Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics/Archive 6

message: As far as I can tell, the Cold Fusion article is getting more and more pro-Cold Fusion as time passes.  I don't have the time or expertise to argue with one of the major proponents of the idea, so I've done the only thing I can think of: delisting it from good articles and tagging it as .  If anyone has any better ideas, please go for it. -- SCZenz 20:01, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Now there's edit warring over the tag itself.  Can you guys keep an eye on the page, so we can at least maintain that? -- SCZenz 20:08, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cold fusion 

message: I feel that LHC article is very weak. Any contribution will be appreciated. I also nominated it for Wikipedia:Science collaboration of the week, you can vote for it if you like. þħɥʂıɕıʄʈʝɘɖı 17:08, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I think that most of the articles about accelerators and detectors are at least weak (if not existent at all).. I don't think they are going to need a collaboration from all Wikipedians right now, but we should do something about them... I'll help as soon as I get some spare time.. :-) [[[User:Tatonzolo|Tatonzolo]] 13:25, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  LHC 

message: I've just come across Supersolid. Most of the current content there was added in one lump by an anonymous editor (and later wikified) and by the writing style looks like it was written for a magazine or at least something other than an encyclopaedia. Another anonymous editor commented on the talk page that it was "just about verbatim ripped from n/s". I didn't know what he meant by "n/s" (New Scientist?), but I googled for the content and came up only with pages derived from the WP article. There are two references, of which one is to a Nature article which you can only read if you have a subscription (which I don't, not being a scientist). The other is evidently not the source.
Since I don't have the time or the inclination to look for a possible source, I'm informing the folks on this WikiProject since I'm assuming lots of you are physicists with subscriptions to publications which might be the source. If it is a copyvio, I'm sure someone can come up with an original article on the subject. Hairy Dude 02:04, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suspected copyvio 

message: Is that really usefull, for al the physics PNA stuff to be in two places? Isn't a link enough? What do others think? Karol 07:07, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: wtf? Pages needing attention! --MarSch 14:51, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  PNA on WikiProject Physics Page 

message: Nobel prize-winning Wikipedian. See also  .
:And promptly into the breach of controversy ... linas 13:41, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Indeed, we'll have to watch his edits closely for POV-pushing. ---CH 09:06, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Welcome User {{user|Brian Josephson}}

message: has recently edited dark energy, Casimir effect, and possibly other articles to express the associated phenomena in terms of virtual particles. I recall there was a large debate at Talk:Casimir effect over this the last time the subject came up, which resulted in the virtual particle explanation being de-emphasized at that article, as being more a product of one way the math could be performed than a fundamental part of the effect. If User:Linas or someone else who was involved in that discussion wants to track down the relevant pages and see if anything needs correcting, it would be greatly appreciated. I don't have the background to do it. --Christopher Thomas 00:40, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Also include quantum statistics and photon density. Karol 07:50, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've been on a mini-wiki-vacation. I'll take a look. linas 13:45, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

text: To be clear, the problem of saying a physical effect is "due to virtual particles" is kind of like saying that a derivative is a "delta-epsilon  effect". While not exactly wrong, its not exactly right either. Virtual particles are artifacts of perturbation theory. Systems that can be solved exactly without using perturbation theory don't need to have (don't use, don't posses) virtual particles. linas 02:15, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Dark energy]] and other [[virtual particle]] edits by [[User:Enormousdude]]

message: Tommysun (talk • contribs) seems to be cut-and-pasting the same "doppler shift controversy" paragraph into a significant number of cosmology-related articles. As far as I can tell this is more plasma cosmology material. I've rolled back the grossly misplaced edits, but this could end up being a recurring problem. --Christopher Thomas 05:08, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Plasma cosmology material being inserted into many articles

message: See Talk:XANES for a discussion about a possible merger and the replacement by User:141.108.20.26
of links to NEXAFS with links to XANES.   This smells like yet another blatant attempt at self-promotion.    While the phenomenon of people adding links to their own research papers is fairly harmless, I object to their removal of links to existing articles when they do so.    (Please note that I have never created any links to or citations of my own research papers!)   Clearly Bianconi/141.108.20.26 knew that the NEXAFS article already existed since he/she created XANES since he/she went to the trouble of removing links to the NEXAFS article!  Alison Chaiken 19:57, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Your evidence is thin; that doesn't mean you're wrong, but it does mean that asserting that this is self-promotion may not get anywhere.  I'd suggest in the future that you de-emphasize the accusations in favor of fixing the articles so the possible self-promotion goes away.  Be bold! -- SCZenz 20:25, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I see your point but fear that if I'm bold in undoing others' ill-advised changes that I'll start a revert war.    It's one thing to boldly create new articles, and another altogether to go ahead and merge XANES into NEXAFS without some thought, especially since "XANES" is an equally valid article title.   Answering the high-handedness of others with equal high-handedness doesn't lead to a solution!  I can't figure out what behavior will lead to a solution though.  At least most of the Wikipedians I've communicated with have been helpful.   Alison Chaiken 20:42, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The funny thing about Wikipedia is that mercilessly editing others' additions isn't all that impolite if the reasons are explained (in this case you'd say merge/redirect because article already exists), but accusing people of having inappropriate motives without mind-bogglingly clear evidence is.  That philosophy is the source of my suggestion.  If you merge/redirect with an explanation, and someone else reverts you, then they have to explain themselves too. -- SCZenz 03:37, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I see the wisdom of your advice.   User:87.3.31.93 is continuing  to expand the XANES article in a knowledgeable way despite the fact that he/she seems to agree that it is a duplicate of NEXAFS.   He/she removed the merge template that I put on the XANES page.    I am inclined to put it back since the articles need eventually to be merged, I don't care in which direction.  No one disputes that NEXAFS and XANES describe the same technique.    I'm not even aware of the history of why there are two names.   Alison Chaiken 02:58, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I put the merge template back on NEXAFS and XANES and it has been removed again, so now we have a full-blown revert war.   Perhaps I should just go ahead and merge the articles myself but that might start a real conflagration.  I'm busy with something else right now anyway.  Alison Chaiken 04:41, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I certainly think merging the articles is appropriate, in some manner, since everyone has agreed that the two words describe the same thing.  What the tile should be is a content dispute.  If Dr. Bianconi is indeed editing the article and citing his own papers, it would appear that he has some cause to (if indeed he wrote the first paper on the technique); when the content being added really is notable, violations of WP:AUTO are more forgivable.  However, one thing that's muddying the waters is the multiple IP addresses agreeing with each other; I've asked politely on Talk:XANES for them to straighten out which of them are the same person.  (Although editing from more than one user name or IP is not forbidden on Wikipedia, using sockpuppets/meatpuppets to influence a content dispute is.)  In any case, I would suggest that you look at the merits of the claims made on Talk:XANES and decide what action to take independent of your (reasonable) dislike of self-promotion; if you still think there's no reason for a name change, then by all means continue discussing, or consider whether there's a neutral way to use both terms in the article (e.g. possibly refer to it consistently as NEXFAS/XANES regardless of the article title). -- SCZenz 07:40, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Some time long ago, the people who came up with the names "XANES" and "NEXAFS" were probably having a spat, but I don't know about that history and don't care.   Having just one article called "XANES" is fine with me; the important thing is to have just one article.   The other folks seem to be of the opinion that we should have two, which is ridiculous.   Having said that, the new XANES article is pretty good.   While the Bianconi papers may be worth citing (I don't really know), the lack of citations to other works or to the major monograph by Jo Stohr in the new article is a problem that a merge would solve.  Thanks for stepping in.   Alison Chaiken 14:11, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I see that User:141.108.20.26 has now removed the  tags put on XANES by User:Pearle and User:Waggers.    The author of XANES (and his/her associated sock puppets) show little interest in the conventions of Wikipedia or in others' well-intended suggestions about the contents of their articles. Alison Chaiken 14:16, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Alison, thanks for the heads-up on my talk page.  Removing cleanup tags without giving a valid reason is vandalism, and you are perfectly entitled to revert it.  The 3-revert rule, which is the main handler for edit wars, makes an excemption for vandalism-fighting, so don't be afraid of getting into trouble over edit warring for undoing vandalism.  I've replaced the wikify tag, and also replaced the merge tag. Waggers 08:01, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[NEXAFS]] and [[XANES]] 

message: I've nominated one of Wikipedia's regular physics editors, Keenan Pepper, for adminship.  If you've had experience with this editor and an opinion of Keenan's qualifications, please visit the RfA and voice your opinions. -lethe talk [ +] 06:34, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  RfA 

message: I am planning, in the near future, on finally writing an article on the general concept of the typical concentric-rings-of-different-detectors-covering-as-much-solid-angle-as-possible design for collider detectors.  (I'm going to include history as well as generally how they work, something I wrote a lot about for ATLAS experiment even though it's not really particular to ATLAS.)  The problem is, I'm not sure what to name the article.  I've heard 4π detector as the general term, but that's kind of a lousy name for a Wikipedia article because it assumes a knowledge of steradians.  Any suggestions? -- SCZenz 03:33, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  you could use the term Hermetic High Energy Physics Detectors or something like that.. Tatonzolo 08:15, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Help with 4π detector article name 

message: Utter and complete nonsense. It's so depressing. Revert, AfD or RfC? Unfortunately article RfC is next to pointless in the last time I've seen it in action. --Pjacobi 21:09, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm leaning to AfD, though I think I could be persuaded.  Railing against relativity is a common enough stance for crackpots that I think a case could be made to have an article about it.  Though in its current state, the article needs work. -lethe talk [ +] 00:44, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

text: I would AfD. It seems really non-notable, incoherent, and quite insulting in a few places. I deleted a few of the most flagrant violations of NPOV, such as apparently suggesting that researchers at DESY murdered someone, and claiming that HEP researchers are "mislead (sic) and indoctrinated scribes". --Philosophus 03:54, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Anti-relativity --Pjacobi 08:58, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Anti-relativity]] 

message: This time he's done a heavy edit of potential energy. I don't feel up to thoroughly checking it yet, though I may if nobody else does. It looks like he didn't quite get the original paradigm being described, and so substituted a different one that's arguably less flexible, and didn't follow the description of the (non-hollow) sphere example. --Christopher Thomas 19:59, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: He's also messed with Casimir effect again, though only one change looks questionable (altered the statement about the cosmological constant to handwave away the problem). --Christopher Thomas 20:05, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: He was sort-of right in the Casimir effect, as to how infinities are treated in practical calculations. I re-tweaked and merged the general idea in. linas 04:51, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

text: The incorrect math he removed from potential energy was, in fact, incorrect.  (I can't figure out what the original author was trying to do, either!)  I haven't looked other than that. -- SCZenz 20:33, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: His edits to potential energy are ok, except that the article is a complete mess in any case.  Also we ought to figure out what he means by "elastic force" and replace the term with a definition. -- SCZenz 20:36, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

text: From what I can tell after a second look, the original author was trying to be too smart for their own good. They were trying to integrate over shells of matter in a solid sphere of uniform density, but botched setting up that equation, and didn't seem to realize that it was unnecessary to do this when by the conditions of the problem they were looking for the potential outside the sphere anyways. They were also using Earth as an example without explicitly stating that they were approximating it as a sphere of uniform density (the usual simple model treats the core and mantle as having different, fixed densities, while more accurate models use a parabolic fit for them, if I recall correctly). --Christopher Thomas 21:17, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

text: Most of his edits appear to be mostly right, and often rather confusing. C'est la vie. linas 01:35, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: More edits by [[User:Enormousdude]]

message: Anybody volunteering to give Bell's spaceship paradox and Talk:Bell's spaceship paradox a look? User:Rod Ball (most time edititing anonymously) is terribly confused about what proper times and proper accelarations are and now has reached the stage of the text books are wrong, I know what's right. Perhaps my attempts at explaining the issue were not brilliant prose and I'm rather tired of the topic, as it was a months long PITA on German Wikipedia. --Pjacobi 09:29, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This is a bit late, but I completely rewrote Bell's spaceship paradox a week or so ago, as well as the background article Rindler coordinates (adapted to Rindler observers, a family of constant acceleration observers).  In the past few days I completely rewrote Born coordinates (adapted to Langevin observers, who are rigidly rotating around an axis of cylindrical symmetry) and plan to use that to rewrite Ehrenfest paradox.  ---CH 08:41, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Bell's spaceship paradox]] 

message: There's been a vigorous dispute at Talk:Special relativity for about a week or so now. The disagreement seems to be over whether Einstein postulated that the one-way or round-trip speed of light was invariant. I know there are lurkers here who are much more familiar with the topic than I am; if you're feeling up for another debate-slog, this would be a relatively civil one that needs looking at. --Christopher Thomas 22:56, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: In my understanding the one way velocity is purely conventional (but of course heavily hinted by Occam's Razor) and not subject to any measurement. I've improvised a stub Einstein synchronisation some time ago. --Pjacobi 00:05, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: In my understanding it is the instantaneous speed of light which is a constant. --MarSch 10:54, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Special relativity

message: The article Conjugate quantities is listed for deletion: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Conjugate quantities. I tried to edit it into something sufficiently decent that it might be kept, but am not an expert. Please contribute to the article and/or the discussion. --LambiamTalk 16:20, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I did a REDIRECT to conjugate variables. linas 13:36, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Conjugate quantities

message: The article Low energy nuclear reactions (ofshoot of cold fusion) needs serious npoving. I'm sure there are people far more knowledgeable than me here who can help. --Deglr6328 01:35, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: A cursory glance suggests that most of this could just be merged into cold fusion. However, it looks like it was actually created by extraction _from_ that article, for reasons that aren't clear to me. --Christopher Thomas 02:15, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Low energy nuclear reaction]]

message: This areticle is up at AfD.ßlηguγΣη | Have your say!!! - review me 07:15, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I especially like the bit where it claims mercury atoms (mass about 2e+11 eV/C^2) emit gamma rays with energies on the order of 1e+18 eV. --Christopher Thomas 17:29, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Flouron Emission Rays]] 

message: Two (thankfully) unrelated items that may bear watching:
* A new user, Cycles (talk • contribs), has started posting as of Tuesday, focusing on Cycles Theory-related articles. Points that are suspicious are that they only became active shortly after the AfD mess died down, and that they're displaying suspicious mastery of things like citation templates despite having made less than a dozen edits so far. No discernable abuse yet, but probably should be watched as a potential sock puppet of existing players.
* Remember the fun with H0riz0n (talk • contribs) and Harmonics Theory, Quantum metaphysics, and so forth? Well, I checked on a whim, and now he's aggressively editing Brane, merged S-Brane, D-brane into it, and moved Brane cosmology to Braneworld cosmology and made substantial edits there as well. Someone with detailed knowledge of the field might want to visit with a mop and bucket and vet the new versions of the articles for accuracy.
I'll continue helping out where I can, but my cosmology background isn't strong enough to vet the articles in the second item. --Christopher Thomas 03:52, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've reverted all of his brane edits, which made some decent articles and stubs into a giant confused mess. It would be nice if editors were more restrained in making content changes in subjects they don't understand at all. If H0riz0n's only edit had been the change he made from 4D to 3D in the Brane Cosmology article, I would have though he was a vandal. In addition, I had no idea the M-theory article was so horribly written! I might try to rewrite it after this quarter is over, but I am terribly busy right now and shouldn't even be making these edits. --Constantine Evans 06:23, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the prompt response. --Christopher Thomas 14:08, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: More Cycles stuff, and M-Theory stuff

message: I just noticed that the Virial Theorem page has a giant copyright warning on it.  I don't have Goldstein's Mechanics book, so I can't check the issue in question myself.  If anyone wants to help figure out the issure and/or write the page from scratch, it'd be appreciated.  KristinLee 22:08, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Virial Theorem

message: I'm too tired to AfD -- any volunteers to nominate Unitary field theory, and possibly the other contributions of User: Roger Anderton? --Pjacobi 21:27, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: let's see if a prod takes. -lethe talk [ +] 21:43, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

text: The only other non-reverted contribution is a biography page on Leo baranski. Quick-link via user template, for easier tracking: Roger Anderton (talk • contribs). --Christopher Thomas 21:51, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

text: This is against prod policy.  If anyone removes the prod tag, and we still want to delete, then we have to take it to AfD proper.  Removing prod tags is not allowed, and the closing admin is not to delete if the prod tag didn't stay on continuously for 5 days. -lethe talk [ +] 17:22, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the note. I've read up on Wikipedia:Proposed deletion, and will attempt to follow proper procedure in the future. --Christopher Thomas 18:33, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

text: I've redirected to Albert Einstein#Generalized theory --Philosophus <sup>T</sup> 18:15, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Anybody in AfD mood? 

message: I've nominated the article Leo baranski  for deletion; see Articles for deletion/Leo baranski. --LambiamTalk 12:46, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: AfD Nomination [[Leo baranski ]]

message: I see steady effort to link many articles to http://xstructure.inr.ac.ru/ (e.g. ).
Before discussing, whether these links are reasonably based on their content, I'd like raise a formal issue: At least to me, this site displays popunder ads. I judge this to be very annoying.
Pjacobi 17:24, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  xstructure links 

message: I thought I'd let you all know that User:KraMuc, due to suggestions made to him, attempted to write an article on modern Galilean relativity at Anti-relativity.  I speedied it as recreated deleted material, but he pointed out that it was different content.  As it is different and some willingness to move parts of the old material was expressed at AfD, I have undeleted this new article and moved it to modern Galilean relativity.  — Laura Scudder ☎ 21:15, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: So far, he seems to be presenting the subject in a more neutral light, though the article will still need NPOV'ing work by other editors. --Philosophus T 22:12, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The article should clearly state that Galilean relativity is firmly regarded as cranky by the mainstream.  Galilean dynamics was founded by Petr Beckman, an EE by training, and has published the likes of Tom Van Flandern of Face on Mars infamy.  Hadronic Journal was founded by Ruggero Maria Santilli, who has also published a hysterical anti-Einstein rant.  See Did Einstein Cheat?, a Salon article by John Farrell, and Wired 6.03: Breaking the Law of Gravity, a Wired article by Charles Platt. ---CH 09:15, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

text: This article is now thorougly cranky, and KraMuc has not responded well in talk page discussions.  I am too exhausted to try to reason with him, unfortunately.  In any case, I think a group effort is needed to control this. ---CH 20:48, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Anti-relativity and [[Modern Galilean relativity]] 

message: Right now, the unified field theory page comes across as being a more badly-written version of theory of everything. I was under the impression that the term "unified field theory" referred to a specific class of model that attempted ToE-style unification. If an expert on the subject could take a look at it, it would be greatly appreciated (the article needs heavy editing for tone at minimum). --Christopher Thomas 05:08, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: And there is also Albert Einstein#Generalized theory and Classical unified field theories, and the term " Unitary field theory". It would be great if someone knowledgeable about these subjects could clarify the relationships. --LambiamTalk 17:33, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've asked around a bit, and I am not so sure that unified field theory and theory of everything are well-defined terms.  Thus the articles should probably be merged, and it should be made clear that they are popular rather than technical terms. Note however that Grand Unified Theory is something different, well-defined, and the article is in good shape. -- SCZenz 18:55, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree.  Unless someone has a very good argument otherwise, let's merge Unified Field Theory with Theory of Everything. RK 00:59, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Likewise, and neutralize to remove slant toward cranky "theory" promoted by Roger D. Anderton, who maintains a cranky website.  ---CH 07:04, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

text: I've only ever seen "theory of everything" used as an umbrella term to refer to any theory that unifies all four forces. This gives it a consistent, though broad, definition in my (admittedly limited) experience. I'd thought UFT was similarly specific (a QFT that was a ToE), but apparently there's ambiguity over this. I strongly suggest that if a merge takes place, the final article is at "theory of everything", as this is the more general term. --Christopher Thomas 07:16, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

text: If we keep the articles separate, there has to be a clear and (to non-physicists) comprehensible difference between the terms. -- SCZenz 18:14, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Unified field theory]]

message: Could anybody with some knowledge of statistical mechanics please comment at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Derivation of the partition function? Thanks. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 08:28, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That deletion discussion is solid evidence that we should avoid AfD as much as possible.  If someone steps up to improve the article, well and good—if not, we can always redirect to Partition function (statistical mechanics) in the interim to sweep the dubious material under the rug, so to speak. -- SCZenz 08:44, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: AfD Derivation of the partition function

message: Amusingly, some time back the pltn13.pacbell.net anon, a suspected sock of permabanned  (who should not be editing WP at all) edited this article to add a bit of scorn concerning Hal Puthoff (apparently Sarfatti and Puthoff had a falling out some time ago).
Must more seriously, a new single purpose user,  has completely rewritten this article in a manner which I regard as violating WP:NPOV.  Even worse, Ibison is presumably in real life Michael Ibison, who is  listed as an employee of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Austin, an organization apparently founded by Hal Puthoff which has no relation with the reputable Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ.  Indeed, the Pufhoff insitute is apparently a subsidiary of 
Earth Tech International, Inc. in Austin, TX, a company which promotes the theories of Hal Puthoff.  Indeed, it would apparently not be inaccurate to say that Michael Ibison is an employee of Hal Puthoff.  If true, this would appear to raise issues related to WP:VAIN WP:NPOV WP:RS.
No doubt everyone here knows that Puthoff's speculations about "metric engineering" are generally regarded as fringe science at best, but see also Eugene Podkletnov and the article from Wired by Charles Platt cited there, for starters.  (Puthoff is claiming among other things that gravitation is an electromagnetic phenomenon.) ---CH 08:52, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Polarizable vacuum]]

message: Throught he actions of one anon user who thinks Wikipedia is the space for writing his own textbook, has been making this article, intended as a non-technical introduction to the topic for laymen, into a highly technical and mathematical treatment of the topic using advanced concepts such as metric tensors and pseudo-Riemannian manifolds. It is in need of immediate attention from an expert who can ruthlessly edit the article and bring it upto a introductory level. This is a plea for help, please rescue this article from its steady death-march! Loom91 07:15, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Introduction to general relativity]] 

message: It seems to me that there is a contradiction within this article.  The article confidently states that:
:The only mainstream candidate for a theory of everything at the moment is superstring theory / M-theory; current research on loop quantum gravity may eventually play a fundamental role in a TOE, but that is not its primary aim
Yet a few paragraphs away we find it stated that:
:There have been several attempts to advance the general theory of relativity as a theory of everything. As mentioned above, Einstein was responsible for one of these: in collaboration with Rosen he attempted to model particles as tiny wormholes, hence the term Einstein-Rosen Bridge.... Such theories face a number of hurdles: the creation of wormholes changes the topology of spacetime by creating a new "handle" which implies violations of causality (see Hadley [2]), and the general theory of relativity predicts its own breakdown at a Gravitational singularity by theorems of Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose. A recent effort to surmount this hurdle notes that the equivalence principle can be applied along curves rather than at a single point (Iliev [3]), ....
Should, then, we revise the statement to say something like:
:There are currently two mainstream candidates for a theory of everything.  The candidate with the most attention by professional physicists is superstring theory / M-theory. (current research on loop quantum gravity may eventually play a fundamental role in a TOE, but that is not its primary aim.) However, another active field of research - pursued by a smaller group of professional physicists - is to use Einstein's general theory of relativity as a theory of everything....
Is this wording more accurate?  Or are the number of people following the latter GR path so small as to be not worth stating in this fashion? Any thoughts would be appreciated? RK 15:58, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: As a graduate student in high energy theory, I certainly haven't heard of any substantial work on this "GR alone as a TOE" approach.  I'm not sure what evidence exists to support the idea at all, to be honest.  Certainly the vast majority of people working on LQG (which is just aiming to be quantized GR) don't expect it to explain anything beyond gravity on its own.  If the "GR as a TOE" folks were making a substantial impact on the field, I would expect that attitude to be different.  If anyone has substantial references to the contrary, please do share them, but I would be tempted to refrain from mentioning any ongoing work on the "GR as a TOE" idea under the "no original research" policy here.--Steuard 03:33, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

text: My understanding of the idea being discussed here (which I'll admit I hadn't heard of before in any serious context) was as a notion that various topological effects in gravity alone might give rise to particles and the other forces.  As I said above, I'm not aware of any mainstream work on such a model, and it goes against the general understanding of what GR describes by physicists in related fields.--Steuard 13:40, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've never heard of this program, and I would suggest it be deleted as a violation of NOR.  On the other hand, it's got lots of citations from the arxiv.  I read several of the abstracts, and not a single one of them mentions a general relativity ToE.  In fact, other than the mention that particles can be modeled as wormholes, the text in question doesn't really convince me that this approach is actually being considered as a ToE.  Do they think it will be able to predict the gauge group, and the number of generations, the mass, and the hierarchy problem?  If not, then it ain't a ToE.  What we need here is a citation for a scientist who thinks this thing may become a ToE.  Otherwise delete. -lethe talk [ +] 14:02, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Is a General Relativity ToE accepted as a useful approach?