Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics/Archive June 2022

AfD Discussion for WARP Reactor

This AfD discussion may be of interest to this project. Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Wave_Accelerated_Ring_Pinch_Reactor PianoDan (talk) 03:26, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

Wiki-notability of Paola Zizzi

Via digital physics, I noticed the article Paola Zizzi, which has been tagged as needing citations since 2014. Checking by the usual methods, I'm not sure that the relevant wiki-notability standard is met: low citation counts, publications mostly just on the arXiv or in marginal journals. Opinions welcome. (I'm also not convinced that we need a page devoted to digital physics, since there is not a lot of secondary coverage establishing it as a well-defined topic, rather than a junk drawer of "maybe the universe is a big computer" remarks.) XOR'easter (talk) 23:49, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

Would think she's of a different sort of notability, that attained by applying scientific methodology to questions more on the edge of reason. Namedropped by Stuart Hameroff in this interview with Deepak Chopra, "Paola Zizzi (she was mentioned in the Enlighten Next article) has been working on the Bekenstein bound and information at the edge of black holes. That's where one can answer such questions about information loss, Hawking radiation and so forth." And by Knujon Mapson in Pandeism: An Anthology. "Theoretical physicist Paola Zizzi also seems to support a pantheistic view, ..." and so on. Hyperbolick (talk) 01:45, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

"Namedropped by Stuart Hameroff in this interview with Deepak Chopra" pretty much typifies unreliable source, I'd say. I don't think brief mentions indicate real influence; that's a pretty low bar to meet. XOR'easter (talk) 02:04, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Not the point I was getting at. Just wondering whether the standard identified truly is the relevant one. Hyperbolick (talk) 03:51, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

I get the point that WP:PROF might not be the relevant standard here, but I think Dr. Zizzi is even LESS likely to hit WP:GNG. The passing mentions don't on their own pull her to the level of warranting an article by the general standard, IMO. PianoDan (talk) 06:37, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

I'd agree with that. XOR'easter (talk) 16:30, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

OK, I've gone ahead and created a deletion discussion. XOR'easter (talk) 17:15, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Øyvind Burrau

This guy was a Danish geodesyst, but early in his career he derived an important result in quantum mechanics - the energy of the Dihydrogen cation. Does he rate a page of his own, or should he just redirect to the H2+ page? I can find very little in English about him. Here's a bit of a Google Books description of his result: [1] PianoDan (talk) 18:22, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Radian – dimensional analysis

Please help us to resolve the problems at Talk:Radian#Dimensionless Analysis (see also Talk:Radian#Problem with the Dimensionless Analysis Section). It concerns the inclusion of problematic content which I (and an IP) labeled as WP:FRINGE. This was opposed by another editor who argues that the content is an "alternative theoretical formulation". A1E6 (talk) 22:25, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

@A1E6: I'm not officially part of this WikiProject, nor am I an expert in this field, but allow me to throw in my couple of cents on this issue. I've looked at both of the links that you've provided, and it seems like (as you have pointed out here) the main issue boils down to whether or not angle is a dimensionless quantity or not. As I said, I'm not an expert, but I do have an interest in measurement, and I do regularly check for publications and news from the BIPM. Based on that, here's what I've observed:

• First of all, based on what I've seen from the publications from the BIPM (i.e. meeting reports and scientific papers from Metrologia), it seems like this is a somewhat large issue throughout the metrology community as a whole, not just us plebs on Wikipedia. More importantly for us, this means that (as you are probably painfully aware of by now) there are lots of papers with differing opinions (in the unlikely case that you want more papers, you can visit here and put "rad1" in the search bar), so anyone can dig up a paper that supports their POV and present it as suggesting that the section should be rewritten.
• During the 25th meeting of the CCU last year, the official positions of each of the member organisations (i.e. NIST, IUPAC, PTB, NPL, IUPAP etc.) on angles were presented to try to create some kind of a starting point for discussion and debate, because they could not reach a consensus on the matter at the previous meeting, even after a very lengthy discussion. All in all, the result was that most of the member organisations favoured maintaining the status quo (i.e. what is already in the 9th SI Brochure), although there was general support in clarifying the status of angle in the SI Brochure.
  • Interestingly, Mohr (who was present on behalf of NIST, which held the opinion that angles should be treated as an independent quantity) pointed out that both Wikipedia and Mathematica "routinely treated angles as base quantities without any confusion", while Krystek (who was also present on behalf of the PTB, which maintained that the status quo was perfectly fine) "felt that Wikipedia was not a reliable source and that the German version of Wikipedia treated angle differently".
  • Holden, who was also at the meeting on behalf of the International Mathematical Union, stated that "when he first heard about the issue he and [his] colleagues at the IMU did not understand why this was a problem or [a] controversy. To mathematicians angular measures are mathematical constructs and dimensionless. [Holden] was of the opinion that introducing units unnecessarily would have unintended and unwelcome consequences."

Based on this, and considering the fact that the article generally writes from a more mathematical standpoint, I think the best way forward would be to write the article like this:

1. State the most common definition of the radian as used by mathematicians under the "Definition" section. Delete the stuff relating to the SI in that section.
2. Mention the current status of angles in the SI further down the article, then briefly explain that there is controversy surrounding the nature of angles, why controversy exists, and then briefly mention some of the different viewpoints. (EDIT: it would also be a good idea to mention the most recent CCU meeting and the general shared opinion as well in this section.)

Hope this helps! :) — MeasureWell (talk) 05:05, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

@MeasureWell: "and it seems like (as you have pointed out here) the main issue boils down to whether or not angle is a dimensionless quantity or not" – I've never said this. If anything, it boils down to the definitions – and then it's clear. While we're at it, let me remark that the very first sentence in the introduction to the 2022 paper (submitted to Metrologia) by Mohr, Shirley, Phillips and Trott is "Angle is a familiar concept that needs no formal definition" – they just can't be serious.

The only question is "Does the dimensional analysis section respect WP:UNDUE and WP:FRINGE?" There are so many conflicting opinions on this and it's a real mess.

"both Wikipedia and Mathematica "routinely treated angles as base quantities without any confusion"" – I have no idea what is this supposed to mean – the articles on Wikipedia don't treat angles as base quantities. Also what exactly does it mean for Mathematica? Please clarify. By the way, arguments such as "Wikipedia says" and "Mathematica says" are not very good, to put it lightly.

I would divide the article to "Radians in mathematics" and "Radians in physics" but I'm not going to do it without consensus. And thanks for the reply. A1E6 (talk) 10:39, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

@A1E6: You know what, you're completely correct. By the way, regarding the "Wikipedia and Mathematica" part, I just quoted it because, like I said in my main reply, I thought it was interesting – I know that it has no bearing on the actual discussion here.

As for the question about the "Dimensional analysis" section, I don't know about you, but to me the section reads like Quincey did some kind of systematic review and showed that some certain analysis is "the best", which thus implies that the matter is basically resolved and that the only problem is implementation, when of course the reality is far messier and more complicated, with different people having different opinions. If that doesn't qualify as WP:UNDUE (or WP:NPOV), I don't know what does.

Also, apologies for my (once again) inability to read messages. Hope this clears up a few things. — 13:05, 1 May 2022 (UTC) MeasureWell (talk) 13:05, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

Dimensional analysis does not apply to angles. Units of dimensions such as "foot", "meter", "furlong" act as substitutes for numerical multipliers which rescale the quantity as needed. This assumes that there is a (broken) scaling symmetry. There is no scaling symmetry for angles, just as there is none for logarithms. The fact that a full cycle takes one back to the same situation completely destroys any alleged symmetry. JRSpriggs (talk) 17:54, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

I'm going to disagree there. Revolutions/turns, degrees, and radians are dimensions. If they weren't, saying "Turn this by 5" would mean the same thing in any of these units. Likewise, something like 100 W/sr is a very different thing than 100 W/deg², and those have dimensions of [M⋅L²⋅T⁻³⋅Φ⁻²] (using Φ for angle). The lack of recognition of angles as dimensions is always something that bothered me. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:00, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Technically, one can nondimensionalize any quantity (which is to say, define a proportional quantity that is dimensionless). The reverse is also true: one can consistently define a proportional quantity with a dimension of choice. Ergo, neither perspective (angle is dimensionless vs. angle is dimensional) is inherently correct. The only meaningful question is how to best construct a system of quantities so that it is most useful. SI already creates artificial dimensions of temperature and amount of substance, and angle can similarly be given it own dimension, and this would reduce the confusion. However, to debate correctness is out of place in WP. Much of the discussion above seems to assume that only one of these perspectives is "right"; we should rather focus on reflecting the perspectives in the various sources. 192.12.181.127 (talk) 15:12, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

I don't think the reverse is true. You can always introduce a proportionality constant, but is that really a dimension? To pick a less controversial example, we can nondimensionalize speed by taking its ratio with c. Call the resulting adimensional unit "light". The resulting number is rather inconveniently small for everyday objects, so we introduce a proportionality constant of $10^{9}$ to make things work. Equivalently, we write speeds in nanolights instead of lights (a nanolight is roughly 1 km/h). Now, did we make the "light" dimensional? I don't think this is a useful way to think about the proportionality constant. Turning to the radians, we often do put a proportionality constant of $10^{3}$ and work with miliradians instead. Is that making it dimensional? And how about putting a proportionality constant of $180/\pi$ and working with degrees? It's not a dimension, it's just a convenience factor. Tercer (talk) 15:45, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

I tend to agree. People often conflate dimensional analysis with units management. Units, as social conventions, need to be agreed upon for both dimensional and dimensionless quantities. Most physical theories have their physical objects that have dimensions of some sort. Measuring those objects, assigning numerical values, usually have an explicit or understood reparameterization invariance that allows for different coordinate systems, which include different units. But dimensionless quantities can also have units. The log of a sound intensity ratio relative to an agreed upon reference could be x bels or 10x decibels. Even for a pure, dimensionless number how people want to split it up is a social convention. Angles are computed from ratios of lengths and are dimensionless. But they do have units--degrees, radians, gradians, etc., that imply nothing about their dimensionality. --{{u|Mark viking}} {Talk} 18:26, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

(I'm 192.12.181.127 above.) This whole discussion is off-topic (the topic being being about what should be in WP), while this debate is about "truth", but I'm succumbing to the debating urge with people with whom an intellectual debate is a pleasure. Tercer, the reverse is true (I'd hoped to spare you a lecture justifying my statement). I said "one can consistently define a proportional quantity with a dimension of choice": this statement is essentially trivially a truism; what you might be missing is that defining quantities describing the same thing (e.g. velocity, but one with unit m/s and another unit 1), unless identical, are necessarily different quantities. The question "what units does velocity really have?" is ill-formed: it depends on what quantity we are attaching the label "velocity" to. It is perfectly consistent to define velocity_new of an object as the distance that an object travels in 1 second, and this would have the metre as unit. In the same way, I can define angle to have absolutely any unit I care for (such as metre), including a new one that I define for the purpose to be dimensionally distinct from all other dimensions. I repeat: there is nothing inconsistent in defining a geometric angle quantity as being dimensional (though it would be distinct from SI angle). Mark viking, your statement implies nothing: units can be dimensionless. A quantity used to represent angle can be defined in many ways. The quantity called "angle" in the SI is defined to be dimensionless; this does not mean that this is the only useful way to define such a quantity. One could argue that a definition that eliminates widespread confusion is useful, and what metrologists are feeling their way towards is a definition that more naturally eliminates confusion. The fact that so many physicists (not to mention most other people) get hung up on falsehoods such as 2π rad/s = 1 Hz (or at least need to think a bit about it) is testament to the inadequacy of the SI in this case. 172.82.46.124 (talk) 00:02, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

Mustapha Ishak Boushaki

Hello, WikiProject Physics,

We had a recent sockpuppet who did his best to promote Mustapha Ishak Boushaki's profile on Wikipedia to the extent that he created categories for every award, fellowship or membership that Boushaki has had or received and put him in the category as the only person to have earned these honors. I'm worried that he also did some work exaggerating the accomplishments of this physicist and so I'd be grateful to any member who is familiar with the biographies of academics in physics to give this profile a look to see if anything is out of order. It got to the point where the sockpuppet wrote an article on the Boushaki cosmological operator and an account identifying itself AS Boushaki blanked that page in an effort to get it deleted. So, the sockpuppet is not Boushaki but someone who seems to want to promote his work.

Thanks for any assistance you can provide! Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 22:04, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

Took out the useless section on society memberships. (It would be more interesting if he WEREN'T a member of AAS) Also removed him from the "physical cosmology" template. I nominated the category "Algerian Cosmologists" for deletion, but there's probably some other single-entry categories we could get rid of too. PianoDan (talk) 17:19, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

I trimmed a considerable amount of CV/LinkedIn-like material. XOR'easter (talk) 21:38, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

"Euler-alpha equations" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Euler-alpha equations and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 June 22#Euler-alpha equations until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. SilverMatsu (talk) 08:40, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

Thermotunneling deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Thermotunnel cooling is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Thermotunnel cooling until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

--ReyHahn (talk) 09:41, 27 June 2022 (UTC)