Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Photon Structure

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was Delete -- Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 15:31, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Photon Structure

(comments placed here by TimLong have been moved one paragraph down. Bm gub 15:10, 6 March 2007 (UTC))

Photon Structure (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Incoherent, no scientific content. It may be possible to write a WP-level article about photon substructure, but this isn't even a stub in that direction. Bm gub 00:54, 1 March 2007 (UTC) Non-notable crackpot theory; reference is to single web page consisting of about 100 lines of text and two diagrams. No refereed journal articles; no published journal articles; no online articles of any sort (the web page invites you to "order the academic manuscript" for $2.95+S&H). Still delete. ( The mainstream theory of the photon, quantum electrodynamics, accounts for pair production and annihilation perfectly well, and has passed every experimental test.) Bm gub 16:18, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, this is a deterministic representation but is in line with QED rather than QCD.

• All physical descriptions in this article are verifiable physical characteristics of the photon and any hypotheses referred to on the PhotonStructure.com website were omitted for this reason. I would suggest the so-called experts go back to the standard texts. Next entry: I had deleted the link to the website in response to the accusation of "advertising" it, but after reading SupaSoldier's comments, have decided to reinsert it. This work was first published in Los Alamos in 1979 and encouraged by Carlo Rubbia of CERN at that time (before he got his Nobel Prize). Documentation for this is available. As to refereed articles, the masters thesis describing this concept was an interdepartmental (Philosophy of Science & Physics) research project at the University of New Mexico. George Gamow was instrumental in providing the interaction of the charged sub-quantal components which, incidentally, rotate 360 degrees per cycle providing a resultant charge of zero. (The annihilation process is also used in Positron Emission Tomography.) (unsigned comment was by TimLong2001 Moved to below header by bmonreal. TimLong2001, please add comments at the bottom of the page.)

• TimLong2001, three points:
  1. I cannot find any evidence of your 1979 paper in Google nor in my large university library; even the publisher (journal?) "Maaret DeGroff" gets zero hits. Please supply a standard citation.
  2. A philosophy-of-science Master's thesis is *not* generally noteworthy evidence for a science article.
  3. All of the other references in the article contradict your hypothesis---Nisius, for example, shows agreement between the Standard Model (i.e. quantum field theory) photon structure functions and data. Bm gub 15:10, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Strong delete: I can't even make out what this article is about. It almost seems as if the original poster copied the text, and the references are all mashed together. It has no sources that I can tell. Seicer (talk) (contribs) 01:20, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Delete doesn't deal with "photon structure" at all & what it does deal with is covered more coherently elswhere. Jimp 08:13, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

• Weak Delete. Quite incomprehensible, maybe someone can salvage some information from it and Merge it with wave-particle duality? Though, I didn't really understand either article so I'm not sure. --RazorICE ^T/_C @
• redirect to photon. Content may be salvageable. History should be kept. SmokeyJoe 11:49, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
• Delete: I sort of think that a person with the sense to pick through the history for the good stuff probably doesn't need it. Utgard Loki 13:46, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
• Redirect to Photon per SmokeyJoe. --Polaron | Talk 15:09, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
• Delete - there is nothing here worth salvaging. Arkyan 15:42, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
• Redirect to Photon per SmokeyJoe. Not only is there no harm in keeping the history, and some possible benefit, but it would be a useful redirect to have anyway. Pyrospirit ^{Flames Fire} 15:57, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. I'm cleaning the article up right now, please give this article a chance! §†SupaSoldier†§ 17:32, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

  I'm giving this advice so that you can try to rework it (quickly!) and we can all see if it's salvageable. I think a major problem with the article is that it doesn't make it clear to non-scientists exactly what it's all about. Quite honestly, the article is pretty incoherent at this stage. I've had some courses in physics years ago, so some of the concepts are vaguely familiar. Other concepts are over my head. Here I am trying to reword what I understand of the article. Feel free to use this in the rewriting, and to correct me if I'm wrong.

  From what I gather, photon structure is an attempt to explain wave-particle duality, or how light and matter can show properties of both waves and particles, depending on what is being looked at. The article seems to use the word "light" in the broader sense of anything in the electromagnetic spectrum, from gamma rays to ultraviolet to visible light to infrared to radio waves. If this is the case, then the photons here must refer to gamma rays.

  Two observations that form the basis of this theory are:

  1. A gamma rays with an energy level of 1.0216 MeV (so-called "pair formation threshold") will spontaneously split into an electron and a positron. (energy or waves becoming particles)

  2. When an electron and a positron collide, they produce two gamma rays of 0.5108 MeV, each one exactly half of the "pair formation threshold". (particles becoming energy or waves)

  At this point, I can't follow the rest. Am I even close?

  The article also needs external references that postdate the theory. It sounds as if the theory was published in 1979, right? There should be third-party references to it that are more recent.

  If these concerns are addressed, and addressed quickly, I may be persuaded to switch back to keeping the article. --Kyoko 14:07, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

• Delete. Upon rereading the references, it seems as if the most recent references are by the same person who wrote the Wikipedia article. While I'm not disputing his authority in the matter, I think that Wikipedia requires some sort of third-party published review or mention of scientific theories in order to ensure notability. --Kyoko 05:56, 2 March 2007 (UTC) Weak keep. I've read over the article, and it doesn't make it clear whether or not Photon structure is a theory or not. I assume that it is a theory meant to address the paradox of wave-particle duality. The article needs extensive rewriting, and more explicit (and better formatted) references to make it understood that Photon structure has been discussed throughout the scientific community, and that it isn't just original research that hasn't been reviewed by outside analysts. I'm saying "Week keep" for now, in the hope that the article will better explain just what it is talking about, though if these concerns aren't addressed, I will likely choose to merge it with either wave-particle duality or Photon in the future. --Kyoko 05:05, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

The references included published works! SmokeyJoe 03:18, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Almost all of the references listed were published years, even decades before the apparent first mention of the theory elucidated in the article, i.e. before 1979. --Kyoko 14:13, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

• Delete. Gibberish. Tsumetai 12:34, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
• Delete -- Nonsense. Appears to only have been created to advertise the editor's external web-site page. -- MightyWarrior 14:42, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

  Yes, that was my concern as well, which is why I've been trying to point out that proof of outside scientific review is needed, not just what appears to be self-published sources. I've tried to give helpful advice for improving the article, but it is really incumbent upon him and not us to do it. Especially because I guess most of us (OK, me) don't quite grasp what is being said there. --Kyoko 14:53, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

• Keep This article is salvagable. If cleaned it can be useful. It is notable enough for an article if it can be better. Captain panda In vino veritas 03:10, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
• This discussion has been added as a test case to the proposed guideline Wikipedia:Notability (science). ~ trialsanderrors 01:06, 5 March 2007 (UTC)All physical descriptions in this article are verifiable physical characteristics of the photon and any hypotheses referred to on the PhotonStructure.com website were omitted for this reason. I would suggest the so-called experts go back to the standard texts.
• I just studied the article, and chased down some references. I concluded that most of the content was unverified assertion or gibberish, and I cleaned it accordingly. However, the concept of "photon structure" is clearly serious. The article should not be deleted for not being notable. Due to lack of content, a redirect is a good idea. Given the image, and the method for study, perhaps the appropriate target is Electron-positron annihilation. SmokeyJoe 03:18, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Electron-positron annihilation is not an approprite redirect; photon structure happens to be studied in e-p colliders, but not in annihilations---you'd do equally well looking at it in non-annihilating e-e colliders, if such existed. I'd stick with photon, where it'd be reasonable to write a few sentences about it. Bm gub 04:20, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

• Delete or possibly Merge. As it stands the article is content-free. I can well believe that previously it was OR and gibberish. In any case it does not deserve a separate article. NBeale 15:23, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

• Delete I've got to be honest - I'm biased because I know how to reconcile the wave particle duality (using real physics) - and this is not it - but neither is it anything else Mike 17:19, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

• All physical descriptions in this article are verifiable physical characteristics of the photon and any hypotheses referred to on the PhotonStructure.com website were omitted for this reason. I would suggest the so-called experts go back to the standard texts. (this unsigned edit was by 71.213.150.27, a user whose WP edits overlap closely with those of article creator TimLong2001. Moved from top of discussion by 18.4.2.3 19:22, 5 March 2007 (UTC))
  • Verifiable is not good enough. You have to verify using specific citations, given the specific nature of your assertions.
  • If you have references at PhotonStructure.com, then bring them here. PhotonStructure.com itself is not a reliable source, and is so poorly written that it is not good enough even to be listed as “further reading”. SmokeyJoe 01:30, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

• I suggest giving the author some limited tolerance and time to learn to write an acceptable article. I do urge him to base his contributions on the references. SmokeyJoe 01:30, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

• Redirect as per SmokeyJoe. I have been watching this article and still do not believe it would be suitable material for an undergraduate particle physics student to make sense of, let alone suitable encyclopedia material. I sort of get it, but do not understand how a rotational frequency would yield an amplitude associated with wave motion...that info is just not here. Still, I'll admit I'm frustrated by how much good material gets deleted without a proper look and I've been heartened by this discussion. Please give the author 'some limited tolerance and time to learn' as per SmokeyJoe. Thanks. --Greatwalk 09:34, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
  • The reason you don't "get it" is that it is an incorrect crackpot model of the photon. The author thinks that the photon is made up of a bound electron-positron pair, that this explains e+e- pair production and annihilation, and that it photon wavelength relates somehow to some sort of magnetohydrodynamic waves in plasma. Please stop thinking of this as a badly-written article about photons. It's actually a reasonably clear article about a work of pseudophysics. Bm gub 15:10, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

“incorrect crackpot model” and “pseudophysics” are not reasons for deletion. Wikipedia covers pseudoscience, discredited or obscure theories, as long as they are attributable. It is unfortunate that the article appears to describe what the “author thinks” as opposed to what the secondary sources describe, but we can try to encourage him to change his style. There are sources corresponding to the title, although its not clear how the article content connects to the title. A second new contributor has now expressed an intention to improve the article. We should give them time to do this, and failing the emergence of attributable and sensible content, merge the article with photon. SmokeyJoe 00:10, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

• • • If you suspect theoretics, Bm gub, please say so, but it is safe to assume many at Wiki are at least as intelligent as you. My objection to this article is that it does not state anything clearly, and have asked for a Redirect to Photon so that the history is saved. Kind regards, --Greatwalk 23:42, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

The Journal of Theoretics has a page of "Unsung Heroes of Science", which lists both Halton Arp and Immanuel Velikovsky. The likelihood that Theoretics is anything but a cabinet for fractured ceramics is pretty small. Anville 23:49, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

• Delete. Bm gub just summarized it pretty well. The "references" cited don't actually demonstrate that this is a way to "resolve particle/wave duality". It's a bit like writing an article saying that UFOs come from Jupiter's moon Europa, and then citing astronomical journal articles which give Europa's mass, composition and distance from Earth while crowing, "See, my article has sources!" Anville 23:44, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
• Keep Im going to re-write it so that its about the internal structure of photons (as one would expect). I dont know what its supposed to be about (the process of turning a photon into 2 pair particles maybe??). Ive expanded on this on the articles talk page. Any comments/suggestions are welcome. CaptinJohn 12:22, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.