Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ahad Radius

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, per consensus below and by extension of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Abdul Ahad. Sandstein 15:09, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ahad Radius

Ahad Radius (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

This particular article is about an original research concept being promoted by the amateur inventor of the idea. Doing a quick Google search for the term will turn up many different messageboards and discussions where this idea is being promoted as a "great new discovery". However, it doesn't qualify per the standards outlined by WP:SCI. Plainly not notable, and the authors of the article seem to have a conflict of interest connection to the idea. Nondistinguished 15:53, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment See also related Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Abdul Ahad and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/First Ark to Alpha Centauri

• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletions. -- → AA ^{(talk • contribs)} — 16:06, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

• Delete. Term is not yet in widespread use by reliable published sources, thus article does not meet the inclusion criteria of Wikipedia:Avoid neologisms or Wikipedia:Verifiability. -- Satori Son 16:07, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
• Delete. Only source is self-referential - no independent sources to establish this is a term of even passing use in the scientific community. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 16:17, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Strong Keep Seems to me it is the light equivalent of the termination shock of the heliopause ("photopause"? cf transneptunian objects vs the Oort cloud). The Journal of British Astronomy is a perfectly legitimate scientific paper. That the theory's author is an amateur and not a professional astronomer is irrelevant, many extremely important scientific contributions have been made by amateurs.--Victor falk 22:22, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

• Please note that while the Journal of British Astronomy itself is indeed perfectly legitimate, the cited reference in this article is a letter published in the journal authored by the concept's creator and thus is not a reliable source. Were it an article written for the journal, it'd be another story altogether. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 23:17, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

• I presume you mean "not formally peer-reviewed", not that he meant to send it to his aunt. Unfortunately, as it is a journal for amateurs, it does not formally peer-reviews articles. That does not mean they publish articles based on things "hey! that guy has the same name as the captain in Moby Dick and he draws his curves in mauve and magenta! that'd look pretty on page 3!". It is a primary source, surely you don't mean that primary source shouldn't be mentioned? The secondary source is from the Mathaba News Network, which is not a big news agency, but I think that usenet groups such as alt.astronomy, alt.astronomy.solar, sci.physics.electromag, uk.sci.astronomy, sci.physics.relativity, sci.astro.seti, [1] are much more relevant ones.--Victor falk 10:15, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Primary sources are generally not the best sources since Wikipedia is a tertiary source. There are a number of things to consider: Is the subject notable according to relevant guidelines? Is the subject original research according to relevant guidelines? The answers to these questions are no and yes respectively. That's the justification for deletion with which you need to deal. --Nondistinguished 12:57, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Keep The cosmic night sky's constant that he's formulated seems pretty self evident and it doesn't take a genius mathematician to empirically come to a bottom line number. The universe has a finite brightness (per Olbers paradox) and that finite brightness can be verified using star brightnesses in catalogues. Then the radius is merely a point where the Sun's flux equals the cosmic background. Again, pretty self-verifiable.

As regards professional or amateur, how many PhDs did Einstein have? (Just kidding). The reach of Sun's gravity well (i.e. its sphere of influence) out into space is an astrophysical quantity of importance, so should the reach of the Sun's light dominion. Ahad's work would seem to be encyclopedic in that respect and worth an entry. Uranometria 01:04, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

• Delete no matter how easily verifiable this is, there is no evidence the term or the concept it represents is notable. Further, to merely call it by this term even if easly verifiably true is inappropriate. Say, for instance, that I am the first person to publish on the internet (right here on Wikipedia, even!) some algebraic relationship. Should I start an article on "Someguy1221's equation"? Someguy1221 01:52, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

• Comment: No. But you could send "Someguy1221's Equation" to, for instance, to Annals of Mathematics, and have it published. Generally, the accepted name for a theory or a hypothesis is from the paper where it was first published.--Victor falk 10:15, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

• And the point here being that Ahad Radius was not published by a peer reviewed journal. --Nondistinguished 12:57, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

• You misunderstand the point exactly. Peer reviewed publication is not a sine qua non for establishing scientific reliability.--Victor falk 16:35, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

• What criteria are you using? I use WP:SCI. --Nondistinguished 16:45, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

• Worth keeping - I came to know the author from his two published books. He does self promote a fair bit, but then when you're with a publisher like Publishamerica I suppose you have to :)
• As someone said on another forum, there's 30 distinct Google hits for "Ahad's constant" and 65 distinct Google hits for "Ahad radius", so it's not like he's doing the marketing all by himself. Astronomic discoveries are always named after their founders: Roche Radius (credited to Edouward Roche), Chandrasekar Limit (Subramanyan Chandrasekar), Oort cloud (Jan Hendrick Oort), so on.

Perhaps the subject's bio needs toning down in text so as to not appear he's "over promoting himself" contray to wiki policy and a separate page added for the Radius and Constant on one article? Xcalibur2 14:30, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

• Delete - Absolutely no evidence no notability here. I did a Google Scholar search on "Ahad radius" and go no hits at all. The Google hits themselves seem to be mostly bulliten boards and the like. This is a valid concept IMO, but shows no sign of having had an impact in either science or society. --EMS | Talk 15:16, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

• Google scholar is quite haphazard in what it finds; for instance, SciSeek has 32 hits [2].Also, usenet groups are a very important way of communicating and discussing scientific hypothesises and therories ("establishing notability"). Before the avalanche of discoveries earlier this century of transneptunian objects that led to the demise of Pluto's planethood, there were maybe as far as I can recall at most a couple dozens astronomers that worked on them. --Victor falk 16:51, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

• Usenet groups are a very important way of communicating and discussing scientific hypothesises and therories. I could not disagree more. Usenet groups are for fun: anyone can post on them, and they are not reviewed for accuracy or for quality. Using them as reliable sources is a dubious practice indeed. I think your vision of what constitutes an adequate source or subject for Wikipedia does not conform to the five pillars, or, at least, you don't seem to understand what constitutes original research and why it is banned from Wikipedia. --Nondistinguished 16:59, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

• Usenet groups are for fun: anyone can post on them, and they are not reviewed for accuracy or for quality. I have to respectfully disagree with you. Some of these groups are 'for fun' as you put it, but not all. Sci.physics.research [3] is a moderated forum, where posts are screened for serious research material and journal-quality discussions. Indeed, Abdul Ahad has evidently formulated his theory about him being the first person to demonstrate analytically that the Earth could never retain a particulate ring system in orbit around it[4]. Noteworthy resarch, totally new to science. Uranometria 17:49, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

• What's more WP:SPS seems to directly contradict your opinion about self-published sources. --Nondistinguished 17:06, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

• Delete Fails WP:SCI as a scientific term or concept. Blogs, science fiction writings, and a letter to the editor do not satisfy the need for publication in reliable peer-reviewed scientific journals. No barrier to having an article written if the concept later becomes notable. Edison 17:20, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

• Delete The article gives no indication that the proposed "Ahad radius" has any physical significance or other interesting properties -- unlike, say, the heliopause, which is an actual, experimentally detectable boundary, or the various Lagrangian points. If and when the concept gets used in a peer-reviewed scientific publication (whether by Ahad or someone else) or another authoritative source (e.g., an Astronomy textbook from a reputable academic publisher), that will be an appropriate time to create a Wikipedia article for it. Hqb 18:52, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

• The concept would have far reaching implications in areas of philosophy and religion on interstellar journeys of the future. I have been amusingly folowing the debates, as here [5] for example. Impact on society, cultures and religions spanning the globe would be widespread, with established notions such as solar deities and Sun worship becoming meaningless past the Ahad Radius. Gilgamesh007 11:19, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

• Delete fictional concept that has gotten no attention from real world sources Corpx 01:32, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

• If a quantity is mathematically, empirically verifiable, can it be called "fictional"? Gilgamesh007 10:58, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

• Delete per nom. A letter to the editor is not a reliable source, and there is no indication of notability. --Tengfred 12:05, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

• Delete. Whether the concept itself makes any sense or not, there is no proof that it called that way, or even used, by any independent reliable source. --Itub 12:31, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

• I detect a possible conflict of interest in the tone of this debate amongst individual editors. You don't call these [6][7][8] independent, real world sources who are supporting the concept and aiding its marketing? Gilgamesh007 10:58, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

• No. The first one looks like a collective blog, the second one is just a link from an amateur society, and the third one is a search engine. I'm looking for real scientific publications. What conflict of interest? I'm not even an astronomer, if that's what you mean. Is it a conflict of interest to be interested in having only notable and verifiable topics on Wikipedia, rather than self-promotion and made-up stuff? --Itub 12:17, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

• If you're expecting the Max Planck Institute of Physics to credit Abdul Ahad with this discovery, I'd probably ask you to come back to this debate in a 100 years or so. No, discoveries like these take a long time to become widely known/appreciated. Sometimes posthumously. Those who have a basic literacy level in arithmetic and high school math can see the logic of this analysis. I accept that for WP we need established sources. But not for simplistic insights such as these, that are pretty much self-evident. Gilgamesh007 13:33, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

• Even assuming for a moment that this self-evident insight is correct, it still fails as a self-promoting neologism. See WP:NEO. --Itub 13:52, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

• Delete. I really would like to keep this, as it's an interesting concept. Unfortunately, it's not common or widespread in the literature. Maybe after it's had some time to spread it will become notable enough to include in an article. It's not there yet, and as such it shouldn't be in the encyclopedia. Vonspringer 23:45, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
• Strong Keep. I have been monitoring this for some time. This is a significant discovery and is in such widespread discussion spanning 3 years, I don't believe it can be called OR (original research) any longer. If established sources haven't picked up on it as yet, then they are either too busy or too blinkered to see its implications to a future spacefaring human civilization. Gilgamesh007 10:58, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

• Comment But what is the actual discovery here? Yes, there surely exists some distance from the Sun where its contribution to total illumination in the visible spectrum is about equal to that of all other sources combined; this doesn't mean that such a distance is inherently worthy of a name and an encyclopedia article. Second, lacking a peer-reviewed source, we do not even know if the distance calculated by Ahad is correct at all. Hqb 15:22, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

• what is the actual discovery here? Sorry... couldn't resist being drawn back to this. At the risk of pre-empting user Gilgamesh007's reply, I had a skim read through this guy's usenet posts [9] going back to 2004 (incidentally, his peer review process appears to have been done publicly online by his friends and colleagues in those particular groups in front of moderators). It appears he is being credited with the following:

• The first to research a valid method and the associated flux equations that lead to a total night sky brightness constant ("Ahad's constant"), excluding all light coming from the Sun
• The first to then give an estimated value of that constant at c. -6.5 magnitudes (or 1/300th of a Full moon) worth of light using star catalogue data
• The first to then postulate that there might be some distance beyond the Solar System where the Sun's light power would equate to that constant
• The first to give a c. 11,500 AUs estimate of that distance, where the Sun becomes overpowerd by the collective star light of the surrounding universe (the so-called "Ahad radius"). The edge of the Sun's sphere of light dominion relative to the universe background.

• Unless someone else can correct me, as far as I can gather that's what this whole thing is about. Uranometria 19:39, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
• Oh and an online version of his paper "The Music of the Night Sky" [10]. What a funny bloke. Uranometria 20:24, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

• Delete per Satori Son. Dan Gluck 19:47, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
• Delete Ahad is one of over 100,000 members of the Planetary Society. I suspect it is similar for the British Astronomical Association. Neither organization appears to consider Ahad Radius important enough to publish an article on, which seems to indicate it's pretty non-notable.Edward321 15:54, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
• Keep Weak Keep. I admit its notability is extremely borderline. And, as noted above, it's not exactly a new copernican revolution. But it's about real science, which is inherently more notable to an encyclopedia. --Victor falk 16:20, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
• Delete : NN concept/term. --Ragib 17:43, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
• Delete : The frequency of occurrence of the term on the net (hits on google search) is mostly because of self-promotion. -Arman Aziz 08:35, 24 July 2007 (UTC):

• Comment Ghits establish absolute notability (and in many cases with a dismal accuracy). The relative notability is what matters. How notable is the concept within the relevant community, ie astronomers that study the solar's system's close neighbourhood? As for self-promotion, it is acceptable for a novel scientific concept to be named after its proposer. Cf Olber's paradox, the Chandrasekhar limit or the Schwarzschild radius--Victor falk 12:12, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

• I don't see why you are conflating the dubious practice of self-promotion (i.e., trying to bypass the normal scientific process by going directly to the popular media, rather than first having the discovery vetted by formal peer review), with getting a concept named after oneself by the scientific community. Somehow I doubt that Olbers went around telling everyone about "Olbers' paradox", or that Chandrasekhar wrote a paper on the "Chandrasekhar limit". Those names were assigned by others, in recognition of the significance of the concepts in question. Hqb 12:46, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

• I am very curious as to who these people are that are going around spreading these 'Ahad radius' articles. A few names that spring to mind are some guy called 'Javid' and some bloke named 'Robert' amongst a few other pseudonyms I can find. Looking at that guy's myspace page and gauging his credentials, I can't believe he's got the graphic skills to able to draw such spheres. I think it should be called the Helios Radius! Any votes in favour of that? Uranometria 13:09, 24 July 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.