Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics/Archive August 2010

Neutrino theory of light... WTF?

Anyone heard of this before? It makes somewhat outlandish claims, but they are referenced to non-insane people such as Louis de Broglie and others. It could be a historical theory, but it seems to flirt with the "could still be possible" a little too much for my liking if this is indeed a historical theory. Haven't read the article in details however, so I might be either too generous or too harsh. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 14:08, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

It would be worthwhile for someone fluent in French and in the other language involved to check the nearest major reference library for the first three papers. The fourth paper should be something I can look up, though I can't guarantee doing it any time soon.

My concern is with the more recent work cited is that it looks a lot like pathological science, and I don't think the article as-written makes that clear. Instead, it has words to the effect of, "there's no evidence the photon is composite, and this neutrino model needs massless neutrinos with wierd spin properties, and it doesn't give a bosonic photon, but this is still an area of active research, really!".

What it would take at this point, assuming the original references are correctly cited, is for someone with the expertise to follow the math involved to adjust the article to emphasize the original, relatively brief historical course of this idea, and to condense the more recent work into a shorter summary whose section-lede makes it clear that this is no longer considered a mainstream concept (per WP:UNDUE).

I am not in a position to devote the amount of time this would take, and I do not have the expertise to doublecheck the math. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 17:39, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

I have not looked into this in detail but would not rule out the possibility that it is an elaborate hoax. Xxanthippe (talk) 22:54, 1 August 2010 (UTC).

I found this: [1] "Neutrino Theory of Photons" Phys. Rev. 137, B1291–B1301 (1965), which states that a photon is a neutrino-antineutrino pair. 76.66.193.119 (talk) 04:34, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Comment. This article was published in PRB in 1965 and yet was cited only 23 times on Web of Science. Unusual. Materialscientist (talk) 05:36, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

So it got past the referees. The author extended it in 1972 but with so few cites I doubt if it is worth an article of its own. Odd that it was published in PRB as this is usually for condensed matter. Xxanthippe (talk) 06:08, 2 August 2010 (UTC).

Phys Rev did not clearly partition into PRA-G by then. Materialscientist (talk) 06:20, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

I may be the last horse out of the gate here, but just for the heck of it I checked Google scholar on this topic and there is actually an article in Nature dated 19 June 1937, (Nature 139, 1071-1071 . doi:10.1038/1391071a0. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help); Missing or empty |title= (help)), which mentions Fock in the abstract, who is mentioned in the article (abstract here). Jordan is also mentioned in this abstract and both Fock and Jordan appear to have previously published related articles in Nature. Hope this helps. ----Steve Quinn (talk) 09:58, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

There appears to be a set of articles, on this topic, on Google Scholar - here. ----Steve Quinn (talk) 10:08, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes, the subject does appear to go back a long way. It is certainly not accepted now in mainstream physics (the Standard model) that the photon is a composite particle. The article was written by a relatively new user Waperkins who may have a connection with the subject. Perhaps it needs to be stressed that the subject is of mainly of historical interest. Xxanthippe (talk) 10:27, 2 August 2010 (UTC).

It is absurd to call this a hoax, or to exclaim "WTF". The article is well referenced. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 10:24, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't mean to delete your edit. It looks like there was an (edit conflict). Xxanthippe (talk) 11:55, 2 August 2010 (UTC).

Metadynamics

Hi, I just wrote a stub on metadynamics. Anyone interested in helping is welcome! --Cyclopia^talk 15:54, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

About a link

Could somebody please have a look at my request about the removal of a certain weblink? It seems, that discussion page is not a very busy one. Thank you, --Superbass (talk) 17:57, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

As I have a questioner waiting in german-language OTRS who is asking for a reason why his weblinks have been removed, I'd be really happy if somebody from WikiProject Physics could have a look at that discussion and give a statement there. Thank you! --Superbass (talk) 18:39, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Portal:Star

Please note that Portal:Star has been renominated for featured status. --Extra 999 (Contact ^me + _contribs) 16:50, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Edit war in Gravitational time dilation

Indiscriminate reverts, blatant PoV pushing and WP:IDONTHEARTHAT, but without a formal violation of WP:3R. What to do? Incnis Mrsi (talk) 13:22, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

In an ideal world? Find someone willing to mediate the dispute, roll back to the version from before the IP made their changes on 4 August 2010, and have people agree on drafts on the talk page before the mediator (not the involved parties) make the changes in question. The mediator should not be an involved party (yourself, the IP, Olaf Davis, Jsolebello, Giftlite, and Gandalf61 would be considered "involved" here).

In the real world, I have no idea, beyond bringing it to the attention of editors here and possibly at WT:AST. In theory, this is what the tools and processes in WP:DR are for, but in practice they're difficult to apply, and would probably boil down to "try mediation, and possibly requests for peer review or article content RFCs", but the people who would participate in these are for the most part the ones who already follow the Physics and Astronomy wikiprojects. So, asking for more eyes is the best you can probably do. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 20:12, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Too wide

Below is a request from an individual, regarding the Electromagnetism template, orginally placed at Template talk:Electromagnetism. I decided to copy it here. I figured more eyes could see it here: ----Steve Quinn (talk) 01:31, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Is there any way of making this thing narrower? On a small laptop screen it takes up a lot of space, and displaces pictures from the top of the page. There seems to be scope for narrowing, given the wide margin either side of the image, and the wide gap in the text. --catslash (talk) 23:19, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

{{Physics navigation}} would have to be the thing changed, though I see no immediate reason why it couldn't be narrowed to, say, 280px. Then again, when you are using small form equipment, you have to expect that some things may not look fantastic. — Huntster (t @ c) 02:24, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Dynamic speckle

It seems that HJ Rabal and RA Braga, authors of Dynamic Laser Speckle and Applications (ISBN 9781420060157) wrote parts of dynamic speckle back in April. Things looked fine to me however, so I think it would be nice if we could get these two authors to write more on Wikipedia. I know our optics article could use the attention. Opinions? Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 19:03, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

If they've been good about avoiding promoting their own work, by all means, invite them to contribute to relevant wikiprojects and articles. Heck, they even released some of their conference presentation images as public domain for Wikipedia/Wikimedia to use. Add a welcome note and a gift basket in the relevant talk-page threads ;). --Christopher Thomas (talk) 02:40, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Dark matter (again)

The Dark matter (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) article has been substantially revised by Bbbl67 (talk · contribs), who as near as I can tell (from this editing pass) is trying to emphasize non-mainstream views of dark matter (or at least paint the nature of dark matter as a controversial issue; actual emphasis is a somewhat subjective call on my part). For context, this is the same guy who's been adding links to the Dark fluid (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) article (which as far as I can tell is one group's pet project, based on that article's references).

A couple of other editors have stepped in, and there's a bit of talk page activity. Would other people from WT:AST and WT:PHYS be willing to take a look at the current state of the dark matter article? More eyes would probably help at this point. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 02:17, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

To Christopher Thomas: Please remember to put date (as I do here) on your signature so that the section of talk can be archived at the appropriate time. JRSpriggs (talk) 08:38, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Based on my last thousand or so talk page comments, if a post from me is missing a timestamp, you can safely assume that I mistyped the number of tilde marks and have not deliberately left it out. I've checked the page history and added an appropriate stamp to this comment. By all means do so without asking if I mistype in the future. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 16:58, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

It's a little-known fact that MiszaBot will simply ignore the date of any comment which is missing a proper timestamp. If you mis-date your own comment by omitting the (UTC), then it simply fails to recognize the date of your contribution, and will archive based on the other dates already present. If no comment at all has a proper date, the thread will be immortal. EdJohnston (talk) 17:12, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

I'd noticed the "immortal thread" bit when setting it up elsewhere, but hadn't known it just ignored malformed timestamps. My impression was that it was choking on them, but it's possible I was misinterpreting what I was seeing (all of the involved timestamps might have been malformed or absent, vs. just some of them). --Christopher Thomas (talk) 18:01, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

See the MiszaBot code for details. EdJohnston (talk) 19:20, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Bunch of recent-ish stuff dealing with Lorentz violation, opinions?

• Antimatter tests of Lorentz violation
• Lorentz-violating neutrino oscillations
• Standard-Model Extension
• Bumblebee models

It seems to me that some of those could be merged into already existing articles, or perhaps renamed and refocused? Opinions? Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 19:16, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Although the subject are a bit fringy, they seem legit. Each of the articles is fairly detailed, which makes merging them into other articles generally a bad idea due to issues of undue weight and too much detail on these subjects. Unfortunately, I don't know enough about the subject in question to judge whether the articles reflect a general consensus on these subjects or push a particular POV.

One thing that worries me is that although these articles seem very similar in editing style, each has been created by a different new user account that has only edited the article in question. This could, of course, be fairly innocent like someone who is very protective of his/her privacy. On the other hand it could be suggestive of a deliberate attempt to hide a POV push or a COI. Some careful examination of these articles is warranted in any case.TimothyRias (talk) 08:34, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

"One thing that worries me is that although these articles seem very similar in editing style, each has been created by a different new user account that has only edited the article in question." — Yes, I had the exact same thoughts. Still have them. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 08:40, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

You can't fail to notice that a particular author (V. A. Kostelecky) is cited quite frequently in these Wiki-articles. This could be justified, one can roughly check this by reading the cited articles and looking at the citations in them. This is not perfect, but if e.g. an article published in Physical Review D also cites Kostelecky a lot then that means that this is justifified. But it still remains the case that if someone has a large impact in the field then there should be many citations of that person's work from other authors, unless that field is very narrow. Count Iblis (talk) 14:54, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Three similar articles to merge...

Okay, we have Angular distance and Angular diameter distance and Angular diameter. I am proposing the first two be merged into the third. Discuss at:

Talk:Angular_diameter#Merge_discussion Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:56, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Straw poll on "antielectron" vs "positron"

To settle the endless flip-flopping of one phrase in the lede of antimatter, I've started a straw poll at Talk:Antimatter#Straw poll: positron vs anti-electron. Please review and comment. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 21:33, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

What is the use of general references to standard textbooks?

A question to the self-appointed physics coordinator: Please explain to me the use of an unspecified reference to Alonso & Finn in Bohr magneton? Why this revert? /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 19:01, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

This sounds like a content dispute that belongs on that article's talk page. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 19:26, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

I cannot see any content in such a reference, and the question is rather general for physics articles. Do you see any use in such a reference? /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 19:30, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Considering the tone of the question, and the choice of venue for this discussion, I doubt you care about anything I have to say. But in the off-chance that you are, providing general references is helpful to lay readers. For example, in quark, we provide a general reference (in this case Encyclopedia Britannica) for the statement "Quarks combine to form composite particles called hadrons, the most stable of which are protons and neutrons, the components of atomic nuclei." It's equally appropriate to give a general reference for the statement "According to the Bohr model, this is the ground state, i.e. the state of lowest possible energy." A reference to a specific chapter would be better of course, but if that's your beef, then hunt the relevant chapter down (or alternatively, replace the reference with another one from a book you own, and could provide a specific chapter or page range).Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 19:42, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Well, wikipedia cannot to be taken seriously as an encyclopedia, so it has to refer to a real encyclopedia. But at least that EB reference serves the reader: it gives a hyperlink to where one can find reliable information. But how is a user helped by this general "I read it in Alonso & Finn somewhere"? /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 21:49, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

It helps them by suggesting that they pick up that textbook and read the relevant section. While a reference that included page numbers, chapters, and whatnot would be preferred, a reference that only includes the book name is preferable to no reference at all (Wikipedia users are assumed to know how to use a table of contents or index within a book). --Christopher Thomas (talk) 23:59, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Moreover, it satisfies the requirement of statements to be sourced. If Alonso and Finn contains the information and it is a reliable source used neutrally, then it has to stay to source the statement. If you find a better, more specific reference, all the merrier, but in the meantime please do not remove proper references only because you personally find them "useless". --Cyclopia^talk 14:01, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Do we have a "citation needs to be improved" tag for such cases? Count Iblis (talk) 14:24, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

To ask for chapter and page of a general reference I have seen the tag been used a few times and it helped. DVdm (talk) 15:01, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

{{page needed}} would be better than {{where}}. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 21:11, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Einstein group

The articles about the Einstein group and its inventor Mendel Sachs could do with some attention from someone familiar with unorthodox gravitational theories. r.e.b. (talk) 04:55, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Feynman diagram equation double checking (IP edits)

An IP just modified some equations in the Feynman diagram article. (IP edits) I lack the background to check if this is a legitimate correction, or subtle vandalism, so if someone could check, it would be nice. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 07:27, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

After a superficial look I would say they are O.K. (up to sign). He makes the exponential imaginary which it must be. Xxanthippe (talk) 07:40, 18 August 2010 (UTC).

Check and the edits were OK. (The equations had another error though.) TimothyRias (talk) 07:41, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Centropy (physics)

Could somebody who knows about these things have a look at this? I can't decide whether it's genuine or psuedoscience or what (or even whether it's physics or biology). Ta, Chris (talk) 12:50, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Sounds like something that came out of a gibberish generator to me. DVdm (talk) 12:58, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Brought to AfD. --Cyclopia^talk 13:56, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

The same user has recently added a lengthy essay to ultimate fate of the universe (and its talk page). I've reverted, and left a note on their talk page, but this essay looks very familiar. If anyone's seen it before on-wiki, please flag the relevant edit, and I'll get the ball rolling on a sock-puppet investigation. Hopefully I'm just misremembering instead. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 09:34, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Bingo. A little google search of the closing statement reveals that this was a word for word copy of http://2012wiki.com/index.php?title=The_End_of_the_World, a creation by someone (over there) by the name Eschaton. Doesn't seem related to our user Eschaton (talk · contribs). DVdm (talk) 10:09, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

I ended up having to dig through my own contributions list to find out where I'd last seen and removed it, but it looks like a variant of this essay (better example: here) that indef-blocked user Systemizer (talk · contribs) kept inserting. I'll get started on the checkuser paperwork. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 20:23, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Antineutron

Needs a lot of work. Short with only 2 references, one now as I removed one that linked to Ron Kurtus's www.school-for-champions.com website, hardly a reliable source for a scientific article. Dougweller (talk) 17:01, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

New journal on the history of modern physics EPJ H

This is a new journal (July 2010), and I just took a look at their articles (such as "On the discovery of the gluon" by P. Söding (doi:10.1140/epjh/e2010-00002-5) and by Thor's beard are they wonderful. Take a look at them, and just imagine the possibilities of expansion for our articles such as (in this case) three jet events or gluon). They list all the historical references we need to write our article, focus on explaining the concepts involved, how the concepts came to be, how they were verified, etc...

I know that I for one will try to milk as much information as I can from these articles. Hell, I might even personally subscribed to this journal if I can afford it. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 09:17, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

What to do with Physics/Subfields and Physics/Theories?

These are old (2007) orphans. Surely there are lists where we could redirect these two pages, or something similar? Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 03:53, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

I think they can be safely deleted. Article space pages should not have non-development related sub-pages anyway.TimothyRias (talk) 09:43, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

They are transcluded in Physics, so before deleting them they should be subst'ed or moved to the Template namespace. A. di M. (talk) 13:23, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Transcluding these was a good idea. Both of these certainly seem to have value. As a another suggestion, perhaps these could be a sub page for WikiProject Physics. Is A. di M. intending that these should be part of a template? ---- Steve Quinn (talk) 02:29, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

I would have no objection to subst'ing them in the article and then deleting the subpages, but if they should be transcluded they'd better be in the template namespace than in the main namespace. A. di M. (talk) 16:29, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

These should be substed as prohibited by WP:Subpages#Disallowed uses#3, and probably history merged as well, as their edit history is not insubstantial. They aren't transcluded in enough places to warrant separate templates, and would likely be TfDed if placed in the templatespace for that very reason. --Izno (talk) 17:36, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Well, there are lots of templates which are only transcluded on one article, e.g. {{Infobox hydrogen}} (one for each element) or {{Solar System Infobox/Sun}} (one for each body). (Not that I like that, but I once proposed to merge them into the relevant article but the consensus was against that.) A. di M. (talk) 18:53, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

That's a practice I disapprove of, personally, but fat chance getting WP:CHEM to see my view. ^_^ --Izno (talk) 19:57, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Possible CoI at Photonic-crystal fiber

I have concerns about narrow agendas that some editors may be pushing from within the halls of academia. I would be grateful for advice here. Tony (talk) 03:22, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Rename Atomic Mass Unit article to Dalton (unit)?

As a result of a decision made in 2005, the article Dalton (unit) was merged into and redirected to the article Atomic mass unit. Since then the standards bodies appear to have changed their stance. I have proposed that the Dalton (unit) become the definitive article and that Atomic mass unit consists of a redirection. Please comment on this proposal at talk:Atomic mass unit.

This notice appears at both the Physics and the Chemistry Wikiproject pages. Martinvl (talk) 15:23, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

In my experience "atomic mass unit" is more common, but that may be because in my field such large masses as to need multiples are not frequently used. YMMV if you're a biochemist, I guess (I've seen kDa but never kamu). A. di M. (talk) 18:37, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

World Crystal

The article World Crystal could perhaps use some attention. I'm not sure about how credible this article is. Thank you.—RJH (talk) 19:04, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

This is setting off all of my "crank theory" detectors, but I'll defer to people with more expertise in the field. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 19:15, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

It is out there but legit. Very low profile though. TimothyRias (talk) 20:03, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

I love the paper title Gravity as Theory of Defects in a Crystal with Only Second-Gradient Elasticity. Reminds me of a Hugo-winning story called Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-precious Stones. --Trovatore (talk) 21:11, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

What I have never understood is how these theories which say that spacetime is discrete (quantized) at very small sizes can be made consistent (correspondence principle) with the apparently continuous symmetries in the Poincaré group (translations, rotations, and boosts) of special relativity. Can anyone explain that? JRSpriggs (talk) 21:52, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Operators corresponding to the breaking of these symmetries are irrelevant in the RG sense, so you can have such a theory at the fundamental level and under the RG map it will flow to an ordinary Lorentz invariant theory in the continuum limit. Count Iblis (talk) 00:33, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

I am sorry, Count Iblis, but I do not understand what you are saying. I have heard of symmetry breaking. But which operators are you talking about? What is the "RG sense"? What is "RG map"? JRSpriggs (talk) 03:40, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

What I mean is a so-called renormalization group map which relates the fundamental Lagrangian to the effective Lagrangian. If I got my history of modern physics correct, "renormalization" was seen as just a trick by particle physicists until about the 1970s when people like Wilson explained how renormalization arises naturally in statistical physics (I'm not 100% sure if similar ideas floated around before the 1970s).

So, the idea is that the lagrangian one works with in practice, like the Standard Model Lagrangian is already an effective Lagrangian. When you write down the renormalization group equation for the so-called running coupling constants, all you are doing is making the theory a bit more effective than it already was. This is then exactly analogous to how the renormalization group method is used in statistical physics. So, if we start with the Ising model, then we could attempt to map this to a field theory, where the field at some point can be taken to be some average of spins in the neighborhood of some size R of the spin. That field theory can be used to compute correlations between two points that are much further away than lambda. The field theory then does not describe fluctuations within distances of R.

Then since R is arbitrary you can consider how the couplings in the field theory depend on the choice of R. This is the renormalization group map as it appears in field theory. You don't have to know what the fundamental theory is, you can take whatever effective field theory you have and compute the renormalization group equations for the couplings in the field theory. Now changing R can obviously be interpreted as a scale transformation. If you e.g. double R and then do a trivial change of units so that in the new units the cut-off R keeps the same value, then you have halved all distances. You can compare this with taking a digital picture and then rescaling it to make it smaller, but such that you keep the pixel size the same.

Under such a mapping the correlation lengths will thus scale with the same scale factor. Suppose that we're at the critical point where the correlation length is infinite. Then under the RG map it will have to stay infinite. You can then integrate the RG equations to infinity and you'll get some so-called fixed point Hamiltonian which stays invariant under the RG tranformations. Now suppose that we're very close to the critical temperature. Then the correlation length will be very large but it will still be finite. This means that under an infinite renormalization the model won't be mapped to the fixed point Hamiltonian. But in the limit where we start closer and closer to the critical point we will get closer and closer to the fixed point Hamiltonian under the RG map before moving away from it.

If you then investigate the vicinity of the fixed point Hamiltonian, what you'll see is that the RG map is attractive in some directions while it is repulsive in some other directons. The fixed poont Hamailtonian being the infinite scaling limit of the original lattice model obviosly describes a model formulated on acontinuum that is invariant under rotations. But the original model is obviously not invariant under rotatations. What this means is that as you run the RG map away from the original model you get a field theory that contains sterm that break the rotational invariance, but the coupling of these terms get smaller and smaller as you approach the fixed point Hamiltonian.

Of course, even lacking the a fundamental theory, you can directly add a term to an effective field theory corresponding to the breaking of rotational invariance and study how that terms behaves under renormalization. In case of lattice models near the critical point, you'll see that the perturbation will get smaller. Count Iblis (talk) 15:45, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

WP:COI: volunteers needed

There’s a good number of people, e.g. Kww (talk), Tim Vickers (talk), Coren (talk), among many others, who have expressed desire to have me permanently banned from Wikipedia for writing on the subject of the “human molecule”, efforts of which resulted in a one year ban on me, back in 2007. To exemplify one objection, as expressed by Coren earlier this year: “You seem to ignore, Mr Thims, that Wikipedia is not the proper venue to document your novel theories.” The central problem here is that this is not “my novel theory”; but rather the theory dates back over two hundred years, with over ninety different people publishing content on this subject:

• HMS pioneers

There have been at least six books written on the subject, one painting, four aluminum Molecule Man statues (one 100-foot tall), movie mentions, articles, over a dozen videos, many debates, posters, as well as college courses (dating back to 1894) taught utilizing the human molecule perspective as a basis. What seems to be the case is that either: (a) I have been mis-labeled as an editor with aims of self-promotion over that of an editor with a genuine interest in a subject (that very few people write on or know about); or (b) the subject is an anathema to many editors (and as such are using the various bylaws of Wikipedia in their favor to block the subject from Wikipedia)? To give a bit of history of my failed efforts to write neutral overview article on the subject:

Article	EoHT article	Deletion #1	Deletion #2	Desired neutral article
Human molecule	(human molecule)	AFD (I requested deletion) redirect to nanoputian (10 Oct 2007)	Delete per WP:CSD#G4 (11 Jun 2010)

What I am looking for, at this point, being that there obviously exists some form admitable of conflict of interest (being that I wrote a history book on the subject of the human molecule in 2008 and that I seem to be one of only three people, including Robert Sterner and James Elser (2000), who have every made an attempt at the calculation of the molecular formula for one person), is for a minimum of about two or three neutral volunteer editors to write up a one page article (or even stub paragraph) on the subject of the “human molecule” (encompassing its derivative terms human atom, social atom, human chemical, human element, etc.), and I will confide my contributions or guidance of the article to the talk page. The topic, to note, is very controversial being that it is at odds with many cherished theories, particularly those of religion as well as many secular theories, such as life, free will, choice, purpose, etc.

My interest in having a Wikipedia article on this subject is so that children, age 15 or younger, will know that there is an alternative viewpoint out there on what it means to be a “human” (in contrast to the dogma of outdated subjects such as religion or other secular philosophies), and that this subject has been tossed around for at least 200-years now. At a minimum I would like to see:

(a) the mention that French philosopher Jean Sales (friend of Voltaire) coined the term in 1789 as follows: "we conclude that there exists a principle of the human body which comes from the great process in which so many millions of atoms of the earth become many millions of human molecules."

(b) the Sterner-Elser 2002 published calculation for the empirical molecular formula for one “human molecule”, as found in their Ecological Stoichiometry textbook, where they define a human (a publication which has been cited over 750-times):

$H_{375,000,000}O_{132,000,000}C_{85,700,000}N_{6,430,000}Ca_{1,500,000}P_{1,020,000}S_{206,000}Na_{183,000}\,$

$K_{177,000}C_{l127,000}Mg_{40,000}Si_{38,600}Fe_{2,680}Zn_{2,110}Cu_{76}I_{14}Mn_{13}F_{13}Cr_{7}Se_{4}Mo_{3}Co_{1}\,$

It is my view that the ban of this topic from Wikipedia is equivalent to the hysteria that results in acts of book burning of olden days or the inquisitions of Galileo for believing in the work of Copernicus. As Physchim62 (talk) put in on 11 Jun 2010 "It seems like the witch hunt is still on, more than eighteen months after the original events". I would like to think that there are more than myself and Physchim62 amenable to having a short stub article on the subject of the human defined atomically. I will post this help-message on the Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics and Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemistry talk pages. Comments welcome. --Libb Thims (talk) 19:10, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Per the comments at the AN/I thread, the correct thing for you to do is assemble a list of references meeting WP:RS and take it to deletion review. The main concerns (from both AN/I and the AfD) seem to be that a) you are presenting your own synthesis of others' work, which is not allowed (per WP:SYN), b) your references don't support the text you'd had in the article, and c) you're dragging in enough drama to hurt your own case (with the comparison to Galileo). --Christopher Thomas (talk) 19:49, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

That I’m overly attached to this topic is obvious; thus the over-dramatization (which I would likely retract in retrospect), which is why I looking for sympathizers to write up a stub-article for me. It is a matter of principle, embedded in the general philosophy of Wikipedia, as stated in 2007 by Jimmy Wales, that the point of Wikipedia is to provide “free access to the sum of all human knowledge.” It is my strong view, as well as the view of the ninety various historical thinkers, as listed, that the subject of theory of the human viewed as an abstract reactive molecule is important subject of the sum of human knowledge. I’ve listed the seven books, not including my own, written on this subject, in the said link, along with the table of ninety people (each person linking to voluminous references). I do not see what more I can possibly do? I obviously have COI, which is why I’m looking for help. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Libb Thims (talk • contribs) 15:02, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

It was pointed out quite clearly at the AfD that your points a and b above have absolutely nothing to do with one another. The first one is an analogy made by a 18th century French philosopher, and the second is the result you'd get if you fed a minced up person into a mass spectrometer. Hence the article was deleted. Djr32 (talk) 18:41, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

You seem to be missing the objective. The fact is that prior to the 2002 publication of the formula for one human molecule (by Sterner and Elser), there have been 63 different authors who have published theory on this concept. I seem to barred, however, from writing about these 65 different people, grouped in one article; which is why I am looking for a few neutral editors to summarize this subject, as I have conflict of interest. --Libb Thims (talk) 18:57, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Someone around here is definitely missing the point, but I don't think it's me. As far as I can tell, you are not barred from doing anything. The human molecule article was deleted in 2007, if you think there are any grounds for reversing that decision then you should do what Christopher Thomas suggested above. Until you do that, I think any further discussion here is pointless. Djr32 (talk) 19:21, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Per suggestion by Kww at the 27 Aug 2010 deletion review, I have initiated an incubator space page: Wikipedia:Article Incubator/Human molecule. I will work on developing a cogent acceptable article over the next week or so. Feel free to contribute with objections or suggestions. Thanks. --Libb Thims (talk) 18:18, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Cold electricity

Could someone take a look at this: it reads like a fragment of a proper article but a read of the references and a search on the name Peter Lindemann which turns up Adams motor, i.e. perpetual motion/free energy, so fringe. This should be clearer, it may even be this is covered properly elsewhere so it could be merged, or maybe it just needs to be deleted as non-notable (though I think there's no problem with having obscure fringe theories on WP as long as it's clear that's what they are).--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 19:13, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Since posting another editor has nominated it for deletion, but it still needs expert attention I think to untangle the language of it.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 19:34, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

I've added a (very short) summary of what it seems to be describing to my AfD comment. If I'm sufficiently bored, I'll read the linked reference and write a neutral summary, but it'd almost certainly still be deleted due to non-notability, so it's not high on my priority list. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 19:47, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

List of unsolved problems in physics

A user at List of unsolved problems in physics (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) is repeatedly re-inserting a reference to cyclic universe. This was removed by two editors on the grounds that it's already covered by Big Bounce. If one or two uninvolved editors could skim the article and make a decision about whether or not it should get its own entry, that would be appreciated, as a 2:1 disagreement isn't enough for me to make an ironclad case for the user breaking consensus. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 16:01, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

I am the second editor mentioned by Christopher Thomas above. Androstachys keeps re-inserting this at list of unsolved problems in physics, even though the cyclic universe model is already covered further down the page under the more general heading "Ultimate Fate of the Universe". Opinions from univolved editors would be appreciated. Gandalf61 (talk) 16:37, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

I looked it over. I didn't see a section in the talk page to discuss this, though; else, I would have discussed it there instead of here. I agree that cyclic universe should probably be merged into the section covered by the Big Bounce. I don't think every cosmic model needs to mentioned separately. On the other hand, how the topics are organized and what topics are covered is so much of a mess that reverting this before the article is cleaned up hardly seems important. (One example of the mess is that the arrow of time is mentioned at least twice.) TStein (talk) 18:17, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Discussion now at Talk:List of unsolved problems in physics#Cyclic universe. Gandalf61 (talk) 07:05, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

It's probably worth setting up a straw poll, to attempt to measure consensus among people editing that article, but it's well into "things I really don't want to deal with this weekend" territory. I strongly advise limiting the number of reverts that you personally make, as "slow-motion edit-warring" is still seen as edit-warring, if there are only two or three people involved (i.e. no steps taken to establish that consensus exists for one version or the other). --Christopher Thomas (talk) 08:10, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

Shorthand notations for nuclear decays

What is the shorthand notation for the alpha and beta decay? For fusion reactions it is ^aA(^bB,xn)^a+b-xC. Is there something similar for simple decays? Nergaal (talk) 04:53, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Pauli exclusion principle

The first paragraph in Pauli exclusion principle#Stability of matter fails in explaining anything. I have some educated guesses, but there is some expert input needed. Please read discussion. -- Tomdo08 (talk) 16:37, 29 August 2010 (UTC)