Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Gamma-ray burst/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Karanacs 21:27, 26 May 2009 [1].

Gamma-ray burst[edit]

Nominator(s): Cryptic C62, Jehochman, Daniel Perley
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This article has received attention from several dedicated editors: First in late 2006 by Daniel Perley, an astronomer at Berkeley, then by Jehochman starting in late 2007, then I jumped on when Jehochman asked for my help back in December 2008. Although I originally got involved for the sole purpose of peer reviewing for Jehochman. After the peer review, Jehochman asked me to help expand parts of the article. Suffice it to say that I got completely sucked in. After 3 months of research, I've expanded History of gamma-ray burst research, GRB 970508, and I now have 6 books on gamma-ray astronomy sitting on my desk. I'm sure you'll find issues with the article for Jehochman and I to resolve, but in terms of pure content, I think we're both satisfied (and exhausted). --Cryptic C62 · Talk 21:19, 12 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Tech. Review
  • There are no disambiguation links
    None are needed. Jehochman Talk 00:12, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    *headdesk* No dude, he's saying that there aren't any wikilinks in the article that need to be disambiguated. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 00:25, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    Okay, I get it: don't moon the reviewers. Jehochman Talk 00:28, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • The following refs are duplicated and appear in the ref section more than once, a ref name should be used instead (found using [[WP:REFTOOLS)
  • [[#Piran92|Piran 1992]] [[#Sari99|Sari 1999]] [[#Piran97|Piran 1997]]
Alrighty, I've fixed your issues. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 18:10, 13 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Oppose – The lead needs work. There are a couple of issues remaining, but I don't want to stand in the way here.
    • The first line definition seems awkward to me. The section "occurring in the universe" of this sentence is unnecessary. Do events occur outside the universe? The word "occurring" also seems extraneous here.
      "Do events occur outside the universe?" No, but they can be confined to a specific planet, solar system, or galaxy. I've removed "occurring".
    • The second sentence could also be improved. What is meant by "deep space" in this context? It could be interpreted as interstellar space, for example, and not as occurring on the extragalactic scale. Also, if the bursters occur at random places and at random times, why not just say they occur at random?
      Rewritten.
    • The lead also fails to summarize all of the high-level sections in the article, per WP:LEAD.
    • Likewise, there is an overemphasis on extinction events, spending a full paragraph of the lead.
      Working on it... --Cryptic C62 · Talk 21:41, 13 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • "Drawing of a massive star collapsing to form a black hole. Energy released as jets along the rotation axis form a gamma-ray burst." This wording seems somewhat misleading. The image shows the evolutionary history of a massive star, rather than just the collapse. I think this caption could better explain what the reader is seeing, including directions on how to follow the chronological flow.
      This caption has been rewritten. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 05:18, 18 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • "...that GRBs are isotropic..." Frankly, it is not clear why isotropic is needed here. The text follows by a long explanation of the word, when that explanation could just as easily be used instead. It is also somewhat unlear whether isotropic applies to the GRBs or to their distribution. Perhaps this and the next sentence could be modified to better purpose, since they include some redundancy.
      This is the first mention of the concept of isotropy. The concept is touched upon in 6 other times throughout the article. If the term is not given and clearly defined early on, it will remain confusing for the reader. I did change that sentence a tad, have a look.
    • "...but instead concentrated in..." seems awkward. Perhaps a 'would be' would help, or some other wording.
      Tweaked.
    • "Although the luminosity of the bursts suggested that they had to be originating within the Milky Way..." The text should probably explain why.
      Rewritten to more accurately reflect the source material.
    • "The peak flux distribution was also inconsistent with a local population, indicating that cosmological redshift effects were taking place." This statement is assuming knowledge that the reader may not have. It does not explain how the peak flux distribution is correlated with redshift, nor what is meant by "local population".
      I've taken that bit out. It was added by an IP who may have worked with Piran. The journal article does sum up the isotropy bit quite nicely, but I can't find any mention of 'peak flux'. All the material I've read seems to agree that the isotropic distribution was the first strong evidence of cosmological bursts. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 04:03, 16 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • "considered many distinct objects"; doesn't seem to need 'distinct'.
      Added "classes of".
    • "Researchers specifically looked for"; doesn't seem to need 'specifically'.
      I disagree. With "specifically", it's clear that within the previous list of objects, researchers were looking for these specific qualities. Without "specifically", it just seems like two separate, unrelated lists.
    • "orbital brightness modulation" seems like jargon. I know what it means but some might not.
      It refers to variations in brightness as a function of an object's orbit, yes? I've replaced this item and "fast time scale flickering" with "variations in brightness."
    • "As early as 1980, ..." The need for this statement about the earliness is unclear. Is it because the gamma ray technology was not sufficiently developed at that time? Or because it happened seven years after the first paper was published?
      Erm, no. I just wanted to provide some kind of timeline for when this research group got together. Reworded.
    • "...intended to serve the sole purpose of studying X-rays..." could just be "...intended to study X-rays...".
      Changed. Hee, sorry, some of this reads more like a story than a scientific historical account.
    • I don't think "...could easily serve..." needs the 'easily'. It seems vague and is perhaps from the viewpoint of a specialist.
      Yup. Changed to "also".
      Please check if the "also" satisfies Tony's eliminating redundancy criteria, under "Additive terms". There are 12 instances of "further", "also" and "in addition" scattered through the text, many of which could probably be culled.
      I think you're misinterpreting what Tony is saying here. He's not saying you should never use "also", he's saying you shouldn't just plop it at the beginning of sentences as we often do with phrases like "in addition" and "furthermore". "Also" as I have used it here works just fine. I have, however, gone through the text and changed a few instances of these redundant terms. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 22:08, 20 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      • Unfortunately I will have to disagree, both in your interpretation of my wording and of what I think I understand about Tony's writeup. For example, the following appear additive and I think they would work without an 'also':
        • The amount of radiation between these peaks, or "subpulses," also varies from burst to burst.
        • Short GRBs, while also extragalactic, appear to come from a lower-redshift population and are less luminous than long GRBs.
        • Not only are GRBs extragalactic events, but they are also observable to the limits of the visible universe...
        • It may also be the first observation of a GRB with a black hole-neutron star (BH-NS) or NS-NS merger progenitor.
      Sorry, I just think this is really stupid. When those sentences don't have "also", it sounds as if they're starting a discussion of something entirely different. That's not the case! I know that there are ways of using these sorts of words redundantly. I'm not claiming to be entirely innocent of it, either. But these sentences, when read in context, work when "also" is included. If you want to start some ridiculous "also" genocide, go ahead, but I refuse to take part. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 18:56, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      • Okay. I'll let somebody else mediate whether the present wording satisfies 1a. Thanks.—15:50, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
    • No offense intended here, but I think the article needs some general editing so that it will satisfy the 1a criteria. See, for example, User:Tony1/How to satisfy Criterion 1a. Has this article been through the Peer Review process?—RJH (talk) 16:39, 15 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      None taken. When I first started working on it, I did a fairly thorough unofficial peer review/prose tweak of the material that Jehochman wrote. However, I eventually started writing material of my own, which wasn't reviewed as thoroughly as Jehochman's writing. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 19:57, 15 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • "Two major breakthroughs..." I only count one breakthrough in the text: the redshift determination.
      Whoops. Added the bit about the radio afterglow. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 16:52, 18 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • "...or the burst did not emit energy in all directions, but instead in very narrow beams which happened to have been pointing directly at earth." This sentence doesn't read as smoothly as it should. You have an 'or' case followed by a 'but' instance with a redundant 'instead' thrown in. I don't think you can rule out the possibility that the energy is radiated in all directions. Merely that the flux varies by direction.
      I can't, but Schilling can. Direct quote: "Maybe the energy from the explosion was radiated in a rather narrow beam and the burst looked bright only because the beam happened, by coincidence, to be pointed in our direction.... If gamma ray bursts do indeed radiate their energy in two opposite beams, each spreading with an angle of some 15 degrees, ... in the case the [sic] energy production was not 3 x 1053 ergs but only 3 x 1051 ergs, which can be compared to the energy of a supernova explosion, which is in agreement with the theory of the merging of neutron stars. It is an intriguing idea but there is also a downside. If we on earth only see those gamm ray bursts that happen to have the right orientation, then there must be many more gamm ray bursts in the universe than have been observed up until now. For each burst from which one of the beams happens to be aimed at the earth, there are a hundred others we cannot see.... The mysterious explosions may be hundred times less luminous but they would also be a hundred times more numerous. That also means the total amount of energy that is produced over time by all the gamma ray bursts together is exactly the same." (Schilling 153-156) I did, however, tweak the sentence for clarity. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 21:02, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      • Well "...the burst looked bright only because the beam happened..." does imply that it can be viewed in other directions, whereas your wordiing did not. But the rewrite works for me. Thanks.
    • In the "Current missions" section, it would be interesting to know the angular resolution of these telescopes. I.e. how well do they narrow down the GRB locations? The last two paragraphs of this section do not explain the purpose or benefits of the additional missions.
      Added angular resolutions. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 02:26, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • "towards the direction of a new burst" -> "toward a new burst"
      Changed. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 22:13, 20 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • "vast amounts of data" is unnecessary vagueness.
      Changed to "new data". --Cryptic C62 · Talk 16:52, 18 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • "Researchers generally consider two broad classes of GRBs." It is unclear what 'consider' means here. Is this saying they categorize all GRBs into two broad classes? Or those two are the only types of GRBs they look at?
      The former. Reworded. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 16:52, 18 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • "...the majority of bursts..." is vague.
      Changed to ~70% per the source. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 22:13, 20 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • "low-metallicity" needs clarification, per WP:Jargon.
      Linked to metallicity. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 22:13, 20 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • Earth and Universe are inconsistent in their capitalization. Please use one style consistently.
      All instances of "earth" changed to "Earth". All instances of "Universe" changed to "universe".
    • "...accretion-induced collapse of older neutron stars..." You might mention they collapse into a black hole, assuming they don't form something more exotic.
    • "However, in 2007 the detection of 39 short gamma-ray bursts could not be associated with gravitational waves which are hypothesized to be observable in such compact mergers." Why the 'however' here, when it is immediately contradicted by the next sentence?
      Fixed by removing "however".
    • "...relativistic shock wave..." needs explanation, per WP:Jargon.
      Paraphrased and wikified.
    • "Therefore, a substantial fraction of GRBs are expected to occur in such clusters." Is this asserting that a significant proportion of progenitors must be Wolf-Rayet stars? Aren't WR stars highly evolved so that they have high metallicity? Or does this fit into the collapsar model? I am unclear.
      This fits into the collapsar model. I'll try to make that clear.
    • "The explosion had the power of about 9,000 ordinary supernovae..." Is this based on the total energy of the explosion, or the collaminated energy being observed along the jet path? Is the reference scale based on Type Ia supernovae?
      I wrote what the source said. I understood that they were referring to total energy. Noted.
      • Supernovae can be variable in their energy output. It might make sense to list the estimated output using a primary source
    • The length of the External links section seems quite excessive. Are all of these justified? Can most of these be converted into cites or moved to appropriate articles?
      Due to the nature of the subject, there are a large amount of high impact websites. We've organized the list by topic. We could prune the list, but none of these are spam. I have to think about how to handle this. Perhaps we can migrate some of the links to other articles. Jehochman Talk 18:53, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    Sorry I can not lend my support at present.—RJH (talk) 19:50, 13 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    Pfft, what is there to apologize for? :) --Cryptic C62 · Talk 19:57, 15 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'm pretty much done with my review now. I'll check back later. Thanks.—RJH (talk) 20:58, 19 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments - sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 13:51, 15 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    Cool, thanks mate. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 19:57, 15 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments.. Great article. Please somebody check the copyedits I've made in the text, lest I've misunderstood something. I want to support, but I'd like a couple of minor issues clarified first, on the principle that our articles are supposed to be comprehensible to high school kids and even to me. Could the following details be made clear in the article, please?
  • The first caption makes me wonder if massive as applied to a star is a technical term here, or is just used as a way of saying "ginormous", or dense or something. If it's technical, it ought to be linked. If it isn't, it ought not to be used here, because it's confusing.
    Linked to Star#Massive star. Jehochman Talk 23:07, 18 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • History section: error box. ¿Qué?
    I've stolen a snippet from GRB 970508 to help explain what it is. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 22:16, 18 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Current missions section: I won't insist on this, but I think the sentence The mission objectives include "crack[ing] the mysteries of the stupendously powerful explosions known as gamma-ray bursts is uncommonly useless. Having the GLAST mission in this section already states that cracking the GRB mystery is part of that mission's objective. And in any case we've already been told what GRBs are. Worst, the particular formulation enforces the ugliness of "crack[ing]". Find another quote perhaps, if you want one at all? (And why indeed have one at all, when the other missions don't?)
    Replaced the quote with a more informative snippet. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 22:16, 18 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Back with a little more later. Bishonen | talk 06:24, 18 April 2009 (UTC).[reply]

  • I've no more comments, except that to explain redshift—the term and the usefulness—down in section "Notable gamma-ray bursts" is too late. Should be taken care of in the "History" section. Also, again, please check my changes, as I may have misunderstood something. Bishonen | talk 18:45, 18 April 2009 (UTC).[reply]
    Fixed by moving the definition up and only wikilinking the first instance of redshift. Jehochman Talk 01:26, 19 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • OK, I'm happy. Support. Bishonen | talk 08:48, 20 April 2009 (UTC).[reply]


  • Support, after a bit of copy-editing [2], feel free to change. Cirt (talk) 10:05, 18 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    I made one minor change [3], but other than that it all looks good. Thanks mate! --Cryptic C62 · Talk 16:52, 18 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    No worries, and you're welcome, nice work on the article. Cirt (talk) 00:44, 19 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Basic cleanup and copyediting needed throughout, a sample section:
  • This event was localized within 4 hours of its discovery, allowing research teams to begin making observations much sooner than any previous burst. By comparing photographs of the error box — a small area around the specific position to account for the error in the position — taken on May 8 and May 9 (the day of the event and the day after), one object was found to have increased in brightness. Between May 10 and May, Charles Steidel recorded the spectrum of the variable object from the W. M. Keck Observatory.
WP:MOSNUM issues (4 hours should be four hours), WP:EMDASHes are not spaced on wiki, and there is a typo (Between May 10 and May, ... what?) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:04, 19 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Fixed these particular issues, and any other wayward em dashes. More eyes are needed for proofing. I am bad at it. Jehochman Talk 01:33, 19 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I scanned the article and changed one "10" to "ten", but there were some numerals I kept in place for comparison: "The time history of GRB 790305b, recorded by Venera 12, displayed 22 cycles of a period of 8 seconds, as well as quasi-periodic pulsations at roughly 23 ms. GRB 771029 also strongly exhibited periodicity with 6 cycles of a period of 4.2 seconds" --Cryptic C62 · Talk 01:40, 19 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Image review: no problems here, all okay. Jappalang (talk) 06:54, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Notable GRBs: After putting some thought into it, I think the Notable GRBs section is totally useless, as it can only ever provide redundant information. If "notable" is taken to mean "notable enough to appear in this article," then they should have already appeared in the article (which is true in most cases). If "notable" is taken to mean "notable enough for inclusion on Wikipedia," then this section is already covered by Category:Gamma-ray bursts. My intuition is to delete it altogether. Any thoughts? --Cryptic C62 · Talk 14:28, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Lemme read and I can add my 2c. I am inclined to agree and delete it. Surely the notable ones should be sprinkled through the text at relevant points in the discussion, highlighting why they are notable. Casliber (talk · contribs) 15:26, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The first two sentences should be swapped, as the first doesn't define but qualify or expand upon what is stated in the second sentence. Thus a better reading would be - "Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are the name given to flashes of gamma rays emanating at random from distant galaxies; they are the most luminous electromagnetic events in the universe since the Big Bang." - thus the first sentence should say what they are.
Swapped 'em. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 16:05, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Since then, hundreds of theoretical models have been created in an attempt to explain these bursts - "hundreds?" really?? - also why not simply "Since then, hundreds of theories have been proposed to explain these bursts"
Yes, really. Hundreds. Shortened, but I kept "models". --Cryptic C62 · Talk 16:05, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Many speculative theories were advanced to... - are not all theories speculative (hence why they are theories) and hence the adjective here is redundant?
Quite right. Dropped the adjective. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 16:05, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

OK I have read down to Galactic vs. extragalactic models - I can also see a cite needed tag. I really need to sleep now but will come back to it. This is doable, but the prose does need a bit of massaging. I feel we can make it flow more smoothly and reduce repetition without losing meaning. More tomorrow. Casliber (talk · contribs) 15:53, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Cool. Another editor added some cool new information about the very recent GRB 090423. I've read over the material he's cited, and it seems to check out. We're just waiting for a more definitive article to back up the claim. That's why I added the citation needed tag. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 16:05, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I have read the lead over and am mulling over whether para 3, which is more about what they might be, might be better inserted after para 1. I am pondering whether the lead is clear enough in stating what these things are. This is one of the trickier articles I have read in trying to balance plainer english with accuracy. Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:29, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Now having read it, I can see the conflict on the notable section. I feel that this is better merged into a history section somehow. There can be a subarticle which is a list of GRBs linked from that section too. Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:41, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Ultimately close to supporting but I need to think about the lead - if anything it needs to spell out in plain terms what GRBs might be. I need to think on it. I will also look at the prose again. Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:43, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • Hey Casliber. I appreciate your feedback, but I don't think another read-through of the prose would be a good way to spend your time. I've been discussing the article with User:Daniel Perley. Sometime in the next few days, Dan should be posting some suggestions for the article, some of which will involve substantially rewriting entire sections. Any nitpick concerns you might have will probably be lost in the shuffle. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 22:43, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Conditional support on improving the lede per Casliber's comments. --mav (talk) 21:22, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments I think it's great that this is being considered for a featured article (and very timely - the news on GRB 090423, whose high-redshift status I can assure you is quite genuine, is about to hit the press in (we hope) a big way) though I think there is significant work to be done before it's up to the standard of, for example, the Stars article. I'm totally on board with helping out on this project, though I'm currently too busy to work on this until probably next week. In the meantime, for those interested in looking into it now I do have a few comments.
    • Neutrality - The emphasis right now has some apparent "tilts" (for example, INTEGRAL's importance is greatly overemphasized) and overly uses names of individual researchers and groups. That sort of thing is great for popular documentaries but for an article we want to stick to the facts; I think we should only be bringing up specific research teams if it's absolutely inseparable from the result, otherwise it makes the article seem tilted toward particular groups and suggests that others were not involved with the effort (and almost all big discoveries have been the results of large groups; and often more than one large group in competition with others).
    • Up to date - Some sections seem like they're based mostly on pre-afterglow articles. The section on GRB classification is probably the biggest offender... the only classification of which there is broad agreement in the community is the distinction between long and short GRBs (and that short GRBs are further subdivided into SGR flares, which are usually not classified as GRBs at all unless they're very unusually bright, and the "true" short GRBs.) Things like the number of pulses have not been shown to be reflecting of any real underlying physical variation, and in fact I suspect the opposite could be easily demonstrated.
    • Emphasis - I think too much attention is devoted to some topics and not enough to others.
      • For example, the History section is too long considering that there is a separate article on this subject now. This could be shortened to (paragraph 1) discovery (paragraph 2) isotropy on the sky (paragraph 3) controversy over association with Galactic neutron stars [this part is fine as-is so far] (paragraph 4-5) discovery of afterglows with a segway into current status of the field (I think the Current Missions should be shortened to a sentence or two and merged.)
      • After the History section, I then think we should stick to explaining the current status of the field without long segways into historical development. So if there is a section on "Galactic versus Extragalactic models" it should focus on the real distinction between SGRs and "real" GRBs rather than a second summary of the great debate. (In fairness, I should say I think this particular choice of organization is my own fault!)
      • Progenitors needs a bigger discussion, even though we already have articles on Collapsar and GRB Progenitors. This is, I suspect, what most people are interested in finding out when they read this article. More attention should be devoted to short GRBs and the many models still bouncing around to explain them.
      • Emission mechanisms need more discussion of the afterglow, which is where we get most of our information about the event from. The prompt emission (as in, the actual burst itself) could also incorporate some new knowledge gained from the study of the prompt optical emission of GRB 080319B.
      • I agree that at this stage the section on Notable Gamma-ray bursts should probably be eliminated from this article. I do think this is a useful reference for looking up articles on particular events, as this field does (still) tend to progress mainly from insights gleaned from one event at the time, but this is probably best served by having its own page. The truly important GRBs (e.g. 970508, 980425, 050509B, 060614, 080319B) can be mentioned elsewhere in the text.
        I've gone ahead and cut the section from the article, as no one seemed to want to include it. I've also linked to and created List of gamma-ray bursts, though obviously a lot of work needs to be done bringing it up to speed. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 02:45, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
(As I said, I'm quite willing to do my part in pursuing these things including providing extensive referencing from the academic literature, but I won't have the chance for at least a few days, so if someone else would like to take a crack at it (or disagrees with my suggestions and wants to air that before we actually do any major editing) please feel free to go ahead.)
Daniel Perley (talk) 23:31, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think we're in a rush. Why don't you take a crack at it? It's good to see that you're still watching the article. Jehochman Talk 23:35, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, it is the progenitor bit that needs some more emphasis somehow - i.e. what the things come from. Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:56, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
OK - to start with I made some quick edits to the new table (much more needs to be done). Major work on the primary article will have to wait until next week when I get back from travel. Daniel Perley (talk) 08:13, 1 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Cool beans. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 16:06, 4 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Withdrawal

What does everyone think about withdrawing this article from FAC? It seems like what Dan wants to do will involve a major revamping of the article, and afterwards we might want to take it through Peer Review. We could then simply copy the relevant concerns to the talk page. Any thoughts? --Cryptic C62 · Talk 16:41, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Either way. I actually didn't think it was too far off. Casliber (talk · contribs) 21:04, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I think we should finish the review, and if he wants to edit it later, by all means, he is welcome to do so. The article is what it is. It may not be perfect, but I am not aware of any better introduction to this topic available on the web. Jehochman Talk 23:18, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Well, for what it's worth, I've now finished all the main work I was planning to do on the primary article. I don't plan to do anything else major to the text other than relatively small improvements to existing content and adding references (and maybe images). Admittedly there have been many changes since the previous revision, and I'm not sure how much this will affect the featured status consideration - a lot of checks may need to be redone (at the very least I'm quite sure I've introduced a fair number of typographical errors and not-optimally-worded sentences). At any rate, I'm now quite happy with the status of the page (whereas before I found quite a few things in error - see above), though obviously I'm perhaps not the most neutral observer anymore. But if it might help, I could ask some other researchers to take a look at the page. Daniel Perley (talk) 10:10, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Perspective from other researchers would be cool, but I don't think it's imperative. At least show it to Bloom, he's sure to give you an A at this point. ;). In any case, I'll read through the article and tweak what you've written, then the FAC will continue as normal, I suppose. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 15:14, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Josh hasn't got back to me yet, but I got some comments from another student in Germany who had several good comments, which I've been working in. Daniel Perley (talk) 08:38, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]


Leaning towards support I'm unfamiliar with GRBs, so I'm here mostly to comment on the article's accessibility to interested, but ignorant readers like myself. Let me say first that I thought the "History" section did an excellent job of conveying the initial confusion over GRBs which is slowly being resolved. I also appreciated how later in the article, it was clearly explained what the different issues that need to be investigated are (for example, in the "Emissions mechanisms" section). I have just a few small things:

  • The sources of most GRBs are billions of light years away - From where exactly?
    Well, the first sentence of the lead says that they originate in distant galaxies. Do you think this should be repeated? --Cryptic C62 · Talk 03:49, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm sorry, I meant "light years away from where?" Earth? Solar System? Milky Way? Awadewit (talk) 02:59, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    Ah, I see. Added "from Earth".
  • A subclass of GRBs (the "short" bursts) appear to originate from a different process, possibly the merger of neutron stars orbiting in a binary system. - The first couple of times I read this, I thought it meant "orbiting a binary system" - I was a bit slow to realize that the stars were the two stars IN the system. Could this be reworded?
    Done. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 04:13, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Swift Spacecraft - Do you think we could say a little more in the caption? Is there some interesting factoid about it that we could mention here?
    I expanded it a little bit. I tried to pick a fairly neutral / non-promotional fact. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 03:48, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    Well, it could be a bit more exciting, but ok. Awadewit (talk) 02:59, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • File:Grb profiles.png - It is actually fairly difficult to read the details on this image at the current resolution (519x519). It was hard for me to read what was on the axes. Is there a way to obtain a higher resolution image?
    It looks like no higher resolution of this figure exists on the web as the primary image source seems to also be 519x519. I might be able to create a new one though. Daniel Perley (talk) 11:00, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    I've replaced the image with a higher resolution and (hopefully) clearer version made using archival BATSE data. Daniel Perley (talk) 03:12, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    Thank you. Awadewit (talk) 02:59, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've added a few "fact" tags to statements that I think should be sourced - the rationales were included in the edit summaries.
    All these statements have now been appropriately referenced. Daniel Perley (talk) 11:00, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for writing such a clear, informative article. Awadewit (talk) 02:21, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • When I was reading the article, I moved a lot of the citations after commas per WP:PUNC, but now I see many are again before commas. Can this be fixed again? Awadewit (talk) 02:59, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    I just ran through the article and couldn't find any pre-comma refs. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 16:11, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    Someone fixed them. Awadewit (talk) 01:11, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Support An excellent article, informative, well-written and well-referenced. A few minor suggestions:

  • Some people might not know the difference between the adjectives "Galactic" and "galactic". You might want to explain somewhere near the beginning (perhaps in the Vela section) that Galactic refers to the Milky Way. I know that you have a wikilink there, but something explicit might be better.
    I changed all references to "Galactic" to mention the Milky Way explicitly since this does appear to be a point of confusion for people, with the exception of "Galactic plane" and "Galactic center" which I think are clear in context. Daniel Perley (talk) 08:38, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Re:the lead, some people might not know the expected lifetime of the Sun. Perhaps replace with something like "a typical burst releases as much energy in a few seconds as the Sun has released in five billion years".
    Changed to "ten billion year" lifetime. Daniel Perley (talk) 08:38, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This article was especially satisfying for me, because my very first research project was scanning old glass photographs at Harvard for GRBs. Thanks! Proteins (talk) 16:39, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment: I was asked to do another round of copy-editing. But I noticed there are now large chunks of material, paragraphs, without cites - particularly in the History subsection, but also the last subsection. Why is this? Cirt (talk) 17:52, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Lots of sentences now start out with "Because of the..." this writing could be improved upon. Cirt (talk) 17:58, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • A Gamma ray burst researcher, User:Daniel Perley, helped us balance the article. He felt we were over emphasizing certain things, and neglecting others. There were substantial content changes. He and User:Cryptic C62 are working on the references now, I think. Jehochman Talk 18:34, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      • Perhaps the FAC should be tabled/restarted/closed for a later date, or some other option, until the article is fully referenced properly? Cirt (talk) 20:14, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
        • I think the number of unreferenced statements is small enough that if we just list them here, they could be fixed within a day or two. Jehochman Talk 20:42, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
          • Hopefully. Ideally it would have been best to avoid substantial content changes of the article while at FAC, that's more something appropriate for the peer review process. Cirt (talk) 20:44, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
            • Well, our goal is to create the best article, not to get some FA bling. Daniel Perley was very kind to help, and we weren't about to turn him away. Let's list the problems and fix them directly. Jehochman Talk 20:51, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
              • Added some {{fact}} tags. I did a bit of copyediting throughout - but the recent substantial content changes also appear to have introduced some awkward wording. I removed a lot of "However...", there are still multiple awkward sentences that start with "Because...", "Because of ...", these should be restructured. Cirt (talk) 21:00, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
                • I'm disappointed that Cirt seems to have just added "fact" tags at the ends of paragraphs rather than inserting them at the ends of particular claims and explaining why those need citations per WP:When to cite. As that policy states, "Not every statement in an article needs a citation". I think that a more careful placement of the tags with a detailed edit summary or perhaps an explanation on the talk page would help the editors more. Awadewit (talk) 01:11, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
                  • Well, I was basically done with referencing, but I see I did miss a couple lines, such as the first reference to 980425's SN association, which isn't specifically cited (though the reference is mentioned later when the SN connection is actually discussed.) In some other cases the reference is in the previous sentence and it seemed redundant to mention it twice, but I can do that too. I'm not sure I see that "there are large chunks of material, paragraphs, without cites", though - in a couple cases I was using the wikilinks as de-facto cites, such as the statements about 080319B and 090423 (click on the wikilinks for each burst for the same statment with references)... but if that's not standard policy I can provide direct citations as well, which is easy enough. All other paragraphs have numerous citations. Anyway, I'll take care of this shortly. .Daniel Perley (talk) 04:46, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
                    • Opinions, data and statistics, and statements based on someone's scientific work should be cited and attributed to their authors in the text. So yes, thank you Daniel Perley (talk · contribs) for agreeing to help out with improving the referencing on this article, and please do keep us posted. Cirt (talk) 05:49, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
                      • OK, I added references for almost all of these (or moved the reference from elsewhere to a place where it was clearer what statement it was referring to.) In a couple cases I just removed the tag because the reference was either in the same sentence or the previous one and the text explicitly says "In this model," or "The authors claim" which I think is pretty clear. A couple cases are still without references which are somewhat challenging: (1) The first is about the complexity of some profiles, which has become a sort of self-evident thing (i.e. just look at the figure) although there are probably papers from the '70s and review articles that say as much, but I haven't found one yet. It's a bit of a throwaway statement that could be removed if necessary, though. (2) The statement about the relative danger of short bursts (vs. long bursts) is based on a poster at a meeting I attended, the abstract/title/author of which I have not been able to find online. I will continue to try, though. Daniel Perley (talk) 10:03, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
                        The Fishman and Meegan 1995 review article summarizes this pretty well, actually, so (1) is set. Daniel Perley (talk) 10:21, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
                        Found the appropriate reference for the second one, too. Daniel Perley (talk) 00:40, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
                      • (Also, if there are any other statements in the article that are lacking citations, let me know. Some things seem "self-evident" or "established knowledge" to someone in the field that are anything but to the general public...) Daniel Perley (talk) 10:03, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Impressive, but needs fine-grained fixing. Disappointed to find more than fine-grained issues in the lead, actually (third bullet).

  • "Their duration typically lasts for a few seconds"—"is typically a"
  • Perhaps remove "emitting" in first para (unsure, but do if possible).
  • A subclass appear?
  • "The sources of most GRBs are billions of light years away from Earth. Because of these vast distances, GRBs must be extremely energetic events (a typical burst releases as much energy in a few seconds as the Sun will in its entire 10 billion year lifetime) and also extremely rare (a few per galaxy per million years[1])." Is that logical (the "Because")? Do you mean <for us to observe them, they must be extr. energetic>? And why does distance from us suggest rarity over time? If the latter issue is to do somehow with the "mass extinction" point, later, it's unclear.
  • "their discovery" ... not the discovery of the Vela satellites, of course, but I had to slow down in reading the clause because of this fuzzy back-reference.

Then just at random:

  • "and is still operational"—needs an "as of 2009".
  • per yer.
  • "6" but "sixteen".
  • "Types of Gamma-Ray Bursts" section: takes a dive for the worse. Title case? (MoS says, quite rightly, that an abbreviation, such as GRB, requires no caps when spelled out.) The text that follows is missing "a" and "the" in a few places. "a simple". "variationS". Perhaps "emission" can be a singular quantity, but struck me as odd.
  • very little.
  • "other, relatively nearby galaxies". Wondering why "other" and "relatively" can't be dropped.

A nit-picker is required—someone whose unfamiliar with the text thus far. It's not a long job. Tony (talk) 15:45, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed most of these. A few specific notes:
  • "Do you mean <for us to observe them, they must be extr. energetic>?" ---- Correct - this is not a cause-and-effect relationship but an observation-to-conclusion inferrence. I don't want to burden the lead by splitting off too many independent sentences, but to make this more clear I changed the operative word from "Because" to "implying".
  • "And why does distance from us suggest rarity over time? If the latter issue is to do somehow with the 'mass extinction' point, later, it's unclear." ---- The same number of events, if coming from a large volume, implies a lower physical rate. If all GRBs came from our galaxy that would imply a large per-galaxy rate of thousands per year, for example. If GRBs are observable anywhere in the universe that indicates that only a few hundred out of the billions and billions of galaxies manage to produce a GRB in a given year. This is explained more in the actual text (and it not vital for the reader to understand now, but the three statements in this sentence are related in this way). If you feel it is confusing enough that readers will become confused reading the lead then I suppose we could remove the inferrence line completely to not show the connections of the statements.
  • variationS ---- Maybe this is a difference between scientific and colloquial English, but the way this is phrased in the literature is always as variation, singular. I would be reluctant to change this.
  • Perhaps "emission" ---- In a similar vein, this is always "emission" singular in science when referring to radiation. "Emissions" plural refers to gaseous emissions. (As I understand it.)
Daniel Perley (talk) 00:37, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Conditional support as long as the list of comments from above have been fixed. More articles like this should be featured (although the redlinks should be at least redirrected). Nergaal (talk) 15:33, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: A typical event lasts for duration of a few seconds, but can range from milliseconds to nearly an hour. implies that a typical event can range from milliseconds to nearly an hour. Suggest The durations range from a few milliseconds to nearly an hour and the typical event lasts for a few seconds. --Ettrig (talk) 07:10, 23 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    Incorporated. Good suggestion. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 14:54, 23 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support (Comment)- I was looking forward to adding my support for this FAC but I am disappointed to find—at this late stage—annoying little problems with the prose. For example, I cannot understand this clause: "though there may have difficulties explaining all features of the afterglow very shortly after the gamma-ray burst has occurred". And, there is inconsistent usage of "though" and "although" throughout the article. I found one redundant "also" which I nipped out but one or two others remain which are suspect. This would make a fantastic FA—it just needs an hour or two of more work on the writing. Graham Colm Talk 10:52, 24 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm currently doing a copyedit of the article. I'm done through the Types of Bursts section. I'll notify you (and Tony) when I'm done, then we can pick at specific phrases like the one you've mentioned. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 20:40, 24 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I have this page, and the article on my Watchlist.Graham Colm Talk 20:54, 24 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Done with my copyedit. I happened to touch upon the phrase you highlighted; care to have another look? --Cryptic C62 · Talk 19:52, 26 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support added. Thanks for a fascinating contribution. Graham Colm Talk 20:20, 26 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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