Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics/Archive June 2012

Bell's Theorem again

Comments on Talk:Bell's_theorem#Seeking_consensus_to_exclude_the_disproof_of_Bell.27s_theorem will be appreciated. Thanks. History2007 (talk) 00:40, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

I tried to click the link "Joy Christian (Perimeter Institute)" in the "Former PhD Students" list in "Abner Shimony#External links", and got the result "People: Person not found." from the server of the Perimeter institute for theoretical physics. What does it mean? Just a wrong link? Is Joy Christian still affiliated with that institute? Boris Tsirelson (talk) 08:53, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

I don't know, but Google's webcache has a copy, a snapshot of the page as it appeared on 3 May 2012. It states: "He arrived at the Perimeter Institute as a Long Term Visitor in September 2005". The most recent datable sign of activity on that page is a link to an arXiv paper last revised 22 Aug 2007.  --Lambiam 13:01, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

This issue isn't all that relevant, what matters is that Joy's theory hasn't gotten a good reception in the physics community, not if Joy himself is currently at the PI or not. Even if he were, there are currently people affiliated with PI who have managed to publish plain nonsense. Count Iblis (talk) 17:25, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Templates Ununquadium and Ununhexium at TFD

I have nominated the templates {{Ununquadium}} and {{Ununhexium}} for deletion; see Wikipedia:Templates for discussion#Template:Ununquadium.  --Lambiam 03:52, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Shouryya Ray on AfD

See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Shouryya Ray.

Is this person notable?

Are the news media's claims about him true or merely sensationalist exaggerations that help sell newspapers?

Opine at the page linked to above. Michael Hardy (talk) 16:46, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Quasistatic equilibrium

This article is a poor duplicate of Quasistatic process. It should be redirected to there. Any objections? F = q(E+v×B) ⇄ ∑_ic_i 22:19, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

On an entirely procedural note I would recommend firstly adding the mergeto template and mergefrom template to the respective articles. IRWolfie- (talk) 22:43, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

Done. F = q(E+v×B) ⇄ ∑_ic_i 23:59, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

There has been no involvment, so clearly people are not very fussed on these articles. I will blank Quasistatic equilibrium and re-direct to Quasistatic process. F = q(E+v×B) ⇄ ∑_ic_i 09:24, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Hawking Peer review (again)

The Stephen Hawking article has been put up for Peer review as part of a long-term plan to return to FAC. Thought you guys might like to comment  :) (turns out that it's the page on the project that gets the most hits (Wikipedia:WikiProject_Physics/Popular_pages) and it would be great if someone could make sure that the physics stuff is absolutely tight). Thank you very much in advance… Fayedizard (talk) 10:28, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

List of scientific constants named after people (again)

The List of scientific constants named after people may not be notable, according to a recent tag put at the top of the article. Apparently what is needed is a literature citation showing that the topic of scientific concepts named after people has received attention from the authors of refereed publications. Michael Hardy (talk) 02:50, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

I put the tag there, but it is possible that publications aren't needed because this is a cross-categorization list (see this discussion). However, it's always a good idea to find the references if you can; I think that is ultimately what saved List of important publications in mathematics and related lists from a mass AfD. RockMagnetist (talk) 04:34, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

High energy physics

I am very uncomfortable with High energy physics being just a redirect to the particle physics page. I feel HEP deserves an article by itself, being one of the largest sub-fields of physics. However, I'm having trouble finding good, comprehensive reviews/sources to start the article off with. I have started a "proto-article" in my userspace and I'd really appreciate if anyone could help with expansion (I'll take it "live" as soon as it looks viable). Any new ideas are welcome.

Thanks, SPat ^talk 20:15, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

I could provide sources but they would just refer to particle physics... No expert yet, so I can't see any further than HEP as experimental particle physics... F = q(E+v×B) ⇄ ∑_ic_i 22:35, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure about this. To physicists "High Energy Physics" is virtually a synonym of "Particle Physics", even though they have very slightly different meanings. Also "Nuclear Physics" tends to be regarded as a separate subject now, rather than being part of HEP. CodeTheorist (talk) 22:27, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

They are not generally synonym. For example, String theory and quantum gravity are high energy physics subjects, which are not really particle physics. TR 22:33, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

You are quite correct, but string theory and QG tend to get lumped in with "Particle Theory". From the Particle Physics page: "A third major effort in theoretical particle physics is string theory". CodeTheorist (talk) 22:43, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

At the very least, one of those two articles should mention this (the fact that the terms are sometimes used synonymously). IMO the fact that at least some sources distinguish is reason enough for a separate article. SPat ^talk 23:06, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Two-body Dirac equations

This is a new article first requested for creation by a new editor Hcrater, then declined, then Hcrater wrote it anyway, citing to his own sources i.e. WP:OR. It was painfully vague and genuinely nonsense - I tried to clear it up, remove the OR refs and tagged it as OR. A link on Dirac equation was added to link there - evidently promotion of work. If anyone can find references, please add them, and continue to clarify the article. There is one that does not seem to be OR. I have also warned the user of this on his talk page. Thanks. F = q(E+v×B) ⇄ ∑_ic_i 14:08, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Note, that in principle it is not forbidden to add references to one's own work. This is especially true if your papers belong to to most highly cited works on the subject in the literature, as is the case with the work of Crater here. The more relevant question is whether the topic is relevant enough (which it appears it may be). May I ask, that you be careful in not antagonizing potential expert contributors to the project.TR 15:30, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry, and will apologize to him and restore the references. Just being "too careful". F = q(E+v×B) ⇄ ∑_ic_i 16:29, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Done. F = q(E+v×B) ⇄ ∑_ic_i 16:34, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

My impression is that the subject is notable but the article is seriously unbalanced, with far too many citations of the same author. Also, the Breit equation is another approach to the same problem and has priority by several decades. RockMagnetist (talk) 17:28, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

RockMagnetist - thank you for adding the sources and cleaning up the refs/external links. Unbalanced (and inaccurate by dates of publication, 1920s/1980s) is indeed the problem. F = q(E+v×B) ⇄ ∑_ic_i 23:10, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

I thought that multiple particles were supposed to be handled by quantum field theory where the wave function of the one-particle case is replaced by the annihilation operator. JRSpriggs (talk) 06:43, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes, the standard textbooks will say that relativistic bound state problems cannot be treated via Schrödinger type equations and a full field theoretic approach is needed (see e.g. Chapter 10 of Itzyckson & Zuber, to lowest order you can use the Dirac equation but to obtain radiative corrections you need to tackle the full field theoretic problem). Now, from the article, it seems that there are new results allowing one to greatly simplify such calculations to some approximation by using wave-equations in some way. But the article does not go into details. Count Iblis (talk) 19:50, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

It seems to me that you would need to make the wave function depend on at least seven continuous independent variables: x₁, y₁, z₁, x₂, y₂, z₂, t. But the article says nothing about what independent variables are used. JRSpriggs (talk) 05:06, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Modified langle and rangle templates for inline angular brackets

These templates are currently in the database as unused: for ⟨ see p.6 no 5579 and for ⟩ see p.9 no 8935. Recently after reworking them (and wasting a silly amount of time messing around with aligning things, which shouldn't have happened), I added them to ⟨|⟩.

Aesthetically they look ok (sort of), but the concern is they may cause spacing irritations, due to the glyphs in the template (but these are the closest ones matching angular brackets).

What do others think? Any objections to usage? If not I plan to implement them mainly in QM articles. WikiProject Mathematics has been notified. F = q(E+v×B) ⇄ ∑_ic_i 12:27, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

The glyphs have been updated to the correct angle brackets. F = q(E+v×B) ⇄ ∑_ic_i 15:23, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Both the in and out parameter descriptions say "(i.e. behind the vertex of the bracket)" on both templates. Once that's fixed, I don't particularly have any objections. 786b6364 (talk) 16:23, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Fixed. F = q(E+v×B) ⇄ ∑_ic_i 21:55, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, one more thing. I'm not sure what your point is in the tables section of the docs. Is there any difference between, for instance, ψ{{rangle}} and {{rangle|in=ψ}}? Are you saying that it only matters if you're using vertical bars in tables? Does using or not using the html entity make any difference? 786b6364 (talk) 22:37, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

The point is to show that the vertical bar can interfere with the table coding, because | and not | is used in the tables. Notice how some bits don't show up where they should? F = q(E+v×B) ⇄ ∑_ic_i 23:17, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

The reason for the in/out parameters was to position the contents in/out the brackets as accurately as possible, because of the bad spacing problems with the original glyphs 〈 and 〉 (which are actually Chinese punctuation symbols). They are now redundant so no there is no difference between ψ{{rangle}} and {{rangle|in=ψ}}. The parameters will be removed. F = q(E+v×B) ⇄ ∑_ic_i 23:22, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Done, also the bra-ket article has been reverted for now. F = q(E+v×B) ⇄ ∑_ic_i 23:50, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Alright, the docs look much clearer now. Thanks! 786b6364 (talk) 00:03, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

No worries, thanks for pointing these out, and for any edits you make that fix my typos (probably millions). =) F = q(E+v×B) ⇄ ∑_ic_i 00:28, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Just as a note that the size of the brackets should be specified in ems rather than px. I'm not sure what the exact desired size is for them or the conversion in this case to px, so I held off on editing the templates myself. --Izno (talk) 00:59, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Luminiferious aether

Some comments at

• Talk:Luminiferous aether#Einstein's views
• Talk:Einstein's views on the aether

are appreciated. Thanks. --D.H (talk) 14:56, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

Merge comment requested - Superhydrophobe

Are Lotus effect and Superhydrophobe talking about the same thing? Should they be merged? Please comment at Talk:Superhydrophobe. D O N D E groovily Talk to me 02:54, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

A recent edit

I am wondering if this recent edit by an anonymous IP at Finite-difference time-domain is appropriate. ---- Steve Quinn (talk) 01:42, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

I don't see what the problem is. Xxanthippe (talk) 02:30, 20 June 2012 (UTC).

As-written that addition seems overly-broad and makes connections that may or may not actually reflect historical development. I'll attempt to rewrite it. Anyone intimately familiar with the field is free to revise it, of course, but detailed discussion of the history of and relations between such techniques should probably be left to the Numerical analysis article. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 02:39, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Fluid structure interaction

Article Fluid-structure interaction states that "reed makes sound because the equations governing it have oscillatory solutions". I beg to differ. The reed knows nothing about equations which are just something humans use to understand nature. Instead the reed could just be presented as an example of fluid structure interaction without further ado about why it happens to make sound. Also statements like "equations that govern nature" in other articles should be rephrased so that they don't imply that humans decide how things work.

BR, Anonymous — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.188.8.27 (talk) 13:46, 26 June 2012 (UTC)