Chapter 131 Lively Discussions in the Astronomical Community

After writing the paper for two days in the dormitory, Xu Chuan wanted to attend the meeting of 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 was delayed again.

Moreover, after receiving the materials reported by Nanjing University, the China Astronomical Society took the initiative to change this meeting from an internal meeting of the School of Astronomy and Space Science of Nanjing University to a large-scale national astronomical conference. At that time, some bigwigs in the domestic astronomical community and related institutions will come to attend the meeting.

First, they will study and discuss the impact of the companion star in the hydrogen envelope of Betelgeuse on Betelgeuse, and second, they will learn the method of using 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. Everyone can listen to him and give a report and explanation. Whether they can understand it or not is another matter, but the attitude of learning must be put on.

As for Nanjing University, it must be happy.

Organizing such a large-scale conference is crucial to enhancing the influence of Nanjing University, whether it is the School of Astronomy and Space Science or Nanjing University itself, it can improve a lot.

A week passed quickly. After Xu Chuan finished writing two papers, he submitted the method of the Xu-Weyl-Berry theorem to accurately calculate the parameter information of distant celestial bodies.

As for the journal to submit, he did not choose a mathematics journal or an astronomy journal, but chose the astrophysics journal "Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics".

The English name of this journal is "Annual Review Of Astronomy And Astrophysics". It was founded by 1ual Reviews Inc. and accepts manuscripts in the fields of geophysics, astronomy, and astrophysics.

This journal has a huge academic influence in the field of astronomy and astronomy. It is a TOP journal, a world-class journal with high attention and professionalism. It requires high innovation for original articles and is extremely difficult to pass the review.

But at the same time, its impact factor is terribly high.

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

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

For example, the influence of Nature Astronomy, a subsidiary of Nature, is only about 10 points.

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

Of course, this is also related to the wide range of papers included in Nature, from biology to medicine, to natural materials and natural astronomy, etc. The range of papers included is quite wide, and many sub-journals have been derived.

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

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

So it is appropriate to submit it to the Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Of course, it is also okay to submit it to a mathematics journal, but if this paper is submitted to a mathematics journal again, he will be completely crushed by mathematics in physics.

And astrophysics is at least related to physics, and he is a double-cultivator of physics and mathematics. In order to balance it, Xu Chuan chose to submit it to the top journal of astrophysics.

Moreover, with 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 submitting the paper to the Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Xu Chuan also posted it to the arXiv preprint server for other scholars to refer to, study and communicate.

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

As the world's largest, oldest and most popular preprint server, arXiv has articles from many fields, such as physics, mathematics, computer science and statistics, and astrophysics is naturally among them.

Whether it is a student, a professor, or a research institute or laboratory outside the academic community, perhaps the most cutting-edge knowledge in the current scientific community is a must.

And there are generally two ways to obtain the most cutting-edge knowledge. One is to subscribe to the journals corresponding to the required knowledge.

For example, "Nature" and "Science".

But it is not cheap to subscribe to these journals. Take Nature as an example. It usually costs 20 million yuan to read one Natures article, which is equivalent to more than 100 yuan.

This price is neither expensive nor cheap. It is not a problem to buy a site license or reimbursements in most wealthy companies and awesome schools.

But for those individuals who are interested in scientific research or schools in backward areas, it is a big problem.

For countries like Malawi and Central Africa, in 2016, the official data showed that the per capita GDP was only 400 US dollars (about 20 articles). How can you let them play? Do you want to let knowledge be concentrated in the hands of a few people like wealth?

In addition, it is not just the schools in these backward areas, even the schools and scientific research institutions in developed countries, with the increasing number of various scientific research documents, it is becoming increasingly difficult to pay the fees for subscribing to journals.

Let’s not talk about other things, let’s take China as an example.

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

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

Nowadays, the character check for graduation thesis of domestic students requires less than 60,000 words, and the price is about 200 yuan, while the master's and doctoral thesis check system requires less than 200,000 characters, and the price is about 350 yuan.

This price can be said to be quite expensive.

Moreover, when a college student writes a graduation thesis, he may check for plagiarism more than once. Sometimes, if there are too many, CNKI can extort thousands of yuan from a college student in one graduation.

Not to mention master's and doctoral students and professors of universities.

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

Just as people have always hoped that the Internet would 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 also do not want to block the spread of knowledge because of money.

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

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

As the scale of these preprint websites grows, there are more and more papers and ideas on them, and many university professors and researchers like to browse these preprint websites.

In order to obtain new inspiration and knowledge from them, or to keep an eye on the progress of other people's research projects.

And these preprint websites can basically be set to be interested in or follow the content tracking.

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

Look, graduate students, professors, and researchers who pay attention to astrophysics received the website's push as soon as possible.

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

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

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

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

Whether it is the universal gravitational formula, the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, the luminosity calculation, the transit calculation, or the radial velocity method, these are actually things from more than a decade or even decades ago in the last century.

These methods have actually had considerable defects since their development.

The biggest problem, of course, is that the calculated data is inaccurate.

Take Betelgeuse, one of the hottest observation targets in the astronomical community. As of now, the definition of its mass by the astronomical community has a large deviation, ranging from ten times the mass of the sun to twenty times the mass of the sun.

Although there is a reason for the inadequate observation methods, the bigger problem is that the previous calculation method can only be accurate to such a value.

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

Now a brand new method has appeared, even if it is posted on arXiv, a website where most papers and ideas are dross, it is enough to attract attention.

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

What is written in this paper?

The calculation process in the middle is all devilish symbols, right?

Is the final conclusion sure not to be written randomly?

The hobby space website forum is where a large number of astronomy enthusiasts and astronomy workers gather.

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

[Has anyone read the paper "A method for accurately calculating the parameter information of cosmic bodies using the Xu-Weyl-Berry theorem" on arXiv? ]

[I read it, but I can't understand it at all. The mathematics in it is too profound. ]

[I seriously suspect that this is a mathematician who deliberately disgusts us. Maybe all the calculations in it are wrong, and finally just write a random number on it. ]

[That's not the case. I have also read this paper. I know the author. He is 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 the parameters of celestial bodies. 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 isn't he a math student? Why is this paper not classified in the math category? Instead, it is classified in the astronomy and physics category. ]

[Maybe the object of this paper is not math, but celestial bodies in the universe? ]

[But the whole paper is full of mathematical proofs and calculations. I'm afraid no one in the astronomy community can understand it. Wouldn't it be better to put it in the math category? ]

[Who knows.]

It's cold, I'm in home quarantine...

I got two shots of the vaccine, so it shouldn't be a big problem.