Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics

Archived discussion at:

• Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics/Archive1
• Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics/Archive2

Wikipedia:WikiProject_Physics#The_physicists.27_watchlist

I thought it would be a good idea to have the possibility of telling other participants what pages we think need attention at the moment, so I've made the physicists' watchlist. Tell me what you think, does it seems helpfull? I've added Antimatter now, since it seemd a little science-fiction-like; maybe also Antiparticle, but I haven't read it, because I'm on vacation and don't have time. Karol 17:20, September 7, 2005 (UTC)

One AfD, one almost AfD

• I listed geeforce on AfD. A copyedit of gee would be appropriate at this time, to make sure its complete.

• I was tempted to list higher dimensions for deletion, and then realized that dimension was too dry and complicated for those folks who have no idea of what "four dimensions" are. Anyone want to either expand higher dimensions, or re-write dimension to be bouncier and easier to understand for the non-mathematical? linas 14:48, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Process physics

Process physics seems to be in need of a NPOV check and additional cleanup. Fredrik | talk 12:36, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

And possibly more. I clicked the link, then looked up their references. They publish in Infinite Energy, which is certainly a psuedoscience journal. But they've published in some others I've not heard of, like Relativity, Gravitation, Cosmology, that could be legitimate. (Does anyone know?) Plus they seem to have been featured in some popular magazines. So I'm thinking they article should be there, but of course clearly identify the idea as a fringe theory. -- SCZenz 17:07, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

I checked another journal, Apeiron. The editorial board is a strange mix of real academics and people who are well known for their pseudoscientific work see here. Perhaps this is a form of symbiosis. The pseudoscientists get their journal with some real scientists in the editorial board, while reputable scientific journals get less submissions from pseudoscientists. Count Iblis 23:08, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

Gack. Were it not for the university reference, I'd call this pure, unadulterated pseudophysics. Hell, even with the university reference, its still unadulterated pseudoscience. My patented smell-o-meter finds the following problems:

• Uses the words quantum foam
• Explains everything, everywhere (rather than focusing on single, verifiable claims)
• Must be correct because it explains dark matter
• Must be correct because it makes predictions about things which haven't ever been measured, e.g. Gravity Probe B
• Finds support in controversial experiments (the coax-cable interferometry experiments) and the Pioneer anomaly.
• Fails utterly and completely to explain how we ever got this far without such a far-reaching vision. (Forget the Pioneer anomaly, can process physics even begin to explain simple things like Newtonian gravity?)

-- linas 18:17, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

I agree with linas it seems to be in the same league as Autodynamics Salsb 18:38, September 11, 2005 (UTC)

Random matrix stuff?

This article started ringing a bell ... so I googled. I have a partial explanation for the mixture of legit/pseudo physics seen here. Circa 2000, Reg Cahill and Chris Klinger iterated a random matrix of some kind, with some extra non-linear terms, and found some kind of phase transition ... It was noted that the the result looked like a lattice with random connectivity, and that the nearest-neighbor connectivity was three-dimensional. The claim was made that this was a model of 3D space (explaining why space is 3D), and that "mass" appeared somehow naturally, and also that there were quantum-like effects of some kind ... It actually sounded pretty interesting, and sounded like more-or-less legit math, although it was clear that it would take a lot more work to turn this into a full-fledged physical theory. After some googling, I've discovered that these are the same people I'd heard about.

(FWIW, random matices are fairly hot in physics, being applied to both models of the nucleus, and to various quantum gravity models, including loop quantum gravity. And lets not forget the statistical distribution of the zeros of the Riemann zeta are modelled by a random matrix as well).

I found one reference (below) to the actual hard math behind this thing (although it looks weak). Also, it was clear from the original description that the 3D connectivity was "novel and interesting" but that clearly, a lot had to be done to turn this into something that was compatible with quantum mechanics and/or turn it into something that explained mass/intertia & was consistent with special relativity. I can't find refs to how this was done.

Anyway, the WP article, and process physics in general, seems to have shamefully taken this maybe-viable model of spacetime and turn it into something that sounds like pseudoscience. Which I admit is something that I have a habit of doing myself ... but that's another topic.

A review of the actual results of the random matrix stuff in the Cahill theory is called for. And the WP article should be trimmed of the wilder-sounding claims. linas 05:40, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

• pop-sci review
• Arxiv preprint
• excellent level-headed critique

The magic google search phrase is "gebit quantum" linas 05:50, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

All further conversation should occur at Talk:Process physics.

Microwave auditory effect

The section on other natural carriers in Microwave auditory effect is in need of some attention. It appears to combine real information about decay processes combined with unsupported speculation about neural effects Salsb 17:47, September 11, 2005 (UTC)

Science pearls

Hello, Please notice this project. I hope that the List of publications in physics will be adopted by the physics project. Thanks,APH 06:49, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Help needed: Actor model

Hi, just dropped by to alert you all to what I think is a problem with User:CarlHewitt, who has written some long articles on his own CS "theory", actor model. This article probably violates the "original research" policy, but the immediate problem is that Hewitt claims his theory was "inspired" by gtr and quantum theory, so he added the articles to Category:General relativity and Category:Quantum physics. I regard this link as far too tenuous to warrant being added to these categories, so I left a polite note and removed the categories, but he immediately added them back. I left a second note and removed them again, but the situation probably needs to be monitored.---CH (talk) 22:28, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

It's not a violation of the OR policy if it's really been published in a peer-reviewed journal; no original research just means that Wikipedia isn't the place to publish new work. (e.g. If Peter Higgs logged on and edited Higgs boson, that would obviously be fine.) Not knowing anything about CS theory, I'll leave it to others to evaluate whether it's been published in a sufficiently reputable place that it's legit. However, putting it in physics categories is definitely incorrect, and I will help keep an eye on that. -- SCZenz 23:10, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Same here, its on my watch list for the physics cats, but I'll leave it to CS experts to edit the article otherwise. Salsb 23:16, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

I heard of the actor model more-n a decade ago; even read papers on it; topics legit. A skim shows that Carl Hewitt has been publishing for at least 36 years; so no surprise that the article is less of an article on the topic, than it is an arcing overview of comp sci over the decades. My only concern is that his reflective story-telling is going to clash with the ruthless editing of the younger crowd, who just might rip into this stuff; in which case we'll have a bit of wikishock. (and no, categorically, this article does not belong in the GR or QM categories). linas 00:00, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Hmm... He's an "Emeritus professor from MIT" ... linas 00:07, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Hi all, thanks for your comments. Looks like the concensus is that Hewitt's work is legit as CS, but everyone here seems to agree that the categorizations he wants to add are clearly inappropriate. Has this kind of "category pollution" vandalism happened before? How was it resolved?

I tried to talk to Hewitt, but he didn't really reply to my objections, just reverted my changes, which I reverted (leaving a succession of polite notes in the talk page), and we are now at the three revert threshold. What next? Has anyone here interacted with him before? Any advice on where I can go from here? ---CH (talk) 03:48, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

From what I've seen in similar situations, he'll give up or come around to really discussing it without you needing to take it to the next level. I'm sure it's on several more watchlists now that you've brought it up here and elsewhere, so eventually he'll realize that he needs to actually justify the categories if he wants them to stick. — Laura Scudder | Talk 05:21, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Another example: Quantum_indeterminacy#Quantum_indeterminacy_in_computation . He thinks it's a quantum phenonmenon, I would say it's only analogous to the quantum case. Maybe this is the source of his confusion. Maybe it can be explained to him satisfactorily. GangofOne 06:38, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

It seems like a big part of his misunderstanding is failure to see that just because people working on the actor model see a connection between it and quantum mechanics doesn't necessarily mean that it's a significant enough part of our current understanding of quantum mechanics to warrant inclusion in QM categories. — Laura Scudder | Talk 07:01, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Arghh. You mean Quantum indeterminacy in computation? I am sorely tempted to VfD that article. If I smoked a lot of pot, that might be a fun topic to daydream about, but, I'm sorry, that article is free of facts and carries little information. I don't think idle hand-waving and gee-golly-whiz statements are appropriate for wikipedia. If he wants to write an article on hung gates and quantum mechanics, do that, and provide references to articles where someone measured this in a lab. But speculation, no. linas 04:30, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, he just separated out that chunk and made a new article. If he removed the word "quantum" it wouldn't be wrong. See also Category_talk:Relativistic_Information_Science, currently in progress. GangofOne 05:35, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Category work

I just discovered Category:Physics stubs which has a number of articles that appear to not have been categorized. If anyone feels like killing some time on WP, going through these would be a good idea. linas 04:39, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Ugh, I remember that category as interminable. — Laura Scudder | Talk 06:16, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes! Whenever I have lots of time to kill I look at Category:Physics stubs and its subcat Category:Physicist stubs. They both need considerable work. Though if several of us keep ploding through them, then they at least will get categorized. Someone recently added Category:Relativity stubs to organize the cat a little. Salsb 12:23, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Particle accelearator categories

I recently ran into a difficulty with categorizing the article on the Bevatron that I'm working on. The current organization seems to be that Category:Particle accelerators describes particle accelerators in generality (designs, concepts, etc.), while its subcategory Category:Particle colliders contains articles on specific machines. This works well for modern accelerators, which all do indeed have colliding beams, but the Bevatron was not a collider--it just ran protons into a fixed target. My idea, therefore, is to create a new subcat of the accelerator category, called something like Category:Historical particle accelerators that would have the Bevatron and other past machines (say, prior to LEP?) that I, for one, am interested in filling in over time. Does that seem a reasonable way to do it, or are there other ideas? -- SCZenz 21:56, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Not to add to the confusion, but maybe Category:Particle colliders should be renamed to something that would allow the Bevatron to fit? Another possibility would be to rename Category:Particle colliders to Category:High Energy Physics Institutes and then rename Category:Particle experiments into something that would allow bevatron to fit. linas 22:56, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Category:Particle experiments is the detectors, not the accelerators. But yes, we could rename Category:Particle colliders to something that communicates the idea of "Specific particle accelerators" (which is realy how it's been used). The main reason not to do that is I can't think of a good name! But also, I think there could be a nice category that had the history & development of accelerators in it, all the way back to Lawrence's original 9-incher. -- SCZenz 02:53, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Ok, here's what I did. Since Category:Particle colliders was trying to cover institutes and accelerators, I thought it was badly named anyway. So I moved everything over to Category:Particle physics facilities. (That is general enough to include Bevatron, whose only crime was being a fixed-target accelerator rather than a collider anyway.) This leaves Category:Particle accelerators to be just about general accelerator info, with the specific examples in the facilities category. -- SCZenz 17:01, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Since this was entirely unclear to me until I dug up this page (yes, hi, I'm new here), and since I'm contributing in these categories to a degree, I've added a note to Category:Particle accelerators indicating your distinction above. I think it's far more likely to be seen there, at least, than that all future contributors will bother to join this Project. On a related note, perhaps Category:Particle experiments should be moved to a subcat of Category:Particle accelerators as well? To me it seems like that category should be parallel to Category:Particle physics facilities, but I'd enjoy hearing the why-nots. Kgf0 22:43, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, we could do that. At the moment it's also a subcat of experimental physics, I believe, where it should stay--but I don't mind moving the particle physics branch. In general, it's a mess figuring out what should be a subcat of what in physics. I mean, CDF is not a type of accelerator, but then neither is Fermilab. However, separating "facilities" from "specific accelerators" is too complex a job to be worth it, so they just got shoved in the same place--the same is not true of the detectors, which are clearly separate. -- SCZenz 04:06, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Fictitious force

Help is needed on this article; User:William M. Connolley, who does not consider this to be a valid subject, has reverted eight months of editing, removing details and examples. ‣ᓛᖁ♀ᑐ 09:03, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

I have tried to clearly address his objections and will continue to discuss them. However, his reverts are unacceptable, and I will keep an eye on the page. -- SCZenz 15:25, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

That being said, the introduction of the article needs work, to avoid confusing those who don't already know what it's about. -- SCZenz 15:25, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Unicode in physics articles

The bot User talk:Curpsbot-unicodify has started crawling the math and physics pages and converting html greek characters, such as γ, into glyphs that are hard to work with (although they render the same way). I don't think this is a good idea for math formulas and math expressions, although I support it for the other cases (people/place names, etc.) I'd like to see some sort of majority consensus developed on this, for or against, at User talk:Curpsbot-unicodify. linas 15:00, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

Coanda effect

Any expert in hydrodynamics and aerodynamics available here? The Coanda effect article, while a legitimate topic and article, has and will have the tendency to attract some crackpots, due to the "flying saucer"/"vortex theory" connection. I've listed it on Wikipedia:Pages needing attention/Physics and just removed a weblink to Jean-Louis Naudin's website.

Also I've heard some voices, that the Coanda effect is misrepresented by claiming "it's the effect that make wings work". But a field expert has to be the judge here.

Pjacobi

False Doppler VfD and ErkDemon's articles in general

Please have a look at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/False Doppler. --Pjacobi 11:55, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

In-House Admin

Hi all. I've been thinking about applying for admin, so that we'd have somebody who's active in the wikiproject and understands the issues that come up who's able to deal with pesky administrative stuff, vandalism, etc. directly. Any thoughts? -- SCZenz 17:22, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure why such an in-house admin is needed. I assume you know that admins are not supposed to deal with stuff in which they are themselves involved? Did anything come up where you wished you had such an admin? I think it should be sufficient to have some admins who know enough physics and are willing to help when asked. One of the participants of this project (User:Oleg Alexandrov) was recently made an admin, User:CSTAR is also an admin who knows quite some physics, and you can always try to ask me for help.

As for you (SCZenz) applying for adminship: Did you look through the recent applications to see which are successful and which are not? Looking at your contributions, I am not convinced that your application would pass: little over 1000 edits, some pictures, getting the list of particles featured, few AfD votes, some activity here at this wikiproject, not many edits elsewhere in Wikipedia: namespace. It's hard to predict what would happen, and you may well succeed, especially if you have a strong story, but you may also well fail. So, if you decide to apply, brace yourself for criticism. By the way, I'll support an application. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 20:41, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Hmm. The only times anyone has discussed needing an admin with me, it always involved bringing someone in from the outside the wikiproject. But it would seem that I was wrong about the situation, to some degree.

It also seems like they are looking for something specific in an editor, which seems to involve a lot of breadth and specific checkmarks. I'm mostly interested in improving physics articles, and being able to deal with vandals more directly would help with that. But I would have to, as you say, have a "strong story"--and I'll have to think about whether I feel like explaining, say, just how much effort goes into getting some of the pictures I've put up. You make this sound disturbingly similar to applying for college.

Thanks for your comments; this is why I asked about this here first. Unless other people have something more encouraging to say, I may think about this again when I have more experience. -- SCZenz 21:06, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

If you haven't checked it out yet, you might be interested in Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Standards to evaluate your appeal to strangers. To give you an idea, I've seen people always vote oppose to those they have not run into, on the basis that the person must not be active enough; it's one of those things where everyone has their own very distinctive critera. — Laura Scudder | Talk 21:14, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

I think we should all support SCZenz's application. If we want to have more expert people becoming more involved in wikipedia, then we can't say: "You only have 1000 edits on your name, so you are not qualified".Count Iblis 22:41, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

I think I can wait a bit. I'm going to try out more general wikipedia-wide maintenence crap and see how I like it, then maybe apply later. -- SCZenz 23:34, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

My latest silly idea (featured article)

I just went to what I would describe as "a lot" of effort to get some decent pictures to illustrate A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS. My question is: how close is the article, currently, to being worthy to put up for featured article status? -- SCZenz 23:34, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

It looks nice! I think that it contains most of the relevant information about the detector. You should now concentrate on making it readable to everyone :). Perhaps you could explain a bit about particle accelerators etc. in the introduction so that people who know nothing about physics can understand a bit better what this is all about. Count Iblis 00:38, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree, although it does raise the question: how much should an article duplicate material from other articles in order to be a comprehensive whole? I guess I'll assume the answer is "as little as possible while still giving non-physicists a clue as to what's going on". -- SCZenz 00:40, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes, this isn't very easy. It's actually not that different when you write up results for a scientific paper. You need to write something in the introduction even though people could look most of it up in the refs. B.t.w. DAMA/NaI which I started some time ago, suffers from the same problem.Count Iblis 00:56, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

I've added some background information, and put it up for peer review: Wikipedia:Peer review/A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS. -- SCZenz 00:59, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Stachnikov

Take a look at Stachnikov's triflexian quantum multiplex theorem and Stachnikov. I believe this is outright crankery; I can't find any record of even an actual publication. The biography listed by the author of these articles, User:Lionosmom, is not listed on Amazon, and the terms biflexian, triflexian, and so forth appear to be pure crank terms unknown to physics. The author alleges that Stacknikov has a placque in Red Square. If true, the article needs to be rewritten to accurately portray his lack of scientific notability. If not, the article probably should be nominated for deletion.

Be careful, User:Lionosmon added approving mention of Stachnikov to Albert Einstein, which I deleted.---CH (talk) 03:24, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

I have AfD'd them both. If he appears in red square, it's unverifiable without google appearences or the book actually existing. See:

• Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Stachnikov's_triflexian_quantum_multiplex_theorem
• Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Stachnikov -- SCZenz 05:48, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

If Stachnikov is deleted on the basis of being crank we should make sure the closing admin gets rid of Image:Stachnikov.jpg, too, as its source and copyright status would be unknown, not to mention becoming orphaned. — Laura Scudder | Talk 07:36, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

One general comment about the handling of these articles. As I understand it, claims that nobody seems to have heard of do not have to be "debunked." If they're impossible to verify, that's sufficient to chuck the article. Is that right? -- SCZenz 07:01, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Makes sense to me. — Laura Scudder | Talk 16:22, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Particle beam weapon?

I was thinking that Particle beam weapon might need to be tied into our project in the process of wikification, until I started to read it. IANAP, but it looks largely like hooey to me, either of the pseudoscience or conspiracy theory flavors, perhaps a bit of both, spurred by old SDI stories and the B.E.A.R report cited in Talk. Any of the more knowledgable denizens care to have a look, and perhaps a laugh? --Kgf0 21:01, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

I slapped it with a request for the sources to be cited. If they don't get cited soon, and a quick google search doesn't turn up anything reputable, we'd be justified in pruning the article to just the facts and/or putting it in "fictional weapons" or some such category. There's another article, Directed-energy weapon, that might be related and provide a guide for how to handle this one. -- SCZenz 22:04, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Nobel

The Nobel Prize for Physics was recently awarded to John L. Hall and Theodor W. Hänsch "for their contributions to the development of laser-based precision spectroscopy, including the optical frequency comb technique." Anyone knowledgable enough to start the missing article? I could probably work on the bios once I have time, but I can't begin to guess what OFCT is or does, or whether it even merits an article of its own. --Kgf0 21:22, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

It's not exactly what I do, but since Hall's in my department it'd probably be easy to find out enough to get a start. Might take a bit though since I've got laser time now on top of lab visitors. — Laura Scudder | Talk 22:17, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

A good start would be rewriting coherence (physics), and adding a section on coherence in quantum optics. At the moment it doesn't describe any of the things Roy Glauber figured out. I don't have time to do it at the moment, but it would make a good undergrad project. Thisrod 23:24, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

That's only half the award so it wouldn't cover Hall and Hänsch's work on using frequency combs to make high accuracy measurements. So it's a good start on half. — Laura Scudder | Talk 23:37, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Someone on Talk:John L. Hall has proposed we need an article on JILA since two out of CU's three physics Nobel laureates had appointments there. It is however a smaller institution than it might sound in press releases (more like a second physics department and of about the same size, the only difference being that it's jointly run). I would be happy to expand such an article, but feel divided about whether it's really necessary so I'm not going to give into my departmental pride and start it. — Laura Scudder | Talk 23:52, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Hubble Flow

I feel this stub is redundant, being superseded by Hubble expansion. However, User:Worldtraveller feels there is a distinction between these two terms, and he claims that 'Hubble flow' is a standard term in cosmology with a meaning distinct from 'Hubble expansion' (at least, if I understand his comments correctly). I have requested a citation to a standard cosmology textbook. Can anyone here shed any light? ---CH (talk) 01:41, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

This survived the AfD, but I still think the whole thing should be merged with Hubble expansion. Worldtraveller insists that "Hubble flow" is the standard term in cosmology rather than "Hubble expansion", but of two standard textbooks I consulted, neither Peebles, Principles of Physcial Cosmology, nor Peacock, Cosmological Physics even list "Hubble flow" in their index! This whole thing is very strange.---CH (talk) 03:33, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Wave-particle duality

Can a few people take a look at StuRat's recent edits to Wave-particle duality. They look distinctly dodgy and naive to me, but rather than just remove them I thought I'd be tactful and sensitive for once. William M. Connolley 14:57, 8 October 2005 (UTC).

I don't think it's wrong, but it's kind of written like a textbook rather than an article, which may not be good. Other thoughts? -- SCZenz 21:22, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

I reverted. Actually, it seems that StuRat was trying to clean up someone-elses contribution. However, the additino was as clear as mud and did not seem to add anything, so I deleted. linas 22:20, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree, after looking further. There's now some kind of "vote" on Talk:Wave-particle duality about the section that we should keep an eye on. William was absolutely right to have a big issue with the original editor's assumption that wave phenomena require a medium in all cases. I'm also rather concerned about the notion that phonons (!) should be the first example of wave-particle duality--they're not even mentioned in the introductory QM courses I'm aware of. -- SCZenz 17:17, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

New experimental particle physics category?

Looking at the particle physics categories, it occurs to me we might benefit from having a Category:Experimental particle physics. It would be in Category:Experimental physics and Category:Particle physics, and contain the accelerator, detector, telescope, and "experimental concepts" categories currently at the top of particle physics. A possible variation would be to get rid of Category:Experimental particle physics concepts and put those articles directly in it. Any thoughts? -- SCZenz 16:29, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Smells like the object model - I like it. Could we effect this simply by moving Category:Experimental particle physics concepts to Category:Experimental particle physics, and then RfDing the redirect once we clean up the article categories? (Yeah, I suppose that's me volunteering to do the edits - Mongo like grunt work.) --Kgf0 17:51, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

You could save yourself a lot of edits by requesting the move at WP:CFD. — Laura Scudder | Talk 18:54, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Sounds like a plan, if nobody disagrees. I guess Category:Experimental particle physics concepts doesn't really need to be separate from Category:Experimental particle physics--I originally created it because there was nowhere to put basic ideas about how one actually does experiments, but it's fine with me either way. -- SCZenz 21:09, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Light sources

Presumably in response to my comments on Talk:Beamline, Scottfisher left the following comment on my talk page:

Do you think maybe we should start a new page on light sources, since beamline is about beamlines, like components on a beam pipe? Maybe include a seperate topic like the end of an accelerator, END STATIONS? Experimental beamlines, as I think that is what you are saying, experimental facility beamlines for users?

I've moved it here because I think it needs wider discussion among experts. I'm not sure anyone would look up light source (which is presently a redir to Light) in that sense who wouldn't already know what one is, so I don't think it's the most useful title; at the same time, I have no counter-suggestion. End stations sounds more like it should be Category:Particle physics experiments or Category:Particle physics facilities, with articles for the notable ones. Being relatively new to the field and a non-physicist, I'm not really sure what the best solution would be here; I just know that the edits I did on Beamline are only a stop-gap - so have some discussion while I go get some coffee. --Kgf0 16:13, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Light source is a term in accelerator physics, whereas it doesn't really mean anything more commonly except "something that makes light," so you could make an article with that title, with an italicized bit at the top linking to light. There's probably other ways to title it too, like "X-ray source," and they may even have articles already.

How the articles you mention get categorized would depend quite a bit. If they're pieces of the accelerator, they'd get put under Category:particle accelerators. If they're experiments done at a light source, they'd be put on whatever field (often chemistry or biology) the experiment was in. If they're about the apparatus for holding such experiments, they'd probably go in Category:particle accelerators. But in any case, the ideas scott mentions are all fine for separate articles in my opinion. -- SCZenz 18:47, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Your point is valid, and understood. Light souces are a type of Particle accelerator. There are many accelerators and I'm thinking more like light sources doesn't fit with beamline or some specific facility. Of course a light source has a beamline, but a beamline is not necessarily just a light source. Also there are end stations that users and researchers use, and they are a beamline, some have many experimental beamlines, that's what they call them usually associated with end users. Sometimes they are called experimental beam lines as in E150 lines where E = experimental line with a number of the eperiment. A lot of facilities use this to tag a beamline to an experiment at the end of the accelerator.

Again, I'm thinking a conventional beamline with components on them for the Wiki beamline. More specifically, the typical components associated to an accelerator, ion chambers, vacuum stuff, diagnostic components, magnets, Etc. As I stated on the beamline discussion, there are all sorts of accelerators out there including ion implanter accelerators. They have a beam line too! See: [1]

My point is not to get critical in the beamline article and mention specific accelerators in the article, like light sources, a mention of end stations and or target article, and maybe an article on synchrotrons, storage rings, (accumulator rings of which SNS has), experimental beamlines that research users use at the end of a beamline as an end product. That's it from here, Coffee does sound good! Be back in a few hours I value opinions Regards, 19:10, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Note: I took the liberty of modifying the format of the previous replies to make the thread easier to follow; hope no one minds, and if you do, well, change it back!

SCZenz, if I'm following you correctly, should we move the list of light sources out of Beamline? I'm cool with that; I'd also be cool with a name change for the section to make it less specific, with addition of other examples of notable beamlines. In terms of categorization, what would you say the differences are between Stanford Linear Accelerator, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, and the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory for example?

While we're at it, are accelerators notable in themselves (i.e., we should include as many as time and knowledge permit), or should we develop some criteria for determining which are notable and which are not? Or perhaps simply write pages for those that are referenced in articles as the need becomes apparent? Thoughts? --Kgf0 19:43, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Most accelerators are huge, expensive, and have some unique physics goal in mind. I'm not aware of any problem with non-notable ones being written up. Some of the early smallish ones (e.g. before WWII) might be put together in an article on early accelerator history, which I hope someone writes someday.

The list of light sources should be in light source, I think. -- SCZenz 01:02, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Do it. You can even try to hijack light source from being a redirect, and then see who yells. If it turns out that everyone hates you for this, then you can always move it to light source (physics). File:Gavel.gif linas 00:05, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

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There is even an article on Synchrotron also. Scott 00:27, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Quantum Mechanics - simplified

Up for deletion. Maybe worth a look. -- SCZenz 01:03, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gravitational Oscillating Plane Theory

We've got someone creating sketchy articles on this theory and its creators. I first marked a few of the bios {{nn-bio}}, but put this one up for AfD. — Laura Scudder | Talk 17:57, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Someone's nominated one of the bios at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Peter Vincent. — Laura Scudder | Talk 18:24, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

I nominated the other one since Googling failed to suggest this person exists.---CH (talk) 03:29, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Alcubierre metric

I seem to be involved in an edit war with a new user, KED, which may be the result of some genuine misunderstanding since the term light cone is used loosely in the literature. But what really puzzles me is that KDE cites, not the research literature on warp drives (which I am familiar with) but the sci.physics FAQ entry, which does not even mention local versus global or warp drives, and which I believe is clearly inapplicable to the way that warp drive spacetimes achieve effective superluminal travel. (See my comments in the talk page.) Any feedback/assistance/clarification would be welcome! ---CH (talk) 03:29, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Hi CH, I read through the debate, and it is an interesting one. Here's the problem as I see it: KED is echoing a viewpoint that is commonly taught in introductory GR courses: that superluminal travel implies time travel. Thus, there is an obvious, appearant paradox that the Albacurrie drive somehow avoids. I don't quite know how it avoids this, but simply stating that "the worldline of the observer has no loops" while appearantly true, doesn't help most readers resolve the paradox. Take me, for example: I know enough GR to both mostly understand the article and to be familiar with the basis of KED's complaints. I do not know enough to be able to guess the correct resolution for the paradox (yes, the "no loops" is a good clue). Thus, I fully expect other educated readers to also stumble over this, and protest in a fashion not unlike KED. It would be best if the article tried to deal with this issue in as direct a way as possible, and (among other things) acknowledge that there is a real paradox. linas 00:14, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Talk:Quantum indeterminacy

If you enjoy dispute resolution, and are also very knowledgable in quantum mechanics, particularly quantum measurement, then please note the dispute above, and help out. If you are not good at quantum, or like to shoot off snide remarks, then please do NOT "help out"; we don't need the waters to be stirred any further. Its already a rather long battle. P.S. yes, its another Carl Hewitt intervention. linas 00:14, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Physics-stub split

A split of physics-stubs category has been proposed here. It certainly seems needed, given that there are over 1200 at present. If anyone has an idea of the optimal way of doing this, and especially, roughly how many stubs would be involved in each... Alai 04:57, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

So far a wide range of possible new stubs has been proposed:

• quantum mechanics
• theoretical physics
• particle physics
• sub-atomic physics
• optics
• E&M
• astrophysics
• condensed matter physics

So far we've only gotten a handfull of opinions on this, so a few more voices would probably be helpful. — Laura Scudder | Talk 05:07, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

How about low temperature, particle, and nuclear physics? --Dataphiliac 00:49, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Redirects and computational chemistry

First off, I set up Wikipedia:Wikiproject_Physics as a redirect because I felt it was a bit inconvenient to have to remember the capital p. Also, I've noticed that computational chemistry is a subcategory of computational physics, which doesn't feel right to me. Anyone else share this opinion? --Dataphiliac 00:13, 20 October 2005 (UTC)