Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2016 January 17

Welcome to the Wikipedia Science Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

January 17

Is one of the following option right?

I found this question on Facebook (chemistry group), but I'm not sure if one of the given options is right.

"salt" in chemistry is:

a) compounds that have ionic bonding

b) compound s that consist of elements of halogen family, no matter what is the type of the bonding (ionic or covalent)

c) compounds that have the Cl element

d) compounds that have no metals

According to our article: "In chemistry, a salt is an ionic compound that results from the neutralization reaction of an acid and a base." and I don't see this option here. Are the options wrong? 92.249.70.153 (talk) 05:08, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

a. They are compounds with ionic bonding. Not all salts result from the neutralization reactions of acid and a base. For example, how would you explain the formation of tetrabutylammonium bromide? Yanping Nora Soong (talk) 05:30, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, so if I understand you well the mistake is in the article here. Am I right? 92.249.70.153 (talk) 06:35, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

No, our article (Salt (chemistry)) provides a definition that is generally considered correct.

Most introductory chemistry textbooks will use a definition very similar to the one you find in our article. There are corner cases and subtleties of definition. Most importantly, if you study more chemistry, you will learn that the definition of acid and base is trickier than it first seems. In introductory chemistry, you will focus on the standard definitions and standard chemical reactions; but as you dive deeper, each successive complication necessitates a refinement of many definitions.

In some sense, we call this style of formal education a "lie-to-children," but that's not entirely fair. If you want a complete and total definition of the word "salt" in chemistry, you'll have to read hundreds of books and thousands of research papers. If you want the definition in one sentence, our article (Salt (chemistry)) does a great job introducing the concept in its lede.

If you strongly feel that the opening definition in that article is incorrect, then:

• Find multiple reliable, encyclopedic sources to back you up. An internet-quiz on a social forum is not really a reliable source.
• Engage with the regular contributors at Talk:Salt (chemistry) and discuss your proposal.
• Reach consensus and make a change.

In this case, I do not recommend making the change first, because most educated chemists and scientists will agree that our article's lede definition is generally correct.

Nimur (talk) 17:53, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

The generic form of the given definition is:

[H⁺][B^–] + [A⁺][OH^–] → [A⁺][B^–] + HOH

so it's trivially easy to see what one would react with what to give any arbitrary cation/anion result. Just because you happen to know how to make the A⁺ from something other than A itself doesn't have any relationship to the fact that AB can be made starting with AOH. DMacks (talk) 20:52, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

The Wikipedia definition seems a little weird to me, but the text from ionic compound sheds some light on it: "Ionic compounds containing hydrogen ions (H⁺) are classified as acids, and those containing basic ions hydroxide (OH⁻) or oxide (O²⁻) are classified as bases. Ionic compounds without these ions are also known as salts and can be formed by acid-base reactions." So the definition given is kind of a roundabout way of saying that if you have an ionic compound and you get rid of any H+ and OH- present by reacting them, you get a salt. But the thing is, a salt can result from reacting an acid and a base but it doesn't have to, if you don't neutralize all equivalents of H+ or OH-. (Also I suppose there must be some cute example where you have an OH- in a cage of carbon or something so it won't directly react with the acid?) I don't see an obvious reason not to adapt the ionic compound definition and say that a salt as an ionic compound that doesn't contain H+ or OH-. This is really semantic, not a matter of true acid or base nature as per Lewis acid, given that AFAIK lithium tetrachloroaluminate is a salt, even though it hazardous as an acid that will readily react with water. [1] I would assume that mixing lithium hydroxide and hydrogen tetrachloroaluminate will not produce much of a yield of lithium tetrachloroaluminate + water, since the reverse reaction occurs so readily, so its classification under the definition currently used in the salt article seems very iffy. Comments?? Wnt (talk) 14:35, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

what is it called the compounds that occur between metals to metals?

According to what I'm reading now on "chemistry essentials for dummies" book (p.72) ionic compound occur between a metal and non metal while covalent compound occur between two nonmetals. So my question is what is it called the compound the occurs between metals to metals? 92.249.70.153 (talk) 05:14, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Update: I found the answer right there. It's called metallic bonding. 92.249.70.153 (talk) 06:36, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Yup. Metallic bonding is one of the major types of chemical bonds. DMacks (talk) 11:43, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

To be strictly correct here, we're confusing two different terms. A chemical compound is different than a chemical bond. A compound is a bulk material, while a bond is a type of force of attraction between particles. For example, something like sodium sulfate is usually classified as an ionic compound, but it has both ionic bonding (between the sodium ion and the sulfate ion) and covalent bonding (between the sulfur and oxygen atoms within the sulfate polyatomic ion.) Metallic bonding, by its very nature, does not really fit into the "compound" thinking for many reasons, and we don't often use the term "metallic compound" in the way we use terms like "ionic compound", "molecular compound". We usually use terms like "pure metal" or alloy to describe metallic bonding where all atoms are the same, vs. one with multiple metallic elements. It has to do with the nature of metallic bonding, the so-called sea of electrons model. Ultimately, alloys exist in the fuzzy boundary between compounds, homogeneous mixtures, solutions, etc. It is far less important that, as a student of chemistry, whether one classifies an alloy as a compound or a mixture, and far more important that one understands what is going on at the atomic level. --Jayron32 02:10, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Science(Physics?) Question

I have limited math skills and zero physics skills. My question is complicated. To begin: Light has no mass, as objects approach light speed they become more massive (E=MC squared?) however gravity bends light gravity has mass therefore light must have mass to be bent by gravity. Or am I going astray in my understanding of light, mass and gravity? I am 68 and not in school but interested in astronomy (mostly self taught) tHANK YOU FOR YOUR HELP.------ Dennis H

There are several ways to understand this. One complicated one is that gravity bends the universe, so light, traveling in a straight line, ends up traveling in a curved line. I personally find it much easier to understand that gravity actually affects ENERGY (for example an object moving very fast has lots of energy, so will be affect by gravity more), and since light has energy, obviously it would bend. (A complication is that light can not change speed, but gravity changes the speed of things, but light can't, so how is it able to be affected?) Ariel. (talk) 06:39, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

I think when we say light has no mass, that means no rest mass, but there is also a type of "mass" that's due to relative motion. StuRat (talk) 07:03, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

See Gravitational lens for a fairly non-technical explanation, and Two-body problem in general relativity for something a bit more advanced. On the question of whether light has mass, see Mass in special relativity. Tevildo (talk) 11:58, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

You've made a good observation. General relativity describes gravity as a warping of spacetime, and consequently, it predicts gravity will affect even things with no rest mass, like photons. This is a significant difference from Newtonian gravity, and observations of light from distant stars being bent by the Sun's gravity were a major piece of evidence that convinced many scientists of the accuracy of general relativity. These videos by PBS Space Time are a really good primer on relativity, and I highly recommend them. --71.119.131.184 (talk) 06:27, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

1966 Palomares B-52 crash

Did those Mk28-type hydrogen bombs in 1966 Palomares B-52 crash contain non-nuclear explosives because it was a non-combat mission? Or there was some other reason the nukes weren't armed and didn't explode? Our article doesn't seem to clarify that. --93.174.25.12 (talk) 10:40, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

All nuclear bombs contain a conventional, non-nuclear explosive as well as the fissile nuclear core. That chemical explosive compresses the core and that starts the fission explosion. When the article says "the non-nuclear explosives in two of the weapons detonated upon impact with the ground", it means those explosive detonated, but they didn't set off the nuclear explosives they were attached to. -- Finlay McWalterᚠTalk 10:53, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Ball bearing safety system in a British nuclear weapon

The article doesn't say why the chemical explosives didn't trigger the nuclear physics package. Presumably they have some safety mechanism to prevent inadvertent nuclear detonation - but I can't find out specifics of what that might be for this bomb variant in either the B28 nuclear bomb or Python (nuclear primary) articles. I know some nuclear bombs keep an inert material (in some cases steel ball-bearings) in the void inside the core - these had to be removed to "arm" the bomb, presumably in-flight during an actual nuclear bombing raid. This is the mechanism used in the British Violet Club and related bombs; presumably US weapons had some analogous system. -- Finlay McWalterᚠTalk 11:16, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Two things. One, every nuclear bomb contains non-nuclear explosives. The chemical explosives are what assemble the fission core into a critical mass, when they are detonated. See nuclear weapon design. Two, nukes aren't armed unless you're planning to set them off. This accident demonstrates why. Most nuclear weapons contain multiple safety devices to keep them from going off unless you're quite sure you want them to. For instance, nuclear missile warheads include devices that only arm the warhead when they detect the acceleration from being launched. --71.119.131.184 (talk) 11:41, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

In some designs it's important that the pressure wave from the chemical explosives is symmetrical, otherwise it won't compress the core enough to make it critical. If an impact accidentally sets them off, they'll probably fire first on one side of the sphere, whereas in an intentional detonation they're fired electrically, all at once. I have no expertise in the matter, but it makes sense that this could prevent the nuclear explosion from happening. --76.69.45.64 (talk) 19:43, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

This is why gun-type fission weapons are inherently far more dangerous than implosion designs - they only have a single chunk of chemical explosive (as opposed to between two and dozens, depending on the specific design, for an implosion-type weapon), and if that goes off, bye bye birdie. Whoop whoop pull up ^{Bitching Betty | Averted crashes} 23:55, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

The deal is that with conventional explosives, the materials are inherently unstable - always on the verge of an explosion. Whack a bomb the wrong way and KABOOM! But with nuclear weapons, it requires considerable finesse to bring the nuclear material together fast enough to get them to critical mass without the increasing temperatures as you approach criticality blowing the bomb apart before it can properly explode. This failure is called a fizzle. Almost any fault in the way the bomb goes off can cause this - so an accidental full-on nuclear explosion due to a damaged bomb is highly unlikely.

That said, a fizzle can be a very dangerous outcome in itself. Although all of that explosive power won't be unleashed, the conventional explosives and the heat of fizzle can cause horribly radioactive material to be spread over a large area resulting in contamination that would be a serious problem to clean up.

But even for a fizzle to happen, the conventional explosives have to explode - and that is no more likely than in a conventional bomb. Probably less so because of the extra care and attention that's paid to the safety of the design and construction of nuclear devices. Conventional explosive bombs with faulty fuses rarely explode spontaneously - even after 50 or more years buried in soil or rubble.

SteveBaker (talk) 20:34, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Nitpick: your statement isn't true for all conventional explosives. Some are designed to be very stable. Many plastic explosives can be lit on fire and not explode. --71.119.131.184 (talk) 06:14, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Good point - I guess I should have said "the kinds of explosives that 'just blow up' as a result of an accident are inherently unstable"...but that would be something of a tautology! SteveBaker (talk) 20:32, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

In the case of the Palomares incident, the plutonium from two of the thermonuclear weapons' "primaries," or fission stages was scattered over a two square kilometer area near the fishing village of Palomares after those weapons' conventional explosives detonated (according to our article on the Palomares B-52 crash). No nuclear yield resulted because the conventional explosives didn't go off with the correct timing to compress the plutonium in the primaries to supercriticality - which is needed to release large amounts of nuclear energy from a fissile material.

The section of our article on Nuclear Weapon Design dealing with Warhead Design Safety explains why the thermonuclear weapons accidentally dropped at Palomares didn't detonate with a nuclear yield. In short, they're made not to go off with a nuclear yield unless all the conventional explosive "lenses" (in modern US designs, very often just two are used) go off at exactly the same time. Any other detonation of the conventional explosives should just scatter the fissile around without a nuclear yield.

The standard which has been defined for nuclear weapons safety in the US nuclear arsenal is "one-point safety," defined by the Department of Defense Nuclear Weapon System Safety Program Manual as

• (1) The probability of achieving a nuclear yield greater than 4 pounds trinitrotoluene (TNT) equivalent will not exceed 1 in 10 to the 6th power, in the event of a detonation initiated at any one point in the high explosive (HE) system.
• (2) One-point safety will be inherent in the nuclear system design and will be obtained without the use of a nuclear safing device.

By 1966, initial one-point safety problems with the Mk28 weapons had long been resolved, and the early models of that weapon had been retired starting in 1961. The bombs on the B-52 aircraft that crashed near Palomares, Spain were almost certainly one-point safe by inherent design, according to the Nuclear Weapons Archive's "Complete List of All U.S. Nuclear Weapons".

Hope this answers your question. loupgarous (talk) 22:19, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Bigger microclimates

In areas with generally uniform topography (whether flat or consistently hilly), what factors can produce climatological anomalies that are hundreds of square miles in area? Go to File:2012 USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map (USA).jpg and look at Ohio; there's a big light-blue blob just northeast of Columbus, for reasons that I can't understand. The nearby city of Mansfield is large enough that it generally appears on statewide weather maps (the ones showing current or predicted temperatures for the state's larger cities), and it's routinely the coldest of any such city, despite lying in a region that mixes flat farmland with low-relief wooded hills no closer to major waterbodies than the surrounding terrain. The state's other light-blue areas are part of large zones or are the effects of smaller microclimates (see Milligan, Ohio for the area southeast of Columbus), with nothing comparable to the Mansfield area. Nyttend (talk) 15:35, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

A topographic map (e.g., here shows that this area is a few hundred feet (~100 m) higher than the surrounding region. Not exactly the Cascade Range but enough relief to have a modest climate influence. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 15:55, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

That blue blob is the Tibet of Ohio. 1400-151x feet above sea level! (for comparison the Empire State Building antenna is 1,504 feet above sea level) [2] Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 16:11, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

But the region that includes the state's high point, northwest of Columbus a short distance, has a climate similar to the surrounding region; the local ski resort (see File:Mad River Mountain and Valley Hi.jpg) exists because of snow-making machines, not because the area gets additional cold weather. And going to Boris' map — you also don't have a colder zone in Belmont County and areas north of there in the far east, which is the state's largest area of 1300+ feet, even when you get back from the river and its potential warmer microclimate. Nyttend (talk) 16:22, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Just a guess but those two regions look steeper than the blue blob (especially the lowest of all three), causing faster drainage of cold air? Also, the highest point in Ohio is in a city park 2 miles from downtown (heat island effect?), and only 29-40 feet higher. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 16:45, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

I strongly doubt that it's a heat-island effect; look at the location, 40°22′13″N 83°43′12″W, and it's easy to find other 1500+ spots out in the township, e.g. 40°22′21″N 83°39′24″W near the spot marked "New Jerusalem" on the USGS topo map, while only the highest spots in Mansfield are above 1300 feet, and Mansfield a good deal larger, it's more likely to generate the heat island effect, although I doubt a large effect; the final sentence of Urban heat island#Causes says that a 1-million-person city may create a 2-5ºF difference in mean annual temperature, and the two cities are 13K and 47K respectively. Nyttend (talk) 01:17, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Just a few thoughts: binning continuous data into discrete chunks can always produce artifacts, e.g. discretization errors. The USDA hardiness zones for 2012 are computed via mean annual minimum temp, 1976-2005. Such temperature information at that resolution is the effect of downscaling, which involves all kinds of mathematical voodoo (which usually works well, but should not be universally blindly trusted, as that can lead to false precision errors in the gridded data).

Now, the good folks at USDA are clever, and I'm not saying the whole thing is an artifact. It probably is a bit cooler there. But perhaps the nature of the data product, combined with the high elevation, may make this anomaly more apparent on the map than it is in reality. I would not be surprised if 75% of the blue region you mention is only 1 F lower in mean annual min than a wide swath of the surrounding green. Finally, you may get a bit more out of looking at older hardiness maps. As you probably know, these zone are changing, and this previous version do not have that feature. Here [3] you can see how they have changed, and also note the weird banding structure in the diffs (I have no idea why those bands show up, but it is almost certainly not anomalous, and illustrates how these things often defy simple intuition - climate science is hard stuff!) SemanticMantis (talk) 15:52, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

universal basic income

Why do most variations of universal basic income assume that everyone will suddenly become utopians overnight instead of remaining feckless, lazy addicts? The human mind can't take endless free time, a strong work ethic only comes about through necessity for basic survival — Preceding unsigned comment added by DannyBIGjohnny (talk • contribs) 18:04, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

This question, as phrased, does not appear to be a request for scientific reference material. Would you like to rephrase it, or do you need help finding an internet discussion forum on that topic?

Nimur (talk) 18:19, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

There are a lot of assumptions in your question:

• "The human mind can't take endless free time" - Firstly, how do you know that? People retire from work all the time - and remain perfectly sane despite having "endless free time". Secondly, what makes you think that people without work have "free time"? Perhaps they are taking care of children or a sick relative...maybe they are using their time to invent The Next Great Thing?
• "a strong work ethic only comes about through necessity for basic survival" - Again, how do you know that? Plenty of people work harder than necessary for "basic survival" in order to have a better-than-basic life.
• "remaining feckless, lazy addicts" - Why do you think people who don't get that universal basic income are "feckless", "lazy" or "addicts"? That is also far from the true in every case.

To answer the part of the question that seems to matter, read Basic income pilots which lists the outcomes of Basic Income experiments around the world. The three that were tried out in the USA had really good outcomes. The early studies found only 17% less paid work being done among women, 7% among men. The gender difference probably implies that women found themselves able to stay home and look after their children...so "feckless" certainly doesn't seem to have been a significant result. They found that the money was not squandered on drugs and luxury goods...so much for "addicts". There was an increase in school attendance. Another study reported reduced behavioral and emotional disorders among the children, an improved relationship between parents and their children, and a reduction in parental alcohol consumption. Again, contradicting your expectations.

I doubt many people think that a universal basic income would result in a "utopia", it's fairly clear that we would expect a significant number of benefits to accrue to society as a whole. SteveBaker (talk) 20:17, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Social benefits, although not exactly the same, is also a testing scenario for the idea. Countries with it, including those with generous cash in hand social benefits, did not succumb to all the forms of vice. There is plenty of empirical hard data, beyond ideological worldviews, to analyze the effect of introducing a basic income scheme.Denidi (talk) 22:03, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

In case you are not aware, you have posted this question to a place that exists almost solely because of motivated people who are volunteering their time to a cause they believe in. You are probably less likely to run into people here who believe the "default" human condition is "feckless, lazy addicts". Vespine (talk) 23:21, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Although to be fair, not everyone who contributes here is unemployed and using Wikipedia to fill their spare time. It would be interesting to discover whether Wikipedia contributors are either more or less often employed than the general public since that would shed light on some of the issues in question here. SteveBaker (talk) 16:55, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

• This problem has been thought about seriously by economists, psychologists, sociologists, etc. Do some reading on the Post-scarcity economy for more information. --Jayron32 01:54, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

  Noting, of course, that the topic of post-scarcity economics is an interesting one—but it's definitely a much more extreme condition than a simple universal basic income. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 02:09, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

• Player Piano, the first novel of Kurt Vonnegut, was published in 1952. It depicts a dystopia of automation, describing the deterioration it can cause to quality of life. See also, Butlerian Jihad, The Singularity, grey goo, Logan's Run, Sleeper, Zardoz and THX1138. μηδείς (talk) 04:26, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

It's dangerous to interpret works of fiction as having any kind of predictive power. If such a future were to come about without drama or intrigue - it would not be interesting as the scenario for a science fiction novel/movie. Hence authors tend to look on the dark side. SteveBaker (talk) 16:55, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

I made no such dangerous interpretation; I just assumed that quoting related works of fiction was the best response to the OP's invitation to speculate. He'd already been told to get himself to a chat forum. There's also Charles Alan Murray's (of Human Accomplishment fame) short story "The Social Contract Revisited" on the topic of paying every adult $10,000 per annum as a replacement for all other government subsidies. μηδείς (talk) 22:11, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

You need money to make money, and if you don't have enough to begin with you might not be able to work your way up. Especially if a means-tested welfare system means working more doesn't actually result in a net increase in wealth. Those problems shouldn't apply in the case of a universal basic income, and the advocates of such would argue that some/most examples of people (apparently) "remaining feckless, lazy addicts" are actually the result of the first two problems mentioned.62.172.108.24 (talk) 15:49, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

The OP's question has some silly assumptions, but not as many as a true, monetary UBI, whose academic proponents are basically innumerate and innocent of any understanding of economics. (There have been at least three academic journal issues I know of devoted to debating it). It cannot work for the purposes they intend (without "utopians" - who could make, pretend or play-act that any crazy system whatsoever worked). But it would work quite well toward the aim of some of its (non-innumerate) wealthy proponents who have some grasp of economics: destruction of well-functioning "welfare states", class polarization, resurgent reactionary politics after it collapsed or was debased.John Z (talk) 01:50, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

How can black holes form?

I know this has probably been asked before or is in a wikipedia article but I can't find the answer.

To an observer it takes an infinitely long time for matter to pass the event horizon of a black hole. So how does the black hole form in a way we can be aware of it or its effects? If it takes an infinite amount of time for matter to get there, how can it 'exist' to us? I've read about the time dilation effect, and I think I understand the basics but how can two black holes collide to form a supermassive black hole when from our perspective that would take an infinite amount of time?

I hope my question makes sense! Thanks 95.146.213.181 (talk) 19:56, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

For an external observer they never collapse completely staying in sort of a frozen state with the radius close to the gravitational. Ruslik_Zero 20:14, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Exactly. The infinities don't come about until the event horizon has formed - and once it has, it's meaningless to talk about what's happening "inside" while still considering events from the perspective of an outside observer. SteveBaker (talk) 20:21, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

OP here, thanks for the quick replies. I'm not concerned about what's happening inside the event horizon (or do I need to understand that before I understand what happens outside it?), I still don't understand how they can form from our perspective as outside observers. Could you give some links for a layman to understand please? I've read the wikipedia article on black holes and under the growth sub-heading it states 'Once a black hole has formed, it can continue to grow by absorbing additional matter'. How can it do that, if it takes an infinite amount of time?

I'm sorry if I'm not explaining my question clearly (and I realise that much greater minds than mine, or even the ref desk know how black holes form). To put it another way, as the mass of a 'proto-black hole' approaches the density of a black hole, to us (and the rest of the universe) matter moves into it at slower and slower speeds. The bit I don't understand is how, from our perspective, matter moving into the proto-black hole can get there to form a balck hole.

Thanks 95.146.213.181 (talk) 20:53, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Leonard Susskind explains this by using the uncertainty principle to show that from outside we cannot tell if a particle falling into a black hole is still outside the event horizon or not. As something approaches the event horizon, a photon or particle to probe the position from outside has to become more and more energetic to determine where the infaller is. Until the energy required is more than the mass of the infaller or the blackhole. Resulting in the probe destroying what we are trying to observe. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:22, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Let me try to give a few different perspectives on this...

• The event horizon is a surface in spacetime. Spacetime doesn't change, it just is. Event horizons don't form, they just are.
• It's physically meaningless to say that an event horizon forms at a particular time "relative to an outside observer" because of the relativity of simultaneity. You can draw surfaces in spacetime and decree that they represent the "now" and that everything on the surface happens at the same time, but there's more than one way to do it and they're all meaningless. When people say that the event horizon hasn't formed yet, they're probably thinking of the "now" as a constant t in Schwarzschild-like coordinates. If you instead use Eddington–Finkelstein-like coordinates, then the event horizon does form at some particular time "for you".
• Independently of whether the event horizon "exists now", it is true that you will never see anything cross the event horizon, because by definition it's the boundary of the region of spacetime you'll never see. But it's rather solipsistic to say that something never happens just because you never see it happen. In an exponentially expanding universe like the one we seem to inhabit, there is a cosmological horizon and we will never see anything beyond it, sort of like a black hole turned inside out. If nothing outside that horizon happens, then the universe is a perfect sphere with us at the exact center. Even in special relativity, if you accelerate uniformly forever, there is an event horizon behind you (called a Rindler horizon) and you will never see what happens beyond it, but you don't have the power to prevent that half of the universe from existing just by accelerating away from it. These event horizons behave just like black hole horizons, even emitting Hawking radiation (in the case of uniform acceleration it's called Unruh radiation).
• Classical systems can only asymptotically approach a ground state (in this case a perfectly spherical hole with no hair), but quantum systems emit a final photon/graviton/whatever and reach the ground state at a finite time. For black holes formed from collapsing stars, I think the time from seeing an "almost collapsed" star to seeing the final photon/graviton is a small fraction of a second, though I really should have a source for that. After that, you have a black hole as surely as you have a hydrogen atom in the ground state. (This is probably related to Susskind's argument in Graeme Bartlett's reply.)
• Quantum black holes eventually evaporate. In Hawking's original semiclassical treatment, you see the hole finish forming at the same time as you see it finish evaporating (not because they happen at the same time, but because they happen on the same lightlike surface, and the light all stacks up and reaches you at the same time). I'm not sure that picture is accurate, though, in part because of the previous bullet point. -- BenRG (talk) 21:42, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

These are good questions. One thing I'd like to point out is we never "see" beyond the event horizon. We can't, with currently accepted physics, meaningfully say anything about what happens beyond the event horizon. We detect black holes by detecting their effects on things outside their event horizons, such as their gravitational effects on other objects. A singularity not "hidden" by an event horizon would be a naked singularity, which is a topic of discussion in theoretical physics, with debate over whether such a thing could actually exist. Also I'll recommend these two videos by PBS Space Time which discuss black holes. You'll need some background knowledge (and there are links to some other videos that may help), but they're intended to be accessible to laypeople. --71.119.131.184 (talk) 06:12, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

OP here, thanks for all the responses. I still haven't wrapped my head around things, I think I need to read up a lot more to understand your answers! Your answers have been very much appreciated :-) Mike 95.146.213.181 (talk) 18:10, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

• This should prolly be hatted, gin we got an article. μηδείς (talk) 23:17, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

I'm not sure what hatted means, as in close the question? I don't see any point in that as I have my answers now and those answers may help others. And gin had nothing to do with my question :-) 95.148.212.178 (talk) 22:26, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

How much as human DNA changed along the centuries

Genetically, how different are we from our ancestors of 10,000 years ago? We would look different due to the diet and environment. However, were we DNA-wise essentially the same as today? I suppose if we go 60,000 years back in time, as we left Africa, we would not see Caucasians or Asians, but what else is new? --Denidi (talk) 22:45, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Based on human genome and mutation rate one expects about ~1 mutation in coding regions and ~60 mutations in non-coding regions (including regulatory sequences) of the human genome per generation. That mutation rate will accumulate noticeable variation over thousands of years. Of course, mutations that prove detrimental will be selected against, so the true number of accumulated mutations may be somewhat lower than one might expect via simply counting generations. Dragons flight (talk) 00:07, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

What mutations prove detrimental has changed. Denidi implicitly mentioned one factor. We would not see Caucasians or Asians, because light skin (via either of the two light-skin genetic changes) was detrimental in the African sun but beneficial in the European or Asian mid-latitude sun. Within the past century, modern medicine has reduced the lethality of various conditions and diseases. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:38, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

See Human evolution#Recent and current human evolution, which gives the examples of lactase persistence and resistence to diseases carried by domesticated animals. I suspect another example would be the increasing frequency of short-sightedness, which until a few centuries ago would have been a major disadvantage but since the invention and common availability of spectacles is no longer selected against.-gadfium 00:52, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

I disagree as to myopia. After division of labor, it was no longer a major disadvantage. It only dictated what occupational role the person could fill. They couldn't hunt. They could perform crafts. In an early literate society, it was possible that the nearsighted person could become a scribe, and being a scribe was a high-status occupation in early literate societies in which literacy was the exception rather than the rule. However, it does illustrate that, in general, technology changes what are harmful conditions. Nearsightedness wasn't one, in a society with division of labor. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:47, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

They would likely have more body hair. Head lice are supposed to have developed "30,000–110,000" years ago, as a result of humans having lost body hair in most places, leaving an isolated habitat for lice on the head. So, that puts the transition in the 60,000 years ago range you are interested in. StuRat (talk) 05:06, 18 January 2016 (UTC)