Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics/Archive 15

This is the archive "Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics/Archive 15". It is for March 2007.

This is an archive of past discussions on Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 10

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I hate to do this to everybody. . .

. . . but could we get a third opinion on the recent changes made to Bogdanov Affair? As I said on the talk page, I really don't like seeing verifiable citations vanish into the wiki-ether. Anville 22:38, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Update. Samuel Blanning has addressed my concern by reverting Stern's changes and applying a {{Bogdablock}}. One aspect of this troubles me: looking at the contribution histories for Stern (talk · contribs) and Bester (talk · contribs), I see that both of them were inactive for considerable lengths of time before coming to the Bogdanov article (since 2 August 2006 and 3 July 2005, respectively). Stern used a couple typographical mannerisms, like "Cqg" in this edit summary, which remind me of known sockpuppets. Bester's change is also very reminiscent (many identical turns of phrase) to last year's sockpuppet edits (example). While I hate to jump to such a conclusion, it makes me wonder if we're seeing old accounts being hijacked to circumvent the ArbCom ruling. Anville 16:39, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

If dormant accounts are being hijacked, then how? Did they manage to guess some weak passwd's? If so, there would be a record of repeated failed logins from one IP address... linas 03:18, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

I suppose we could try requesting a CheckUser, but unless the puppet-masters come back, I doubt it will be granted. Anville 21:25, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Robert Oppenheimer FAR

Robert Oppenheimer has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. LuciferMorgan 02:56, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

I was actually thinking the same thing looking over it today... --Falcorian ^(talk) 03:03, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

F.Y.I. - I made changes in 2 articles

I removed the pictures and added the ASCII forms of the symbols. I also added overline codes to the symbols. Thus, no pictures are needed.

Overline codes examples I used for Omega & omega:

Ω
ω

Thanks, CarpD 3/5/07

Conversion templates

Hello! This is to announce that several templates for automatic convertion between metric and imperial units and for displaying consistently formatted output have been created: {{km to mi}}, {{mi to km}}, {{m to ft}}, {{ft to m}}, {{km2 to mi2}}, {{mi2 to km2}}, {{m2 to ft2}}, and {{ft2 to m2}}. Hopefully, they will be useful to the participants of this WikiProject. The templates are all documented, provide parameters to fine-tune the output, and can be substituted if necessary.

Any suggestions, requests for improvement/features/additional templates, or bug reports are welcome.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:19, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Request for help on Radiation

In editing the article radiation, I had some linguistic difficulties. I'm looking for native english speakers with a good knowledge of physics to give me some advice on this. Please see Talk:Radiation#Radiation_vs._wave:_The_linguistic_differences. --Tunheim 07:48, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

It appears to be a disambiguation page, but not in the disambiguation category for some unknown reason. JRSpriggs 08:04, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Back to manual archiving

I have been following Werdnabot carefully; and it just has too many bugs. For example, Tuesday, it left out the edit summaries for no apparent reason. So I removed the Werdnabot invocation. JRSpriggs 08:15, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Category:Entropy in thermodynamics

Category:Entropy in thermodynamics has been nominated for renaming. Please go voice your opinion. Dr. Submillimeter 16:55, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the note. This kind of b.s. is what makes me really hate working on WP. The person who butchered this stuff has no clue what entropy is, but is confident enough to edit anyway. Argh. linas 05:46, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm just sort of teed off because I've spent the last several years writing articles like wandering set and Lax pair and measure-preserving dynamical system so that I can get a better understanding myself of thermodynamics, and someone comes along and does something like that... WP needs a better way of keeping this sort of stuff under control. linas 06:11, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

See response at Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_March_7#Category:Entropy_in_thermodynamics. I split category entropy into two, separating articles on entropy which can make sense outside a thermodynamic context; and articles on entropy which only relate to a thermodynamic context -- and I stand by that split 100%. The split results in two well clustered categories, which are much clearer and much more focussed than muddling all the articles together, as they were before.

I accept, I could have got some of the covering text better: Of course each category illuminates the other. But the articles do split very cleanly into the two sets. As a result category-browsing readers now get a much better clue as to what an article with an unfamiliar title is likely to relate to. Jheald 19:49, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

OK, well, then you should split out the math usage of entropy from the engineering usage. Entropy as defined by topologists is certainly different than entropy defined by engineering students; it has more bearing and weight on chemistry than on channel codings and bit-error-rates. So, from my point of view, the split was not clean. linas 01:29, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Category:Dynamicists nominated for deletion

Category:Dynamicists has been nominated for deletion. Please go voice your opinion at WP:CFD. Dr. Submillimeter 20:22, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Category:Telecommunication physicists

I have nominated Category:Telecommunication physicists for deletion. At first, I thought it was a neologism. A google search shows that the term has been used by people, but only rarely. Hence, I think the category should be deleted. Please go voice your opinion. Dr. Submillimeter 17:17, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Also Category:Quantum Gravity physicists mostly because its too narrow/empty a category linas 00:10, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Tippe top

Hey, check out the external links for Tippe top and their references. There's definitely potential for a great article there! Melchoir 02:50, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Anti-gravity

The Anti-gravity (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) article seems to be receiving the enthusiastic attentions of one editor who is adding large amounts of poorly-verified information about the 1950s antigravity program in the USA, among other things (lots of citations, but not a whole lot that's peer-reviewed). I'm on sabbatical, so I can't deal with it. Enjoy. My last rewrite of it was in 2005 or so.--Christopher Thomas 06:30, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Requested move survey notice

A survey is being conducted over here on whether or not to move Vacuum impedance to Impedance of free space, displacing a disambiguation page. Please come particiapte if you are interested. ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 00:29, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Quantum amplifier

I came across Quantum amplifier which looks suspect. Some one here might like to have a look. --Salix alba (talk) 10:54, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

that article seems to use the right jargon and make some kinda sense. it could be better written. a lot of unclear statements. for example, apparently the amplifier U is "characterized" by the ratios of

\langle {\hat {a}}\rangle

, the expectation values of the annihilation operator when the states are the images of certain coherent state under U. what does "is characterized by" mean? does this specify an unique unitary operator? further down, it is stated that

{\hat {a}}{\hat {a}}^{\dagger }-{\hat {a}}^{\dagger }{\hat {a}}=1

. if

{\hat {a}}

still denotes the annihilation operator, as is apparently the case, and 1 the identity operator, that doesn't seem believable. Mct mht 11:36, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Is not Category:Fundamental physics concepts being over used?

I think that too many articles are being put into this category. JRSpriggs 06:42, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

According to Wikipedia:Overcategorization, terms such as "fundamental" should be avoided in category names because the terms are subjective. Categories like this one are a result of the interpretation problems with such names. Does anyone have a good suggestion on how to fix this category? Dr. Submillimeter 08:29, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

There are wayyy too many articles in there. I recommend beefing up Category:Introductory physics, which is defined as physics topics commonly taught in elementary or high school, or possibly college freshman physics. Note we have an analogous Category:Elementary mathematics, with subcats for algebra, arithmetic, geometry for the analogous categorization in math. I recommend CfD'ing the whole "Category:Fundamental physics concepts" because the critera for inclusion is vague: isn't *all* physics "fundamental"? What's an example of non-fundamental physics? linas 20:39, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

When I created the category in 2005, I put things like Lagrangian, phase space, and tensor in there. In short, concepts that are used all over physics, but are not introductory (subjective, of course) - so fundamental for "physics" itself, not necessarily fundamental for nature. Maybe general instead of fundamental would be a better choice. Anway, it is ambigious and now I would also vote for deletion. Note, however, that it has grown in a bit, and other language wikis also have this category. Karol 11:00, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Maybe you want something like "Mathematical methods in Physics"? But we already have Category:Mathematical methods in general relativity for example. JRSpriggs 12:01, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

I'd settle for Category:General physics concepts, which would be defined as Concepts generally applied in all areas of physics. Anyone care to file a "Category for renaming" for it? linas 04:55, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Talk to User:Complexica first. He's the one who's been doing all the recent work on this category, so it would be courtesy to talk over with him what it's purpose should be, and where he thinks it should be going, before anyone rips the category out from underneath him and throws it into the bruising maelstrom of a CfD.

I agree that perhaps our key problem is that it is not clear how the word "fundamental" is being understood (and it would be particularly useful to have User:Complexica's input on how he sees that).

I suspect a better way to go, if "fundamental" = an intersection of "mathematical physics" and Category:High-importance physics articles might be to replace the category with a list article, along the lines of List_of_basic_physics_topics — perhaps List of mathematical physics topics ? Jheald 07:49, 23 March 2007 (UTC) Though a problem with list articles is that they often fail to keep up with new additions to the Wikipedia - viz. how small a proportion of physics-related articles are now included in List of physics topics, if that list is supposed to be anything like comprehensive. Jheald 08:13, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Category:Quantum Chromodynamics' physicists

Category:Quantum Chromodynamics' physicists has been nominated for deletion. If kept, the bizarre apostrophe should be deleted. Please go express your opinion at WP:CFD. It looks like it's spring cleaning time for physics categories. Dr. Submillimeter 17:28, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Actually, someone should review Category:Physicists and propose a group nomination that includes Category:Weak Interaction physicists, Category:Electroweak Theory physicists Category:Electromagnetism physicists. Some of the cats I don't mind, but might work better under a better name, e.g. "quantum theorists" instead of "Quantum Theory Physicists", for those who took part in te early-mid 20th-century scene. linas 20:15, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

By the way Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 March 16 has another one, a "quantum gravity physicists" category up for merging. — coel acan — 00:47, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Another AfD for OR -- Gravitational attraction

AfD due to OR: Gravitational attraction linas 19:59, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Exact solutions in general relativity needs to be more pedagogical

Exact solutions in general relativity needs to be revised so that it is more easily understood by a general audience. At the moment, it is written in language that only some people with advanced physics degrees will understand. At the very least, it needs an introduction written in layman's terms. (I also found a "help" message at Einstein field equation if anyone wants to work on that as well.) Dr. Submillimeter 21:09, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

OK, let's make some distinctions here. More accessible, maybe; more pedagogical, definitely not. WP is a reference work, not a teaching tool. If you want to write a textbook write it at Wikibooks. WP is an encyclopedia, and people use encyclopedias to teach themselves, but they don't and shouldn't expect the encyclopedia to be written like a lesson. --Trovatore 21:22, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Dr. Submillimeter to a certain extent. I think pretty much any physicist should be able to read the first paragraph or two and come away with at least the basic idea that finding exact solutions to general relativity is hard and thus such solutions are relatively rare and become fairly well-studied and part of the subject cannon, even if they are not terribly "realistic". So one doesn't have to jump right into the language of manifolds and tensors in the first sentence. On the other hand, I don't think this article has to be written for a very broad audience. It would be better to include a statement early on that directs less specialized readers to the main GR page. I think it's ok for this article to be overall technical and specialized; readers without a specialized background probably won't care that much for this content anyway. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Joshua Davis (talk • contribs) 21:41, 17 March 2007 (UTC).

That's an orthogonal question. It can (and probably should) be made more accessible to a broader audience, at least in the lede, without devolving into a pedagogical style. --Trovatore 21:49, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

What I meant to emphasize was that the broader audience should basically be physicists, since the topic is already sort of specialized. The intro should be accessible enough for an undergraduate physics student to pick up a main point about why there is such an article and the importance of the subject matter. The content itself can then be pretty specialized. I don't think the intended audience is any broader than those already with some physics knowledge. Those who need it even more accessible should really probably be directed to the main GR page. Joshua Davis 22:55, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps "pedagogical" was the incorrect term to use. Nonetheless, the page still needs to contain at least an introdcutory paragraph in non-technical terms (so that the average person from the general public will understand what physicisists do and why they should continue to receive government funding) and more information at a level that undergraduates would understand. I also like the suggestion of referring the average reader to an introductory article on general relativity. Dr. Submillimeter 07:26, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Physics Assessments

I don't think the following scale is useful for classifying the importance of articles "within physics":

Need: The article's priority or importance, regardless of its quality

Top	Subject is a must-have for a print encyclopaedia
High	Subject contributes a depth of knowledge
Mid	Subject fills in more minor details
Low	Subject is mainly of specialist interest.

Astigmatism for example, is a must-have for a print encyclopaedia, but it's definately not "top-class" in physics. How about we link to something like the following instead:

Need: The article's priority or importance, regardless of its quality

Top	Subject is a central theme in contemporary Physics (eg Energy, Entropy, Photon).
High	Subject has courses or professional conferences devoted to it (eg Boson, Fermilab, Albert Einstein)
Mid	Subject could expect to be covered in some detail in a graduate or undergraduate course (eg Parity, MINOS, photomultiplier
Low	Subject is mainly of specialist interest (eg branching ratio, B-tagging, gamma matrices.

Flying fish 22:16, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't agree with the equation of "low importance" with "specialist interest". Some of the stuff that popularizers like is often of low importance within the field. The math project describes "low importance" as "peripheral knowledge, possibly trivial"; you might consider adopting that formulation. --Trovatore 06:03, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

so what is the purpose of these tags? Does importance refer to how important a topic is to physicists or does it refer to how important it is that we work to write a good article about it? The current scale seems to imply the latter. I would say that it is also the more useful to have for people involved in 'project physics'. --V. 07:30, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Good question. Here's a possible testcase: Which is the more important topic from the point of view of the WikiProject, Schrödinger's cat, or the Copenhagen interpretation? I would say surely the latter, even though it's arguably the more "specialist" topic; the shockingly mistreated feline is just an illustration of some ideas from the more general concept. On the other hand, while it might not be terribly important to make sure the article on the kitty is complete or inclusive, it's probably very important to patrol it for the nonsense that it's likely to attract from half-informed editors that have heard of it somewhere. So it's a tricky issue. Maybe there's more than one dimension to importance -- important to have good coverage, versus important to make sure it doesn't mislead. --Trovatore 08:06, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I had sort of considered "specialist interest" to mean that it's probably only interesting to a small number of people, whether inside or outside the field. Something a random person might read if she sees a link to it, but that she'd only search for if she already know something about it. How about something like this:

Need: The article's priority or importance, regardless of its quality

Top	Subject is a central theme in contemporary Physics (eg Energy, Entropy, Photon).
High	Subject has courses or professional conferences devoted to it (eg Boson, Fermilab, Albert Einstein)
Mid	Subject could expect to be covered in some detail in a graduate or undergraduate course (eg Parity, MINOS, photomultiplier
Low	Subject is not an important theme within the entire field of physics, and is likely only interesting to a small segment of people reading the wikipedia (eg branching ratio, B-tagging, gamma matrices.

I agree with you that Copenhagen interpretation is more important than Schrodinger's cat, interesting point. I think that if something that is definately a "physics" subject is likely to draw a lot of readers it should be at least Mid-Class rather than Low-Class. Flying fish 15:47, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Before we get too excited about changing the importance-scale, lets decide what we want to do with it. Making a ranking of physics topics by how often they are used by contemporary physicists is an interesting exercise, but one that will no doubt be subject to controversy and one that is not very useful to the wikipedia. as I have said before, it would be more useful to have a ranking by how important it would be to have a good article on this topic in an encyclopedia. I do not think that 'project physics' is 'physicists for physicists', I think physics here for everyone else too. And to the world at large, a topic like 'refraction' or 'newtons laws' are probably of more interest than 'bosons' or 'neutrino mass problem' whereas the first two have no conferences devoted to them the later two actually do.

Perhaps this is a part of a more fundamental discussion: what do we want the wikipedia to be? Do we want it to be the ultimate textbook for physicists or do we want it to be an accessible reference for all those with a passing interest in science? --V. 21:30, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I think this is a discussion we should have. What was the point of creating the physics project tag in the first place? The reason I brought this up was because I think the current "importance" guidelines don't make any sense, I'm very open to suggestions regarding what they should be. I tend to agree with you that we should be ranking articles in order to focus on what it's most important to have correct. I would expect (I haven't checked) that "Newton's Laws" would be Top ranked, and that refraction would be High-Class. Identical particle statistics is one of the most important (and at first confusing) things you learn about in undergrad, so I think it's very important that the page be developed. My other thought is that subjects that are related to very expensive experiments (Fermilab, ATLAS, WMAP, Kamioka Observatory) should have very good pages. Wikipedia should be able to help people to understand why they were worth the effort.

Also, I'm not sure that "importance" rankings need be any more controversial than the pages themselves. Surely we can come to consensus in the same ways as usual. I do think that pages are sometimes overly technical. It makes me wonder sometimes whether it would make sense to split pages into technical and lay versions? I haven't been looking around Project:physics for long, so it wouldn't surprise me if this debate has already been resolved multiple times...Flying fish 02:03, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

importance ranking indeed need not be controversial, but ranking by importance to physicists is more controversial than ranking by importance to an encyclopedia. I agree that all the topics that you mention are important and as far as I am concerned they are all must-haves for a written encyclopedia. So lets make great articles about all of them. The current standard seems to do a great job classifying articles within the bigger picture of creating an encyclopedia. Do we really need more classification? if so, to what practical purpose? --V. 04:58, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Some people have been discussing a very similar system for astronomy articles, but people still see it suffering from POV problems. I inadvertently came up with a good example of one type of article that would cause problems. Arp 220, a relatively nearby ultraluminous infrared galaxy is the subject of intense scientific study, yet the galaxy is hardly ever mentioned in any material that would be read by the general public or amateur astronomers. If I were ranking the article, I would list it as having "top" priority, but if other people were ranking it, it would be listed as "low". I would guess that similar examples can be identified for other branches of physics.

While I would guess that the prioritization of Arp 220 can be discussed in a civil manner, I do see problems with articles about fringe science or pseudoscience. Someone writing about their favorite wacko alternate physics theory (free energy, alternatives to the Big Bang, etc) may identify their article as a "top" priority, whereas most other physicists would label the article as "low". This could spur a useless yet lengthy debate about prioritization that has nothing to do with writing material for the articles. Dr. Submillimeter 08:29, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Dr. Submillimeter here. Would there be any objections to simply getting rid of the importance/priority tag all together? Mike Peel 09:57, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Wait ... I thought the point of prioritization was to determine what articles would go into a printed version of he encyclopedia (a printed version aimed at non-physicists). (See Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Release Version Criteria) Thus, we shouldn't get rid of that tag, since it negates the whole purpose of the thing. However, I do agree w/ flying fish that something other than a ham-handed importance should be used. Renaming to need with the definition of needed for non-physicists is a lot less inflammatory than "importance". linas 23:49, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree with linas' comment (23:49, 20 March 2007), especially "needed for non-physicists". There's no point in trying to produce an importance / need scale that's more sophisticated than "must / should / could be included", and these are just rough guides for the compilers of the CD if they find they're hitting some sort of limit on content. And in assessing importance / need, the "hotness" of the topic should get higher weight than its intellectual significance.
Despite the uncertainties mentioned below (are there real constraints on quantity of content? how easy is it to assemble the CD?), I'm not sure that "importance" is terribly important. Wikipedia:Release Version says of Version 0.7 test release, "This CD contains a collection of 2800 articles ..." To me that implies a single CD, i.e. maximum capacity 650MB. I just checked a fat 1-volume text-only encyclopedia and estimated that it contains about 6MB of text. Does anyone know how much pure text the online English version of WP contains, counting only latest versions of all articles? And the size of images used in these articles, allowing for the fact that some images are re-used? I'd guess an illustrated encyclopedia like WP would be about 50% text, after making allowances for images and and for layout and mark-up overheads. So the CD can accommodate about 325MB of text, i.e. over 50 volumes of my printed encyclopedia. That suggests space is not a strong constraint. The only other constraint I can think of is the time required to ensure that what is published is good and is internally consistent, e.g. if article A is included and relies on article B, article B should be included. I don't know sophisticated the assembly process is - ideally it should be largely automated by software e.g. changing links to included articles so they point to the CD and leaving other links (including excluded WP articles) pointing to the Web.
I think the key sentences in Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Release_Version_Criteria are "An article judged to be 'Top-Class' in one context may be only 'Mid-Class' in another. By 'priority' or 'importance' of topics for a static version of the encyclopedia, we generally mean to indicate the level of expectation or desire that the topic would be covered in a traditional encyclopedia." The second sentence implies that importance should be judged from a reader's point of view. The problem is, what type of reader? Undergraduate and higher-level students of physics are unlikely to use WP, except to find out what's happening on the periphery of the subject (e.g. "... in popular culture"). So I think the target readers should be non-specialists, especially early to mid teens (if WP motivated a teenager to become the next Einstein, WP would have achieved more than a bookcase full of academic papers). That suggests to me that "hot topics", "junk science" and scientifically minor but attention-grabbing examples may sometimes be more "important" than intellectually significant scientific content, and I think the first sentence I quoted from Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Release_Version_Criteria supports this idea.Philcha 09:56, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Questions at Talk:Black hole

Many questions have been posted to Talk:Black hole, mostly to do with rotating black holes. Any of the GR-types who are active might want to take a stab at answering this, as it's out of my league. --Christopher Thomas 06:35, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

usefulness of physics articles

while reading Quantum mechanics I came across the following passage

"In the mathematically rigorous formulation of quantum mechanics, developed by Paul Dirac and John von Neumann, the possible states of a quantum mechanical system are represented by unit vectors (called "state vectors") residing in a complex separable Hilbert space (variously called the "state space" or the "associated Hilbert space" of the system) well defined up to a complex number of norm 1 (the phase factor). In other words, the possible states are points in the projectivization of a Hilbert space. The exact nature of this Hilbert space is dependent on the system; for example, the state space for position and momentum states is the space of square-integrable functions, while the state space for the spin of a single proton is just the product of two complex planes. Each observable is represented by a densely defined Hermitian (or self-adjoint) linear operator acting on the state space. Each eigenstate of an observable corresponds to an eigenvector of the operator, and the associated eigenvalue corresponds to the value of the observable in that eigenstate. If the operator's spectrum is discrete, the observable can only attain those discrete eigenvalues."

Makes perfect sense, right? My compliments to the writer of this passage for coming up with such a compact description of the formalism of quantum mechanics. it is indeed nicely densely defined. My question is, can some one who does not already know this, possibly understand any of this? And if only some one who already knows this is can understand this, does this passage still contain any new information? Sure, WP is a reference work not a teaching tool, but where do we draw the line? is there even a line at this point, specific to science articles? --V. 21:45, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

See the short discussion on exact solutions in general relativity up above. This is a general problem for physics articles. I would suggest that these articles contain at least some basic background information that the average reader understands. (I myself attempt to write astronomy articles so that they can be understood by laypeople but so that they do not lose scientific information. For example, see NGC 3031 or NGC 4594.) Dr. Submillimeter 08:13, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Magnetospheric convection and magnetic storms

I wikified the above article - somebody had to - but I really didn't know what I was doing. I would guess that it is quite an important topic and wondered if someone here could have a look. I have put this project as the one best suited for finding an expert to look at the article. Thanks. Itsmejudith 22:38, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

FTL/time travel animation

In case anyone finds it useful for time travel or other articles, I've produced an animation showing how one would navigate a path that ends up in the past light-cone of the departure event, with diagrams and appropriate subtitles. Drawback: the animated .gif is huge (6.8 megabytes), even with all appropriate tricks applied (line art and very small palette).

Mostly this was a "because I don't want to go to bed yet" project, but it may still serve some useful purpose. --Christopher Thomas 06:12, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Please review "Black hole" article

I've completed pass 1 of the edit of Black hole discussed in Talk:Black_hole#Possible_restructure? Please check it for errors, inconsistencies and serious omissions. For comparison, the previous version of the article is at [1]Philcha. Talk:Black_hole#Please_review_the_recent_edits states the objectives of the edit. 10:12, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Dr. Submillimeter suggested I also ask Wikipedia:WikiProject Astronomy and Wikipedia:WikiProject Astronomical objects to review Black hole, and I'm informing these projects that I've asked Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics to review Black hole.
Dr. Submillimeter commented that Black hole is too long, and I think that for each major "entry point" article WP needs a plan which defines how much detail goes where Talk:Black_hole#Please_review_the_recent_edits.Philcha 22:47, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Quick check of "Lissajous orbit" article?

Could someone please do a quick check of the newly created Lissajous orbit article? Can anything be added about e.g. the source of the name, or how Lissajous orbits are related to Lissajous curves? Thanks! Sdsds 01:37, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Three new AfDs

Physics folk may be interested in these:

25 March – Physical economics (discussion)
26 March – Tom Van Flandern (discussion)
27 March – SklogWiki (discussion)

Anville 14:41, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

The abnormally long name for Planck's law of black body radiation

Does anyone know why the article named Planck's law of black body radiation? Could we move it to Planck's law? Nothing else is apparently referred to as Planck's law, which is just a redirect to Planck's law of black body radiation. If no one objects, I will request a move on 31 Mar 2007. Dr. Submillimeter 22:01, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

I'd be minded to Keep. I like the long title which explains exactly what area of Physics the law relates to. I think that's helpful for Newbies. It doesn't prejudice Planck's law also being there as an alternative link, and being used from then on through the article. Jheald 23:22, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

I think the move is obvious. See WP:COMMONNAME. It would be a simple thing except for some history at Planck's law where someone had put the wrong content there. --Trovatore 23:35, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Changed my mind. Fair enough. Jheald 09:51, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I have now requested moving Planck's law of black body radiation to Planck's law. Please go voice your opinion on the article's talk page. Dr. Submillimeter 09:33, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Physical nullification

Hello. Could someone competent look at Physical nullification. I know about the article because it's uncategorized but that appears to be the least of its problems. Thanks for your help. Pascal.Tesson 02:49, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

The positive energy of matter and radiation is balanced by the gravitational potential energy which is negative. There is no basis for believing that any other kind of negative energy is possible. The article is pure speculation. JRSpriggs 09:10, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Without a source indicating that Robert Forward's idea was directly based on Isaac Asimov's, then collecting them together is Original Research. The same goes for this part:

It mght be noted that there are places in General Relativity where the existence of negative mass/energy would allow things like time travel and faster than light travel to exist (it can stabilize the mouth of a wormhole, for example).

This is OR because we have no evidence that Forward said any of it, and it probably just stems from the imagination of whoever wrote the article, trying to connect an old SF idea with something more modern.

If you cut out the stuff from Asimov's essays, which are forty years out of date anyway, there's not enough left to merit an article. WP:AFD, anyone? Anville 13:54, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Update Suiting the action to the words, I went ahead and began AfD proceedings. Anville 20:36, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Scientific peer review for "Equipartition theorem"

Hi, I just added Equipartition theorem for scientific peer review. I'd like to bring the article to FA status in the near future. Please give me your thoughts and suggestions — thanks muchly! :) Willow 20:19, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Any help you can give at the FAC review of the Encyclopædia Britannica would be most welcome as well; thanks! :) Willow 23:04, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Reverted vandalism unnoticed for more than a year

I've just reverted a sneaky piece of vandalism in Quark model unnoticed for more than a year (introduced [2], reverted [3]). In the meanwhile it has propagated to countless Wikipedia mirrors and clones. So much for reliability of Wikipedia. 131.111.8.104 13:57, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Heat death of the universe

At the request of another user, I've tweaked the "current status" section in Heat death of the universe (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) to improve clarity (and remove flagged weaselling). If any of the cosmology-types lurking here are bored, it would be nice if someone could vet it for accuracy and fill in the "citation needed" points. I am not an expert on physical cosmology. --Christopher Thomas 04:55, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

More AFDs

The following AFDs are within the domain of WikiProject Physics:

Please check the articles, and vote as you see fit. --Christopher Thomas 21:44, 31 March 2007 (UTC)