Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2023 November 26

= November 26 =

Divining rods
About 10 years ago I wrote a research paper and cited a Wikipedia post that stated, The American military (Wikipedia, ibid.), in search of a means of locating unexploded ordnance (missiles, warheads, mines, and shells), has tested all of the [divining rod] candidates and found that they did no better than pure chance. i am trying to retrieve this original post but have not been successful. Can u help me find it? Thx. 108.53.229.65 (talk) 00:51, 26 November 2023 (UTC)


 * The post is not able to be recovered. Kojavak (talk) 00:53, 26 November 2023 (UTC)


 * User:108.53.229.65, that quote seems confusing, since it calls Wikipedia part of the military. Is it something that was posted on Wikipedia, definitely this text word-for-word? Or is it just a recollected approximation? Or is it something on another site that cited a Wikipedia article? DMacks (talk) 03:39, 26 November 2023 (UTC)
 * There is indeed something confusing. The abbreviation ibid. is used for a bibliographic citation to the same source as the previous one, so the parenthesis is presumably an in-text parenthetical list of citations, as in the APA style. Then Wikipedia is also a (rather underspecified) citation, presumably expanded in the bibliography. Does the research paper have a bibliography section? What is the in-line citation preceding (Wikipedia, ibid.).? What makes this confusing is that citations are meant to be supplied for statements, not for a non-truth-bearing noun phrase such as [t]he American military (except in the rare situation that the noun phrase is an unusual appellation whose coiner needs to be credited, but then it would typically be presented in scare quotes). Should the sentence in the research paper have run like, "The American military, in search of a means of locating unexploded ordnance ... found that they did no better than pure chance (Wikipedia, ibid.)."? The wording "Wikipedia post" can also do with some clarification. We do not refer to articles as "posts", but only to discussion page contributions, which (if cited at all) should be cited by the contributor's user name, not generically by Wikipedia. Citing Wikipedia articles should generally be avoided in research papers, but under no circumstances can claims found on discussion page contributions be used in support of statements in a research paper. --Lambiam 09:11, 26 November 2023 (UTC)
 * With respect to publishing OR, we have a duty to cite contributions whether it's private personal correspondence (normally with their consent) or public discussions. Modocc (talk) 09:34, 26 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Michel Eugène Chevreul debunked divining rods in 1854 in ""De la baguette divinatoire".


 * Could it have been the British military? Dowsing § Studies (5th item - though both the wording and nationality differ from that in the question). catslash (talk) 19:15, 26 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Citation 33 in Dowsing might be what you want. NadVolum (talk) 20:06, 26 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Citation 33 is about the etymology of one sense of the verb dowse. I suspect you mean a different citation. --Lambiam 21:07, 26 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Sorry it is 49- not sure how I got 33:
 * NadVolum (talk) 22:20, 26 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Could this be what you are looking for? page 71 here: https://www.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh241/files/media/document/178913-2.pdf Dhrm77 (talk) 21:37, 27 November 2023 (UTC)
 * This is a segment from the guide linked to above by NadVolum, with identical pages 71–72. --Lambiam 09:51, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
 * This is a segment from the guide linked to above by NadVolum, with identical pages 71–72. --Lambiam 09:51, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Time period for highest mountain being in the Himalayas.
Approximately how many million years ago did the collision of the Indian Subcontinental plate with Asia lead to a peak in the Himalayas, *and* where was likely to have been the highest mountain on the planet before that point? And on the other side, when will erosion of the Himalayas/end of collision and additional collisions (Africa into Europe? Australia into the plates of New Guinea/Philippines?) lead to the highest point on the Planet being outside the Himalayas?Naraht (talk) 13:58, 26 November 2023 (UTC)


 * To answer your first question, observations from drilling into the Bengal Fan support an Early Miocene age (~23-16 million years ago) for the start of major uplift in the Himalayas, according to this paper from 1990. This is in agreement with much more recent results, see this paper from 2022. Figure 4 from the second paper show an elevation curve for the Himalayas indicating that the mountains rose from about 2 km to in excess of 5 km during that period, although it also suggests that it continues to rise to the present day. Mikenorton (talk) 15:10, 26 November 2023 (UTC)
 * The collision of the India Plate with Eurasia, which is what ultimately sustains the elevation of the Himalayas, show no sign of stopping, even after 50 million years, so it would be just speculation to come up with a number for that. If a new subduction zone does develop south of India, as has been proposed, the whole mass of thickened crust of the Himalayas/Tibetan Plateau would be expected to gravitationally collapse, as appears to have happened back in the Devonian along the lines of the Caledonian Orogeny. Assuming that nothing was happening to affect the elevation of the Andes, that's where you would probably look for your highest peaks. Future mountain ranges are even more speculative. Mikenorton (talk) 15:47, 26 November 2023 (UTC)
 * It's kind of a sobering thought that the Himalayas didn't even start to exist until several tens of millions of years after the extinction of the dinosaurs. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:01, 26 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Back 66 million years ago, in North America, only the Laramide mountains existed and there were still remnants of the Western Interior Seaway. Greenland was still connected to Eurasia, there being no northern North Atlantic. In Eurasia, most of the Tethys ocean crust had yet to be subducted, with no Pyrenees, Alps, Alborz and Zagros mountains, Tibetan Plateau or Anatolian Plate.In Africa, there was no Arabian Plate, Red Sea or East African Rift. The Sea of Japan had yet to open. Australia had yet to collide with Eurasia and Zealandia was still rifting away to the east and was almost entirely under water. Mikenorton (talk) 12:36, 27 November 2023 (UTC)