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It appears to me that there is not just one version of special relativity, but a range of versions which vary all the way from
to
Where in this wide range should we fix what we call "special relativity"? JRSpriggs 10:06, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
This occurred to me when I was thinking about the fact that I had written the section Lagrangian#Special relativistic test particle with electromagnetism in the 3+1D notation rather than the 4D notation, and I was wondering whether that was the right thing to do. Other than that, I did not really have any specific problem in mind. I just wanted to know whether you-all feel that we should have a policy about how we present special relativity. For example, the energy of a free particle could be written in several different ways:
Ultimately, these are equivalent, but they look quite different. JRSpriggs 10:31, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
In my opinion (and that doesn't say much), I think the most important thing to keep in mind on a topic like this is fundamentals. Think about it, if you set up your own equipment, it makes no sense not to continue and take it a step further! What do you lot think? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Deimtchek (talk • contribs)
I think he was talking about SR--Cronholm144 08:59, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
There seems to have been some kind of edit war brewing over the last weeks at the heat and thermal energy articles between several editors, primarily User:The Way, that caused User: ScienceApologist to quit Wikipedia. In any event, the situation still continues; please review Talk:Heat (disambiguation) and Talk:Heat and give your opinion or vote: here . --Sadi Carnot 04:08, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
As a mathematician I'm accustomed to such usages as this:
etc. Lately I've come across a number of Wikipedia articles that say things like this:
A period is put at the end of the equation and the initial W in Where is capitalized as if it's the beginning of a new sentence. Or sometimes the period is omitted; it seems physicists (at least here on Wikipedia) often omit the period after an equation even when it's at the end of a sentence. The first time I saw this I thought it's obviously a gross gramatical goof by someone who wasn't paying attention to what he was writing. After a couple of dozen times, I'm thinking maybe this usage is actually standard among physicists. Can anyone confirm or deny anything? (Sometimes in certain moods I start to wonder if physicists consider it their sacred duty to be offended by any attempt to be precise in the use of language.) Michael Hardy 12:33, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
The first version is correct. The second is a result of sloppiness or (forgivable) ignorance. Gnixon 18:51, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
I would agree that the first version is correct(the second seems very bad from a grammatical point of view). Out of laziness punctuation is often omitted after equations, but I wouldn't call it a "physicist style". It's true that we physicists get a little ornery when criticized on the precision of our language; kind of a quirk of the field, I guess. Joshua Davis 20:16, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
I've just read the above articles. As far as I can see:
As far as I can see, a Spin Ice is not geometrically frustrated. It has a certain residual entropy, yes, but this is not as a result of any kind of frustration, but as a result of a large number of degrees of freedom. If this is correct (and I'm writing here in the hope that somebody will help!), then I think we should:
Comments please! Chris 21:46, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
After a long period of stability, a number of edits were recently made to the John Bedini article in an apparent attempt to advance his unproven theories. This included replacing a longstanding statement that his device designs "do not adhere to the first or second laws of thermodynamics, which relate to conservation of energy" with what seems to be an agenda-advancing statement that the devices "(do) adhere to the laws of non-equilibrium thermodynamics".
I've reverted nearly all of the additions to restore the article to its relatively neutral and terse state. I did leave in a mention of non-equilibrium thermodynamics, though; it now says the devices "demonstrate principles of 'non-equilibrium thermodynamics' — that is, they do not adhere to the first or second laws of thermodynamics, which relate to conservation of energy."
However, I'm not sure the implied contradiction between the field of non-equilibrium thermodynamics and the laws of thermodynamics is correct; I'm just railing against what seems to be an attempt by proponents of his theories to dishonestly associate them with what is characterized in Wikipedia as a legitimate branch of physics.
So, is non-equilibrium thermodynamics legit, or is it pseudophysics? Should I characterize it differently? Is it even applicable? How can we continue to improve the John Bedini article? I'd appreciate some more eyes looking at it because I don't have time to police the article on my own. Thanks! —mjb 10:50, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
User:Banno on July 12 2007 WP:PRODed cosmosophy. 132.205.44.5 18:51, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
I'm wondering about the legitimacy of the sources in this article. In particular, some of the self-published stuff by Bjerknes raises some eyebrows, particularly since it's hosted on a website called jewishracism.com.-Wafulz 01:24, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
There is a merge proposal, standing intact for months, to merge X boson and Y boson articles into X and Y bosons, just like W and Z bosons have common article. So it would be really good itea to merge those two, because X and Y bosons are related in same way as W and Z bosons.
It also looks like there is extremely low edit activity on those articles. --83.131.77.66 15:56, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
I would like to propose that someone who has enough knowledge on the subject creates a page called "Status of String Theory" which details the general consensus of the scientific community regarding the acceptance, falsification, and verifiability of String Theory.
I say this because as a layman, I do not have access to information on the latest tests with CERN or Fermilab colliders, and would like to know more about whether the theory ever is directly confirmed or not.
I have recently been cleaning up the biography of Fritz Zwicky. It had originally included an enormous amount of material relating to tired light, IMO far out of proportion to its importance in a biography. But much worse, all the material related to modern fringe ideas by Lyndon Ashmore in particular. Similar problems have existed, and been resolved, in the past in the Tired light page. My changes have just recently been reverted or partially reverted by an anonymous editor, and the modern tired light stuff is back, justified by appeal to the authority of Feynman and Ashmore. I am new to Wikipedia and don't know the best way to handle this. I requested 3rd party assistance; a 3rd party Wikipedia expert duly showed up and declared the dispute a bit too technical. I have flagged the contentious section as being under dispute and indicated a drastic edit I wish to apply in the discussion page; which is essentially another revert to what I did a few days ago. Input from people with good understanding of the relevant physics and of Wikipedia conventions would be very much appreciated! -- (Duae Quartunciae 10:51, 13 July 2007 (UTC))
I lost my account password on my other computer and so began editing as User:Velikovsky to look at some of the catastrophism pseudoscience. I was surprised that Ian Tresman was editing he is extremely well-connected in the Society for Interdisciplinary Studies and makes much of his living by doing web-design for that group. I don't think he should be editing those pages and posted a WP:COI warning on his page which he did not take kindly too. He also reverted a change I made to Anthony Peratt's page about his new-found amicas with Velikovsky supporters. This user reverted it and placed a warning at User talk:Velikovsky. I'm in over my head. Can anyone help me? --Mainstream astronomy 20:04, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
I've just made a number of significant changes to the long-stagnant Physics article. The most important changes were cutting a gigantic History section (covered by History of Physics) and moving two illegibly large tables to subpages. From the remaining content, I've tried to create the skeleton of an article with expanded coverage of the major theories and fields of research, but a lot of work needs to be done.
I'd appreciate it if folks around here would consider expanding the subsections of Physics they're interested in. Right now they could all be considered stubs. Alternatively, you could tell me I'm a dunce for messing with the article so much, but I'm hoping these changes will put it on the right track. See Talk:Physics#Changes. Thanks, Gnixon 00:54, 17 July 2007 (UTC).
I was just reading about Stellar nucleosynthesis, and added the following to Talk:Oxygen burning process.
Isn't the 2 superscript on D redundant? It seems like consistency would be best, ideally any (non-1) superscripts on an H base, although the links could obviously continue to point towards the specific isotope's page.
Is there a style guide about this? I did not turn up anything via google… --Belg4mit 05:48, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
"Cenetic energy" dosn't get any hits on scholar.google.com and dosn't cite anything. The first contributor (who suspiciously has this article as his/her only contribution) wrote that Neil Turok (real scientist) came up with it. Even so, "cenetic energy neil turok" has no non-wikipedia hits on google. I've signed this article up for deletion and the debate on the deletion proposal can be found at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Log/2007_July_17 EverGreg 16:37, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
Hello, could someone please assess Pran Nath for notability? It was recently ((prod))-ed. I reversed that, but now I'm not sure if I should have.
His work seems to involve theoretical elementary particle physics and supersymmetry. His faculty page is here.
Thanks, Tualha (Talk) 00:46, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
My expertise is in a different area than his, but my understanding is that Pran Nath is pretty well known and respected. As evidence of a sort for this, one can take a look at this site (http://www.pascos04.neu.edu/) about the 2004 PASCOS conference and Nathfest. PASCOS (Particles, Strings and Cosmology) is a annual international physics conference and evidently Nath is important enough that they held the 2004 meeting in his honor. --Joshua Davis 05:15, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
Could we add some of this to the article...it is still one sentence.--Cronholm144 05:21, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
It's been suggested to me that I mention the status of Tesla Coil. I don't know how to put this delicately, but someone making extensive "contributions" is a free energy enthusiast and does not seem to know much about electricity. I haven't gotten through my electromagnetism book yet (blush), but I've designed and built a MOSFET Tesla coil, and done EE professionally for many years. Somebody put a banner on the page saying that it was within the realm of Wikipedia Project Physics, but they don't seem to have stuck around. Anybody who knows the subject is welcome to weigh in; very welcome; that's all I'm saying. FETSmoke 04:12, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
The article on Anthony Peratt is currently up for deletion. We could use some input from someone familiar with plasma physics, specifically plasma cosmology, on whether he is Notable by Wikipedia standards. Cheers, CWC 10:11, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
I've been making some major revisions to the long-dormant Physics article. My changes have been rather WP:BOLD and largely unilateral, due to the almost complete absence of any editors frequenting that page over the past few months or responding to my comments on Talk:Physics. After shedding an obscenely awful History section, I've expanded sections on Theory and Research, largely by stealing big blocks of material from other physics articles (many of which were pretty bad).
The current status is that each subsection has a reasonable amount of text, but not all of it is well-written, and some subsections are still pretty thin. I'd love it if some of the folks around here could swing by and have a look at their areas of interest. There should be something to start from in each section if you prefer to make incremental changes, and if you're willing to try complete rewrites, that would be welcome, too. If you make changes to a section, consider updating the leads of the main articles (on, e.g., particle physics), which are likely to be pretty similar. Please keep in mind the need to limit excessive detail in this very broad article. Thanks in advance!! Gnixon 06:04, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
Update With recent interest and much editing by the anon User:68.224.247.53, there is now lots of info in many sections---in fact, often too much. It would be great if some of the experts around here could apply some editorial judgement to limit sections to the 3 or 4 "several" paragraphs recommended by WP:SUMMARY. For example, what are the most important things to discuss about quantum mechanics? Thanks, Gnixon 22:30, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
What guidelines are there for what historical articles should be included under this project? I'm wondering in particular about archaic, obscure and/or obsolete theories like Central Fire. Anarchic Fox 07:14, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
There have been some very curious recent edits to the Anti-gravity page. This is on the periphery of physics stuff, but it seems to have become a magnet for some rather odd ideas.
The latest edits are horrible, in a number of ways; but I'm not going to do anything about it myself for the time being. The problem is that the edits are by someone who has serious issues with me personally, and is inclined to go into long screeds about my various sins. It's hard to follow, because the edits are apparently from Germany, and their English is very poor. It shows up in the articles they edit, and the comments on talk pages. What is worse is that the they are rather extreme crank physics, imo.
All the edits are from anonymous isp accounts, 84.158.*.*. The article where I met them before is the biography of Fritz Zwicky, and discussion on the talk page is very illuminating. The Anti-gravity page is of low importance, and if I try to do anything about it then it may make matters worse by aggravating the unknown editors with my existence. I would appreciate someone else having a look. Check out all diffs from any 84.158.*.* isp; they go back into June, I think.
The whole effect is pretty bad. I would really love these guys to create an account and use it, instead of having a whole heap of different ISP addresses. Mostly I don't think they should be editing physics articles at all, or indeed anything written in English. Someone needs to tell them also to TALK about such major changes as they are doing at present... but it might not help because the talk seems even less coherent than the edits.
I don't know what the best thing to do about it might be, or whether any action by me will just inflame them. So please take a look, someone else. Thanks! -- Duae Quartunciae (talk · cont) 14:55, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
This is much worse than I had thought.
This guy has been working hard in good faith, but his grasp of wikipedia conventions, of English, and of physics are all poor. He uses an IP that shifts around all the time, for which he has apologised many times but says he can't do anything about it. He has been editing many pages, some very high quality ones, for the last two months or so I think. Usually it gets reverted. Sometimes not. Tracking will be difficult.
I have a feeling this kind of IP shifting, even if not deliberate or malicious, can result in the IP addresses being banned. It's not because anyone using them is a bad person, but because it makes administration and tracking so much harder. At least, that is how I understand WikiProject on open proxies... can someone confirm? If so, we should collect all the IPs he is using, and submit for a collective ban. I think getting an account would resolve the problem for him. He could still contribute, but his contributions could be reviewed better.
Pages where he has been active, even if briefly. Photon, Mechanical explanations of gravitation, general relativity, Fritz Zwicky, Big bang, Non-standard cosmology, Solutions of the Einstein field equations, Divergence theorem, Dark matter, Cosmic microwave background radiation, Observational cosmology and I am sure there are more. I got most of those just by guessing where to look.
Usually he gets reverted. I've seen some errors left uncaught, I think. There's a minor error at Divergence theorem. Here's the diff, which is still in place. [2]. The phrase "mainly spherically selected shell" looks like nonsense, and the extra formula does nothing useful; just introduces confusion by conflicting notational conventions. This is minor compared with what he usually does; I guess the worst stuff generally gets picked up.
He periodically gets very upset at the unfairness of the censoring being applied to his views and the glaring failure of wikipeda, in his view, to cater to "thousands of dissidents" or to allow for a clear expression of the many errors he has identified in conventional cosmology and physics. He apologizes for his poor English on talk pages, but has no compunction about putting it in article pages with no notice in the discussion page. He does not use discussion pages much, unless sometimes to complain when he gets reverted — in which case you get a lesson in mangled physics and complaints about all the amateurs who change his scholarly inputs. He put a long complaint on Jimbo's talk page including complaints about me and how terrible it was that I was honoured by being made a part of this physics project. I ignored it. Can be admired at permanent link [3]. Also has shown up at User_talk:^demon/Archive3, User_talk:Ems57fcva, and others. He has made formal complaints, to no effect, at (for example) FURG and Wikiquette alerts archive14, May 29 2007.
I'm going to start collecting IP addresses; I think other people should do the same. Drop them off here, please. -- Duae Quartunciae (talk · cont) 18:26, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
Unfortunately, I don't think he is using open IP addresses, but dynamic IP addresses, which is a different thing. And, unfortunately, probably not bannable. So that solution don't work. I'm very unhappy with the idea of just letting it be until he gets bored. This has been an issue in many pages. Here is what I have found so far with a hacked script to pull out the info:
Article | Edits | Time | Discussion | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Anti-gravity | 19 edits | from 13 June -- 23 July | talk page | 1 edit | on 19 July |
Big Bang | 14 edits | from 11 May -- 25 May | talk page | 11 edits | from 11 May -- 12 May |
Cosmic microwave background radiation | 2 edits | on 18 June | no discussion | ||
Dark matter | 4 edits | from 18 May -- 15 June | no discussion | ||
Divergence theorem | 2 edits | on 12 June | no discussion | ||
Exact solutions in general relativity | 2 edits | from 3 July -- 5 July | talk page | 5 edits | from 3 July -- 17 July |
Fritz Zwicky | 59 edits | from 16 May -- 12 July | talk page | 26 edits | from 18 May -- 13 July |
General relativity | 3 edits | from 13 June -- 15 June | no discussion | ||
Graviton | 7 edits | from 28 June -- 30 June | talk page | 1 edit | on 17 July |
Mechanical explanations of gravitation | 3 edits | on 27 June | no discussion | ||
Non-standard cosmology | 36 edits | from 12 May -- 13 June | talk page | 17 edits | from 12 May -- 13 June |
Observational cosmology | 2 edits | on 11 June | no discussion | ||
Photon | 5 edits | from 28 June -- 30 June | talk page | 20 edits | from 30 June -- 17 July |
Pioneer anomaly | 2 edits | on 3 July | no discussion | ||
Schwarzschild metric | 3 edits | from 15 June -- 17 June | no discussion | ||
Solutions of the Einstein field equations | 19 edits | from 14 June -- 3 July | no discussion | ||
User talk:^demon | 6 edits | from 29 May -- 30 May | |||
User talk:Jimbo Wales | 9 edits | from 18 July -- 23 July | |||
Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/FURG | 2 edits | on 5 July | |||
Wikipedia:Wikiquette alerts | 3 edits | on 29 May |
That's old information; he is continuing to work away at Anti-gravity, and a revert war is brewing there. I frankly think a revert war would be a GOOD thing, now; it would at least get a result and convey the idea that discussion is important. He really needs to engage discussion rather than just edit everything to fit his WP:POV. He refuses to debate on the talk page; one of his recent comments there was
The links he mentions are to unreliable sources, the relevance involves WP:SYN, it's horrible. —Duae Quartunciae (talk · cont) 00:30, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
The article on Dynamical friction is another one I have just found with additions from W. Kehler. As usual, the English is very poor, and there is no attempt at discussion for his additions.
The addition in this case may have some validity. Zwicky did propose a gravitational drag effect for photons; so perhaps I should not merely delete the section outright. Has there ever been a proper analysis of gravitational drag on photons? Anyhow, I have put a comment on the discussion page, and as before, I would really appreciate input from a physicist.
Thank you to Gnixon for fixing the problem I raised above in relation to Planck mass. I think that there are probably quite a few of these additions to various physics articles being made by 84.158.*.* of dubious credibility. Is there a way to find the list of contributions for a range of IP addresses? —Duae Quartunciae (talk · cont) 05:55, 31 July 2007 (UTC)