Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics/Archive 2

Particle categories

I am not sure what is to be done about the fact that there are so many ways to categorize elementary particles. In particular, a top quark could be listed as a quark, a fermion, and a subatomic particle, as well as under particle physics and Quantum chromodynamics. This is too many. What should be done? One possibility is that we get rid of categories like quark and fermion entirely, and just make sure each particle's relationship to those definitions is well-documented in Template:elementary. Any thoughts? -- SCZenz 00:01, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

Templates suck (in my opinion) (for a large variety of reasons) (and this even seems to be a majority opinion). Categories are good. Naively, I'd say that Top quark should be in Category quark, which should be a subcat of category fermion, and a subcat of QCD. Cat fermion should be a subcat of category subatomic particles (and possibly a subcat of other cats as well, since fermions occur in solid state physics, not just particle physics). Top quark should not get a listing in fermion or qcd, since it already appears in the appropriate subcategory. linas 20:11, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

I agree with linas here. A hiearchy of categories with overlap seems optimal . Salsb 20:17, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

Its better to have a clean set of categories now, and a quick skim shows general disorganization in this area.

Good point. Particles needs to be organized better. I'll start if I get a chance. Salsb 20:36, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

Go for it! -- SCZenz 23:41, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

I see three things to potentially fix.

1) Many particles are in not just their most specific category, but the category containing their category, and the category above that, which defeats the purpose of having subcategories.

2) There seems to be a some categories that only have one entry, Exotic meson and Exotic baryon for example. These probably should be removed unless someone has plans to add more articles

3) There are a number of particles that have been added to the nuclear physics category, when it seems to me that it would make more sense to list categories under nuclear physics

Is there a good reason to have all particle under subatomic particles, as well as in their respective categories?

Thoughts? opinions? Salsb 15:18, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

I went through cleaned up the particle categorization. Check it out, please. I also think the exotic meson and exotic baryon categories could be deleted. Salsb 00:33, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

I went through all the SM elementary particles to check out your categorization. I reversed only one change--Gluon should be in Category:Quantum chromodynamics for the same reason that the W and Z bosons are in Category:Electroweak theory, i.e. that they're the carrier of that force. (Perhaps Photon should be in some electromagnetic category also?) My other question is whether we can't reduce the categories electron is in, but I think maybe we can't since electrons belong to much more than particle physics. -- SCZenz 04:52, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

Ah, I missed the Gluon thanks. Good point about the photon, so I put it into electromagnetism as well. I thought about the electron, but it is so important to so many branches that I actually added categories. Salsb 23:37, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

Somebody just went through and put a bunch of antiparticles into Category:Antimatter which is dedicated to things related to antimatter in fiction. I think this is sad after all the effort that's been put into paring down the number of categories that the particles are in, but what do other people think? -- SCZenz 06:05, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

I noticed this as well. Since none of the articles discuss their appearance in fiction, it doesn't strike me as appropriate. Salsb 17:27, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps that those ficiton articles should be put into a more appropriately named category, like "Antimatter in fiction". --MarSch 16:53, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

I agree: it doesn't make sense for a category dedicated to fictional things to get priority with the name over real things. — Laura Scudder | Talk 15:59, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

But we also don't want them to put real particles in an "Antimatter in fiction" category. That's my real beef--we don't need an antimatter category at all, and we've struggled so hard to limit the number of categories most particles are in. -- SCZenz 20:05, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

I put Category:Quarkonium up for deletion, see Wikipedia:Categories for deletion#Category:Quarkonium, since it is empty and I could only find two articles to place in the category {including Quarkonium } Salsb 15:51, August 29, 2005 (UTC)

Particle template

I have made the changes discussed below. Template:Elementary now lists the SM particles, the Higgs boson, the graviton, and links to List of particles#Hypothetical particles. That section of the List of particles, which I just reorganized a bit, seems to have all the SUSY particles there were before and more. If there are other particles people want articles on, I think they should be added to the particle list page. -- SCZenz 18:48, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

And excuse me for the following rudeness, but the template at the bottom of top quark epitomizes everything that I dislike about templates. This template should be converted into a real, legit article, and not cut-n-pasted everywhere is if it were a bad nightmare of some upcoming mid-term exam. linas 20:31, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

Linas, you seem to misunderstand the purpose of the elementary particles template. Ther are legitimate articles covering all of that material, both the generalities and the specifics, which are linked to by the template itself. The template is only for the purpose of navigating around between elemntary particles, and understanding how they're interconnected, and I can tell you it works very well. So well that I have it on my own user page to navigate to the elementary particle pages that I am working on. -- SCZenz 23:41, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

As somebody who generally dislike templates, I have to say that this one seems to be a useful. My only problem is that three lines are taken up by particles that have not been observed, of which all but the Higgs boson seem to be quite speculative (disclaimer: I am not a physicist but a mathematician). Do you really need to spell out all the SUSY partners? How about collapsing the last three lines to "Not yet observed: Higgs boson - Graviton - Supersymmetric partners"? -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 10:13, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

I concur with that idea, but didn't do it earlier because I was afraid of stepping on someone's toes. I think i will do it, unless I see objections. -- SCZenz 14:52, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

I think that there should be one wiki page on which all the supersymmetric parters are listed. Then you can link to that page from the template. Now there are a few stubs which mention some particles, like e.g. gluino or gravitino and I don't think that these pages will ever become full articles. The page should also mention other hypothetical particles associated with supersymmetry, like the R-Axion (in case of R-symmetry breaking) particles from the hidden and messenger sectors see page 10 and further in this article, extended objects like Q-balls etc. Count Iblis 15:36, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

There should really be one page with all hypothetical particles, which we link to from the template. No reason to favor SUSY. Does such a page exist? -- SCZenz 16:59, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

I agree! Such a page doesn't exist to my knowledge. I did have plans to make a page about Q-balls and 'broken' mirror matter as opposed to 'unbroken' mirror matter. All the stubs should be deleted or redirected to a main page with all the hypothetical particles. That page could, of course, link to separate pages about hypothetical particles in case there is enough to write about those particles. Count Iblis 17:29, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

I am not 100% sure we need to delete those stubs. I'll make a first draft which just links to them for now, I think, but we can change it later. -- SCZenz 18:21, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Well, you misunderstand why I dislike navigating with templates. I think that categories provide a superior navigational structure to templates, (as the above conversation about gluinos already makes clear). But I doubt this argument will bear fruit, so I'll stop vocalizing on this. linas 23:52, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

"Other hypothetical particles" should list axion as well; CAST is the current interesting experiment for this. linas 00:11, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

Yes, and also its supersymmetric partner the axino.Count Iblis 14:32, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

At a certain point, if everyone wants to add their favorite hypothetical particle, we should split of the hypotheticals into their own list, by theory. Perhaps I will do this when I get the chance... -- SCZenz 15:48, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

Composite particle

Template:Composite has three entries -- exotic meson, tetraquarks and hybrids -- all of which redirect to exotic meson. Should these be split into three articles, or should the template list non-quark model mesons, or just exotic meson ? Salsb 00:45, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

Template:Composite sounds like it is unnecessary and should be deleted. There's no reason to split an article into 3 to fit the template. -- SCZenz 04:40, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

I may have not been clear Template:Composite had 12 entries, 3 of which were to the same article. I went ahead and removed the superfluous entries. Salsb 23:41, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, I should have looked. My bad. -- SCZenz 00:03, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Long philosophical quotes at Magnetic field

A whole bunch of quotes about Tesla's philosophy of rotating magnetic fields were just put on Magnetic field by User:Reddi. I may be sensative about Tesla in particular, since the relativity-denying crowd seems to like him, but I don't think that long quotes on the philosophy of one aspect of the subject are appropriate for the article. Thoughts? -- SCZenz 18:16, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

I think the article could do without that entire rotating magnetic field section. I also don't like how he divided the see alsos and added Tesla's Egg of Columbus. --Laura Scudder | Talk 18:27, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

The rotating magnetic field is an important enginnering topic. Tesla's Egg of Columbus is one of the first demonstrations of this. JDR 18:41, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

If it's an engineering topic, shouldn't it be in an article about engineering, or motors? -- SCZenz 18:44, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

The concept redirects to the magnetic field. It should be at where it redirects. JDR

But an article about engineering applications of rotating magnetic fields shouldn't be in rotating magnetic field at all! It should be in with motors and generators! Also I'd appreiate it if you didn't take out your debate about a separate article on the magnetic field article, just to make a point. -- SCZenz 19:50, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

I agree, especially since I don't think Electromagneics is really a word. Anyway, I'm in the process of fixing it up.. -- SCZenz 18:29, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, some of his divison of the see also's seems odd. And I would remove the rotating wave approximation from the see also's too. I'll wait to do anything until I see your fixed up version. Salsb 18:33, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

I am making no more changes, since Reddi is actively editing, until a consensus materializes about what should be in and what shouldn't. -- SCZenz 18:44, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

I'm going to do the same as well. Salsb 18:48, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

I took out the "rotating wave approximation". The see also delineated a bit more clearly. JDR 19:21, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

How about this for a solution: stop making rotating magnetic field be a redirect, and turn it into a full-fledged article? The article magnetic field could then say something like See main article rotating magnetic field for more information. linas 23:44, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

I proposed that also, but if you read Talk:Rotating magnetic field you can see there's been problems with that idea before. Instead we've substantially pared down the added material, and I'm hoping everyone will accept the current version as a solution. -- SCZenz 01:08, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

Oh dear. I was afraid that might happen; didn't occur to me that it already had. linas 14:22, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

List of physical quantities

I think this list could use some cleaning, but I'm working on something else right now. Karol 08:42, July 28, 2005 (UTC)

• I'm concerned by what's written under the "Meaning" column for a number of the entries; they seem to be a method of calculating the quantity rather than a description of what the quantity is. As my high school physics teacher used to say, an equation is not the same as a definition. StuTheSheep 15:27, August 30, 2005 (UTC)

I don't know what else to say for most of them. Perhaps a concrete example would be useful (albeit space-inefficient) in many examples, but what is linear density aside from the mass per unit length? -- SCZenz 16:09, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Please check out Magnetoelectric force

I think this may be crank material, but I don't know enough to tell. Please review. (Also listed at WP:PNA). JesseW 01:49, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Something similar to magnetoelectric force page was once put up for deletion and then deleted, see Votes for deletion of Magnetoelectric force started by User:194.158.208.242. XaosBits 06:56, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Not crank so much as badly written and mostly duplicative, although some history is added. The user who created this article before, who I strongly suspect is the same user, created several similar articles that I redirected as appropriate since the titles seemed like mistakes someone could type in Salsb 11:52, August 9, 2005 (UTC)

What is it that drives people to write ponderous articles about 19th-century explorations of phenomena that turn out to be small facets of well-understood theories? It's not incorrect, I just don't understand! -- SCZenz 13:14, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

I've deleted it, as it was essentially the same article which was decided to delete in Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Magnetoelectric force. --Pjacobi 15:49, August 11, 2005 (UTC)

Help with a calculation

Firstly, though I have a strong interest, IANAP and I'm officially crap at math. So, I need the help of someone here (if they would be so kind). I have been reverting additions to criticality accident and others for quite some time which insist on attributing the infamous "blue flash" associated with these accidents to cherenkov radiation. This is a common mistake even on purportedly reputable internet sites concerning the issue. I think it is quite clear that the blue glow seen in air during these events does not occur because of the Cherenkov effect but instead to direct ionization and fluorescence of the air. The only resonable source of Cherenkov light from a fission event is beta particles in air (yes? I mean alphas and positrons are stopped SOOO easliy and heavy ions have NO chance of reaching relativistic velocities.....right?) and because air is so tenuous the velocity of the betas would have to be very close to the speed of light (>99.97% c) in order for Cherenkov light to occur. Here's my problem then: I do not know how to convert eV to velocity for electrons (or any particle for that matter! :) so that I can say with certainty that "only beta particles exceeding X MeV are capable of producing Cherenkov light in air and therefore since there are few (none?) beta emitting isotopes which produce betas w/ energies greater than X MeV, this is a highly unlikely cause for blue light seen in the air during a criticality event". Can someone help me? I would very much appreicate it!! Thanks. :) --Deglr6328 09:11, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

You can pobably convert eV to Joules. Then all you need is the equation for (rela.) kinetic energy: .5 γ m v^2 and solve for velocity v. m is the mass of your particle. --MarSch 17:09, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Bogdanov affair

I've put Bogdanov Affair on Wikipedia:Pages needing attention/Physics. The article got a heavy amount of editing since the Bogdanovs themselves (if this claim is correct) tried to put it "right". Currently the article is protected. Confusingly Lubos Motl recently spoke in favour of the Bogdanovs [1] whereas Peter Woit unsurprisingly isn't amused [2]. --Pjacobi 17:20, August 14, 2005 (UTC)

Lubos doesn't seem to be in favor per se, but he isn't helping any either.. I have no idea what can be done with this article. -- SCZenz 06:50, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

I think that it should be deleted. Any reasonable NPOV article would necessarily have to be very negative about them. The Bogdanovs themselves are also editing here and they clearly don't agree with such an article about them. Keeping the article will probably mean that you would have to block the Bogdanovs from editing here. The Bogdanovs may then decide start a legal case against wikipedia...Count Iblis 12:03, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Help needed with cleanup

A new user, Markdroberts, is contributing stuff to physics articles. Unfortunately, there is quite a lot of cleanup to do after him, as this user has no idea of how to use wiki markup properly.

I cleaned up Finsler manifold, Lanczos tensor, Perfect fluid. and Higgs mechanism, then got tired of it. Several more are left: Rotation curve, Isolated physical system, Asymptotically flat spacetime. The articles Geodesic deviation equation and Signature change seems to have already been cleaned up by other people.

Also, physicists, could you take a look at the correctness of these articles? I found Finsler manifold to miss words from a sentence, and I can't understand what it wants to say. Thanks! Oleg Alexandrov 17:50, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Aether Physics Model

Could someone have a look at Aether Physics Model and its subpage APM Physical Dimensions. To me it seems quackery, but it would be useful if a specialist could check to see if it should be brought to VfD. - SimonP 20:24, August 15, 2005 (UTC)

Yes its quackery. I suspect it also qualifies as original research as well. Salsb 20:29, August 15, 2005 (UTC)

Category:Electromagnetism

This category was getting messy, as was the subcat on magnetism, so I reorganized them. The subcat on electricity needs to be done as well, its still up for delection, so I haven't touched it yet. I'd appreciate comments if anyone wants to check it out. thanks Salsb 14:22, August 16, 2005 (UTC)

Electromagnetic induction

Electromagnetic induction is being continually reverted by User:Sidam to unreadable, misformatted original-research psuedoscientific nonsense. He is now restoring the text without using his user name, presumably to avoid the three revert rule, so we may need more assistance in keeping the page in the correct form. It appears that he has also tried to put similar text on other pages before, and eventually was thwarted. -- SCZenz 17:46, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Heck, that is the same user, under a new account, which adding this stuff since weeks. I've put Magnetoelectric induction (Faraday's induction) on VfD and added some REDIRECTs and {{delete}}s. --Pjacobi 18:29, August 18, 2005 (UTC)

This seems to be source of all this. --Pjacobi 18:56, August 18, 2005 (UTC)

Err, I've changed several of his junky articles into redirects thinking a student without a good grasp of e&m, and prehaps English as well, was looking for stuff, not finding it, and addint it, but now I'm thinking he's committed to adding junk Salsb 20:10, August 18, 2005 (UTC)

I'm rather hoping that he simply doesn't understand Wikipedia and consensus. Of course, at this point, it probably is a case of throwing good effort after bad now that he's committed himself to this material. --Laura Scudder | Talk 20:26, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

I admire your ability to hope for the best, but someone who builds some toy synchronous motors and puts himself in the line of Oerstedt, Faraday and Ampere for this achievement, inspires only fear of more troubles in me. --Pjacobi 21:03, August 18, 2005 (UTC)

After a brief hiatus, it seems Sidam is back at it again. Ugh. -- SCZenz 18:44, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

• Is it time for Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism ? linas 20:53, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
  • He hasn't received the official warnings on that pages yet. I just sent him one, and I will move down the list each time he vandalizes the page again. Once I get to the last one, we'll find an admin. -- SCZenz 21:02, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

List of particles nominated as featured list

If you're wondering why I've been changing silly cosmetic things on list of particles, I've been trying to pretty it up a bit in response to suggestions after User:Merovingian nominated it as a featured list. Go to Talk:List of particles to see where to go to support it. -- SCZenz 22:24, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Aw, c'mon, can we get a couple Supports for this? ;) Wikipedia:Featured_list_candidates/List_of_particles -- SCZenz 05:19, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Gravitational radiation of atom

I just stumbled into this in the physics category. Maybe someone would like to spiff it up? I'm on vacation :P Karol 07:40, September 3, 2005 (UTC)

I nominate this article for VfD. There are oodles of fundamental errors and misunderstadnings. The potential is wrong, inner electrons screen the potential. There are no terms for spin-orbit coupling, no fine/hyperfine structure of any kind. These are approx 10^40 greater in magnitude than any effect from gravitation. And the whole thing is presented non-relativistically, which is wrong for high-Z, and generally misleading without further ado. linas 16:18, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Now I don't even want to start to read the thing :) Karol 20:31, September 3, 2005 (UTC) P.S. Tempted I have become and actually started to read... but finding that the author refers to a gravitational constant (and not the) makes it tiring... your are right, Linas, this is a relativistic effect and it shows up for higher nuclear masses which hasn't been addressed and doesn't really describe radiation at all... but maybe that still isn't a reason to delete it, but a reason to change and improve, no?. Unobservability also isn't really a reason for deletion, I think, since we have articles on many things that we can't observe at the moment, isn't that right? Karol 20:43, September 3, 2005 (UTC)

This is a whole other class of unobservability. Also it's just plain not important. Even as a hard-core experimentalist, I tolerate string theory because although it's unobservable at this time, it addresses critical problems in the foundations of physics. This thing is just an almost unimaginably minor correction to the spectral lines of hydrogen. Even if somebody saw it tomorrow, the only news would be the amazing apparatus that was used for the experiment. Also, see the VfD page for a discussion of the rather dubious reference. -- SCZenz 20:52, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

I must agree, and if it were my Encyclopedia, I would delete it right away :) ... but it isn't and I'm just thinking that leaving this unimportant topic doesn't hurt anyone, but deleting it may deprive someone of the information (which needs to be corrigated). Karol 21:02, September 3, 2005 (UTC)

I don't understand your logic. Things can be, and are, deleted here because they're not notable. So if you agree it's not notable, why keep it? -- SCZenz 21:34, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

It's not logic, but a kind of feeling that there is a slight chance a topic like this one is potentially notable. On the other hand, not everything that is non-notable is non-interesting, which in my view allows for exceptions. Karol 22:32, September 3, 2005 (UTC)

So you're saying that, although the current article contains content which is incorrect and has very little to do with the title, something might exist, some day that is important and fits the title? If that happens, someone can create a new version of the page after the current one is deleted. -- SCZenz 23:08, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Also, I assert that this violates the policy Wikipedia:No original research. According to that page, "Original research refers to theories, data, statements, concepts, arguments, and ideas that have not been published in a reputable publication," and "reputable publications include peer-reviewed journals, books published by a known academic publishing house or university press, and divisions of a general publisher which have a good reputation for scholarly publications." (The page goes on to discuss "non-academic sources," so it's not like I've left anything relevant out.) Conference proceedings, which are not peer-reviewed and are very easy to get into (remember those goes from MIT with the nonsense paper?), I don't think qualify as "published in a reputable publication." -- SCZenz 23:08, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes, OK, I give in :) ... changin my vote Karol 07:17, September 4, 2005 (UTC)

I remember doing similar calculations for fun a long time ago. I looked at relic neutrinos trapped in the gravitational potential of planets and black holes.Count Iblis 21:57, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Dynamical friction

May please somebody have a look at dynamical friction? And Talk:Dynamical friction? IMHO it concentrates on an effect which is disputed at best (dynamical friction causing the red shift) and misses details from areas where dynamical friction really is important (galaxy evolution). --Pjacobi 10:49, September 4, 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, this needs to be fixed. They need references and a huge dose of NPOV, at minimum--right now the whole article waas written for the sole purpose of bringing that crap up. Unofortunately, I don't know enough about the topic to do it myself. -- SCZenz 15:25, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps I'll steal translate and paraphrase the sober treatment of the subject in a recent Sterne und Weltraum [3]. The pictures in the box on pages 32+33 make it rather clear. --Pjacobi 21:22, September 4, 2005 (UTC)

I'd recommend getting rid of the redshift crap completely, unless you can find a reference for it. -- SCZenz 21:36, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

Exactly - the first part is not bad but the stuff on redshifts is nonsense. The loss of energy by the photon would be very small, and if the effect mattered at all the images of distant objects would be horribly blurred. Also the time dilatation has been confirmed for the envelope of the photons - i.e. distant supernovae are not only redshifted, but the light curve is stretched in time.

One should indeed add material on the effects of dynamical friction on the evolution of galaxies, star clusters, and the pre-planetary disk. Dynamical friction has been invoked by the people behind the "giant impact" moon theory, to return the earth-moon system to a low eccentricity orbit - the giant whack would make for an eccentric one. Sorry, due to a health problem in the family I may not have time. Pdn 06:56, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Modified Newtonian dynamics

You may want to comment at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Modified Newtonian dynamics/archive1. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 18:41, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

VfD of Time evolution of quantum operators

I probably should have just #REDIRECTED this article to Heisenberg picture, but instead, I listed it on VfD. Not sure why I bothered. I guess my brain is muddled after trying to clean up Category:Quantum mechanics (again). linas 22:02, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Problem with categories

It seems there is a basic problem with categories in physics and chemistry. I don't see directly how to solve this but I am awaiting your comments. The problem is that in physics, usually, the name of a field covers its theoretical as well as experimental aspects like for example atomic physics, nuclear physics, molecular physics and so on. But there are exceptions like quantum mechanics, quantum chemistry or quantum field theory which are purely theoretical fields. When one tries to categorize this one can obtain that atomic physics or nuclear physics are subfields of quantum mechanics or maybe of quantum chemistry (for atomic physics) because theoretical atomic physics and nuclear physics are fields of quantum mechanics. This is particulary true for scattering. Scattering theory is a clear subfield of quantum mechanics but this is not the case for the phenomenology of scattering which can be seen as a subfield of atomic, molecular, nuclear or particle physics. If you still follow you understand that having an unclear editorial line with respect to this leads to the claim that Scattering can be a subcategory of atomic physics and a subsubcategory of quantum mechnaics while at the same time it is a subcategory of quantum mechanics. This of course leads to nonsense. A possible answer to this paradox could be to split atomic physics into theoretical and experimental atomic/molecular physics. Theoretical atomic/molecular physics would be a subcategory of quantum chemistry and quantum chemistry a subcategory of quantum mechanics which would be in turn a subfield of theoretical physics. Maybe the best way to proceed would be to put somewhere -- why not here? -- a tree of categories for physics and chemistry which would make the editorial line clear -- which ever we decide.--131.220.68.177 07:52, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

I only know by inference what the role of categories is in Wikipedia, but if I'm correct, categories need not be completely logical and exclusive trees. Rather they are groupings of the most relevant topics to a particular article. So I am not sure there's a problem. -- SCZenz 08:17, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

That was also my opinion till User:SeventyThree and other editors moved around changing the cats with the comment (-cat, as per Wikipedia:WikiProject Categories#Goals, 'No category or article is a direct child of one of its grandparents'). I think their reasoning is not stupid and having a clear category tree would be an advantage. Nevertheless I think this cannot be done at random without etablishing some editorial line. --13:23, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

I am also not sure it's possible in all cases, at least not without great difficulty and bruised egos. If we have people who want to do it, though, I'd contribute. -- SCZenz 20:06, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

I mostly agree with SCZenz; I'm not convinced that there is a problem. I view categories more as a kind of free association based accepted groupings of subjects as actually taught, practiced in journals, used by real people, etc. Such groupings are not hierarchical trees, they are networks with loops. Put another way: subcategories are not "academic sub-disciplines"; rather, they are frequently "related disciplines". This way, we can categorize inter-disciplinary things, which otherwise become a hard problem. I'll also explicitly reject the theoretical/experimental divide, as it is difficult to talk about a topic in atomic physics without referring to both. Even articles on QCD are both experimental and theoretical; only string theorists are exempt. I am somehat miffed at the edits from User:SeventyThree which I consider to have been outright damaging; I tried to fix a few, but got exhausted after a while. Its possible that very small loops in the category structure can be eliminated, but the shotgun approach used was just wrong. linas 00:38, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

The thing to keep in mind is that Wikiproject Categories is not infalliable, and their ideas are not policy. I'm going to take back my previous willingness to reorganize physics article along their guidlines. Linas, I approve very much of your comments on User_talk:SeventyThree and on Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject Categories. Their ideas may simply not be relevant to physics, and we police our own categorization rather well. Is there more work to be done fixing SeventyThree's edits that I can help with? -- SCZenz 01:11, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Not sure; his edits from around 5 sept should probably be reviewed. I saw a few in there that looked a bit off. linas 14:55, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

The guideline Wikipedia:Categorization says: "A good general rule is that articles should be placed in the most specific categories they reasonably fit in. For example, Queen Elizabeth should not be listed directly under People, but Queens of England might be a good place for her. We know that all Queens of England qualify as Famous Britons and as Royalty, and all of those folks qualify as People. But sometimes there's a good reason to assign an article to two categories, one of which is a direct or indirect subcategory of another. For a well-argued case study, see John Lennon." It may help to include a comment arguing your case if you decide to put an article in a category and one of its (grand)children. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 18:42, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Frankly, we can refer people here if they care to read about the general issues in physics categorization. To document which areas of physics and chemistry Category:Scattering (for example) is properly associated with would take a lot longer than just doing it. To have people who know the rules of categorization, but don't know the physics, working on this is rediculous--if it wasn't obvious to someone who knew the physics, though, maybe including an argument would be appropriate. -- SCZenz 21:32, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Yep. See, for example, the discussion in topic 8 above #Chemical Physics vs. Physical Chemistry. No one disagrees with the general rule, its just that some of these things are hard to categorize. linas 00:22, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

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. ‣ᓛᖁᑐ 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)