Talk:Particle physics

Large scale rewrites of page need discussion first

CactiStaccingCrane, you have been trying to remove/change large sections of this page, and your changes have been reverted. Many editors have spent time working on this page and you seem to want to remove all their work and start over. Since editors have objected to what you are doing it is time to discuss here on the talk page. See Wikipedia:Consensus. The article can use improvement. Can you outline what you propose to do? Changing section by section, and incorporating good material already there, is a better approach. An overview article like this may well need reorganizing since it has just grown over time. StarryGrandma (talk) 00:30, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

I am currently planning to rewrite the whole article entirely. I've incorporated some of the materials to my new version, however the lack of sources make it really hard to justify doing so. The article's organization currently is very disorganized and undue, so expanding these sections individually is not a great option either. (why should the Subatomic particles section be separated from the Standard Model section? Why should there be a list at the Experimental laboratories section at all?) CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 00:51, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

StarryGrandma do you think that my revised version is ok now? CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 01:55, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

Also notifying earlier revert by others: User:Yakme and User:Spicy. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 02:33, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

@CactiStaccingCrane, I don't have any way to easily compare what is in your sandbox with what is in the article. And more people need to be involved. I will post a note at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics. Tell us what your plan is for the article. The article says almost nothing about the experimental side of particle physics (experimentalists tend not to edit Wikipedia as much as theorists). The section about labs is the only thing so it shouldn't just be removed. It should be replaced with sections on what experimental particle physics is and how it is carried out. The history section lacks information about that area also. StarryGrandma (talk) 02:34, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

Agreed, I am not at all an expert at the topic really, I'm just expanding the article with summarized sourced content from other articles. That's why I keep the "Fundamental interactions" section empty, I couldn't wrap my head around it :) CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 02:37, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

If you are copying things from other articles you have to be careful to credit the material to those other articles. See Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia. I suggest doing an outline of what you think the article should look like first. What topics should be in a top-level particle physics/high energy physics article. There are whole textbooks on the subject and this will just be a relatively short article. StarryGrandma (talk) 03:19, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

For an example see the table of contents at Introduction to High Energy Physics by Donald Hill Perkins. StarryGrandma (talk) 03:22, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

@User:CactiStaccingCrane, I am not at all an expert at the topic really then sorry but I totally do not trust your judgement on the re-structuring of this article, which is very technical. You cannot really say that there is a lack of sources on particle physics, either! Given that particle physics is one of the most studied branches of physics with tens of thousands of publications per year. The major problem with your restructuring is also that one cannot really notice what you changed and what you kept or moved around. If you would like to improve this article I would suggest to do so gradually, with a proper edit message for each step, so that other editors can see what you changed. Yakme (talk) 06:56, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

I think you misunderstand my message – I mean the old version of the article is lacking a lot of sources, so reusing the content is sub-optimal. That's why I rewrite the article entirely rather than just retrofitting the old version. But otherwise, you are right, I should have detailed my plans on the edit summary and on the talk page more throughly. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 07:03, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

The article needs to focus both on theory, experiment, and the in-between (particle phenomenology). At the moment the rewrite seems to be a brief summary of the types of particles there are in the SM and a bit on BSM physics. But those articles do that already; the summary here should not be the main aspect of this article, although a brief summary is needed. Rather this article should focus on what this field is about, that is what is done in it. Most of particle theory is particle phenomenology, that is constraining possible SM extensions using experiments and it should briefly elaborate a bit on these (axions, composite Higgs, dark photons, etc etc etc). Particle theory in other things is also important, such as particle cosmology and astroparticle physics. There is also a lot on improving SM calculations (higher order loop calculations, scattering amplitude methods, etc). Then, half of the article should be on experimental particle physics; looking at what experimentalists do, some accelerator physics, calculation techniques, something on the numerical side (ROOT, lattice methods, etc). But generally SM based particle physics focuses on precision measurements to test the limits of the SM and measuring the many particle properties (just browse the Particle Data Group (PDG) to see). The PDG 2022 Review chapters (there is a lot of them) gives a pretty good idea of what particle physics is about. OpenScience709 (talk) 11:10, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

OpenScience709, I just changed the draft to have 4 main sections: history, theory, experimental (including phenomenology), and interdisciplinary (Astroparticle physics and such). I may be able to help a little bit at the history and interdisciplinary sections, but the theory and experimental sections are just way beyond me. Feel free to make changes to the draft, I don't mind the sections being rearranged again. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 11:26, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

Update: I moved the draft to Draft:Particle physics to give space for my sandbox. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 04:09, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

Yakme, StarryGrandma, OpenScience709 Do you guys have any more concerns about the draft? Is it ok to go online now? CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 03:46, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

Well, I'm just gonna post the draft per WP:BOLD and wait for the response then. No use waiting forever. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 07:26, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

I think that was a mistake. The earlier version was better [1]. The new draft had grammatical and other errors and I have corrected some of these.[2] It is hardly "forever" since the 29th of July and not enough time has been allowed for a full discussion. I propose reverting to the earlier version. Graham Beards (talk) 16:21, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

Graham Beards, feel free to revert my edits. I have bit off more than I can chew. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 12:30, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

CactiStaccingCrane I think your introduction added some value. Graham Beards (talk) 15:12, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

high energy physics?

Just wondering why this isn't high energy physics? I would think that is the WP:COMMONNAME, at least among physicists. One complication, I don't know if it should have the hyphen or not. Gah4 (talk) 18:58, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Particle physics is not restricted to high energies. Where does this idea even come from? ♆ CUSH ♆ 13:45, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

High energy physics is one of the common names - on the experimental side the energies are high. See https://www.energy.gov/science/hep/high-energy-physics and https://science.osti.gov/hep/Research/Science-Drivers-of-Particle-Physics from the US Office of High Energy Physics. Not hyphenated. StarryGrandma (talk) 14:06, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

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