Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mass of the observable universe

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 KEEP. Rje 23:54, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Mass of the observable universe

~~Original research~~ abakharev 04:03, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Delete as OR. This could possibly serve as a redirect somewhere, but I don't know where. --Core des at talk. o.o;; 04:45, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Unverified Research. Possibly a joke or a hoax--Ageo020 05:29, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Comment put a mention of this AfD on the WikiProject Physics talk page. -- Koffieyahoo 05:29, 21 July 2006 (UTC) [reply]
Speedy as patent nonsense, and possibly vanity as well. Pages like this shouldn't be put up for AfD. It is better, in my opinion, to speedy such nonsensical sounding articles, and risk the remote chance of being wrong, than to leave them here while an AfD takes place. --Philosophus ^T 06:33, 21 July 2006 (UTC) See below.[reply]
Comment the article maybe complete crap, but I wonder how it is that Mass of the observable universe has been in the Orders of magnitude (mass) article since December 2003 and that there has been published an article on this subject in the International Journal of Theoretical Physics [1] -- Koffieyahoo 07:16, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- The article is nonsense and OR, and can be speedied as such - the author is essentially multiplying a physical constant by some random value that came from nowhere. The idea could be added to the Observable universe article. But all the values I see here are suspect, and don't specify what they are talking about. Does mass mean baryonic matter or all matter? Either way, if one assumes that the "mass of a critical density universe" listed on the Orders of magnitude (mass) is for the observable universe (otherwise we can't really go converting density to mass, can we?), then the mass of the observable universe given there implies that $\Omega >>1$ $\Omega >>1$ , and more like 2, which is really wrong, so I assume something must be wrong with those values (or I am not thinking coherently). I'm removing them for now. An easy order of magnitude estimate would be $\Omega _{matter}\rho _{crit}V_{obs}$ $\Omega _{matter}\rho _{crit}V_{obs}$ , and is probably obvious enough that it can't be considered OR, but I don't want to do anything like that right now.
  As for the IJTP article, I can't get to it, and it isn't in Citebase. It is really old, too (1994), before any of the really accurate measurements of the important values. --Philosophus ^T 10:22, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  - Haven't looked at the IJTP article, I only wanted to demonstrate that the subject of the article was a valid one, eventhough the article itself was complete crap, which in my opition would just require a rewrite by someone with some knowledge of the field (not me in this case) and not an AfD. -- Koffieyahoo 05:47, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- It would be a bad merge, as all the information appears to be wrong, except the value of the Planck length...WilyD 13:10, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  - I'm proposing that it be speedied, not merged. I am just suggesting that an order of magnitude figure for the total mass of all matter in the observable universe should be added to Observable universe.--Philosophus ^T 13:16, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  - Nevermemind - it was the Planck time he got right, the Planck length is wrong. WilyD 13:11, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

*Speedy per Philosophus - creator made this while thinking the same thoughts as led to [this]. - Peripitus (Talk) 07:44, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Keep as rewritten - Peripitus (Talk) 13:51, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
~~Speedy delete~~ as WP:NONSENSE. I posted this earlier, but it seems that the server error reverted me. Byrgenwulf 10:24, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Keep as rewritten (see below). Byrgenwulf 08:39, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Delete When time increases in negative three dimensions under the force of gravity you oddly enough, have mass. Now that is odd. Keep the rewrite. Dlyons493 Talk 12:26, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

*Speedy per Philosophus Jibbles | Talk 12:57, 21 July 2006 (UTC) *Speedy Delete if someone cold bore a hole in this article to let the demons out, that'd be great. Thanks WilyD 13:09, 21 July 2006 (UTC) Comment per the rewrite, I'm now neutral between Keep and merge to Observable Universe WilyD 21:12, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. I don't see it as speedy material. It's nonsense but not patent nonsense. Consider the fact that to a layman a good deal of modern physics reads as incomprehensible gibberish. Fan-1967 13:19, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Keep after rewrite. Fan-1967 01:34, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

- Comment that may be true, but phycisists could step in and say No, it's fine. This isn't the case here. There are words there, but the words don't form into coherent thoughts. That's what makes it patent nonsense. It may take a long time to understand Cauchy's principle value theorom, but you can do it - this stuff can never be understood, hence patent nonsense. WilyD 14:10, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  - Comment I think we need to be very careful with applying G1, which is for "Patent nonsense and gibberish, an unsalvageably incoherent page with no meaningful content. This does not include: ... implausible theories, or hoaxes."" This is not incoherent or gibberish. It's very well laid out and clearly stated. It just happens to be garbage. -- Fan-1967 14:16, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    - Comment you may be right, but I'm not convinced. It has all the form of language, but I'm not really sure it's coherent. Much as I detest Chomsky, he had a good point with Colourless green ideas sleep furiously - a phrase I think we could also dismiss as patent nonsense, even though it has all the trappings of being well laid out and clearly stated. WilyD 15:15, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      - Comment A few years ago, someone might have said the same about the following: "The observable universe is only 4% of the actual universe; the other 96% is composed of two varieties of undetectable substance whose existence can only be inferred from their effects." -- Fan-1967 15:21, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        Right, but they would have been wrong, which is the different. I can say it about the phrase Brazil is the largest country in South America but I would be mistaken. The key signature of incoherence is that it's impossible to extract information from the sentence. If you're contending that it's only incoherent because it's excessively vague, you may be right, I have no idea. WilyD 15:35, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      - Fan-1967 is right. This article isn't patent nonsense. The text in section #1 is a quite legible description, in words, of the formula given in the introduction, for example. That the article is wrong does not mean that it is patent nonsense. Uncle G 19:16, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        Nonsensical claims that are coherently phrased are still nonsense. The equations used in the article are pulled straight out of thin air, as are the statements about number of spacelike and timelike dimensions needed. See observable universe for sane and accurate treatment of the question. --Christopher Thomas 19:26, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        Whether the article is nonsense is not at issue. Whether it is patent nonsense is. The two are not the same, and only the latter is speedily deletable. Please do not abuse the speedy deletion criteria by erroneously conflating nonsense and patent nonsense. Uncle G 19:31, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per WP:V. It doesn't have to be true, but it has to be verifiable. Unless the author(s) can cite some sources to back up their assertions, it should be deleted. Scorpiondollprincess 14:35, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per WilyD. Warning: By deleting articles you do increase the entropy of the universe a bit :) Count Iblis 15:00, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Strong delete OR Computerjoe 's talk 15:25, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
~~Delete~~ as nonsense. --Christopher Thomas 15:46, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- Merge and redirect rewritten version to observable universe. --Christopher Thomas 20:45, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It was at this point that a source was added to the article.

The article is wrong, inasmuch as it doesn't agree with the cited source. But this article does cite a source. An article on the subject of the mass of the observable universe can be written simply by cleaning this article up so that it agrees with the source that it cites. There's no need to delete the article in order to do that, and indeed deleting the article makes the source inaccessible. I encourage the participants in Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics who have come to this discussion to aid in rewriting this article so that it matches what the sources actually say. Keep. Uncle G 19:16, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I would be more inclined to allow this AFD to conclude and let this be deleted. Then if some good editors want to create a new article with this title (and without even the history of this stuff), I believe that would be a much better path. Fan-1967 19:28, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- There's nothing innately bad about having this content in the article's history. If anything, it will demonstrate Wikipedia's cleanup process in action. There is no reason for an administrator to hit the delete button on this article (and one good reason not to, as stated before). It does not require administrator privileges to make this article better. It merely requires ordinary editors to edit it in the ordinary way. The participants in Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics are here. They should be able to clean this article up, so that it matches the source, in short order. Uncle G 19:36, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It was at this point that the article was changed to make sense.

Keep as rewritten. Arguments for deletion no longer apply. --Lambiam ^Talk 20:15, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect: the article is no longer nonsense, but should be part of the Observable universe article instead of an article in its own right. --Philosophus ^T 20:39, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Speedy Keep the article is completely re-written and now is not an OR. I was the original nominator of this AfD abakharev 22:24, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
~~Keep~~Merge the rewrite with Observable universe, as this is inherently a very short article. -- Koffieyahoo 05:55, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, much better now. --M e rovingian (T, C, @) 05:49, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Merge to Observable universe after rewrite. --Core des at talk. o.o;; 09:28, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Keep after rewrite. Polonium 19:41, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Comment seriously misleading while it lacks link to an article on observable universe which explains this term. Otherwise an intelligent layperson might well wonder, if the universe has infinite extent and finite matter density, how can it have a finite mass? There are many subtle points lurking here, but the first thing which needs to be explained is that the "observable universe" is defined wrt some event, such as "here on Earth in rougly 2000 AD", and corresponds to a finite region of spacetime whether or not the universe itself is infinite in extent. Of course, once you understand the meaning of the term, "mass of the universe" begins to look a bit silly. "Average density" is less silly, but also needs to be explained; do we try to estimate "density now" (e.g. on some hyperslice orthogonal to the world lines of dust particles in an FRW model) or "density averaged over places we can see as it was at the time which we can see now from where we are" (e.g. averaged over past light cone from here and now). This is just the first thing which comes to mind from skimming one paragraph. The article need a lot of work to become useful for a general audience.---CH 06:49, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- You might want to read the article again. The article is not titled mass of the universe, and there's a link to observable universe in the first 5 words of the article. Uncle G 11:11, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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.