Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics/Archive November 2007

Articles for deletion/Beta carbon nitride
Can someone with access to physics journals (especially J. Appl. Phys, J.Phys.: Condens. Matter and Advanced Materials) have a look at this AfD please? There's a proposal to delete Beta carbon nitride as a hoax. The references cited certainly exist, but do they support the claims made? Thanks Iain99Balderdash and piffle 21:35, 4 November 2007 (UTC)


 * The references are all completely legitimate, as is the article. As far as I can tell, the repeated attempts by Koolo and Iceglass to mark this as a "hoax" and a "speedy delete" (which was later downgraded by a third party to an AfD) are completely baseless; either it's a joke/vandalism, or some ideological thing. --Steve 00:06, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Major changes to force article
I've been making some major changes to force. There are a few things I could use help with:


 * Writing a section on nuclear forces (strong, weak, color, etc.)
 * Referencing (this is mostly formality, but anyway)
 * Finding a good lead image.

Cheerio,

ScienceApologist 01:26, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Addition of Pages relating to IHEP
Hello all. I have added a page for Institute of High Energy Physics Chinese Academy of Sciences. I have also added IHEP which is for Disambiguation, for the benefit of those who may not notice the subtle difference between Institute of High Energy Physics and Institute for High Energy Physics. Please visit these pages and add to them as you will. Especially if there are templates, and or project memberships which are appropriate. Many thanks, cullen 02:04, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Experimental physics
Experimental physics is a sad, sad, sad article. It seems like such an important topic. Shall we move it to top importance?

Beast of traal  T   C   _  22:08, 12 November 2007 (UTC)Beast of traal

Scientific peer review
This Scientific Peer Review project can hardly be called successful. While there have been a steady but small flow of articles submitted for review, the actual reviews have been either non-existent or in no real way different from those done through the standard Peer review process. Some editors will recall that the project was started with an enthusiastic discussion about identifying expert reviewers through an elected board. Unfortunately as time went by, it became clear there was no consensus on whether we had a board, or on how it was to be set up or on what it was supposed to do. There was also a lack of consensus on what "sciences" we were covering, and on many other aspects. In the end we sort of lapsed into a minimal review process which has staggered on for about 18 months. I think it is time we decided what to do about the project. Unless people can come up with a new way forward and enthusiastically implement it, I think we have to declare that this project be no longer active in any sense and that editors should ask for review at WP:PR. I am posting this on the talk pages of the major Science WikiProjects. Please feel free to publicize it elsewhere. Please add you comments at Wikipedia talk:Scientific peer review. --Bduke 01:41, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Faster than light travel?
There is discussion at the Talk:Tachyon page regarding whether it is acceptable to have the article say that faster than light travel is impossible. All informed input is welcome. Thank you. John Carter 02:02, 14 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Clarification: in the above statement, faster than light travel and faster than light communication are being confused. FTL travel does not imply FTL comms: see tachyon for details. --Michael C. Price talk 02:21, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Actually, I think the members of this project know enough about the subject that they not need to be insulted by you by having you talking down to them in that way. However, I acknowledge that what is being discussed is "communication". John Carter 02:24, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Thank you. --Michael C. Price talk 02:28, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Although, if FTL is technically possible, would that not mean that FTL communication would also be possible? Considering that FTL travel has been stated by several parties to be at least marginally possible in a number of admittedly bizarre situations, one would think that any body engaged in FTL travel would be at least potentially capable of communicating information. And in my eyes the operative question is the use of the word "impossible" and synonyms. I have very serious reservations about anyone saying that anything is "impossible", particular in this field, given the relative dearth of truly universal data. Were the content to be altered to at least indicate that there is, or at least was, some disagreement regarding the subject, as there has regularly been, that would probably be sufficient. John Carter 14:06, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
 * "Although, if FTL is technically possible, would that not mean that FTL communication would also be possible? " No it would not.  You need to read (and understand) the Feinberg reference, which is explained (not doubt inadequately) in the article. Feinberg's demonstration of this, within the framework of quantum field theory, is watertight and accepted by experts in the field. --Michael C. Price talk 15:17, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
 * The question isn't whether it is accepted by experts in the field. The question is whether it is accepted by such a overwhelming number of experts in the field that there is no real disagreement. If there is disagreement by reliable, verifiable sources, even "cranks", then that disagreement should at least be indicated. I'm not necessarily saying that explicit reference to them should be included in the article, but simply indicating that there is some disagreement would probably be sufficient. John Carter 15:23, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Portal:Physics
Due to a lack of much free time at present, and for the foreseeable future, I've stopped updating Portal:Physics. As it was set up, the portal needed a new selected article and image each month, and ideally also needed the news updating, and new anniversaries adding. 199.125.109.136 (talk · contribs) has effectively frozen the portal as it is for the time being. I'd encourage anyone interested in doing so to keep updating the portal. Otherwise, I expect that it will loose its' featured portal status at some point in the next few months. Mike Peel (talk) 21:47, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I'd be happy to help. Beast of traal   T   C   _  22:28, 19 November 2007 (UTC)Beast of traal

FAR for Carl Friedrich Gauss
Carl Friedrich Gauss has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. King of &hearts;   &diams;   &clubs;  &spades; 01:37, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Tired light
User:Harald88 continues to insist that certain extremely fringe publications that are only cited by the authors get included at tired light which was a proposal made by Fritz Zwicky o so many years ago and now has been consigned to the dustbin of history. As it is, these references look very much to me like soapboxing. I'm not sure if Harald is associated with Marmet, Masreliez, or Accardi, but he seems to be peculiarly convinced that their papers have relevance to physics beyond the astrophysics community where these cranks have received little to no recognition for their ideas. I would appreciate a third opinion on the matter as I cannot seem to get Harald to understand that these references do not belong in a legitimate encyclopedia. Thanks. Please comment at Talk:Tired light. ScienceApologist (talk) 02:27, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

New user help
how do i start participating in this project? Sai 2020 13:59, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Found the participants page.. sorry Sai 2020 14:00, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Help: review Gamow factor
Wrote an article Gamow factor regarding a quantum mechanical correction to nuclei overwinning the Coulomb Barrier. But I don't understand physics formulae (only mathematical ones), so the Gamow factor stub might need a formula. Said: Rursus ☻ 10:58, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Louis Slotin
I'm no expert on nuclear physics, so I was hoping someone more experienced in the field could take a look at Louis Slotin and make sure all the facts are straight (especially the nuclear details of accident). I hope to take this article to featured article status in a few weeks. Thanks in advance, Nishkid64 (talk) 07:07, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Cold fusion -> Low Energy Nuclear Reaction
Cold fusion has been proposed to be renamed low energy nuclear reaction (LENR), see talk:Cold fusion for details. 132.205.99.122 (talk) 19:14, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Template programming challenge
Hi all -- Template:electromagnetism3 was recently programmed by DJIndica. The idea was to keep the template from being overwhelmingly long by using show/hide boxes, and moreover the template has the nice feature that pages can call it with the most relevent show/hide box showing (e.g. in Biot-Savart law, the template starts out with "magnetostatics" box open). However, at some font sizes, the text in the box can overlap the text that says "show" or "hide". The challenge is to fix that.

Note the discussion page, where Alanwillemsen demonstrates a different way to set up the template, which appears to fix the text-overlap issue (albeit the expense of awkward line-breaking), but it does not have the feature mentioned above (i.e., pages can't call it with a particular box showing).

Once the bugs are worked out, I think there are some other overwhelmingly-long physics templates that would benefit from an analogous reformatting (I'm thinking of template:quantum and template:condensed matter physics in particular). --Steve (talk) 02:06, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Röntgen
The X-ray article shows the first radiograph of Anna Bertha Ludwig's hand while the article of Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen shows the exact same picture entitled radiograph taken by Röntgen of Albert von Kölliker's hand. One radiograph was taken in November 1895 the other early 1896 but which one is shown in this image? The google search gives more blured images stating that they were taken of Anna Bertha Ludwig's hand. Can anybody help with this problem?--Stone (talk) 13:08, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Delta-v (physics) for deletion
Delta-v (physics) has been nominated for deletion, see Articles for deletion/Delta-v (physics). A suggestion has been made to perhaps merge with Delta-v, the orbital dynamics article. 132.205.99.122 (talk) 22:41, 29 November 2007 (UTC)