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Cold fusion

As far as I can tell, the Cold Fusion article is getting more and more pro-Cold Fusion as time passes. I don't have the time or expertise to argue with one of the major proponents of the idea, so I've done the only thing I can think of: delisting it from good articles and tagging it as {{totallydisputed}}. If anyone has any better ideas, please go for it. -- SCZenz 20:01, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Now there's edit warring over the tag itself. Can you guys keep an eye on the page, so we can at least maintain that? -- SCZenz 20:08, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

LHC

I feel that LHC article is very weak. Any contribution will be appreciated. I also nominated it for Misplaced Pages:Science collaboration of the week, you can vote for it if you like. þħɥʂıɕıʄʈ 17:08, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

I think that most of the articles about accelerators and detectors are at least weak (if not existent at all).. I don't think they are going to need a collaboration from all Wikipedians right now, but we should do something about them... I'll help as soon as I get some spare time.. :-) ] 13:25, 13 April 2006 (UTC)]

Pseudoscience article threads originally from PNA/Physics

(These comments were originally moved to the main page of Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Pseudoscience by User:Alba. They certainly don't belong there, and they don't belong on that project's talk page, and PNA/Physics has had its discussion threads summarily removed, so this seems the best place to put it. --Christopher Thomas 17:23, 10 April 2006 (UTC))

Notice for members of WikiProject Pseudoscience: PNA is undergoing experimental modification. PNA will become one-stop shopping for all attention needs: relevant portals, wikiprojects, categories, stubs, and requests for cleanup, expansion, and expert attention will all be added, maintained by bot, and transcluded to every interested project. However, this necessitates that discussion of such pages be conducted on project or talk projects. Therefore, I'm pasting relevant comments that no longer have appropriate talk pages here. Thanks for your attention, and I hope the new PNA helps your project keep pseudoscience in its proper place. Alba 12:12, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

• Aetherometry and associated pages - Could someone with patience and a really large hatchet help to make these fringe scientific sound more like fringe scientific theories rather than the greatest scientific discoveries in the history of the world?? Dragons flight 21:35, Jun 20, 2005 (UTC)

Still on fringe-theory sabbatical after harmonics theory ate a month. I'll add it to the "pages to look at" list, though. --Christopher Thomas 22:01, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Update - still active squabbling going on, so I'm not touching it for now. --Christopher Thomas 6 July 2005 20:38 (UTC)

Page has been deleted, though there are other mentions of the subject within Misplaced Pages. --Christopher Thomas 20:33, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Suspected copyvio

I've just come across Supersolid. Most of the current content there was added in one lump by an anonymous editor (and later wikified) and by the writing style looks like it was written for a magazine or at least something other than an encyclopaedia. Another anonymous editor commented on the talk page that it was "just about verbatim ripped from n/s". I didn't know what he meant by "n/s" (New Scientist?), but I googled for the content and came up only with pages derived from the WP article. There are two references, of which one is to a Nature article which you can only read if you have a subscription (which I don't, not being a scientist). The other is evidently not the source.

Since I don't have the time or the inclination to look for a possible source, I'm informing the folks on this WikiProject since I'm assuming lots of you are physicists with subscriptions to publications which might be the source. If it is a copyvio, I'm sure someone can come up with an original article on the subject. Hairy Dude 02:04, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

PNA on WikiProject Physics Page

Is that really usefull, for al the physics PNA stuff to be in two places? Isn't a link enough? What do others think? Karol 07:07, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

wtf? Pages needing attention! --MarSch 14:51, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Welcome User Brian Josephson (talk · contribs)

Nobel prize-winning Wikipedian. See also Brian David Josephson (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views).

And promptly into the breach of controversy ... linas 13:41, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Indeed, we'll have to watch his edits closely for POV-pushing. ---CH 09:06, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Dark energy and other virtual particle edits by User:Enormousdude

Enormousdude (talk · contribs) has recently edited dark energy, Casimir effect, and possibly other articles to express the associated phenomena in terms of virtual particles. I recall there was a large debate at Talk:Casimir effect over this the last time the subject came up, which resulted in the virtual particle explanation being de-emphasized at that article, as being more a product of one way the math could be performed than a fundamental part of the effect. If User:Linas or someone else who was involved in that discussion wants to track down the relevant pages and see if anything needs correcting, it would be greatly appreciated. I don't have the background to do it. --Christopher Thomas 00:40, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Also include quantum statistics and photon density. Karol 07:50, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

I've been on a mini-wiki-vacation. I'll take a look. linas 13:45, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

To be clear, the problem of saying a physical effect is "due to virtual particles" is kind of like saying that a derivative is a "delta-epsilon effect". While not exactly wrong, its not exactly right either. Virtual particles are artifacts of perturbation theory. Systems that can be solved exactly without using perturbation theory don't need to have (don't use, don't posses) virtual particles. linas 02:15, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Plasma cosmology material being inserted into many articles

Tommysun (talk • contribs) seems to be cut-and-pasting the same "doppler shift controversy" paragraph into a significant number of cosmology-related articles. As far as I can tell this is more plasma cosmology material. I've rolled back the grossly misplaced edits, but this could end up being a recurring problem. --Christopher Thomas 05:08, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

NEXAFS and XANES

See Talk:XANES for a discussion about a possible merger and the replacement by User:141.108.20.26 of links to NEXAFS with links to XANES. This smells like yet another blatant attempt at self-promotion. While the phenomenon of people adding links to their own research papers is fairly harmless, I object to their removal of links to existing articles when they do so. (Please note that I have never created any links to or citations of my own research papers!) Clearly Bianconi/141.108.20.26 knew that the NEXAFS article already existed since he/she created XANES since he/she went to the trouble of removing links to the NEXAFS article! Alison Chaiken 19:57, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Your evidence is thin; that doesn't mean you're wrong, but it does mean that asserting that this is self-promotion may not get anywhere. I'd suggest in the future that you de-emphasize the accusations in favor of fixing the articles so the possible self-promotion goes away. Be bold! -- SCZenz 20:25, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

I see your point but fear that if I'm bold in undoing others' ill-advised changes that I'll start a revert war. It's one thing to boldly create new articles, and another altogether to go ahead and merge XANES into NEXAFS without some thought, especially since "XANES" is an equally valid article title. Answering the high-handedness of others with equal high-handedness doesn't lead to a solution! I can't figure out what behavior will lead to a solution though. At least most of the Wikipedians I've communicated with have been helpful. Alison Chaiken 20:42, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

The funny thing about Misplaced Pages is that mercilessly editing others' additions isn't all that impolite if the reasons are explained (in this case you'd say merge/redirect because article already exists), but accusing people of having inappropriate motives without mind-bogglingly clear evidence is. That philosophy is the source of my suggestion. If you merge/redirect with an explanation, and someone else reverts you, then they have to explain themselves too. -- SCZenz 03:37, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

I see the wisdom of your advice. User:87.3.31.93 is continuing to expand the XANES article in a knowledgeable way despite the fact that he/she seems to agree that it is a duplicate of NEXAFS. He/she removed the merge template that I put on the XANES page. I am inclined to put it back since the articles need eventually to be merged, I don't care in which direction. No one disputes that NEXAFS and XANES describe the same technique. I'm not even aware of the history of why there are two names. Alison Chaiken 02:58, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

I put the merge template back on NEXAFS and XANES and it has been removed again, so now we have a full-blown revert war. Perhaps I should just go ahead and merge the articles myself but that might start a real conflagration. I'm busy with something else right now anyway. Alison Chaiken 04:41, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

I certainly think merging the articles is appropriate, in some manner, since everyone has agreed that the two words describe the same thing. What the tile should be is a content dispute. If Dr. Bianconi is indeed editing the article and citing his own papers, it would appear that he has some cause to (if indeed he wrote the first paper on the technique); when the content being added really is notable, violations of WP:AUTO are more forgivable. However, one thing that's muddying the waters is the multiple IP addresses agreeing with each other; I've asked politely on Talk:XANES for them to straighten out which of them are the same person. (Although editing from more than one user name or IP is not forbidden on Misplaced Pages, using sockpuppets/meatpuppets to influence a content dispute is.) In any case, I would suggest that you look at the merits of the claims made on Talk:XANES and decide what action to take independent of your (reasonable) dislike of self-promotion; if you still think there's no reason for a name change, then by all means continue discussing, or consider whether there's a neutral way to use both terms in the article (e.g. possibly refer to it consistently as NEXFAS/XANES regardless of the article title). -- SCZenz 07:40, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Some time long ago, the people who came up with the names "XANES" and "NEXAFS" were probably having a spat, but I don't know about that history and don't care. Having just one article called "XANES" is fine with me; the important thing is to have just one article. The other folks seem to be of the opinion that we should have two, which is ridiculous. Having said that, the new XANES article is pretty good. While the Bianconi papers may be worth citing (I don't really know), the lack of citations to other works or to the major monograph by Jo Stohr in the new article is a problem that a merge would solve. Thanks for stepping in. Alison Chaiken 14:11, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

I see that User:141.108.20.26 has now removed the {{wikify}} tags put on XANES by User:Pearle and User:Waggers. The author of XANES (and his/her associated sock puppets) show little interest in the conventions of Misplaced Pages or in others' well-intended suggestions about the contents of their articles. Alison Chaiken 14:16, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Alison, thanks for the heads-up on my talk page. Removing cleanup tags without giving a valid reason is vandalism, and you are perfectly entitled to revert it. The 3-revert rule, which is the main handler for edit wars, makes an excemption for vandalism-fighting, so don't be afraid of getting into trouble over edit warring for undoing vandalism. I've replaced the wikify tag, and also replaced the merge tag. Waggers 08:01, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

RfA

I've nominated one of Misplaced Pages's regular physics editors, Keenan Pepper, for adminship. If you've had experience with this editor and an opinion of Keenan's qualifications, please visit the RfA and voice your opinions. -lethe 06:34, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Help with 4π detector article name

I am planning, in the near future, on finally writing an article on the general concept of the typical concentric-rings-of-different-detectors-covering-as-much-solid-angle-as-possible design for collider detectors. (I'm going to include history as well as generally how they work, something I wrote a lot about for ATLAS experiment even though it's not really particular to ATLAS.) The problem is, I'm not sure what to name the article. I've heard 4π detector as the general term, but that's kind of a lousy name for a Misplaced Pages article because it assumes a knowledge of steradians. Any suggestions? -- SCZenz 03:33, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

you could use the term Hermetic High Energy Physics Detectors or something like that.. Tatonzolo 08:15, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Anti-relativity

Utter and complete nonsense. It's so depressing. Revert, AfD or RfC? Unfortunately article RfC is next to pointless in the last time I've seen it in action. --Pjacobi 21:09, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm leaning to AfD, though I think I could be persuaded. Railing against relativity is a common enough stance for crackpots that I think a case could be made to have an article about it. Though in its current state, the article needs work. -lethe 00:44, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

I would AfD. It seems really non-notable, incoherent, and quite insulting in a few places. I deleted a few of the most flagrant violations of NPOV, such as apparently suggesting that researchers at DESY murdered someone, and claiming that HEP researchers are "mislead (sic) and indoctrinated scribes". --Philosophus 03:54, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Anti-relativity --Pjacobi 08:58, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

More edits by User:Enormousdude

This time he's done a heavy edit of potential energy. I don't feel up to thoroughly checking it yet, though I may if nobody else does. It looks like he didn't quite get the original paradigm being described, and so substituted a different one that's arguably less flexible, and didn't follow the description of the (non-hollow) sphere example. --Christopher Thomas 19:59, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

He's also messed with Casimir effect again, though only one change looks questionable (altered the statement about the cosmological constant to handwave away the problem). --Christopher Thomas 20:05, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

He was sort-of right in the Casimir effect, as to how infinities are treated in practical calculations. I re-tweaked and merged the general idea in. linas 04:51, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

The incorrect math he removed from potential energy was, in fact, incorrect. (I can't figure out what the original author was trying to do, either!) I haven't looked other than that. -- SCZenz 20:33, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

His edits to potential energy are ok, except that the article is a complete mess in any case. Also we ought to figure out what he means by "elastic force" and replace the term with a definition. -- SCZenz 20:36, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

From what I can tell after a second look, the original author was trying to be too smart for their own good. They were trying to integrate over shells of matter in a solid sphere of uniform density, but botched setting up that equation, and didn't seem to realize that it was unnecessary to do this when by the conditions of the problem they were looking for the potential outside the sphere anyways. They were also using Earth as an example without explicitly stating that they were approximating it as a sphere of uniform density (the usual simple model treats the core and mantle as having different, fixed densities, while more accurate models use a parabolic fit for them, if I recall correctly). --Christopher Thomas 21:17, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Update - I've taken another look at the math, after it was added (again), and while it's done in pretty much the most confusing possible way, it's valid. I've added an extensive section on the talk page discussing this and showing an alternate, much simpler, derivation.

Unfortunately, I finally figured out what was going on _after_ reverting the re-addition. Argh.

If anyone more awake than I am right now wants to take a stab at putting something easier to follow in place of the removed equations, please do so. --Christopher Thomas 06:57, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Most of his edits appear to be mostly right, and often rather confusing. C'est la vie. linas 01:35, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Bell's spaceship paradox

Anybody volunteering to give Bell's spaceship paradox and Talk:Bell's spaceship paradox a look? User:Rod Ball (most time edititing anonymously) is terribly confused about what proper times and proper accelarations are and now has reached the stage of the text books are wrong, I know what's right. Perhaps my attempts at explaining the issue were not brilliant prose and I'm rather tired of the topic, as it was a months long PITA on German Misplaced Pages. --Pjacobi 09:29, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

This is a bit late, but I completely rewrote Bell's spaceship paradox a week or so ago, as well as the background article Rindler coordinates (adapted to Rindler observers, a family of constant acceleration observers). In the past few days I completely rewrote Born coordinates (adapted to Langevin observers, who are rigidly rotating around an axis of cylindrical symmetry) and plan to use that to rewrite Ehrenfest paradox. ---CH 08:41, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Special relativity

There's been a vigorous dispute at Talk:Special relativity for about a week or so now. The disagreement seems to be over whether Einstein postulated that the one-way or round-trip speed of light was invariant. I know there are lurkers here who are much more familiar with the topic than I am; if you're feeling up for another debate-slog, this would be a relatively civil one that needs looking at. --Christopher Thomas 22:56, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

In my understanding the one way velocity is purely conventional (but of course heavily hinted by Occam's Razor) and not subject to any measurement. I've improvised a stub Einstein synchronisation some time ago. --Pjacobi 00:05, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

In my understanding it is the instantaneous speed of light which is a constant. --MarSch 10:54, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Structure factor

I've created an article called Structure factor. It would be good if someone could take a look and suggest changes and expansions. O. Prytz 03:14, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Yet more supporting evidence that if I'm lazy enough eventually everything on my to do list will get done by other people.

It is a concept in need of diagrams. If I can come up with a helpful one I'll work it up this afternoon. — Laura Scudder ☎ 16:29, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

The article is more or less copied from the appropriate part of the Electron diffraction article, so it could use some expanding. A diagram could be helpful, but I'm not sure what it should be. O. Prytz 06:27, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Besides what you've included, I'd like structure factor to contain some text and a table about the close-packed planes of the various Bravais lattices. The fact that structure factors predict the primary orientations of polycrystalline thin films is interesting and pertinent. I'd work on the article myself except that I'm about to go out of town. Thanks for taking a crack at this article, as it has been on my to-do list for a long time. I think it's exactly the kind of fundamental concept that students or aging scientists like me might well consult Misplaced Pages for. Alison Chaiken 04:55, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Added some content, and changed notation to make it consistent with the norm. Lex Kemper 8:44, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

...for beginners

Three of our articles got "...for beginners" forks, see :

• Introduction to special relativity
• Introduction to general relativity
• Introduction to quantum mechanics

Two of them were on (somewhat inconclusive) AfDs:

• Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Special relativity for beginners
• Misplaced Pages:Articles_for_deletion/Quantum_Mechanics_-_simplified

In my not so humble opinion, short, accessable introductions should go into the main articles and longer, textbook-style stuff, should be at WikiBooks. But, unfortunately, my opinon doesn't set policy, see I'd like to hear some comments on this issue. And anywaym the Introduction articles may need some proofreading. --07:56, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

These intro articles are structured like articles instead of textbooks. They are not long and deep enough to go to WikiBooks, but not anywhere near short enough to go into the main article. These articles help keep technical treatments and explanatory treatments separate, keeping Misplaced Pages useful for both experts and laypersons. Loom91 06:14, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree. If anything, I think our error is most often in thinking that the technical treatment is the "real" article. Also, these articles look well-written. -- SCZenz 18:44, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

That is the direction I'm thinking. If the main article of an important field in physics is too technical for a general audience, there is something wrong. I'd prefer better accessable main articles and technical stuff relegated into the more specialised articles.

And the intro-articles do have some textbook style in them, but we can work on this.

Heck, if Einstein himself managed to write accessable articles for the Volks-Reclam, why don't we aim to do so?

Pjacobi 20:31, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Whether the introductory or the technical article is the "main" article is a trivial issue not of much consequence. I will personally prefer that a formal technical approach ("descriptive") approach is taken in the main article while the forked article uses a more "getting-the-point-across" approach. Loom91 08:18, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

If an article is harder to understand than necessary, then that article needs to be fixed. I don't see any justification for forking, because I don't think the content of these articles is really of such disparate difficulty levels. --MarSch 10:42, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. How hard an article is to understand depends on the target audience. I don't think having two versions targetted at people with very different physics and mathematics backgrounds is unreasonable. In fact, I'd welcome more of this for some of the pure-mathematics topics. For a sufficiently specialized topic, an article that is comprehensible to a beginner is likely to be uninformative or even wrongly-informative to someone with expertise in the topic, and an article that is both correct and informative to a specialist will usually be incomprehensible to a beginner.

I'm not saying this should be done for _all_ articles, but I can see good reasons for doing it for many of them. The alternative is to devote a lot of space to explanations targetted at different audiences in one article. While this seems reasonable for cases where it doesn't greatly lengthen the article, for specialized and/or technical subjects it takes a lot more than just a brief introductory paragraph to do this, decreasing readability for all audiences. Hence, the tradeoff between making an article more understandable and forking it. --Christopher Thomas 18:06, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Conjugate quantities

The article Conjugate quantities is listed for deletion: Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Conjugate quantities. I tried to edit it into something sufficiently decent that it might be kept, but am not an expert. Please contribute to the article and/or the discussion. --Lambiam 16:20, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

I did a REDIRECT to conjugate variables. linas 13:36, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Low energy nuclear reaction

The article Low energy nuclear reactions (ofshoot of cold fusion) needs serious npoving. I'm sure there are people far more knowledgeable than me here who can help. --Deglr6328 01:35, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

A cursory glance suggests that most of this could just be merged into cold fusion. However, it looks like it was actually created by extraction _from_ that article, for reasons that aren't clear to me. --Christopher Thomas 02:15, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Flouron Emission Rays

This areticle is up at AfD.ßlηguγΣη | Have your say!!! - review me 07:15, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I especially like the bit where it claims mercury atoms (mass about 2e+11 eV/C^2) emit gamma rays with energies on the order of 1e+18 eV. --Christopher Thomas 17:29, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

More Cycles stuff, and M-Theory stuff

Two (thankfully) unrelated items that may bear watching:

• A new user, Cycles (talk • contribs), has started posting as of Tuesday, focusing on Cycles Theory-related articles. Points that are suspicious are that they only became active shortly after the AfD mess died down, and that they're displaying suspicious mastery of things like citation templates despite having made less than a dozen edits so far. No discernable abuse yet, but probably should be watched as a potential sock puppet of existing players.

• Remember the fun with H0riz0n (talk • contribs) and Harmonics Theory, Quantum metaphysics, and so forth? Well, I checked on a whim, and now he's aggressively editing Brane, merged S-Brane, D-brane into it, and moved Brane cosmology to Braneworld cosmology and made substantial edits there as well. Someone with detailed knowledge of the field might want to visit with a mop and bucket and vet the new versions of the articles for accuracy.

I'll continue helping out where I can, but my cosmology background isn't strong enough to vet the articles in the second item. --Christopher Thomas 03:52, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I've reverted all of his brane edits, which made some decent articles and stubs into a giant confused mess. It would be nice if editors were more restrained in making content changes in subjects they don't understand at all. If H0riz0n's only edit had been the change he made from 4D to 3D in the Brane Cosmology article, I would have though he was a vandal. In addition, I had no idea the M-theory article was so horribly written! I might try to rewrite it after this quarter is over, but I am terribly busy right now and shouldn't even be making these edits. --Constantine Evans 06:23, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the prompt response. --Christopher Thomas 14:08, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Virial Theorem

I just noticed that the Virial Theorem page has a giant copyright warning on it. I don't have Goldstein's Mechanics book, so I can't check the issue in question myself. If anyone wants to help figure out the issure and/or write the page from scratch, it'd be appreciated. KristinLee 22:08, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Anybody in AfD mood?

I'm too tired to AfD -- any volunteers to nominate Unitary field theory, and possibly the other contributions of User: Roger Anderton? --Pjacobi 21:27, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

let's see if a prod takes. -lethe 21:43, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

The only other non-reverted contribution is a biography page on Leo baranski. Quick-link via user template, for easier tracking: Roger Anderton (talk • contribs). --Christopher Thomas 21:51, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

The prod tag was removed by Harald88 (talk • contribs), along with most of the web site links. I've restored the prod tag. --Christopher Thomas 16:20, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

This is against prod policy. If anyone removes the prod tag, and we still want to delete, then we have to take it to AfD proper. Removing prod tags is not allowed, and the closing admin is not to delete if the prod tag didn't stay on continuously for 5 days. -lethe 17:22, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the note. I've read up on Misplaced Pages:Proposed deletion, and will attempt to follow proper procedure in the future. --Christopher Thomas 18:33, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

I've redirected to Albert Einstein#Generalized theory --Philosophus 18:15, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

This user has also recently edited Lancelot Law Whyte, though from what I can tell the edit is valid (added a list of authored and co-authored books). --Christopher Thomas 17:52, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

AfD Nomination Leo baranski

I've nominated the article Leo baranski for deletion; see Articles for deletion/Leo baranski. --Lambiam 12:46, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

xstructure links

I see steady effort to link many articles to http://xstructure.inr.ac.ru/ (e.g. ).

Before discussing, whether these links are reasonably based on their content, I'd like raise a formal issue: At least to me, this site displays popunder ads. I judge this to be very annoying.

Pjacobi 17:24, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Anti-relativity and Modern Galilean relativity

I thought I'd let you all know that User:KraMuc, due to suggestions made to him, attempted to write an article on modern Galilean relativity at Anti-relativity. I speedied it as recreated deleted material, but he pointed out that it was different content. As it is different and some willingness to move parts of the old material was expressed at AfD, I have undeleted this new article and moved it to modern Galilean relativity. — Laura Scudder ☎ 21:15, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

So far, he seems to be presenting the subject in a more neutral light, though the article will still need NPOV'ing work by other editors. --Philosophus 22:12, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

The article should clearly state that Galilean relativity is firmly regarded as cranky by the mainstream. Galilean dynamics was founded by Petr Beckman, an EE by training, and has published the likes of Tom Van Flandern of Face on Mars infamy. Hadronic Journal was founded by Ruggero Maria Santilli, who has also published a hysterical anti-Einstein rant. See Did Einstein Cheat?, a Salon article by John Farrell, and Wired 6.03: Breaking the Law of Gravity, a Wired article by Charles Platt. ---CH 09:15, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Unified field theory

Right now, the unified field theory page comes across as being a more badly-written version of theory of everything. I was under the impression that the term "unified field theory" referred to a specific class of model that attempted ToE-style unification. If an expert on the subject could take a look at it, it would be greatly appreciated (the article needs heavy editing for tone at minimum). --Christopher Thomas 05:08, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

And there is also Albert Einstein#Generalized theory and Classical unified field theories, and the term " Unitary field theory". It would be great if someone knowledgeable about these subjects could clarify the relationships. --Lambiam 17:33, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

I've asked around a bit, and I am not so sure that unified field theory and theory of everything are well-defined terms. Thus the articles should probably be merged, and it should be made clear that they are popular rather than technical terms. Note however that Grand Unified Theory is something different, well-defined, and the article is in good shape. -- SCZenz 18:55, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree. Unless someone has a very good argument otherwise, let's merge Unified Field Theory with Theory of Everything. RK 00:59, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Likewise, and neutralize to remove slant toward cranky "theory" promoted by Roger D. Anderton, who maintains a cranky website. ---CH 07:04, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

I've only ever seen "theory of everything" used as an umbrella term to refer to any theory that unifies all four forces. This gives it a consistent, though broad, definition in my (admittedly limited) experience. I'd thought UFT was similarly specific (a QFT that was a ToE), but apparently there's ambiguity over this. I strongly suggest that if a merge takes place, the final article is at "theory of everything", as this is the more general term. --Christopher Thomas 07:16, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

In my understanding, a "unified field theory" is the "old-fashioned" term, commonly used in 20th century physics literature, and is the appropriate term for any unification attempts before 1985; this is what these theories called themselves. Sometime around 1985 or so, the term "theory of everything" became popular, possibly due to pop lit by the Hawking or Wienberg Stevens? The term was not used at all in the earlier theories, and is used heavily only in current papers. Thus, ToE, as I know it, only applies to supergravity, strings, branes, M-theory, and not the earlier theories. Similarly, I'd prefer to keep these two articles apart; for this and many other reasons (not the least of which is the former is more staid, historical and scholarly, while the latter is pop and hip and the target of crankier thinking) linas 13:58, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

If we keep the articles separate, there has to be a clear and (to non-physicists) comprehensible difference between the terms. -- SCZenz 18:14, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

AfD Derivation of the partition function

Could anybody with some knowledge of statistical mechanics please comment at Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Derivation of the partition function? Thanks. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 08:28, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

That deletion discussion is solid evidence that we should avoid AfD as much as possible. If someone steps up to improve the article, well and good—if not, we can always redirect to Partition function (statistical mechanics) in the interim to sweep the dubious material under the rug, so to speak. -- SCZenz 08:44, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Polarizable vacuum

Amusingly, some time back the pltn13.pacbell.net anon, a suspected sock of permabanned Jack Sarfatti (talk · contribs) (who should not be editing WP at all) edited this article to add a bit of scorn concerning Hal Puthoff (apparently Sarfatti and Puthoff had a falling out some time ago).

Must more seriously, a new single purpose user, Ibison (talk · contribs) has completely rewritten this article in a manner which I regard as violating WP:NPOV. Even worse, Ibison is presumably in real life Michael Ibison, who is listed as an employee of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Austin, an organization apparently founded by Hal Puthoff which has no relation with the reputable Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ. Indeed, the Pufhoff insitute is apparently a subsidiary of Earth Tech International, Inc. in Austin, TX, a company which promotes the theories of Hal Puthoff. Indeed, it would apparently not be inaccurate to say that Michael Ibison is an employee of Hal Puthoff. If true, this would appear to raise issues related to WP:VAIN WP:NPOV WP:RS.

No doubt everyone here knows that Puthoff's speculations about "metric engineering" are generally regarded as fringe science at best, but see also Eugene Podkletnov and the article from Wired by Charles Platt cited there, for starters. (Puthoff is claiming among other things that gravitation is an electromagnetic phenomenon.) ---CH 08:52, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Introduction to general relativity

Throught he actions of one anon user who thinks Misplaced Pages is the space for writing his own textbook, has been making this article, intended as a non-technical introduction to the topic for laymen, into a highly technical and mathematical treatment of the topic using advanced concepts such as metric tensors and pseudo-Riemannian manifolds. It is in need of immediate attention from an expert who can ruthlessly edit the article and bring it upto a introductory level. This is a plea for help, please rescue this article from its steady death-march! Loom91 07:15, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Is a General Relativity ToE accepted as a useful approach?

It seems to me that there is a contradiction within this article. The article confidently states that:

The only mainstream candidate for a theory of everything at the moment is superstring theory / M-theory; current research on loop quantum gravity may eventually play a fundamental role in a TOE, but that is not its primary aim

Yet a few paragraphs away we find it stated that:

There have been several attempts to advance the general theory of relativity as a theory of everything. As mentioned above, Einstein was responsible for one of these: in collaboration with Rosen he attempted to model particles as tiny wormholes, hence the term Einstein-Rosen Bridge.... Such theories face a number of hurdles: the creation of wormholes changes the topology of spacetime by creating a new "handle" which implies violations of causality (see Hadley ), and the general theory of relativity predicts its own breakdown at a Gravitational singularity by theorems of Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose. A recent effort to surmount this hurdle notes that the equivalence principle can be applied along curves rather than at a single point (Iliev ), ....

Should, then, we revise the statement to say something like:

There are currently two mainstream candidates for a theory of everything. The candidate with the most attention by professional physicists is superstring theory / M-theory. (current research on loop quantum gravity may eventually play a fundamental role in a TOE, but that is not its primary aim.) However, another active field of research - pursued by a smaller group of professional physicists - is to use Einstein's general theory of relativity as a theory of everything....

Is this wording more accurate? Or are the number of people following the latter GR path so small as to be not worth stating in this fashion? Any thoughts would be appreciated? RK 15:58, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

As a graduate student in high energy theory, I certainly haven't heard of any substantial work on this "GR alone as a TOE" approach. I'm not sure what evidence exists to support the idea at all, to be honest. Certainly the vast majority of people working on LQG (which is just aiming to be quantized GR) don't expect it to explain anything beyond gravity on its own. If the "GR as a TOE" folks were making a substantial impact on the field, I would expect that attitude to be different. If anyone has substantial references to the contrary, please do share them, but I would be tempted to refrain from mentioning any ongoing work on the "GR as a TOE" idea under the "no original research" policy here.--Steuard 03:33, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

General relativity is not a candidate for a Theory of Everything. One of the goals of a TOE is to provide a unified description of fundamental interactions. Einstein and Schrodinger spent part of their time trying to develop a unified field theory that would unify electromagnetism with gravity. This Einstein-Schrodinger theory isn't part of General Relativity and it also doesn't unify physical interactions. It exploits some useful analogies between the tensor fields governing gravity and electromagnetism, but doesn't truly unify them. GR and Einstein-Schrodinger Theory say nothing whatsoever about nuclear interactions. There is no such thing as "GR as TOE", because GR is only a theory of gravity. Tomm

My understanding of the idea being discussed here (which I'll admit I hadn't heard of before in any serious context) was as a notion that various topological effects in gravity alone might give rise to particles and the other forces. As I said above, I'm not aware of any mainstream work on such a model, and it goes against the general understanding of what GR describes by physicists in related fields.--Steuard 13:40, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

I've never heard of this program, and I would suggest it be deleted as a violation of NOR. On the other hand, it's got lots of citations from the arxiv. I read several of the abstracts, and not a single one of them mentions a general relativity ToE. In fact, other than the mention that particles can be modeled as wormholes, the text in question doesn't really convince me that this approach is actually being considered as a ToE. Do they think it will be able to predict the gauge group, and the number of generations, the mass, and the hierarchy problem? If not, then it ain't a ToE. What we need here is a citation for a scientist who thinks this thing may become a ToE. Otherwise delete. -lethe 14:02, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Other ToEs?

Aside from superstring theory (and related M-theory, branes, etc.) are there any approaches in physics to the theory of anything? Or are superstrings the only feasible path actually being studied by professional physicists? I am aware of Woit's "Not Even Wrong" website and upcoming book, but surely he isn't raging against superstrings without proposing a few alternate paths, right? (Maybe not...) I haven't been able to find any info at all on physicists working on ToE's outside of superstrings, so if this is the case (for the moment?) then the article should reflect this. Maybe we should remove the GR topology, under our policy against No Original Research, and not include it again unless someone can offer peer-reviewed references (or at least a few ArXive papers) on this topic. RK 01:00, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Not Even Wrong

My understanding was that part of the point of trying to quantize gravity was the hope that doing so would point the way towards a gauge theory formulation that unified all of the forces (instead of just the three we already have quantum theories for). This wouldn't make LQG or any other quantum gravity a ToE itself, just a stepping stone towards one. --Christopher Thomas 07:19, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Please don't bring the politics of string theory onto this page; Peter Woit doesn't deserve your jabs. But yes, any avenue of research we discuss ought to be citable from some papers. Try using the {{citeneeded}} tag before actually deleting material, so that whoever wrote it has a change to note their source. -- SCZenz 08:30, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Physics AfDs

Some User:Physicsprof has nominated Spherical model and Rodney J. Baxter for deletion. As the author, I would be biased, but I definitely think they are notable enough. Blnguyen | Have your say!!! 06:37, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

I strongly support User:HappyCamper's handling of this; he closed the AfD's. It appears that Physicsprof (talk • contribs • page moves • block user • block log) is a single-purpose account created for those AfD's; I am considering whether it ought to be blocked as (almsot certainly) misleading. -- SCZenz 08:33, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Probably a twin of single-purpose account User:Mathguru. Note the similarity in names. Next we may see Chemwizard or Astropundit. --Lambiam 15:43, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Plasma Universe questions

Discussion regarding a relatively new article, Plasma Universe, is underway on various related talkpages. In particular, on Talk:Astrophysical plasma and Talk:Plasma cosmology there has been discussion of merging the new article with these points. Please add your comments and possible remedies. --ScienceApologist 16:23, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Tired Light problems again

There is an edit war continuing to simmer over at Tired light. User:Harald88 seems to think that Paul Marmet's work qualifies for inclusion. I do not. We need some other people to help us determine a resolution. --ScienceApologist 18:58, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

There are other people in that article whose notability is not obvious. I've tried to start a discussion on the talk page. -- SCZenz 19:32, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Paul Marmet's articles are peer-reviewed, and have been decided by referees more knowledgable than us, to be worthy of publication. The object of Wiki is to represent human knowledge irrespective of what editors think about a particular theory. I have no idea whether Marmet is right of wrong, but writing about his work neutrally is trivial. --Iantresman 20:45, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Core articles

Some wikiprojects (e.g. Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Chemicals) seem to very systematically identify their most important topics and work to improve those articles. Would anyone here be interested in an initiative like that? -- SCZenz 21:47, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Seems like a good idea... that way we update pages that everyone agrees are important, not just the ones that get special attention. -- 0SpinBoson 19:24, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

I've created Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Physics/Key articles. If people can go in and add articles they think fit the definition of key articles (basically, that they're important within the field of physics), that would be a good start. Then we can start to think about what needs attention. -- SCZenz 08:00, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Added some new topic & a few comments. --0SpinBoson 13:35, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Field shapes?

I have no idea what is should be called, but I'm interested in an article that would describes and compares such terms as:

• axial, azimuthal, poloidal, radial, toroidal

For examples, the shape of an axial magnetic field, azimuthal magnetic field, poloidal magnetic field, radial magnetic field, toroidal magnetic field, etc. --Iantresman 20:03, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Several of these (axial, radial, and arguably azimuthal and toroidal) just refer to specific symmetries in cylindrical coordinate systems and spherical coordinate systems. Poloidal fields are ordinary magnetic dipole fields. --Christopher Thomas 21:13, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for that, are there others? --Iantresman 22:34, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Not that I can think of offhand, but there are related terms describing certain types of device, which can also be used to refer to the field configurations used in the devices. Ones I can think of offhand are tokamak, spheromak, z-pinch, the reversed field pinch variants of some of the above, and I seem to recall references to a "theta pinch" device, though that may just have been a Z pinch; it was a while back). I'm not including the term "stellarator" in the list above because that seems to refer exclusively to the type of device, not the field configuration, though arguably that's true to some degree of all of these. I think the best place to put a description of field configurations would be as a subsection in the magnetic confinement fusion article, rather than their own article. --Christopher Thomas 01:29, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

How about a subection in magnetic fields, with examples from the bar magnets, the Earth, lightning bolts, etc?

Introduction to QM peer review

Perhaps of interest... A peer review of Introduction to quantum mechanics has started here: Misplaced Pages:Peer review/Introduction to quantum mechanics. -- SCZenz 10:04, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Help needed

I've been working my way through the list of Dead-end pages (pages that don't link anywhere) and I came across Digital magnetofluidics. The original article contained the sentence The consequent dipolar interactions among the particles form chain-like clusters, which follow the magnetic field lines and aggregate further to form long clusters and I've changed dipolar to bipolar as I've never heard of dipolar and in any case I think that they're synonymous. Could someone just confirm this for me? Additionally does anyone have any ideas where I should link bipolar to as at the moment the disambiguation page makes no mention of bipolar in this context? Thanks RicDod 17:53, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

"Dipolar" is probably closer to being correct, but "dipole" is what should have been written. It refers to magnetic dipole field configurations. --Christopher Thomas 02:07, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Certainty principle

Is this indeed, as this new article claims, "more fundamental and general than the uncertainty principle" for which "many attempts were made to formulate it mathematically, but they were not successful"? --Lambiam 01:42, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

This looks like the work of one researcher, from what I can see from the article. No idea if it's notable, much less correct. I've stuck an "expert attention" tag on it to get it to show up on the PNA list. --Christopher Thomas 02:21, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

This article certainly needs carefull consideration. I draw you attention to several points.

1. This article did exist and was deleted. See Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Certainty Principle.
2. User:Rcq created two awards to praise the author of the original "Certainty Principle" article, and, in affect, criticise those who were involved in the deletion process, even when they did not actually vote for its deletion. See Misplaced Pages:Barnstar and award proposals/New Proposals#Certain and Uncertain Elephants and User talk:Rcq. Note particularly that he states on his talk page: "I think that in the re-creation/deletion conflict I am stronger than the WP community". That is with specific reference to this article.
3. This article was created by User:Hryun and modified by an anon editor from 195.177.120.40. I note that both the anon IP address and user Hryun have both only edited this article and related stuff - Hryun's user page and reference to the certainty principle on Uncertainty principle. I think someone with checkuser privileges should check whether Hryun is a sockpuppet of Rcq.
4. I note that the article now does give a reference to two papers in a Russian journal that Rcq mentioned on his talk page but never properly cited. However, It is so obscure that I do not know how to start looking for it.

• If this article is important then the originator, Arbatsky, has gone about things in a very odd way with the results of his work only published as self-publishing or in an obscure journal.
• If the work is not important or even wrong, then it should be speedy deleted by an admin as it is creating an article that was deleted after a AfD discussion.
• I would like to read the original article but I can not read the pdf files mentioned. However, after argueing with Rcq about his elephant awards I am rather exhausted by this process and here in the Physics community is the best place for this to be sorted out. --Bduke 02:36, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

This has also been edited into Uncertainty principle. Googling "Certainty principle" Arbatsky returns 115 hits, many of them wikipedia clones. Not impressive for something "more fundamental then the uncertainty principle". Zarniwoot 03:01, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

If this article has already been deleted, then the present version can be speedied as a recreation of deleted content. I'm hesitant to do this without first checking with most of the lurkers here, though, to see if the researcher cited has been vocal enough to merit mention (albeit likely with an appropriate heavy disclaimer on the article). As for sock checking, it can be requested at WP:RCU, but my reading of WP:SOCK suggests that there isn't currently grounds for it (no vandalism or vote-stacking being done). Disclaimer: I'm not an admin. --Christopher Thomas 04:06, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I've looked around at this and concluded that a) this was a recreation of deleted material, and b) all of :the reasons for deletion are applicable still (non-notable, misrepresented subject). Since I am an admin, I will delete it now. -- SCZenz 06:03, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

It appears that one person may be using multiple accounts to add legitimacy to these additions. If that user also uses those accounts to violate 3RR, then a sock check might be in order. In the meantime, I'd ask everyone to keep an eye on Uncertainty principle to make sure that this rubbish isn't reintroduced. -- SCZenz 06:15, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

It seems Arbatsky references have entered about 40 of our physics articles . As he is essentially an unicted author , I suggest we just summarily rervert all references to Arbatsky in all articles. --Pjacobi 07:06, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Concur. Even if this were seriously peer-reviewed research, new research does not go in articles on the foundations of quantum mechanics. Fortunately, there are not so many physics articles on that google list as one might fear, and there is apparently more than one Arbatsky. -- SCZenz 07:34, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Dear friends, (1) the new article was not a re-creation of the old one, the content was very different, (2) I have seen a long discussion on the page User_talk:Rcq and found that, according to WP policy, there is no reason to wait for reinstatement of the article (the arguments of RCQ about reinstatement of the history are incorrect). So I created a new one. (3) All talks about whether Arbatsky and the journal are "well-known" or "not-well-known" are just demagogy and nothing more. (4) An opinion of a specialist is welcome. If somebody has objections about the certainty principle, on the purely scientific ground, you are welcome to discuss them. Hryun 15:08, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

It's not "demogogy", it's a crucial part of our policies on not giving people with fringe theories a soapbox (a key part of our WP:NOR policy). Arbatsky can get a page on here for his theory once others accept it. Misplaced Pages is not a place to launch new investigations, which is what is pretty clear what is being attempted here. --Fastfission 15:20, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages is not a place for scientific discussions of validity. We are doing inclusion decisions on purely formal grounds. --Pjacobi 15:23, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

You are right, my friends. And I completely agree with you. But this topic was already discussed on the page User_talk:Rcq. Hryun 15:27, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Please don't recreate the article until it has appeared in a scientific journal that we can find some information on—it's not an unreasonable request, since essentially all journals in physics have (at least) their abstracts on the internet. Until that happens, I think the reasons for the original deletion of the article remain valid, and so the article can be deleted as the recreation of deleted content. -- SCZenz 15:47, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

(1) Sorry, but I cannot agree with you. If an article has been published in a not-well-known journal, you cannot use this only fact against it. (2) I do not want to make more problems here than necessary. I am open for a civil discussion. (3) I do not want to waste time of administrators more than necessary. But please, do not ask me to agree with obscurants. If you cannot say anything more wise, we will have a battle here. Sorry. Hryun 16:16, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

We're only asking for any verifiable information on the journal at all—can you provide that? As for your last sentence, please see WP:NOT#Misplaced Pages is not a battleground. If you want to appeal the original deletion, please do so at Misplaced Pages:Deletion Review. -- SCZenz 16:23, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

(1) I even can send an issue of the journal to you. But it is expensive... (2) I hope that "Misplaced Pages is not a battleground". This is why you must accept the article. (3) If you really care about the content, you can place some appropriate tag on the article (something about "neutrality" or "POV"). I will not remove it. (4) The original article was created not by me, but by User:Slicky. The content was very different. Hryun 16:58, 6 June 2006 (UTC) Dear friends, I am waiting... On my talk page I explained to ScienceApologist that you will not be able to block my access to WP. And in direct creation/deletion battle I will win. So, I ask you to suggest something more wise than you already have written above. Do not try to just ignore me. Thank you. Hryun 18:53, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Template:Physics Series

There is a person, editing under a variety of names, who is adding the template {{Physics Series}} to a number of articles. I got into a disagreement with him/her already because he was over-writing the {{physics}} template (which I was trying to add features to) for the same purpose; that disagreement seems to be over and he/she seems to be satisfied with the new template name, but now I have another question... Is {{Physics Series}} really a desirable template to have in our major articles? See, for example, particle physics, which had its original picture moved waaaay down the article in order to accomodate the template. -- SCZenz 13:22, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I think that template is kinda neat, but I don't prefer it to pictures. Is there a way to accommodate both? -lethe 13:24, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

We could make the template wider and give it a flexible picture. Or we could put it on the left, with a picture on the right, but I don't think that will look good. Other ideas? -- SCZenz 13:51, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Maybe it could go at the bottom of the page? I dunno, I'm not big on layout and stuff, but if someone made a good case, I could be convinced to keep it. -lethe 15:21, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

POV/Pseudoscience/"extreme generalization" alert

Appearently B. Roy Frieden, a Professor Emeritus of optics, discovered, late in life, that everything is related to everything and that information theory and ergodic theory and fluctuations etc. is the theory of everything and so on. Seems to be a manic phase, headed for a fall. Thus we have the highly suspect Extreme physical information article, which is at least pseudoscience and is probably worth an AfD discussion. There's leakage to Fisher information (bottom of article) and Lagrangian (section on "informqation lagrangian"), and possibly other places. The external web sites for Frieden's theories are crankier than my own cranky writing, ergo are far too far out there to be considered science. linas 15:51, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Listed for AfD Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Extreme physical information --DV8 2XL 16:20, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

The article has some fans it seems. Unless some support for deletion shows up, it's going to fail on momentum. --DV8 2XL 17:37, 6 June 2006 (UTC)