Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics/Archive May 2021

viXra

Might anyone know offhand about other sources written about viXra? Such things are hard to find thanks to items posted there generally filling up the search results. XOR'easter (talk) 16:29, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I don't know of anything not already in viXra; I only found this book chaper which you just added. There's plenty of non-reliable sources, though, viXra is often discussed informally. Maybe the blog of a researcher would be acceptable? Tercer (talk) 17:07, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

I think a blog post could be acceptable per WP:SPS here. XOR'easter (talk) 17:30, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

I've found these [1][2][3]. Tercer (talk) 21:10, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for finding those. The first definitely looks good (the author is even wiki-notable). I don't have an opinion about the other two yet. XOR'easter (talk) 23:35, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

I like the humour in that one. It would be nice to have something on the site per se (as opposed to the hosted content) though. —Quondum 00:21, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

List of quantum chemistry and solid-state physics software

There is a conflict at List of quantum chemistry and solid-state physics software about what to include in this list. Wikipedia:Stand-alone lists suggests that a selection criterion of "being notable/having its own article" is valid. Unfortunately someone else disagrees and keeps restoring the full list including many red links. The discussion is going nowhere so more eyes are needed at Talk:List_of_quantum_chemistry_and_solid-state_physics_software#Notable. Thanks in advance. The Banner talk 14:11, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

FAR for Leonhard Euler

I have nominated Leonhard Euler for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. (t · c) buidhe 04:04, 8 May 2021 (UTC)

Asymptotically flat spacetime

I'm not sure why the {{Expert needed}} tag was added to this article, but I did remove a fringe POV section. The concern listed on the talk page is about all the redlinks from this article. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 12:47, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

EDIT: Fixed most redlinks, except for one topic that seems to be genuinely missing (Ernst vacuum). These redlinks mostly used non-standard names for existing topics like the Kerr metric. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 13:03, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

EDIT2: I'm going through Category:Science articles needing expert attention for a ratioanle. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 13:05, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

Category:Science articles needing expert attention

You are invited to participate in a discussion Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Science#Category:Science_articles_needing_expert_attention about the following articles:

• Asymptotically flat spacetime
• Cooperstock's energy-localization hypothesis
• DACAPO
• Environmental radioactivity
• Landau–Hopf theory of turbulence
• Quantum paraelectricity
• 11 articles primary about other disciplines.

–LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 14:28, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

FAR of Atomic line filter

I have nominated Atomic line filter for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. FemkeMilene (talk) 12:32, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

Warp drive

The article Warp drive is currently a blend of variations on the Alcubierre metric (which probably generate sensationalist media "reporting" out of proportion to their scientific interest) and uncited Star Trek fan lore. I'm guessing the Trek lore is probably fairly accurate, but even so, we're not Memory Alpha, and there's probably a better way to do it. XOR'easter (talk) 18:11, 22 May 2021 (UTC)

The topic is clearly the fictional propulsion system. Connecting this with theoretical ideas that might potentially be applied to produce propulsion technologies with the same outcome (namely superluminal drive) seems to me out of scope of an encyclopedia – at least in the sense of connecting the term "warp drive" in fiction to the concept of spacetime warp in the sense of the Alcubierre drive; this suggests stripping mentions of these down to a "see also" section. I agree with "we're not Memory Alpha". This article should be stripped down to an enumeration and brief description of warp drives in fiction, and possibly retitled accordingly (Warp drives in fiction or Warp drive (fiction)?). My gut says that there is a possibility of vociferous pushback. —Quondum 18:49, 22 May 2021 (UTC)

I've stripped the theoretical idea out of it. Let's watch for reactions :) —Quondum 19:02, 22 May 2021 (UTC)

Philosophical physics: "quantum of action"

I noticed that there is an active debate driven by some eminent meteorologists about whether angle should be treated as an independent dimension. I then discovered that around mid-2019, NIST changed the unit of h from J⋅s to J⋅Hz⁻¹, which made me wonder whether it was related. I think it would be reasonable to say that a system of quantities that treats it as an independent dimension would at least be consistent, and which we could use to reason more clearly about topics such as this. Torque and energy have the same SI unit but are quantities of different kinds. Similarly, angular momentum and action are of different kinds, and in particular, angular momentum is quantized but action is not (else the calculus of variations would have a major obstacle). Ergo, a "quantum of action" is nonsensical. I was looking at Planck constant and noticed the apparently false statement

Eventually, following upon Planck's discovery, it was recognized that physical action cannot take on an arbitrary value. Instead, it must be some integer multiple of a very small quantity, the "quantum of action".

At first I thought this was just WP editors getting confused, but it seems as though this term has been around since the advent of quantum mechanics. How should we approach what seems to me to be blatant nonsense from a physics perspective, but seems to be quite prevalent outside WP? —Quondum 16:06, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

"Quantum of action" is a term that goes back to the old quantum theory, in which discretizing the action was a heuristic way of getting results that agreed with experiment, or disagreed with experiment less than the completely wrong predictions of classical physics. The term might be a little old fashioned (at least, my impression is that I hear it more in conversations about physics history than elsewhere), but it's not nonsensical. XOR'easter (talk) 18:28, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

This suggests that I should feel free to replace "quantum of action" with "natural unit of action", clarify that it is historical meaning not in line with modern theory, or make a correction to the content, without fear of being contradicted by modern usage. The above quote seems to be invalid synthesis by someone who did not adequately distinguish. —Quondum 18:59, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

I don't think that replacing a standard term with a new one is really advisable (and "natural unit of action" is used orders of magnitude less frequently than "quantum of action"). Plenty of scientific terminology is hold-overs "for historical reasons"; it might be nice to reform the whole business, but that's not our job. The line in Planck constant was awkward, though the following sentences did a little to clarify to it. I've rewritten that paragraph somewhat. XOR'easter (talk) 19:08, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

It reads better now. I tend to react too quickly, not reading on when I've already decided it is junk. There is an inconsistency with Old quantum theory in terms of the size of the assumed quantum, but that is something that I could sort out with a bit of digging. I'm not trying to argue for reformulating terminology (much as I'm tempted), just for getting things clear. Thanks. —Quondum 20:05, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for finding it! Wikipedia's science articles seem to have an endless supply of sentences originally added by people who didn't quite know what they were talking about, or who didn't have experience in making themselves understood and minimizing misunderstandings. And, of course, plenty of our content was probably written by people who (through no fault of their own) had heard the "physicist's history" of physics, which can bear surprisingly little resemblance to the actual history. XOR'easter (talk) 20:20, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

It is quite an interesting exercise, trying to build a coherent picture ab initio from WP (and other sources). As a self-taught layman, I might notice things that more expert people don't because they "read" what it should say. It also means that I fail to notice many things, but am sensitive to inconsistencies, to things that could be confusing/ambiguous to a novice and to unstated premises. I guess my premature "this is junk" reactions are in part a result of too many fights with people who were far too persistent. I am enjoying the current relaxed atmosphere in the physics zone. —Quondum 20:43, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

What XOR'easter says. When I learned QM back in the day, a "quantum of action" was a synonym for Planck's constant. Habitually, I still think of it that way: of "what it is" rather than "what the name of it is". 67.198.37.16 (talk) 18:30, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

Aether theories

The page Aether theories looks like it needs a de-synthing and counter-fringeification. XOR'easter (talk) 18:00, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

I've tried to do what I could, but now I'm wondering if the whole thing ought to be merged/redirected somewhere else. There's not a lot of point to having a page for "various things that somebody somewhere attached the word aether to". XOR'easter (talk) 03:25, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

I agree with that characterization. It tries to be an "Overview of things called 'aether'". It is not warranted as a "List of ..." article, we are not allowed dictionary entries, it is not a topic in its own right and it is most certainly not a topic that warrants an "Introduction to ..." article. Each of the sections could probably be merged to their respective "main" articles, though I suspect that this would add nothing in each case. —Quondum 13:29, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

Would anyone object to taking it to AfD? Looking at it again after a bit of a break, I'm not seeing more reason for it to exist. XOR'easter (talk) 15:55, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

Can you be more specific? It seems harmless (but I only skimmed it) - its a history-of-physics survey - indeed, a survey of "everything that someone called aether at some point". Its useful precisely because it does survey everything; it doesn't make your eyes water the way that lists do. So I would not recommend an AfD, but don't have strong feelings. I'm partial to it mostly because there is an insufficient focus on history of physics in general, especially of surveys of broad, vaguely-defined ideas that slosh around over the decades. Aether is an excellent example of this kind of broad, vaguely-defined idea that sloshes around and never quite goes away and never quite comes back. It's the "vis viva" of the 19th and 20th centuries. 67.198.37.16 (talk) 18:47, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

A "survey of everything called aether" runs into synthesis problems, particularly when the ideas being mentioned are obscure enough that we have no secondary or tertiary sources to evaluate them. Meanwhile, we have the main article Luminiferous aether to discuss the actual history. Maybe a (very selective) merge would be preferable to outright deletion. XOR'easter (talk) 18:54, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

It also runs into the problem that though it might be "useful", it fails the WP criteria for an article to exist. In particular, an article should have a singular topic. If we cannot identify the topic and associated title, I don't see how it can remain. I'm not aware that we have "Survey of ..." articles. If there is a single vaguely defined idea, this is a topic and may merit an article (say, aether as a medium through which electromagnetic waves travel, but that article already exists, and is a suitable place for the associated history). —Quondum 19:11, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

Planck particle: category?

I have trimmed undue linking to Planck particle on the grounds that it is a highly speculative amalgam of ideas without any theoretical basis that a micro black hole of a rather arbitrary particular size might be considered to be an elementary particle, and thus should not be listed in a template as a "hypothetical elementary particle", for example. It strikes me as being WP:FRINGE, and I'm not sure it makes the threshold of notability (but since that threshold seems to be horribly vague, I do not intend to push for an AfD perspective at the moment).

My question: should Planck particle be categorized as Category:Fringe physics or similar? —Quondum 16:05, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

Searching for uses of the term finds a lot of the typical subjects: Progress in Physics, Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, even viXra. The article is mostly trivial dimensional analysis, with some speculation on top. (I mean, making a decay-time prediction about a "particle" whose very definition puts it at the point where unknown laws of physics take over is pretty silly.) The Hoyle (1993) reference is an attempt to defend steady-state cosmology long after anyone cared, by attributing nucleosynthesis to "Planck fireballs" instead of to the Big Bang. The Deza and Deza Encyclopedia of Distances book is a miscellany of superficialities that doesn't give indications of where it gets anything from, and it post-dates the Wikipedia article.... I wouldn't object to placement in Category:Fringe physics. Since it survived AfD in 2010 on "sources technically exist" grounds, I'm not optimistic that it would be deleted, even though I don't see much reason to have it around. XOR'easter (talk) 18:22, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. You are pretty thorough. Done. Your mention of "post-dates the Wikipedia article" reminds me of the echo chamber that forms around WP in areas of popular science, akin to the self-reinforcing social media phenomena that can get quite out of hand. Unless it develops more distinct policies around this (crowdsourcing responsibility will not always be effective), I can see WP having its own Facebook moment at some point. —Quondum 18:46, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

I'll look for better sources if I get a chance. Most things published prior to the Wikipedia's article creation seem to be steady-state cosmology advocacy by Hoyle and coauthors, published in places that look pretty marginal. Relying on such references would be a poor move as far as representing mainstream physics goes. It's possible that a couple decent sources will turn up, but even so, I rather doubt that Planck particle needs to be more than a redirect to somewhere in Planck units, with a line saying, "A hypothetical body whose Schwarszchild radius is equal (or approximately equal) to its Compton radius is sometimes called a Planck particle". XOR'easter (talk) 19:06, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

That would be a good endpoint for the trajectory of this article, along with Planck length. My approach has been to slice away overt nonsense piecemeal: coming down hard with an axe at times seems to trigger strong pushback, though maybe I'm off the mark and it is really a matter of what editors are taking an interest at the time. —Quondum 19:34, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

The lead should be copied into Steady-state model#Quasi-steady state. The equations cut. The whole thing a redirect to Steady-state model#Quasi-steady state. 67.198.37.16 (talk) 20:27, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

Hasn't the idea spread beyond that? The papers I've seen (admittedly non-notable scraps) seemed to be more interested in these as potential elementary particles than in their cosmological implications. —Quondum 20:38, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

Heh. Too late. I just created the redirect. Based on the article as it was, I assumed that the only application was by Hoyle. I don't know what papers you've seen, so I can't comment on that. It's not particularly hard to play numerology in physics: take your favorite number and ask "what's the Compton wavelength of that?" and its vaguely educational to do this, generically. It forces some focus. But having done so, the results aren't generally notable. In short: what's notable about the "Planck particle"? It's not obvious to me that it even deserves even so much as a redirect. (I mean, you're welcome to revert what I did; I kind of don't care. I figured just doing it was easier than talking about doing it.) 67.198.37.16 (talk) 20:47, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

No, I think it needs just that kind of thing (as you will see from what I have said above). The problem was that in the past, this article and some like it got some support from the "Planck units are cool" brigade. We need to leave enough behind that it acts as brake on re-creation; a redirect like this may have that effect. Or it may not. But this saves me doing something like you have done for the mean time. —Quondum 21:00, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

Well Planck units are cool! My favorite planck unit is the mass, which is apparently about equal to a flea's egg. So its macroscopic more or less. I like Penrose's suggestion that any system heavier than Planck's mass cannot be in a quantum superposition (the difference between a dead cat and a live cat is much much more than that). Penrose's handwaving argument is that it would require the superposition of two different gravitational fields, i.e. a superposition of two different space-times, and there's no coherent way of writing that down. So that's fun to ponder, a physics curio, knick-knack. 67.198.37.16 (talk) 21:27, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

Planck units are cool for setting scales, not actual "special quantities". I never did like Penrose's objective collapse idea (though it wasn't a Planck mass, it was a much smaller, along the lines of a graviton's difference). Objective collapse seem to me to be trying make things palatable to the unimaginative rather than finding something that mathematically explains anything. "no coherent way of writing that down" is not an argument for anything, only an indication that we have not found it. I've pondered the idea of superposition of spacetimes with black holes in different locations, and even classically I think we have not exhausted the simpler options. —Quondum 22:11, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

Heh. OK. Somewhere I have 20 or 30 or 40 pages of rambling notes on such ideas. I don't recall if I ever made them public. I'm trying to think of something funny to say, but all I can think of is a quote from Firesign Theatre: "How can you be in two places at once when you're nowhere at all?" 67.198.37.16 (talk) 22:22, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

That may be more on the mark than you might expect. Picture this: assuming perfect linearity, since what we perceive of as reality is potentially just a self-aware component of an overall wavefunction, and that overall wavefunction has no impact on its components, or similarly, every wavefunction has every wavefunction as a component in a superposition, "actual" wavefunctions are nothing more than mathematically consistent possibilities/solutions. So any perceived universe has only to be a mathematically consistent possibility to exist in a real enough sense to make us perceive it: you need nothing "physical". Doesn't this fit your quote rather neatly? —Quondum 22:44, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

High five! we've wandered into the domain of idle chat. (which I seem to enjoy, as do you, but perhaps this is not the place) I don't know how to define a function, wave or otherwise, that isn't a map from something to something, and there's the rub. Apparently, I did post my attempts to provide a foundation for QM (by which I mean QFT) that evades the difficulties of gravitation. For your entertainment, its here. Sadly, it has no hah-hah funny parts to it. (fixed; I added the quote). 67.198.37.16 (talk) 02:19, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the link; I'll need time to peruse it. I was surprised by the quote being in the paper until I saw your update here. You're right, this is not an inappropriate place for chat. —Quondum 13:51, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

FAR notice

I have nominated Laplace–Runge–Lenz vector for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 21:07, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

Please do help in improving the Laplace–Runge–Lenz vector, particularly by adding citations to reliable modern sources, clarifying confusing passages, or simply by adding your comments to its featured article review. Thank you very much! :) Willow (talk) 09:40, 31 May 2021 (UTC)