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August 5

Somebody has decided that a Slow worm is "a squamata" and not "a reptile".

See diff. Is this very wrong, or only slightly wrong? What should I say when I change it back? This was by a French IP, so I looked at fr:Anguis fragilis, which says it's a species of Sauria, which on fr Wikipedia redirects to Lacertilia, which on en Wikipedia redirects to Lizard. Maybe I should change it to lizard? In fact in 2019 it was "a legless lizard", until somebody added "reptile". Card Zero (talk) 15:24, 5 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

So, one thing you need to understand is there no less unified, more acrimonious and disunited group in the world than taxonomists. If there exists, in the world, n number of taxonomists, there are guaranteed to be a minimum of n+1 taxonomic schemes distinct from all of the others. At any given second of any given day, there will be some new classification or designation that is created, for which there will be some number (possibly a majority, usually a minority, often singular) of taxonomists who insists that their new classification is better/more accurate/more precise/correct, and that ALL other possible ways to categorize something are not just different but WRONG, with giant, capital letters, and the evil souls of anyone who spreads such lies are bound to the deepest pits of hell. The real answer is that Squamata are reptiles; they are the order of reptiles that include lizards and snakes. I'm sure you have at least one taxonomists who insists this is wrong, and perhaps more than one. You can probably even find a paper someone wrote insisting on it. Squamata consist of three subgroups (I don't know if these are suborders, infraorders, or "unclassified clades", or non-cladistic common groupings, but there are three of them) that are the true lizards, the true snakes, and Amphisbaenians, which are neither snakes nor lizards, like the slowworm cited above. --Jayron 32 15:58, 5 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I changed it back, due to the poor English usage and also the built-in opinion. Since when is the term reptile "obsolete"? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:00, 5 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Based on what other Wikipedia articles say (which for all I know could be part of a controversial systematic opinion, but for purposes of discussion I'm assuming it's correct), it would appear that it is correct to say that: they are reptiles; they are squamates; they are lizards; they are legless lizards.

However "reptiles" is the least specific of the four options. "Squamates" is more specific, but not necessarily more informative, because many readers have no idea what a squamate is. "Lizards" is better, but surprises the reader in a way that calls for explanation.

I think "legless lizard", with the link, is the best of the four options. It makes a correct statement, is fairly specific, and gives the reader fair notice that, while the creature is a "lizard" in some scientific sense, it's not the everyday sort of fence lizard they're likely used to. Armed with that notice, they can click on the link and learn about the rest of the taxonomy. --Trovatore (talk) 16:08, 5 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

That works as well as anything else. --Jayron 32 16:20, 5 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

In a sense, this is exactly one place where an old-fashioned encyclopedia had a "leg up" (sorry) over Wikipedia. The editorial staff at, say, Britannica, could issue a fiat and declare that they used only the XYZ taxonomy system adopted by the ABC Society of Established Taxonomists, or whatever. Then they could enforce a consistency in all their articles. Then, whether the "editors" were internal staff or externally-commissioned experts, the final edition could be held to a specific and consistent standard taxonomy. Or look at my favorite childhood encyclopedia. The 2023 edition promotional material has a discussion about dinosaurs, and they boldly announce in the lede that "dinosaur is the name of a group of reptiles." I tell you - as a scientist, as a reader of a lot of encyclopedias - World Book staff did not make that sentence because they misunderstand modern scientific nuances of the taxonomy of "dinosaur" or "reptile." They wrote that sentence because it is a good introduction, editorially curated for the intended audience, and the reader who cares to know more is able to easily locate detailed discussion about these concerns in the other 14,000 pages. So - what's Wikipedia doing, and why is Wikipedia different?

Here at Wikipedia, we don't really have an editorial board who may issue fiat decisions as such. So when an issue of scientific fact has a plurality of valid opinions, we're essentially begging for inconsistency by virtue of our style of open contribution. This is a bit of a meta-analysis of what makes our encyclopedia different. It has strengths and weaknesses. True experts on "slow worms" can read an article and suss out the systematics, and they already know the nuances of disagreements about the taxonomy concerns, and if it's relevant, they can see the cited sources and review the details from the privileged position of already having an established, expert-level background. But an amateur reader can read the same article - replete with cited sources - and walk away with a different view about which facts are known, and which items remain disputed.

It's a conundrum. Wikipedia isn't hiding the knowledge - we have zillions of articles about taxonomy and about the different systems of taxonomy and about the relative merits of each, and the disputes about them, and so on... but most readers of the slow worm article don't click every link, nor perform a breadth-first-search of the whole of biological taxonomy.

I think as an editor I'd say that this issue isn't relevant for the lede of the article on the slow worm. (Maybe I can concede that it is appropriate at dinosaur, and as of this writing, "I approve" of how we handled that article). But overall - the issue of taxonomy has better coverage elsewhere. The typical audience of that article doesn't need to be distracted by these concerns in the introduction of the topic. It's all about context - where do we need to discuss taxonomy? Surely not in the introduction paragraph of every single article that uses binomial nomenclature, or even mentions an organism,...

Nimur (talk) 16:21, 5 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It's a question of how much of a lie-to-children is necessary. It's the classic "there is no such thing as a fish" problem. Or, like, why monkey shouldn't exist as a concept. So we have to decide between using common words as people will understand them, or use specialist definitions that are more correct, but less likely to be understood correctly by our readers. If you want to get really specific, taxonomy should be reliably paraphyletic, which is to say that a taxon should contain all and only those members who share a last common ancestor. Common names don't always follow this system. --Jayron 32 16:29, 5 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

From time to time, I'm reminded of this R&H song:

Leontopodium nivale, Leontopodium nivale,

Every morning you greet me;

etc.

←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:24, 5 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I feel like The slow worm is a worm wouldn't last very long, anyway. That's too much. Card Zero (talk) 17:41, 5 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It gets especially confusing as wyrm (the serpent-like mythical creature) and worm (the floppy invertebrate) are etymologically the same origin; so the ancient English speakers didn't really draw distinctions between serpents-and-or-worms. --Jayron 32 18:16, 5 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Ah yes, t' Lambton Worm. Thanks for the informative and interesting comments on taxonomy, had thought of asking if a "legless lizard" is a lounge lizard with a drink in him, but better not. . . dave souza, talk 18:45, 5 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Seems like they could have defeated the Lambton Worm by impaling him on a giant fishhook. Meanwhile, this "slow worm" thing sounds like a song by the Mills Brothers. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:52, 7 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

August 6

Engineering question: water flowing through a steel pipe.

Is there a formula in engineering that takes into account velocity, temperature, and friction? Say at room temperature you have water flowing through a horizontal steel pipe. If you increase the T of the water and steel pipe to 50 C, water will flow faster due to less friction. So about how much faster would it flow, would it be like 1% faster? 67.165.185.178 (talk) 15:56, 6 August 2022 (UTC).[reply]

As you propose, the main effect of temperature is on other properties. "Friction" involves both the pipe surface (not sure how much that changes for small changes in temperature) and the nature of the fluid itself. Temperature might have a substantial effect on the viscosity of the fluid, and possibly also its density. Flow also depends on pressure, so one would have to keep that constant (or include that as an additional variable). And it all depends how turbulent vs laminar the flow is. Some lead topics include include Reynolds number and dynamic and kinematic viscosity. DMacks (talk) 16:16, 6 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

See Darcy–Weisbach equation. Dolphin (t) 23:01, 8 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Plant question: does UV harm fruit more after it left the plant?

So like cherries, nectarines. If you have an apple that fell off the true, and is now on direct sunlight, does the UV harm the fruit or berry more? I believe berries like blueberries can still do respiration a little longer after being plucked, but other fruit essentially instantly stop respiration. If that were a factor. 67.165.185.178 (talk) 16:00, 6 August 2022 (UTC).[reply]

I have never heard that fruit stop respiring once severed from the mother plant. They are still doing metabolic processes, with the best known being ripening and the production of ethylene. Even if they aren't doing much respiring, they should have all kinds of mechanisms working to protect the fruit and seeds within. Abductive (reasoning) 01:02, 7 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Some fruits and vegetables can continue to ripen after picking, but some don't. Here's a decent list of what does and what doesn't. Sunlight hitting picked fruits that can't ripen any further may or may not be harmful, but it's not going to do much good and the warmth may encourage spoilage. Matt Deres (talk) 13:23, 7 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

August 7

If liquid nitrogen weren't so cold, could you safely drink it?

I guess there's not much to elaborate on. If you were somehow able to get liquid nitrogen at like, idk 5C, would it be safe to drink? What would it taste like? (Also curious about the same thing but with liquid helium/oxygen/carbon). 2601:401:101:37B0:BC00:E8A5:6A1C:69AF (talk) 01:09, 7 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Speaking from personal experience and having had too many prankster friends, it rapidly boils off your body without imparting much cold, and it is odorless. N₂ has a triple bond, and is quite chemically inert, so there can be no taste. I have heard that people have suffered from freeze injuries and burst stomachs from ingesting liquid nitrogen. These reports may be apocryphal. Abductive (reasoning) 02:10, 7 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Ingesting any gas (or liquid that will soon become a gas) is not generally recommended (belching, bloating, farting, discomfort). As liquid nitrogen ice cream is common I would agree that it should be odorless and tasteless, but I disagree that that should be the case for all inert substances: note the smell of space. Carbon -- even elemental carbon -- takes many forms (char and soot are different things) but they all probably taste a heck of a lot worse in pure form than the very thin layer of black char you get on a fire-roasted marshmallow. You could just try drinking liquid smoke. SamuelRiv (talk) 02:33, 7 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Beyond the risk of farting yourself to death, you'd also run the risk of displacing oxygen from your lungs as the liquid nitrogen boiled. Breathing in inert gasses can kill you... AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:38, 7 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The question is about drinking. GI tract only. SamuelRiv (talk) 02:43, 7 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Liquid nitrogen cocktail reports on an injury from drinking a something containing LN2. DMacks (talk) 03:18, 7 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Didn't another IP ask this question a few months ago? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:50, 7 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

OP here - searched and didn't see anything about if it wasn't so cold. I guess also should've clarified - if it weren't so cold and it stayed a liquid. 2601:401:101:37B0:B45C:A922:3DE6:AABF (talk) 01:37, 8 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Nitrogen, when liquid, is very cold and will cause damage by freezing (of tissue) and boiling (of nitrogen), but if we could magically keep it a liquid at body temperature, it's just a chemically inert liquid. Nitrogen isn't poisonous and only narcotic at partial pressures well above atmospheric. Other than possibly disrupting you digestive system, it won't do anything. Helium, same story. Oxygen, almost the same. It isn't inert, but pure oxygen isn't very dangerous to humans (on a short term). Be careful not to add an ignition source. Carbon has a triple point of about 4600 K, 10.8 MPa, so below that temperature and pressure you can't make it a liquid, but if we magically could, ... Well, I don't know the chemical properties of magically liquid carbon. Solid carbon may bond to all kinds of stuff in the intestines, preventing absorption by the body, and magically liquid carbon might be even better at that. I wouldn't want to try. PiusImpavidus (talk) 08:11, 9 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

But see Activated charcoal (medication). Alansplodge (talk) 10:53, 10 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Humans in Arabian Desert

I wonder how accurate is information about Humans in Arabian desert, as described in Britannica, particularly this phrase:

Humans have inhabited the Arabian Desert since early Pleistocene times (i.e., about 2.6 million years ago). Artifacts have been found widely, including.

Some Arab are using it to argue they are not originated from modern humans in Africa. Almuhammedi (talk) 05:36, 7 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It's too bad that Britannica doesn't cite sources. I haven't found anything reliable to support early Pleistocene habitation. There have been recent discoveries supporting as early as 400k years ago at a site known as Khall Amayshan 4, which falls within the Pleistocene epoch. Searching for "Khall Amayshan 4" will find plenty of sources, in reference to a 2021 article in the journal Nature: (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03863-y). 2603:6081:1C00:1187:ECDB:8839:6640:BB74 (talk) 07:07, 7 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

These can hardly have been anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens), of which the currently earliest known fossils (Jebel Irhoud, Florisbad Skull) do not date to much earlier than 300,000 years ago. The early expansions of archaic humans out of Africa are currently thought to have started between about 2.1 million and 0.2 million years ago. --Lambiam 10:06, 7 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

In any case, the Arabian peninsula is close to and contiguous with East Africa, and was even more so in the past when the Red Sea Rift was narrower and sea levels lower. For "East African" human and other species, the area now occupied by the Arabian desert (which in various past eras would have been less desertlike, just as the area of the Sahara was) would have been part of their normal range. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.196.45.159 (talk) 12:26, 7 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Somewhat off-topic here but I once worked for a Muslim boss, Egyptian. His PhD and undergrads were in engineering, but he believed Arabic was the oldest language of all. So I asked him is that what Mesopotamia spoke? And he said he never heard of Mesopotamia. Sounds like he might deny humans originating from Africa too. 67.165.185.178 (talk) 12:44, 7 August 2022 (UTC). Also, Arabic was never spoken in Mesopotamia, it was Sumerian than slowly replaced with Akkadian. 67.165.185.178 (talk) 12:48, 7 August 2022 (UTC).[reply]

Now, I'm not saying that guy was right, or wrong - I'm not participating in that discussion... ultimately, I don't think it's particularly interesting that "one guy may have been wrong, this one time." That phenomenon - a person who is misinformed or undereducated repeating a wrong fact - is really very frequent and ultimately uninteresting.

But ... in my mind,... the interesting questions emerge: what is the Arabic-language word for the Akkadian language? What is the Arabic-language word for "Mesopotamia"? I know a few expert researchers who could go off on a tangent telling you why some words - especially English-language words - are problematic when we use them as place-names. And in the Middle East, where there are additional sensitivities around place-name, language, and history... oh boy! If that place is in the middle, what is it east of? East of... central Europe? It turns out that there's an entire field of study about how problematic this field of study is, and one of the most famous books - Edward Said's Orientalism - talks all about how the depiction of "the East" is ... well, not only problematic, but at its core is an intentional perpetuation of racism, colonialism, and imperialism to further a particular agenda.

Well, we do have an article, if you can read it. And we have this one, too. Interestingly, the place-name "Mesopotamia" is not one with an English origin... it's one that evolved from Greek and was brought back into the mainfray of European language because somebody who knew how to read and write classical Greek translated it for you into a language and lettering scheme you can read. I wonder, what language did they use during their translation, and if that language predated the modern English language, what English-name got attached to it later?

One of my most favourite books is lovingly titled The Levant. There is a foreword in which the authors explain why they chose that word - Levant - a word that is less commonly used in the English language - to describe ... a concept, a culture, a place, ...

I mean, if you can use the same word, "English," to describe both the language that you speak today, and the gibberish that was used to notate Beowulf, aren't you imposing a false sense of continuity across time and place, and doesn't that impart some kind of political innuendo? Who are you to say that a person living in Basra must use two different word-names to distinguish their language from the version that was spoken there centuries ago? And why do you get to pick the name of that ancient language?

Having spent a little time asking and answering this (and related questions), I think it's also important to link to our article on historiography. The way that you know and learn history is different than the way that others know and learn history. To presuppose that one of these is the correct history, without deep, deep, lengthy study, is a bit ... culturally relative, isn't it?

Nimur (talk) 17:47, 8 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hubble exposure time allocation per orbit

I'm having trouble finding how LEO space telescopes like Hubble manage long exposure times to minimize dead time. I found details on how time is allocated to HST projects, but let's say one observation requires several hours of exposure from Hubble: did it point at the object for 55 minutes and then uselessly at Earth for the next 41 minutes (it would take 15 minutes to turn 90 degrees), or did it instead do separate observations divided into smaller segments of the orbit that require only small adjustments for each, or something smarter? SamuelRiv (talk) 17:11, 7 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

There's a good answer to this question here: [1]. --Amble (talk) 19:27, 7 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It sort of gets to part of it. The HUDF is not in the CVZ, so I don't know if the 20-minute-average exposures were out of necessity for the orbit or for other practical reasons, but the Hubble Deep Field individual exposures seem to be (from the wording of the text) about 6 minutes, and that's in the CVZ. At the same time it quotes our article on the HUDF which cites NASA's press release for the Hubble taking 11.3 days of viewing time (exposure time) over the course of four months. So obviously they weren't just doing exposures for half an orbit and then waiting to come back around for another pass. Still, it doesn't answer what they actually do instead. SamuelRiv (talk) 20:59, 7 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

You can find various types of historical Hubble scheduling here: [2]. An example of a weekly timeline from 2003 including UDF observations is here: [3]. It shows several UDF exposures of ~20 minutes each, within a time range, with other observing targets also overlapping that time range. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be as fine-grained as to say exactly when each observation began and ended. --Amble (talk) 05:03, 8 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

August 8

Physics Question

Found this question somewhere, but can't understand, kindly solve it or just tell something- "You along with your 6 friends discovered an abandoned 11m long boat and decided to board it in a single line. The boat started to lose balance from the front and the back, and in that chaos, everyone began to collide with each other elastically while moving with a constant velocity of 0.5 m/s. Eventually, all of you will fall down due to such collisions, but with one particular order of collisions, it will take the longest time for all 7 of you to fall off. Find that longest time period." 103.139.171.71 (talk) 13:07, 8 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

You're assuming the premise is valid. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:17, 8 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

We don't do people's homework for them, and we don't answer questions of this kind. Instead, we encourage people to read the text book, think about the problem, discuss it with peers, and learn from it. Dolphin (t) 13:21, 8 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

That seems like a very convoluted restatement of a classic riddle about ants on a board or on a rod. See the answer to question (A) in the second link for the solution.

Considering that it is a "gotcha" question where you either see the trick or you don’t, I am inclined to think this is not a homework problem. (And it’s not really a "physics question" either: if anything, "collide with each other elastically" is physically incompatible with "while moving with a constant velocity of 0.5 m/s" unless everyone has the same mass.) Tigraan^{Click here for my talk page ("private" contact)} 14:19, 8 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This is not my homework obviously. Just found it somewhere over the internet unsolved. Also, I am a student whose physics level is yet lower than the question. --103.139.171.71 (talk) 15:21, 8 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

And you were given an answer by Tigraan above. --Jayron 32 15:26, 8 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This is no physics question; it's a mathematics puzzle. PiusImpavidus (talk) 08:16, 9 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Sure - no argument - but there are a lot of refined mathematical techniques that are widely used by physicists - like partitioning - that we can use to quickly simplify and approximate, provided we can recognize their utility. A pure mathematician might solve directly; a physicist might take a left turn at Albuquerque, assign an effective temperature for the boat, and derive a diffusion-time-constant... then since it has been reduced to a previously solved problem without loss of generality (which the mathematicians will appreciate), the physicist doesn't bother calculating a numerical answer and gets distracted analyzing the quantum-mechanical implications of estimating temperatures for very small numbers of particles. Meanwhile, the mathematicians are converting the problem into some kind of graph-topology in a modular-arithmetic system over commutative rings, and constructing an algebra to represent "collisions" as a linear operator; and the original poster is still looking for an answer measured in minutes and seconds. Different minds have different conceptualizations about what it means to "solve a problem" or "answer a question." Nimur (talk) 15:08, 9 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Additionally meanwhile, the machine learning goons are still trying to recruit low-wage data labeling technicians to review six hundred million video clips of people falling off of boats, because they assure us that as soon as they have enough data, their method to estimate the answer will start converging... Nimur (talk) 15:12, 9 August 2022 (UTC) [reply]

The physics part is having a deeper understanding of the meaning of elastic collisions. If the question were more precisely worded, I think it could be a very good illustration of (multiple) very fundamental concepts. It can then be modified to demonstrate the limits of inelastic collisions (my demo for that concept would be with uniform acceleration, such as if stacked vertically on Earth). SamuelRiv (talk) 16:26, 9 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

August 11

Parrots and cuttlefish bones

Pet parrots are often provided with a cuttlebone as both a source of calcium, a beak sharpener/conditioning tool and just as something to pull apart in general. My parrot (goffin) really seems to love the texture of it - the way it collapses when squeezed hard.

I was wondering - what (if anything) do wild parrots use for this purpose? 146.200.127.77 (talk) 06:46, 11 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

You might have come up with a possible explanation for why wild cockatoos, most often sulphur-crested cockatoos, in Australia attack timber parts of houses and some plants. HiLo48 (talk) 07:54, 11 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Could be analogous to indoor cats which are given scratching posts, lacking natural tree trunks in most houses. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:00, 11 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

In the wild, the diets of most Parrots include tough nuts and seeds which their beaks have evolved to deal with. Although pet parrots are (hopefully) also fed with such items, these will likely form a lower proportion of their diets due to softer foods also being supplied, so they need to perform supplementary chewing that reduces the discomfort of beak overgrowth.

Since in the wild beak under-growth would be a problem, parrots' beaks probably naturally grow a little more than on average is necessary, and they probably also correct this by supplementary chewing. Possibly "urban parrots" are also feeding partly on human-discarded (or deliberately offered) foodstuffs softer than their 'natural' diet, so have to perform more of this beak maintenance. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.196.45.159 (talk) 21:42, 11 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@@ Line 125: / Line 125: @@
 :You might have come up with a possible explanation for why wild cockatoos, most often [[sulphur-crested cockatoos]], in Australia attack timber parts of houses and some plants. [[User:HiLo48|HiLo48]] ([[User talk:HiLo48|talk]]) 07:54, 11 August 2022 (UTC)
 ::Could be analogous to indoor cats which are given scratching posts, lacking natural tree trunks in most houses. ←[[User:Baseball Bugs|Baseball Bugs]] <sup>''[[User talk:Baseball Bugs|What's up, Doc?]]''</sup> [[Special:Contributions/Baseball_Bugs|carrots]]→ 13:00, 11 August 2022 (UTC)
+::In the wild, the diets of most [[Parrot#Diet|Parrots]] include tough nuts and seeds which their beaks have evolved to deal with. Although pet parrots are (hopefully) also fed with such items, these will likely form a lower proportion of their diets due to softer foods also being supplied, so they need to perform supplementary chewing that reduces the discomfort of beak overgrowth.
+::Since in the wild beak under-growth would be a problem, parrots' beaks probably naturally grow a little more than ''on average'' is necessary, and they probably also correct this by supplementary chewing. Possibly "urban parrots" are also feeding partly on human-discarded (or deliberately offered) foodstuffs softer than their 'natural' diet, so have to perform more of this beak maintenance. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} [[Special:Contributions/90.196.45.159|90.196.45.159]] ([[User talk:90.196.45.159|talk]]) 21:42, 11 August 2022 (UTC)