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Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics/Archive November 2013

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Technical non-article move request for Template:Physics Member Navbox

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Requested moves#Technical requests. -- Trevj (talk) 11:49, 8 November 2013 (UTC) → Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics/Member Navbox. Thanks. -- Trevj (talk) 11:49, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Odd Frequency Superconductivity

Hello physicists! The above article is scheduled to be deleted as a stale draft. It does have a couple of references which are not showing because of bad formatting. I don't want to edit it (and this delay its demise) to uncover them unless the topic itself is a legitimate one. Can someone here comment? —Anne Delong (talk) 03:48, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Article is rubbish or says nothing new. Delete it. Xxanthippe (talk) 04:13, 8 November 2013 (UTC).
Thanks, I will. —Anne Delong (talk) 20:55, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Watchlists

The article and discussion watchlists that are linked in the tab at the top of the project page have not been working for months (the account of their host, tim1357, has expired). Unless we have some reason to think that they will be revived, we should remove those links.

Meanwhile, I have added a link at the bottom of the Current status of physics articles box that watches the 500 most popular physics articles. RockMagnetist (talk) 05:19, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

Agreed, the top two links "Article watchlist" and "Discussion watchlist" could just be removed. Thanks for adding the link on the main page here. M∧Ŝc2ħεИτlk 05:53, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
There's also an extensive list of physics articles for use with related changes at User:HhhipBot/Physics pages. — HHHIPPO 20:52, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

New article and move: Lajos Jánossy -> Jánossy Lajos?

This should probably be at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics/Taskforces/BPH but that page seems fairly inactive.

If possible, some opinions on the talk page of this new article would help, concerning a move from Lajos Jánossy -> Jánossy Lajos. Thanks, M∧Ŝc2ħεИτlk 06:19, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Superheavy elements

Hey guys, there's a discussion some of you might be interested in going on, here. It's about superheavy elements will be called in future. In short, the discussion as is today is leaning toward ditching the IUPAC system in favor of one used in science today. Nuances are also being discussed. Please take part.--R8R Gtrs (talk) 17:27, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

AfC submission

Here's another relevant article. Regards, FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 14:28, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Additional opinions at Talk:György Paál

Additional opinions would be welcome at Talk:György Paál. --Amble (talk) 16:57, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

International Year of Crystallography 2014

UNESCO proclaimed the "International Year of Crystallography 2014". It can be an important opportunity for wikipedians to contribute in an international initiative, spreading the scientific knowledge, in particular about crystallography.
These are my proposals to participate to this event:

  • to create the page International Year of Crystallography 2014 in all the Wikipedias
  • to improve substantially during this year the page Crystallography, Crystal and other important pages about crystallography, in all the Wikipedias
  • to create and translate pages related to crystallography
  • to create a Portal:Crystallography
  • to organize better the pictures in commons:Category:Crystallography and encourage the creation of new pictures
  • to contact all the Wikipedias, other Wikimedia projects, Wikimedia Foundation and the organizing committee of the "International Year of Crystallography 2014" (here you can see their contacts) to communicate our adhesion to this initiative.

Do you have any other opinion or suggestion? --Daniele Pugliesi (talk) 10:12, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Portal:Crystallography already exists. Under its former incarnation as Portal:Xray Crystallography, it was nominated for deletion (see the discussion). RockMagnetist (talk) 17:25, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

I've nominated Portal:Technology for featured candidacy. Comments would be appreciated, at Wikipedia:Featured portal candidates/Portal:Technology. — Cirt (talk) 17:42, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Sarfatti

Can someone have a look at what's going on with the edits by 50.184.42.155 (talk · contribs), at Jack Sarfatti and perhaps also at Susskind-Glogower operator, specially this and also this by what seems to be another instance of same? Thx. - DVdm (talk) 19:10, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

I reverted the edits you link to by diffs as they were unsourced and email addresses should not be in articles (for obvious reasons of anonymity). Maschen 20:48, 24 November 2013‎

Plasma cosmology

I have no interest in the subject of Plasma cosmology, but a newbie started out by deleting large portions of the article, and is demanding that he recreate it from the ground up, apparently without interference from the earlier editors ("The current ring of editors really have no business in the editing process for this article."[1]). I'd rather let others with more knowledge of the subject deal with this person.

Maybe they have a lot to bring to this topic, but they know nothing about collaborative editing, ownership, and edit warring. They aren't listening to advice. Here are some relevant links. Their contributions is a good place to start:

Brangifer (talk) 00:39, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

"cease and desist immediately". Sounds like a legal threat. Xxanthippe (talk) 01:13, 25 November 2013 (UTC).

Nuclear forensics

Can somebody help me gathering sources and editing Nuclear forensics. It was recently greatly expanded, but is somewhat of a rough draft. The topic is really interesting, but there is a lot of literature out there, and I only know two analytical methods well enough to write about them. --Tobias1984 (talk) 15:09, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

FAR notification

I have nominated Binary star for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Dana boomer (talk) 18:53, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Plasma

I'm not a professional scientist, so someone might review my edit. 2601:8:B500:862:DDBE:B5D5:2AD5:B5CC (talk) 16:18, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Your instincts were right. Thanks for your removal of hyperbole! Stigmatella aurantiaca (talk) 17:02, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
Amazing. That article had an Unreferenced tag dating back to 2008. RockMagnetist (talk) 17:13, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Wu experiment

I just did a major rewrite of our article on the Wu experiment (which established P-violation) old version. It's a very interesting topic/experiment, but it would be nice if someone could double-check if I got anything wrong/if I muddied the waters. I've trimmed lots of materials and details from the old version, mostly because it was either unclear or had the effect of hiding a forest behind trees (i.e. mundane details). The mechanism and consequences section is the one which I feel needs the most attention from someone who can handle the mathematics of P-violation/weak interaction.

If you have sources for the various [citation needed], feel free to add them. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 05:54, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Did some copyediting, most relatively non-controversial, but deleted a sentence that seemed vaguely gobbledegook to me:
"The gamma rays are emitted electromagnetically, and are quickly released from the excited Nickel-60 nucleus."
What in heck does it mean for gamma decay to occur "electromagnetically"? Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.57.52.219 (talk) 12:43, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
Gamma rays are photons. Since photons are the mediators of the EM interaction, gamma decay is an EM process. I've restored the sentence. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 13:35, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
Does it add anything to the experimental description to state that emission occurs "electromagnetically"? Is there any non-electromagnetic means for gamma emission to occur? Does it not strike you that the sentence is totally redundant?
Note that almost immediately before the statement under question, one reads "The stable nickel nucleus is excited by the reaction and emits two gamma rays (γ)..." So what does the statement under question add except the need for the reader to scratch his head trying to figure out its intent? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.57.52.219 (talk) 14:22, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
The "Experiment" section is unclear. It needs an illustration. Anybody care to make an English version of File:Parity violation principle Wu experiment.jpg so that it can be added to the article? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.57.52.219 (talk) 14:12, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
That gamma decay is an EM process is important because EM does respect P-conservation. This is why comparing beta decay with gamma decay yield information about whether or not beta decay respects P-conservation or not. The information is technically redundant, in that this is obvious to who understands the physics of gamma decay, and know that gamma rays = photons, and that photons mediate the EM interaction. But this needs to be spelled out because this isn't something that's obvious to someone who isn't familiar with particle physics.
I agree that a diagram of the experiment would go a long way. [2] for the experimental setup, and some version of that German image for the "conceptual" setup. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 14:37, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
A reworded version of what you've just written would be an excellent addition to this section. 173.57.52.219 (talk) 14:44, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

A quite well-written description of the Goldhaber Experiment is available on the German Wikipedia. Anybody care to take a hand at translating it? 173.57.52.219 (talk) 07:47, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

It's on my to do list at some point in the mid-to-near future (i.e. before 2015), but one thing at a time. Feel free to create the article yourself btw. If you don't want to register, you can follow WP:AFC. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 17:51, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

I find the following statement to be disturbing: "The parity violation observed in this experiment resulted from the W and Z gauge bosons of the weak interaction only interacting with left-handed matter particles and right-handed antimatter particles." Is this statement true for the Z boson? 173.57.52.219 (talk) 08:05, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

In the case of the Standard Model, the answer would be no since right-handed matter neutrinos simply don't exist. In the case of Standard Model extensions, the answer would depend on the model. One way or another though, the Z boson is not involved in beta-decay at all, so the statement in question seems a bit muddy to me. Stigmatella aurantiaca (talk) 12:05, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Please check my "Materials and methods" description. Thanks. 173.57.52.219 (talk) 11:34, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Cleanup listing out of date

The pages Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics/Cleanup listing, Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics/Taskforces/Acoustics/Cleanup listing, and so on, may have been very useful in their time, but are now three years out of date. The automatically generated CleanupListing fills much the same role and is always nearly up to date. Yet multiple links to the former are prominently displayed on the project page while a link to the latter is tucked away at the bottom. Is it time to get rid of the old pages and display the CleanupListing box more prominently? RockMagnetist (talk) 17:31, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes. M∧Ŝc2ħεИτlk 17:37, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Another collection of obsolete pages is Wikipedia:Pages needing attention/Classical physics and other lists of pages needing attention. Some have been marked with a {{historical}} tag, but such a tag is really intended for old policies and guidelines (see WP:HISTORICAL). RockMagnetist (talk) 18:43, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

We could just delete the redundant stuff. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 14:46, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

One other issue: on some of the taskforce pages there are new article alerts like this one linking to pages of a blocked user. Can these be replaced by functional alerts, or should they just be deleted? RockMagnetist (talk) 18:26, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Proton/Neutron structure image

AspaasBekkelund (talk · contribs) has been changing our current images for baryon structure from

to

and

to

Since these would affect a large number of high-visibility articles, I revert them so we could discuss if this was appropriate or not. I don't have any strong qualified opinion either way, although it do think the older image looks nicer. Also if we choose the new version, we should probably update the current image rather than create a new one. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 11:39, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

I had a discussion with my particle physics professor, who says that the images on the left are better to describe a baryon. This is because the quarks directly interact with each other. Truth be told, neither of the images describes what actually happens, but the image on the left is more indicative of the interactions between quarks. In the right image, it gives the impression that the quarks are releasing gluons into a general space, when in fact the quarks are interacting with each other via gluon transfer. Primefac (talk) 13:01, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
That was my impression as well, although I can't claim much expertise here. I think the y-shape for the gluon is sort of based on the shape of the gluon flux tubes (e.g., see figs in arXiv:hep-lat/0606016 / arXiv:hep-lat/0212024 / arXiv:hep-lat/0401026), but that is a far stretch from saying that the interaction is not quark-gluon-quark, but rather quark-gluon-gluon-quark. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 14:00, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
I will have to defer to experts in the field, about whether the 'delta' formation on the left or the 'y' formation on the right is more accurate. (Although it is my impression that they are both equally bad and there is probably no good way to represent what is actually happening.) I prefer the aesthetics of the right since it is easier to read the letters. However, I do prefer the lighter gray circle with the less distinct boundary since it distracts less from the up and down quarks with their gluon interaction. Further, I don't want to cause more trouble, but shouldn't the gluons have color as well?
- TStein (talk) 14:06, 14 November 2013 (UTC)


This will be a short response since I have to leave soon, but I will come back for more discussions soon. I can agree that the previous image might look nicer, but I don't feel it shows how the gloun flux tubes is connected. Since with a still image it is very hard to represent what's actually happening, I would like to create a .gif instead which will make it easier to show what is happening. Something like what Hank Green has done in this video(starting at 2:30). What are your thoughts on that?

Thanks for the feedback - AspaasBekklund (talk) 14:43, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Why do you feel its important to illustrate the 'flux tubes'? Do you beleive that the Y configuration has a bigger amplitude than the delta configuration? Perhaps it illustrates confinement better, or helps explain the origin of jets? User:Linas (talk) 22:09, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
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