Wikipedia:Peer review/Dark matter/archive1

Dark matter

I am nominating this article as I am soon doing a Physics project on this topic and how it affects the possible end of the universe. I intend to improve this article in parallel with my own work. I would appreciate any comments that can be made about improving the article. Thanks. --Darth Revert ^{(AKA Deskana)} (talk) 14:19, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It looks pretty cool; perhaps a little on the technical side in a few places, as in the "Alternative explanations" section. (Which may put off younger, or non-technical readers.) Just a few small issues:

Rather than using inline links, could should reference them using inline citations and put the links down in the references section.
The formula for the gravitational energy needs to have either a link to a page with the currently-accepted fuction, or put that function in the text as well (so the reader gets a before and after comparison).
There is a one-liner entry that states "Another proposed explanation is Nonsymmetric Gravitational Theory." I think this needs to be expanded into a paragraph with a brief explanation.

Finally I would really like to see a section on proposed scientific experiments for detecting and examining dark matter. Thanks!! — RJH 15:59, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This article may look ok. to non experts, but unfortunately it is a pretty bad article. The main problem with the article is that it mentions facts in an unbalanced way.

The introduction is ok. The next section starts with a big paragraph about Kristian Birkeland. This is totally unjustified. He could be mentioned in e.g. a footnote. Then the last sentence of that paragraph is Professor Peebles and Professor Ostriker, both of Princeton University investigated dark matter. So what? There are also some other professors who have investigated Dark matter. These two professors are quite big names in the field, so mentioning them can be justified, but you have to place it in some context. I.e. what they did and how that has influenced dark matter research.

The next paragraph is ok.

The last paragraph of the section is again pretty bad. Was Prof. Sumner the first scientist who proposed that CDM could be the hypothetical neutralino? If not then there is little point in mentioning him. The UK Dark Matter Collaboration is one of about 20 dark matter searches in the world. It hasn't yielded the strongest constraints on dark matter.

The last 3 sections are of better quality. There are some issues here about mentioning the latest research findings. I think it would be better to move all these paragraphs starting with "in 2006 scientist x from university y found result z, etc." to a special section devoted on the latest news.

I've been hard on the editors here, but note that I have been editing here too and I am thus partially responsible for the big mess this article has become. Count Iblis 13:20, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

On a technical note, the article badly needs an image to make it more appealing. Karol 08:38, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

First thing that comes to mind is that this needs more Wikipedia:inline references. 'Dark matter in popular culture' is just a stub section and should be expanded. Some pictures would be nice, too.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 21:55, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]