Talk:Small planet radius gap

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Requested move 24 June 2020[edit]

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Moved to Small planet radius gap, weak consensus (non-admin closure) (t · c) buidhe 03:38, 10 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]


Fulton gap → Photoevaporation Valley (Exoplanets) – While the name "Fulton Gap" has seen increased usage recently, its use is primarily being promoted by the associated researchers and press releases associated with their work. Within the scientific community, "photoevaporation valley" or "radius gap" see greater usage, and both the observed feature and the theoretical explanation that is currently favoured predate the Fulton, et al (2017) paper that is credited with 'discovering' the gap, and is the basis for the 'Fulton gap' name. The term 'Fulton gap' is included in the text of the page to recognize this emerging usage, and users should still be able to find this page by searching for the Fulton gap. However, within the scientific community, this term has seen very little usage despite being introduced 3 years ago--in the NASA Astrophysical Data System that indexes abstracts, only one result is returned for "Fulton Gap", and is a non-peer-reviewed proposal abstract. Alphaparrot (talk) 21:31, 24 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Strong oppose to renaming the article to the Photoevaportation valley. It is merely an alternate name for the concept with a similar count as that for Fulton Gap at scholar.google.com. Each has about 31 results. Peaceray (talk) 05:02, 25 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Alternative proposal I would be happy to have this article moved to the Radius gap (note sentence case). There are over a thousand results for this term at scholar.google.com. Peaceray (talk) 05:02, 25 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose alternative proposal: Moving to Radius gap would be inadvisable, as these search results are misleading, and this name choice would violate guidelines about the precision of article names. 'Radius gap' is a term in many fields, and so the larger number of search results includes many unrelated concepts which share the same name. Within the field of exoplanet population statistics alone, there are two different radius gaps discussed in the literature; "Fulton gap" specifically applies to the one between 1.5 and 2 Earth radii, as does "photoevaporation valley" or "photoevaporation radius gap". Also note that while both terms have similar counts on Google Scholar, searching for 'Fulton gap' returns several duplicates as well as entries from other fields; searching for 'photoevaporation valley' returns more unique results that are relevant to the concept discussed on this page. While the field has not reached consensus on single name for this phenomenon, "photoevaporation valley" is more common, has been in use longer, and is also more descriptive. "Fulton gap" also fails the recognizability principle for article naming. A non-specialist who comes across "Fulton gap" (and even a specialist who has not yet encountered the specific researchers beginning to use this term) is unlikely to know what is being referred to; "photoevaporation valley" or "photoevaporation radius gap" within the context of exoplanets are far more likely to be recognizable. Due to emerging usage, 'Fulton gap' should be included in the page text and as a redirect, but due to the above reasons should not be the article title. Alphaparrot (talk) 22:26, 25 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I am trying to assume good faith here, but your statement that the Fulton gap search on Google Scholar returns several duplicates rings false. I counted one duplicate.
If we need to differentiate Radius gap from other fields, then Exoplanet radius gap would do just fine. I see that it is used in the literature to refer to this concept.
Here are the the pertinent searches at Google Scholar so that all may see:
It seems clear to me that Exoplanet radius gap is much straight forward about what the concept than either Fulton gap or photoevaporation valley. In this regard, it fits the Wikipedia article title policy to use use commonly recognizable names: "In Wikipedia, an article title is a natural-language word or expression that indicates the subject of the article."
Peaceray (talk) 05:46, 26 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Response In the "Fulton gap" search results, there are two Peterson, et al (2018) results for the same paper hosted in preprint and published form (these do not represent two distinct uses of term, ergo a duplicate), two instances of the van der Marel (2019) 'Signposts' white paper (again hosted in two locations), two instances of the Weiss, et al (2018) CKS paper "Peas in a Pod" (again two locations), two instances of the Otegi, et al (2020) mass-radius relations paper, plus two results for papers in neurology, one on hospice care, and one in ecology, for a total of 9 spurious results and 22 legitimate unique results. I count one duplicate in the "photoevaporation valley" search results--two instances of the Cloutier, et al (2019) paper on L98-59, one of which is incorrectly attributed to Sara Seager in the search results but is actually just hosted on her webpage--yielding 27 legitimate unique results and one spurious result (31 is an estimate; there are actually 28). I would like to assume good faith as well--perhaps the magic of Google's search engine algorithms is returning distinct sets of search results for the both of us, perhaps as a consequence of the exoplanet literature in my search history.
Exoplanet radius gap is more specific and appropriate than simply Radius gap, but still has the problem that there are two radius gaps in the exoplanet population which see discussion in the literature (often with the same name)--the other is the Neptunian Desert--so we would likely need a disambiguation page. The Neptunian Desert is not associated as strongly with photoevaporation as the 1.5-2 Earth radii gap and likely has distinct underlying physical mechanisms, which has motivated the use of 'photoevaporation valley' in many papers as a way to be more specific about the language we use as astronomers--since it is not clear which radius gap is discussed if one only sees the term 'radius gap'. Alphaparrot (talk) 22:13, 26 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Point taken; I see that the Neptunian Desert is about orbital radius & the Fulton gap/photoevaporation valley is about the radius/diameter of the planet. I would then propose Small planet radius gap.
Failing a reasonable compromise at a title that succinctly summarizes the concept, we have the following considerations (quick & dirty, only looking at titles for duplication):
My point here is that the Fulton gap is in the news & more often shows up in Google results. It is the most commonly recognizable name. Thus, the most common way someone will get to this is via a news article. The people getting here via a scientific article or paper are going to be a small minority. Besides, photoevaporation valley does not exactly roll off the tongue, & is not going to be easy to remember for someone who is not an astronomer, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, or similar specialist. Again, from the WP:COMMONNAME policy: "... an article title is a natural-language word or expression that indicates the subject of the article." Photoevaporation valley fails this latter test as there is nothing in the term that implies planet. The photoevaporation article itself is about the activity of gases as "molecular clouds, protoplanetary disks, or planetary atmospheres" & addresses "the gravitational radius of the disk" but not the radius of a planet.
Thus, I think the the best course here is the Small planet radius gap compromise. Failing that, IMHO, the common name & edit consensus policies would apply here.
Peaceray (talk) 04:00, 27 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Agreement Yes, Small planet radius gap could do the trick. This, along with the presentation of 'photoevaporation valley' in the text as an alternative (noting for posterity that a great many articles have technical-sounding names that don't roll off the tongue, including articles for complex chemical compounds), would ensure that everyone knows what they're getting with the article and can find it without any problem. Both this radius gap and the larger radius gap for the Neptunian Desert are gaps in physical radius, and both also have correlations with orbital radius and incident flux--the latter is simply much more apparent for the Neptunian Desert, since we have found planets within that radius gap at larger orbital radii. The papers describing the small-planet radius gap predict that we will find more planets with radii within the gap at larger orbital distances; our observational limitations however severely limit the number of such planets that could have been observed so far. Alphaparrot (talk) 19:35, 2 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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