Talk:Supernovae in fiction

Proposed merge

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

(1) Precedent is for "X in fiction" pages, where X is a scientific article, to be placed in separate articles. (2) This material is not properly cited, whereas supernova is an FA rated article. The addition of this material would subject the supernova page to an FAR and possibly demotion. So it would need to be stripped out.—RJH (talk) 16:30, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Not sure. Nearly every scifi franchise has involved supernovae at some point, so a fiction list would be unending. Instead of a list, it might be a good idea to create a subsection dealing with the way supernovae are often portrayed in scifi, particularly the inaccuracies, such as our Sun or a tiny red star going nova. Serendi^podous 09:36, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

The Supernova article is already past the upper limit on article size, even after the material has been split into several sub-articles. I'm sure that may be a fine idea for an article, but I would prefer to see that developed on its own page. This would be in line with the multitude of other articles along a similar vein; all of which suffer from similar abyssmal lack of citations. In it's present form this simply isn't FA worthy material.—RJH (talk) 23:23, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Supernovae in fiction/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: TompaDompa (talk · contribs) 21:53, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Reviewer: Kusma (talk · contribs) 08:12, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

Will review this soon. —Kusma (talk) 08:12, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

Content and prose review

I will comment on anything I notice, but not all of my comments will be strictly related to the GA criteria, so not everything needs to be actioned.

• Lead: short but more or less covers the topic.
• Background: a little more background on astrophysics/history/etymology (a "nova" being a newly visible star, Tycho/Kepler, which stars can become supernova) would be nice to have here. Consider linking, for example, History of supernova observation.
  • Expanded somewhat. I want to avoid going too much off-topic here. TompaDompa (talk) 23:55, 21 June 2024 (UTC)
• I am not a fan of the super short section headings ("Disaster"/"Sun"). "Disaster" isn't a natural companion to "induced and exploited" either.
• I am kind of missing a mention of Cixin Liu's The Wandering Earth and its film adaptations. Is this too new for your sources?
  • It's not too new for the sources, but Stanway is the only one to mention it, saying: Recent works by Cixin Liu, such as his novella "The Wandering Earth" (2000), have also focussed on the (valid) astronomical prospect that the Sun will go through a brief but dramatic brightening known as a "helium flash" towards the end of its life. While this would be extremely short-lived in astrophysical terms, it might be enough to irradiate the Earth's surface. We believe that the Sun is likely about 5 billion years away from undergoing a helium flash, rather than the few centuries suggested by Liu, and that it will become a red giant before this occurs, but (unlike a nova) it will at least experience this evolutionary state! It seemed kind of a poor fit for the article based on that. TompaDompa (talk) 23:55, 21 June 2024 (UTC)
    • Added the same author's Supernova Era (2003), using the same source. TompaDompa (talk) 20:27, 22 June 2024 (UTC)
• There is very little about the supernovae itself here, just how they would impact humanity.
  • That reflects the sources on the topic. TompaDompa (talk) 23:55, 21 June 2024 (UTC)
• Other stars: Anything about the real supernovae of the past? The Martian Star-Gazers for example mentions the 1572 supernova.
  • Not that I've seen discussed by the sources, no. TompaDompa (talk) 23:55, 21 June 2024 (UTC)
• Induced and exploited: again, not a fan of the heading.
• How are the supernovae used as weapons? It seems too easy to wipe out yourself as well (as with the bomb in Life, the Universe and Everything).
  • The sources don't really go into the details much here. TompaDompa (talk) 23:55, 21 June 2024 (UTC)
• "Doomsday (Doctor Who)": hide the disambiguator.
  • Don't know how I missed that. Fixed. TompaDompa (talk) 23:55, 21 June 2024 (UTC)
• See also: Not a fan of the massive amount of whitespace caused by {{clear}} and the clickable image.
  • I don't feel strongly about the {{Clear}} template, but when I've left it out in other articles other editors have been unhappy about the effect that has on the reference list's columns. I do feel strongly about including the clickable image, though. TompaDompa (talk) 23:55, 21 June 2024 (UTC)
• Does Supernova nucleosynthesis feature in any of the stories?
  • Not that I've seen discussed by the sources, no. TompaDompa (talk) 23:55, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm pretty happy with the prose, but I have some broadness concerns and would like to see a bit more background information. —Kusma (talk) 20:59, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

Source spotchecks

Looking at Special:PermanentLink/1230457162.

• 1b: ok
• 2p,q: ok
• 3d,m: ok. It is technically a "blog" but Stanway looks solid.
  • Indeed. Stanway has been published in, among other things, Foundation. I raised this a few months ago at WT:SCIFI#"Cosmic Stories Blog" by Elizabeth Stanway, for the record. TompaDompa (talk) 21:00, 22 June 2024 (UTC)
• 4a: ok
• 5e: ok
• 8: ok
• 10: ok
• 17: ok

Spotchecks passed. —Kusma (talk) 20:54, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

General comments and GA criteria

Good Article review progress box

Criteria: 1a. prose () 1b. MoS () 2a. ref layout () 2b. cites WP:RS () 2c. no WP:OR () 2d. no WP:CV () 3a. broadness () 3b. focus () 4. neutral () 5. stable () 6a. free or tagged images () 6b. pics relevant () Note: this represents where the article stands relative to the Good Article criteria. Criteria marked are unassessed

• Prose is fine as discussed above. No MoS issues other than perhaps section headers, but those may be personal preference
• References are formatted nicely. In some cases, one might wish for precise page numbers, but the page ranges are so short that it is not a real issue.
• Sources are good, mostly science fiction studies.
• Could not detect any OR or copyvio issues during spotchecks.
• Broadness/neutrality scrape a pass now that at least one non-English work is included.
• No excessive focus on anything.
• Stable since your rewrite.
• Image licenses are OK, and captions work. You could consider adding ALT text, but I don't have a good suggestion what to write.

Looks like a pass! —Kusma (talk) 21:07, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Premeditated Chaos talk 10:31, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

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• Comment or view
• Article history

)

Artist's impression of a supernova

• ... that in fiction, supernovae (pictured) are induced to serve as weapons, power sources for time travel, and advertisements?

• Source: weaponized, power source for time travel, advertisement.

• Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Martingale (clothing)

Improved to Good Article status by TompaDompa (talk). Number of QPQs required: 1. Nominator has 21 past nominations.

TompaDompa (talk) 21:59, 22 June 2024 (UTC).

• article was recently promoted, is long enough and is within policy. Hook is short enough and interesting. QPQ is complete. « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 16:49, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

Another "induced" example

Charles Stross's Iron Sunrise has a whole chapter devoted to describing an induced supernova (the sun's core is momentarily removed somehow, placed in a pocket universe where quintillions of years pass in a fraction of a second our time, and then restored to the center of the star as a hunk of supercold iron. Boom within minutes, great description of the effect of the supernova on the solar system, the settled planet within it, and its outlying space stations as the neutrino wave and its lethal radiation spreads outward and only a few escape it in time.

Ought we to include it? Daniel Case (talk) 00:28, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

I haven't seen it discussed (or even mentioned) in any sources on the overarching topic of the article—Supernovae in fiction—and a quick search does not bring up any that I might have missed (though there could of course be others that I have still missed), so I say no on the basis that it would be out of WP:PROPORTION to its treatment by sources on the subject. TompaDompa (talk) 03:45, 14 July 2024 (UTC)