Chapter 131 Lively discussion in the astronomy community


Chapter 131 A lively discussion in the astronomy community

After two days of writing the paper in the dormitory, Xu Chuan originally wanted to attend a meeting at the Department of Astronomy on the third day. However, he called Dean Qiu Chen of the School of Astronomy and found out that the meeting had been delayed for some time.

Moreover, after receiving the materials submitted by NTU, the Chinese Astronomical Society took the initiative to transform this meeting from an internal meeting of the School of Astronomy and Space Sciences of NTU directly into a large-scale national astronomical meeting. Everyone will come to the meeting.

The first is to study and discuss the impact of the companion star in Betelgeuse's hydrogen envelope on Betelgeuse. The second is to learn the Xu-Weyl-Berry theorem to accurately calculate the parameter information of distant celestial bodies.

A more accurate calculation method than before is definitely worth learning for the astronomical community.

The person who invented this method is now at Nanjing University. If he is invited to come on stage to give a report and explanation, everyone can listen. Whether you can understand it or not is another matter, but you must show a learning attitude.

As for Nanda, I would definitely be happy to do that.

Organizing such a large-scale conference is crucial to increasing the influence of NTU, whether it is the School of Astronomy and Space Sciences or NTU itself.

A week passed quickly. Xu Chuan wrote two papers and submitted the Xu-Weyl-Berry theorem method for accurately calculating the parameter information of distant celestial bodies.

As for the journal to which he submitted his manuscript, he chose neither a mathematics journal nor an astronomy journal, but the astrophysical journal "Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics".

The English name of this journal is "Annual Review Of Astronomy And Astrophysics". It was founded in 1963 and is published by the publisher of Annual Reviews Inc. in the United States. It receives papers covering the entire field of geoscience, astronomy and astrophysics.

This journal has a huge academic influence in the astrophysics industry. It is a TOP journal and a first-class international journal. It has very high attention and professionalism. It requires high innovation for original articles and has the highest difficulty in passing review.

But again, its impact factor is terrifyingly high.

In 2016, this year, its impact factor index was 34.226, which is ridiculously high.

Although the impact factors of "Nature" and "Science", the two top academic journals, can also be as high as over 40, correspondingly, their astronomy-related sub-journals are not so exaggerated.

For example, the influence of Nature Astronomy, a sub-journal of Nature, is only about 10 points.

Compared with the "Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics", it is a level lower.

Of course, this is also related to the wide range of papers included in "Nature", from biology to medicine, to natural materials, natural astronomy, etc. The range of included papers is quite wide, and it has also spawned numerous sub-journals.

The Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics only includes papers in astronomy and astrophysics.

In Xu Chuan's view, although the Xu-Weyl-Berry theorem's method of accurately calculating parameter information of distant celestial bodies is extended from mathematics, the object it serves is not mathematics, but astrophysics.

So it is appropriate to vote for the "Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics".

Of course, there is no problem in submitting it to a mathematics journal, but if this paper is submitted to a mathematics journal, he will be completely crushed by mathematics in physics.

At least astrophysics is related to physics, with both physical and numerical aspects. In order to balance it out, Xu Chuan chose to submit it to the top journals in astronomy and physics.

Moreover, given the status of the Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics in the astrophysics community, there is no need to worry about sinking this paper.

Of course, when the paper was submitted to the Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Xu Chuan also threw it on the arXiv preprint server for reference, research and communication by other scholars.

After the paper was submitted, Xu Chuan took a short break, but during his break, the paper he posted on the arXiv preprint server caused quite a stir.

As the largest, oldest and most popular preprint server in the world, arXiv has articles from many fields, such as physics, mathematics, computer science, statistics, etc., and astronomy and physics are naturally among them.

Whether you are a student, a professor, or a research institute or laboratory outside academia, perhaps the most cutting-edge knowledge in the current scientific world is a must.

Generally speaking, there are two ways to obtain the most cutting-edge knowledge. One is to order journals that require corresponding knowledge.

For example, "Nature" and "Science".

But ordering these journals is not cheap. Take "Nature" as an example. Reading a Nature article generally costs 20 yuan, which is equivalent to more than 100 yuan.

The price is neither expensive nor cheap. It is not a problem to buy a site license or get reimbursement from most wealthy companies and awesome schools.

But for individuals with scientific research interests or schools in backward areas, this is a problem.

In countries like Malawi and Central Africa, in 2016, the per capita GDP in official data was only US$400 (see about 20 articles). How do you let people play? Do we want knowledge to be concentrated in the hands of a few people like wealth?

In addition, not only schools in these backward areas, but also schools and scientific research institutions in developed countries, as the number of various scientific research documents increases, it becomes increasingly difficult to pay for journal subscriptions.

If nothing else, let’s take China as an example.

In China, the most famous one is CNKI. Although it is not a journal, it is even better than journals in terms of knowledge charging.

This is probably the pain every college student and graduate student feels when writing their graduation thesis.

Nowadays, to check the plagiarism of domestic students' graduation thesis, the characters are required to be within 60,000 words, and the price is about 200 yuan. The plagiarism check system for master's and doctoral thesis, which is within 200,000 characters, costs about 350 yuan.

This price can be said to be quite expensive. Moreover, when a college student is writing his graduation thesis, he may check for plagiarism more than once. Sometimes, if more than once, CNKI can steal thousands of dollars from a college student in one graduation.

Not to mention master's and doctoral students and university professors.

Although paying for knowledge is a normal thing, the fees for knowledge websites such as CNKI and academic journals are rising day by day, leaving many schools and scientific research institutions unable to keep up with the development of academic journals.

It's as if people have always wanted the Internet to be neutral, that is, Internet service providers such as telecom operators and cable TV companies should treat all traffic passing through their networks equally. People don’t want money to stop the spread of knowledge.

Therefore, the scientific community has the ‘Budapest Declaration’, which calls for open access to all new peer-reviewed research and to extend it to all disciplines and countries.

On this basis, preprint websites such as arXiv, BioRxiv, ChemRxiv, and TheWinnower have developed rapidly and have received support from many scientific researchers.

As these preprint websites become larger and larger, there are more and more papers and ideas on them, and many university professors and researchers like to browse these preprint websites.

Use this to gain new inspiration and knowledge from above, or to keep an eye on the progress of other people's research projects.

Basically, these preprint websites can be set up to interest or follow content tracking.

For example, in the physics world, you can set a tag for high-energy physics, particle physics, or condensed matter physics. If someone on the website finds content related to these tags, the website will push it to you as soon as possible.

No, graduate students, professors, and researchers who are interested in astrophysics will receive push notifications from the website immediately.

"A method for accurately calculating parameter information of cosmic objects using the Xu-Weyl-Berry theorem. 》

The title of Xu Chuan's paper has always been simple, but this simple title attracted the attention of most of the scientific researchers who paid attention to this push.

In the scientific community, whether in mathematics, physics, materials, biology, astronomy, etc., the emergence of calculation methods is often far more difficult than the results.

In the astrophysics community, the method of calculating parameter information of cosmic objects has not been updated for a long, long time.

Whether it is the universal gravitation formula, the Hertz-Russell diagram, photometric calculations, transit calculations, or the radial velocity method, they are all things that were developed more than ten years ago or even decades ago in the last century.

These methods have developed to the present, but they already have quite a few flaws.

The biggest problem is naturally that the calculated data is inaccurate.

Take Betelgeuse, one of the most popular observation targets in the astronomical community. Up to now, the astronomical community's definition of its mass deviates so much that it can range from ten times the solar mass to twenty times the solar mass. .

Although there are reasons for insufficient observation methods, the bigger problem is that previous calculation methods can only be accurate to such a value.

Astronomers can no longer use the observed data to further calculate parameter four.

Now a brand new method has emerged. Even if it is posted on a website like arXiv, where most papers and ideas are crap, it is eye-catching enough.

However, when these expectant astronomers downloaded and opened the paper, they were all dumbfounded.

What is this paper about?

The calculation processes in the middle are all symbols of the devil, right?

Are you sure the final conclusion wasn't written randomly?

The hobbyspace website forum is home to a large number of astronomy enthusiasts and astronomers.

The paper posted by Xu Chuan on arXiv caused a heated discussion here.

[Someone read "A method to accurately calculate the parameter information of cosmic objects using the Xu-Weyl-Berry theorem" on arXiv. 》This paper? 】

[I read it, but I couldn’t understand it at all. The mathematics in it is too profound. 】

[I seriously suspect that this is a mathematician who deliberately came to disgust us. Maybe all the calculations in it are wrong, and in the end he just casually wrote a numerical value on it. 】

[That’s not true. I have also read this paper. I know the author. The 18-year-old super mathematical genius who proved the Weyl-Berry conjecture in Princeton some time ago. The Xu-Weyl-Berry theorem can indeed be used to calculate celestial bodies. Parameters, I can guarantee this, but as you said, these calculation processes are too difficult to understand. 】

[If it is true, then we should have a more accurate calculation method in the future, but doesn’t he study mathematics? Why is this paper not placed under the mathematics category? Instead, it was thrown into the astrophysics category. 】

[Maybe this paper is not applied to mathematics, but to celestial bodies in the universe? 】

[But the entire paper is full of mathematical proofs and calculations. I’m afraid no one in the entire astronomical community can understand it. Wouldn’t it be better to put it under the mathematical category? 】

【Who knows.】

It’s cold, I’m in isolation at home...

After taking two shots of the vaccine, there shouldn't be much of a problem.

(End of chapter)

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