OT: GR [LWN.net]

OT: GR

Posted Sep 21, 2006 5:35 UTC (Thu) by roelofs (guest, #2599)
In reply to: WOS4: Quality management in free content by ortalo
Parent article: WOS4: Quality management in free content

... factual evidence (like measuring star light distortion near Mercury to prove some theory - initially highly controversial)

Minor quibble: the theory to which you refer, if I'm not mistaken, is General Relativity, in which case I believe you've conflated two separate tests/predictions: the bending of starlight near the sun (first measured during the total solar eclipse of 1919, IIRC), and the anomalous precession of Mercury's orbit (by an extra 43 arc-seconds per century, again assuming my memory isn't playing tricks on me). Mercury itself has far too little mass to cause lensing measurable even with today's instruments, I believe.

Greg

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OT: GR

Posted Sep 21, 2006 9:19 UTC (Thu) by ortalo (guest, #4654) [Link] (1 responses)

Thanks for correcting (and enlightening) me.
Furthermore, it sounds like a very practical illustration on why, nearly all the time, such writings needs quality review(ers).

OT: GR

Posted Sep 22, 2006 19:53 UTC (Fri) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link]

Good point, but don't forget that "quality" != "expert".

Case in point: I could have written the same correction, but my knowledge of relativity stops roughly at the point where things get interesting (i.e. mathematical).

The "expert bias" problem shouldn't be neglected either. As a somewhat extreme example, if you only allow astrologers to edit the article on astrology, then Wikipedia's much-vaunted neutral PoV is lost -- none of these people will admit that the stuff doesn't work in the first place.