Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics/Archive December 2009

AFD Nanotech age
Please express your opinion here. Materialscientist (talk) 01:07, 30 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Of related interest is Template:Nanotech Age. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 01:32, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I missed it. The template lists proper articles. The title "Nanotech age" above it might not be ideal, but renaming and fixing appears easier than nominating that template for deletion. Materialscientist (talk) 01:38, 30 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Are you sure about that? Template:Nanotechnology already exists, and is much more widely applied. By contrast, Template:Nanotech Age is only linked from a handful of articles that this user added them to. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 06:42, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
 * No, I'm not, but the Template:Nanotech Age seems harmless. Personally, I dislike the arrangement of Template:Nanotechnology - it always interferes with some image or refs or "see also", etc, so that I had to delete it from one article simply because there was no way to find a place for it. Flat templates fit everywhere. Materialscientist (talk) 06:47, 30 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm all for creating a cleaner version of Template:Nanotechnology, but if a hypothetical Template:Nanotech Footer would not share the name of Template:Nanotech Age, and not share the content (being based instead on the contents of Template:Nanotechnology), why exactly would be be going through the template-renaming and complete rewrite, vs. just a scratch creation of the new template? I'm having trouble understanding what would be kept from the template in question. It's possible that I've missed part of the argument you're making; if so, by all means clarify, so that I can properly understand the rationale. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 07:11, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
 * The only use I see in template Nanotech age is the style of presentation. Such templates can be created, corrected and redirected any time. Deleting them takes much longer as we've got to nominate and wait quite some time (There is some useless gravitational template mentioned above - hardly deleted yet). Materialscientist (talk) 07:18, 1 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Deleting also avoids the unfortunate appearance of endorsing the original. In any case, it's moot point now, as I've taken half an hour and put together template:nanotech footer. Exactly the same links as template:nanotechnology, more conventional presentation, and much easier to maintain (due to lack of all the markup cruft in the original). The template:fusion power hierarchy was very handy as a reference. Enjoy! :)


 * (Note: I'm not going to be the one inserting template:nanotech footer into nanotechnology articles. People invested quite a lot of time in the old one (per template talk:nanotechnology), so quite a bit of negotiation would be required to avoid stepping on toes. I actually think it'd be best to trim the old one down to an infobox, and use both.) --Christopher Thomas (talk) 07:49, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I don't mind using either one, but as I mentioned, the "old" one sometimes interferes too much with other graphics of an article. Materialscientist (talk) 07:57, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
 * No problem; it gave me an excuse to learn about navboxes. I've started a thread at Template_talk:Nanotechnology for people to discuss application of both templates. I intend to stay out of the discussion (still nominally on wiki-sabbatical). I hope that this ends up being useful! --Christopher Thomas (talk) 08:09, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

astrophysics of spiral galaxies
See Spiral galaxy

An editor has rewritten the article, with respect to the formation of the spiral shape with reference to a newly published paper, seemingly violating WP:UNDUE, and perhaps WP:OR, who seems to have a WP:COI since his user name matches the supporting website used as a reference.

There was a notice at WT:AST, so I thought I'd let you guys know.

See also Talk:Spiral_galaxy

76.66.202.219 (talk) 05:57, 1 December 2009 (UTC)


 * For ease of reference:


 * (the user who inserted the controversial material)
 * (the IP user who reported the insertion here)
 * --Christopher Thomas (talk) 07:20, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
 * --Christopher Thomas (talk) 07:20, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

An additional note, there is a suggestion by User:RQG to rewrite Density wave theory according to the newly published paper, see Talk:Density wave theory.

76.66.202.219 (talk) 11:11, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

X-ray astronomy
Can someone look at X-ray astronomy? It ballooned from 13k to nearly 200k in the last couple of months. At 200k, it's rather large for a single article.

Several of the X-ray astronomy related articles (Stellar X-ray astronomy, Solar X-ray astronomy, X-ray telescope, ...) seem to be very repetitive of other articles, and some have sections called "Featurette" which don't look like any other Wikipedia article I've seen...

76.66.197.2 (talk) 15:56, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Look also at the article talk page, where discussion has been on-going, and more cooks might be useful. Thanks, Wwheaton (talk) 00:06, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Postulates and special relativity
A thread is in progress at talk:special relativity regarding the postulates used to derive it. I vaguely recall that this was a topic of contention in the past. It might be worth having a few more eyes on the thread, to avoid any such difficulties this time around. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 19:05, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Gaussian q-distribution
I don't yet have any opinions on the new article tited Gaussian q-distribution (beyond the formatting cleanups I did) but an obvious problem is that hardly any articles link to it. Could anyone who knows of any articles that should link to it attent to that? Michael Hardy (talk) 20:12, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Book-Class
Just to let you know I've implemented the book-class for the Physics project. To clarify, the book-class is much like the template-class but for Wikipedia-Books. I also coordinate the WikiPedia-Books project, and the general idea is that specialized projects (in this case the Physics Project) take care of merging books, deletion, content decisions, etc. Eventually there probably will be a "Books for discussion" process that would be incorporated in the Article Alerts.

There's an article in this week Signpost if you aren't familiar with Wikipedia-Books and classes in general. Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 06:48, 5 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I've created WP:Books/Hydrogen as an example book (took me about 4 minutes, so it's probably not perfect, and some stuff is probably irrelevant, while other is missing) based off Category:Hydrogen and Category:Isotopes of hydrogen.


 * The easiest way to create books is to enable the "book-creator" (click on "Create a book" on the print/export toolbox on the left), then go to a category like Category:Helium and click on "Add this category to your book"). Give some structure (chapters), and you're pretty much done.


 * There are others ways to edit books (see Help:Books for more.) If you have questions, just ask and I'll answer. Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 06:48, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

review please
Can someone look at DNA Phantom effect and tell if it is real or a hoax? Thank you. RJFJR (talk) 20:23, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I've had a look, and it looks like an obscure and nonsensical fringe theory, kept alive as someone is trying to make money off it, so I've put it up for deletion at AfD. --JohnBlackburne (talk) 14:13, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Good article Nominations
There are currently three physics articles that have been nominated for GA and are awaiting review: If anybody here has some time to spare please consider reviewing one of these articles. Review GAN's does not require any special privileges on wikipedia so anybody can help out. Just be sure to review the guidelines at WP:GAN. Some experience with GA process is useful though, for example having worked on an article that has passed GAN. Even if you don't have time to do a complete review, it can still be very helpful if you can leave some comments on these nominees. Remember that this process can only work if people with suitable background actually participate! Thanks. TimothyRias (talk) 09:03, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Stephen Hawking (a top priority article for this project!)
 * Geothermal power
 * Kazuhiko Nishijima

Emission spectra and code
(Previous thread: here)

I've been busy enough at work that it's becoming clear I won't be improving my spectrum plotting script any time soon. Instead, I've put the code on-wiki at User:Christopher Thomas/spectrum script v1. By all means copy and modify this code if you would find it useful to do so! --Christopher Thomas (talk) 17:41, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Tritium
I found the sentence  helium-3 has a very large cross section for the (n,p) reaction with thermal neutrons in the tritium article and a IP changed it to  helium-3 has a very small cross section for the (n,p) reaction with thermal neutrons. Ha anybody a clue which of the two versions is right? Thanks.--Stone (talk) 10:46, 17 December 2009 (UTC) S Pat  talk 11:10, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I would say very high as scattering cross section of He-3 for thermal neutrons is 5330 barn whereas that for comparable light nuclei is ~0.1 barn.
 * Thanks for the quick help! Materialscientist has corrected it.--Stone (talk) 06:11, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Introductory physics
FYI, Introductory physics has been prodded for deletion.

70.29.211.163 (talk) 05:24, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything
An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything got some needed reworking. It would be nice if others could check it for completeness and neutrality.--Verbapple (talk) 00:31, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
 * The theory was a flash in the pan which has since fizzled out. Perhaps the article is no longer needed. Xxanthippe (talk) 04:33, 23 December 2009 (UTC).


 * Still worth keeping IMO, as it did legitimately generate press (giving it at least minimal notability). As long as it isn't given undue weight on other pages, I don't see why it wouldn't be kept? --Christopher Thomas (talk) 08:34, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Copyright concerns related to your project
This notice is to advise interested editors that a Contributor copyright investigation has been opened which may impact this project. Such investigations are launched when contributors have been found to have placed copyrighted content on Wikipedia on multiple occasions. It may result in the deletion of images or text and possibly articles in accordance with Copyright violations. The specific investigation which may impact this project is located here.

All contributors with no history of copyright problems are welcome to contribute to CCI clean up. There are instructions for participating on that page. Additional information may be requested from the user who placed this notice, at the process board talkpage, or from an active CCI clerk. Thank you. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 17:40, 19 December 2009 (UTC)


 * In looking through his copyright violations, I've found that he has a tendency to both
 * Cite the sources he stole from, and
 * Steal from the arXiv.
 * He's also taken things from Google Books and from Springerlink. Anyone interesting in helping out can join in at Contributor copyright investigations/Henry Delforn. Ozob (talk) 09:21, 21 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Followup: While most of the affected articles were math related, a good portion were physics. Many article have been tagged with copyvio and are subject to being deleted in less than a week. You can find a list of the tagged physics articles at WikiProject Physics/Current activity in the copyright problems section.--RDBury (talk) 08:19, 24 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Um, if he's citing the sources then it can hardly be theft, can it? --Michael C. Price talk 21:15, 27 December 2009 (UTC)


 * The problem is direct quotations without quotation marks. --Steve (talk) 23:01, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Infraparticle up for deletion-- needs expert eye
Infraparticle is up for deletion possibly only because it is so badly written that us non-high-end physics types can't tell whether it is just a bunch of physico-babble. We are aware that there is a real reference to such a thing, but we can't tell whether this article is actually about it. Some tough love from experts is needed. Mangoe (talk) 14:44, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Extensive edits of physics articles by banned user
There appears to be a banned user creating multiple accounts serially, mostly editing BLP and physics articles. Their accounts may include, , and , all currently blocked. The edited articles include Bogdanov affair, Marcus du Sautoy, Edward Witten, Antony Garrett Lisi, An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything, Andrew Wiles, Elliot McGucken, Pythagorean triple, Lee Smolin, Leonard Susskind, Steven Weinberg, The Elegant Universe, Frank Adams, Jan Hendrik Schön, John C. Baez, Theory of everything, Peter Woit, Standard Model, Alexander Grothendieck, The Story of Maths, Kent Hovind, Luboš Motl, and several others. The banning policy encourages but does not require editors to enforce the ban:

"Anyone is free to revert any edits made in defiance of a ban. By banning a user, the community has decided that their edits are prima facie unwanted and may be reverted without any further reason.  This does not mean that obviously helpful edits (such as fixing typos or undoing vandalism) must be reverted just because they were made by a banned user, but the presumption in ambiguous cases should be to revert.  When reverting edits, care should be taken not to reinstate material that may be in violation of such core policies as neutrality, verifiability, and biographies of living persons. Users who reinstate edits made by a banned editor take complete responsibility for the content by so doing."

Since there were a lot of edits in this case, reversion help would be appreciated. Thanks. Golumbo (talk) 09:22, 27 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Any chance of a pointer to where all of this was decided? (And, critically, when it was decided?)  I had a quick look through one or two of the articles listed above, didn't see anything out of the ordinary, though none of them are really in my area.  Djr32 (talk) 12:36, 27 December 2009 (UTC)


 * See: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics. BeforeAfteread (talk) 02:16, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Tensors on Wikipedia
There is a thread that might benefit from input from the physics project at WT:WPM. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:47, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Wall of Recognized Content (WoRC)
The WikiProject Physics/Recognized content page is now automatically updated by a bot. This means less trouble for us, and up-to-date goodness for us and others. Maybe someone could incorporate this into the physics portal. Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 05:06, 31 December 2009 (UTC)