Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics/Archive October 2011

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.

List of important publications in geology up for deletion

List of important publications in geology has been nominated for deletion, with the implicit argument that such a list is original research; the discussion is at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of important publications in geology. --Lambiam 21:12, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

This follows deletion of List of important publications in biology at AfD. Several others are also listed at AfD. --Bduke (Discussion) 22:49, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Red Link Recovery Live

Howdy. For a while now, the Red Link Recovery Project has been using a tool (named Red Link Recovery Live) to find and correct unnecessarily red links in Wikipedia articles. For example, for the red link Annual Reviews of Nuclear and Particle Science on the article Leptogenesis (physics) it might suggest that the link be changed to Annual Review of Nuclear and Particle Science.

The tool currently has around 1100 suggestions for corrections to red links on articles relevant to this project (those in Category:Physics_articles_by_quality). Each time you visit this link, you'll be shown two or three of these suggested fixes. I'll be delighted if anyone with a few minutes to spare would care to do so and help improve the quality of this project's articles. - TB (talk) 14:37, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Einstein vs Poincare spilling into Speed of light

About POV-pushing at Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard#Priority for the concept of the constant speed of light (leftover from this talk page section). DVdm (talk) 16:48, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

It all has to do with some creationist twit saying that Einstein's Theory of Relativity promoted moral relativism. Amazing what rubbish people pushing things like that will get up to. Dmcq (talk) 17:06, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Single purpose account blocked for sockpuppetry, as was to be expected. DVdm (talk) 21:12, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Virtual particle article contradicts uncertainty principle article

The article on virtual particles contradicts the article on the uncertainty principle by stating:

"The virtual particle forms of massless particles, such as photons, do have mass (which may be either positive or negative) and are said to be off mass shell. They are allowed to have mass (which consists of "borrowed energy") because they exist for only a temporary time, which in turn gives them a limited "range". This is in accordance with the uncertainty principle which allows existence of such particles of borrowed energy, so long as their energy, multiplied by the time they exist, is a fraction of Planck's constant."

while the article on the uncertainty principle states:

"Another common misconception is that the energy-time uncertainty principle says that the conservation of energy can be temporarily violated – energy can be "borrowed" from the Universe as long as it is "returned" within a short amount of time.[26] Although this agrees with the spirit of relativistic quantum mechanics, it is based on the false axiom that the energy of the Universe is an exactly known parameter at all times. More accurately, when events transpire at shorter time intervals, there is a greater uncertainty in the energy of these events. Therefore it is not that the conservation of energy is violated when quantum field theory uses temporary electron-positron pairs in its calculations, but that the energy of quantum systems is not known with enough precision to limit their behavior to a single, simple history. Thus the influence of all histories must be incorporated into quantum calculations, including those with much greater or much less energy than the mean of the measured/calculated energy distribution." --130.225.244.206 (talk) 18:17, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Although these paragraphs are not expressed very clearly, I do not think that they actually contradict each other. Energy is exactly conserved. However, the division of energy between a system which endures for a limited time and the rest of the universe is not well-defined. The shorter the duration, the more vaguely the energy is known. For virtual particles, the relativistic energy-momentum equation fails to provide an exact relationship between the mass and the energy and momentum of the particle. That is because it is actually an artifact of destructive interference of the wave function with itself. JRSpriggs (talk) 00:24, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Two accelerating universe articles

Could someone look at reconciling / merging the old article accelerating universe with the recently created accelerating expansion of the cosmos? Though recently created (mainly by just two editors), the second article is actually longer. However it also suffers from formatting and style problems. Now that the accelerating universe has won the Nobel prize, people are going to be looking for this information and it would be nice have things be cleaned up and merged as appropriate. Dragons flight (talk) 19:02, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

AfD of Neo-relativity

New article Neo-relativity has been sent to AfD here as OR. JRSpriggs (talk) 08:13, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

This is the work of Gameseeker (talk · contribs). A second article of theirs, Rajagopal Kamath, is also being reviewed at AfD. It might be worth vetting their recent contributions to Neutrino, Fifth force, Theory of relativity, Special relativity, and Speed of light, just in case they've been on a linking spree. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 08:55, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

OPERA neutrino anomaly

We should have a look at the OPERA neutrino anomaly article. --D.H (talk) 16:29, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

It seems a nice article. It's not pushing a POV and is well sourced. The experiment is certainly notable owing to the huge media attention it received. Even if/when the results are proven wrong (as is quite likely) the experiment itself will remain notable. But I agree that the article and related article should be watched to make sure dubious information isn't added. Polyamorph (talk) 17:49, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Some news stories mentioned that they even corrected for the rotation of the Earth. This makes me wonder whether the error might lie in how that correction or another correction was done. Thus it would be nice to see the article list the various corrections and say something about how they were done. JRSpriggs (talk) 06:26, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

That's a well-enough-known source of error that I'd expect it to have been very carefully corrected for. I'd wait until one of the many groups mulling over the results puts out a critique paper before adding commentary about sources of error (beyond just listing ones that have been noted by the media). About all that can be reliably/verifiably said right now (as far as I know) is that they checked (list of things) and have presented their work for others to check. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 07:31, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but I saw a textbook on special relativity once which had an error in one of the solutions to its problems. Even supposed experts can make a conceptual mistake by implicitly assuming pre-relativistic ideas. If they assumed that going once around the Earth would return them to the original reference frame, then they would be making such a mistake. JRSpriggs (talk) 11:14, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Why do you feel it would be more likely for them to have made an elementary mistake than a mistake with one of the other error sources that's more difficult to analyze or more difficult to account for systematic errors with?

Even disregarding that question, why do you feel it's the job of the Wikipedia article to go down the list of possible errors and say, "this is what it could likely be", rather than wait for external research groups studying the problem to do that?

It's possible that I'm misunderstanding what your position is, but I really don't see why the Wikipedia article about the experiment has to contain very much at all about this before people have published critiques of the experiment in appropriate journals. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 19:31, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

The simple answer is that our opinion on the accuracy of the experiment and the possible sources of error is irrelevant. You are absolutely correct in that until such critiques are published in reliable sources we should not be adding our own opinions on the matter per WP:OR. Polyamorph (talk) 19:37, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Though obviously not something one puts in Wikipedia, I would mention that I actually calculated the size of the motion of the Earth corrections shortly after the paper came out and concluded that they were significantly smaller than the reported effect. Dragons flight (talk) 19:48, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, you need much higher speeds. You can also quite easily calculate that to get the synchronization wrong by 60 ns, you could synchronize the clocks in a frame that is moving at about twice the velocity the GPS satellites. Obviously, they didn't synchronize the clocks in this way, but hypothetically, you can imagine that you synchronize clocks in the frame of a GPS satellite and then, instead of subtracting a 30 ns time difference to correct for this, you add 30 ns due to some software bug, leading to a 60 ns error :) . Count Iblis (talk) 20:09, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Indeed, a software bug is the most plausible-sounding (to me) of the proposed explanations of the anomaly I've heard. (Neglected GR effects? FFS, Earth's r_{Schwarzschild}/r is a hell of a lot smaller than 2.45×10⁻⁵.) ― A. di M._plé^dréachtaí 17:23, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Superfluid vacuum

My first impression due to the minimal history at the primary article and the large number of redirects/aliases is that this is someone's pet model and that one or more editors have gone on linking sprees pushing it. That said, I am not an expert in the field. Anyone else care to take a look and comment? I encourage using the "what links here" tab, as the web of linking is rather extensive. My concern is violation of WP:UNDUE. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 10:25, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Breaking down maintenance categories in terms of project importance

Does anybody know, if there is a way to get break down of the various maintenance attention categories in terms of the project importance? For example, producing a list of all top importance physics articles that are tagged for requiring additional references, or all low importance physics articles tagged for notability concerns. Ideally, I would like to create a table like Wikipedia:WikiProject_Physics/Current_status_of_physics_articles, but instead of the quality ratings having various maintenance categories. This would be a very useful tool in monitoring the project article quality, and gives us a handle on reducing maintenance backlogs based on the priorities of our project. Any idea if this is possible and how?T R 14:59, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

White hole article

The White Hole article seems very poor and unscientific to me in a couple of passages. There is no mentioning of the problem of white holes existing at all but rather sci-fi like speculations about parallel universes... Can someone have a look at it? --Schiefesfragezeichen (talk) 21:52, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Well, the content currently IS very close to standard textbook treatments of the subject. The text has many issues, which need to be dealt with. Like the use of URLs in mid text. But the scientific accuracy is actually pretty good.T R 06:13, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps a cleanup occurred in the meantime, then. When I un-watched it, it had suffered from a series of substantial amendments that weren't consistent with each other, and a large and disorganized "in popular culture" section. It's been a while, though. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 07:38, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

It still needs a lot of clean up, but has been mostly fairly accurate for a while now (more than a year). It is not a very good article at the moment, but at least it is not flat out wrong.T R 08:17, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Gravitomagnetism

I believe someone we have had some dealings with before is editing Gravitomagnetism. Anyone like to look at it and confirm my suspicions and delete the lot/tell me I'm paranoid as the case my be. Thanks Dmcq (talk) 16:06, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

He seems to have rediscovered the centrality of the Earth in the cosmos. The caption of a new illustration says "By the end of the continuum's gravitational life cycle, its gravitoelectromagnetic matter waves become spaghettified into a "dendritic drainage system", collecting the continuum's gravitoelectric force (wavefunction, information[7][8]) to a single point—the planet Earth. Thus, the informational progress of mankind is the final crescendo of the continuum's gravitational evolution.". JRSpriggs (talk) 17:38, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Please, delete the whole mess. Another contribution from this IP to Free entropy has been undone. I really like the article on Gravitomagnetism, and this pasta thing is clearly nonsense. --Daniel (talk) 19:21, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Can someone fix the archive? It's located at Talk:Gravitomagnetism/archive1, but should be located at Talk:Gravitomagnetism/archive 1 . 70.49.126.190 (talk) 04:04, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Done. This doesn't actually matter unless Miszabot is set up to archive it (and arguably doesn't matter much even then, as you can configure the archive name string in its template). --Christopher Thomas (talk) 04:35, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Actually, a bunch of common templates assume certain names for archives (like archivenav) 70.49.126.190 (talk) 06:19, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

I believe the ips are Antichristos/Systemizer again and deleted the lot. They've reinstated them so it will need a proper block. Have to go now though. Dmcq (talk) 09:42, 13 October 2011 (UTC)]]

Thanks Favonian for the semi-protection. Dmcq (talk) 23:01, 13 October 2011 (UTC).

I'm not convinced that these IPs are Systemizer. Systemizer's MO was to post long essays about how something bizzare happened when things were blue-shifted close to the Planck length, if memory serves. I support the reverts either way, but I don't think this passes the duck test for sock-puppetry (unless there are other Systemizer/AC posts that this resembles that I'd missed). --Christopher Thomas (talk) 19:42, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

See [1]

Keyword: St. Petersburg. Check the IP's with WHOIS and contribs. The oldest IP is

91.122.93.63 (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RBLs · proxy check · block user · block log · cross-wiki contribs · CheckUser (log))

See their edits here, the IP taken over from Antichristos after their block.

Then check the current ones:

89.110.23.46 (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RBLs · proxy check · block user · block log · cross-wiki contribs · CheckUser (log))

91.122.1.39 (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RBLs · proxy check · block user · block log · cross-wiki contribs · CheckUser (log))

91.122.86.108 (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RBLs · proxy check · block user · block log · cross-wiki contribs · CheckUser (log))

92.100.169.26 (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RBLs · proxy check · block user · block log · cross-wiki contribs · CheckUser (log))

95.55.112.91 (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RBLs · proxy check · block user · block log · cross-wiki contribs · CheckUser (log))

Also look at the recent edit summaries. A twin duck :-) - DVdm (talk) 22:25, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for sniffing my socks, DVdm. — 89.110.2.109 (talk) 09:16, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

It does look a bit like the user eschatos at knol in that edit is the same but I can't be sure. My guess is they'll come back trying to cover their tracks better. If they cover their tracks so well they're indistinguishable from a good contributor I guess I wouldn't mind ;-) Dmcq (talk) 09:53, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

In article Spacetime with another attempt.

89.110.31.63 (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RBLs · proxy check · block user · block log · cross-wiki contribs · CheckUser (log))

DVdm (talk) 09:54, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Time to consider rangeblocks on 89.110.x and 91.122.x, I'd think? The editor has expressed clear intent to continue with disruption. It won't get all of the IPs used, but will get about half of them. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 18:28, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

RfC on a cold fusion editor

See here. Have mörser, will travel (talk) 18:55, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Rotating black hole

Can someone correct the original research under the "possibility of time travel" section? Gravitoweak (talk) 12:07, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Ouch, that section is pretty bad. Note, however, that the maximally extended Kerr metric does contain closed timelike curves, and therefore seemingly allows time travel. This is probably what however wrote that was trying to refer to. I'm sort of wondering whether rotating black hole and Kerr metric should be merged to a single article.T R 13:18, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

My user page MfDed

My user page has been sent to MfD. If you have an opinion on this, you may express it at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:JRSpriggs. JRSpriggs (talk) 12:56, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Result was speedy keep. JRSpriggs (talk) 03:19, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

My thanks to all who supported me at MfD, and especially to Polyamorph and Jowa fan. JRSpriggs (talk) 06:30, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

AfC submission

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Photographic Hypersensitization could use a knowledgeable editor's help. Have mörser, will travel (talk) 08:05, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Shear strength soil

Shear strength (soil) ; I know this is Geology rather than pure physics, but I thought it could maybe use an outside perspective. On the talk page there are some comments about recent publications, people argue that secondary sources aren't as reliable as primary, and the latest additions suggest fundamental disagreements. Talk:Shear strength (soil)

IF you are going to critique the critical state approach, then you MUST also qualify the steady state approach. Though Joseph's hypothesis is intuitive he has not demonstrated its physical basis!!! Also, it is not a true constitutive model--can't generalize to all stress paths!!! Further it has not been independently verified!!! Tcat64 (talk)

and physical basis of critical state is??? of gravity??? At least Joseph hypoth. is intuitive. Jankar68

I know nothing about the topic, maybe someone has knowledge about the current consensus in this field? DS Belgium (talk) 14:59, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

I also didn't know where to post this, is there some non-formal RfC for Physics or sciences? Wikipedia seems filled with all kinds of old projects no longer active, if there is a page that gives a good overview, I'd like to know, because I still keep getting lost. Or a place/group involved in creating a clear structure, that would be one I'd like to participate in. DS Belgium (talk) 15:26, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Long-term disruptive editor at black hole

As some of you are already aware, JoetheMoe25 (talk · contribs) has been intermittently changing Black hole (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) to reflect his interpretation of Hawking's statements about the Thorne-Hawking-Preskill bet. He has been reverted by multiple editors, who have attempted to engage him in talk-page discussion, but he seems to be at it again. I've tagged his talk page with a warning, but more eyes on the situation would be helpful. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 02:11, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Reaction Mechanics

New article via AfC. Could use a subject-matter review. Uʔ (talk) 16:09, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

It has been nominated for deletion. RockMagnetist (talk) 16:38, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Collapsed essay. Convince the scientific community, not us. See WP:NOR, WP:N, WP:UNDUE, WP:RS, and WP:V for what Wikipedia writes about. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 18:31, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

NOTE FROM AUTHOR OF REACTIONMECHANICS

REACTION MECHANICS is a mathematical method for calculating the motion of point particle systems with delayed interaction. Most delayed interactions occur because the interactions propagates with a finite velocity. Electromagnetic and gravitational interactions propagate with the speed of light. The euation of motion of Reaction Mechanics generates the appropriate Advanced and Retarded terms without the necessety of postulating additional potentials. In the limit of no delay the equation of motion of Reaction Mechanics reverts to the Euler Lagrange equation of motion of Classical Mechanics. In the limit of infinitesimal delay Reaction Mechanics reverts to the equation of motion of the General Theory of Relativity. The equation of motion of Reaction Mechanics was derived by the same variational method as Classical Mechanics and the General Theory of Relativity. Neither Newtonian Classical Mechanics nor the General Theory of Relativity analizes systems with delay.

Reactin mechanics has been used in an article "contribution of the Delayed Gravitationl Interaction of Pairs of Point Objects" in Advances of Natureal Science to calculate the delay contribution to the lunar and binary starr 596B orbits. The results are in excellent agreement with observations.

Other articles discussing similar subject are:

1. "Über den Wirkungszusammenhang der Welt. Eine Erweiterung der Klassischen Dynamik" by Hugo Martin Tetrode, Zeitschrift für Physik Vol. 10, pp 317, (1922).

2. P. A. M. Dirac, Proceedings of the Royal Cociety, London, A167, pp 148, (1938)

3. “Absorber Theory and the Radiation Arrow of Time“ by J. A Wheeler and R. Feynman, Review of Modem Physics, Vol. 17, pp 157 - 181 (1945)

4. “On Wheeler - Feynman Absorber Theory of Radiation” by R. V. Kamat Journal of Physics A Vol. 3 pp 473 - 480, (1970) printed in Great Britain

5. "On Advanced and Retarded Potentials" by Alfred Lande, Letter to Editor Phys. Rev. Vol. 80 p. 283

(1950)

acceptance letter to (journal of) Advances of Natural Science:

Académie canadienne de culture orientale et occidentale Canadian Academy of Oriental and Occidental Culture 3-265 Melrose, Montreal (Verdun), Quebec, Canada, Postal Code H4H 1T2 E-mail: callpaper@cscanada.org caooc@hotmail.com Http://www.cscanada.org The Notice of Accepting Paper Dear Philipp Kornreich, your paper "CONTRIBUTION OF THE DELAYED GRAVITATIONAL INTERACTION TO THE MOTION OF OBJECT PAIRS”, after the peer review, has been accepted by the journal Advances in Natural Science, ISSN 1715-7862, Volume 3, Number 2. We are arranging to publish it on December 31, 2010. Please mail the filled and signed Copyright Transfer Statement to us before August 31, 2010. Thank you for your cooperation. Advances in Natural Science Editorial Board In Montreal, August 5, 2010 Journal: Canadian Social Science ISSN 1712-8056 Bimonthly Journal: Cross-Cultural Communication ISSN 1712-8358 Quarterly Journal: Management Science and Engineering ISSN 1913-0341 Quarterly Publisher: Canadian Academy of Oriental and Occidental Culture Http://www.cscanada.org E-mail: callpaper@cscanada.org — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pkornrei (talk • contribs) 17:55, 28 October 2011 (UTC)