Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics

WikiProject Physics
WikiProject Physics Main / Talk	Members	Quality Control (talk)	Welcome

GR Amaldi edit-a-thon 13 July 2025

To coincide with the 24th International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation (GR24) and the 16th Edoardo Amaldi Conference on Gravitational Waves (Amaldi16), there will be a Wikipedia edit-a-thon on 13 July. This will concentrate on pages connected to topics of the conference, primarily in gravitational physics, and biographies of researchers in the area. There should be some translation of pages, depending on the availability of international conference participants. Please expect a edits from several new accounts with IPs corresponding to the University of Glasgow. Expert Wikipedians will give some training at the start of the day. We hope the event will encourage some longer-term involvement in editing Wikipedia from participants. CPLBerry (talk) 21:35, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

Good article reassessment for Augustin-Jean Fresnel

Augustin-Jean Fresnel has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Z1720 (talk) 00:56, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

Good article reassessment for Deep Impact (spacecraft)

Deep Impact (spacecraft) has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Z1720 (talk) 15:57, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:William Rankine#Requested move 5 July 2025

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:William Rankine#Requested move 5 July 2025 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. TarnishedPath^talk 11:36, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

Check a HEP page please

Can someone knowledgeable in HEP please check Higgs pair production: e.g. for LLM, accuracy etc. Ldm1954 (talk) 11:36, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

While I don't meet your qualifications I boldly edited that page. The main problem is dated overly detailed content, much of which I removed. I added a key recent review of the Compact Muon Solenoid project. The main need is some basic theoretical and experimental context with links. Johnjbarton (talk) 02:44, 14 July 2025 (UTC)

Physics AfD category

I added (with a little help) a "Physics" category to those available when creating an AfD. Any AfD's which are created using it now also appear at WP:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Physics. Ldm1954 (talk) 11:42, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

Good article reassessment for Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Z1720 (talk) 21:35, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

request AfD or redirect: Quantum engineering

Currently the article Quantum technology (QT for short below) is redirected to Quantum engineering (QE for short below). It seems QE is the name of a master programme at ETZH but not much else. The QE article mainly refers to material about QT and it uses very little supporting material for QE (if any). The are plenty of university courses related to quantum technolgy, but very few of them are actually called QT. But probably are some master programmes, tracks or profiles with the term quantum technology in their names or syllabi.

The other language versions about QT link to the QT article.

I suggest to remedy this by:

1. deleting the QE article and reinstating the QT article, or

2. omitting anything QT from the QE article and reinstating the QT article, or

3. reinstating the QT article and redirecting to that from the QE article (milder version of 1.), or

4. If there actually is sufficient reason to maintain an article on QE, do so but revoke the redirect from QT to QE (variant of 2.).

I today posted a draft version for an QT article in my sandbox. Alternatively use previous non-redirected versions of QT article, then we can update it. Benkeboy (talk) 13:29, 14 July 2025 (UTC)

I agree there is a problem. I'm unconvinced by your proposal. Quantum technology redirects to Quantum engineering, so the options your options don't make sense. I assume you mean you want to restore the older version here. That article has a large number of problems which may have lead to the redirect. Most of the content overlaps with quantum computing: why do we need both? The strategy section is not clearly encyclopedic. "Pillars" is just marketing speak.

I do think that "quantum technology" and "quantum engineering" are notable topics. I think we could have "quantum technology" as as Wikipedia:Broad-concept article with summaries of quantum computing and quantum engineering, quantum sensor, and quantum communications. To me that makes more sense the the old version.

These topics are both engineering rather than physics so I wonder if this is best venue to discuss them. Johnjbarton (talk) 19:32, 14 July 2025 (UTC)

Here is the case for "quantum technology" as a notable topic:

• Dowling, J. P., & Milburn, G. J. (2003). Quantum technology: the second quantum revolution. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 361(1809), 1655-1674. (1400 citations, top journal, review of article topic)
• This trend in quantum technology is curiously reminiscent of the history of semiconductors: here, too, sensors—for instance light meters based on selenium photocells —have found commercial applications decades before computers. From the introduction of Degen, C. L., Reinhard, F., & Cappellaro, P. (2017). Quantum sensing. Reviews of modern physics, 89(3), 035002. (4300 citations, top journal)
• Quantum Technologies in a nutshell, outline of EU funding for quantum technologies. The outline of web page matches my proposal for adopting Wikipedia:Broad-concept article plan for an article on "quantum technology".

Based on this I proposed to replace the current redirect with a new article focused on short summaries of existing quantum technology wikipedia articles. The existing quantum engineering would focus on educational and standardization content.

@Benkeboy Would you agree to this counter proposal? Other inputs? Johnjbarton (talk) 21:43, 15 July 2025 (UTC)

Feedback request: SynchronoGeometry draft

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.

---

Hi everyone! I’ve submitted a draft article titled SynchronoGeometry that proposes a geometric framework where each point in space carries an intrinsic temporal rhythm. It builds on ideas from Riemannian geometry, geometric flows, and quantum spacetime oscillations.

I’d be grateful for any feedback on its scientific relevance, clarity, or potential connections to existing physical theories. 🔗 User:SynchronoGeometry/sandbox

Thanks for your time and insights! SynchronoGeometry (talk) 18:27, 18 July 2025 (UTC)

Not a single source mentions "SynchronoGeometry". Looks like this is something you invented yourself. That's not what Wikipedia is for, see WP:INVENTED. Tercer (talk) 18:37, 18 July 2025 (UTC)

Proposed Response to Wikipedia Editors:

Hello and thank you all for your feedback.

SynchronoGeometry is an emerging conceptual framework currently undergoing academic review. I've sent the draft—including its mathematical foundations and proposed applications—to faculty at reputable institutions for evaluation. My goal at this stage is not to publish an article on Wikipedia, but rather to gather informal perspectives from experienced editors on its structure, clarity, and theoretical soundness.

The sandbox was created solely to facilitate that exchange before any formal publication or citation takes place. I fully respect Wikipedia’s guidelines regarding original research and will not pursue article creation until reliable secondary sources become available.

With appreciation, SynchronoGeometry (talk) SynchronoGeometry (talk) 21:13, 18 July 2025 (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.

Wanted: Thick-skinned physicists with good theory

It would be good to have someone with good theory helping out reviewing new physics pages, User:SDZeroBot/NPP sorting/STEM/Physics. This really needs WP:NPP rights. If you don't have them, the requirements are a fair bit of experience, a decent amount of diplomacy and a thick skin (you can guess why for the last). Ldm1954 (talk) 15:28, 19 July 2025 (UTC)

From that listing, I found my way to Frenesy (physics), which is in pretty rough shape. It's a pile of COI whose bibliography reads like a curriculum vitae and which conveys no useful information. What good is an article about a quantity without a formula for it, for crying out loud? The best source in the whole bunch is the Gaspard book, as far as I can tell. I wonder if the whole thing should just be a line in some other article ("The time-symmetric part of the action functional is sometimes called the frenesy"). Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 19:23, 19 July 2025 (UTC)

I deleted a few of the refs that were not reviewed, but many of the other sources are in top journals. Technically the topic is "notable". Some of the sources do not mention "Frenesy" but are related, so some more digging is needed.

This topic very obscure, a new and rarely used concept in one treatment of non-equilibrium thermodynamics which itself relatively minor for an encyclopedia. The main secondary source, Gaspard, covers the topic in less than a page and is clearer than the current article. I agree that the sourcing is too concentrated on the work of Maes et al.

Ideally this topic would be covered in a subsection of non-equilibrium thermodynamics. I personally don't think its worth pursuing a merge. It could not be done without significant work to fill in the context. Johnjbarton (talk) 01:43, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

I poked around a bit and didn't see an article with what felt like the right scope to be a merge target. Non-equilibrium thermodynamics seems too broad. But maybe there's another possibility? Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 19:24, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

Article Alerts or similar

On the general topic of article alerts, is there a list or a feed somewhere of the most-viewed physics articles? I would value such a thing, since any time I got stuck in a particularly pointless argument in an obscure corner of Wikipedia, I could look at the list of more important things and go work on one of them instead. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 00:25, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

Look at "Pages needing attention" on the main project page. Ldm1954 (talk) 00:40, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

Ah, I see Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics/Popular pages linked just above that. Thanks. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 00:46, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

This led me to Theory of everything, which, ah, let's say it needs work. For example, it says that Hilbert's sixth problem was asking for a "theory of everything", and it supports this by citing a paper that does not use the term "theory of everything". Hilbert asked if one could provide axiomatizations for those particular "physical sciences in which already today mathematics plays an important part"; that's different from what people mean today by a TOE. Overall the article seems prone to WP:OR. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 02:10, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

Unfortunately a lot of junk is written about "theory of everything" so I don't think a sensible article can be written about it in Wikipedia. In my opinion a sensible article would discuss unification in physics, starting with Newton's unification of everyday gravity with planetary gravity and ending with a explanation on why unifying gravity with other interactions is so difficult or maybe impossible. There are sources for this kind of approach but the totality of the topic includes a hairball of boring speculation.

BTW Unified field theory starts out:

• In physics, a Unified Field Theory (UFT) or “Theory of Everything” ...

Johnjbarton (talk) 02:34, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

The Unified field theory article seems, on a first glance, to be redundant with Theory of everything. A UFT is a TOE that is a field theory, no?

I'm not expecting the TOE article to ever be spectacular, but I think we can and should make it significantly better than it is right now. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 02:40, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

No a UFT is not a TOE. Gravitational + EM fields would be a UFT but not a TOE.

Sorry I did not mean to discourage any improvement for any article including Theory of everything. Rather I was explaining, to myself perhaps, why I wouldn't jump in. Johnjbarton (talk) 02:46, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

Well, one could say that Maxwell's equations are a unified field theory of electricity and magnetism, and some books probably do say that. But the Unified field theory article defines it as a theory that "allows all fundamental forces of nature, including gravity, and all elementary particles to be written in terms of a single physical field". That's obviously not talking about just electroweak unification, or a unification of just gravity and EM, etc.

We have Unified field theory, Theory of everything, and Unification of theories in physics. They are all talking about the same thing. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 02:53, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

Sorry I disagree. The cited Encyclopedia Britannia source (https://www.britannica.com/science/unified-field-theory) in unified field theory is simply incorrect: a unified theory need not encompass "all" interactions. A comprehensive source like

• FM, Goenner Hubert. "On the History of Unified Field Theories." Living Reviews in Relativity 7.1 (2004).

makes it clear that, for example, Maxwell's theory is a "unified field theory". The "all" property is characteristic of only "theory of everything". Grand unified theory is clearly a unified field theory and equally clearly not a "theory of everything". Unification of theories in physics is a separate topic because, for example, Newton unified physical theories before fields were used in physics.

I guess we should start a collection: there is also Classical unified field theories. Johnjbarton (talk) 14:55, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

I concur with Johnjbarton: certain phrases seem to have acquired standard, very specific meanings. Over time, I have gleaned that a "theory of everything" and a "grand unified theory" are very specific about what they address (the former includes gravity, the latter not); a "unified theory" simply describes a theory that brings separately described interactions into a cohesive "single" interaction description. These meanings have remained stable over decades. —Quondum 15:05, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

Yes, all these words have mostly-stable meanings, but we have articles about concepts, not words. There's no real reason why Unification of theories in physics has to be a separate article from Unified field theory, for example. Surely all we need is one page, maybe even just called Unification (physics), with "Classical field theories" and "Quantum field theories" being subheadings within it. Right now, there are simply too many fragments floating around this area to be manageable. They repeat each other, and each one of them is a crank magnet. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 16:39, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

I would agree to merging Unified field theory into Unification (physics) aka Unification of theories in physics and adding summary material from Grand unified theory, Classical unified field theories, and theory of everything. I would like Unification (physics) to be a WP:Broad concept article. Separate articles like Classical unified field theories can be the space for inevitable enumeration of the multitude rather than repetition. While I agree that these leaf pages are conceptually unnecessary, their topics pass the notability test. Better to have them separate than muck up the concept page.

Maybe "Physical unification" or "Unified theories" or "Unification in physics"? I think titles (with parenthesis) are off putting to readers. Johnjbarton (talk) 17:01, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

I don't know if parentheses actually make a difference to most readers or not; Wikipedia uses them for disambiguation often enough that I don't think their use here would stand out. But if we're avoiding them, I think "Unification in physics" is the best of those possibilities. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 17:04, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

IMO, we should use parenthetical disambiguation for that and only that: within the field of study, the title should be unambiguous without the disambiguator. Unification as a stand-alone title would not tell a physicist what is being unified, so none of these suggestions (Unified field theory, Unification (physics), Unification of theories in physics) work for me. The article at Unification of theories in physics is about unification of field theories, and should make that clear in the title. It is not, for example, about unifying thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, or the unification of gravity with inertial motion through the equivalence principle. —Quondum 22:45, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

I'm confused because you eliminated some titles but did not nominate alternatives. If we added non-field content to Unification of theories in physics then what title would suffice? Johnjbarton (talk) 23:14, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

I would suggest Unification of field theories (does it need a disambiguator?; if so:), Unification of field theories (physics), or Unification of field theories in physics. This narrows it down to the actual topic that the article would cover. —Quondum 23:24, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

Unification is not a sole property of field theories, they just happen to be the popular kind now. As Weinberg, Feynman and Kargh point out, unification is a long standing goal in physics.

• Weinberg, S. (1993). Dreams of a Final Theory: The Search for the Fundamental Laws of Nature. Hutchinson Radius. ISBN 978-0-09-177395-3.
• Feynman, Richard (1965). The Character of Physical Law. Modern Library. ISBN 978-0-679-60127-2.
• Kragh, H. (2011). Higher Speculations: Grand Theories and Failed Revolutions in Physics and Cosmology. United Kingdom: OUP Oxford.

Perhaps we should work on the sourcing in the existing articles before we go about deleting/merging. Johnjbarton (talk) 00:33, 23 July 2025 (UTC)

As you can see in my comment below, I've been talked around, except that in this case I feel that it would need quite a re-write. —Quondum 01:31, 23 July 2025 (UTC)

On a re-read, I see I failed to read your question properly. I do not think we should consider "Unification of theories in physics" to be a general topic: is the term applied that broadly? If so, we'd need an additional super-high-level article Unification of theories in physics, but it would be very broad and abstract. (Typically, unifications such as EM spectral unification (magnetism, electric fields, radio waves, light, etc.), gravitational phenomena (planetary motion, gravity on Earth) should not be listed together in a top-level article for the sake of expounding on the dictionary term "unification".) 23:33, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

Looking around, there may be a basis for an article with that name, but it would primarily be a philosophy-of-science one, not a broad-picture or a list article for specific unifications in physics (these are incidental examples of the general process). Links for sourcing could be [1], [2] (a tertiary source), [3]. —Quondum 23:57, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Acoustic network

The article Acoustic network has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Unreferenced for literally 20 years. Tagged for Notability concerns for 8 months. No other language has a reliably sourced article from which to translate. I see a handful of passing mentions in Google books, but not what appears to be significant coverage.

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the page to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Bearian (talk) 06:42, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

Bearian, note that there is the redirect Acoustic networks to be deleted at the same time (and I support deletion and not redirection), just as Acoustic network would not be a suitable redirect. I cleaned up the only other incoming link, which was in Template:Hydroacoustics. —Quondum 23:21, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. Bearian (talk) 01:15, 23 July 2025 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:William Rankine#Requested move 5 July 2025

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:William Rankine#Requested move 5 July 2025 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Векочел (talk) 07:34, 25 July 2025 (UTC)

Paid editing: The History of Physics in Trinity College Dublin

The paid editor Gukecavoran has just created directly in main the page The History of Physics in Trinity College Dublin, avoiding the recommended AfC for COI editors. To me the page has masses of problems, for instance the loooong list of faculty many of whom are not notable. I would also say that it fails WP:GNG, WP:NOTCATALOG, WP:NOTPROMO, WP:NOTDB and perhaps a few more. It also contains vast amounts of unsourced material, as well as material which is unverifiable such as refs [1] and [2] which are to self-published records that nobody can verify. One obvious thing is to remove everyone who does not have RS, all the academics who do not have WP pages. The alternative is to go straight to AfD. (PROD is already implicitly contested.)

Then again maybe people here want to defend having pages such as this? If so speak now or forever.... Ldm1954 (talk) 14:26, 30 July 2025 (UTC)

I don't see the purpose of it. Very few colleges and universities have had their physics departments described in loving detail by sources outside of their physics departments. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 17:58, 30 July 2025 (UTC)

What next? History of History in Oxford University? No surprise, it is a redlink, as should be the case for this article. Institutions have their own websites for this kind of stuff. It would also fail WP:SYNTH: it is a collection of items of data synthesized to suggest that the topic has coherence or notability. —Quondum