Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2014 December 4

= December 4 =

Making wine like soda?
Are there obstacles to making wine industrially by mixing calibrated amounts of purified water, food-grade ethanol, and flavorings, much like how soda and energy drinks are produced? --173.49.79.100 (talk) 06:27, 4 December 2014 (UTC)


 * The obstacle is the complexity of the flavourings, and aromatic compounds, and colours, and aging characteristics.... HiLo48 (talk) 06:33, 4 December 2014 (UTC)


 * There would also undoubtedly be legal problems - European legislation for example defines wine as "The product obtained exclusively from the total or partial alcoholic fermentation of fresh grapes, whether or not crushed, or of grape must". While a mixture of "purified water, food-grade ethanol, and flavorings" might theoretically be indistinguishable from wine, it couldn't be sold as such. AndyTheGrump (talk) 08:28, 4 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Yes but aside from that it is still a good question. Could you make a drink that approximates the taste of reasonable wine, starting from a base mix of ethanol and water? If you think about it gin is pretty much ethanol+water+flavorings, is it a big stretch to imagine making wine in the same fashion? My immediate answer is that grapes are a cheap source of ethanol, and you get the rest thrown in, but if you allow yourself oak chips and so on even modern wines are fairly manufactured product. Have you tasted the oaky stuff they blend into a pinot noir? Greglocock (talk) 09:12, 4 December 2014 (UTC)


 * OP here. Thanks. The feasibility of approximating the taste of real wine well enough is really what the question is about. When I asked the question, I was assuming that chemists might have a way to make the flavorings relatively cheaply. Note that besides potentially being cheaper to make, "wine" made that way is potentially more easily made consistent across batches. --173.49.11.192 (talk) 13:12, 4 December 2014 (UTC)


 * It's an interesting question. When making this simulated wine product ("Whyne"?) how close to the original – or an original – version of the product is required?  I mean, look at the candy aisle or the soda cooler at the grocery store.  One will find lots of products which are putatively "orange"- or "cherry"- or "lemon"-flavored.  These approximations are often readily identifiable as intentional imitations of their nominal, natural originals.  Nevertheless, in most cases one is never remotely fooled that the snack or beverage is actually the original and not an imitation.
 * So, does our Whyne need to reach a level where it could be mistaken for actual wine? Or can Whyne simply be an (obviously-)artificial mixture that happens to more closely resemble wine than it does most other liquid beverage products?  (And then there's the question of how good a wine we need our Whyne to imitate.  I mean, there are some low-quality, low-cost jugs of plonk that already taste like barely-potable imitations.)  Or does it just have to have enough grape-y booziness to work as a substitute for wine in a wine cooler or other mixed drink? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:37, 4 December 2014 (UTC)


 * It certainly seems like it should be possible. That said, I don't know that that's really a safe assumption you're making. How much synthetic wine costs would, as TenOfAllTrades suggests, likely depend on how closely you approximate the real flavor, color, and aroma. You might be able to replicate all the major flavor compounds cheaply, but to get all of them might require dozens, if not hundreds, of chemicals added in extremely precise amounts. See the wine chemistry article and the articles linked from there for an idea of the complexity. describes over 50 different compounds that can affect the aroma of Chardonnay, some in concentrations as low as a few hundred parts per quadrillion.
 * It would depend on how the flavor compounds are produced industrially. If they have to be extracted from fruit, it would almost certainly be cheaper to just mash the grapes up and do it the old fashioned way rather than chemically separating and recombining all the components in a lab. Wine isn't actually that expensive to make. Some wines can cost a lot in the store because they're produced in small quantities (supply and demand), they have to be shipped halfway around the world in heavy glass bottles, and people associate price with quality. A wine that retails for $100 might only cost the winery $15 to make, and that includes the cost of the bottle itself. The rest is shipping, marketing, and profit for the winery, distributor, and retail store. Mr.Z-man 15:47, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * There used to be powdered wine (see e.g. this German review), especially marketed to trekking enthusiasts. It's made with alcohol powder and red wine extracts, and apparently is about as appetising as that sounds ;-). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 16:15, 4 December 2014 (UTC)


 * The answer to "why don't they" questions like this is almost always cost vs quality. For example, one could, in principle, synthesize all the sugars, fats, and protein in milk in a laboratory.  But It's cheaper to get it from a cow.  You can mix grape juice and vodka and get a pretty poor substitute for wine.  The cheapest way to do it well is probably to age fermented grape juice.  Look at butter and sugar.  For health reasons, some use expensive and otherwise inferior substitutes.  But the real thing remains. μηδείς (talk) 16:25, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Agreed. You could also ask "Why would they?" when we still have a wine lake needing to be drunk. "Hundreds of millions of bottles of wine are turned into industrial alcohol every year" according to our article. Alansplodge (talk) 16:32, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Now that's a crying shame. But why distill wine or even (God forbid) uproot vineyards when some countries ought to just pass the hat and make wine and/or bulk grape juice a common relief supply for areas struck by war and famine?  (Yeah, I know why, I just can't believe it) Wnt (talk) 16:52, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Why distill wine? Because Brandy.  -- Jayron  32  18:32, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * erm, right; I meant, into industrial ethanol as described in the quote. Wnt (talk) 23:10, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

Honestly, I suspect this is an issue of discrimination rather than science. Anything done by the rich is noble, but if done by the poor it is evil and dangerous, and tippling is no exception. Things like gin and malt liquor have been the object of great crusades. It's not hard to find things like this today. (It's not just wine - you need merely watch a program like Sons of Guns to see rich white folk playing with machine guns and grenade launchers, while being in a black neighborhood with a gun usually means five years in prison. The FAA is gradually mulling over how to make it so that it's legal for a company to hover outside your window taping you but any attempt by you to do that to them would land you in jail for years.)  As an industry I would expect vintners to recognize that any innovation that reduces prices is a mortal peril, not merely because it is a race to the bottom as the nearly fixed consumption of cheap booze generates less profit, but because it invites new prohibitions that potentially affect all their products. Wnt (talk) 17:02, 4 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Funny, my parents don't buy gin, since they can get four times as drunk on reasonably priced mid-quality wine for the same amount. My sister buys wine, and doesn't drink it.  My broinlaw buys expensive microbrews and complains when people drink it.  I just mix vodka and Welch's. μηδείς (talk) 01:13, 5 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I was thinking Prohibition-era bathtub gin, not really that far from what you are describing actually. :) Wnt (talk) 02:37, 5 December 2014 (UTC)
 * My grandfather actually had a still (and his wife ran numbers as a girl). He died when I was a minor and I had forgotten the story. μηδείς (talk) 03:42, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

UK "Quantum hubs" applications
Does Wikipedia have anything on the projects being funded by the UK for practical applications of quantum technology described at ? Some of these (quantum encryption) seem familiar enough, basically using action at a distance to transmit/share a one-time pad in a secure (?) way. But using 'spooky' quantum effects to see through smoke or detect sinkholes by the lack of gravity? That I'm not so familiar with! Wnt (talk) 08:11, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * We have a short article at Quantum sensor, which links to Quantum imaging and Quantum metrology. Mr.Z-man 18:11, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

Will there be any consequences if a human eats the glands of an animal?
After cooking, will the hormones still be active or will they denature? Let's assume that the meat is poultry, pork, beef, fish or shellfish. 140.254.245.237 (talk) 17:59, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Folks have been eating Rocky Mountain oysters for a long time, with no apparent problems. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 18:10, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * for the people or the sheep? -- Jayron  32  18:22, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I think some effects are possible from raw glands. For example there seems to be a large market in thyroid capsules made from raw/desiccated beef thyroid - here's some associated discussion  - I haven't looked up the heat stability of triiodothyronine and thyroxine to say what cooking would do to them, so I don't know if it reduces the activity just a little or completely.  There are similar hits for adrenal capsules.  In general this is biology - if you do something nobody else does, you may get a result nobody else has seen before; I don't think you should assume that eating unlimited amounts of very specific meat organs would be without effect. Wnt (talk) 18:26, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks to Wnt for actually answering the question rather than just joking around. This is Reference Desk, not a chat room.  The Rambling Man (talk) 18:44, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Not all of the jokes are that offal, are they? -- Jayron  32  20:13, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Chat regarding jokes on the Refdesk has been transferred to the talk page. Wnt (talk) 23:00, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Per request, I have added back Jayron32's comment as it contained a relevant link. I have also added back TRM's comment it was in reply to to give proper context. Any followup discussion relating to the above should stay on the thread at Wikipedia talk:Reference Desk. Nil Einne (talk) 01:23, 6 December 2014 (UTC)
 * See here and also here. Count Iblis (talk) 20:21, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * We have an article: Desiccated thyroid extract which gives some of the history of using animal thyroid glands to treat hypothyroidism. I shall now have a look for the article I can recall seeing giving a bit more of the history. --TammyMoet (talk) 22:29, 4 December 2014 (UTC) Found this one. Am now off to bed having just got in from work. --TammyMoet (talk) 22:33, 4 December 2014 (UTC)


 * After cooking specified the OP. μηδείς (talk) 01:08, 5 December 2014 (UTC)


 * I found this reference on Google Books that in the 19th century, cooked sheep's thyroid had indeed been used as a treatment for hypothyroidism. If the link doesn't work, it's from Mental Retardation and Developmental Delay : Genetic and Epigenetic Factors by Irvine (Emeritus) Moyra Smith M.D. Professor of Pediatrics University of California (2005) page 5. --TammyMoet (talk) 12:35, 5 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Most animal glands are considered organ meat when discussed as human food. Our article has some relevant info. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:44, 5 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Explorers have gotten Vitamin A poisoning at the death by full-body skin peel off level from ingesting polar bear liver Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 21:01, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

How do insects drink water?
Is it through their mouths like other animals? Besides the ones that get water from their food, how do they get it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Radioactivemutant (talk • contribs) 18:53, 4 December 2014 (UTC)


 * It depends on the insect, but most do drink through their mouths, from puddles, dew drops, etc. E.g. a butterfly has a specially adapted long tube for drinking nectar from flowers. The true bugs also have piercing/sucking mouthparts, though many of them will get their water along with the plant nutrients that they are sucking. Ants can go forage for water and then share it with their nestmates via trophallaxis. Check out this cool .gif of an ant drinking water:, and note that at their small scale, water's surface tension seems much stronger, and some of them even carry around water drops in their mandibles much like you could carry a water balloon. SemanticMantis (talk) 20:30, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

Isentropic efficiency of gas expansion process
Let's say I let a compressed gas expand. If the process is isentropic, the relationship between its temperature before expansion, and its temperature after expansion is related to its heat capacity ratio. The precise relationship is: T1 = T2(p2/p1)^1/1-g Where g is the heat capacity ratio. How do I do this calculation if the process is not completely isentropic, but has an isentropic efficiency of say, 80%?--Goose Geyser (talk) 19:20, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * You either assume its isentropic or not - there is no "80% isentropic". Thermodynamic base models assume there is no loss of energy. If you want to include "loss" into your calculation you have to extend your model to include an surrounding volume of matter. --Kharon (talk) 23:26, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Says the man who has never used steam tables when working out the efficiency of a steam engine cycle. Sorry, in engineering there is a concept called isentropic efficiency. Hopefully there are enough search terms in the previous sentence to get the OP to answer his own question, I certainly can't remember how (but I did figure it out myself much to the surprise of my thermo prof). Greglocock (talk) 09:39, 5 December 2014 (UTC)
 * As far as i have read this is some extended engeneering model doing more or less what i wrote, including something "outside" into the model like a second shell to calculate some efficiency inside. I doubt the results are reliable but in theory you can extend that all the way till you have a new world weather report model. --Kharon (talk) 07:25, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

cold fusion
has the process for creating cold fusion use heavy water below freezing temperature and then with a titanium electrode to activate the cold fusion proses ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.137.114.52 (talk) 20:34, 4 December 2014 (UTC)


 * We have an article on Cold fusion - the most important part of which is it doesn't work. So there is no "cold fusion process" which makes it kinda difficult to discuss it meaningfully. SteveBaker (talk) 21:15, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * More precisely, cold fusion is considered to be pathological science. As the article explains, experiments that have been claimed to demonstrate cold fusion, also known as low-energy nuclear reactions, have been flawed in various ways, and are not reproducible.  As User:SteveBaker says, this makes it difficult to answer any questions about the process other than to say that there is no scientifically valid process.  Robert McClenon (talk) 21:36, 4 December 2014 (UTC)


 * It's kinda like asking whether unicorns will grant wishes to male virgins as well as female ones.  Since there are no unicorns - there is no answer to give. SteveBaker (talk) 21:41, 4 December 2014 (UTC)


 * That has to be perhaps the most offensively sexist remarks I have yet heard at wikipedia. There are no such things as male virgins. μηδείς (talk) 01:06, 5 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Your assertion is false. I was certainly one until I met the right woman. Edison (talk) 05:01, 5 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Why are you still here, Medeis? You're flagrantly trolling. AlexTiefling (talk) 06:25, 5 December 2014 (UTC)
 * In the nineteenth century, virgin may have implied female virgin. In the twenty-first century, it does not necessarily.  Robert McClenon (talk) 00:27, 6 December 2014 (UTC)
 * In modern times it is often used about men who are likewise "chaste". However, the ancient origin of "virgin" had to do strictly with females. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 13:41, 6 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Well, just because Planet X wasn't out there didn't make Sedna (planet) go away. "Cold fusion" is often applied to a broader set of "Low-energy nuclear reactions", and I see no conceptual reason why such reactions can't (perhaps) be a subset or relative of induced gamma emission (though that too is a controversial topic).  But the latter article makes the all-important point that you can reach out and touch a nucleus and make it do something different, and so long as that is the case, I see no reason not to daydream. Wnt (talk) 23:22, 4 December 2014 (UTC)


 * As User:Wnt notes, there might be low-energy nuclear reactions, but, if there were, one would expect that it could be occasionally observed in nature. There is more research being done on cold fusion than on unicorns; whether that research is a waste of money is another question.  One difference between the cold fusion question and the unicorn question is the genre of a book that answers the question in-universe.  The former would be science fiction and the latter would be fantasy fiction.  Robert McClenon (talk) 23:28, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Yeah, unicorns, balderdash, pseudo-science, no way, eh? Someone needs to tell them they're impossible. Wnt (talk) 23:44, 4 December 2014 (UTC)


 * I view that as a crucial distinction. Even if one looks on classical cold fusion as a pathological science (and it certainly does seem to deserve its place as a poster child for that term), we needn't throw the baby out with the bathwater as regards hope for all practical applications for fusion power.   The fact that we are now at the threshold of manufacturing reactions that release more energy than goes into initiating them, be that reaction however small-scale and short-lived, is incredibly heartening.  I think it's worth remembering that it wasn't so long ago that this particular accomplishment was viewed as being closer to the realm of science fiction than immediately viable scientific fact. Maybe it's still pie-in-the-sky thinking, but it's hard to not be cautiously optimistic in light of such an unexpected development, given the immense implications this would have for every arena of human need.   S n o w  talk 03:26, 5 December 2014 (UTC)


 * I would be very wary of attempts by modern "cold fusion" 'researchers' to first change the name of their field to something with a more innocuous sound ("low-energy nuclear reacctions") and then subsequently to try to absorb and associate themselves with more-credible niche research&mdash;like the aforementioned induced gamma emission. (It's kind of like the way that homeopathy 'researchers' periodically try to pretend that their bottle-whacking statistical-noise placebos are somehow related to hormesis.)  TenOfAllTrades(talk) 13:52, 5 December 2014 (UTC)