Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2012 August 24

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August 24

Meteor Strike

Is a meteor like the one that killed the dinosaurs occur again? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.167.130.215 (talk) 12:41, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

It is almost certain that sometime in the near infinite future, a similar sized object will strike the earth. Certainly, such objects have hit it multiple times in the past, not just when the dinosaurs went extinct. There is no reliable way to estimate when it is going to happen. It's probably not going to happen today, and tomorrow doesn't look likely either. If we extend it out to a time scale of billions of years, then yes, it will most likely happen again. But a billion years is a very long time. The article Near-Earth object has some details. One of the most famous recent hits was the Tunguska event, and it is estimated that events that large only happen once per millenium, and Tunguska was several orders of magnitude smaller than the Dinosaur killer and had no long-lasting effects. You may also want to look into subjects like the Torino Scale or List of Earth-crossing minor planets if you want to research this topic some more. The dinosaur killer was the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, and is connected to an object which created the Chicxulub crater, though it isn't universally accepted that the Chicxulub impact was what caused the extinction. It is the most widely-held explanation, but not the only one. I can't find any estimates on how often a Chicxulub-sized impact occurs, but I wouldn't be shocked if it wasn't on the order of hundreds of millions of years between impacts. --Jayron32 13:48, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Great answer Jayron. Very informative... I took the liberty of fixing the heading too as none provided... gazhiley 16:30, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

We have an article Extinction event, which speculates on the reasons for any periodicity of such phenomena. if such an event happens in the - as yet very short - history of the species homo sapiens maybe a moot and futile speculation. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 18:47, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Manicouagan crater

The dinosaur-killer hit about 65 million years ago, but as far as we know it's the largest impact from the last billion years, so it isn't likely that anything nearly as large will occur anytime soon. There have however been many smaller impacts within the last few hundred million years -- to me the most striking is Manicouagan crater in Canada, which is easily visible from space. That impact was about 215 million years ago. Looie496 (talk) 18:52, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

The Shiva crater would be greater. μηδείς (talk) 19:19, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

List of impact craters on Earth list many large impacts in the last few hundred million years - some nearly Chicxulub-size. Rmhermen (talk) 19:21, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

As for rarity, there is Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 and Tunguska event. μηδείς (talk) 19:26, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Is there an echo in here? --Jayron32 20:07, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes, the blast wave from the Tunguska event circled the Earth and returned to the point of origin. :-) StuRat (talk) 20:44, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Did you mention Shoemaker-Levy 9? Were you responding to Looie496's statement of rarity? (I sincerely apologize for my habit of actually providing links in my responses.) To quote the last person who copied my post verbatim, "my version was better." μηδείς (talk) 21:27, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

As Earth has 1/318 the gravity of Jupiter and 1/122 the surface area, we can expect comets to hit Earth somewhat less often than they do Jupiter. —Tamfang (talk) 21:40, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Jupiter hardly has a 318G surface gravity. Do you mean mass? In any case, the Earth is by far the largest body between Jupiter and the Sun. Large bodies have been observed historically to strike both the moon and Jupiter as well as the sun, and the results of such strikes on the Earth are known historically as well. μηδείς (talk) 03:43, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

Surface gravity is irrelevant; I'm considering relative gravity at a given distance. —Tamfang (talk) 07:58, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

But there is no equal or proportional distance at which Jupiter's gravity or escape velocity is 318 times that of earth. What you mean is that Jupiter has 318 times the mass of Earth. μηδείς (talk) 16:18, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

And thus exerts 318 times the force at a given distance. Who said anything about escape velocity? —Tamfang (talk) 19:52, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

I guess a more useful comparison is Hill spheres. —Tamfang (talk) 20:37, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Wilkes Land crater

"If this feature really is an impact crater, then, based on the size of the ring structure, it has been suggested by von Frese's team that the impactor could have been four or five times wider than the one that created the Chicxulub Crater, believed to have caused the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event.[6]

Because mass concentrations on Earth are expected to dissipate over time, von Frese and coworkers believe the structure must be less than 500 million years old, and also note that it appears to have been disturbed by the rift valley that formed 100 million years ago during the separation of Australia from the Gondwana supercontinent.[6]

These researchers therefore speculate that it is possible that the putative impact and associated crater contributed to this separation by weakening the crust at this location. These bracketing dates also make it possible that the site could be associated with the Permian–Triassic extinction event.[6] The Permian–Triassic extinction occurred 250 million years ago, and is believed to be the largest extinction event since the origin of complex multicellular life.

Plate reconstructions for the Permian–Triassic boundary place the putative crater directly antipodal to the Siberian Traps, and von Frese et al. (2009) use the controversial theory that impacts can trigger massive volcanism at their antipodes to bolster their impact crater theory.[7]" Count Iblis (talk) 21:26, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Somewhat off topic: Prof Nick Bostrom from Oxford´s Future of Humanity Institute argues in an interview (European Forum Alpbach, today), that advances in artificial intelligence - quantum computers + nano technology + whatever - may result in an extinction of humans or in a loss of the current dominance of our species. His argument is that a non-human super-intelligence may "escape" the control of (far less intelligent) humans and may decide that we are useless for their specific purposes. At best they may keep us as enslaved / domesticated nano cobblers in the pig sty. Unfortunately I only have a reference to a German language source containing a short interview. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 13:24, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Copyrighted image?

How can I find out if an image is copyrighted? I am referring to the Capital Beltway sign which I just uploaded. I know the rules about use on Wikipedia, so there is currently just one fair-use posting. What I want to know is if there is somewhere to look up whether it is copyrighted or not (such as a copyright or trademark directory). Thank you.

Without directly answering the question of "where would I find out", at Wikipedia the general policy is "If you don't know, assume it is under the greatest restrictions". That is, the default state is "everything is under copyright" and you assume that it is unless you can prove that it isn't. Many people mistakenly think that at Wikipedia you are free to use any image freely unless someone can prove that it is copyright. That's actually 180 degrees backwards. You cannot use any image freely unless you can positively prove it is unencumbered by copyright issues. --Jayron32 15:40, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Thst is exactly what I did, which is why the image is only in one place as fair use. I want to find out for sure, because if it isn't, the image can have other uses, as the logos of other named highways do.    → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 15:47, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

I did find this page: Wikipedia:Copyright on highway shields, but it doesn't look like it's been updated in a few years. Still, it is a lead. --Jayron32 16:28, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Old restaurant or store on East 42nd Street, Manhattan

There is currently a TGI Fridays restaurant located in Manhattan at 47 East 42nd Street, running from 42nd to 43rd Streets, between Vanderbilt Avenue and Madison Avenue, one block west of Grand Central Terminal. It is obvious from the configuration, panelling, and overall structure of the space that it previously housed a very different, and I suspect more historically interesting, type of restaurant or store, but I have not been able to find out what used to be there. Does anyone either know, or have a suggestion for how I could readily find out? Thanks. Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:58, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

1) Ask them.

2) You can try the street view in Google Maps. It might happen to have a pic of the old business. StuRat (talk) 23:35, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

2) I just tried this myself, but it is a TGI Fridays, with an adjacent KFC, there. Both look to be part of a much larger former business, 3 stories high and the width of several stores (extending from the KFC to Madison Avenue). I notice that most of it is TD Bank, N.A., so it's possible it all was, but then sold off parts. The grey and black (marble ? slate ? granite ?) is more of the type of look I associate with a bank than a restaurant. StuRat (talk) 23:39, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

The original name of the buiding was the Liggett Building, although the folks that are currently selling office space there refer to it as the Columbia Carbon Building. The image at my second link shows the building before the recent remodeling of the façade of the first three stories, but it's too damn small to make out what occupied the TGI Friday's space at that time (and Tineye can't find a larger version). When the building opened in the 1920s, much of the ground floor was occupied by a large branch of the Liggett's Drug Store chain; but I can't determine whether it extended to that part of the building, and all trace of it is surely gone, anyway. I can't find any information about former tenants online, but perhaps my clues can help someone with better resources. Deor (talk) 01:02, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Is there an online database of old phone books or something like that? If you could search by address, you could probably work it out. --Jayron32 03:18, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Or city directories, which often have listings by street address. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:34, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

This book shows a nice picture of the building as it appeared in the 1920s, on page 72 -- but not nice enough to see what they were doing on the ground floor. Looie496 (talk) 04:39, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Found a possible lead. Doing some poking around, I found the NYPL "Ask A Librarian" section. This page here: [1] is from the "Milstein Division of United States History, Local History and Genealogy", a Librarian working in "local history" should be able to direct you to resources to answer this question. --Jayron32 13:59, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

I ate at that Fridays before 1994, so I doubt google maps is going to be very helpful. μηδείς (talk) 02:01, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

Thank you all for your suggestions; I will follow up on them. (As for StuRat's initial suggestion of "ask them," I tried that a couple of times. Most of the staff had no idea, while one senior employee told me that "I think it was a Houlihan's before this," which even if true, isn't what I was looking for.) I'm surprised that it was a TGIF as far back as 1994, but that is interesting as well. Thanks again. Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:38, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

I am fairly certain I remember correctly. I worked at a TGIF before that date, and had brunch at a TGIF in Manhattan on the east side with someone who died shortly thereafter. If I am wrong then the location was in the village or downtown. μηδείς (talk) 17:31, 27 August 2012 (UTC)