Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2015 August 7

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August 7

Ugly duckling

On the Mississippi River below the Quad Cities

What's the ugly duckling? Some sort of domesticated duck gone feral? Nyttend (talk) 03:09, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Looks like a plain old white American goose (not sure what the official name is) in with a bunch of Canada geese. Those white gees used to be widespread until the Canadians moved in and took over. StuRat (talk) 03:18, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

You're joking, right? Canada geese can be problems at e.g. golf courses, and their numbers and migrations patterns have been changing. This is all covered in the article you linked. But their native range has included most of the USA, and in fact there used to be a lot more of them in the USA. There are historical reports of flocks in CA that would block out the sun for hours. SemanticMantis (talk) 14:22, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

There may have been more before the arrival of Europeans, but they underwent a dramatic decline due to hunting, and have more recently rebounded. Just looking at the population in Ohio, from our article: "Canada geese were eliminated in Ohio following the American Civil War, but were reintroduced in 1956 with ten pairs. The population was estimated at 18,000 in 1979." ... "In 2015, the Ohio population of Canada geese was reported as approximately 130,000, with the number likely to continue increasing. It was reported that many of the geese, previously migratory, had become native, remaining in the state even in the summer months. The increase was attributed to a lack of natural predators, an abundance of water, and plentiful grass in manicured lawns in urban areas." StuRat (talk) 21:46, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Plain old snow goose, not to be confused with invasive Canadian snowbirds. InedibleHulk (talk) 04:41, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

I've seen the Snowbirds; they're pretty impressive, and they go back up north pretty quickly. But InedibleHulk, this was just taken last week, not in January, and the bird's breeding range is up in Nunavut. I'm finding publications like [1] when looking for information on summer ranges, and nothing's mentioning a sustained summer population in the central USA. Nyttend (talk) 12:11, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

That probably explains why there's only one. Filthy vagrant. Hanging around in strange neighbourhoods can be safer than flying, if you're not bigger than the plane. InedibleHulk (talk) 12:22, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

This is what an ugly feral duck looks like. That's probably not even the wildest monstrosity of the flock. Lock up your wives and children, Florida! InedibleHulk (talk) 09:49, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Mine is uglier than yours![2] - don't you just love caruncles!DrChrissy ^(talk) 12:50, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

I can never love again, thanks to Jim Henson. InedibleHulk (talk) 13:06, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

User:Nyttend - many birds' patterns of migrations are changing with land use change and climate change. Not all Canada geese migrate. Some of them just stay at shopping malls and golf courses and don't move much. As for snow geese, this page [3] says they were spotted in PA in April, which is also inconsistent with a too-literal reading of our range map. But, also consider that it may just be a feral domestic goose. I can't tell from the photo, but WP:OR I've seen plenty of odd domestics hanging out with flocks of Canada geese. SemanticMantis (talk) 14:14, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Ducks aren't gooses — Preceding unsigned comment added by Erunaquest (talk • contribs) 17:30, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

No, they're not. They're not geese, either. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:42, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

According to Wikipedia, Duck, duck, goose is sometimes called "Duck, duck, gray duck" in Minnesota. Citation needed, of course. (Story checks out.) InedibleHulk (talk) 06:10, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

Testing theory of evolution empirically

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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The theory makes sense and all, however, scientific is not what makes sense, but what stands after empirical testing. So, what could falsify the hypothesis that living beings evolve and are naturally selected? Is there anything that if exists, would make theory of evolution questionable? Couldn't it be that somewhere on Earth all kinds of creatures were created spontaneously (not implying there is a god) and they emigrated to the most convenient environment to survive?--Scicurious (talk) 13:04, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Modern_evolutionary_synthesis#The_modern_synthesis is a good place to start. SemanticMantis (talk) 14:06, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Also remember that the standard of empiricism and falsifiability is not necessarily an organized experiment, but rather the gathering and analysis of evidence. Where evidence already exists, experiments do not need to be specially organized to create it. Science is fully capable of gathering evidence which is already lying around, and organizing, analyzing, and drawing conclusions from that already existing evidence. The test is in the form of gathering evidence (geologic evidence, fossils, genetics, etc.) not in setting up an experiment in a laboratory and having a scientist wander around with a clip board watching it happen. --Jayron32 16:09, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Right, controlled experiment v.s. natural experiment or observational study. Though the former is not unheard of, the latter two are much more common as study designs for modern research that attempts to better understand aspects of evolution. SemanticMantis (talk) 17:25, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Your question makes the statement "living beings evolve." That is false. It is not part of evolution. It has never been part of evolution. It makes no sense. It is nothing more than an argument by religious zealots to discredit evolution. Species may (or may not) evolve over time. Individual beings do not evolve in any way. Evolution is merely the propagation of generic mutations from one generation to the next. It is not a change in the genetics of an individual being. However, it is apparently impossible to make this point understood. 209.149.114.32 (talk) 17:11, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Horizontal gene transfer is a way in which a single organism can change its phenotype and genotype during its lifetime. We have a whole article on Horizontal_gene_transfer_in_evolution. SemanticMantis (talk) 17:25, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

I omit discussions of bacteria when discussing evolution with those who are of the mindset that evolution isn't real. They don't comprehend genetics and walk away thinking you just said that you can evolve by shaking hands with someone. 209.149.114.32 (talk) 17:33, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

• Yes, you are so right about this. Groups of living beings evolve, species evolve. I expressed myself poorly and I had not in mind that we evolve during our life time. --Scicurious (talk) 21:06, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

"A rabbit in the Precambrian" is the classic example of something that would falsify evolution. I.e. something turning up in the fossil record long before any of its supposed ancestors. "A cat giving birth to a dog" (something that creationists seem to think evolution involves) would also actually disprove the theory of evolution as currently understood. Your suggestion of spontaneous creation and migration to a suitible environment - well, if it was proven would obviously overturn evolution, but it requires something that we know not to occur, would result in huge numbers of organisms dying (due to being created in a place they cannot survive and cannot escape from), and would presumably show up in the fossil record. Also, creation or intelligent design (whether by gods, aliens, mad scientists, vital force, whatever) isn't necessarily incompatible with evolution. Once a species has been created (by whatever means), as long as there is inheritable variation which affect the ability to reproduce, there will be evolution. Iapetus (talk) 18:12, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

The problem with this question is that we already know evolution to be true. We can literally see it happen in the laboratory (eg Scientists tracked 50,000 generations of E.coli bacteria and actually observed evolution in progress http://myxo.css.msu.edu/ecoli/), we can see it happen in nature on human timescales (eg Peppered moth evolution), and we can clearly observe it happening in humans during the historical record (eg Lactase persistence in humans) and, of course we see it quite clearly in fossil evidence (eg List of human evolution fossils).

So to ask how such a well-established scientific theory might be shown to be false is kinda tricky.

What it takes to overturn any scientific theory is one of two things (and preferably both):

1. A clear counter-example that demonstrates that the current theory cannot possibly be correct....OR....
2. An alternative explanation that:
   1. ...covers ALL of the currently known facts at least as wall as the current theory...
   2. ...and which makes a testable proposition that the current theory cannot explain...
   3. ...and is potentially falsifiable.

In this case, that would be:

1. A clear, incontrovertible, example of an organism that hasn't evolved from anything else...OR...
2. A workable alternative explanation that:
   1. ...explains every single detail of how all of the currently investigated species (including historical, fossil and lab-experiment-generated) came about without evolution...
   2. ...and makes a prediction of some kind of a test that could be performed (either in the lab, or by examining existing fossils) that would produce a result that evolution cannot explain.
   3. ...and which could (in principle) be falsified.

None of those things seem very likely to happen - but if they did, we'd have a new theory to replace evolution. The more we look at existing organisms, perform genetic studies on them and look at their biology, the more we understand and reinforce the idea that everything has evolved from a single common ancestor. Furthermore, the more organisms we fit into the evolutionary family tree, the fewer organisms remain that might somehow refute the theory. Furthermore, the more we understand how genes are passed from parent(s) to offspring, the more it becomes obvious the evolution isn't something that just happens to be true for no well-understood reason...it's a process that seems impossible NOT to be true.

When evolution overturned the pre-existing theories of how species appeared ("God did it"), the old theory could be shown to be at least very unlikely by demonstrating how those finches on different islands had different beaks, etc...and evolution explained every previously known fact - and made predictions that things such as the events surrounding the peppered moth would happen - and that we would find fossils that explained human evolution so elegantly.

When you look at how previous major laws of physics were overturned, it generally took some amazing new breakthrough to do it. Newton's laws of motion were only overturned in favor of Einsteins relativity when he predicted that light from a distant star would bend as it passed close to the sun - and that this could be demonstrated in a solar eclipse. Two eclipses later, and after a lot of very enthusiastic people hauled telescopes to the ends of the earth to measure it - we had a clear counter-example that showed that Newton was incorrect - and a new theory that explained everything that Newton had explained PLUS it covered this new set of data. The new theory explained the precession of Mercury's orbit and a whole host of other things that hadn't quite fit properly in Newton's world view.

SteveBaker (talk) 20:13, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

I appreciate the answer, but disagree with the point that "The problem with this question is that we already know evolution to be true." We should be able to replicate an empirical experiment, otherwise we got something wrong. That's also valid for things that we are sure about. --Scicurious (talk) 15:01, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

Then maybe you didn't read the whole answer. The E. coli experiment Steve mentioned is replicable. Someguy1221 (talk) 19:14, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

I did read the whole answer. I am just disputing that there is a problem with the question.--Scicurious (talk) 23:03, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

• Anyone who really, really, really wishes to answer this question should feel free to do so, but empirical evidence for natural selection amid random variation has been about since well before Darwin, Mendel, and the Modern Synthesis, and trying to prove it to a skeptic is like trying to teach a bachelor's degree in colour theory to a congenitally blind person within the scope of a few paragraphs. Scicurious has already suggested that Erunaquest is a troll. I wonder if they are not simply the exact same troll. In any case, one can't "prove" anything at the ref desks, especially not integral calculus to someone who has trouble with long division. I am not about to try jumping the Grand Canyon to prove anything to anyone, but until these users show their true colours, I wouldn't suggest anyone else do so on their behalf either. μηδείς (talk) 02:32, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Cryolipolysis - 2 questions

Hello, here are my two humble, technical questions about Cryolipolysis:

1. What is the maximal temperature that Cryolipolysis instruments inflict on the skin?...
2. Does some areas require higher or lower temperatures? or the treatments' temperatures are always homogenous?

Thank you very much! Ben-Yeudith (talk) 20:29, 7 August 2015 (UTC)