User talk:Xerxes314

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Contents 1 Theory of everything 2 Welcome to Wikipedia 3 '04 comment 4 Voting for standardization 5 flavour and qcd 6 kkbar mixing 7 opps 8 Thanks for fixing spam 9 Hi xerxes 10 Hi 11 minus sign 12 Sorry for the Quark Complexities 13 Historical maps 14 doerfel 15 re revert entropy 16 Re the electron 17 Galaxies 18 Lepton 19 Thanks for Update 20 Supersymmetry 21 Atom and atomic nucleus 22 Top Quark 23 Thanks! 24 Higgs boson consensus vote 25 That message 26 Fundamental interaction 27 Britishism Edits 28 Star Edits 29 Reply by Standonbible 30 Reverts 31 Re:Nomenclature 32 Unified Field Theory 33 Neutrino Question 34 I don't like your edit 35 Atom 36 Most excellent work on Proton decay 37 size of electron

[edit] Theory of everything

Hello Xerxes314, I think a crackpot is editing the Theory of Everything article. I have seen you remove his edits from the unified field theory article. This crackpot's name is Thomas Campbell. Should I remove his section from the theory of everything article completely?

This article is in very bad shape. I haven't even looked at it in months, just given it up as a lost cause. Sadly, there are several such lost-cause articles on Wikipedia. Deletion of the three non-Heim "alternative" theory sections of this article would be a good start at a cleanup project. Heim theory is also nonsense, but at least it's well known nonsense. -- Xerxes 18:34, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Welcome to Wikipedia

Hello! Welcome to Wikipedia. Thank you for your fine work on 'Fermion'. Judging from just this one article, it seems that your forte is chemistry or quantum mechanics; you can find plenty of articles in need of help in various fields of science and in other fields at Wikipedia:Pages needing attention.

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Thank you for your contribution; I hope you continue to help us.

[edit] '04 comment

-- Djinn112 20:08, Feb 11, 2004 (UTC)

Hi Xerxes -- I see you made a major contribution to the fermion article -- you might be interested in my comment on whether spin or statistics is their defining property, at Talk:fermion. BTW, regarding your edit summary at black hole: Article does not change. Mind changes. ;-) Fpahl 06:23, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Would you be interested in being interviewed about your work on the Wikipedia?

As part of a research project conducted by the Electronic Learning Communities group at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, we are conducting a study of the Wikipedia. The purpose of this study is to explore the online community of the Wikipedia by investigating who contributes to the Wikipedia and why.

To that end, we would like to interview people who write, edit, and comment on the articles that make up the Wikipedia. Study participants agree to be interviewed about their experiences with the Wikipedia. The interview can be face-to-face (if you are in the Atlanta area), on the telephone, or via email, whichever is most comfortable and convenient for you. Participation is voluntary and can be discontinued at any time with no reason given.

If you think you might be interested, more information about the study, including how to volunteer, is available at:

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If you are not interested, there is no need to reply to this message, and we thank you for your time.

-Hey would you mind devoting some time to my project? oo64eva (AJ) 18:41, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Voting for standardization

Hi. I'm oo64eva. We're holding a vote here to standardize the table and color template. If you have any questions leave a message on my talk page or on the project talk page. Spread the word about the vote, it ends May 12th at 3:40 UTC. — oo64eva (Alex) ^{(U | T | C)} @ 04:06, May 9, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] flavour and qcd

Xerxes: Nice detective work (talk:flavour (particle physics). I knew the name SM was new 20+ years back, but had never bothered to track it down. I also liked your additions to the QCD page. Bambaiah 10:00, May 25, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] kkbar mixing

Thanks. I've replaced the figure with a corrected version at the approximate hadronic effective theory level that I wanted to show here. You are right of course about the box diagram requiring W and not π, but I didn't want to show pictures at the SM level here. Bambaiah 09:19, Jun 20, 2005 (UTC)

Since the decays K⁰→2π (and similarly for K0bar) are almost 100% of the total decay width, the modified figure is the dominant contribution to the oscillation. I guess your question is which operators in the chiral PT correspond to this process. Let me go through the logic before I get back to you in a couple of days. Bambaiah 06:19, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)

Yes, showing the box diagram (above) is simplest. I've now done that, but that leaves me unhappy because the Pais Gell-Mann analysis (2×2 matrix as in the article) did not need quarks. If you take the box diagram and imagine an u quark loop between the W's, then you get pion (and D meson) pair exchange. This is the picture that I wanted to use, except of course for the nice little problem you mentioned. I guess they just wrote down a Hamiltonian and constrained it by symmetry, without bothering about the exchanges that would give the form they got. But I can't quite believe that; I need to look at the papers again. Bambaiah 08:56, Jun 22, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] opps

Sorry about deleting your nucleon sentence. Someone had add something silly, and I reverted back one too many. Salsb 7 July 2005 18:04 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks for fixing spam

G'day Thanks for fixing spam from that anonymous user. Saved me having to do all of it. :) Flehmen ^{Work with me} 00:59, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Hi xerxes

Thanks for fixing the Rabinovici silly paragraph. Sorry for leting you bother.

[edit] Hi

Just wanted to thank you again for all your help with the calculations of beta energies on the beta decay page. I've been trying to get someone to help me with that one for a while. Thanks very much indeed!--Deglr6328 00:46, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

I have used the information you provided to edit the article Criticality accident which you may peruse for accuracy if you so like. --Deglr6328 02:39, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

A fascinating analysis. Something I hadn't thought about before. Nice work on it. -- Xerxes 03:28, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] minus sign

I understand the code notation, but for some reason it just comes up as a box on my browser. but hey, if everyone else can see it, who am I to change it. sorry for rocking the boat. Shaggorama 09:11, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sorry for the Quark Complexities

Thanks for the questioning. Now I explained myself on the Quark page. You're welcome to answer anytime! :-)--Not a user but still smart

[edit] Historical maps

Hi, I was just admiring your historical maps, after I stumbled across the one in the Mongol Empire article. In particular, I really liked the whole-world cross-section of World 820. I'd been trying to put together something similar as part of an animation of the global rise and fall of empires. That project turned out to be very difficult (I never finished anything outside Central America), so I thought I'd ask what techniques and sources you used to put together your map. -- Xerxes 19:46, 23 January 2006 (UTC)"

Hi Xerxes. In response to your query, I use a number of historical atlases, including the old Shepard's, various of the Penguin Atlases, and most importantly Cassesl's Atlas with tis maps by John Haywood (this, for example, was my main source for the world map in 820 CE). I also use some color photocopies I made of a Turkish-language historical atlas I found in the stacks at Harvard's Widener Library (unfortunately, I don't remember the name or publication info, but I may have it at home and will check). If you like I can provide publication info for some of the (in my opinion) better historical atlases. Obviously all the borders are approximations and are hand-drawn either copying from historical maps or by roughly following descriptions in primary or secondary sources that don't actually provide detailed maps of their own. To the extent I'm able, I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have about any particular map or about the maps in general. Briangotts (Talk) (Contrib) 21:04, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] doerfel

Hi:} Yes sorry my mistake. Googling him under his proper name the first result is [1]. (paragraph 4). Seems to be a bit of a forgotten figure though I suppose not everybody gets a crater named after them. This is not my field but I came across him in an old English almanac which surprisingly (to me) credited him not Newton. Jameswilson 01:52, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] re revert entropy

Hi! You removed my addition to entropy (the bit about heat capacity) Did you read my comment on the talk page giving my reasons for adding it - I accept that this is not the neatest addition to the the text but as I cannot find this infomation any where else in the text I think it should be included. I'm not sure why you call the addition non-encyclopadeaic. A lot of people seem to get confused about entropy - look at all the comments on talk page - I usually assume that people are not stupid so when there is confusion there is usually a reason - could this be because the relationship between thermodynamic entropy (ie Specific heat) and statistical entropy (number of microstates etc) is not necessaryily always valid - I would like to see real justification for boltzmann's relationship.HappyVR 17:22, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re the electron

Hello again - I seem to be giving you a lot to do - you reverted some of my edits.. Again I did leave a message on the talk page - my major point was that about the 'spin axis' mentioned in the article - but you also removed other stuff - could you mention on the talk page what the problem was - (the edit note was bad physics?) My edits were:

Minor change concerning electron charge and mass
Note about the assumed quantisation of spin
Comment that the spin of the electron interacts with other things (surely this has to be true or it would be impossible to observe spin in experiments?)
And an alternative view of electric current (I agree with your removal - this should be a comment in an electricity section - not here - theory is a bit of a dead end anyway.

Thank youHappyVR 17:47, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Galaxies

Hi Xerxes

Thank you for your comments about my edits to Galaxies. Sorry that there were so many (I am still a newbie to Wikipedia and learning the ropes).

Regarding Life in the Galaxies, I think this is important for two reasons.

• Firstly, life as we know it, seems to be possible only in a certain place within Spiral Galaxies. It would seem to be preclded from Supernova rich locations within Spirals, within areas close to the Galacitic centre, and for that matter also precluded fronm Elipticals and Irregulars as well as Stellar Clusers. This is important to discuss.

• Secondly, id life (as you suggest) forever limited to planetary surfaces or is it capable of playing a role in the future history of Galaxies. The Kardashev Scale suggests it may, and for that reason I have included it just before the discussion on the future of Galaxies.

Warm regardsJohn D. Croft 04:41, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Lepton

Hi.

You write:

Nothing against the town of Lepton. Scientific articles tend to get cluttered up with long lists of totally unrelated things that happen to share their names. If a Lepton, Huddersfield article does come to exist, you should make a Lepton (disambiguation) page with that and the Greek currency, and link to it from the top of Lepton. Thanks.

Actually that change was just a holding exercise, as I created the Lepton, Huddersfield article and considered what disambiguation model to use long term. I've now checked the 'what links here' for Lepton and found several mis-links that were obviously intending to link to the Greek currency. I've corrected these, but this reinforces my initial view. Whilst the usage of Lepton to mean a particle is certainly very well known to a specialist audience, I don't believe that, when tested against the generalist target audience of Wikipedia, it meets the necessary criteria for 'primary use disambiguation' which is the model you are suggesting above. I'm therefore proposing to disambiguate using the normal disambiguation mechanism, by renaming Lepton to Lepton (particle) and making Lepton the dab page. However, given the number of links that will require dabbing, I will not do this until I can get a clear run at it. -- Chris j wood 17:22, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks for Update

Hi! Thanks for the update on Pentaquark. I can state with reasonable certainty that it will prove useful (to me, if no one else). I would have responded sooner if I had known how to. (I am new to Wikipedia).

Thanks again! scienceman 01:09, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Supersymmetry

It appears that "Supersymmetry" is in need of expert attention. You may want to take a look at it... scienceman 13:38, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Atom and atomic nucleus

Hi--

I hope you're still doing the image at atom; I agree it needs to be repaired. I hope that you also update the image at atomic nucleus, also! It'd be much appreciated! Olin 03:39, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

I believe it's ångstrom not Ångstrom (even if abbreviated Å). But, should it be drawn with SI units instead?

[edit] Top Quark

Hi Xerxes, There may be some misinformation in the top quark article. It states that the top quark does not live long enough to hadronize. You may want to take a look at it. Thanks! scienceman 20:54, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks!

Thanks! I was reasonably certain about this, but I am currently only a beginner in this field, and was not certain enough. Once again, thank you! scienceman 22:16, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Higgs boson consensus vote

There is currently a vote on the Higgs boson talk page over whether or not to merge the pop culture references article with the main article. I noticed you've previously contributed to the debate, so your vote would be helpful in establishing a consensus (or, perhaps, a vote of "no consensus", in which case the problem will be referred to AfD). Thanks! -DMurphy 21:37, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] That message

That wasn't spam. I want another user at the funny wiki. —The-thing (Talk) (Stuff I did) 20:32, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Fundamental interaction

The reason I changed the strong interaction to infinite range with no distance dependence is that if the strong interaction dropped off at all, confinement would not exist because it would not take infinite energy to separate two quarks. See the section on the strong interaction on the Fundamental interaction page and the second paragraph of Colour confinement (I believe the first paragraph has a mistake in saying that the force increases with distance, but I want to think about that more before I change it). Let me know if you have further questions or want clarification on anything. -Scott Medling 21:25, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Britishism Edits

I noticed on Colour_charge that you renamed the article from Color_charge to Colour_charge with the comment of "britishism reigns supreme" - what is your reasoning for this? - ChrisKennedy 01:31, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Just trying to be funny. Seriously tho, international English is th standard for science articles. -- Xerxes 02:12, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

I have removed your britishism edits based on Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style. Trying to be funny is not justification for renaming articles. -- ChrisKennedy 03:07, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm going to revert Mr. Kennedy. When I was in school, in the US, it was spelled like "colour". linas 03:44, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Your argument is illogical - articles on wikipedia are not named based on the time a random user "was in school." Surely you are not arguing for a general principle of usage on WP. My original reversion restored the article to its title when you originally edited it in 2005-09-20. -- ChrisKennedy 04:10, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

The manual of style states "If an article is predominantly written in one type of English, aim to conform to that type rather than provoking conflict by changing to another." As I have already said, the standard for science articles is International English; please refrain from Americanizing it. -- Xerxes 17:23, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Just passing by. For the record: 1) there's no such thing as International English; 2) there is no standard for science articles. --Cultural Freedom talk 2006-06-26 06:42 (UTC)

[edit] Star Edits

Hi Xerxes314, Just wondering why you deleted my added references to Stellar Astrophysics (which is my area), blackbody radiation, and 'blue-hot'? I understand 'blue-hot' may go against the WP style though. It was my 1st WP edit.

Regards, Memer.

The material on stellar temperature and color is better covered later in the article. The reference to stellar astrophysics is redundant with stellar astronomy; the terms are synonymous and it is the former which has a wikipedia article. -- Xerxes 04:28, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Is the intro to WP articles meant to be like an abstract? If so, the fact that stars are coloured (spelt with a u!) is an important, central concept. Probably doesn't need reference to Blackbody Radiation in the intro though. The reason I edited it is that I think it is misleading to say stars emit light 'because of their intense heat' - they emit light and heat because of the fusion reactions happening in their cores.

Secondly, I deleted the HR diagram paragraph because, although it is very important, I don't believe it should be in the intro.

Thirdly, it's not nice being called 'redundant'. I am a Stellar Astrophysicist. Just because the only reference to the study of stars is Stellar Astronomy in WP doesn't mean Stellar Astrophysicists don't exist (I thought this is one of the reasons why WP is so good - it is able to keep up to date with information).

Also, the use of the word 'plasma' throughout the intro can also be misleading/wrong - not all stars are fully ionised. Indeed, some stars have complex molecules in their atmospheres (eg. Red Giants).

So my first experience with WP was a little disappointing... I thought it may be more democratic... but the way my edits were (mostly) thrown out....

I guess I should write an article on Stellar Astrophysics :)

Memer. 5 May 2006.

Well, there's no offense intended. People have worked a long time to get the introduction into a state where it covers the basics without getting too long or technical. It's pretty hard to even come up with a definition of "star" that covers both ordinary stars and objects as varied as brown dwarfs, white dwarfs, Wolf-Rayet stars and even neutron stars. Or should all those objects be considered stars? If not, how do you explain why a neutron star isn't a star?

What is the difference between stellar astronomy and astrophysics? Is the former observational while the latter is theoretical?

Don't get discouraged; we need experts to help edit. Welcome to Wiki. -- Xerxes 14:31, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reply by Standonbible

Hey Xerxes, I replied to your comment on my talk page. Just thought I'd let you know.... standonbible 15:34, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reverts

Xerxes, I don't appreciate complete reverts of my additions to fundamental particles. Certainly, revisions, cleaning or modifications may be in order; however, complete reverts without even a move to the talk-page for discussion is very distasteful. A number of points are absent from the article:

1. The article fails provide an accurate count of the number of fundamental particles upon which all others are reducible too.
2. The article fails to provide a total count of known observable particles (~230).
3. The article fails categorize in terms of spin.

I am now going to add to the article (with source). Please only change in the spirit of cooperation and joint action. Thank-you.--Sadi Carnot 09:36, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Xerxes, maybe the total number of particles is irrelevant from your perspective; however, including myself, I count 4 people on the talk page that want a particle count. I have added a sentence to account for this needed piece. Thanks for your cooperation. --Sadi Carnot 01:02, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re:Nomenclature

from my talk page:

Hi "", I see you don't like the name "neutron star". Unfortunately, you don't get to choose the names of astronomical bodies. The astronomy community likes that name, and our job at Wikipedia is to report the facts, not make up new ones. -- Xerxes 18:22, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

i did not make up the name quark star, there is an article on it that was not created by me and that numerous people have contributed to. "" 18:31, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

from my talk page:

Yes, but it's a different kind of object. You can't use the terms synonymously. -- Xerxes 20:10, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

i didn't. I stated that a "neutron star" supported by quark or strange matter would actually be a quark star. "" 16:12, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Unified Field Theory

Thanks for commenting on my earlier question. I just made a new comment on the Talk:Unified Field Theory page. The distinction between these two articles seems to need clarification. RK 19:08, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Neutrino Question

Thank you again for the ref to the prelim finings on the MINOS project. Do you happen to know if I was correct in stating that nothing has been done with the neutrino beam created with the NuMI Beamline.--Dr.Worm 19:39, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] I don't like your edit

see Talk:Archimedean spiral futurebird 03:58, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Atom

Thanks for cleaning up my mistake in atom, I reworded something that didn't make sense and then realised that the whole sentence was wrong but I was too tried! I was wondering what was wrong with the anti matter section, I thought that the change I made had not made it off topic and was a better summary of the main article, could you explain your concerns? Rex the first ^{talk | contribs} 19:27, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

The basic problem with your edit was just that the text was about antimatter, not about atoms. There are not many connections between atoms and antimatter. One is that you can make antiatoms; the other is beta-plus decay, which isn't really about atoms but about nuclei. There's no need to include the antimatter section both in the antimatter article and the atom article. It's doing a fine job in the antimatter article where it belongs. -- Xerxes 23:45, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Fair, I added content on the section to as Titoxd suggested. Rex the first ^{talk | contribs} 06:14, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Most excellent work on Proton decay

Maury 20:54, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] size of electron

Hello Xerxes314,

My info on the size of the electron comes from two sources. The book by Malcolm MacGregor (recently retired from LLNL or Berkeley), The Enigmatic Electron, has the first bit of info reporting the 10(-18) meter size of the "mechanical mass" of the electron. The other info came from an article, forgot the journal just now.

bvcrist