Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2022 December 30

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December 30

"A tiger! In Mexico?"

I recently watched The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and one of the things that seemed odd to me was repeated references to tigers, despite the film being set in, well, the Sierra Madre of Mexico. Multiple characters bring it up in multiple contexts. They bring up lions as well, which I assume refers to cougar, but what do they mean by tiger? Were jaguars ever referred to that way? I can't think of anything else that's even close. Despite being filmed on location, the film-makers also decided to add Kookaburra calls liberally to the background noise, so it's not like they were making a documentary, but I thought I'd ask if there was anything other then carelessness involved. Matt Deres (talk) 01:58, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

It seems that in Mexican Spanish, the jaguar was referred to as 'el tigre'. [1] B. Traven, who wrote the novel the film was based on, seems to have spent much of his life in Mexico and presumably used the local term. AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:16, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

Great - thank you! Now, about the kookaburra... Matt Deres (talk) 02:53, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

Kookaburra#Film covers that in some detail. I heard one in my front hard this morning, but I AM in Australia. HiLo48 (talk) 02:59, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

If you heard a kookaburra coming from your "front hard", I suspect you need to a see a doctor. Or a talent agent. Matt Deres (talk) 23:09, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

Whoops. Yard. HiLo48 (talk) 01:04, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

I suspect the kookaburra was just used to add ambience, perhaps a little tongue-in-cheekily, just like film music (and of course the loon). Jungle scenes are notorious for including anatopic sound effects. Shantavira|^{feed me} 09:31, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

I was well into adulthood before I was persuaded that tigers do not occur natively in Africa. Till then, I believed what I saw on a stack of Jungle Jim and Bomba, the Jungle Boy movies. Hollywood would never lie, not to little kids, surely. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 10:20, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

Like when Chilly Willy, the penguin, would interact with polar bears. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:15, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

Exactly. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 17:33, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

Do we know which human being, specifically, designed the HDMI port?

I know (from the HDMI article) that the HDMI standard was propagated by a group of seven companies, but has any individual person ever been credited with the physical design of the HDMI port and plug themselves?

Not that I want them to answer for their crimes or anything, but... --24.76.103.169 (talk) 17:08, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

I'd guess t was a team effort, but I don't see what you have particularly against it. The USB2 plug now, that does deserve a bit of ire. It always seemed to take three goes to get it to fit, try one way up and it doesn't fit, try it the other way and it still doesn't fit, then try the first way up again and finally it seemed to fit. :-) NadVolum (talk) 00:04, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

They're far too fragile for what they're being used for these days. The most common game console repair is an HDMI port replacement, because with even careful use they can easily be damaged. --24.76.103.169 (talk) 01:27, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

• It would not have been 1 person as noted. It was created by an industry working group consisting of representatives from a number of electronics firms; this would have been likely divided into a number of subgroups of engineers, designers, policy writers, etc. This page has a pretty comprehensive history of the development of the HDMI standard; it looks like the physical connector specifications were released with the initial HDMI v1.0 standards, which came out in December 2002. There are actually 5 different types of HDMI connectors, as described Here. I'm guessing the OP means HDMI Type A, which is what I usually think of when I think of an HDMI connector. But that article lists all of them, with specifications and release notes. --Jayron32 02:45, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Date of the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary

Back in the 1990s, I always used to hear people refer to the end of the Cretaceous period as "65 million years ago", but in recent years, an estimate of 66 million years seems to have become ubiquitous. I'm mildly curious about why and when the estimates were changed. A glance at the article history for Cretaceous shows that "65 million" was the date given when the article was created in 2001, that 65.5 was the estimate in the mid- to late 2000s, and that 66 was in place by the end of 2009. So I assume the shift in the scientific literature took place over the course of the 2000s, with Wikipedia probably lagging somewhat behind, but does anyone know why the dates were revised? A. Parrot (talk) 19:55, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

Consensus has grown that the boundary is defined by the Chicxulub impact whose direct and indirect after-effects largely if not entirely caused the changes which lead to our distinguishing the two Periods. Continued scientific investigations over recent decades have gradually refined the precision of our dating of that event, currently to 66.043 ± 0.043 million years ago. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 51.194.245.235 (talk) 20:08, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

Is there an article about this topic?

It's about imagining fake scenarios as a form of escapism. Neocorelight (Talk) 20:44, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

I've not read the report, but it has been pointed out that when you close your eyes when it's dark you do not see black nothingness but images, because your brain will not allow anything else. 89.243.13.100 (talk) 21:25, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

That's not at all my experience. No images unless I specifically want to imagine one. There's quite a lot of difference between people. NadVolum (talk) 00:19, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

I can't read the report but is this to do with hypnagogia? Shantavira|^{feed me} 09:29, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

It is about making up fantasies, fake scenarios, when lying in bed with the lights already off but still awake. So this seems to be about daydreaming before falling asleep. AFAICT from the article, it is not different from daydreaming under other circumstances.  --Lambiam 10:43, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

Antti_Revonsuo#Threat_Simulation_Theory is somewhat related.  Card Zero  (talk) 10:29, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Lop-sided earth?

Today, I've learned that 70% of land on Earth is in the Northern Hemisphere. Why is our planet so lop-sided in terms of land in different hemispheres? 67.215.28.226 (talk) 21:59, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

This looks interesting: . 89.243.13.100 (talk) 22:31, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

I suspect, but don't know, that the important to us - land - is just a dusting of foam on the tectonic plates. Greglocock (talk) 07:14, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Hello, Greglocock. Major movements of Plate tectonics take place over billions of years. The magnetic poles move around and even reverse on much shorter time scales. The true poles of rotation are known to "wobble" a few meters on very short time scales. I do not know what the wobbling is over a billion years. The broader question is whether or not plate tectonics is influenced by the location of the equator. Is there a mechanism that gradually influences continental plates to drift northward, or is this a case where a random roll of a dice tumbling for a billion years comes up with five plates slowly migrating north from our current point of view, instead of three or four? All are equally likely. Now, the people who are much smarter than me can comment. Cullen328 (talk) 07:59, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Like most things in nature, it's just down to chance. There is no reason for the land masses to be distributed perfectly evenly either. Shantavira|^{feed me} 09:36, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Yep. If you look at Pangaea#Formation of Laurasia, the distribution of dry land was once even more biased toward the southern hemisphere. Someguy1221 (talk) 09:47, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Supercontinent cycle asserts that this happens cyclically, but without saying why. I don't suppose there's enough of Earth's history for it to have happened very many times, so I wonder whether it might be merely an artifact of random motion (ice ages are similarly vague), but the article says "cycle".  Card Zero  (talk) 10:35, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

That is about Pangeas vs dispersed. When a Pangea happens plate tectonics eventually reverse direction from the effect of the extra insulation on mantle convection. Thus explaining the stereotype of volcanoes in the background of dinosaur cartoons. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 15:37, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Supercontinents are (to quote from our article) generally defined as "the assembly of most or all of Earth's continental blocks or cratons to form a single landmass". Such assemblies are followed inevitably by various phases of break-up by rifting, often accompanied by massive volcanism (Large Igneous Provinces). After break-up the fragments then scud around Earth's surface until they run into each other and collide (like the Indian Plate with Eurasia currently), forming larger continental masses. At least three times in the past the various continental masses have ended up colliding with each other to form a supercontinent, in order Nuna (forming about 1600–1500 million years ago), Rodinia (forming about 1100–850 million years ago) and Pangaea (forming about 300 million years ago). There are earlier proposed supercontinents and then there's Pannotia, which some geologists recognise as forming in between the break-up of Rodinia and the assembly of Pangaea (and note that that one is thought to have been grouped around the South Pole). These protracted collisional events followed by equally protracted rifting events are generally referred to as a cycle. Mikenorton (talk) 17:01, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

On a long-term time scale, the mantle convection driving the drift of the tectonic plates is a chaotic process.^[2] So one should not expect to see a regular, predictable pattern.  --Lambiam 17:54, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

If you ever make some soup you'll get some scum on the top that joins up and splits every so often as the soup slowly rises and falls in cells below it. That's what's happening with the earth. It is the continents which are the scum of the earth and we are short lived tiny forms that live on that scum,. NadVolum (talk) 21:14, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

It appears to me that this question is based on the assumption that the land masses have a lot of weight compared to the oceans, causing a "lop-sided" effect, which is separate from the distribution being non-uniform. That assumption is not correct. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 18:10, 3 January 2023 (UTC)