Please post at the bottom, thanks. Johnjbarton (talk) 00:34, 6 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The wave vector is really a vector , as is the group velocity. I suggest staying with this from the start of the article, rather than having wave number anywhere. There are cases where this matters a lot, for instance in periodic solids. Ldm1954 (talk) 19:17, 25 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

My goal here was trace through de Broglie's historical path but to connect to the (modern) group velocity page. A reader of the de Broglie approach would have some work to connect to the group velocity otherwise.

Using vector here would, I believe, require additional explanation out of context for the historical story. I did add a qualifier "in free space" to the passage.

I understand the value of consistency but there is also value in starting with the simple homogenous case to give the basics, then generalizing.

To me the group velocity page is weak in not clearly calling out the general case and making the connection. Solids and anisotropic mediums are not mentioned. Similarly wavevector does not connect with crystal momentum. Johnjbarton (talk) 03:11, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your reply on 'QM Non-interpretations talk'. If you are interested in matter waves, perhaps the following is your cup of tea: https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/17832/arthur-lunn-and-the-schr%c3%b6dinger-equation 176.93.119.196 (talk) 17:41, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

hey, I am physics student and I am interested in your scattering graph of Rutherford scattering. Youve send code, but how do you get the function r(theta) ? 191.37.156.163 (talk) 16:17, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@191.37.156.163

• Please append new posts to Talk pages (using Add Topic if possible). The Talk pages have the oldest topics on top, newest on bottom.
• Please post content discussions to article topic pages if at all possible. So Talk:Rutherford scattering experiments in this case.
• I assume you are asking about Rutherford_scattering_experiments#/media/File:RutherfordHyperbolas.png where I wrote
  • r(phi) = 2(p/b)^2/(e cos(phi) - 1)
  • Where p is the impact parameter
  • b is the closest approach radius
  • and e = Sqrt((2p/b)^2 + 1)

This is an equation of motion for a Hyperbolic_trajectory#Equations_of_motion in polar coordinates with the parameters written to match Rutherford's p and b (rather than l as on the wikipage). Johnjbarton (talk) 23:19, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've searched and cannot find the link. I give up. -- David Spector 98.2.238.89 (talk) 00:50, 16 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The link is: https://physics.mcmaster.ca/phys3mm3/notes/whatisspin.pdf

It is wrapped around the title in the reference #3 on Spin (physics). I don't know what the deal is with the other two links, something the ref tool added. Johnjbarton (talk) 01:12, 16 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Sometime wiki articles get a bit over cluttered but I changed the eqn on the la place page to reflect the modern usage (which I used for real---as opposed to learnt at uni --- in sound processing and aircraft autopilots). But I have always thought the most usful high level description is the fact that dividing by s corresponds to integration in the real time domain and multiplying by differentiation, very important concepts in control eng. actually sometime I use wikipedia and skip the english versions because of cluttering and go for ore engineer explanations. But thanks for keeping the 0 and infinity in the la place transform I think its meaningless to leave it as a general integral. Really because of the dirac impulse function the 0 should have a minus marker as well but that could be cluttering. its so difficult to get the audiencer right. But I guess anyone who has waded down thaT FAR MUST BE MATHS/ENGINGEERIN. sorry have not screwdrivered out my caps lock key yet. I was not shouting! Getting the screwdriver now! I guess that page is history not a how to use and understand!

I haven't tried very hard, but I can't find the source of the term. It must have been around 1924, but it is not clear whether Born's paper was actually written by Heisenberg. David Spector (talk) 22:09, 12 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Did you see my edit? I think I fixed it ;-) Johnjbarton (talk) 22:18, 12 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I saw your edit. Here is more from me:

I haven't tried very hard, but I can't find the source of the term. It is said to have been around 1924, and in German, but it is not clear whether Born's paper (published in 1925?) was actually written by Heisenberg. Also, WP itself says that the First Solvay Conference was primarily concerned with quantum mechanics, in 1911, had "quanta" in its title, according to WP; however, the official title appears to have been, "Invitation а un Conseil scientifique international pour élucider quelques questions d’actualité des théories moléculaires et cinétiques". A typical article on the Solvay conferences doesn't mention who invented the term. David Spector (talk) 22:22, 12 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Ah ok. I cheated. Tracing down the origin of the word may not be practical/reliable. So I used the first time in print. AFAICT this is close to the same as all the folks using the term worked with Born. (Who actually wrote the paper isn't vital but I have no reason to think it was not Born). Johnjbarton (talk) 22:28, 12 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The paper, "The 1925 Born and Jordan paper “On quantum mechanics” ", by William A. Fedaka and Jeffrey J. Prentis (2008), states definitively that Max Born invented the name, so I'm inclined to agree. I got confused by the fact that Heisenberg contributed to a sequel to Born and Jordan's 1925 paper. Note: Paul Dirac independently discovered the basic QM equations without using matrix mathematics. David Spector (talk) 01:08, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Nice, I added that ref to the draft and to History of QM page, thanks! Johnjbarton (talk) 01:34, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I guess though, that hiesenburg was the first to ditch the models and just use what can be observed, which naturally led to the matrixes defining QM electron state changes with probability. In fact I dont think he knew he was doing matrix maths initially. He was just using observations and forgetting all 'orbit' models ~2026-34090 (talk) 18:45, 2 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I just wanted to take a moment to thank you for all the work you're doing for the QM pages. I'm too busy with video-editing and Web software projects for the charity I run to spend much time on this, and also I have to look things up, because I've only had a few physics classes in school. We all know that isn't much preparation for s real understanding of physics, especially the math. - David

...although I did once make a class presentation on the math behind the precession and nutation (ignoring the higher order motions) of toy tops that try to fall over due to the pull of gravity. David Spector (talk) 10:51, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! I appreciate your feedback on the articles, very helpful.

To be honest I'm reliving my youth a bit ;-). I have a fancy (if a bit dated) education in this topic area but the courses were so difficult most of it just washed over. Weirdly I discovered I could do the math at the time even if I didn't understand it. Johnjbarton (talk) 14:05, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I think that was Richard Feynman's complaint, too, although no one can be sure: "If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics." David Spector (talk) 16:01, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

yeah. NABLA PSI, gotta keep movin! ~2026-34090 (talk) 18:58, 2 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

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Thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia. It appears that you copied or moved text from Wave–particle duality into another page. While you are welcome to re-use Wikipedia's content, here or elsewhere, Wikipedia's licensing does require that you provide attribution to the original contributor(s). When copying within Wikipedia, this is supplied at minimum in an edit summary at the page into which you've copied content, disclosing the copying and linking to the copied page, e.g., copied content from [[page name]]; see that page's history for attribution. It is good practice, especially if copying is extensive, to also place a properly formatted {{copied}} template on the talk pages of the source and destination. Please provide attribution for this duplication if it has not already been supplied by another editor, and if you have copied material between pages before, even if it was a long time ago, you should provide attribution for that also. You can read more about the procedure and the reasons at Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia. Thank you. Nobody (talk) 12:51, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yes that is what I did. Johnjbarton (talk) 13:55, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The "copying" is the part that you did, the "attributing" is what you didn't and you need to do in the future. Nobody (talk) 14:31, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I can't tell whether you are looking for a tool or offering a tool, and what OS. Just wanted to contribute that the IrfanView free viewer can generate a .gif on Windows. David Spector (talk) 17:44, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! Those links are just stuff I thought I should remember for editing on wikipedia. Johnjbarton (talk) 18:27, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

i don't think you will win (be listened to) by TD. Also, one of the odd things about coherence is that there is always some partial incoherence as otherwise the waves hit Jupiter etc. In double slit experiments the electrons are sausages, some microns long (along z) and maybe 100nm wide in x,y. Those are the longitudinal and transverse coherence lengths (when , so wavepackets are not too far off -- but this is way too complex! Ldm1954 (talk) 15:18, 12 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Coherence is quite a tricky subject. Most of the effects are classical. The size of the source through the slits and the energy spread reduce fringe visibility through purely geometrical effects. So the packet one computes from coherence is an ensemble that correctly explains macroscopic visibility without having any necessary microscopic consequences. The packet dimensions are set by uncertainty, so lifetime to energy spread for example. I think few experiments reach those limits. It would be best to put numbers to my claims I suppose. Johnjbarton (talk) 16:20, 12 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

In the EM community there are three groups

• Those who ignore it
• Those who say it is in Born & Wulff
• Those who struggle experimentally to optimize.

I am somewhat in the second two camps, having spent time drinking beer with Pozzzi, Tonamura & Lichte. Every now and again we get back to whether holography eliminates inelastic, and inelastic imaging at atomic resolution. Most others who have not retired are in the first camp.

I only have incomplete lecture notes on it .. Ldm1954 (talk) 16:55, 12 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

N.B., it is not geometric, except in terms of the slit width and edges. The main coherence issue is coming in to the slits, which requires cold FEG, small apertures & masses of work to eliminate stray fields etc. I often get those papers to review! Ldm1954 (talk) 17:04, 12 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I will suggest cleaning the Sandbox, which I think is close. Much of what is being fought about will then go away (I hope). Ldm1954 (talk) 17:11, 13 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

you are the one who decided to engage and provide inadequate sources. the ^{[citation needed]} tag stood for over five years. you have not provided any sources that meet WP:RS. and until you do, that tag will stand. you should understand this, but clearly you're pushing an agenda. 172.219.6.108 (talk) 23:22, 15 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Consistent histories, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Interpretation.

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Hi, just concerning your recent modification to my edit on the charm quark articles: I'm not sure using the term "Standard Model naturalness criterion" is the best way to do it. I agree that it is important to distinguish what we mean by natural, but there is not such thing as SM naturalness criterion by itself. The kaon argument arises from a generic naturalness argument, which is not restricted to a SM version of naturalness, whatever that may be. Maybe we should just call it the "naturalness criterion"? OpenScience709 (talk) 20:47, 6 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. You seem to understand my concern so make the change you think is reasonable. Maybe "physical naturalness criterion"? Johnjbarton (talk) 23:31, 6 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Johnjbarton I try not to contact people directly on their talk pages but I just hope to have some kind of signal from you In a recent ping [1] I tried to recontact you about the structure of the article. I do not know if you have seen it (the talk page is kind of complex right now) or if you are busy with something else. Anyway please discuss that when you are available or if you are ambivalent please tell us so. Keep the great work. Best, ReyHahn (talk) 19:27, 21 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I'm making an effort to not get too wrapped up in discussions; most of the time I don't understand the final result so they seem to have low costs/benefit. Please don't hesitate to ping me in a Talk page however. I will respond as soon as I am able.

I am preparing the charges for the Action at a distance TNT. Johnjbarton (talk) 21:02, 21 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Hi, would you mind having a look at Talk:Electron diffraction/GA2, especially the 1st and last comment and let us know what you think. FuzzyMagma (talk) 07:57, 10 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Dear John,

Thank you for your continued interest in this topic. I see you deleted a whole section with the experimental Tennekes graph of the cubic relationship between car power and velocity. Isn't that deletion a mistake? It's just basic physics - though not trivial - for the air drag regime for cars at high speeds, nice for high school and first year physics students. I answered your comments at Talk:Car_speed,_energy_consumption_and_city_driving and added a section on city driving. Thanks and cheers, Hansmuller (talk) 19:17, 8 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I think it is obvious that without a carrier particle there is no "fundamental" force. Spacetime is a mathematical mental interface that is tuned to the behavior of gravity only for the purposes of predictions, it is not a physical entity and does not explain the underlying physical mechanism of gravity. I think it's somewhat similar to the Higgs field, before the experimental proof of the Higgs particle the Higgs field was a hypothetical theory, that doesn't mean that matter didn't have mass before. But without evidence for the graviton we limit the research by saying that gravity is a fundamental force. Gravity has been a mystery for centuries, it is not productive to limit research on it. So please bring back the change in your editing. Best Regards.

94.66.207.176 (talk) 07:01, 14 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@94.66.207.176 Wikipedia is not a place for opinion sharing or discussion for that matter. Wikipedia summarizes sources. if you have a reliable source then it belongs in the page. if you only have an opinion, then no. gravity can be a fundamental interaction without a quantum. the graviton is hypothetical not gravity. Johnjbarton (talk) 07:23, 14 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The subjective opinion is "that gravity is a fundamental force", not an objective fact. I told you that it's like claiming that the Higgs field exists definitely and indisputably without having experimental evidence for the Higgs particle, or like saying that you don't need a particle, but that's not how nature works.

Objective facts are supported by experimental evidence, subjective opinions are not supported. If you have no experimental evidence for the existence of the graviton, then it is not a fact that gravity is a fundamental force and I am just saying you are making an assumption because you have no experimental evidence. It's very very simple. You have no experimental evidence to assert a fact and you are blaming me because I said you are making an hypothesis. If you want to prove me wrong, show me the experimental evidence for the particle carrier of the force of gravity. It is a fact such evidence does not exist, so by claiming gravity is fundamental without evidence of carrier particle YOU have a subjective opinion not me. The view that a fundamental force can exist without a carrier particle is more wrong than wrong and breaks the established standard model. The other 3 fundamental forces have carrier particles just to be trendy? I expect to see your fault. Best Regards. 94.66.207.176 (talk) 07:42, 14 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@94.66.207.176 Wikipedia is not about logic or about Truth, or any claimed objective analysis. Wikipedia is a summary of sources as defined by consensus of its editors. you're wasting your time unless you have published sources for your story. it has to be this way because everyone has opinions. Johnjbarton (talk) 08:11, 14 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The list of the forces in the beginning of the Wikipedia article is a reference (no1) from the book "Particles and Fundamental Interactions: an introduction to particle physics page 109". I have this book, on page 109 ( imgur.com/a/4OzrjZq ) it has a table showing the forces and there is a clear reference to the graviton as the exchange particle for the force of gravity. But the graviton is hypothetical and not experimentally proven, so it is wrong to present gravity as a non-hypothetical fundamental force yet according to the reference in the book. It's wrong, don't you want to correct something wrong in Wikipedia? Okay, but it's just WRONG to present gravity as a fundamental force with the graviton being hypothetical. Best Regards. 94.66.207.176 (talk) 09:12, 14 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Throughout the article the graviton is described as hypothetical. If you drop a brick on your foot you will discover quite quickly that the graviton maybe hypothetical but gravity is not.

The reference cited also describes the graviton as hypothetical, though not in that one table. Don't go ballistic over one minor omission in one book.

Instead of wasting your time and mine with this pedantic and pointless argument I encourage you to look for constructive ways to contribute. There is a great deal "wrong in Wikipedia". You could contribute positively. When someone reverts a change you make, discuss it on the article's Talk page. If you really think it is important and they won't budge, ask for help on Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Physics. Other editors may agree with you or not. Move on: there are lots of interesting topics that need work.

You also seem to be messing with your IP address. If someone reports that your device will be blocked. I encourage you to get a real login in account and become a positive contributor. Johnjbarton (talk) 18:59, 14 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think I am wasting your time, you are weak in physics, maybe you can learn something from me instead of watching the news or the weather on tv. By your insistence you are casting a curse on humanity to never understand how gravity works. Almost everyone believes that gravity is a fundamental force, but in reality we have no experimental evidence for it. We have no evidence for the fundamental nature of gravity (this is the title of the article), not for its existence in general as a phenomenon! Don't you understand that the key point we need to state in a scientifically acceptable way that gravity is fundamental is an experimental proof of its hypothetical carrier particle. This is why I say you are weak in physics. The article presents the popular (but false) belief that gravity is fundamental as a 100% proven fact. Kids will read it, AIs will read it, and guess what? Decades later they will still believe it that gravity is a fundamental force and never look for anything else. So if gravity is not fundamental but a side effect of some other phenomenon (perhaps unknown at the moment) we will never find it because there will be no interest in searching in that direction. That is the curse. Open your mind and resume processing. It's no big deal a bracket that says "Hypothetical". Best Regards. 94.69.58.163 (talk) 00:47, 15 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

LOL. Anyway you are not reading or understanding what I am telling you.

Please read Wikipedia's policy on no original research and Wikipedia:Dispute resolution. Johnjbarton (talk) 02:23, 15 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Dear John, Our article on the mathematics of car energy and power consumption has vanished.

• Where can i find the last version, including city driving?

Thank you, Hansmuller (talk) 15:49, 15 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The page content is available under the View History option of the page with no-redirect option: Car speed, energy consumption and city driving‎Car speed, energy consumption and city driving‎. The page content is now a redirect so normal links redirect. Johnjbarton (talk) 16:24, 15 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, yes, sorry, i found it. Perhaps we can use the math with a less sweeping conclusion on the fuel usage, you agreed with the remainder, isn't it? There wasn't really a consensus on merging the old article as you know.... What was lacking was a calculation of the relation of heat production versus speed. MacKay used an overall speed-independent fudge factor of 4 (25% locomotion efficiency), which cannot be far off. It would still be useful to have a simple math approach to car processes. Math is allowed - and essential - on Wikipedia for education, compare Drag (physics) which includes some calculations. What do you think? Hansmuller (talk) 16:46, 15 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

To be honest I'm not a huge fan of math in Wikipedia articles. My reasons are: 1) it immediately turns away quite a number of people. 2) often relatively simple relations come with lots of overhead to define symbols, 3) users are not here to do calculations, 4) one typically cannot jump into the middle of a long section of math and get value. One major exception are math expressions that serve as shorthand for complex ideas, eg F=ma. When math is added, I think terms and significance of the formula in context need to be completely spelled out.

Using MacKay as an example, he has formula that are not very complex, but he uses them in ways that are not completely spelled out. To me, almost all of his discussion about cars is pointless because he does not focus on the one effect that completely swamps all of the others: the factor of 4 thermodynamic loss. Similarly, buying a car with 10% better gas mileage has more effect than any other suggestion, including reducing speed, because the vast majority of people don't reduce speed and even those that do rarely travel long distances at high speed. Global warming isn't caused by people going too fast, it is caused by people going in cars that emit carbon dioxide. Johnjbarton (talk) 17:04, 15 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Abishe (talk) 14:34, 1 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, Johnjbarton. This is a bot-delivered message letting you know that Draft:Revised wave-particle duality, a page you created, has not been edited in at least 5 months. Drafts that have not been edited for six months may be deleted, so if you wish to retain the page, please edit it again or request that it be moved to your userspace.

If the page has already been deleted, you can request it be undeleted so you can continue working on it.

Thank you for your submission to Wikipedia. FireflyBot (talk) 15:06, 2 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, Johnjbarton. I do not object to your perceived COI of my edits. However, you cannot erase everything en masse. I have marked clearly wrong text in Wikipedia as Dubious. I have the right to do so exactly as you can. The insertion of reference to my work is not necessary for re-writing and revisiting the dubious text. There are other published peer-reviewed works that point out the error and basically say the same thing, see for example: Urbanowski K. Remarks on the uncertainty relations. Modern Physics Letters A 2020; 35 (26): 2050219. http://arxiv.org/abs/1810.11462 http://doi.org/10.1142/s0217732320502193 In summary, I would request to leave the Dubious tag of marked Wikipedia text until someone competent is able to revisit the text in such a way that it is not blatantly false. By the way, I was thinking of possibly uploading my Fig.3 in Wikimedia, however, the resistance by people like you changed my mind. If you are knowledgeable, you could use the quantum mechanical calculations to plot your own images. Best regards, Danko Georgiev (talk) 08:44, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Sorry I erased the dubious marks. I suggest that if you introduce yourself and your suggestions on the Talk:Uncertainty principle resistance will be substantially reduced. Johnjbarton (talk) 17:52, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I just want to say that I valued the work you put into summarizing Physical Review papers (even though we disagreed ultimately on what else ought to be included) at Harold E. Puthoff. jps (talk) 12:50, 16 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@ජපස Thanks! Johnjbarton (talk) 16:14, 16 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have a bit of a question about your moving of this footnote from Pound–Rebka experiment and sticking it in Gravitational redshift, giving the note far too much prominence in the latter article such that I totally agree with @L3erdnik:'s immediate reverting of your addition.

The reason why I included the footnote in the Pound-Rebka article in the first place is that it is almost impossible to research the history of Gravitational redshift without running into Earman and Glymour's rather harsh critique of the Einstein et al. derivations. The fact that Earman and Glymour's alternative derivation is perfectly correct seems to give their critique great weight. Their "how could so many people have overlooked these essential points for so many years?" argument would appear reminiscent of Terrell's and Penrose's demonstration (after a half century of misunderstanding) that length contraction is not visible. However, the mere fact that the Earman and Glymour derivation is correct does not in any way invalidate the Einstein et al. derivations.

The way that the Gravitational redshift article is currently written, I cannot see any way to shoehorn the footnote into that article. I do believe that this little historical side note does need to be somewhere in Wikipedia, and I think that my original positioning of the footnote was as good as any. Prokaryotic Caspase Homolog (talk) 05:26, 29 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @Prokaryotic Caspase Homolog, thanks for your clear explanation.

As I understand it, Wikipedia requires content to be WP:NOTABLE. There are a bunch of criteria, including some that amount to "editors agree". So it is perfectly reasonable (and preferable) to make your case on Talk:Pound-Rebka experiment (or where ever you think the topic ought to be presented).

Please note that "being correct" is not a criteria. Specifically the assertion that the 'derivation is perfectly correct seems to give their critique great weight' is not true on Wikipedia. Wikipedia reports knowledge, not truth. Your, mine, or Earma/Glymour's opinion on the subject does not count. Secondary references are essential. The Koks ref does the job here.

So let's suppose the Earman/Glymour work makes the cut. In that case I am completely against placing this content in a footnote. This use of a footnote is contrary to the Manual of Style, MOS:DONTHIDE:

• Such mechanisms should not be used to conceal "spoiler" information.

If this controversial topic is notable it should be directly in an article.

Since, as far as I know, the topic is entirely theoretical I can't see how it fits in the Pound-Rekba article. Einstein could not have mentioned it, and Koks barely does.

I think it belongs in Gravitational redshift and I think you should make the case for including it there. Focus on why this is notable. The editor that reverted my addition argued in the edit summary that it was trivial. The Koks ref probably won't convince a lot of editors: it's new, in a journal with a low bar and its historical analysis. There may be more in the 79 citations of Earman and Glymour. Some editors, myself included have low tolerance for "controversies" because they are mostly smoke and little fire.

Historically the Earman/Glymour article had almost no impact. So a succinct description of the scientific value of content would help. The net result is two different ways of using uniformly accelerating frames to analyze redshift, I just don't know if you can summarize them in a paragraph at the same level of sophistication as the rest of the article. Maybe Non-inertial reference frame? Johnjbarton (talk) 15:51, 29 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'll think about what you have to say. I'm in no rush to make changes and like building consensus. :-)

• MOS:DONTHIDE does not discourage the use of footnotes. Rather, it discourages the general use of collapsing CSS/JavaScript-based templates which do not work in mobile environments or where JavaScript is disabled, with specific exceptions including table of contents, etc.
• You state that "Historically the Earman/Glymour article had almost no impact." Maybe or maybe not. Besides being cited 79 times, another article of theirs with 238 citations makes similar assertions to the effect that Einstein was quite confused in his prediction of gravitational light deflection, claiming that he only got the right figure through a confluence of circumstances. In terms of citation count, their work apparently has had quite a bit of impact.
• I have no desire to completely rework what I feel to be a fairly decent outline of the historical development of the theory in Gravitational redshift simply so that I can shove in an interesting historical sidenote.
• I confess to being rather enamored of the use of footnotes. Case in point would be Spacetime, which I began working on in 2017 under a different username (I switched usernames a few years ago when I lost my password and the password recovery mechanism didn't seem to work), when a user wrote "This article needs a complete redo." The version that I started with was absolutely and totally dreadful. My authorship under both usernames currently stands at 76%. (down from 85% at its peak)

Prokaryotic Caspase Homolog (talk) 21:16, 29 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Your original footnote was clearly "spoiler" information. The principle applies independent of the mechanism.

Footnotes force readers to tediously work through an article, continually jetting off on tangents. Any text worth having in an article is worth having in an article. Footnotes mean the Article structure needs work.

There are many examples of famous and not famous scientific discoveries that benefited from confluence of circumstances. The more famous the scientist, the more likely a historian will get all worked about it. These stories are not science. It's completely irrelevant for science how a discovery is made. It's relevant to history of course, but to what purpose? Einstein was the most important physicist of the 20th century because his instincts across a broad spectrum of physics were exceptional in a time of great uncertainty, not because he was the most careful scientist. Johnjbarton (talk) 21:37, 29 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If I may put in my 5 cents (I'm not versed in Wikipedia policies, so it is just my opinion). I can see the value of presenting the struggles of theoretical development, at least in historical sections (like "pudding model of an atom" -> "Bohr's orbits" -> etc., as wrong as they turned out to be), for they were the stepping stones on the path forward; or covering important controversies that could genuinely be resolved either way, for they were an important crossroads on the path forward. But this particular instance seems more like some travelers misreading the map and complained that it lead them astray from an already built road, despite the map (Einstein's argument) being correct. In a case like this, I would think, you'd need a really good extra reason to include it, like "it's a common mistake", or "they respond with an alternative that is valuable on it's own", but then that probably should be the focus, not that "somebody misunderstood the argument that was fine, after all". L3erdnik (talk) 01:10, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Otherwise any topic would get drowned with inconsequential incidents that get numerous quick as one lowers the admission threshold. L3erdnik (talk) 01:15, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, to put the point made by @L3erdnik somewhat differently, the Earman/Glymour work claiming that Eddington was mistaken was itself shown mistaken by Koks. Unless we learn some valuable new physics from the these, it's just "oops". Johnjbarton (talk) 01:36, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Well, that's a two to one consensus against me. I will acquiesce to the consensus, despite disagreeing with it. My point is that Earman and Glymour are well-known scholars in the field of science history whose journal articles about Einstein are cited in numbers comparable to those of other well-known Einstein experts such as Pais, Stachel, Norton and so forth. So this is not just "oops". When influential scholar(s) make a claim that I deem incorrect, I feel obligated to correct the record. For example, Fölsing, in a widely read biography of Einstein, suggested that Rosen actually originated the ideas in the EPR paper. In note 18 of Einstein's thought experiments, which I intended as a science history article, not a science article per se (95% my authorship), I pointed out that Einstein had been discussing his ideas with others at least as far back as 1933. Prokaryotic Caspase Homolog (talk) 05:33, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The Einstein's thought experiments looks awesome. I wonder why it is not linked from History... articles that discuss those thought experiments.

You said:

• I pointed out that Einstein had been discussing his ideas with others

So? That is how science (and math) is done. The "solitary genius" think is a complete myth. Johnjbarton (talk) 14:55, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the compliment on Einstein's thought experiments! After I wrote it, I did some linking to it from other articles. But then, after a while, it seemed like I was doing too much self-promotion, so I stopped.

A long-term project of mine that may be ready in two or three years is a fundamental rewrite of Introduction to the mathematics of general relativity. The current article, as it stands, is pretty useless, being nothing but a description of various mathematical concepts used in general relativity without any real indication of how the concepts are used. My work-in-progress actually uses the math to go through the basics. The following indicates the scope of my project:

This non-rigorous introduction to the mathematics of general relativity stops at the vacuum field equations which are valid only in regions of space where the energy-momentum tensor is zero, which is to say, in regions devoid of mass-energy. Nevertheless, a variety of interesting results are possible with this limited approach, including derivation of the Schwarzschild metric and an exploration of some of its consequences.

A major problem with my draft as it currently stands is how to avoid violating wp:NOTTEXTBOOK Prokaryotic Caspase Homolog (talk) 05:54, 31 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Johnjbarton, I have noticed that you use to ping me when there is a history related topic. I am still active but I have still 5 to 6 busy weeks, so my reaction to these notifications is very low. Please, please, continue to notify me with these kind of topics, I will check on them in a later time. Thank you for your work. Don't worry if I do not respond or interact right away. ReyHahn (talk) 13:39, 7 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

–LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 10:44, 12 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

My edit on the Lagrangian section were based on this article from MIT. It seems like it would apply to the new edit after my edit:

We begin by considering the conservation equations for a large number (N) of particles in a conservative force field using cartesian coordinates of position xi. For this system, we write the total kinetic energy as � M 1 2 T = mix˙ (1) 2 i . n=1 where M is the number of degrees of freedom of the system. For particles traveling only in one direction, only one xi is required to define the position of each particle, so that the number of degrees of freedom M = N. For particles traveling in three dimensions, each particle requires 3 xi coordinates, so that M = 3 ∗ N Lecture L20 - Energy Methods: Lagrange’s Equations b39e882f1524a0f6a98553ee33ea6f35_MIT16_07F09_Lec20.pdf Starlighsky (talk) 23:18, 20 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Starlighsky Thanks, I did check your ref. There are different ways to write the same thing. I agree that the previous form was confusing and I made some edit to try to improve it. In the current page the formula has a "hidden" sum over the degrees of freedom in a single particle. That's the bit about the dot product mentioned below the formula. For 3D, the dot product has 3 and N particles we get 3*N DOF.

I don't have a copy of the Torby, Bruce (1984). "Energy Methods" reference to verify what I said, but we should not mix refs for formulas, because as I say the same thing can be written different ways. The Hand and Finch ref used elsewhere in the article is available through wikipedia library so you could change entire formula to what ever they chose. Johnjbarton (talk) 01:13, 21 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I will look for the book shortly, thanks. Starlighsky (talk) 01:29, 21 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I forgot to ask, what is M in the above equation? I am not sure if N is explained as to what is. Starlighsky (talk) 02:51, 21 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Which above equation?

The MIT site has "M is the number of degrees of freedom of the system", so for N particles in 3D, it is 3 times the number of particles. In other mechanics problems there may be constraints, ie "non-freedoms". So a play ground teeter-totter has one degree of freedom because the solid body can only rotate on the spindle. Johnjbarton (talk) 03:16, 21 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I am limited it use of symbols, but the summation of one half of m(v-squared) is the equation where I was wondering what m would be. I did put "degrees of freedom" but it was deleted. Shouldn't m be explained to the reader? Starlighsky (talk) 03:29, 21 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The lower case m_k is mass. The upper case M in the MIT page is degrees of freedom. I fixed the Lagrangian mechanics page, please check it.

In future please open a topic on the Talk page for the article and (optionally) 'ping' me with '@' user name. In addition to making it easier to navigate to the article, this makes the conversation available to others. Johnjbarton (talk) 14:50, 21 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, will do. I am still learning how this all works. Starlighsky (talk) 14:53, 21 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hello johnjbarton

The recent anonymous edit by 131.155.230.125 was legitimate, so I restored it. The "5" that 131.155.230.125 corrected was a typo originally made by me, and was intended to be a "4". All subsequent equation work is based on a value of 4. I went through and confirmed that before restoring the typo correction. 131.155.230.125 was only trying to be helpful. Netshine2 (talk) 19:35, 29 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the info. I will follow up on Talk:Newton's method Johnjbarton (talk) 19:42, 29 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I apologize for insulting you on the matter wave talk page. That was very juvenile of me, and you deserve more respect than that. SpiralSource (talk) 08:39, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@SpiralSource Thanks! I totally get that reverts have this odd 'slap in the face' character that triggers emotional response. I'm getting better at letting it go ;-) Johnjbarton (talk) 13:47, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Single-purpose account ASChem22 has been either adding or replacing links to MSDS's to one specific company's copies of them; I reverted that edit not realizing that the previous link was bogus. Appreciate the double-check. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 19:12, 9 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Real number, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Continuity.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 06:20, 14 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, Johnjbarton! Having an article draft declined at Articles for Creation can be disappointing. If you are wondering why your article submission was declined, please post a question at the Articles for creation help desk. If you have any other questions about your editing experience, we'd love to help you at the Teahouse, a friendly space on Wikipedia where experienced editors lend a hand to help new editors like yourself! See you there! Funnyfarmofdoom (talk to me) 04:22, 15 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hello! I've posted a request for a third opinion here. Hopefully someone who is better positioned to find something ambiguous or not than either of us (since we both seem familiar with this) has a perspective! Warrenᚋᚐᚊᚔ 15:52, 15 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Warrenmck thanks Johnjbarton (talk) 16:07, 15 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Paul Dirac, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Lagrangian.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 08:48, 22 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

BTW, thank you for editing. Keep it up. We alway need some scientific rigor and common sense. --Smokefoot (talk) 20:44, 9 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Smokefoot thanks! Johnjbarton (talk) 15:17, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

About this: Is "from 10⁻³⁶ seconds to between 10⁻³³ and 10⁻³² seconds" not "from 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000001 seconds to 0.000000000000000000000000000000001 seconds", i.e., an incredibly tiny fraction of a section? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:43, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@WhatamIdoing The text you used was

• "for only a tiny fraction of a second"

In my opinion, the vast majority of reader will imagine 1/10 or 1/100th of a second. That is not, as I think you are saying here, not at all close to the kind of time scale involved.

I would be ok with both your second version and the numbers eg

• an incredibly tiny fraction of a second, from 10−36 seconds to between 10−33 and 10−32 seconds.

(In future please post to the Talk page of the article for article issues). Johnjbarton (talk) 02:29, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Since we've started here, we might as well have the conversation in one place.

Given the level of innumeracy in the world, I'm concerned that 10^-36 won't be understood at all, and may even be misunderstood in the opposite direction (on the order of three hundred octillion years, rather than one undecillionth of a second). Do you think it's important to include? It's not mentioned in the body, so it didn't look like the details were important to the article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:37, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I deleted the sentence as it was not a summary of content in the article. Johnjbarton (talk) 15:56, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You seem to have a good idea of what kind of information should be conveyed under "safety" or "precautions" headings on chemistry articles. I tried fleshing out such on article Terbium#Safety. Your thoughts are appreciated as to whether all that I've written is appropriate or due treatment of the details given scarcity of usable sources. I can dig into the literature and try and improve similarly thin sections on articles such as Ytterbium, Erbium, Rhenium if it's considered okay. Thanks. Reconrabbit 18:09, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Reconrabbit That section looks great to me. I tweaked the last paragraph. Thanks. Johnjbarton (talk) 19:05, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'd like to ask for a second opinion regarding recent edits in Madelung equations, given that you're a more experienced editor and that you recently addressed the exact same issue in Talk:Wave packet

In this case, lots of subsections have been added with no references at all. The few inline citations that have been provided do not cover the claims being made or are just too general to be of any use.

On the one hand - given the multiple failed attempts to address the issue with the author - I'm strongly inclinded to revert the edits based on WP:NOR and (borderline) WP:NOTEVERYTHING. On the other hand, the page wasn't much to begin with.

What would you do? Kind regards, Roffaduft (talk) 09:42, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

yeah. I broadly agree with you, including the lack of clarity on the best course of action. As you say the page was not really made worse. The NotEverything applied to the previous content as well. I worked on the page some. I am thinking of working on several related articles, Quantum hydrodynamics, de Broglie–Bohm theory, Pilot wave theory so I will to visit this issue again. Thanks. Johnjbarton (talk) 20:22, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your response and subsequent edits. It gave me the confidence to rewrite most of the "Derivation" subsection and remove redundant information.

It took a while to find it (on libgen.yt), but the book "Theory of Quanta" combined with Wyatt 2005 covers all the material. The article could benefit from elaborating more on the effects of internal and external forces (or the quantum mechanical equivalent thereof), but for now I'm calling it a day.

Kind regards, Roffaduft (talk) 10:36, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! BTW I should have said: in the past I have had some success encouraging (named) editors to add citations so I think that is still my first response.

I'm curious: why did you changed the citation style? I use wp:proveit a lot and I find the double-page-click interaction of Template:sfn style to be too tedious. I pretty much avoid editing such articles. Johnjbarton (talk) 13:40, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Fist, because I never heard of proveit before haha. Second, because I use the citer tool which gives me the sfn as well as a proper citation. Third, it makes editing much more cluttered if I have full citations in the middle of sentences. And last, because I think it looks messy when a reflist consists of footnotes, citations full references and other stuff.

I actually don't find it tedious. Especially when citing various pages or chapters from a single source, it's much quicker just to add a sfn and change the pp/loc. But that just my preference. I'll look into proveit

Kind regards, Roffaduft (talk) 13:52, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In Proveit I use the DOI / ISBN look up feature a lot. I plan to try a style of ref with refs in the reflist to avoid the inside-the-sentence part. The tedious part for me is to have to navigate in two stages to read a reference, its not about the writing. Johnjbarton (talk) 14:56, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

		The Original Barnstar
		Because I really appreciate your work. :) Double sharp (talk) 05:52, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If you need my input for an article which I've not commented on in a while, then sure, but if I'm clearly reading it, please don't ping me. Banedon (talk) 02:33, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

sure. I guess I was just using the "@" feature in the UI to get the correct user name spelling without thinking about the consequences on the other side. Johnjbarton (talk) 03:17, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have been looking thru various diffs, including this, en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AAndrew_Davidson&diff=1245493925&oldid=1245493854.--Oh, and i just had an idea that i have a feeling that any 'Delete and Merge' of 'Polar wind related thingy', will not be decided by facts (mostly).--I understand the facts about the Merge (and i agree with those), but feelings and/or spin - could be enough too decide the issue.--Anyway, if you prefer not to have diffs, hanging around on your desktop, then i totally understand if you remove this post - even without replying to it.--And, thank you so much for the work you have done, in adding a section on "Polar wind". Regards, 2001:2020:31B:D1A2:19B3:57BD:A1A4:2532 (talk) 17:58, 13 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

One 'winnable controversy' would quite possible be to move mention of ambipolar electric field, to c. the last section (of the wiki-article, Polar wind).--The exact placement within 'c. the last section', should keep-in-mind - giving priority to 'soothing' the 'fanbase' of 'ambipolar electric field'.--Some of the above, might be going to a relevant talk page, as soon as today. Regards! 2001:2020:31B:D1A2:DD2C:839B:26E8:9AF1 (talk) 23:13, 13 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. I would appreciate it if you commented on the articles in the Talk pages for that article rather than posting to my User talk page. Thanks. Johnjbarton (talk) 23:16, 13 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi John. I see you are interested in clear communications of physics to educated lay audiences. I wonder if you might be interested in commenting at Talk:Magnus effect/Archive 1#Newton's 3rd law does not explain the Magnus effect. Best regards, Dolphin (t) 12:25, 14 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. I see that you reverted my edit on Non-ionizing radiation, but you didn't provide an adequate edit summary. I need a bit more clarification for why the summary claim is inconsistent. Susbush (talk) 17:40, 30 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Did you read the paragraph directly after your edit? If you still disagree let's discuss it on the Talk:Non-ionizing radiation page. Johnjbarton (talk) 17:52, 30 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, I get it know. The text "anything less than 10 eV is non-ionizing" is already there. Susbush (talk) 17:57, 30 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This article has GA-status. The article already has a source that says that ruthenium was named after Russia. Now we have a source that does not mention ruthenium and instead refers to the name of Ruthenia in a completely different context to support a false statement. The name Ruthenia in the 19th century did not refer to the "area around modern Kiev, Ukraine at that time". This is a violation of WP:NOR. The new editor in question has been POV-pushing all kinds of nonsense lately. For an article with GA-status, such disputed statements should first be discussed on the talk page before they are restored. Therefore, I ask you to kindly self-revert. Mellk (talk) 04:58, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Mellk Next time please give a reasonable edit summary when you revert someone. That will save a lot of unnecessary bad blood. Johnjbarton (talk) 15:42, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, you have a point there, in that the original edit summary did not adequately address the issues with the changes. I did not mean to call your changes "nonsense". But I think it would have been preferable to ask for clarification first before reverting. Mellk (talk) 07:04, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi John, Glad you do not hide your identity in the Wikipedia environment. I also do the same to ensure credibility. I have asked Bill Phillips and Jean-Philippe Uzan for their opinion (no replies!) concerning our open source paper in J M Spectry. Reference J Mol Spectry (2023) volume 395, 111794(3). The video at the very bottom of the 'Planck constant' Wiki page addresses the same topic. If you could explain to me what we am doing wrong I would very much appreciate it. Cheers Phil Bunkerpr (talk) 19:51, 6 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Bunkerpr Sorry, but I am confused. I don't recall an issue regarding Planck constant, so I'm unsure how to help. Johnjbarton (talk) 21:43, 6 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Dear John,
Because I am an anon IP user, you may not have connected our numerous interactions over the last couple years, but they stem from our apparent mutal interest in the same types of topics.

On several occasions you have reverted one of my edits only to very shortly thereafter, and entirely in good faith, reconsider and revise the text in question yourself. Although it is certainly a fine practice that ultimately and invariably improves the encyclopedia--and you're certainly welcome to continue using this technique if it helps your workflow in some way--when seen from a different perspective this approach might seem to give the very slightest whiff of work appropriation.

I only write to request whether it might be possible, if you feel unsure about one of my edits, to pause and consider whether your further remarks could possibly be built upon my work, as opposed to a prior-previous revision. 24.19.113.134 (talk) 00:47, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I can tell from our contribution histories I reverted just one of your edits in the last three months. Afterward I realized existing text was unclear and tried a fix. I did not appropriate any of your material. If you don't agree, please post to the article Talk page.

I realize that being reverted is disturbing. I generally avoid reverting registered users in favor of opening a discussion in the Talk pages. This is not however, the "Wikipedia way", which is to revert first and discuss later. 90% of the changes from anonymous accounts are vandalism or nonsense. It's not like I can remember on IP from another and "feel unsure" about one of your edits: I have no idea which edits are yours.

One approach I try to take when I'm upset by a revert is to open a talk page discussion on the article. Most of the time I don't post the discussion because part way through writing it I realize why the revert was ok or at least not worth additional time.

I encourage you to get a registered account. I appreciate your contributions. Johnjbarton (talk) 16:21, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I do understand that the opportunity to learn anything about me is essentially limited to perhaps 'recognizing my writing (or edit comment) style', given the unfortunate and unrelated requirement that I operate in the anonIP mode. It is additionally foiled by my ISP changing even that every few months. (Bell Tests and EPR were previous engagements, for example) The one plus side is that, facing the issues of “different treatment” (that you mention) that come with this “yoke” has forced me into striving for ever more extreme levels of care that many “registered users” don’t have to worry about. So that’s just a perverse extra twist that makes it especially frustrating for my specific case. 24.19.113.134 (talk) 20:29, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

p.s. Thank you for pointing me to the BRD information, I had somehow missed it. 24.19.113.134 (talk) 20:55, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting to note that the BRD page takes such pains to say not that it is *the* “Wikipedia Way”, but rather *a* “Wikipedia Way”. 24.19.113.134 (talk) 21:25, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have any idea of who introduced the variaational formalism for fields? ReyHahn (talk) 09:17, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@ReyHahn Not off hand. I can check on Sunday with Lanczos and a history of gauge theory to see if they say. Johnjbarton (talk) 16:01, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@ReyHahn I believe this question may not have a simple answer. Part of the problem is "fields" as a mathematical structure was defined by Weierstrass and by David Hilbert so strictly speaking work on say hydrodynamics before that point would not be "fields". (Goldstine, H. H. (2012). A History of the Calculus of Variations from the 17th through the 19th Century (Vol. 5). Springer Science & Business Media.) Lanczos has a wonderful passage on "phase fluids" connecting hydrodynamics to phase space and the field description of fluid motion. (Lanczos, C. (2012). The variational principles of mechanics. Courier Corporation., p.174) So there isn't really a line between fields and the analytical mechanics approach to particles. Applying a variational approach to a mechanical problem implies an abstract "field", just not in 3/4 D space. On the other hand, Lanczos also explains that Maxwell's equations don't fall out of a simple variational treatment, implying that electromagnetic fields were not treated by variational methods until modern times. HTH Johnjbarton (talk) 17:55, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for all these insights. I thought that Euler-Lagrange equations would be important for classical field theory, but I failed to find its origin in field form. I agree that electrodynamics using variational techniques did not appear until modern times, but by modern times it is not that modern, because the Lagrangians for Lorentz force and Maxwell's equations appeared before relativity. However problems like solving the shape of the catenary using Euler-Lagrange equations for me are already field theory. If you find anything else I am interested. Thanks again.--ReyHahn (talk) 18:27, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As I understand it, with a Lagrangian (eg Lorentz force) one can go in two directions, differential or integral. In the differential direction we learn about local, instantaneous properties like forces; in the integral direction more global and "timeless" properties (eg elliptical orbits). So possession of a Lagrangian may not imply variational method. The derivative approach, being more directly intuitive, is often the first choice. (After Bohr and Heisenberg we learned to distrust that approach for quantum problems. I think that is why Feynman never talked about interpretations of QM: his variational approach doesn't build on the differential wing of classical mechanics.) Thus I'm not sure that Lagrangians for field theory necessarily imply variational methods for field theory.

@ReyHahn ping per your previous requests. Johnjbarton (talk) 19:10, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If the Wikipedia talk:physics page is not an appropriate place to mention the limitations of physics, Wikipedia should not publish a physics entry (until such time as it has adequate official sources to do so “authoritatively.”) Thankfully both physics and Wikipedia are necessarily/apriori personal.

In the morality of personalism, Your proof of receipt here is causally crucial! Science remains a work-in-progress; but You should have known (by now) that your refrigerator debunks materialism. We might yet spark a historic personalist moral phase change we can all experience first hand.

Reverted by reputation: talk about you handled it when all you did was paint it grotesque and junk it*. (I won my class award for senior design (in chemical engineering from rpi) the year I graduated, bro; I wouldn’t mention it but for you yourself beg (r2e2v2e2r2t) for someone who says “I’m qualified to know” when I find something fundamentally interesting: (I now pronounce you… (Max Planck and the reverend doctor Martin Luther King Jr. saw past materialism too, so...

|=x=| NedBoomerson (talk) 19:11, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Michael M. Abbott had this big pet peeve over the popular description of entropy as a force of disorder. Entropy is a state function attributed to a thermodynamic (3D) system at equilibrium. The irreversibilities of (non-equilibrium) processes is where the waste develops. Life cannot be Captured by 3D systemics, I (assuredly) contend, but the Definiteness of inter-personalism does have its own considerable limitations. Your cutting out =mxy= legs turns out to be objectively bad for absolutely everyone, @Johnjbarton! If you really want the best for yourself, you’ll want your partners dancing their best too! “This is somethin’ like a holocaust, millions of our people lost;” if you revert my talk:physics reply to dude a third time dead-handed, … (I’ll at least have warned you it*’ll look like historic villainy to life.) NedBoomerson (talk) 14:07, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe you know enough physics to expand on "optical polarizing films", now mentioned in iodine as one of the major apps. I think that these poled films generate the plane- or circularly polarized light required for LCDs to function.--Smokefoot (talk) 15:00, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Smokefoot ok thanks I took a shot, please review. Johnjbarton (talk) 17:59, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Johnjbarton,

you are kindly invited to provide third opinion in the following dispute: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Tercer#Quantum_entanglement_lead

Thank you so much in advance for your time. 217.118.83.168 (talk) 19:27, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Discussions on content should occur on the article's Talk page where everyone interested in the topic can weigh in. I gather that would be Talk:Quantum entanglement. Johnjbarton (talk) 19:48, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This message is being sent to let you know of a discussion at the Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard regarding a content dispute discussion you may have participated in. Content disputes can hold up article development and make editing difficult. You are not required to participate, but you are both invited and encouraged to help this dispute come to a resolution. The thread is "Double-slit experiment".

Please join us to help form a consensus. Thank you!

TheWikiToby (talk) 05:09, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. Tercer (talk) 13:58, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, regarding the edit on the matter wave article that you reverted: The de Broglie wavelength and the thermal wavelength are different things, as you say, but they are very closely related, and how they are related is clearly stated in the introduction of the thermal wavelength article.

I think it would be useful for readers to have a link pointing them to the thermal wavelength article in the matter wave article, seeing as how closely related the two are. Do you have any thoughts on how it would be best to include such a link? ItsBigBoat (talk) 08:50, 2 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Having the term de Broglie wavelength, which is defined in the matter wave article, wikilinked to a related term would be confusing and incorrect in my opinion. Note the term de Broglie wavelength lands in matter wave.

The matter wave article already links thermal de Broglie wavelength in the Matter_wave#See_also section. I guess we could add a sentence about the thermal wavelength to the article and remove it from the See also. Johnjbarton (talk) 16:03, 2 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that linking de Broglie wavelength to the thermal wavelength article could be misleading. I think it would be a good idea to add in a short sentence and a link to the thermal wavelength article, as (while formally incorrect) it's not uncommon that the term "de Broglie wavelength" to refer to the thermal (de Broglie) wavelength. I'll add in a suggestion some time soon :) ItsBigBoat (talk) 13:36, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

re: the LASER page -- LASER is an *acronym* standing for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. "anacronym" is not even an English word. "anachronism" is the closest word, defined as "something or someone that is not in its correct historical or chronological time, especially a thing or person that belongs to an earlier time."

please re-think your response to my proposed change and consult a dictionary if needed.

I emailed you, but I'm not sure you would receive it, as I don't know how your notifications are set up. I didn't want to call the grammatical error out in public, but it's hard to believe that anyone would argue that the non-word "anacronym" is correct. "acronym" is the appropriate word for what LASER is -- "a word formed from the initial letters or groups of letters of words in a set phrase or series of words and pronounced as a separate word, as Wac from Women's Army Corps, OPEC from Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries" Deedle2038 (talk) 04:08, 9 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Please post about specific articles on the Talk pages for those article, in this case Talk:Laser. Johnjbarton (talk) 16:05, 9 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Please see new entry. mOk to put in JWST update based on published (not pre-print) results as suggested also by @Moleculewerks  ? Kt170 (talk) 16:25, 13 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for checking the references. I should have been more skeptical/careful and have checked the reference too before spreading the information from Wikipedia. MathKeduor7 (talk) 03:27, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

		The Good Article Rescue Barnstar
		This is presented to you by the GAR process in recognition of your sterling work in helping Fizeau experiment retain its Good Article status. Please feel free to display the GA icon on your userpage. Keep up the good work! ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 21:03, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

for your patience in History of the metre! fgnievinski (talk) 15:46, 4 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. I have been trying to engage with editors with a view to the longer term. I find myself initially resistant to points of view that I later adopt. In any case when the article settles down we should step back and consider improvements. Johnjbarton (talk) 16:41, 4 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, the Metre Convention will be commemorated this year. For this occasion, the Wikipedia article History of the metre in English should attain a suitable quality to be translated in other languages. I hoped my contributions would help. Charles Inigo (talk) 18:55, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for sparing most of my contributions so far. About the contributions about paradigm shifts in physics you suppressed because they deviate from the main subject, I wander if it would be possible to restore them as notes respectively in the sections Scientific measurement and From standard bars to wavelength of light?

• Newton questioned Descartes' Vortex theory in 1687 after Jean Richer's pendulum experiment.
• Albert Einstein, questioned the luminiferous aether, when he formulated special relativity in 1905, following Michelson–Morley experiment which paved the way to the current definition of the metre.

You can find the sources for these assomptions in the talk page of History of the metre section Scientific measurement. Charles Inigo (talk) 06:30, 11 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Please discuss History of the metre on Talk:History of the metre. Thanks. Johnjbarton (talk) 15:15, 11 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Several of the other languages' articles have additional sources that mention the term, such as this accessible blog linked to the French language article. What do you think? Bearian (talk) 05:35, 5 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! I replied on Talk:Hadron epoch. Johnjbarton (talk) 16:23, 5 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Uchika's addition - deleted by you - also not valid as it was animal study, i.e.m not MEDRS. I left him a note on his Talk page. David notMD (talk) 21:37, 14 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@David notMD Thanks. I was aware of that Wikipedia may have especial criteria for human health but I did not know about MEDRS specifically. You could review the addition I made to Leprosy, but I tried to avoid anything related to recommendations. Johnjbarton (talk) 00:53, 15 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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I saw that you reverted my edit in Metre. I wouldn't like to beginn a war about which excerpt should figure in the article Metre. I think there is enough place in English Wikipedia for two articles which could be excerpted in the section History of definition of the article Metre, History of the metre and Arc measurement of Delambre and Méchain. I think the choice of the article requieres a consensus. Please discuss this point in the Talk:Metre page. I think you are exagerating when you accuse me of vandalism! Charles Inigo (talk) 19:07, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

We have discussed the issue of derailing an article with dense off-topic content in Talk:History of the metre. I am sure you are aware that the arc measurement is secondary. I think it is you who should be proposing in Talk:Metre if you want to do something exotic. Johnjbarton (talk) 20:00, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't want to waste time in arguements. Personnaly I enjoyed contributing in both articles especially the first paragraph of International prototype metre in History of the metre about French invasion of Egypt and Syria, which, you may not know, was financed at the expense of Switzerland, which was ruined after the invasion of the French Revolutionary Army.^[1] Thank you for your stimulating interventions. Charles Inigo (talk) 23:19, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Tried to ameliorate my answer with Google translate. If you change your mind please let me know. Charles Inigo (talk) 07:30, 23 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Let me express to you, on behalf of all Swiss people, our gratitude to the United States for the support which was given to us so far. Charles Inigo (talk) 07:37, 23 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In my opinion Carlos Ibáñez e Ibáñez de Ibero should have a better place in Panthéon than Napoléon. As said Eugène Spuller quoting Arthur Morin:

"Science therefore also has its heroes who, happier than those of war, leave behind only works useful to humanity and not ruins and vengeful hatred".^[2]

Who knows sometimes dreams come true. Charles Inigo (talk) 15:57, 23 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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In this edit you reverted a change in spelling back to "metre"; the IP editor had changed the spelling to "meter". Your edit summary stated "the name of the unit is metre". Since you edit lots of technical articles, I think it's worth pointing out that the fully spelled-out name of units is language dependent. In the United States it's spelled "meter", in the UK and quite a few other countries it's spelled "metre". The reason "metre" is the correct spelling in the "International System of Units" article is because that article uses British spelling. Your edit would have been incorrect in an article that uses American spelling. Jc3s5h (talk) 22:17, 22 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Jc3s5h No, please see page 130 of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (December 2022), The International System of Units (SI) (PDF), vol. 2 (9th ed.), ISBN 978-92-822-2272-0, archived from the original on 18 October 2021. The unit is named "metre". Johnjbarton (talk) 22:21, 22 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

See page 124 of version 3.01 of the 9th edition, updated in 2024. It states

Small spelling variations occur in the language of the English-speaking countries (for instance, “metre” and “meter”, “litre” and “liter”). In this respect, the English text presented here follows the ISO/IEC 80000 series Quantities and units. However, the symbols for SI units used in this brochure are the same in all languages.

This means that while the brochure follows ISO/IEC 8000 series Quantities and units, one should not expect that to be followed in all countries. Jc3s5h (talk) 22:31, 22 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The source for the table is given in its title. Johnjbarton (talk) 22:34, 22 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The table on page 130, "Table 2 SI base units" does use the smelling "metre", which is consistent with "Preface to version 3.01 of the 9th edition" on page 124, which explains which spellings the authors of the brochure chose from among the acceptable variations. Wikipedia is under no obligation to choose the same variations, and our practice of using different national varieties of English in different means we use the American variety in some articles and the British variety in other articles. Jc3s5h (talk) 00:06, 23 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

We should say something about the size of the universe at various stages, with whatever caveats are appropriate. This is difficult info to find on WP, but is something that is of great interest to people. I understand we don't know how large the universe is, or even if it's finite, but we can say something about expanse over time relative to the observable universe. It's common for lay people to say that the Big Bang means that the universe came from a volume smaller than an atom. We should say something about what we actually know, what is confirmable by observation and what is theoretical extrapolation of that observation. Supposedly since the CMB was released, the universe has expanded a thousandfold, so if the observable universe is calculated to be 100 Gly across at present, at the time of recombination the volume corresponding to the universe that we now observe would've been 100 Mly across. When the idea of inflation came out, it was common to say that the 'universe' at that time was about 10 cm across, though of course we have no direct evidence for that. If we don't say what we know, then readers are just going to go to other sources which may be less reliable — kwami (talk) 22:37, 22 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Please post comments about articles on the Talk page, eg Talk:Chronology of the universe, thanks! Johnjbarton (talk) 22:39, 22 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Just a check in to say thank you for your thank you. This article needs work and rationalizing--I hope my work today improved things rather than tangling them up.

And I just remembered this "add topic" link button for talk pages. Hope I didn't mess up any of your page's formatting. Just returned to Wikipedia after a hiatus.

Sicklemoon (talk) 22:39, 22 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Looks good,l welcome back! Johnjbarton (talk) 22:41, 22 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Johnjbarton,

Might I ask why the page for the kinetic term was deleted? Seems like it is very much relevant to have a page for it. It is like the most important type of terms in quantum field theory and comes up in every basically every QFT (almost by definition).

OpenScience709 (talk) 09:14, 6 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@OpenScience709 The Wikipedia answer is that "kinetic term" is not a WP:notable concept. No one writes books or articles about "kinetic term" and even uses in textbooks are not notable because they are shorthand for "kinetic energy term". Did that article have a reliable reference discussing "kinetic term"? Do you know of sources that discuss "kinetic terms" but do not mean "kinetic energy terms"?

The physics answer is that the word "term" is a generic reference to one item in a sum or series of terms. The "kinetic term" is a shorthand way of saying "that item in the equation under discussion related to kinetic energy". We don't have an article on second term or last term or potential term either. These aren't concepts but just references to local information in a discussion.

By the way, to stop a WP:PROD you simply make a case against it and remove the tag. That would force a consensus for delete discussion where you can make your case and hear other sides.

Johnjbarton (talk) 15:03, 6 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

But thats not what kinetic term means. They are not shorthand for "kinetic energy term". They are specific types of terms in field theories, which is distinct from the kinetic energy. Kinetic terms inlcude for example gradient terms, such as in a scalar field theory a (\nabla \phi)^2 term. This does not contribute and has nothing to do with the kinetic energy, but is in the kinetic term.

If you want someone discussing kinetic terms and how they are distinct from kinetic energy, see for example Schwartz's QFT and the Standard Model textbook. Page 30-31:

"We do not usually talk about kinetic and potential energy in quantum field theory. Instead we talk about kinetic terms and then about interactions, for reasons that will become clear after we have done a few calculations. Kinetic terms are bilinear, meaning they have exactly two fields." "Anything with just two fields of the same or different type can be called a kinetic term. The kinetic terms tell you about the free (non-interacting) behavior. Fields with kinetic terms are said to be dynamical or propagating. More precisely, a field should have time derivatives in its kinetic term to be dynamical. It is also sometimes useful to think of a mass term, such as m^2 \phi^2, as an interaction rather than a kinetic term"

Ok back to me: Kinetic terms are distinct from the kinetic energy, although one can calculate the kinetic energy by knowing the kinetic terms of a theory. But they tell you much more.

"No one writes books or articles about "kinetic term"...": There are plenty of articles looking at kinetic terms. A quick look on arXiv just for papers which have "kinetic term" in the title yields:

arXiv:2111.01362 ("Primordial black holes and scalar induced gravitational waves from Higgs inflation with non-canonical kinetic term")

arXiv:2110.12457 ("Inflation with exotic kinetic terms in Einstein-Chern-Simons gravity")

arXiv:2005.13016 ("A Higgs Doublet + Higgs Singlet Scheme with Negative Kinetic Term for Neutrino Mass Generation")

arXiv.1911.00341 ("Fat brane, dark matter and localized kinetic terms in six dimensions")

All these (and many more) deal explicitly with various types of kinetic terms and how this modification leads to different physics, which is very much distinct from the concept of kinetic energy.

As for why I didn't stop the WP:PROD is cause I didn't notice it.

OpenScience709 (talk) 16:44, 6 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The Schwartz book quote should have been summarized and cited on the page.

I have asked the admin to restore the page. Johnjbarton (talk) 17:45, 6 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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You appear to have deleted a subsection I contributed to the Lambda CDM model article. I wrote something on the Talk page advocating for the inclusion of that subsection: Talk:Lambda-CDM_model#Dark_Energy_may_be_weakening_over_time. If you get a chance, I would appreciate receiving a response back on Talk page. Thanks! Pmokeefe (talk) 10:21, 15 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry for the delay. I responded on the Talk page. Johnjbarton (talk) 14:45, 16 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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I just want to confirm whether "Sir W. Thomson" in Photodynamic Notes, IV isn't Lord Kelvin? Wjerome2023 (talk) 03:48, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

(Please make article-related comments on the article's Talk page, thanks).

Sorry, I don't know the answer to your question. If the quote were notable and we had evidence of the name change we could cite it as "Sir W. Thomson, later known as Lord Kelvin. But the quote is confusing and its connection to the topic unclear and not notable in my opinion. Johnjbarton (talk) 16:12, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The lead is a summary of the article. It does not require citations. For that reason, {{cn}} tags are banned in the lead; they can only be ised in the body. Should you find anything in the lead that is not sourced in the article, then it should be removed from the lead. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 18:46, 30 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Show me such a ban. Johnjbarton (talk) 18:47, 30 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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Hi, John - Regarding the dubious tag you applied to the article "→Nucleon shape: Add dubious here. There are sources that claim a "pauli exclusion force", but it is not at thing that can accelerate masses." Although there are literature references to a Pauli Exclusion Force I agree with you that the reference to such a force is confusing because there's no such fundamental force. The main citation for the idea by Buchmann contains reference to "spin-spin force", however. I rewrote the paragraph to clarify the concept, and I invite your thoughts. Urayness (talk) 19:28, 15 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I replied on Talk:Shape of the atomic nucleus. Johnjbarton (talk) 17:27, 16 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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Any relation to User:JohnJBarton? DMacks (talk) 03:48, 19 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oh I guess so! I must have created that account (~2005) then forgot about it. The external link points to an old website I had from the 1990s but lost. I did a few edits up to 2009. I retired a few years ago and started many more edits under this account. Johnjbarton (talk) 04:07, 19 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No worries. I just didn't want someone else to be lurking and then cause trouble later. Belated congrats on transitioning into retirement! DMacks (talk) 04:51, 19 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I changed the pages for that account to point over here. Thanks for the heads up! Johnjbarton (talk) 16:15, 19 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I noticed you expanded Mott problem about a year and a half ago; it looks good, I appreciate it and I like it! I also read large chunks of this talk page, and good grief, you get a lot of grief. So I feel doubly ardent in thanking you, the second time for your patience in the face of ... uhh, what should I call it? ... "the usual WP nonsense." 67.198.37.16 (talk) 02:42, 24 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! One of my favorite articles ;-) Johnjbarton (talk) 02:49, 24 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Why are you edit-warring on Talk:Quantum statistical mechanics? This is just like any other talk page, where garbage accumulates, and it becomes difficult to figure out what talk topics have been dealt with, and which ones remain open and unaddressed. There's four distinct topics there, added by four distinct people, many years apart. Each issue that was raised should be resolved. Edit-warring resolves none of the issues. Come one, you're better than that. 67.198.37.16 (talk) 17:04, 3 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The article page is a work of consensus among editors. The Talk page represents their individual inputs. Altering the inputs of other editors distorts their opinions. The Talk page is not a TODO list or a checklist of issues. Alteration of other editors inputs should be minimal and should not alter meaning.

Please stop editing the Talk page. Next time I will discuss this with an admin. Just like every other Talk page, topics accumulate. Ignore the ones you do not understand, do not like, or whatever your problem is.

If you want to create a TODO list to discuss open issues, please do so! Just open a new topic. That will make it clear whose opinions are being expressed. You may wish to refer to or quote previous posts. Just don't alter what they said, however incoherent you think it may be. Johnjbarton (talk) 17:23, 3 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I saw you made a draft at User:Johnjbarton/sandbox/measurement in quantum mechanics. Userspace is not a place to host long-term forks of article content. If you no longer need this page, you can tag it with {{db-U1}}. If you wish for others to help you on this content before you merge it, you can move it to a WP:Workspace. If you think the content is ready for an article, and there not consensus against moving it, you can merge the content into the article. Legend of 14 (talk) 02:29, 26 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Well if I move this content to Measurement in quantum mechanics it will just be reverted. No one will help merge it. I can't get anyone to reply to content disputes on QM pages so the consensus discussions are always 1:1 and changes cannot be made. I was hoping that new editors might come along. So the draft is not "abandoned" but rather I was waiting for circumstances to change. Johnjbarton (talk) 02:51, 26 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You can try WP:Dispute resolution noticeboard or WP:RfC. Legend of 14 (talk) 02:54, 26 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I deleted the content. Johnjbarton (talk) 15:17, 26 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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Hi. Thank you for working Hydrogen article is was great. There is also a pre-far note at the Oxygen, and the citation needed tag was all filled by the editor recently. If you mind to take a look at the article and see if there are still issues? Thanks 🍕BP!🍕 (🔔) 21:20, 27 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

When you reverted my edit in the article Supernova, can you explain how to put a reliable sournce in a table. I cannot cite it. EpicCoder (talk) 10:07, 5 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@EpicCoder Immediately after the content place wiki markup: <ref>The source info</ref>. See Help:Referencing for beginners. Alternatively, add a Topic to the Talk:Supernova page with the source and content and ask for help. Johnjbarton (talk) 15:03, 5 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, more citations needed! But less when I'm done. I don't want to put an under-construction tag on it, but you might like it better in an hour or two. NebY (talk) 17:09, 7 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That'll do for today - thanks if you were holding off. Hope you find it clearer and maybe easier to work with. The exercise has exposed more points that aren't well referenced, The introduction to the Background section is partly supported by refs in the following subsections, which maybe should be copied there. I'd like to find a single ref for standardisation being very ancient (weights especially) rather than mere illustrative refs of this or that instance. NebY (talk) 19:04, 7 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. You're invited to participate in The World Destubathon. We're aiming to destub a lot of articles and also improve longer stale articles. It will be held from Monday June 16 - Sunday July 13. There is over $3300 going into it, with $500 the top prize and $300 top prize for most Science and Tech destubs and improvements. If you are interested in winning something to save you money in buying books for future content, or just see it as a good editathon opportunity to see a lot of articles improved for subjects which interest you, sign up on the page in the participants section if interested. Even if you can only manage a few articles they would be very much appreciated and help make the content produced as diverse and broad as possible! ♦ Dr. Blofeld 19:27, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi! Are you using the classic version? I got the DOIs from Google Scholar now, but I can't find the way to auto-fill the references with ProveIt. :( MathKeduor7 (talk) 17:15, 23 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. Btw... I want them in order to edit relationship between mathematics and physics (to add something about the so-called "tribunal of experience" in math and physics). MathKeduor7 (talk) 17:18, 23 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Nevermind! I think I've got how it works! Thank you so much! MathKeduor7 (talk) 17:21, 23 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I got it! I just had to use the other version, not the classic one. Thank you again! MathKeduor7 (talk) 17:25, 23 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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I would like to affirm this: it is well-deserved, and I will add add that it was a great pleasure working with you on the article Wu experiment. You did the lion's share of research, inclusion of needed references, inclusion of missing material, and cleaning up, with me providing some review and feedback. —Quondum 00:20, 30 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, a pleasure working with you. Johnjbarton (talk) 03:07, 30 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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00:03, 1 Jul 2025 (UTC)

Hi John. Back on Feb 6 2025, you altered the Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koopman%E2%80%93von_Neumann_classical_mechanics . The page had explained that the name "Koopman-von Neumann" was a misattribution due to a paper by Danilo Mauro in 2001. This is completely clear from reading the original Koopman and von Neumann papers, and from later treatments, such as by Jordan and Sudarshan in 1961. Anyone can read these papers themselves and see. This is all in the research literature. It couldn't be clearer.

Certainly a Wikipedia page should, at the minimum, be as true as possible, right, and not say things that are clearly false? Or is none of this corrective material admissible in a Wikipedia page unless someone literally gets a paper published in a leading journal explaining all this history correctly? That could take many months of work, and it seems hardly worth it just to fix one rarely accessed Wikipedia page on a little-known formulation of classical statistical mechanics, when the historical error is so blatant. Who created this Wikipedia page anyway, and why wasn't that person challenged to provide better sourcing? Why is the onus on those fixing the mistake, and not on the people who originally created the Wikipedia page?

When a minor Wikipedia page is wrong because of historical errors, is the only recourse really to get a new paper published in a journal before the Wikipedia page can be fixed? That seems like killing an ant with an atom bomb. Can't there be exceptions made for small errors? Is there any other option other than to write a whole paper and get it published? Otherwise this mistaken attribution will persist on Wikipedia indefinitely.

Thanks. AtomicLucretius. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:189:8581:8ED0:0:0:0:B8CE (talk) 00:05, 1 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

(Please post questions about specific articles on their Talk page, eg Talk:Koopman–von Neumann classical mechanics).

• "Certainly a Wikipedia page should, at the minimum, be as true as possible, right, and not say things that are clearly false?"

The short answer to this question is "no". Wikipedia is not about "truth", it is about knowledge, verifiable through sources.

• "Why is the onus on those fixing the mistake, and not on the people who originally created the Wikipedia page?"

The requirement of all editors is the same independent of when they contributed. The burden is on the editor who adds or re-adds content to ensure that the content is WP:Verifiable.

• "Can't there be exceptions made for small errors?"

Yes, you can make the case for an exception on Talk:Koopman–von Neumann classical mechanics and develop a WP:Consensus to consider the unsourced claim to be common knowledge. Johnjbarton (talk) 00:29, 1 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there. I'm just revisiting this issue with the entry Koopman–von Neumann classical mechanics. There's a new paper that was just published in the journal The European Physical Journal H that lays out the history in great detail: https://rdcu.be/eZJuL

The paper clearly establishes that Danilo Mauro's claim that Koopman and von Neumann introduced classical wave functions is erroneous. The paper also makes clear that the method of classical wave functions was not introduced by Koopman and von Neumann, but (most likely) by Martin Schönberg.

Can the Wikipedia entry now be reverted back to the version that made this history clear? Are these edits I can make, or would it be better for you to make them?

Thanks. AtomicLucretius. AtomicLucretius (talk) 05:42, 20 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Please post questions about specific articles on their Talk page, eg Talk:Koopman–von Neumann classical mechanics Johnjbarton (talk) 16:46, 20 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Dear @Johnjbarton,

Thank you so much for all your suggestions. I’ll have time over the weekend to work on adjusting the paragraph text.

So, just to confirm, your idea is to add a paragraph on risk analysis to the Power law article on Wikipedia, and then include a sentence in the Chaos theory article that links to that new paragraph, right?

Also, I’d like your advice on adding a new section to the Power law page. A few years ago, I tried to make some edits to that article (which I believed were useful and relevant), but I was strongly challenged by another user. In the end, I gave up and didn’t contribute.

Do you have any suggestions on how I might avoid that happening again?

Thanks again for your patience.

Best, MadameButterfly96 (talk) 23:56, 8 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@MadameButterfly96 There is a bit of culture to the wikipedia editing. As another editor put it to me, edits have two audiences, readers and other editors. Challenges esp for new content are not uncommon. Wikipedia has evolved policies and guidelines to address conflicts. The effort is communal, so flexibility and discussion are vital. You have already demonstrated that. The barriers to additions are discussed as notability and verifiability. I especially recommend WP:BOLD and WP:BRD to understand the editing process. I find this advice very difficult: don't take push back, eg a revert, personally. Think of it as an editor saying "wait let's talk about this", then engage them in discussion. Good luck! Johnjbarton (talk) 03:16, 9 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It's not my job, Johnjbarton. I'm no longer an Admin. I'm only a volunteer here. Your user page is there for you to recognize your own efforts. It's considered rude, actually borderline vandalism, to create new pages on another user's own space, just to let you know. After 15 years, you should know that. Bearian (talk) 15:46, 14 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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Unlike you, I will not notify you with an inappropriate template, but with my own words. I am editing according to conventions you are not aware of, as you are not active in this area. If you believe it not acceptable on element pages, you can point out - here - just why, rather than simply disrupting my effort. I admit that you had a point on Przybylski's Star and conceded it, even though I thought you were more tendentious than necessary. I do not know that you have one here. 73.228.195.198 (talk) 17:08, 26 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You have made numerous edits that remove sources, including Lutetium, Rhenium,Samarium. You have given no explanation. I reverted these with edit summaries like "Sources removed without explanation. Please discuss on Talk page". That is what you should do. Johnjbarton (talk) 17:35, 26 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It is not reasonable to ask that I discuss on the talk page of every element an issue common to all. Removing sources is not itself problematic: if the information being sourced is also removed, or the source does not support the claim, or the source is unnecessary because of a better source, for example, which I have encountered. I am applying the same standard I have done for all isotopes edits, which I explained to the administrator that blocked and then quickly unblocked me: on the isotopes pages, one reference to Nubase2020 (which is used for all isotopes data, where possible) suffices for the entire page, and we need not repeat references to it, which would be numerous. On the element pages that one reference is linked to in the isotopes infobox. Versions of Nubase prior to 2020 should not be used as they and much of the information in them have been superseded; nor are any other sources needed for material taken from there. I apply this also to isotopes information on other pages, and these reasons account for all the sources I have removed.

Removing sourced content is not prohibited and any editor normally may make the judgement that some material does not belong; in this case, I may decide that some material is excessive or unnecessary detail for the element page and belongs, if at all, only on its isotopes page. Unless there is an already established controversy, the burden of explanation should rest on the person reverting edits that are clearly in good faith, and any alleged violation of policy should be spelled out. 73.228.195.198 (talk) 18:00, 26 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Reverting edits by anonymous IP editors that delete sources without explanation is completely normal. Nothing it your edits or summary as clearly in good faith. My edit summaries made this issue clear.

You're making a big deal about simple issue of human communications. Johnjbarton (talk) 18:33, 27 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I hope neither of you object to me sticking on my oar here, but this seems like an avoidable disagreement between two reasonable editors. Firstly, the standard boldly edit, revert, then discuss process in any given article is a robust tried process: it allows both editors to efficiently discover that there is a disagreement, and the next reasonable step in the general context is to initiate discussion. I sense unproductive frustration on both sides here, though I have not reviewed more interactions.

While IP editors should be treated the same as any others, unfamiliar editors introduce the bulk of undesirable edits and some cues (such as removal of sources) can readily trigger a revert, since it is not generally effective to examine each such edit in detail; the cue is then all that would be mentioned in the edit message of the revert. It helps to be aware of such cues and anticipate by mentioning them in the initial edit summary, erring on the side of being overly pedantic (e.g. mentioning what a source is superseded by). This suggests that Johnjbarton's approach is reasonable, and that the next step, discussion, is normal before getting frustrated.

On the other hand, the edits themselves seem likely productive, with some possible equivocation about the detail of how the sources are referenced. For example, a general Nubase2020 reference for the article is not very helpful to the reader: it does not let them know which aspects of the article are sourced from that reference. In this instance, a page citation footnote to a shared page reference at the cited fact seems appropriate, possibly in the form of a template such as {{sfn}}. —Quondum 14:06, 28 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I agree that the content changes, exclusive of the source deletions, were ok by me. I agree that if the editor had been named I hope I would not have reverted, but rather started by discussing the issue on the Talk page as I find that usually works out. However, for the most part engaging IP editors is a waste of time since they may never return. So I'm not sure I would do anything different next time. Johnjbarton (talk) 16:15, 28 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

My last two paragraphs were not directed at you, but at the IP, and my "should" was only intended to express an in-principle ideal, not a goal. This looks like a knowledgeable and methodical person who definitely seems to be sticking around, whom I'd hope to encourage to take the generally unavoidable biases against IPs and general Wikipedia practices into account, and in understanding them, to understand that their frustration may be misdirected. For as long as the IP address stays static, at least you will be able to think of them as an individual, though. —Quondum 18:04, 28 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I agree that this editor seems both knowledgable and consistent and I agree that this likely explains their reaction to my reverts. They thought they were doing the right thing. I'm not sure how I could improve however without investing even more time investigating every random IP to see if they are legit, something I'm not willing to do given the overwhelming experience. Johnjbarton (talk) 18:15, 28 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Fair enough. And more complete edit summaries by the IP that do not presume that AGF is obligatory would help those trying to evaluate their edits. Something (even an edit summary) is written once, but read many times, and so extra effort by the writer is well-spent. —Quondum 18:41, 28 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there, sorry to pop up on your talk page, but I was wondering if you had time and inclination to help me with the rescue and rehabilitation of the Astronomy article? There has been a more positive set of noises from the GAR reviewer TompaDompa, who you found "disheartening" earlier, so it seems to me that we are now set for a positive result as long as we 1) get the article fully cited and 2) certify that the content is a fair summary of the subject, i.e. defines what astronomy is. I can contribute to those things but (as a biologist) definitely think your contribution would be valuable! I'd certainly be very glad of your support, if you can find the time. All the best, Chiswick Chap (talk) 07:51, 13 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Chiswick Chap, thanks for your many improvements on Astronomy. I plan to clear the citations, hopefully over the next few days and certainly by the end of next week. Johnjbarton (talk) 13:42, 13 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

... update: I blitzed the citations, so we now have coverage; that doesn't in itself prove the article covers the subject as it should, but we're certainly getting there. Any input, especially knowledgeable overview, will be very welcome. Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:32, 13 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Don't know if you've seen this, but I thought you might be interested: Wikipedia_talk:Make_technical_articles_understandable#Improving_the_structure_of_this_guideline. MichaelMaggs (talk) 08:45, 14 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, you’re on the list of AfC reviewers by subject and I was wondering if you could take a look at this… I’m a bit over my head here. No pressure; it’s ok if not. Cheers, GoldRomean (talk) 00:26, 19 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. The submission will fail on WP:CIO, I left a comment. Johnjbarton (talk) 01:11, 19 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! GoldRomean (talk) 04:05, 19 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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		The Good Article Rescue Barnstar
		This is presented to you by the GAR process in recognition of your sterling work in helping Astronomy retain its Good Article status. Please feel free to display the GA icon on your userpage. Keep up the good work! ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 17:02, 9 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

To avoid confusing, i copied and edited the current article in my sandbox User:Harold Foppele/sandbox Please, if you want, comment on the changes. Thanks in advance ! Harold Foppele (talk) 11:24, 14 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Harold Foppele My overall suggestion is to set this aside for now and edit an existing article. I think this will help you get familiar with the idiosyncratic nature of Wikipedia editing. Johnjbarton (talk) 21:08, 14 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Johnjbarton I will try and many thanks for your help ! Did the canged sandbox not help in any way? Harold Foppele (talk) 21:22, 14 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Can you please see if you like my version better (shorter) than the original ? Harold Foppele (talk) 09:02, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Harold Foppele Sorry I do not understand you question. If you are referring to changes to an article please post the name of article. We don't have one named "Quantum system and environment". Johnjbarton (talk) 14:58, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, was referring to the section of Open quantum system Harold Foppele (talk) 15:25, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ok thanks, so Open quantum system § Quantum system and environment. That section is critical to the article and you can see from my recent edits I think it is not at all satisfactory. It starts out with an unexplained premise concerning the necessary relationship between a system and its environment (that at the QM level they are inseparable) and makes additional unexplained assumptions regarding the significance of a pure state and wavefunction. Without sources I can't repair it. I would delete it and start over. Johnjbarton (talk) 15:33, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

will do Harold Foppele (talk) 16:48, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I moved the image to where you wanted it. Now finding the correct page for #4 Am i according to you on the right track? Harold Foppele (talk) 20:36, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Pages 98-105 Harold Foppele (talk) 20:47, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment about Open quantum system on Talk:Open quantum system, thanks. Johnjbarton (talk) 21:51, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to learn from you 🙏🏻 Harold Foppele (talk) 22:28, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. I've asked the closer to reconsider and a good discussion followed. You may want to join in, especially after all of your good work on the stand-alone page. Thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 14:39, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hello,

Why do you want to keep redundant information only because it's sourced? I don't get it. 176.140.209.174 (talk) 06:46, 25 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Sources generally belong in the article body, not in the introduction section. Please see MOS:LEAD. Johnjbarton (talk) 10:31, 25 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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Hello John, Could you be so kind as to look at the "View History" of User talk:Harold Foppele and maybe you find that strange also. Thanks ! Cheers Harold Foppele (talk) 21:39, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Harold Foppele sorry I don't know what kind of strange you mean Johnjbarton (talk) 23:28, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Johnjbarton it is the review of Pythoncoder first a speedy deletion then that text was removed replaced by something else so 3 times a different reviews in 10 minutes. Ending with : Declining submission: Wikipedia already has an article on quantum mechanics. Also, was AI used in writing this draft?

There are 28,224 articles About quantum so i dont see his point.Harold Foppele (talk) 07:22, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Harold Foppele If you want to appeal a review, the most effective method is to post a request on the Talk page for the Physics wiki project. If you did that I would reply that the draft is not an encyclopedia entry for a notable topic, it includes numerous errors, and had insufficient references. it's a personal essay, not a contribution to the encyclopedia Johnjbarton (talk) 16:25, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you !! Could you point out the errors? Maybe i can correct them? Harold Foppele (talk) 16:48, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Harold Foppele there is no direct connection between size and qm, both states in a superposition do not exist, measurements of entanglement do not instantly affect each other. these are all pop-science fallacies. correcting them may be educational for you but it won't change the fundamental mismatch between your draft and the goals of the encyclopedia. Johnjbarton (talk) 18:05, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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Thank you today and all who helped for Redshift, a 2006 physics featured article that you and many rescued! ... after many wrote it, - thanks to all! -- Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:34, 23 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You are recipient no. 3001 of Precious, a prize of QAI. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:35, 23 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

johnjbarton,

I sort of picked up with this whole "Good Article Reassessment" thing that people didn't like the way I was going about it. I'm pretty new to Wikipedia, not even extended confirmed yet, and I don't really understand what I did wrong at all. Can you please tell me what I did wrong so I don't keep doing it in the future?

Thanks! PsyKat777 WasTaken (talk) 17:10, 29 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@PsyKat777 WasTaken I have three suggestions.

First, don't work on "Good Article Reassessment" (GAR) until you have more experience. The Good articles are Good because multiple people worked on them, often for quite some time. The GAR process is criticism. Thus through the GAR process you effectively telling people their work is not good. Every GAR I have seen was immediately greeted with hostility. I think you need a lot of experience to deal with this aspect. If you haven't pushed an article through the Good Article review start there. Rescue an article sent to GAR. Prevent one from going to GAR.

Second, watch the pages Wikipedia talk:Good article nominations and Wikipedia:Good article reassessment for a while and look at how @Z1720 or other experienced editors work.

Third, be specific and constructive. For example, report the number of uncited or under cited sections. Offer to tag uncited content. Something like "needs copyedit" is too vague. You should assume that editors will try to rescue the article and your job is to help.

I would also encourage you to make many smaller edits to pages esp. to Good Articles. For example, this edit covered a lot of ground and the edit summary was a condemnation of the entire article. A series of shorter edits with constructive summaries would be easier to understand and discuss.

Hope this helps and thanks for asking! Johnjbarton (talk) 17:55, 29 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, thanks! PsyKat777 WasTaken (talk) 18:18, 29 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi John, and thanks for this fix to a confusing comment at this MOS discussion. One little thing, though: you are welcome to edit your own comments, as long as no one has responded to them yet, but if someone has, the rules change, and there is a special procedure to adopt as described at WP:REDACT. The reason is, editing your own comment can make the follow-up commenter look like an idiot, responding to something that isn't there, or making them look a troll or spammer. The right way to fix your comment in this case, would have been like this:

Acronyms for article topics should be set in boldface, even when that title does not redirect to the page.

Then third party editors reading the follow-up will understand what happened. That said, you don't have to go back and fix this now, because the way I quoted you, makes it pretty much clear what happened, so it's fine. That said, do have a look at WP:REDACT, and since this is a kind of a practice opportunity, if you feel like it, go ahead and edit your comment to insert the underlined 'not', leaving an edit summary something like, 'Redacted my comment of 00:56, 7 November' just to see how that goes; but it is fine as is, so it's totally your call. Just thought you would like to know. Happy editing! Mathglot (talk) 03:47, 7 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Please indicate which aspect of these bioremediation papers that you find compelling to an overview of copper? The fact that they are highly cited?--Smokefoot (talk) 00:51, 8 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Since it seems we will not agree, I suggest this discussion should be on Talk:Copper to get other opinions.

The source

• Gadd, G. M. (2010). Metals, minerals and microbes: geomicrobiology and bioremediation. Microbiology, 156(3), 609-643.

has over 2400 citations. It is not an overview of metals, but an overview of biological aspects of metals, including copper. I think bioremediation is a suitable minor subtopic of biology of copper and this source is clearly WP:reliable. We could look to improve the content.

The source

• Harbhajan Singh (2006). Mycoremediation: Fungal Bioremediation. John Wiley & Sons. p. 509. ISBN 978-0-470-05058-3.

has over 600 citations, again well above any reasonable bar. I think this content summary is especially weak.

Overall the paragraph comes across as too detailed and specific, but the sources are good and the topic is valid. Let me see if I can give it a boost. Johnjbarton (talk) 01:29, 8 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I completed my reply on Talk:Copper. Johnjbarton (talk) 02:24, 8 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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Hey @Johnjbarton. Your wiki edit anniversary is today, marking 15 years of dedicated contributions to English Wikipedia. Your passion for sharing knowledge and your remarkable contributions have not only enriched the project, but also inspired countless others to contribute. Thank you for your amazing contributions. Wishing you many more wonderful years ahead in the Wiki journey. :) -❙❚❚❙❙ GnOeee ❚❙❚❙❙ ✉ 18:10, 24 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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Hi John, looking at the article Dark matter i saw that you removed the coining a from 1933 by Fritz Zwicky. May I point to: of DOE, but maybe you know all this and am I incorrect. Btw, congrats with yout First Edit Anniversary. Cheers Harold Foppele (talk) 11:15, 26 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Harold Foppele I looked for an edit I made to that page that might match the one you are concerned about, but I could not find it. If you can paste the URL here I will take a look. Johnjbarton (talk) 18:33, 26 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry it was Dark energy: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dark_energy&diff=prev&oldid=1322389933. So, matter mixedup with energy. Harold Foppele (talk) 21:28, 26 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, so most of that edit was removing analysis by an editor. I know it's very tempting to look up some refs and say "ok here is the earliest one that says 'dark energy'", but that conclusion is then not verifiable. I replaced the claims with a much simpler description based on a source. The net result, that Turner coined dark energy, is the same.

As for the specific bit about echoing Fritz Zwicky's "dark matter" from the 1930s, I didn't see that in the sources so I left it out. The dark matter has a whole paragraph about Zwicky using the term. However I think the question of origination is a bit less clear than the "DOE Explains" site asserts. Poincare used the term before Zwicky and both of these used it for an idea different than the one in current vogue. The dark matter article has two history sources which confirm this. Johnjbarton (talk) 03:17, 27 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much for this thorough and clarifying answer. Harold Foppele (talk) 10:53, 27 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe you know it already, if not this might be of interest to you: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.07209.pdf Greetings Harold Foppele (talk) 22:46, 27 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Well, that was fast (the appearance and disappearance of the item Pseudo-supernovae). Of course, there are no printed or online sources, because nobody ever thought about something like this. Yet, there are hundreds of distant galaxies which show pseudo-supernovae (foreground stars from our own milky way galaxy). Somehow there should be a catalog of NGC and IC galaxies with foreground stars "in" them, looking very much like supernovae. Am I really the first one who's thinking about this? DannyJ.Caes (talk) 19:21, 4 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry I cannot answer your question. Maybe someone on the Astronomy project knows. Johnjbarton (talk) 23:22, 4 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The Wiki article on Tachyons contains serious false infirmation. I have tried to post corrections; but my posts are removed. Most recently you [John Barton] did that claiming COI, because I gave a reference to my own published work. I am a retired Professor of Physics at UC Berkeley. I have the title Professor Emeritus; and I receive a monthly pension. Otherwise I am entirely on my own. I have written and published (in respected peer-reviewed journals)a number of research articles about tachyons: theory and connection to experiments. Among those papers one can find detailed logical analysis of several anti-tachyon myths (like a "causal paradox"). They are all proven to be false. Wikipedia must be open to correcting falsehoods, which it is responsible for spreading. I am the best authority on this topic; and the correct reference for my argument about falsity is in those published papers. So I cite the best reference. Why do you complain? What better way should I work with Wiki?

14:57, 13 December 2025 (UTC) Charlieschwartz (talk) 14:57, 13 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Charlieschwartz Wikipedia is completely open to correcting falsehoods. There are well-established and well-documented approaches to removing incorrect content and adding new content.

The basis for these approaches has two parts. The first is to provide reliable and verifiable sources for new content. This step is essential for Wikipedia because we have no way to determine if "Charlieschwartz" is a retired professor or a high school kid on a lark. In principle all content in Wikipedia is a summary of existing sources. The second part is discussion and review among editors. If you do not agree with content you have options. First, if the content is not sourced you can delete it and use an edit summary that explains that it is not sourced. Second, if the content is sourced you can open a topic in the Talk page for the article and explain your concerns. A challenge to sourced material needs to explain why the source is unreliable on the topic and usually requires alternative sources. Third, if the content is sourced but you have other sources, you can add content based on the other source to provide a neutral point of view on the subject.

Your edits on Tachyon provided no sources. I did not even read the content. I immediately revert any new unsourced material for Tachyon because the page has a long history of inappropriate edits and because a primary mechanism to reach a goal of sources for all content is to source all new content. Your additions have two additional challenges. First, any time an editor adds content based on sources they themselves produced, experience has shown that the content may be biased. For that reason, Wikipedia has an established process for clarifying the relationship between the editor and the sources called conflict of interest. This is not a prohibition, but a disclosure. Second, Wikipedia intends to represent the primary, well-establish point of view on all topics. Unusual points of view should not be unduly represented. This is a judgement call that involves discussion on the Talk page and comparison of sources.

So now some advice: start by opening a discussion on Talk:Tachyon. Include sources. Assume you are trying to convince a skeptical professor of, say, chemistry who has never heard of you: what evidence based on publications can you provide? Johnjbarton (talk) 16:57, 13 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"Sources do not mention Fuchs, but do mention Nobelists" Many sources note that Fuchs and several other individuals were undergraduate students of John Archibald Wheeler, while those who later received Nobel Prizes under Wheeler’s supervision were graduate students. DutchAgent (talk) 00:52, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I assume you are referring my revert of your edit on John Archibald Wheeler. I stand by my revert as proper. If you want to challenge it, please do so on the Talk:John Archibald Wheeler page. Your subsequent change has better sources and is ok by me. Johnjbarton (talk) 01:03, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Wave, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Vector.

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On 18/7/2025, you produced the edit summary, "delete unsourced claim especially inappropriate in this section". The source was deleted by you earlier, on the grounds that you did not like the method of publication. You should tell us how you calculate the degree of inappropiate-ness for each section. The source was Dieter W. Ebner's article.— Preceding unsigned comment added by M8y7sw3 (talk • contribs) 13:45, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Please discuss article issues on their Talk page, in this case Talk:General relativity priority dispute. If you wish you can draw my extra attention to your post with a notification. Johnjbarton (talk) 16:46, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

See https://www.researchgate.net/publication/2177303_How_Hilbert_has_found_the_Einstein_equations_before_Einstein_and_forgeries_of_Hilbert's_page_proofs

Ebner is a noted physicist.

M8y7sw3 (talk) 11:52, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Please see the preceding post. Johnjbarton (talk) 16:46, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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I really appreciate all your help on the black hole article recently. I’ve been on vacation, which is why I haven’t been active these last few days, but I do see and appreciate your contributions! Shocksingularity (talk) 06:32, 30 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Happy to help, you've pushed it so far along. Johnjbarton (talk) 16:32, 30 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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You know that Wikipedia has Good Articles (of high quality) and Featured Articles (of higher quality). Among physicists, Galileo, Michael Faraday, Max Planck and Paul Dirac are without Good Articles. They surely deserve them. If the articles aren't GA quality yet, let's get them there. How's that for a New Year's resolution? (Happy New Year's, by the way). Charlie Faust (talk) 06:05, 2 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

   Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year fireworks}} to user talk pages.

Volten001 ^☎ 05:58, 3 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! Johnjbarton (talk) 16:30, 3 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

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I think you're right about Wheeler 'adopting' the term rather than coining it. Maybe he came up with it independently (that happens). But others used it before him.

Thank you for keeping this quote, from Wheeler's talk "Our Universe, Known and Unknown"::

"[B]y reason of its faster and faster infall [the surface of the imploding star] moves away from the [distant] observer more and more rapidly. The light is shifted to the red. It becomes dimmer millisecond by millisecond, and in less than a second is too dark to see...[The star], like the Cheshire cat, fades from view. One leaves only its grin, the other, only its gravitational attraction. Gravitational attraction, yes; light, no. ... Moreover, light and particles incident from outside [and] going down the black hole only add to its mass and increase its gravitational attraction."^[1]

He had a way with words, as in "spacetime tells matter how to move; matter tells spacetime how to curve."

Thorne's book is good. I am slowly working through Penrose's The Road to Reality. A review of a Samuel Beckett book noted its "neutron star density." That could describe Penrose. His knowledge is encyclopedic. What other physics books should I be reading? Charlie Faust (talk) 23:32, 4 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• "Spacetime Physics" or "Exploring Black Holes" by Edwin Taylor and John Archibald Wheeler
• "The Character of Physical Law" and "QED, The Strange Theory of Light and Matter" by Richard Feynman.
• "An Interpretive Introduction to Quantum Field Theory", Paul Teller.
• "It's About Time", David Mermin.
• "Einstein Gravity in a Nutshell", A. Zee.

And most histories of physics because historians are better writers on average. Johnjbarton (talk) 00:58, 5 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Have read A. Zee's Swallowing Clouds: A Playful Journey through Chinese Culture, Language, and Cuisine and Fearful Symmetry.

Pais was a physicist who was a great writer. His Subtle is the Lord is a great biography. Have yet to read Inward Bound.

Feynman's The Character of Physical Law and QED are gems. Have not tackled the Lectures. Charlie Faust (talk) 02:51, 5 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Re: physicists as stylists, Alan Lightman is a physicist who is an eloquent stylist. His Einstein's Dreams is very good, not quite science fiction.

Steven Weinberg was an eloquent stylist; The First Three Minutes might have the best title of any book. Dreams of a Final Theory is very good, even if I don't agree with how far he takes reductionism. He provided a good list of science books.^[2] So did Ian McEwan in the same publication.^[3]

For historians, Timothy Ferris is very good. His Coming of Age in the Milky Way should have an article. Charlie Faust (talk) 16:21, 5 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

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Hello, Johnjbarton,

Thank you for creating Astronomical timekeeping.

I have tagged the page as having some issues to fix, as a part of our page curation process and note that:

Nice article, however the lead doesn't really define the topic of the article per MOS:LEAD, specifically MOS:FIRST

The tags can be removed by you or another editor once the issues they mention are addressed. If you have questions, leave a comment here and begin it with {{Re|Lordseriouspig}}. Remember to sign your reply with ~~~~. For broader editing help, please visit the Teahouse.

Delivered via the Page Curation tool, on behalf of the reviewer.

Lordseriouspig 01:01, 8 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Lordseriouspig Thanks, but I think comments in the Talk:Astronomical timekeeping page would be more appropriate. But maybe this is what the Page Curation tool does. Johnjbarton (talk) 01:32, 8 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

If I provide a comment through the page curation tool it sends it to your talk page, yeah. Lordseriouspig 01:37, 8 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Lordseriouspig: ok I made progress. I am awaiting access to another review source before more work. Please review. Johnjbarton (talk) 03:08, 8 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I saw you helped make my g-factor edits a lot better, thank you! Could you also correct the muon g-factor listed in the table of physical constants? It's currently listed as positive, when it should also be negative.

Thanks! ~2026-82522-0 (talk) 19:46, 10 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

	The Barnstar of Diligence
	Thank you for your significant contributions to Black Hole, particularly in your recent peer review. It has been very helpful to have a fresh set of eyes on the page, especially from someone with real-life scientific experience. Shocksingularity (talk) 06:53, 11 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Please review "talk:gravitational coupling constant" regarding your claims.  Nicole Sharp (talk) 19:02, 26 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I answered on that page. Johnjbarton (talk) 19:06, 26 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Why did you criticize me on the autism talk page? What did I do to you? Theeeggplant (talk) 01:44, 1 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I disagreed with your claim on Talk:Autism#WHY_ARENT_YOU_MENTIONING_THIS. I don't recall then or read now that I criticized you personally in any way. If something I said appeared to be criticism, please let me know what it was. Johnjbarton (talk) 03:58, 1 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

It was when you said: “What kind of stuff? Some autistic person posted on our talk page that they got good grades?” Theeeggplant (talk) 05:56, 1 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Theeeggplant I apologize for including this characterization of your post. Johnjbarton (talk) 17:06, 1 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

You are forgiven Mr. John J. Barton Theeeggplant (talk) 18:18, 1 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]