Talk:Theoretical astronomy

We need lots of cleanup

From an organizational standpoint, this article is dominated by enumerated lists and tables. There are even stand-alone quotes spliced with the prose of the introduction. From a physics standpoint, I would argue for a clear distinction of experimental astrophysics and observational astronomy. Things you observe are not laboratories unless you can change the controls, and something like a radio telescope is hardly an 'experimental tool'; it's an observational tool! The page at the top seems namely concerned with n u c l e o s y n t h e s i s, but a lot of the page discusses other things, which need to also be at the top. The number of corrections I'll need to make to the nuclear physics and nuclear astrophysics is large. For some examples, ⁴⁴Ca is stable, not radioactive. As is, the subtopics of Theoretical physical Astronomy are irrelevant. There are some sorts of beta-decay studies using cosmic rays, but I'm not sure if there's much for n e u t r i o n l e s s double-beta decay there, and certainly the citation is strictly nuclear physics. One of my supervisor's papers (N o t i a n i 's doctoral thesis work) is cited for the discovery of neutron rich nuclei, but in the context presented there's no relation to astrophysics in this Wiki and the paper only talks about the neutron drip line. Supernova 1987A is given "for example" for neutrino detection from supernova, but it's actually the only case, not a mere example of many such cases; furthermore, the neutrinos were detected before the optical counterpart, not after (which is consistent with opacity and transport models of supernovae as well, I should note). I found all those problems in 5 minutes, so I think there's considerable room for improvement, reduction, and fact-checking. D A I D ([[User talk:D A I D[ D A I D|talk]]) 18:49, 6 July 2010 (U T C)

As a note, specifically on ⁴⁴Ca, basically one needs to be really explicit. Through the decay chain for ⁴⁴Ti one can get beta-delayed gamma radiation from ⁴⁴Ca, but this needs to be stated much more clearly. There is a technical aspect of saying radiation from ⁴⁴Ca which is correct, but it's really misleading to write it that way. One is better off explaining the whole decay chain (and including ⁴⁴Sc I hope) than having it written like it is. D A I D (talk) 18:59, 6 July 2010 (U T C)