Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2014 March 22

= March 22 =

Capsaicin half-life?
Thanks. Regards. 95.35.51.89 (talk) 00:21, 22 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Approximately 24 hours, elimination half-life is 1.64 hours.  --Canley (talk) 00:31, 22 March 2014 (UTC)


 * If you're asking about the burning feeling it causes humans, that might be a bit more difficult to figure out, as we also become accustomed to it over time. StuRat (talk) 00:45, 22 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Referencing to the first answer: What is the difference between the 24 period to the 1.64 period of biological half-life? 109.64.137.68 (talk) 04:04, 22 March 2014 (UTC)


 * They are actually both elimination half lives. The 24 hour figure is the half life of capsaicin on human skin, whereas the 1.64 hour figure is the half life of capsaicin in human blood plasma. Neither is the half life of say, capsaicin in a pepper, or a bottle of hot sauce, or prepared food. Someguy1221 (talk) 04:15, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

Is it true that all human embryos are initially female?
Someone told me that all human embryos start out with just the X chromosome, and then develop for a period of time, and then hormones and another Y chromosome are added at a later stage of development to make it male. Is this true? ScienceApe (talk) 00:48, 22 March 2014 (UTC)


 * No. You start out with your full set of chromosomes right from conception.  However, it is true that the embryo looks female at the beginning, as the penis doesn't develop until later, and the testicles don't descend until much later, sometimes even after birth. StuRat (talk) 01:01, 22 March 2014 (UTC)


 * I got carried away with details below, but I should say first: the human egg starts out with an X chromosome, and indeed, it is undeniably female, being part of the female body and being the female gamete. But the sperm carries either X or Y, which quite rapidly fuse during fertilization.
 * See, oh, Sex determination and differentiation (human), Sexual differentiation, genital ridge, Mullerian ducts, Wolffian ducts. Embryos are sort of female, but then again ... so are men.  The only meaningful way to define male and female is by the essence of the embryo, i.e. its future programmed sexual development.  That said, the chromosomal type isn't always XX or XY, nor a perfect prediction (see Turner syndrome, testicular feminization, freemartin, SRY.  So in order to truly determine the sex of an embryo with perfect reliability... you have to watch it grow up.  And even then maybe it's transsexual and it and you still can't make up your mind. :)  Bottom line: the sex of an embryo is an abstraction, an imperfect model.  You have to simply cite the evidence you have, such as the karyotype or other genetic test, and more than 99% of the time that will be perfectly convincing. Wnt (talk) 01:20, 22 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Below? In the skyhook thread?  Gametes don't have sex, only zygotes do.  Otherwise you are of the absurd opinion that all sperm are male, which is obviously false. μηδείς (talk) 03:26, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Hmmmm... now that's an amusing philosophical question. Clearly sperm can be "female" in that they carry an X chromosome and have a wild aspiration to give rise to baby girls.  But even more clearly they are male because they are part of a man's body - I mean, if sperm isn't male, what is?  Biology really doesn't have a lot of respect for semantics. :) Wnt (talk) 11:08, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
 * To say that eggs are female because females produce eggs is like saying cakes are bakers because bakers make cakes. It just doesn't follow. μηδείς (talk) 18:04, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
 * If the union of sperm and egg isn't a case of male and female joining up, I don't know what is. I mean, if a transsexual impregnates a woman, it goes to show she isn't "fully" female because there's a part of her that's male.  I'll tell you one thing, this looks to be a damn sight more amusing than arguing about the chicken and the egg! Wnt (talk) 17:15, 23 March 2014 (UTC)
 * The SRY gene on the Y-chromosome makes a mammalian embryo develop as a male; without it the embryo will develop as a female. However, before the SRY gene is expressed, there is no difference between a genetically male or female embryo. CS Miller (talk) 11:59, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
 * To be picky, SRY is a lot, but it's not absolutely everything. XX male syndrome isn't the same as being XY - so far as I know, they're always infertile due to the lack of some important details (especially for sperm-making) on other parts of the Y chromosome.  Even in young embryos there may be important unknown differences, and there are technically distinctive known differences such as the X-inactivation in females (though come to think of it, Klinefelter syndrome males also have that...) and well, the presence of the Y chromosome itself.  But yes, in the visible aspects known the early genital ridge looks undifferentiated due to lack of SRY expression as you say. Wnt (talk) 13:05, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

Moon winch
How about installing a winch on the moon and hoisting stuff up into space that way? Is that any less feasible than a space elevator? --78.148.110.69 (talk) 02:39, 22 March 2014 (UTC)


 * If you've got 400,000 kilometers of cable lying around, then go for it. -- Jayron  32  02:45, 22 March 2014 (UTC)


 * One big problem I see is that the Moon isn't in geosynchronous orbit. So the hook at the end of the cable would be moving along the face of the Earth at thousands of miles per hour.  Dismas |(talk) 02:46, 22 March 2014 (UTC)


 * While you've got a strong point in general, is that calculation really correct? What is the actual "ground speed" of the moon relative to the earth? It takes about 12 hours for it to get from one horizon to the other, so I would think its ground speed would be in the neighborhood of 1,000 miles per hour. Not exactly slow, but maybe could be used as a space-age equivalent of the old railroad system of a train grabbing a mailbag on the fly. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 03:59, 22 March 2014 (UTC)


 * It's considerably less feasible. A space elevator has two big advantages over a moon winch: 1) the cable doesn't need to be as long, and 2) the base of the elevator isn't moving relative to the Earth's surface. --Carnildo (talk) 02:47, 22 March 2014 (UTC)


 * And the reason why long cables don't work is that the weight of the cable is vastly more than the cargo, to the point where the cable can't even support it's own weight and breaks. Even with a long kite string the weight of the string starts to have a drag on the kite, and this is like a million times longer.  The space elevator cable may one day be possible, but not the much longer cable to the Moon. StuRat (talk) 14:50, 22 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Hmmmmmm.... it's possible to make a sort of "cable" by, say, having a steel ball bounce between two steel plates in vacuum, or more realistically, having a rail gun that shoots objects out, which are caught, decelerated to store free energy, and reaccelerated back with that energy by another rail gun at the far end. Such a cable can't mediate an attractive force by any means I know of, but it certainly can induce repulsion.  I can kind of picture the Moon being used to "levitate" an object on the far side of Earth by such a stream of exchanged bullets with inspired trajectories, with (hypothetically) relatively low input of fresh energy once it is established.  Now if only I had Wile E. Coyote to manage the project! Wnt (talk) 15:04, 22 March 2014 (UTC)


 * But then it technically won't be a "moon winch", but a "moon gun" or "moon catapult". 24.5.122.13 (talk) 19:50, 22 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Also, it won't be capable of actually hoisting stuff into space from Earth's surface -- the most it will be able to do is shuttle stuff between low Earth orbit and the Moon. 24.5.122.13 (talk) 19:53, 22 March 2014 (UTC)


 * True. I think... unless there's some even more lunatic scheme I can devise. :)  I suppose that you can boost yourself in something like a sounding rocket or space tourism vehicle to the mesosphere, and then the Captain orders (drumroll) ... "Engage the meteor drive!"  The lumps of lunar rock, worked into ceramic heat shields with some robust electronics to control steering fins, pass through the atmosphere almost horizontally, steering to the tiny ship's position and slamming into its momentum receptacle!  With blast after blast at incredible speed, the ship gains the crucial momentum to put it into orbit.  Except, that is, alas, that it takes quite a bit of energy to redirect a rock from lunar to Earth-grazing orbit, and the energy in this model doesn't plausibly get recycled, so it requires having so much energy on the Moon that it's cheaper than energy taken (with considerable inefficiency) from Earth.  Pity. Wnt (talk) 23:29, 22 March 2014 (UTC)


 * It'll be difficult to devise something even more lunatic than what is already out there – like in one SF novel where a stream of metallic projectiles was catapulted towards the earth, and used for reaction mass to "climb into space" by the reaction force of electromagnetically accelerating them faster downwards. —Quondum 04:47, 23 March 2014 (UTC)


 * The "moon catapult" concept was explored in some detail in the Robert Heinlein book The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. It's a form of Mass driver.  -- Jayron  32  04:55, 23 March 2014 (UTC)


 * +1 here, a railgun is an incredibly destructive kind of mass driver, in the sense that it damages itself when launching its projectile. "Mass driver" is the broader term, and the one we'd need here.


 * While we need quite a delta v for the transfer from the Moon to low Earth orbit, the very gravity well that makes the transfer difficult will add to the projectile velocity as they freefall towards Earth. Two weeks ago, we had a topic about how much energy it takes to push the Moon (in its entirety but not necessarily in one piece) into its own circumsolar orbit; this one hints at how much energy we could gain by essentially dropping small pieces of the Moon down Earth's gravity well...


 * Now we have two topics within one month to combine our moon and mass driver technology; does that make it a "blue moon"? - ¡Ouch! (hurt me / more pain) 06:57, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Here, we'll need to make that a full moon to make it official. Ѡ Wnt (talk) 19:15, 24 March 2014 (UTC)


 * The Moon's orbit isn't perfectly circular, so the distance between the Earth and Moon isn't constant. I suppose, if all the other problems were magically fixed, this could actually be an advantage, as you could snag cargo at the low point and release it at the high point, some 42 thousand km up. StuRat (talk) 15:20, 22 March 2014 (UTC)


 * A related problem is pumping water from well. Suction (i.e. vacuum) will only lift water a finite difference (about 32 feet).  But a submerged pump can push up water from a much larger depth.  A cable not only has to lift the object, bur the cable itself.  The weight of the cable is significant.  --DHeyward (talk) 06:12, 24 March 2014 (UTC)


 * A better analogy is a rocket needing to not only lift the payload but also the rocket, fuel, etc. It's better because you need additional (thicker) cable to support the weight, which in turn adds it's own weight, and the rocket needs more fuel to lift the fuel, and that in turn adds more weight which requires more fuel.  In the pump case you may need a bigger pump and thicker pipe to contain the higher pressure differential, but that doesn't add to the weight you need to pump.


 * Ultimately the solution for a rocket requires using an external power source, such as in a solar sail. StuRat (talk) 17:30, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Abiogenesis mark 1
A few weeks ago I read an article about traces of multi-celled “organisms” which had been discovered around 2004. The article (from a nonscientific, but otherwise reliable source) implied that these “blobs” were the only “survivors” from abiogenesis mark 1 and significantly older than any of the primitive life forms discovered in Australia and elsewhere.

It seems, that these “blobs” became extinct and life disappeared from our planet for a few hundred million years (?) until abiogenesis mark 2 kicked in some 3.5 billion years ago.

I remember looking up the term used in the en:WP and found no article. Does anybody know what I might be talking about? Unfortunately, I recorded no bookmark, can´t remember more details and Googling gets me nowhere.

Thank you.--Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 06:34, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I assume you've checked out our abiogenesis article — there's plenty of blob-like stuff there. Your description almost sounds like Thermotoga maritima, except they're not extinct. ~:71.20.250.51 (talk) 06:49, 22 March 2014 (UTC)


 * It's been suggested that life may have arisen during the Hadean era prior to the giant impact hypothesis that created the moon. Such an impact would have wiped out all evidence of prior life, so there is no way to prove it. Someguy1221 (talk) 07:17, 22 March 2014 (UTC)


 * OP here: I managed to locate the report (in German).  The blobs are called Gabonionta (discovered in Gabon).  They are about 2.1 bio years old and measure about 35mm).  Still, there is no article in the en:WP, indeed, all references I can find are either in German (but a red link in the de:WP) or in French (no article either).  Thank you for your help.


 * --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 08:11, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
 * PS: Some additional data can be checked here.  --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 08:18, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

citric acid Extracellular/Intracellular?
citric acid is a extracellular product or intracellular? --84.108.213.48 (talk) 10:45, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
 * It's produced in the Krebs cycle, which occurs in the mitochondria -- any guesses as to whether the mitochondria are inside or outside the cell? 24.5.122.13 (talk) 19:48, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

X chromosome inactivation in male mammals
In female mammals, one of her X chromosomes is deactivated at random in each cell. This is because in XY males, the Y chromosome has most (but not all) of the genes missing, and expressing genes from both chromosomes in females, and not in males can cause problems, due the doubled expression. My questions are CS Miller (talk) 12:14, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
 * 1) For the genes that are shared between the X&Y chromosomes, are both sets of genes expressed in males?
 * 2) In females, is the deactivated X chromosome completely deactivated, or is the area conserved on the Y-chromosome still expressed?
 * 3) If both sets of genes are expressed in males, and not in females, does this cause any problems?


 * The article you linked and pseudoautosomal region both talk about it a little. By and large, any statement in biology is at least a bit true and at least a bit false, and this is no exception.  Gene by gene there are known exceptions to both X-inactivation and to the lack of inactivation on the pseudoautosomal region.  When you start looking at it closely, there are structural boundaries  but these boundaries are not that simple and not that easy to study.  By and large, I think it's fairly reasonable to say that "there is no X-inactivation in males" and "the pseudoautosomal region is spared from X-inactivation". Wnt (talk) 14:31, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

Claudius Ptolemaeus on the year
What did Ptolemy believe to be the origin of the year: different amounts of sunlight in different seasons, or Persephone, or something else? Nyttend (talk) 15:22, 22 March 2014 (UTC)


 * It seems to me that the different amount of sunlight in the different seasons is absolutely obvious, as is the fact that sunlight warms the Earth. Both can be determined by direct observation.  Now why the Earth gets more sunlight at times than others is a bit trickier, being mostly due to the Earth's tilt with a minor component due to the Earth's elliptical orbit.   StuRat (talk) 16:03, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Ancient astronomers, including Ptolemy, were well aware that a year was the time taken by the sun to complete one circuit of the ecliptic and that the tilt of the ecliptic with respect to the celestial equator was responsible for the varying amounts of daylight at different times of year. It never ceases to amaze me that modern folk assume that the ancients were oblivious to easily observable phenomena. Ptolemy may have been mistaken about which body was stationary with respect to the other, but he was no fool. Deor (talk) 18:06, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
 * The problem is that I wasn't paying attention when I wrote the question, and shouldn't have included the different amounts of sunlight. I meant to ask about the astronomical background: why is a year related to the changing amounts of sunlight?  Why does the sun go through the ecliptic once per year?  I'm looking for a theoretical basis for the observations, analogous to the theory of epicycles necessary to explain the retrograde motion of some of the planets.  Nyttend (talk) 03:01, 23 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm still not sure that I understand your questions, but (ignoring some refinements, such as the eccentric and epicycle he assigned to the sun) Ptolemy viewed the whole heavens as revolving once a day from east to west around the earth. In addition, each of the "planets", including the sun and moon, had a slower motion in the opposite direction, accounting for their movements relative to the background of fixed stars. In the sun's case, this motion produced its yearly movement along the ecliptic, from one vernal equinox to the next—the equinoxes being the points at which the ecliptic intersects the celestial equator. (Some information about the data on which P. based his value for the exact length of the year is at Hipparchus.) The differing amounts of sunlight a point on the earth's surface receives at different times of year is, as I said, a result of the obliquity of the ecliptic (the inclination of the sun's path with respect to the celestial equator). Is that any help? Deor (talk) 15:03, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Bowel cleaning
How does a human organism clean the bowels from feces' internal traces and residue after defecation?--93.174.25.12 (talk) 16:20, 22 March 2014 (UTC)


 * It doesn't, feces is produced by the body, it's not purely a waste product. It contains bacteria that help the body digest foods and keep harmful bacteria away. Some people who have certain types of intestinal infections can be cured by putting feces of healthy people in their bowels. Count Iblis (talk) 16:35, 22 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Note that for certain medical procedures, like a colonoscopy, it is important to clean the bowels. In that case, a clear fluid is ingested which also causes defecation to occur, and the patient refrains from consuming anything but clear fluids for a day or so.  This largely cleans the bowels. StuRat (talk) 17:44, 22 March 2014 (UTC)


 * The fluid in this case is Polyethylene glycol and the procedure is called Whole bowel irrigation. The procedure is done solely so that the physician performing the colonoscopy can see everything clearly; i.e. there's no feces obscuring the view of the colon.  Otherwise, for a healthy person, there's usually no reason to "clean" ones bowel after defecation.  External cleaning is done often with toilet paper and/or a bidet.  But there's no need to clean one's insides out after defecation.  There's a bit of quackery that is sold to the uneducated public as Colon cleansing or sometimes "colonic irrigation", which is mostly hoakum, so don't believe what you hear from people trying to sell you on such stuff.  But no, you don't have to clean feces out of your colon after defecation.  -- Jayron  32  23:39, 22 March 2014 (UTC)


 * I doubt Jayron means to be offering a medical opinion, but I would suggest looking at articles like constipation, diverticulosis, and irritable bowel and so forth before assuming all such issues are bunkum. I do agree healthy people shouldn't be going to non-medical clinics for what sounds like medical treatment, and that people who think they are sick should phone their doctor. μηδείς (talk) 01:28, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

What is the SI definition of 1 litre?
litre says " 1 cubic decimetre (dm3), 1,000 cubic centimetres (cm3) or 1/1,000 cubic metre ", which are of course all the same. But what is the SI definition. My guess is 1/1,000 cubic metre, but I haven't found a definitive statement. -- SGBailey (talk) 16:55, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Our article on the International System of Units don't mention the litre, and the article on SI derived units states that "Some other units such as the hour, litre, tonne, and electron volt are not SI units, but are widely used in conjunction with SI units." So the straight up answer is that there is no SI definition of 1 litre, but a litre is defined in relationship to an SI unit - something which is also explained in the second paragraph in the article on the [litre]]. WegianWarrior (talk) 17:06, 22 March 2014 (UTC)


 * See also Volume. The nontrivial thing here is the SI definition of the metre, which is defined in terms of the second (by defining the speed of light). The second is by definition the duration of 9192631770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom. This ultimately how the SI unit of length and derived quantities like the litre is defined in terms of physical quantities. Count Iblis (talk) 17:08, 22 March 2014 (UTC)


 * The Official brochure for the International System of Units, on page 141 of the English version, states that the 12th General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM) abrogated the former definition of the litre, the volume of 1 kg of water under specified conditions, and "declare[d] that the word 'litre' may be employed as a special name for the cubic decimetre". The CGPM has jurisdiction over all metric units, including those that are part of SI, and those, like the litre, that are not. Jc3s5h (talk) 17:28, 22 March 2014 (UTC)


 * I think we've progressed far enough to where we can say "the amount needed to fill a one-litre bottle to the point such bottles are typically filled". That's what I'm going with, anyway. InedibleHulk (talk) 17:37, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

I think Jcs has given the answer I was seeking: 1L = 1 cubic dm. Thanks -- SGBailey (talk) 23:24, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Or in proper SI notation: 1 L = 1 dm&sup3; (put a space after the number and don't mix words and symbols). ("1 l" instead of "1 L" is also correct, but harder to read.) See the "official brochure" already cited above; specifically, sections 5.1, 5.2, and 5.3.3. --50.100.193.30 (talk) 04:06, 23 March 2014 (UTC)


 * No, that is wrong, the deci applies to the m&sup3;, not to the m so using that notation it should be 1 L = 1 mm&sup3; ( 1 milli "cubic meter"). -- SGBailey (talk) 12:12, 23 March 2014 (UTC)


 * What? No, that is not how the notation works. dm&sup3; means a cubic decimetre in standard SI notation. It's a common unit in engineering contexts, and so this isn't a hypothetical. mm&sup3; would be a cubic millimetre, of which there are a billion in a cubic metre. If this was actually intended as a joke (I cannot be sure), you might consider following the convention of enclosing it in <small tags. 86.157.148.65 (talk) 15:28, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Do any kind of vitamin/mineral/nutrient overdoses cause tics/muscle spasms ?
If so, at what level ? And the same Q for deficiencies. StuRat (talk) 18:03, 22 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Eating too much Hypericum perforatum will lead to Serotonin syndrome. Count Iblis (talk) 18:44, 22 March 2014 (UTC)


 * "...supplementing too much of the wrong nutritional remedies ... have a lowering effect on calcium levels ..." [Calcium related to Muscle Spasms or Cramps] —   See also: Electrolyte ~:71.20.250.51 (talk) 19:28, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks so far, good info. StuRat (talk) 13:26, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Another gravity "related" question
When Sandra is spinning in space: would she eventually get used to it. And observe the universe as spinning around her, the way we observe the sun "go around" the earth. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:C:3600:4AC:4DAA:466F:9A53:2D46 (talk) 19:34, 22 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Well, she'd feel the blood rushing to the far points, such as her arms if spinning about her spine, or her head and feet if spinning about her hips. If rotating slowly enough, this might not be noticeable. StuRat (talk) 19:46, 22 March 2014 (UTC)


 * The Semicircular canals would still detect rotational movement due to centrifugal force acting on the fluid in them, so she would always be aware that she was spinning. However, it is hard to know how your brain would interpret which was moving - you or the rest of the universe. And of course, the answer to that really depends on your frame of reference. Richerman    (talk) 19:55, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, but the semicircular canal article also tells us Sandra would "eventually" become habituated to the feeling. I guess from the context that the habituation only takes a few seconds. If so, then I expect she would then see the stars as spinning round although she would obviously know this was wrong. As for the physics rather than the physiology, I found the article Mach's principle not so easy to grasp and Absolute rotation gives a gentler ride. Thincat (talk) 20:46, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Re: habituation: There is a (somewhat tangential) experiment regarding Perceptual adaptation — Uhmm... This might be a better link:.  —:71.20.250.51 (talk) 21:55, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
 * As with many optical illusions such as "old woman, young woman" here it's possible the brain would constantly flip from one model to another so sometimes she would feel she was turning and other times she would feel the stars were moving. Richerman    (talk) 22:16, 22 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Does the Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker metric figure into anything here? InedibleHulk (talk) 23:18, 22 March 2014 (UTC)


 * I assume you're talking about the scene early in Gravity (film) where Sandra Bullock's character goes spinning off after detaching herself from the ruins of the space shuttle. She appears to be spinning head over heels with a period of about 2 seconds, which would make the centrifugal force at her head and feet about 1 gee (in opposite directions). This would be very noticeable, but I don't know if it would feel like spinning. If she flailed around she would also feel the Coriolis force, which might be something like the odd sensation you get when trying to turn a spinning gyroscope.
 * I would think that anyone who's trained to be an astronaut could give you a definitive answer to this question, but some quick googling failed to turn up anything. -- BenRG (talk) 21:55, 23 March 2014 (UTC)