Talk:Numerical relativity

This page needs to be thoroughly rewritten and expanded. The current article gives a seriously misleading impression of the goals of numerical relativity, the state of the art, and open problems. CH 18:58, 28 May 2005


 * Maybe, but I have a feeling that there is a great shortage of people who know enough about the subject matter to be able do this rewritten.... it really is rocket science! :) novacatz 14:47, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

There appear to be a handful of active Wikipedia editors who have the neccessary background and writing ability to write a decent article. The trouble is that they don't have the time.---CH 04:37, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

So maybe an introduction will help. I'm a graduate student studying Numerical Relativity at Wake Forest University. I dropped a couple comments on other relativity related topics. As a graduate student, I know only enough to be dangerous so I try to keep my comments to the few things that I am fairly certain about. My advisor, like you say, is probably too busy to write something specifically for Wikipedia - though he is considered with some regard in the field (and has handed my intellectual butt to me many times). If you want some good sources for reviews in General Relativity though, you should check out the following website: http://relativity.livingreviews.org/Articles/

Living Reviews is meant for the best in various fields to come around and write overviews of where our research basically stands right now (idealy). Some of the articles are well written and people with a mathematical background can learn a lot from them. I'd recommend some authors (though I am by no means disregarding the others): Clifford M. Will, Greg Cook and Luc Blanchet. I've just found their work easier to understand myself. With those tools in hand, I'm pretty sure someone who is careful (and mathematically savvy enough) could put together a better article on these subjects.

Warning, these articles fill in some holes but don't make you (or certainly me) an expert.

Jason Grigsby


 * Thanks for your comments, Jason. I agree that LLR is the place of first resort for a WP editor with a strong general background in physics to go for guidance in preparing an WP article on virtually any topic which is covered there. ---CH 23:22, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Students beware
I had been making a half-hearted attempt to monitor this article (which has been in very bad shape during my entire year as a Wikipedian), but I am leaving the WP and am now abandoning this article to its fate.

Good luck to all students in your search for information, regardless!---CH 02:36, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Sad situation: - It is a pity that [CH] abandons the project. I publish in numerical relativity and therefore cannot undertake such edits as I will have to cite my own work which I find unethical/uncomfortable. Rather than thrashing an editor, why dont you help him update it.? It is easier to complain than actually do the work, right? I think CH did a great job but just need to get in contact with the complainers and others to get the article to the cutting edge.


 * I don't understand what you mean; why you cannot avoid citing you own work? If you really cannot, that means your work is necessary and that other people would cite them too anyway. Temur (talk) 04:09, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Rewrite in Progress
I will attempt to add some more detail to this article in time. In the meanwhile I removed the lion's share of the computational difficulties for a number of reasons: 1) they implied nonexistence of compact coordinates; 2) they seemed to imply that non-linear PDE's are more challenging to solve numerically than ``analytically'', contradicting the supposed reason for using numerical methods; 3) states that roundoff error of floating point precision makes numerical approximation methods inconsistent with the Einstein equations seemingly ignoring weak formulations which do not discretise the PDE's.

I added some sections which refer to other active areas of research, since the binary black hole isn't the only thing researched, and certainly numerical relativity doesn't just look at dynamical spacetimes. I made a methodology section and merged and expanded the elliptic equations section into it.

Although the 3+1 decomposition is really only of interest to numerical relativity, I am not so sure this article should be it's home. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Atonita (talk • contribs) 17:13, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

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