Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2015 April 15

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April 15

stability of neighboring orbits

Occasionally I hear someone say, "Because that star is so bright, its water belt is extra wide, so it has room for multiple Earthlike planets." This is counter to my unsupported intuition that the spacing of stable orbits depends less on linear distance than on the ratio between the orbits' periods. What's the right thing to measure here? —Tamfang (talk) 07:35, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

You're referring to the Titius-Bode law (or some variation thereupon). Despite its name, the "law" is simply an observation - and not a well-supported one, now that we know about Uranus, Neptune, and all the smaller planet-like objects beyond. Intuitively, there's a tendency to say that such a law might follow from some consequence of orbital resonance, but it's not something that has ever been successfully derived analytically.

The terrible reality is that stable orbits are ultimately solutions to an n-body problem, so there aren't any simple laws about ratios of planetary orbit semimajor-axes. Nimur (talk) 09:05, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Also is the problem of time scale. All orbits in an "n-body problem" are metastable. That is to say, given a long enough time scale, a complex system like the solar system would behave chaotically, and one would not be able to derive the position of any one body knowing only the initial conditions of the system using only mathematical functions. Being metastable means that on relatively short time scales, the system is stable, within the precision limits of your calculations. But eventually, the system becomes chaotic. Now, these timescales could be billions of years for all we know, which is stable enough. But strictly speaking, not "stable". --Jayron32 11:59, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

These and similar issues are presented with more refs at Stability_of_the_Solar_System. Earth_analog also has some relevant links. SemanticMantis (talk) 14:39, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Over a decade ago (in what sometimes feels like a different life), I was doing some dynamical stability experiments looking at the long-term impact of adding other large bodies to the outer solar system. I remember being surprised when some of my control runs would eject Mercury from the solar system after less than 10 billion years. The fact that Mercury might be unstable with respect to ejection is mentioned at the stability of the solar system link you offered, but it came as something a shock to me at the time. Of course the chaotic nature of the underlying dynamics prevent us from really knowing what will happen more than a few million years in the future, but the fact that large changes are possible is certainly interesting when thinking about the solar system on evolutionary time scales. Dragons flight (talk) 04:24, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Time scale does undermine my point, in that the water-zone planets of a very bright star may orbit in much longer than a year, and so have rarer opportunities to perturb each other. On the other hand, the life of a very bright star is relatively short. —Tamfang (talk) 07:36, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

I'd forgotten about Bode; more likely I was thinking of the criterion for planets that they "clear their orbits". —Tamfang (talk) 07:36, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Lithinase

It is highly confusing. Somehow I got involved in discussions on lithium in the human body. It seems there is a belief among holistic medical practitioners that a person should have a certain amount of lithium in the body. I've never heard that the lithium is a constituent of the human body in any capacity, like micro element in any reactions or whatnot. There is a lab on the East coast. You send them your hair sample and they would "determine" that you are lacking some lithium or low on lithium (?). How could it be? There is a product Lithinase available on Amazon.com, you can obviously have it without a prescription and it has homeopathic amount of lithium. Has anybody heard anything about it? Thanks, - --AboutFace 22 (talk) 21:50, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Lithium (medication) says it has several possible uses in the body, but that's not the same as establishing a minimum requirement. I'd tend to be skeptical, especially if those telling you you need a minimum amount are selling it (or get paid by those who do). Also beware that an overdose is possible, as listed in our article. StuRat (talk) 22:00, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

StuRat, thank you but please understand, you are not answering my question. My question is about an alleged organic presense of lithium in the human body as some people claim. I am well familiar with lithium as medication and it is not this question about. This website, although commercial claims that the lithium is a micro-element necessary for life. What kind of reactions does it take part in? --AboutFace 22 (talk) 23:07, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

There were various sourced claims in the article I linked to, such as improving the growth of grey matter, that, if true, would suggest a certain level of lithium may be healthy for normal people, as well as those suffering from various disorders. Of course, this would just be the very first step in setting an RDA. But, my point is, the basic claim that lithium is an important micronutrient, is not, on the face or it, absurd (as if somebody had claimed that plutonium was). As for the reactions in the body involving lithium, the article I linked to also discusses that, although much of it is theory. StuRat (talk) 05:56, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

See Dietary element. To wit: "It is not known whether lithium has a physiological role in any species,[35] but nutritional studies in mammals have indicated its importance to health, leading to a suggestion that it be classed as an essential trace element with an RDA of 1 mg/day.[36] Observational studies in Japan, reported in 2011, suggested that naturally occurring lithium in drinking water may increase human lifespan.[37]". --Jayron32 01:09, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

It's worth mentioning what an underlying problem is: there are no radioactive isotopes of lithium with a usable half-life. Which means that you can't put radiolabelled lithium in a cell, run the proteins on columns and gels and such, and examine which proteins have traces of radioactivity coming with them. (I wonder if nowadays there's some other imaging modality that could pick up tiny amounts of nonradioactive lithium?) Wnt (talk) 01:14, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Well, you could use other methods to detect lithium in macromolecules. I suspect one could devise methods using, for example, mass spectrometry to detect the presence of lithium atoms within purified samples of biomolecules. --Jayron32 01:16, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Li-6 is detectable by neutron activation. Not sure how small a sample (gel spot from whole-cell lysate?) can be activated efficiently. Growing two cultures, one with Li-6 and other with Li-7, would mean "all you have to do" is do a separation and then look for the mass difference of corresponding spots. Gel electrophoresis samples are within the limit of detection of MALDI-TOF (see PMID 22547356) but needing reliable single-isotopic mass resolution for MALDI-TOF I think means you can only go up to about 5 kDa. DMacks (talk) 04:14, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

This is a very clever idea, but a tough one. To start, I don't see the problem with the 5 kDa; my understanding (to be honest I haven't practiced this formidable art) usually a spot cut out of a 2D gel is treated with trypsin first to break it into predictable pieces of acceptable size. What is going to be difficult technical problem is to detect a 1-dalton difference in many kilodalton-sized proteins. You'd have to do it as a "native" gel electrophoresis, without SDS, because denaturing the proteins would send the lithiums flying; they're not known for covalent binding after all. However, difficult doesn't necessarily mean impossible, and you can do statistics between gels done with 6Li, 7Li, and absolutely no Li. I think that the difference in overall structure (which is more noticeable on a native gel) and isoelectric focusing imposed when lithium is absent (even if it is replaced by another ion) might make a more noticeable shift; in any case, it would be a sensitive way to measure whether the lack "does anything" to the cell. On the other hand, if it does too much... you'll never spot the shifted lithium-binding peaks among all the other changes in that comparison. One bone that nature might throw is there could be multiple lithiums bound to a specialized protein, multiplying the difference between 6 and 7.

Still, I wonder if there might be another way. What if you took a native 2D or even 1D gel, denatured the proteins, and could stain the lithium somehow? Such as by neutron activation as you suggest (I'm not familiar with that), or if you could select some kind of lithium-binding aptamer (which would be a cool demonstration of potential biological relevance; even if biology does nothing with the ion at all, you'd then be able to ask why, and if aptamers can't be selected, that also says something). The aptamer would presumably change in some optical density ratio in response to binding Li. Wnt (talk) 19:14, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

The PMID I mentioned specifically uses non-stained gels (direct UV detection of presence of protein). I picked a limit of 5 kDa as that's what I hear is this ballpark limit, and specifically for whole proteins because as you say, those Li ions are possibly not tightly held except in the whole native proteins. The idea of running a gel, and then denaturing and then detecting the (now-free) lithium ions is neat. I don't know about aptamers, but there are a bunch of crown ethers and similar structures that are selective for Li. Just need a way to detect when they bind, which leads to PMID 18547040 as a lead ref for using fluorescence to detect presence of various cations (need something with high sensitivity for such presumably low levels involved). Neither that ref nor what it reports as precedent couple Li-selective ones though. DMacks (talk) 01:49, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

@DMacks: Very good ideas. I'm afraid I blurted out the aptamer idea too soon, since selecting one ... requires some method to assay lithium binding to it, which rather begs the question! But your idea with the crown ethers is indeed interesting. Wnt (talk) 02:56, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

To get back to the original question, I think it is obvious that the whole scheme is essentially a fraud. There is no medical science indicating you need lithium supplementation and I guarantee that their supposed test for lithium is going report 100% of the time that you need to buy their product (which being homeopathic actually contains none of the lithium that you supposedly need). They are selling you a fake test to give you fake results that require you buy their fake product. It is a scam from start to finish. Deli nk (talk) 20:31, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

There are two problems with this. First, looking up "lithinase" I find that it is a supplement containing 50 micrograms of lithium, which is lower than a 300 microgram figure I see tossed around, but at least conceivably relevant since we don't know the actual mechanism and necessary level (if any). The other is that homeopathic does not mean that there is no activity. There is actually a whole subset of "3X" homeopathic products, i.e. 1:1000 dilutions of things. Zicam is one example of an active substance sold homeopathically; I've seen others in FDA reports. Recently I remember seeing an anti-allergy homeopathy preparation that was "3X" aconite! (That follows a genuine Chinese herbal treatment, but at best it makes one nervous to see it out of the hands of a competent Chinese herbalist...) Now of course none of this changes the fact that lithium ought to be really cheap - people sold lithium chloride as a salt substitute in earlier times, but the FDA stepped in and they seem to prefer expensive loopholes to cheap ones. Wnt (talk) 00:44, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

"Trace amounts of lithium are present in all organisms. The element serves no apparent vital biological function, since animals and plants survive in good health without it. Non-vital functions have not been ruled out." --AboutFace 22 (talk) 18:07, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

That logic seems a bit off, to me. It might very well serve a vital role, just one for which another substitute also works. In the case of dietary nutrients, that is often the case (you don't need one type of nut in your diet, as other nuts serve a very similar dietary role). StuRat (talk) 18:35, 17 April 2015 (UTC)