Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics/Archive June 2024

Virgo interferometer FAC
Hello everyone, I have submitted the Virgo interferometer article to FAC recently, and it has not attracted too much attention yet (perhaps due to the technicality ?). I would be happy if anyone was willing to take a look; you can find the candidacy page here. Thanks! Thuiop (talk) 07:17, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

Nomination of GRSI model for deletion
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 * The discussion is over. "The result was merge‎ to Alternatives to general relativity.". JRSpriggs (talk) 02:01, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Academic notability
Hi everyone! I usually write articles on physics topics, but I've been thinking about starting to write a bit more about people as well. For this reason I'm trying to get a feel for crierion 1 on Notability (academics). What exactly qualifies as "highly cited". I've asked this question in the Teahouse, but I think its better to ask here since this community would have a better feel towards this physics niche case. The cases presented here are not obviously super stars since I'm also interested in what the lower bound is on this criterion.

For example, consider the following Professors at the University of Oxford:
 * Andrei Olegovich Starinets: He has a MASSIVE impact on AdS/CFT hydrodynamics with his top cited papers have 2.9k, 1.7k, 1.6k, 1.2k citations each, which is pretty insane, so I'm baffled how he doesn't already have a page.
 * Subir Sarkar: Cosmologist who is now Emiratus Professor at Oxford with a non-collaboration paper with 1.3k citations. His impact is however more due to his fundamental contributions to various collaborations such as IceCube and the Particle Theory Group and his most cited papers are from there. This is exemplified by the fact that his retirement had the department hold a 2-day conference called Subirfest https://subirfest.web.ox.ac.uk/home.
 * John March-Russell: Discovered the axiverse (1.8k citations) (this is a very big thing due to the increadible popularity of axions to string theory), and has another important paper on FIMP thermal freeze with 1.1k citations.
 * Joseph P. Conlon: He discovered the Large Volume Scenario with over 1k citations (this is the second most important mechanism for stabilising moduli in string theory, with the first most famous one being KKLT. These mechanisms are genuinely vital in constructing realistic string theory models and so are super important and comes up in standard string theory textbooks for example) and is a prominent string phenomenologists.

I'm not necessarily aiming to create articles for all (or even most or any) of them, cause, well, effort. But understanding if they are all indeed notable would help me in the future. Any thoughts? Thanks!!! OpenScience709 (talk) 10:06, 6 June 2024 (UTC)


 * In my personal opinion, the notability criteria adopted for biographies is far below common sense. A large number of citations is a sign that the work itself is notable and we should invest articles about that work. The citations do not make the author notable. A notable author will have a biography written by someone other than a wikipedia editor, eg a historian or a scientist writing about history. The remaining criteria are even weaker, leading to many many Wikipedia vanity "resumes". I don't think these are interesting or knowledge, sorry. Johnjbarton (talk) 16:28, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I can agree with the sentiment that "The citations do not make the author notable" per se. But the issue with making the bar so high that every wikipedia biography needs to have a whole biography by a historian or scientist writing about history may be too strict. Mainly because these biographies usually only come about when someone retires, or when they die (or later), despite them being notable for a while beforehand. There is utility in these more contemporary figures which are notable in their respective fields, but no one yet bothered to write their history (since its still being written). On the other hand, using Wikipedia as "vanity resumes" is indeed annoying. Exactly why I'm trying to figure out the bar for genuine notability. OpenScience709 (talk) 00:17, 7 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Just to be clear: I am not advocating that the bar be changed (see Don Quixote). Rather I am suggesting a way to make choices on which articles to invest in. Johnjbarton (talk) 02:06, 7 June 2024 (UTC)
 * It's really not possible to say anything based on citation counts alone, without at the very least comparing to typical profiles for the field. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 02:17, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

"Ceiiinosssttuv" listed at Redirects for discussion
The redirect [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ceiiinosssttuv&redirect=no Ceiiinosssttuv] has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at  until a consensus is reached. –LaundryPizza03 ( d c̄ ) 14:05, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Helium Featured Article review
This discussion may be of interest to the community here. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 20:35, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

RfC on meaning of nonmetal
There is a RfC on this topic at Talk:Nonmetal which may be of interest. Is the primary use of the term nonmetal for elements in the periodic table, see discussions in Talk:Nonmetal and also at Talk:Nonmetallic compounds and elements. Editor Sandbh is arguing that this is the case, with some other additions. Editors Johnjbarton, Ldm1954 and YBG have questioned this, and both Johnjbarton and Ldm1954 have questioned the scientific accuracy.Ldm1954 (talk) 07:49, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Uuno Öpik
Does anyone here have an opinion on whether Uuno Öpik meets our notability criteria? It looks a little questionable to me, at least based on the sources cited in the biography. AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:56, 19 June 2024 (UTC)


 * I think WP:NPROF is not satisfied. His h-index is 13, and he had two highly cited articles about Jahn-Teller effect (~1000 citations each) with co-authors that have higher h-indices (between 33 and 55). The next highest cited papers have 91 and 66 citations. He worked in UK, so he did not have any significant local effect on physics in Estonia either.
 * Perhaps also fails WP:GNG, although he is apparently mentioned in
 * Estonian scientists in exile. Tln., 2009. P. 75-76.
 * Estonian researchers abroad. Stockholm, 1984. Pp. 148.
 * Estonian Voice (London, England), 2005, June 3, no. 2230, p. 4. Obituaries.
 * I have access to none of these sources. Jähmefyysikko (talk) 06:37, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Naturalness (physics) – article or essay?
I came across this, and I'm having difficulty imagining how this would ever become an encyclopaedic article or even how to define it clearly – does it merit its own article? Currently the content reads like some musings. Wouldn't any content not rather belong under more specific articles, such as Hierarchy problem? —Quondum 02:34, 23 June 2024 (UTC)


 * Since the two sections Naturalness (physics) and Hierarchy problem appear to be identical, I have to wonder whether the two need to be merged as the topics of both seem similar. Both have been around for a long time, so perhaps they are different enough -- need an expert opinion for that.
 * I also will throw out the question of whether a little should be added in a broader sense. It is pretty standard in many areas of theory to rescale to dimensionless parameters to collapse data. This can be as simple as using atomic units in QM to effective medium models in many (many) areas etc. Ldm1954 (talk) 05:49, 23 June 2024 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the input. On the grounds that this was little better than an attempt at an essay about a potential subcategory of Category:Unsolved problems in physics and that it basically duplicated material from specific articles about the individual scale enigmas ("problems"), I have boldly merged this.  At best, it could be a list-class article, but I've left it as a redirect.  —Quondum 15:55, 23 June 2024 (UTC)