Talk:Kennelly–Heaviside layer

Spoilers
Somebody said it's "ridiculous" to put a spoiler warning in a physics article. However, the warning was in the "Cultural Impact" section because said section gives away the ending of the musical CATS. With this is mind, should there be a spoiler warning, or is this just a case of somebody making judgments without even reading the article? If there's a good reason why that should not be marked as a spoiler, I won't question the issue further, but I would like to know this person's reasoning... Lycanthrope777 19:21, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

How can people in 1902 predict the existence of something the existence of which was proven experimentally in 1899?

First and Second Heaviside Layers?
The book “Wonders of Science” (Metro Publications, New York, 1943) describes a first Heaviside layer (40-50 miles altitude) and a second Heaviside layer (100-120 miles altitude). Both layers are descibed to contain “minute nitrogen crystals” that reflect wireless waves to the Earth. Does anyone know the history on how this evolved into our present understanding? —Preceding unsigned comment added by ShermansPlanet (talk • contribs) 17:28, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

The last note in this article is incorrect "This may be a scientific pun by Eliot". Anions and cations are from the same roots as anode and cathode "up pole" and "down pole". See the respective articles in Wikipedia.75.57.252.95 (talk) 15:19, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Wrong frequency band!
As written, the article states, "It (Kennelly-Heaviside) reflects medium-frequency radio waves..."

This isn't true. The E-layer reflects radio waves in the higher parts of the high-frequency and in the the very-high frequency spectrum. Medium-frequency waves are not propagated by the E-layer See:

http://www.arrl.org/files/file/Technology/pdf/119962.pdf — Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.147.72.48 (talk) 16:44, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

Wrong physics!
This part is not true: "Conversely, on the night (lee) side of the Earth, the solar wind drags the ionosphere further away, thereby greatly increasing the range which radio waves can travel by reflection."

The ionosphere appears to move up on the nightside because the source of ionization (sunlight) is removed, and the lower part recombines more rapidly due to increased collisions with the neutral atmospheric gas, which is more dense at lower altitudes. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.244.38.5 (talk) 14:32, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

Does anyone actually call it this?
I've heard of the "Heaviside layer" for most of my life. I've heard of the "Kennelly–Heaviside layer" once, here. Does anyone actually call it this, or is this simply someone being pedantic? Maury Markowitz (talk) 16:02, 18 January 2014 (UTC)


 * much more commonly simply called the "Heaviside Layer". The article should be renamed this, and "Kennelly–Heaviside layer" should be the redirect, instead of vice versa. Geoffrey.landis (talk) 03:17, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Totally agree, I'd never even heard of Kennelly before visiting this page. I suspect some proud American patriot has decided to wave the flag a bit, but that's not what WP is for. --Ef80 (talk) 15:06, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
 * See this n-gram https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Kennelly-Heaviside+layer%2C+Heaviside+layer%2C&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3 Constant314 (talk) 18:46, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

Cats
An IPC para has twice been removed now, explaining the relationship of the Heaviside Layer to the musical and recent film Cats.

Fortunately we have an article at Heaviside Layer, which does much the same job. As the pageview traffic shows that is getting four times the traffic this is, and with a large spike overall when the film came out, clearly this section should not be deleted as "unimportant trivia". Like it or not, the world's interest is more about a film than ionospheric propagation.

So, what's to do? Andy Dingley (talk) 20:29, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
 * 1) As it was, with IPC here
 * 2) As it is now, with IPC only in Heaviside Layer
 * 3) Merge, and keep the IPC within the article. This also solves the issue that no-one (see above) calls it after Kennelly anyway.
 * Clearly it should also be linked at the article Cat. If someone could explain why it doesn't get linked there ,please? Clearly more relevant. --Wtshymanski (talk) 20:21, 23 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Propose rename of Heaviside Layer to Heaviside Layer (Cats) as it has nothing to do with the physical Heavisde Layer. --Wtshymanski (talk) 20:26, 23 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose That would be a disambiguator where none is needed. Andy Dingley (talk) 23:21, 23 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Agree The Heaviside layer article logically should be this one; the use in "Cats" is a metaphor. And, yes, if some people think that's the main meaning of the term, a disambiguator is very clearly needed.
 * Cats are already a familiar topic and I see no indication that that article is seeing a film-related drive of traffic, as Heaviside Layer clearly is. Andy Dingley (talk) 23:21, 23 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Shouldn't we disambiguate between things that sound the same but denote completelyl different concepts? Even on a clear day, I can't see any cats in the upper atmosphere. --Wtshymanski (talk) 20:33, 29 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Heaviside Layer has already done just that. Andy Dingley (talk) 21:06, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

Can't someone just add one of those top article redirect links saying "If you're looking for the stupidly-named thing from that damn awful musical, click here"? --2600:1700:B450:7500:A1E7:CB1B:4BB5:B617 (talk) 07:58, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Request for clarification: what is the downside of including the IPC paragraph? At present, if a user searches for "Heaviside layer" directly, the user is directed to this article, which does not mention the reference in the musical. The reference is definitely inspired by the scientific concept, albeit abstractly. This article, as it stands, isn't terribly long; an IPC paragraph doesn't seem to add a significant maintenance burden and adds better interconnection for people searching the term because they heard it in the musical.

There is discussion on moving the existing "Heaviside_Layer_(Cats)" page into the Cats_(musical) page, which would diminish the utility of the current solution. Mtomczak (talk) 20:36, 9 July 2020 (UTC)


 * When I turned up, Heaviside layer was a redirect to the musical, which is silly, since this is at LEAST as likely a search target. Changed the redirect to a disambiguation page, and removed the hatnote. PianoDan (talk) 23:45, 10 January 2022 (UTC)


 * Ugh - on further inspection, it was even MORE tangled. Heaviside Layer pointed here, while Heaviside layer pointed at "Cats".  I changed to former to a redirect to the latter, and made the latter the disambig page, per the MOS. PianoDan (talk) 23:55, 10 January 2022 (UTC)