User talk:Caroline Thompson

Welcome to the Wikipedia

Here are some links I find useful

Feel free to ask me anything the links and talk pages don't answer. You can sign your name by typing 4 tildes, likes this: ~~~~.

Cheers, Sam [Spade] 22:41, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:No original research

You may want to know that we have a policy of no original research - everything must have been published, preferably by a peer-reviewed journal. Secretlondon 22:45, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I'm doing my best to just present lesser-known facts objectively. The editors of Phys. Rev. Lett. and Phys. Rev. A consider my material to be "well known". Much of it is published in peer-reviewed journals -- see my bibliography -- but these are not widely available. I am therefore linking mainly to the versions at arXiv.org. Caroline Thompson 11:01, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)

As long as they're published somewhere there is no problem, but the article should cite the sources for the material, and maintain a neutral tone. Dori | Talk 15:34, Jun 29, 2004 (UTC)

I'll add full journal refs to external references but mainly link to the quant-ph archive or other public sources. Caroline Thompson 08:11, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)

(William M. Connolley 19:51, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)) Errm, Caroline, are you not being a teensy bit deceptive here? Quoting from your bibliography page:

In 1964, John Bell proved that local realistic theories led to an upper bound on correlations between distant events (Bell's inequality) and that quantum mechanics had predictions that violated that inequality. Ten years later, experimenters started to test in the laboratory the violation of Bell's inequality (or similar predictions of local realism). No experiment is perfect, and various authors invented "loopholes" such that the experiments were still compatible with local realism. Of course nobody proposed a local realistic theory that would reproduce quantitative predictions of quantum theory (energy levels, transition rates, etc.).

This loophole hunting has no interest whatsoever in physics. It tells us nothing on the properties of nature. It makes no prediction that can be tested in new experiments. Therefore I recommend not to publish such papers in Physical Review A. Perhaps they could be suitable for a journal on the philosophy of science.

This puts a somewhat different slant on the opinions of the editors of PRL. Incidentally, the text above (if it is indeed an official editorial opinion) might well be of interest on the page. Can you clarify its source? (I found: http://freespace.virgin.net/ch.thompson1/Papers/Crasemann-CHT%20correspondence%202004.htm so I guess that is the source. Probably official enough).

Perhaps you should also read my comments in Appendix C of Setting the Record Straight on Quantum Entanglement. To me, what the policy statement amounts to is evidence that the editors and referees do not fully understand the detection loophole, let alone any others. (Looking at the page on Bell's theorem it is not hard to see why!)

There simply does not seem to be any system at present for correcting mistakes. It was decided after Aspect's experiments that QM was right. Aspect had decided that the CHSH inequality was OK because it was reasonable to assume fair sampling and also because he thought he had proved that the bias from this source was, in his experiments, too small to matter. He had also, incidentally, decided that it was OK to subtract accidentals. Many people would now, if pushed, agree that fair sampling cannot be assumed in any optical experiment and that accidentals cannot legitimately be subtracted, yet numerous experiments using tests involving these are currently quoted as supporting quantum entanglement. If you look at the quantum mechanics page you will find that the experimental support for entanglement is one of the main arguments for quantum theory (the link to Bell Test Loopholes there is my recent addition).

Yes, I'm on the opposite side of the fence from the editors of PRL and PRA, but what can I do? I've studied the raw facts while, as far as I can tell, they have relied on opinion. Caroline Thompson 22:44, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Aspect

When you add an entry to a disambiguation page, please provide a link to to article you're referring to. Also, there's no need to explain why you're adding an entry in the article itself—that's what the Edit Summary is for. Anyone who wants to know what links point to the page itself can use what links here. — Gwalla | Talk 22:35, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I wasn't sure about that. There is not yet any page on Alain Aspect. If anyone creates such a page I suppose they would not call it just "Aspect" anyway. I know: I'll edit the page I'd come from instead (to link to Alain_Aspect) and delete the disambiguation entry. Caroline Thompson 11:28, 2 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Don't worry about linking to nonexistent articles. It may prompt somebody to write the article. Don't delete the diambig entry either—it may help people who are searching and don't know his first name (lots of citations only use the last name). — Gwalla | Talk 18:05, 2 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Talk:Relative_motion_theory

Caroline -

I have listed Talk:Relative_motion_theory on Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment. Hopefully some other members will come by and head off the edit problems you're experiencing. Ocon | Talk 17:19, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Right now I'm not involved in this -- my own edits seem to have stayed there. The page (and others by the same user) is down for possible deletion so that may finally solve everything. Caroline Thompson 18:04, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Edit attribution

Hi, Caroline. Edits from 81.103.216.91 have now been reattributed to you. Regards — Kate Turner | Talk 04:19, 2004 Sep 4 (UTC)

Same for 81.103.146.124. Regards — Kate Turner | Talk 08:41, 2004 Sep 4 (UTC)

And the same for your other edit to Loopholes in optical Bell test experiments - sorry about the delay! — Kate Turner | Talk 04:15, 2004 Oct 22 (UTC)

Self-promotion

It is poor form to link to one's own papers on the Wikipedia. If your ideas are sufficiently noteworthy to be noted by an encyclopedia article, it will surely go up without your help. Otherwise, see Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not (point 18 of section 2) and Wikipedia:No original research. -- CYD

CYD, see your talk page. Two out of the three main papers I reference are pubished in refereed journals, so don't count as original research. The fact that they are mine cannot be helped. There are no others that cover the subjects. I'm therefore reverting. Caroline Thompson 08:49, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)