Talk:Outline of space science

Science fiction
Wikieditors please feel free to discuss this article with Michael Hooten; mlhooten@gmail.com.

Reverted the edit by User:Uncle G - removed perfectly good references However this page is a mess and need a great deal of tidying up Jaster 16:39, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Please learn how to edit, rather than simply how to revert. If you wanted the references, those alone are what you should have re-added, not the entire morass of science fiction that was in the rest of the article.  Uncle G 16:52, 12 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Sorry Now Iv'e had time to actually read the morass of text on this page I can see it's just (very badly) reinterating what is on the barely/badly linked pages and is not adding anything new, or where it is it is new reasearch or opinion, I've mostly put back what you had, The references were perfectly good but refered to stuff which should have been on other pages ...Jaster 17:21, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I've just discovered, from repairing the interwiki links, that the references, like the interwiki links, were copied and pasted wholesale from extraterrestrial life. Uncle G 17:31, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
 * The only thing that needs improving now is the preamble (what is space science...) the current is much better that the old one but could do with being less "it's science about space" ...Jaster 17:35, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
 * is that better ? Jaster 17:50, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I think that it was probably better to have the internal links. Uncle G 09:40, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

The two remaining references seem to be both to do with Space exploration and not specifically Space Science ? Is there a reason they are here ? Jaster 17:50, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Proposals
Propose addition of 3 major categories, equal in heirarchy with exobiology, astronomy etc: SOLAR SCIENCE (concerning the sciences related to Stars), GALACTIC SCIENCE (concerning the sciences related to galaxies), SPACE DEFENSE Mlhooten. Oct 24, 2006.

Propose changing name of Planetary Science to Non-Earth Planetary Science. Mlhooten. Oct 24, 2006.


 * Solar Science - no, Solar = Sun = Sol = Our star not every star


 * This would be Stellar Science but that is a stub due to the material being covered by Astronomy and it's sub articles, So the Astronomy Section covers this ....


 * GALACTIC SCIENCE - Galactic astronomy and Extragalactic astronomy cover this They could be added as sub-categories of Astronomy/Cosmology


 * Space Defence ~= Strategic Defense Initiative and not really a major topic of space science ?
 * Maybe we should have a more general topic of Militarisation of space ?? Jaster 11:04, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Proposal of addition of SPACE SCIENCE'S HISTORY ---reply--- Stellar Science vs Solar Science. Agreed. Stellar Science is the overall term.

But which part of Astronomy are you proposing Stellar Science is a part of? Stellar science is the study of 1000000000000000000 Stars. (yes that is really true, proven by deep field survey). Seems to me that Stellar Science is larger than Astronomical Science. In 10 years Wikipedia might have 10,000 entries for 10,000 different named solar systems ("put your name on a star"). Why don't we put the master sublinks to those 10,000 entries in something besides the article talking about "telescopes"? Mlhooten. Oct 25, 2006.

Did you read what I wrote in cabal about Library of Congress Classification "Descriptive Astronomy"? We should put general descriptions of particular stars in NEITHER Astronomy NOR Stellar Science! General descriptions of stars should go into "Geography of the Universe" or similar. Would you go to an astrophysicist to give you a general description of the mountains on the moon? Would you go to a Planetary Scientist? No, you would go to a GEOGRAPHER. Mlhooten. Oct 25, 2006.


 * Stellar = of the stars, Astro- = of stars, Geo- = of earth, If I wanted a description of the mountains of the moon I would talk to a Selenographer or Planetary Scientist
 * the preamble to the Astronomy article does not even mention telescopes? It says it "the science of celestial objects (e.g., stars, planets, comets, and galaxies)" So Astronomy covers everything and Stellar Science covers just the stars? Cosmology is the study of the Universe in its totality, but Geography is "the study of the Earth's features and of the distribution of life on the earth"
 * So the levels are


 * Astronomy
 * Cosmology
 * Astrophysics
 * Stellar Science
 * Planetary Science
 * Geography
 * Selenology
 * Probably it would be a good idea to look at Portal:Astronomy in particular it's Projects section ... Jaster 08:22, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Page destroyed and redone
Dear Jaster, I have done a whole lot of work to clean this up to many of your standards. Do appreciate that you are on top of my mistakes. Would much appreciate it if you would just delete or change or correct or reduce or reword or refont any and all portions of this version that you wish, rather than just revert. Most sincerely yours, Michael Hooten. Oct 28, 2006.


 * I've started to clean it up .... watch this page and I will as I get time restructure it Jaster 16:42, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Arguing the validity of this page
I have found no viable source (especially the links at the bottom of the sites page) that truly references the term Space Science. However I did find this one link, http://icc.ub.edu/gp_astut.php, that does reference Space Science but not to merit it its own page. I feel that this page needs to be removed or a viable reason for why this page was created. As I am seeing it Astronomy is the same as Space science. Richard Lloyd 22:00, 29 September 2008 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.186.137.207 (talk)

I tend to agree with the previous comment. Most of the present article duplicates subjects treated in the articles astronomy and space exploration. I suggest that unique material within those areas are moved to those two artiles. The current article (Space science) ought to be reduced to a short article similar in character to space research. It should give the reader a list of the scientific disciplines generally covered by the term space science, and perhaps some examples of the use of this term and the history of the term. 2011 Jan 3 / 216Kleopatra (talk) 12:57, 3 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Space science is a recognized discipline, with several text books. (A couple are "Space Science", by Wilmot Hess, 1970, and "Introduction to Space Science", by Robert Haymes, 1971. The Journal of Geophysical Research (JGR) and the American Geophysical Union (AGU) are major places to look for information.)  It covers some subjects that are important to NASA as discipline areas, like magnetospheric physics, solar-terrestrial interactions, and some aspects of earth science/planetary physics.  Space physics is roughly synonymous, if earth science be included.  But they are ambiguous as a borderline, cross-disciplinary subjects; such regions inevitably exist.  I think it deserves an article defining it, laying out the boundaries of the subject, with sections presenting a little bit of a a substantive overview for each area, and then wikilinks out to detailed coverage for each.  Then redirects from astronomy, physics, and space exploration can cover the gray areas without needing a mass of separate redundant articles.  Wwheaton (talk) 03:25, 19 February 2011 (UTC)


 * This is the only time I've heard a non-journalist refer to 'space science' (apart from academics complaining about journalists dumbing-down news stories). I'm not convinced that a discipline should be considered recognised by having books written on it.  I think a better metric would be to ask how many people would write 'space scientist' on their resume.

What is Space science ?
After some surfing on the web I get the impression that the term "Space science" is used with two distinct meanings:
 * Space science is the same thing as space research, i.e. scientific studies carried out using scientific equipment in space. This definition includes a much broader set of scientific disciplines than what is covered in the current article on space science (compare it to the article space research).
 * Space science is astronomy, the study of the universe outside Earth, with special emphasis on the type of astronomy that became possible in the space age. This is essentially the definition currently used in the preamble of the article space science, but the actual content of the article is slightly broader.

I believe it is important to agree on whether or not both the above usages of the term space science are common, before deciding on the future of the articel space science. 2011 Jan 3 / 216Kleopatra (talk) 15:26, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

"Van Allen radiation belt" -- a Wikipedia horror tale ?
Last night I removed an unsourced claim, attributed to Alex Dessler, that the Van Allen radiation belts may be due to volcanic activity. I think this is physically very unlikely, and not at all main-stream, though I am not an expert on Van Allen radiation. A little Google search found ~9000 hits on {'Alex Dessler' 'Van Allen'}, but looking at the top few I see only things that seem to quote our previous Wikipedia article verbatim — almost all having all or part of the phrase: "while Alex Dessler has argued that the belt is a result of volcanic activity". Most appear to be blogs & other lightweight material, nothing that looks like a reliable source. A full-text search of the Astrophysics Data System for {"ALEX DESSLER" "VAN ALLEN BELT"} found no hits between 1952 and 2003. (Where would one search for older space physics information, I wonder?)

At first glance it appears to me as if there may have been an avalanche or loop of citations stemming from that very early (~2002) Wikipedia mention. The editor who made the claim was blocked indefinitely in 2008 as a troll, although that was not at first enough to convict the edit. Although "Alex Dessler" is redlinked, he is a reputable worker in space science.

I looked around a bit for a proper source, and commented out the dubious claim, thinking that if there is a peer-reviewed article in a scientific journal that supports the claim, we should probably restore it. But I now it looks like this is a classic Wikipedia horror story.

When I could find no reasonable sources (glancing at only 30 or 40, of course not 9000), I sent an email, to Dessler, who quickly responded: I am (sort of) shocked that this is what is reported. It is true that I once made a verbal joke at a meeting where I was making fun of someone (Tom Gold as I recall) to make the point that correlations were not proof of physical causality. You need a viable theory to make the connection. For example, I like this quote, "It has been proven by thousands of experiments that the beating of tom-toms during an eclipse will restore the Sun." This is from E. Bright Wilsons's book (which I read as a graduate student in the early 1950s) Introduction to Research. Wilson did not believe this correlation was true, as I did not believe volcanoes could cause or have any effect on the Van Allen Belt. My point was regarded as funny enough that I believe Wilmot Hess, in one of his books, quoted me in the spirit of a physicist having fun. If he did, the book would have been published in the 1960s. I never put such nonsense in print -- OMG!

The edit that did the damage was:


 * 07:44, 18 November 2002 Lir (talk | contribs) (7,275 bytes) (undo)

Lir made many many edits, often on other subjects, for over 6 years before being blocked, many of which probably need to be reviewed carefully. So it is potentially a more general Wikipedia problem. I think this case history needs to be reported (and discussed) on some of the project pages — physics, astronomy, space science,... as many as are relevant, and wherever Lir made many edits. (I have by now put an expanded version this into the physics, astronomy, and space exploration project pages, and put this here as there is no space science project, and this article is central to the subject.)

This is the first clear instance I have encountered of what appears to be an attempt to undermine the integrity of Wikipedia by deliberate covert fallacious editing. It is not trolling, which I think is defined as a deliberate attempt to create destructive conflict by stirring up conflict, outrage & emotion, etc — ie, not hidden.

The appalling thing is that at this moment there hundreds of "sources" out there on the Internet—and none of them are reliable.

Cheers, Wwheaton (talk) 03:34, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Major restructuring underway
As requested by tags, I've begun a major restructuring of the article. The current content is highly redundant with astronomy but is a basically a bunch of links and catalog headings. I'm merging the links and any factual information with subarticles, and leaving behind a master list here (which then we'll need to decide whether to keep, further merge, or expand back into an article). -- Beland (talk) 04:55, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Geothermometry
I removed: "Geothermometry (heating of the earth, heat flow, volcanology, and hot springs)"

Just leaving a note here in case someone wants to create this article or make a redirect or add a mention to the article of a parent field. -- Beland (talk) 03:42, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Quick explanation of Wikipedia outlines
"Outline" is short for "hierarchical outline". There are two types of outlines: sentence outlines (like those you made in school to plan a paper), and topic outlines (like the topical synopses that professors hand out at the beginning of a college course). Outlines on Wikipedia are primarily topic outlines that serve 2 main purposes: they provide taxonomical classification of subjects showing what topics belong to a subject and how they are related to each other (via their placement in the tree structure), and as subject-based tables of contents linked to topics in the encyclopedia. The hierarchy is maintained through the use of heading levels and indented bullets. See Outlines for a more in-depth explanation. The Transhumanist 00:10, 9 August 2015 (UTC)