Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics/Archive 11

This is "Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics/Archive11". It covers November 2006.

orbital motion

i don't know where to discuss this, but the stub orbital motion should probably redirect somewhere, i just couldn't figure out where? generally, the orbital and orbit (disambiguation) pages need some sorting out; at the moment planetary orbit has been nominated to be renamed to orbit (physics) (discussion here).. although, perhaps it should be renamed to just orbit? thanks, Mlm42 09:08, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Sub-project for Relativity?

See User talk:MathPhys/WikiProject Relativity. JRSpriggs 12:06, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Hafele-Keating experiment and Global Positioning System

I'm looking for advice from an editor who is knowledgeable about relativity and our content policies. We have a single-issue editor, Uknewthat (talk · contribs), who seems to be trying to mount a case against Einstein. He is adding what is sometimes clearly his own original research, but sometimes not so clearly, to Hafele-Keating experiment and Global Positioning System. The pages have been fully and semi-protected because of him, and he's been blocked several times for disruption or 3RR, but he continues to add the material anyway.

Examples of the more obvious original research are [1] [2]; the less obvious examples are [3] [4].

I'm not qualified to judge the science, so any help working out how best to proceed would be very much appreciated. My interest in this is as an administrator, by the way, not as an editor. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 18:39, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Einstein disprovers are not that uncommon contributors in category:relativity, I hope standard procedure will hold them somewhat in check, but note that some contributors already fled Wikipedia due to this problem.

Also, it is easier to revert, block and ban based on WP:NOR, than to go into the details of content argument.

For GPS specifically, there is an excellent review article in the open content journal Living Reviews in Relativity. IMHO everything which cannot be backed by this review, can be deleted on sight.

• http://relativity.livingreviews.org/Articles/lrr-2003-1/index.html

Pjacobi 19:07, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Thank you, that is very helpful. Just to be clear, it is your view that each of the links I provided above shows the user's original research? I'm minded to apply blocks of increasing length each time the material is inserted, but I want to make sure I'm being fair. I'm being accused of being part of an Einstein groupie conspiracy. :-) SlimVirgin ^(talk) 19:38, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Welcome to the Einstein cabal.

If he is sane and polite enough to stay here for longer, we have to differentiate two points.

(A) Is GPS a test for special and general relativity

(B) Are relativistic effect important for the

(B1) operation of the GPS system as whole

(B2) operation of a (unsophisticated) receiver

For (A) and (B1) it's a clear yes, for (B2) he may have a point

Pjacobi 20:16, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

He seems to be saying no to (A) and to (B1), although I'm not sure about (B2) — but I'm assuming a no to (B1) entails a no to (B2) — and he definitely isn't polite, so I sense he won't be around for much longer. Thanks for the welcome to the cabal. :-) SlimVirgin ^(talk) 21:00, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

It makes me think of Tom Van Flandern and his windmill fight against relativity based on GPS.  --Lambiam^Talk 22:52, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

FYI, I worked on GPS receiver signal processing for a while, and noted that it seems to be de-rigeur to have every GPS conference proceedings to publish one or two Einstein-debunking articles. I find this partly excusable, as the conferences are conducted and edited by electronics engineers, and not relativity experts, and thus, they are not really fit to judge one way or the other, and thus allow this stuff to get published. Most of these seem well-written, and authored by otherwise accomplished engineers (i.e. peers of the reviewers) thus making it all that much harder to reject. Some of the arguments presented in these papers are quite subtle and confusing, and can take some hard thinking to find the precise fault in the logic (I wasted hours on one). Anyway, the point is that one can get refereed, published sources in authoritative-sounding journals that support non-sense arguments.

A piece of GPS trivia: the satellite transmitters make a miniscule, but non-zero correction for the Pound-Rebka falling photon blueshift due to the fact that the ground-based receivers are in a gravity well as compared to the satellites. This is a purely general-relativistic effect. The original declassified military spec gives an explicit numeric value for this correction, ten or 15 digits worth, early in the spec ... "page 18" sticks in my head. linas 15:27, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Please verify this article

Hello. I am tempted to put a proposed deletion tag on the article Loopholes in optical Bell test experiments but I suppose it would be better if someone with more specific physics knowledge could check it out. As far as I can tell it was built by a single user citing, essentially, her own papers some of which are unpublished or at least have not benn peer-reviewed. This all seems very contrary to the no original research policy. Anyways, if this is mostly bunk, as I suspect, please put the prod tag yourself. Pascal.Tesson 04:59, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

This (and related) page have a long and unhappy history here. Compare this AfD. AfD result and other old discussions may indicate that everything has to be consolidated into one theory and one experimental article, i.e. Bell's theorem and Bell test experiments, instead of the cobweb of articles which once existed.

Even if the works of deceased [5] Wikipedia editor User:Caroline Thompson get published as book as her family indicated, it is still rather marginal unless it becomes cited in scientific journals.

Pjacobi 09:46, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Sorry to hear about Caroline. We're here but for a little while. I'd vote to keep such an article; it may need fixing/cleanup/clarification. Although I strenuously disagree with Caroline's conclusions, the subject itself is important. Aspect talked about performing more experiments to close more loopholes, and as far as I can tell, these experiments were never funded/performed. linas 04:59, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Ugh.

Yes, I had known about Caroline Thompson death early this year. The whole subject was very painful.--CSTAR 05:10, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Physics pages needing attention needing attention

The three lists of physics pages needing attention: Wikipedia:Pages needing attention/Modern physics, Wikipedia:Pages needing attention/Classical physics, and Wikipedia:Pages needing attention/Other physics topics, all have the instruction: "— Do not add text below this point — / <!-- BOT INSERTS CONTENT HERE --> / <!-- EVERYTHING BELOW THIS LINE WILL BE OVERWRITTEN -->", but have not been updated since July 11, 2006.  --Lambiam^Talk 16:36, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Those pages seem to be updated by Pearle (talk · contribs). He was posed the question of whether or not he was still updating the PNA back on the 18th, which he hasn't yet responded to. Mike Peel 16:53, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

It looks like he's started updating them again now. Mike Peel 17:50, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Cosmic inflation

I have two requests concerning this article. One: I have submitted a peer review for it. Please have a look at the article and comment. The last four subsections in "theoretical status" need major work, and the article needs to be pared down a bit and sub-articles written, and technical things need to be better explained for the lay reader, but I think the article is at least quite accurate, well referenced (except in a couple places where I haven't dug something up yet) and clear. I'd appreciate hearing your comments.

Second, I've been having two long discussions with User:MichaelCPrice on the talk page. I don't see that they are going anywhere, and I'm having trouble seeing a way past the impasse. It seems like we're talking past each other. The first is about whether the concept of "gravitational energy" needs to be mentioned. My feeling is that it is an ill-defined concept seldom if ever mentioned in the technical literature on inflation and mentioning it in the article would introduce unnecessary details. MichaelCPrice's says that it is mentioned in Guth and Hawking's popular books, and needs to be in the article.

The second is about whether inflation can be past eternal. I feel like the weight of the literature is behind it not being past eternal, and that the issue is fairly and clearly represented in the article. Michael disagrees with this.

Any comments or advice would be greatly appreciated. –Joke 05:20, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

A new playground (redux)

A home for wiki-driven review articles? An off-site stable version archive? A venue for debunking pseudoscience, using original research when we need it? You help decide!

Blake Stacey 17:07, 3 November 2006

Laplace-Runge-Lenz vector as an FA candidate?

Hi all, I'm toying with the idea of submitting Laplace-Runge-Lenz vector as a Wikipedia:Featured article candidate. Would you please look it over and make suggestions on what we might do to get it ready for FAC? Thanks very much! Willow 17:28, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

I'd recommend passing it through peer review and/or Good Articles, at the very least so that the article gets more eyes over it before it goes to FAC. Mike Peel 18:44, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Oops, sorry for not clarifying that. My thought was to pass the article through scientific peer review, then normal (non-scientific) peer review, and then finally to FAC, just as we did for Photon. Right now, I'm hoping that people here will catch any obvious errors/problems/omissions, to make life easier for the peer reviewers. Interested in volunteering? Mwahaha! ;D Willow 19:03, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

I'll be keeping an eye on the article, but it's not something I'm familiar with, so I probably won't be of much use regarding errors and omissions. Mike Peel 19:10, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Molecule

This article hasn't been claimed by either Wikiproject Chemistry or Physics. Is there a reason for this? youngvalter 17:32, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

It should be part of the chemistry project since chemists generally seem more interested in molecules than physicists. Molecules are a central concept to chemistry, whereas they are not as important in most fields of physics (although fields of physics closely related to chemistry do study molecules). Moreover, note that the word "chemistry" is used more freqently than "physics" in the molecule article, and more chemistry books and articles are referenced than physics articles and books.

(As a side note: I also think that molecule should be taken out of the template at the bottom of the molecule page, but that's just my opinion.) George J. Bendo 18:01, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Most likely, no-one's gotten around to tagging it. Currently, only 3,275 articles have been tagged as physics, out of an estimated ~10,000. Feel free to tag it with {{Template:Physics}} or {{Template:Chemistry}} as you see appropriate (I'd recommend the latter, but not the former). Mike Peel 18:08, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Can an article be in only one Wikiproject? I would think molecule could be legitimately in both physics and chemistry. In fact, I would imagine a bunch of articles would be appropriate for both projects, e.g. atom and thermodynamics. Joshua Davis 19:56, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

There's no problem with an article being covered by more than one Wikiproject. One example of this would be Albert Einstein, which is covered by Physics, History of Science, Biography and Germany WikiProjects. Wikiprojects don't own articles; they exist to support them as and when needed. Mike Peel 20:12, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

I have added the Chemistry Wikiproject tag. There is certainly no reason why an article can not be looked at by more than one project and indeed there is a strong need for some articles to be looked at by both the Chemistry and the Physics projects. One the side note above re the particle template, molecules are the particles of molecular physics. --Bduke 21:37, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Upgrading equations to more more modern contexts

Does anyone know whether we have articles on methods (heuristics) for upgrading: (1) a set of classical equations to special relativity; or (2) a set of special relativistic equations to general relativity; or (3) a set of classical equations to quantum mechanics? For example, to go from special relativity to general relativity, we replace "eta" by "g" and partial derivatives by covariant derivatives, etc.. JRSpriggs 08:41, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

For the last point, see quantization and related articles on canonical, path integral and geometric approaches. These articles do not look in particularly good shape, but they exist. Blake Stacey 16:37, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Laplace-Runge-Lenz vector in scientific peer review

Hi all, I've submitted the article Laplace-Runge-Lenz vector for scientific peer review. Would you please look it over and make suggestions on what we might do to get it ready for FAC? Thanks very much! Willow 23:12, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Possibly relevant Admin vote

An excellent editor of scientific articles, Opabinia regalis, is being considered for adminship. Her work has primarily been in biochemistry, but she is broadly educated and scientifically discerning, which could catalyze the development of science articles on Wikipedia. As an example, O. regalis was really helpful in bringing Photon to FA status. Please support her candidacy, if you feel as I do that she would an excellent administrator. Willow 19:45, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

This might not be the right place...

...but would there happen to be anyone who would be willing to review the Relative density article? In a random google search, I stumbled on a claim that the article had been vandalized by injecting random-but-credible values into a table. I don't know the subject, so I have no way to determine whether the claim is true. I added a note to the article's talk page. If this is the wrong place for this, is there another forum that would be more appropriate? Thanks! -- Jim Douglas ^(talk) _(contribs) 22:15, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Dissymmetry of lift

Hi Physics geeks. Could you have a look at Dissymmetry of lift to see if it makes sense? --Dangherous 11:24, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

This makes sense to me, although this somehow does not seem like an encyclopedia article. It looks like a paragraph from a textbook. George J. Bendo 11:39, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

There is also an article with the somewhat unlikely name "Dissymetry of Lift". Anyone here feel competent to merge the two, or shall I just slap mergefrom/to tags on them? To make our happiness complete there is also Asymmetry of lift, which, we learn, must not be confused with dissymetry.  --Lambiam^Talk 17:54, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Dissymetry of Lift looks more complete than Dissymmetry of lift, but the correct title is "Dissymmetry of lift". Maybe someone can cut the Dissymetry of Lift and paste it over Dissymmetry of lift. Would that be sufficient for a merge? George J. Bendo 07:51, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

In doing this one should make sure no useful information is lost. Calling the article Dissymetry of Lift "S" for "source" and Dissymmetry of lift "T" for "target", the most appropriate procedure for this particular case (S is "better", T has the proper title) would appear to be:

1. Open S and T in two separate edit windows.
2. Cut/paste any non-redundant useful content from T into S.
3. Cut/paste the entire content from S into T.
4. Preview and edit T until it looks good and consistent, and then save it, with an edit summary "merge content from [[Dissymetry of Lift]]"
5. Replace the contents of S by #REDIRECT [[Dissymmetry of lift]] {{R from misspelling}} to the source page, and save it.
6. Check "What links here" on S for "double redirects" (pages redirecting to the now redirect page S).
7. Fix any double redirects by making them redirect directly to T.

 --Lambiam^Talk 09:00, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

New category

There is now a new category for tagging non-mainstream proposals that the scientific community has ignored in the journals. Check out Category:Fringe subjects without critical scientific evaluation and tag it to appropriate articles. --ScienceApologist 12:31, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

What is the hierarchical relationship with the category Pseudophysics and its subcat Fringe physics? Above / below / incomparable?  --Lambiam^Talk 18:00, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

The review of Physics continues at Talk:Physics/wip

Some time ago a group of editors set up a "work in progress" page (at Talk:Physics/wip) to hammer out a consensus for the Physics article, which for too long had been in an unstable state. Discussion of the lead for the article has taken a great deal of time and thousands of words. The definitional and philosophical foundations seem to cause most headaches; but progress has been made. Why not review some of the proposals for the lead material that people are putting forward, or put forward your own, or simply join the discussion? The more contributors the better, for a consensus. – Noetica 01:53, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Update: Concrete proposals have now been put forward, arising from recent discussion aimed at producing a stable and consensual lead section for the Physics article. We have set up a straw poll, for comments on the proposals. Why not drop in at Talk:Physics/wip, and have your say? The more the better! – Noetica 22:37, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Understandability

"Horses used for pulling vehicles varied in size, but also traded off speed for weight and power. Traction force of horses used for transport can be between 50-300kg, depending on speed and distance. To get the traction force in Newton(SI units) multiply with the local acceleration due to gravity. The traction force corresponds to the friction force of the pulled object and in case additionally to its downhill-slope force."

This section in Horses in Warfare is designed to briefly describe the basics of how much a horse can pull under what conditions. I have somebody from the US, who finished high school, telling me that he doesn't understand any of this and most US based wikipedia readers will neither. So I ask myself:

a) Could my explanation be improved?

b) Can the necessary knowledge to understand this neither be presumed nor retrieved from existing wikipedia articles?

Thank you for helping me to get clarity on such cases. Wandalstouring 09:08, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Horse people seem a bit odd on units. That's the best someone could give me, although I still miss the sources for this Russian notification of horses traction ability. Wandalstouring 09:11, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

It seems unlikely that kilograms used as a measure of force would be made to vary according to the local gravity. You probably should use the standard value of 1g = 9.80665 N/kg.

You say "The traction power corresponds to the friction force ...". In physics, power is the dot-product of force and velocity. You say nothing about the velocity of the horse.

Overall, the passage seems unclear and muddled (at least to someone like me who is unfamiliar with the units used by horse-people). You need to be more explicit about what your terms mean. JRSpriggs 11:39, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

OK, the input data was a bit low. The only other data available was the distance, no time given. The section had been rewritten and reinserted several times. This is how traction power sneaked in. Of course this makes no sense. Wandalstouring 21:06, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

New Scientist again

Tajmar/Podkletnov antigravity this time

• http://www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/mg19225771.800;

Please watch out for antigravity all over the place.

BTW: It seems ESA got a bit upset, and Tajmar now includes the disclaimer Comment: This work does not reflect the opinion of any official institution in his abstracts.

Pjacobi 14:54, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Seems a new wave of Antigravity experts have arrived already [6].

In 2001, the Disclosure Project announced that Anti-Gravity and Zero-point energy were in use by secret government agencies, and had been so for over fifty years. The claim was backed up by 400 military, intelligence, government, corporate and scientific witnesses.

Pjacobi 16:10, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Where can I go to put a down-payment on my new anti-gravity UFO? My friend has a Corvette, and I need to show him off. linas 01:15, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

I'll gladly take your down payment now. Please wait 6 to N weeks for delivery. Anville 19:22, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Guys, Guys, Guys. Much as I hate to defend New Scientist, it is a Science News magazine, it has a responsibility to report the News within the field of Science, and like all newspapers, etc. the exciting news is what is unexpected, new and relevatory.

With the article in front of me here it doesn't read like pseduo-science - an anomalous observation was observed (a magnetic field within an accelerating superconductor being higher than expected) was observed by one reasearcher. Two independent reasearchers found a paper by an independent third group of physicists with a theory that might explain the observation and conducted an experiment to test the theory, apparently with a skeptical attitude. They found results that agreed with the abberant theory and published these in a reputable journal, going on to perform more experiments varying the parameters.

The results appear to be huge (ten-to-the-seven over standard predictions is mentioned), and more importantly testable. The article reads to me more like s proto-science than pseudoscience. --Neo 21:47, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Object naming

Recently, the article for Comet Halley was renamed to "Halley's Comet". The problem is that the name "Halley's Comet" is officially not used by the International Astronomical Union - the internationally recognised body for naming celestial objects.

Now, according to the Wikipedia Naming Conventions, the article name should reflect what "the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize" which, unfortunately, is "Halley's Comet". However, they are "conventions, not rules carved in stone" - I think there is a case to be made that when the most easily recognised name is officially unused, the official name should be used instead. I want to put that argument to one side, for the moment, as there is a more fundamental issue I want to address.

There is nothing in that convention which states that the article needs to use the officially unused term. Now, what has happened is I changed the article so as to explain that "Halley's Comet", whereas in popular usage, is officially not used. I also tried (rather dismally, I admit) to back up my claim with references etc. And, I changed the text of the article so that every instance of "Halley's Comet" was changed to "Comet Halley" except where "Halley's Comet" appeared in the context of a quotation from someone who actually used the term. There is a difference between an article using a lesser officially-accepted term (eg "Heartburn" instead of the official term Pyrosis) and an article using an officially unused term (eg "Halley's Comet" when there is a very similar officially used term "Comet Halley").

Regarding my initial dismal attempt to explain the issue, I have since found much better references, and I've also found out exactly what the official position is. But I've run into a Wikipedia Administrator who says that my views on the issue are "consistent with neither Wikipedia guidelines nor community opinion", and has totally reverted my contribution. According to said administrator, the community opinion includes -

• "Halley's Comet is the more well-recognized form of the name and that's all there is to it", hence the term Comet Halley only needs "a small mention somewhere - maybe even in parentheses". I have to say I disagree - I think the opinions of the people who dedicate their lives and careers to studying these things deserve better than to have their opinions relegated to "a small mention somewhere - maybe even in parentheses".
• "I wouldn't expect to see an article titled (a subject most people have never heard of before)". That begs the question - what should the title of an article about a subject that most people have never heard of before be? Or, should Wikipedia simply avoid such articles?

Chrisobyrne 14:33, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

As someone who is currently embroiled in a rather extensive arbitration relevant to this, maybe I can comment a bit. Wikipedia has a problem that it tends to bend over backwards to be accomodating to amateurs while being pretty harsh on experts who do not have the time nor the inclination (often) to fight off amateur attacks. This is pretty much by design, and the culture of this place is not going to change.

However, things are not so bleak as they might at first seem. You are an expert because you have studied the subject so much that you know what the accurate answer is and where to find good sources. You can evaluate which sources are good, which are mediocre, and which are bad, and can point people in the appropriate directions. Use your abilities as an expert to guide other users to the "correct answer". This will allow them to see your points as contributions to the encyclopedia rather than sources for debate.

One of the advantages of Wikipedia is that corrections to articles do not have to be made immediately as the encyclopedia is a dynamic and changing source. While having an article with miscoceptions or errors is regrettable, there are boilerplates and warnings you can post that allow people to see that there may be problems with a particular article. These things can serve as placeholders (for, in some case, a very long time) until the controversies are resolved.

Your goal may be best to sit down and write brilliant prose that totally overhauls an article. Such behavior is tolerated and encouraged, so long as this prose is meticulously documented and cited. This is what I did on the Big Bang article two years ago or so when I saw it was in terrible shape. Then I started tackling redshift. I'm happy to say that those two articles conform much better to the standard treatments than they did when I arrived.

So here is my recommendation to you: Read WP:BOLD. Think about the naming convention "controversy" and consider writing a section in the article discussing why one is formal and another is informal (there's definitely plenty of material for this). Write the section with well-cited references (using the ref tag and all that) and insert it into the article at an appropriate location. Let your contribution sink in, and then see what the response from the community is. Sometimes it is easiest to affect consensus by adding content. While it is easy to debate in a conflict when there is no prose to the effect of what you are trying to argue in the article itself, it is a lot more difficult to argue against someone who writes a section of an article that is duly sourced, accurate, and verifiable that supports their claim.

Good luck, and let me know what the outcome of all this is.

--ScienceApologist 15:05, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

That said, do you support changing "Halley's Comet" to "Comet Halley" throughout the article? How about the results of the move request? —Wknight94 (talk) 15:19, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I have no opinion on the matter, but generally I support the experts in these disputes. --ScienceApologist 19:01, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

In your discussions with foresaid admin, and in a move request, you might politely refer to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (astronomical objects)#Comets, in particular the following sentence:

"For extremely famous comets which have no issues with disambiguation, these should be titled "Comet <name>", e.g. Comet Halley."

I hope this helps.  --Lambiam^Talk 17:22, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Wow, that guideline seems to fly in the face of WP:NC which says both:

Generally, article naming should give priority to what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature.

and

Names of Wikipedia articles should be optimized for readers over editors; and for a general audience over specialists.

How was that comet guideline determined? I don't see any discussion or consensus for it. —Wknight94 (talk) 18:15, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

The Wikipedia:Naming conventions (astronomical objects) page is relatively new, so it is still open for discussion. — Dr. George J. Bendo

Reverted again for different reason

FYI, I reverted the last change to Halley's Comet with the edit summary, "rv. According to Astronomical naming conventions#Comets, the only official name would be 1P/1682 Q1. I can't determine where this "Comet Halley" even comes from. Please cite". I realized no one has actually said where "Comet Halley" comes from. The http://www.iau.org website appears to be under some sort of construction and is all messed up. If someone can cite that "Comet Halley", go ahead and put it back. Otherwise, I call Shenanigans. —Wknight94 (talk) 18:42, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

The name of comet Halley, according to the IAU naming convention introduced in August 1995, is actually any of 1P, 1P/Halley, 1P (Halley), 1P/1682 Q1, 1P/−239 K1, 1P/1982 U1 (Halley), and several others. None of these is "more official" than the others; however, only if a specific apparition is meant, is it usual to include the year.  --Lambiam^Talk 23:44, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

It would be nice to have a link to a website where this is defined. —Dr. George J. Bendo

When I do a search with [+comet +halley -"halley's comet"], Google reports about 432,000 hits. Searching for [-"comet halley" "halley's comet"] gives about 363,000 hits. This suggests, at least to me, that the designation "(comet) Halley" forms a quite significant fraction of the total number of references.  --Lambiam^Talk 23:58, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

This was discussed previously on the Talk:Halley's Comet page in the requested move. Note that many of the search terms may be duplicates of the older version of the Wikipedia page. I encourage you to continue this discussion at Talk:Halley's Comet; the extended discussion on this comet is detracting from the other physics-related discussion. —Dr. George J. Bendo

New move discussion

Talk:Halley's Comet now has a new move discussion regarding whether we should take an expert's opinion on the naming convention of a comet or if we should rely on a popular rendition. Since the first discussion didn't address this particular problem, I think we need to revisit it. --ScienceApologist 19:16, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I do not think that chrisobyrne can appropriately call himself an expert in the field. According to his Curriculum Vitae, he has not been active in professional astronomy since 1993. Perhaps we should examine Mr. O'Byrne's claims more critically. Dr. George J. Bendo 20:48, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

We don't need to really go into an expert vetting here. What I can say is that the IAU definitely ruled that eponymous comets as objects are usually named as Chris declares. This can be confirmed in most contemporary texts that discuss comets, for example. --ScienceApologist 22:56, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Where did the IAU declare this? Is the other Wikipedia article incorrect then? —Wknight94 (talk) 02:16, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

First of all, in response to Dr. Bendo, he is totally correct in saying that I haven't been involved in professional astronomy since 1993. However, I've been involved in amateur astronomy since the early 1980s, and it's hard to be involved in something for a quarter century without becoming something of an expert. I certainly don't, of course, claim to be anything remotely like the expert in anything astronomy-related.

As for the IAU, the very best reference I have as to their position is a private email I have received from an IAU official. The most pertinent quotation from that email is "The IAU does not use possessive forms (Halley's, Encke's etc.).", which I think is quite clear indeed. Unforutnately, the email contained only this web reference on the issue. I think the word "possessive" is quite interesting - my guess is that the reason behind the policy is so as to not support the idea that anyone "owns" anything in the sky (it's not my comet, it's not your comet, it isn't even Halley's comet - it is the comet Halley). Somehow I suspect Mr. Halley himself would agree. Chrisobyrne 19:42, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Instead of continuing discussions on this topic both here and at Talk:Halley's Comet, I suggest moving this discussion to Talk:Halley's Comet. I hope Mr. O'Byrne will be willing to reprint his comments there for further discussion. — Dr. George J. Bendo

Experts requested

Hey folks, could you have a look at Category:Pages needing expert attention from Physics experts? More articles will be added to this category as the expert requests are sorted. Thanks much! WP:WERS. --Brad Beattie ^(talk) 10:27, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Additionally, many of the articles in Category:Pages needing expert attention from Science experts have an important, often predominant, physics aspect.  --Lambiam^Talk 14:09, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Stablepedia

Beginning cross-post.

See Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team#Stablepedia. If you wish to comment, please comment there. ★TWO YEARS OF MESSEDROCKER★ 03:49, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

End cross-post. Please do not comment more in this section.

New "undo" function

From Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-11-27/Technology report:

It is also now possible to undo edits other than the last one, provided that no intermediate changes conflict with the edit to be undone. The interface used is more akin to "manual revert" than rollback: on diff pages, an "undo" link should appear next to the "edit" link on the right-hand revision. When this link is clicked, the software will attempt to undo the change while preserving any changes since then, and will add the result to the edit box to be reviewed or saved. (Andrew Garrett, r17935–r17938, bug 6925)

There is a new button labelled "(undo)" which appears on the right under the edit summary when you look at the diff in a vandal's contributions. This allows you to remove a change without disturbing subsequent changes to the same page. I just found out about it. Have not had an occassion to try it yet. JRSpriggs 10:18, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

RfC: William G Tifft

I started a biopgraphy on astronomer, William G. Tifft, and discovered one of the few sources of biographical information, and want to include it. But another editor disagrees. I would appreciate some input, described on the Talk:William_G._Tifft page. --Iantresman 17:06, 30 November 2006 (UTC)