Wikipedia:Scientific peer review/Redshift

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[edit] Redshift

After a rather bruising two attempts at FA candidacy, I have decided to submit this article to scientific peer review. In particular, the last FA Nomination failed because a medical science editor felt the article was under-referenced. I asked him to specify what items he wanted to see referenced and now the article contains some 45 {{fact}} tags, many of which are considered such elementary common knowledge that it is difficult to know exactly how to reference them. I would appreciate comment regarding this issue as well as any other issues surrounding redshift. Thanks, --ScienceApologist 14:42, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

I would enjoy taking a look at that article. Astronomy articles are quite fun, especially ones related to cosmology, but I'll take a bit of care. While my recent SPR of the Photon article was useful to the requestor, my attempts at improving the Entropy and Observable Universe articles earlier in the year were met with a lot of resistance, the latter of which has continued even to this week. Since Redshift can ostensibly lead to controversy or arguments, I'll look at the editorial responses so far to get an idea of where people are at with this one. Do you have any suggestions, other than the citation concerns mentioned above, SA? I do hope to contribute positively on this. Cheers, Astrobayes 03:05, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Glaring omissions of facts/phenomena would be good to look for as would be any suggestions you might have for clarifying information. Also, if you could consider the last section in the article in terms of scientific utility and rigor. This is the section that was included to disambiguate misconceptions and to deal with the objections from Ian that the Wolf Effect was a type of redshift (see the talkpage for more on this). It would be useful from a scientific standpoint to look at how and whether this section can be improved (or if it really belongs in the article at all). --ScienceApologist 13:37, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

I only looked at the extragalactic and redshift survey sections. I did not like that section. The organization is very confusing. First the section mentions the CMBR, then it discusses the first discovery of quasars, then it describes the Hubble flow, and then it finishes with a description of the acceleration of the universe's expansion. I would prefer to see the section organized as follows:

• A brief description of Hubble's law and its discovery
• A discussion of galaxies that deviate from the Hubble flow
• A description of the discovery of high-redshift (z > 0.1) quasars and high-redshift objects that are not quasars
• A discussion of the CMBR that mentions the redshift-related change in the observed temperature
• A description of the discovery of the acceleration of the universe

The redshift surveys section is better. However, I think the second paragraph needs more references. It almost looks like every sentence needs one or more reference; in particular, the statements about the 2dF Survey measuring neutrino mass and the SDSS detecting z=6 quasars need references, even if that means citing a paper a second time. It would also be appropriate to cite multiple references in this section.

Finally, I was disappointed with the reference section. The citations in the section are rather heterogeneous in their formatting. I would also prefer to see journal papers' references linked to the ADS abstract service rather than to the journal website or to the preprint service at arxiv.org. The ADS entry contains links to the publicly-accessible arxiv.org preprints and links to the journal publication, which is accessible to professional astronomers and university staff and students. The ADS abstract service also gives the actual publication information (the journal name, volume and page numbers, and publication date). Also, where appropriate, the final journal article (rather than the arxiv.org preprint) should be cited. Professional journals, such as the Astrophysical Journal, will substitite references to preprints with references to the final publications when articles are prepared for publication. Finally, please see the Sombrero Galaxy article for examples of how I use references. George J. Bendo 20:28, 18 October 2006 (UTC)