Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics/Archive April 2020

Ghosh spa?

A single purpose account Mischievousgnome (talk · contribs) seems to be active promoting publications of a certain Amitabha Ghosh. See:

• Draft:Velocity dependent inertial induction
• Inertia with this edit
• Newton's law of universal gravitation with this edit
• Alternatives to general relativity with this edit
• Rotation and Interior Structure Experiment, with this edit. Note the source "William Folkner, personal communication".

DVdm (talk) 08:02, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

Aside from the obvious implications of using WP as a platform for promotion, the added material is way too fringe to be included; it may not even merit mention in an article about fringe theories. —Quondum 12:10, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

Agreed. I went through and reverted what others hadn't already taken care of. XOR'easter (talk) 14:28, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

Thx. - DVdm (talk) 14:40, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

Problematic changes to physics articles by an editor

A recent pattern of edits by a single editor seems to seek to rewrite content in a way that disregards and contradicts the sources, for example, these edits at Hartree atomic units, where the editor seeks to redefine the Hartree atomic units in a rationalized form. Similarly, this very long list of edits to Planck units (with a small number of edits by others interspersed), where the the concept of "Gaussian Planck version" and "Heaviside–Lorentz version" is introduced (invented?), an apparent transplanting of the names from electromagnetism. Some broader oversight might be helpful, since the number of edits and articles involved is large, and shows a disregard for edit summaries and the opinions of other editors. It may take significant effort to undo the damage. —Quondum 13:48, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

I've never heard the speed of light called the "Planck speed" or Boltzmann's constant called the "Planck entropy" (and a literature search for either finds only false positives and obscure/un-reviewed papers; for "Planck permittivity" there is even less). This does rather look like a person advancing their own pet idea for what a system of units "should" be. XOR'easter (talk) 15:40, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

I had some doubts about this string of edits and the sources in it. Perhaps it's time to courtesy ping user Ahri6279 (talk · contribs) and make them aware of this. - DVdm (talk) 16:15, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

See Natural units#Electromagnetism units, “Of these, Lorentz–Heaviside is somewhat more common, mainly because Maxwell's equations are simpler in Lorentz–Heaviside units than they are in Gaussian units.” —- Ahri6279 (talk) 02:44, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

You can't put some self-invented "new" system into Wikipedia. That's not how Wikipedia works. --mfb (talk) 05:24, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Ahri6279, you are exhibiting a strong pattern of disruptive editing. You are causing damage to Wikipedia, and I appeal to you to stop editing until you had read more and understood the principles behind collaboration on Wikipedia. Your comment above is evidence of your misuse of information to sidestep understanding what you are being told. Some examples:

• Your comment above is an extract which refers to two systems of units, neither of which is called Planck units. Not only are you missing the point, but you seem to be violating the principle of policy, specifically: "Policy: [...] Wikipedia articles may not be used as tertiary sources in other Wikipedia articles [...]".
• You are ignoring input by others to your edits, and not listening to them on talk pages, including your own. For example, despite this appeal to you on your talk page, you have continued to edit in a way that creates unmanageable edit histories, for example at Plank units, where you have made over 600 edits over a short period, mostly without edit comments.

• Why cannot I do this? Like when you do a document, you will save it over a short period, won’t you? -—Ahri6279 (talk) 14:54, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

• The difference is that Wikipedia is a collaborative project. When you edit your own personal document hundreds of times, you do not make life difficult for other people. When you edit a Wikipedia article hundreds of times, almost always without providing edit summaries, you do. You can develop and revise drafts in your sandbox. XOR'easter (talk) 18:17, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

• You have changed template data so that it is incorrect. This is in contradiction of the sourcing, and causes the template to function incorrectly, which in turn makes many article that us it incorrect.

• This is not damage, the values of these physical constants are given by this app [1], click “shift+7” to find the values of these physical constants. —Ahri6279 (talk) 14:50, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

• A random app on the Google Play store is not a reliable source for anything. XOR'easter (talk) 14:55, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

• Okay. -—Ahri6279 (talk) 14:58, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

• You have chosen to redefine Hartree atomic units to be a rationalized system, making it incorrect, and ignoring the sources, and reverting my attempt to revert the article to undo the damage without an edit comment.

• I don’t know that the Hartree atomic units uses “rationalized” units ($\epsilon _{0}=1$) or “non-rationalized” units (${\frac {1}{4\pi \epsilon _{0}}}=1$), I only know that $c=\hbar =e=m_{e}=a_{0}=1$. —-Ahri6279 (talk) 14:58, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

• You should be able to determine that easily yourself. I'll give you a hint: the formula for the Bohr radius (a₀) is in the article by that name and can be checked at a reliable source, the referenced NIST page, where you will need to click on the symbol to show the defining formula (though I notice you took it upon yourself to redefine the formula for the Bohr radius with this edit). Then you can try to reconcile that with your edits to Hartree atomic units. —Quondum 19:16, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

• I have not enumerated every instance. Review of your edit history of the last two months shows that you have been been very active, and hence your edits are all the more problematic

I will reiterate: you are damaging Wikipedia, and I appeal to others to weigh in to prevent this. —Quondum 12:04, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

• Besides, can I put these things (which are original research) to a subpage (Planck units) of my userpage? Or should I put them to wikiversity? —-Ahri6279 (talk) 10:15, 8 April 2020 (UTC)

If you click on "Sandbox" in the list of links at the top right whenever you are logged in, you will go to (or be able to create) a subpage in your user space where there are less restrictions – see WP:User pages and WP:About the sandbox. XOR'easter has already pointed this out above. For questions such as this, you can ask at WP:Teahouse. —Quondum 12:27, 8 April 2020 (UTC)

References

Penning-Malmberg trap

This new article looks like a good start, but it needs cleanup at the very least, and I'm not sure it's distinct enough from Penning trap to warrant a separate page. XOR'easter (talk) 21:58, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

Sticky bead argument image

Would somebody be interested in creating a figure for Sticky bead argument? it would really help to clarify the thought experiment.--ReyHahn (talk) 09:07, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

One-way wave equation

It's possible there's a topic here, but there are strong self-promotion concerns with this new article. XOR'easter (talk) 23:23, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

The article is essentially transcribed verbatim from the one paper (the fourth reference). It does have the feel of promotion of the work of only a small number of largely co-authors on the topic. I find it intriguing that the authors seem unaware of the technique of the Weyl equation (essentially the use of a Clifford algebra), that succeeds in exactly such a factoring of the second-order wave operator into first-order operators in three dimensions plus time. This suggests that the authors really don't have a clue, and their lack of coherence and rigour compounds the impression. While I would not write it off as bunk, it does not seem to merit an article as not meeting notability criteria (we don't have an article for every paper publishing the same thing using a few new words, and it is not really a topic separate from the wave equation, where the factoring in one dimension is already mentioned). —Quondum 02:19, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

Good catch; I hadn't checked for copyright violations. I suppose it's possible that they reinvented an idea under a new name not knowing of the predecessors (if their background is acoustics, then maybe they hadn't encountered the Weyl equation or factorization methods in physics more generally). The term "one-way wave equation" itself seems common enough, but the bulk of this article's text doesn't really seem justifiable. XOR'easter (talk) 15:15, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

The article creator is now seemingly edit-warring over it. I have faculty meetings and such for the rest of today and won't have the time to try explaining WP:COI, WP:SECONDARY, WP:TOOSOON, etc., etc. (and it is probably for the best that I step away before I get exasperated!), but maybe someone else will have more luck. (Pinging Quondum.) XOR'easter (talk) 15:06, 17 April 2020 (UTC)

I think we'll have to be patient. Either the author will learn to understand more about the way in which WP operates, or they won't. The handling will be different, and the temporary presence of an out-of-the-way incomprehensible/incoherent article might not be important. Let's see whether a discussion develops. I'll keep a presence on that talk page for a while. —Quondum 15:19, 18 April 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for chiming in. I think your comment on the Talk page struck just the right tone. XOR'easter (talk) 15:53, 18 April 2020 (UTC)

Photon

Photon is currently a Featured Article, but it may be delisted. XOR'easter (talk) 05:29, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

Scale relativity again

A promoter of this non-notable fringe theory restored 93K of bad content against consensus. I am afraid I will not have time to deal with an interminable argument this week. XOR'easter (talk) 14:41, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

Another round of argument has begun at Wikipedia:Fringe_theories/Noticeboard#Scale_relativity_and_(not_so)_subtle_vandalism. Comments welcome. XOR'easter (talk) 15:17, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

I vaguely remember reading that Hermann Weyl attempted to combine electro-magnetism with general relativity by applying symmetry breaking to scale-relativity. Does anyone know more about that? JRSpriggs (talk) 00:14, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

Weyl did make an attempt to unify E&M with gravity back in the 1910s, which Einstein shot down (as I recall, his main argument was that according to Weyl's theory, the frequencies of spectral lines would change depending on where atoms are). Several years later, when quantum mechanics was becoming established, Weyl realized that he should be working with phase instead of scale, and he laid the groundwork for gauge theory. XOR'easter (talk) 01:55, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

Those frequencies do depend on location -- see Gravitational redshift. JRSpriggs (talk) 00:22, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

There was, IIRC, a hysteresis effect that Weyl's theory predicted which is not observed (something like going up and down in a gravitational field and not having the same spectrum when you return to the same spot). I will have to hit the books when I get a chance, because more recent readings on other history-of-science oddities have driven the details from my memory. XOR'easter (talk) 00:39, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

These look like reasonable starting points: [2][3]. There is also relevant material in Weyl's entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. XOR'easter (talk) 00:58, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

Antiverse

This looks perhaps too soon. XOR'easter (talk) 01:34, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

Definitely too soon. The paper was just published, and the secondary sources are all just the initial reactions about it. Not that it matters, but also this idea is obviously going nowhere. Tercer (talk) 06:48, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

Something amiss: "The new theory [...] aims to preserve a rule of physics called CPT symmetry." We already have CPT symmetry in existing theroies. Looks to me like a flash in the pan of physics journalism (and I'm not even a physicist). —Quondum 13:25, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

I proposed its deletion. XOR'easter (talk) 15:02, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

And it has been de-prod'ed, with a rationale that to me does not really address the concern. XOR'easter (talk) 17:34, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

PROD tags can be removed at any time, by anyone, for any reason, good or bad. Of course placing one on a new article that someone is clearly highly attached-to is asking for it to happen. So, AfD it is. Lithopsian (talk) 19:27, 30 April 2020 (UTC)