Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics

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Nobel warning 2025

As usual the Nobel Prizes are being announced, today it was the Nobel Prize in Physics to John Clarke (physicist), Michel Devoret and John M. Martinis. As usual, a large number of users are trying to modify their articles. Please take a look at them so that the articles follow WP:BLP and help improving the articles related to their work. You are also invited to help with other laureates as they come. ReyHahn (talk) 10:19, 7 October 2025 (UTC)

Trying 30 day archive limit on article alerts.

As discussed at Wikipedia_talk:Article_alerts#Lots_of_out_of_date_entries I changed the archive cut off to 30 days. The effect should be many fewer long-decided items (~1/2?) and an occasional change to an item that goes unnoticed. Johnjbarton (talk) 20:04, 7 October 2025 (UTC)

Nobel warning 2

Speaking of the recent Nobel in physics, can somebody take a look at the new section Macroscopic quantum phenomena#Mechanical Systems in the Quantum Regime look like made by an LLM.--ReyHahn (talk) 21:18, 10 October 2025 (UTC)

I reverted the addition for now. In addition to the possibility of LLM use, any such section should be based on secondary rather than primary sources, i.e., on books and review articles rather than the original papers reporting on the experiments. Here's one possibility, and here's another. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 03:16, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

Burn and clean

Can somebody check this article Jose Luis Mendoza-Cortes is a clear mess for a WP:BLP. I would just remove everything if I were to edit it. Should it go to AfD? ReyHahn (talk) 09:44, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

• Moved on to AFD. See here: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jose Luis Mendoza-Cortes.--ReyHahn (talk) 10:38, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

"Nucleon decay" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Nucleon decay has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 October 15 § Nucleon decay until a consensus is reached. --MYCETEAE 🍄‍🟫—talk 16:42, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

 Note: The discussion was relisted today. It would benefit from more input from physics editors. --MYCETEAE 🍄‍🟫—talk 16:42, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

Delete Black hole electron

Please weigh in on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Black hole electron. Johnjbarton (talk) 15:43, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

"Total energy" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Total energy has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 October 20 § Total energy until a consensus is reached. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫‍(talk) 20:58, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

Discovery of the neutron

The Discovery of the neutron looks pretty good but once I started to read carefully I found more and more problems. However editor @Bdushaw disagrees with some of my changes. It would be helpful if other editors would take a look. The issues are primarily historical so I asked on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject History of Science but I'm unsure how many follow that page. Johnjbarton (talk) 16:55, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

Physics history category idea

Hi!

So I have an idea for a new type of physics-type category which I just wanted to get some thoughts on. Specifically a "XXXX in physics" cateogry which would list the set of pages assocaited with XXXX year.

The other sciences that seem to do something like this extensively seems to be in biology for when specific taxa were discovered/first described, and in archeology for when specific finds were made.

The idea would be to try to associate a single date with a page when possible. For example Dirac equation 1928, Schrodinger equation 1926, Wilson loop 1974, etc. Sometimes multiple dates may be required such as Higgs boson 1964 and 2012, etc.

Upsides:

• Nice overview of physics history by consulting Category pages, letting people see what happened when and also what physics was up to in a certain year.
• History of physics on Wikipedia is at times neglected, so this could help give it a bit more focus for writers to actually also mention who did what and when. After all, physics is a discipline done by people in time, just like anything else.

Some downsides:

• Would take effort to go through pages.
• Biggest downside I see is the possible ambiguity of pages. Many pages wouldnt admit a date at all. Like for example what would electric current?? But these could just not be included. Many other pages do seem to have reasonably well-defined dates, corresponding either to the discovery date, experiment date, or first time something was theorized date.
• Another downside could be that we would at times possibly be trying to impose a date on a historical development where no clear date exists, thus misconstruing the actual history.

Do the upsides worth it? What are your thoughts on this? Why is it unfeasable/not currently in existance? OpenScience709 (talk) 13:39, 1 November 2025 (UTC)

The biggest reason why it's not currently in existence is probably that nobody has bothered. That doesn't mean it's a bad idea, just that no one has invested the energy to start it, yet. I am a bit wary, though. In addition to the downsides you mention, Wikipedia's year-in-science articles tend to be accumulations of cruft. Every news story gets a bullet point, dubious "news" items that are really just press releases get treated like good sources, etc. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 16:18, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

Good point although concerning the issues with Wikipedia's "year-in-science" this would be in principle avoid it since it would be tying the article itself to the date. So assuming the articles are notable, then their inclusion in the category would be notable. If they are not, well they shouldnt be articles in the first place. This is why one would want to strongly limit the number of dates associated to an article, ideally to just one. So it wouldn't tie all the dates that may come up in the article to those cateogires, just the overarching date (if there is one. If not, no date and so no inclusion in a category).

From my experiance a lot of articles tend to have a single date assocaited to them, so such things would be reasonably unambiguous. Although most of my experiance is in theoretical physics where its usually the date of the paper that proposed the concept.

Actually one half decent criterion I could see is that a date is included if the event that happened on that date is notable enough to in principle warrent its own Wikipedia page (and the page in question has a substantial discussion of those events/they form a key element of it). This is more relevant for multi-date inclusions. So for example, Higgs boson I suggested 1964 and 2012. In fact both events effectively have their own articles, 1964 PRL symmetry breaking papers, Search for the Higgs boson (I would argue 2012 is the key date for this one), respectively.

In summary, only Wikipedia-level notable things would get dates. OpenScience709 (talk) 17:21, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

In my opinion improving the history directly would be better. This sounds like an effort which would cause many minor and potentially contentious changes ("I would argue 2012 is the key date..."). The payoff on occurs for users of categories (do they exist?) and only near the end of such a project. It essentially uses an unreliable source, Wikipedia, as references for inclusion in categories. Many topics in physics are not tied to a date. Johnjbarton (talk) 17:37, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

I'd suggest developing Timeline of physics, improving one of its sublists, or creating a new sublist of your preferred physics branch. It doesn't force the events to be specific to years, the date can be less granular, as in decades or centuries. fgnievinski (talk) 19:27, 2 November 2025 (UTC)