because time is closely related to the spatial dimensions. I wish I could explain this better Von Restorff (talk) 13:22, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Nay, check out the special theory of relativity. Two events separated widely in space can appear to occur in a different order depending on your motion in the "physical" dimensions. An object falling into a black hole has the singularity in its future, which is close to what the OP has in mind. But the thing is, our theory of time is generally continuous and well-behaved - when it comes to an end like that, who knows what really happens? Wnt (talk) 19:48, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Time is not at all "something completely different" from space. "Space" and "time" are inextricably connected. Which direction in spacetime you consider to be the "time" direction is an arbitrary choice, except that the choice of forward-in-time direction from an event has to lie somewhere strictly interior to the event's future light cone. That's very much like how what direction in a Euclidean space you consider to be the "z" dimension is an arbitrary choice, except that the choice of "time" direction is a little more restricted. Similarly, 3-dimensional Euclidean space does not physically exist, except as a submanifold of (4-dimensional) spacetime. What 3-dimensional submanifold of spacetime counts as "space" depends entirely on that arbitrary choice of how you choose to define "time". Red Act (talk) 07:09, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I don't understand what you are saying. Could you post a more comprehensive explanation yesterday to help me understand... AndyTheGrump (talk) 07:18, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

I always liked Asimov's "The Last Question".--Wehwalt (talk) 13:10, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

The first thing I thought of was Flatland too, or rather its interpretations by Martin Gardner. His The Colossal Book of Mathematics (Ch. 12 The Church of the Fourth Dimension) touches briefly on multi-dimensionality but I'm sure I've seen either he or Hofstadter go on at greater length, so a collection of the Mathematical Games columns from Scientific American might have more. And as it turns out, the book I cite has Ch. 40. Does Time Ever Stop?. :) In that, Gardner mentions several fictional works and discusses an academic paper on the topic: S.S. Shoemaker (1969). "Time Without Change". 66: 363–381. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help). If you really want to stay awake at night though, consider this: as the universe expands, it cools and we suspect it has undergone several phase changes. From the Big Bang forward, the quark soup "condensed" into elementary particles, which later condensed into atoms, which cooled down enough to form molecules. So what happens if we cross another "freezing point" and molecules start condensing into something else? Franamax (talk) 19:16, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

We already have. It's called life. Goodbye Galaxy (talk) 19:57, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

I don't think that should worry me. Two hydrogen atoms in the solar plasma would live to settle down and get together; they just don't have the chance because everything happens so fast. Likewise someday our protons and electrons might decay and "neutrino nuggets" might start stably form, but it'd take a ridiculously long time, just as our time scale is ridiculously long compared to those early Big Bang eras. (And theirs, likewise, is probably ridiculously long compared to some era we can't even guess at) Wnt (talk) 19:45, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

I bet those free-moving electrons were saying exactly the same thing just before they turned into atoms. :) Franamax (talk) 20:04, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Experience is an activity. Any activity requires time. If time disappears, so does all activity. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:28, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Time doesn't exist, it's an unobservable fictitious parameter that can be entirely eliminated from the known fundamental equations of physics. Count Iblis (talk) 00:07, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Waves on an hanging rope

Does the frequency of waves on a freely hanging rope (fixed at one end but free at the other) vary as a function of time? --T.M.M. Dowd (talk) 14:27, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes, why? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.14.194.205 (talk) 15:34, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

The notion of a time-varying frequency is troublesome and you should define what you mean by it more clearly. To the extent that the linear theory applies, the answer is no : the motion of the rope may be decomposed into a number of independent harmonic motions with time-independent frequency.83.134.157.185 (talk) 17:51, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Astronomy Question

Over the last couple of months (since early December), I've noticed a very bright object in the western sky, visible for the first couple of hours after sunset. It appears to move slowly northwards, before disappearing (although I've never managed to track it completely).
I'm in south east England.
I assumed it was Venus, but I would have thought that would have moved to a different part of the sky by now. Any ideas? Rojomoke (talk) 15:55, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Jupiter has also been up. It's nearly impossible to pinpoint what you've been seeing unless you can be more specific; even an approximate setting time would help narrow down the possible options. Nimur (talk) 16:15, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

We had a similar question a few months back. in the night sky. An app like space junk pro may help to identify any know body. Other than that, do please let me know, what you have been drinking lately, so that I go out and buy some.--Aspro (talk) 16:31, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Could be Vega or (less likely) Altair. Messing about in Stellarium suggests both have been in the west (from London) over this winter, visible from sunset, with Altair setting between 8 and 10 and Vega setting between 10 and midnight (though if you live in a hilly or built up area, they may appear to disappear much earlier). Vega is the 5th brightest star in the sky and 2nd brightest in the northern hemisphere, so it can really stand out, especially if light pollution drowns out the rest of its constellation (Lyra). Smurrayinchester 16:51, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Well, I'm in SW England, and right now there are two really bright 'stars' in the western sky. I think the most westerly is Venus and the other is Vega. Chris (talk) 19:20, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Venus has been in the evening sky towards the setting Sun over the winter. Jupiter has been the brightest object in the rest of the sky, but it has been almost overhead and visible most of the night. So you probably saw Venus. --TammyMoet (talk) 20:42, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Venus can be seen well before Sunset, even at Noon time, see here for tips on spotting it. Count Iblis (talk) 23:20, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

If you have a smart phone you should check out Google Sky Map or similar software. It allows you to just point your phone at the sky and see what you're looking at. --Sean 14:36, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

how does stylus work

Can anyone explain to me how a electronic stylus works? Will anything that is magnetic work as a stylus? Can I use a metal pen or a paperclip — Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.83.61.203 (talk) 16:21, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

It depends on the type of touchscreen#Technologies involved. Some only sense pressure, so it doesn't really matter what you use to press on them. Some involve some sort of a circuit that involves the person or instrument touching it. In some cases, a magnet may suffice for pressure and position-sensing, but also interfere with other electronics in the touch-screen. DMacks (talk) 21:17, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

strange temperature changes

Can anyone explain to me what the heck is going on with the weather? How come one day it's below zero and the next day it's 40°. I read this seesawing temperature changes is a signal that an Ice Age is approaching is this true?

History says you're User:208.83.61.203, geolocating to Philadelphia. I'm north of Philadelphia and I don't think it's gone under 12 F or so all winter. So you have to tell us more about where you are or we don't have a hope of answering you.

This story mentions that the cold weather from the continental U.S. and southern Canada is apparently shifted north to Alaska, or even over the pole to places like Odessa and Europe. I've noticed that it seems like there's some kind of inverse relationship between the two sides of the northern hemisphere, but haven't seen much about it. Looking at a map the U.S. by rights is level with southern Europe and you'd think it would be very mild indeed, and I always had trouble believing that one little Gulf Stream would be enough to change weather across Europe. Are there other jet-stream level mechanisms that can explain the difference between the continents, which might fail for some reason? Wnt (talk) 16:30, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Human life span is short. A person born in to a period of wildly fluctuating temperatures may well have said in the past (and maybe in the future) – what the heck has happened to the weather all of a sudden – it hardly ever changes. Remember too, the dust bowls – it was good farming land when the settlers first arrived and then native Americans said – did we not tell you so?!!!--Aspro (talk) 16:46, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Hmmm, cite for that? I ask because usually the Dust Bowl has been blamed on extensive farming of a type that - I might wrongly presume - the Native Americans wouldn't have managed with their smaller populations. But North America has been colder than Europe since the days of the "Pilgrims". Wnt (talk) 18:25, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Dust Bowl discusses this, and both are right. The farming practices were terrible and ill suited to the environment, but there was also a prolonged period of wetter than average condition in the decades before the 1930s drought hit. Those wetter conditions gave settlers a false set of expectations about what to expect from life on the plains. When the drought finally did come, the false expectations compounded the problems created by poor land management and made an already severe situation into a catastrophe. Dragons flight (talk) 19:58, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

The main cause of the cold weather in Europe and above-average temperatures and below-average snowfall in North America is the positive phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation. La Nina is also contributing to warm temperatures across the United States. Last year, we had an arctic dipole anomaly for the second winter in a row, in a combination of a negative NAO and a negative AO. ~AH1 ^(discuss!) 01:49, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

is this fake?

This seems obviously fake to me:

http://imgur.com/bIe4e

The middle to bottom-right is obviously fake (to my eyes). Someone suggested this is camera blur, but on the left and top, the individual coins are clear and not blurred. It looks like some or all of this picture is photoshopped. What do you think?

Here is where I defend my point of view> http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/p7dfa/reddit_coin_stacking/c3n5y5k?context=3 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.92.81.13 (talk) 16:27, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

For further evidence: I consider this comparison photo unshopped (http://i.imgur.com/KGd5R.jpg). You can count the number of coins in it quickly, without any "fractional" coins or weird ones. Now count the number of coins in the one I call a shop. You can't, because there's all sorts of cruft, coins splitting and melding, etc. It's totally unclear in the section I'm talking about, while being perfectly clear in the top-left, and there is no camera-jerk "blurring" right of the stack of coins. It just seems obviously photoshopped to me. 78.92.81.13 (talk) 16:36, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

I just don't see it. The "cruft" you mention to me looks like just a tiny jiggle in the camera. I don't see any similarities in the patterns of the coin stacks. And just in terms of credulity, this photo is a very simple spiral even I could make given enough time and money, whereas that other thing is, well, a masterpiece of some sort or other. Sometimes shopped .jpg images can be spotted with error level analysis, but the site everybody linked to for that^[5] is "temporarily shut down for a move", which is Internetese for dead beyond all possibility of resuscitation. Wnt (talk) 16:43, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

"Error level analysis" is pretty much pure pseudo-science. BenRG posted a pretty good debunking last April; I vaguely recall User:SteveBaker similarly debunking it. I'd offer up my own debunking of the error-level analysis technique too, if I believed it had any bunk to begin with - but it doesn't, so I won't.

Determining whether a photograph has been "forged" requires a very very careful definition of what "forgery" means. Image processing experts armed with powerful analysis tools can tell you whether an image is bit-identical to another; and they can often spot image artifacts that appear to be the result of amateurish use of common image-processing tools; but unless there's an authoritative reference for comparison, it's provably impossible to determine whether a pixel in a rendered JPEG file is "digitally altered," or if it's actually what the camera image-sensor recorded. The individual pixels contain no additional information, other than their color value.

As I said, the problem devolves into a matter of definition of "forgery." Suppose somebody constructs an elaborate, photorealistic painting of a scene, and then digitally photographs the painting. The painting may contain any image characteristics I wanted to paint on it - any possible combination of pixels. The camera may perfectly capture the photo, but the scene is "phony." Statistical analysis of the image will show whatever, but without knowing how those statistics compare to the actual scene, they're useless for analysis - no matter how improbable any metric may be in a "normal" scene. Is that a "forged" digital image? Nimur (talk) 18:01, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Why can I clearly count and delineate with my eye each coin in the background (not foreground); each coin at the left of the image; each coin in the comparison (up-down arrow) image (up-close). But when you zoom in real close on the center, you suddenly see that you an individual coin photorealistically (no blurring) splits apart, or is photorealistically (no blur) cut as though it were an impartial, shattered coin, and photorealistically see coins that bend up and over one above them, as though they were bent out of shape just to go to the trouble of occluding something they wouldn't if they were straight? All of these effects are photorealistic: they are not blur. There is no blur that makes the coins difficult to discern or dilineate elsewhere in the image; nor is there any blur outside the stack of coins: the whole image is photorealistic. I'm asking you to click up close, magnify and zoom in, and then explain the photorealistic (non-blurred) effects you see. 78.92.81.13 (talk) 17:03, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

The only splitting I see is that the camera was pretty clearly jiggled up/down during the exposure. That's why there are double highlights and why the grooves in the edges of the coins are so much sharper than everything else (because they run up/down and superimposed on themselves) Is that what you mean or something else? Wnt (talk) 18:21, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Carbon 14 half life

I understand that carbon 14's half life is approximately 5730 years. Are there any conditions that affect the amount of carbon 14 in a fossil; i.e. heat, pressure etc? Thus, affecting accurate dating. What are the presumptions, if any, that affect carbon 14 dating. If carbon 14 decays to nitrogen in approximately 5730 years; how can anything that contains carbon 14 be older than 5730 years? 209.243.5.164 (talk) 16:34, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Half-life means the time it takes for half of it to decay, not all of it. If there were 1,000 atoms of C-14 in the organic matter when it died, there will be about 500 after 5,730 years, then 250 atoms after 11,460 years, 125 atoms after 17,190 years, etc.. It would take a very long time before all the C-14 was gone. Nothing is going to affect the rate at which C-14 decays. The main problem with carbon dating is contamination with more recent organic matter. The main assumption behind carbon dating is what the proportion of C-14 in the environment was at the time the organism died was. The C-14 levels were pretty constant until we started doing nuclear testing, but you need to be very careful with using any kind of radioactive dating on things after nuclear testing started. --Tango (talk) 16:51, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

After you get down to two carbon 14 atoms, and 5730 years later you then have one lonely carbon 14 atom and immediately start the stopwatch, how long until that one turns? 5730 years? But then 100% would have gone in that period. 20.137.18.53 (talk) 18:29, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Half life (especially when dealing with quantum things like radioactive decay) is a statistical property. It's more accurately stated as "the time after which there is a 50% probability that any given nucleus would decay". According to the law of large numbers that's equivalent to "the time it take for half of it to decay" when you have a large number of atoms. However, that breaks down when you have a small number of atoms. So for a single atom, flip a coin - if it comes up heads, the atom will still be around in 5,730 years. Flip it again: 11,460 years, etc. Even for something like 10 atoms of C-14, you can't say that there will be exactly 5 of them in 5,730 years - you would effectively flip 10 coins, and might get 5 atoms, but may get 6, or 8 or even (with small probability) all 10 decaying over the 5,730 years. -- 140.142.20.101 (talk) 18:56, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict)You can't know how long it will take any individual atom to turn. It's a probabilistic process. Imagine that every day you roll a six-sided die. You have a 1/6 chance of getting a 6 each day. Maybe you'll get one the first day, but probably not. Maybe you'll go two weeks without getting even one six. On average you'd expect to have rolled a six on or before the sixth day, but there are no guarantees. Radioactive decay is like that. Imagine that every atom has its own little die, and each day it rolls it to determine whether it will decay. Except in stead of having 6 sides, this die has 2 million sides. So there is only a 1 in 2 million chance that the atom will decay on any given day. You'd expect that the typical carbon-14 atom will have rolled the magic number that causes it to decay after 2 million days have passed (5730 years to be precise), but some will take longer, and some will decay right away. Because it is probabilistic we can predict how the population will change in aggregate but you can't make any such predictions for individual atoms. Dragons flight (talk) 19:08, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

As we currently understand it, the half life of spontaneous fission of a radionuclide is the same everywhere in the universe, regardless of external stimuli like heat or pressure. A 2008 edition of Science News contained a story where someone suggested that there might be small changes in half life when in the proximity of a sun (it's subscription only, unfortunately). I mention this only for nebbish completeness - even if this is the case, it might affect the long-term power output of space probes, but the effect will be much too small to have any bearing on radiocarbon dating. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 18:19, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Just in case we've missed it, the key concept to keep in mind here is that atoms, like flipped coins, don't have a memory. An atom of C-14 doesn't know when it was born, doesn't know if it's been 5000 or 50000 years. If you go for a half-life, half the atoms are gone, but the other half don't know they're the other half. To their perspective they're a brand spanking new sample of C-14 and they've got their whole half-life ahead of them, at the end of which half will be gone - i.e. only half of the first half will be left, which is 1/4. And so on. Now 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32, 1/64 ... the sequence does grow fast. So if you go out ten, twenty, thirty half-lives the number of remaining lucky atoms gets very very small indeed, too small to measure. Our article says 60,000 years, i.e. about ten half-lives = 1/1024 of the original sample, is the practical limit. Wnt (talk) 19:37, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Ethenedisulfonic acid

Ethanedisulfonic acid

How might I go about requesting an article on ethene-1,2-disulfonic acid? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Colgator4 (talk • contribs) 17:07, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Well, let's start by redlinking ethene-1,2-disulfonic acid, which subtly helps to indicate demand. Normally you'd go to WP:RA to request the article next, but maybe we can move things along... Next I go to PubChem and see what turns up. Term not found, curses. Tried PubMed for the heck of it... nada. Alright, now I'm thinking there's a more common name so I just plain Google it. Top hit is in Wikipedia - for ethanedisulfonic acid, a.k.a. ethane-1,2-disulfonic acid. At this point, I have to actually think for a moment. I've put the graphic up at the beginning of the section - we see there are two and only two carbons; each has a sulfonate and a bond to one other carbon so they have two hydrogens also. We could have one hydrogen and one double bond between the carbons. So the compound you suggest is reasonably possible, though I don't know how stable it is - what's clear though is that with only two carbons we don't need the 1,2. Which means back we go to Google, and voila, there are results. [6] One of them looks like exactly what we want (ChemSpider, forgot them the first time!): [7] But it doesn't have much data - it links an inside front cover and thousands and thousands of patents, and I doubt any of that is real. Tried PubChem again and nothing.[8] Nothing from PubMed: [9] Google Scholar turns up one hit, to a patent, [10] but this is as a long list of groups claimed including methanedisulfonic but excluding ethanedisulfonic. Oops, somebody filed a patent with a hole in it - if it wasn't from 1981 this might be worth something. ;) Now despite much discouragement, I try Google Books, and voila! 131 hits for ethenedisulfonic! [11] A lot of these are derivatives but right off the top I find [12] "Ethenesulfonic acid polymerizes in aqueous solution (32-3*0, under the influence of hydrogen peroxide, potassium persulfate, or ultraviolet light." But it's all locked up under copyright and you'd have to interlibrary loan it (at best) to get at the gooey center. Certainly an ethene polymerizing is not the most shocking idea I've heard, though. [13] says, "Preparation Salts of ethenesulfonic, also known as ethylenesulfonic or vinylsulfonic acid," and oh lord here we go again. PubMed: 12 and 35 hits and 12 more for "vinyl sulfonic acid" [14]. PubChem 3 hits and 18 hits and 2 hits but alas none sulfonic at both 1 and 2. The PubMed results may well be similar. So alas, I've fallen into the "Where did Google want me to go today?" trap and hit on their "synonym" of ethenesulfonic for ethenedisulfonic, likewise all the rest. (Should have looked at the chemical formula in the first book hit and I would have realized) But in the process I've thought of a term "ethylenedisulfonic" which works in Google for a bunch of hits. [15] But that, alas alas, gets me back to ethanedisulfonic hits again. This ambiguity matches that for ethylene chloride - there could be good hits in that Google mass somewhere, or not.

So far I really have is one ChemSpider hit, which for all I know is about an entirely hypothetical compound. Now the one thing I haven't done is to search Chemical Abstracts, or Beilstein for that matter, which might give some more useful direction, because unfortunately we have not made the same strides to liberate chemistry as we have with biology. Wnt (talk) 18:11, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

For future reference, you can put single quotes around a word to stop Google using synonyms. See here for details and other similar tricks. (Oddly, I thought it was a + sign you were meant to use... I guess that explains why that never seemed to work properly!) --Tango (talk) 18:22, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

It was a + sign, but they quietly changed it several months ago [16]. It's not entirely clear why, but there is speculation that it's to free up the + symbol for use with Google+. -- 140.142.20.101 (talk) 18:47, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

A chemical structure search for ethenedisulfonic acid in Chemical Abstracts turns up no references. This indicates that this chemical compound has never been reported in the chemical literature. Colgator4 is most likely interested in ethanedisulfonic acid (as mentioned above), which we have a very short article about. A request could be placed at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chemistry or Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chemicals to ask that the article be expanded. -- Ed (Edgar181) 18:52, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

This is very interesting and has produced a number of useful connections. Thanks! Your finding the reference [17] that says, "Preparation Salts of ethenesulfonic, also known as ethylenesulfonic or vinylsulfonic acid," was very good, because I am looking for a sulfonate analogue of maleic acid. I used the term, "ethene-1,2-disulfonic acid" because that's what comes directly out of ChemDraw; and it distinguishes what I am seeking from, say, ethene-1,1-disulfonic acid. Ethene-1,1-disulfonic acid is very likely unstable. Oh, and I am not looking for ethanedisulfonic acid (as mentioned above), which we already have an article about. User:Colgator4 —Preceding undated comment added 20:22, 2 February 2012 (UTC).

I checked SciFinder (CAS) for the substructure S-CH=CH-S and none of the hits had any oxygen on the sulfur. The parent compound (dithiol) is known as are a bunch of salts and simple alkyl (including dialkylsulfonium on one of the sides). DMacks (talk) 20:37, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Molecules

Few questions that I have been pondering.

1) Is there a limit to the number of different kinds molecules that can exist? 2) If there is a limit, do we know of all of the different kinds of molecules that exist in the universe? 3) Is it possible to engineer a molecule that doesn't normally form in the universe? ScienceApe (talk) 21:05, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

What is a "kind" of molecule in this context? DMacks (talk) 21:10, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Since molecules can be arbitrarily large, it follows that the number of different molecules that can exist is a very, very large number, much as the number of possible spoken sentences that can exist is a very, very large number. Comet Tuttle (talk) 21:25, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Lignin biosynthesis

1. Yes, but it is immensely large. Some molecules are immensely complicated - lignin is produced by small molecules with free radicals reacting with a much larger molecule. The process is completely random, so each molecule produced will be large and unique. There are probably many other possible reactions similar to the only thing limiting the number of different types of molecules, would be the amount of matter in the universe.
2. No and we may never know, since mass spectrometry can only detect small molecules.
3. Yes see drug design and plastic. SmartSE (talk) 23:24, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

I think that proteins are a great example for all these things. Using the genetic code you can make a pretty much arbitrary sequence. Sure, sometimes it'll misfold into inclusion bodies and be a general pain in the rear, but actually that doesn't even matter for your abstract question. Every three basepairs of DNA gives 20 different possible ways to extend the molecule, for more or less as long as you want - thousands of amino acids in a row. And the weirdest thing is sometimes it seems to take hundreds of amino acids to get a specific property you want. Wnt (talk) 00:04, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Alcohol and steam from drain gates

In the movie Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, Dustin Hoffman's character warns the protagonist to be cautious when he hastily grabs a large container of pure alcohol and asks him if he wants to blow up the entire building. Can alcohol explode?

My other question is why does steam comes from drain grates in cold mornings?

Thanks!

109.74.50.52 (talk) 21:21, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Nearly pure alcohol has a very low flash point, and fire marshals treat it as a very dangerous combustible liquid on account of its easily-ignitable vapor: so yes, it's far more dangerous than you might think. However, 190-proof alcohol is not widely found outside of distilling operations, pharmaceutical plants and perfume manufacturing plants. But explode? No, not really. It'll just make a really nasty fire if it's got an ignition source.

Steam that comes from drainage grates is water vapor from the relatively warm underground stream/drain that condenses when it hits the colder air above the surface. Acroterion (talk) 21:27, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Everclear (alcohol) is available in 190 proof, and is commonly used by amateur perfume makers. It is sometimes used in making "Rocket fuel" punch for parties, along with ginger ale, sherbet, and dry ice. When moviemakers wish to depict a street scene in a large old US city such as New York, they cause steam to come from the street grates. Now York has steam heating pipes under the streets. I once saw makers of a movie about New York use another US city as a substitute to save money, but they made sure to cause steam to come out of the street grates. Edison (talk) 00:59, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

I'd forgotten about Everclear. But it's not an explosive, except where your brain cells are concerned. And yes, in some cities with central steam heating plants like New York, Baltimore and others, you can get actual steam (or at least genuinely warm water vapor) from street vents; there are pressure relief valves down there. In New York you'll see chimneys set up to keep it from affecting visibility. Acroterion (talk) 02:34, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Note that while not explosive under normal conditions, alcohol can be made into an explosive by increasing it's surface area and possibly the oxygen percentage in the air. The surface area can be increased by spraying it in a fine aerosol, as is done in an internal combustion engine run on ethanol or methanol, or as could be done in an thermobaric weapon. Even something like wheat dust can be made into an explosive in this way. StuRat (talk) 18:59, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

There are probable a few unfortunate people sleeping in the gutters along the streets of large cities whose fondest dream would be getting "alcohol from drain grates. " Edison (talk) 20:17, 3 February 2012 (UTC)