Where Can I Safely Publish a Groundbreaking Physics Theorem?

[Borek]

There are lawyers who believe in such a thing as "honest mistake by a corporation"? Wow.

 

[WWGD]

I referred to some sort of mail to show primacy. Send it to yourself using a certified letter. The letter will have a stamped date. Of course, don't open the letter unless necessary.

 

[Vanadium 50]

WWGD, spreading urban legends isn't helping. This has no protection in court, because you could always mail yourself an empty envelope and seal it later.

Also, this whole thing presupposes that there is value in this proof. It is very likely, for the reasons that have been expressed, that there is not.

 

[DivergentSpectrum]

skepticism aside, you will need to find a notary public. a notary public is an official (such as a cop, judge, etc) who carries a stamp with a seal on it, and will stamp, sign, and date a paper document.

 

[dextercioby]

Trying to say something funny: the odds of publishing accurate content disproving something written by Gauß 175 years ago and not spotted by the mathematical community in the meantime years are the same as the odds of the OP organizing a dinner in his home with Obama and Putin and getting them agree on the Ukrainian crisis and a subsequent reduction of 1000 active nuclear warheads.

 

[1MileCrash]

Trying to say something funny: the odds of publishing accurate content disproving something written by Gauß 175 years ago and not spotted by the mathematical community in the meantime years are the same as the odds of the OP organizing a dinner in his home with Obama and Putin and getting them agree on the Ukrainian crisis and a subsequent reduction of 1000 active nuclear warheads.

Maybe if the additionally, the OP is a moon octopus and hosts this dinner on mars.

Would be much more fruitful if the OP just posted this and allowed the PF members to explain where it is mistaken. It may end up being a great problem. Otherwise even mentioning this is worthless.

 

[jtbell]

WWGD, spreading urban legends isn't helping. This has no protection in court, because you could always mail yourself an empty envelope and seal it later.

If you send it registered mail, the envelope must be sealed, and the post office applies postmarks over the sealing-flaps. Although I suppose someone could carefully steam the envelope open, change the contents, and carefully re-seal the flaps so the postmarks still match up.

It's been a long time since I sent a registered letter... I don't remember if they also apply sealing-tape.

 

[WWGD]

WWGD, spreading urban legends isn't helping. This has no protection in court, because you could always mail yourself an empty envelope and seal it later.

Also, this whole thing presupposes that there is value in this proof. It is very likely, for the reasons that have been expressed, that there is not.

Sorry, I don't mean to troll; I just think you misunderstood ( misunderestimated? ) what I was going for.
I do agree the odds are a trillion-to-1 of having something worthwhile.

No, you put the content ,the alleged (dis) proof* inside of the envelope, register-mail it to yourself through the post office, and never open it, until someone asks you to prove primacy.
There will be an official, government-issued seal and time stamp in the envelope.
Then, if you are asked to give proof of primacy, you appear in front of a judge, you present the enveloppe so that it is clear that it has not been open, you open the sealed, time-stamped envelope in front of the judge and you produce the document. The time seal will most likely be accepted as proof of time of authorship by any judge.
If you can cheat and produce a fake official stamped/dated envelope, my hat off to you.

The value of the allged proof is a whole other issue.

* Or (dat)proof.

And I do agree that the probability is zero, but this does not imply impossibility. Just for that
1,000,000,000: 1 odds. And, hey, it is not my time/money.

What Would Gauss Do (WWGD) ?

 

[jobyts]

There are lawyers who believe in such a thing as "honest mistake by a corporation"? Wow.

These are corporate lawyers trying to protect their own corporation to act innocent when they are caught by other corporations.

 

[MattRob]

Heh. This whole thread makes me think of myself, a little. It's fun to try to hash at problems way over my head, but I never hesitate to just ask here because I know I'm most certainly wrong if I'm contradicting something already known.

I think it's rather common for someone to think they've stumbled on something great and world-changing. There's probably some ego in there, but I think it's mostly just innocent; "I don't see how I'm wrong so I must be right," and stems from a lack of understanding the subject.



Doesn't keep me from trying my own hand at coming up with something I think is original, though. I'm just too curious not to, and it's a tremendous amount of educational fun to really investigate an issue and try to answer difficult questions.

It's a little disheartening to start to ask things that I can't find anybody who knows the answer, to though, and begins to make me wonder if anyone knows the answer at all. So that's why I start wondering about journals.

I do know, however, though, that I'm almost always going to be wrong, haha. But all the fun of science is finding out how you're wrong, eh?

And maybe you can at least hope you're partially correct if you want to be right. Nature is a creative thing, though, and often has much more interesting ideas than you do.



That being said, when I start building a theory based on ideas, and the questions I ask on whether those ideas are true, are questions that very few people know the answers to, I begin to wonder if I'm delving into territory that could count as original research...

But I honestly don't care too much if ideas get stolen. My brain keeps working, it's not just going to produce one idea, ever. They'd almost certainly end up stealing a wrong idea, anyways, haha. So I'm just going to keep asking questions here because I'm curious and I want to learn. I don't care about my ethos, I just want to satisfy a thirst for understanding. I think that's an attitude a scientist ought to have.

Plus, if I just sat on my ideas and hoarded them, I'd probably just find myself sitting on a pile of garbage given enough time. But by discussing them, I'm able to polish them off and keep improving them so they stay grounded in reality.

First, a theorem can't disprove a theorem. One or the other must be wrong, in which case it's not a theorem. If one of them is in wide use and has been for years or decades and the other is not, I know which one I'd bet on.

Second, if you aren't already reading journals you have two problems. The first is that you're not aware of what is going on in the field you are trying to contribute to, so your odds of success are very low. The second is that wanting to publish without reading is just like talking without listening. And it will be received about as well.

Third, don't worry about people stealing your idea.

If you are serious, start reading the journals.

How do I start reading journals? I'm a student at a university so I have access to the university's online library. Any useful pages, links, tips, etc. you could point me to?

 

[Borek]

How do I start reading journals? I'm a student at a university so I have access to the university's online library. Any useful pages, links, tips, etc. you could point me to?

Back when I started (somewhere in Oligocene) one of the first things we were taught was how to use journal collection in the library. Actually most of the lecture was on the way Chemical Abstracts were organized. These days such things are no longer printed, but you should have access to databases - and learning how to effectively use them should be an important part of the curriculum. Perhaps it is offered to graduate students only?

Simplest thing to do is to select some subject (something narrow), and ask librarians for help locating related papers. They should guide you in the right direction.

 

[jtbell]

If you want to get some idea of what's been published on some topic, try a search in Google Scholar:

http://scholar.google.com/

Then follow references in any articles that turn out to be useful.

 

[MattRob]

Back when I started (somewhere in Oligocene) one of the first things we were taught was how to use journal collection in the library. Actually most of the lecture was on the way Chemical Abstracts were organized. These days such things are no longer printed, but you should have access to databases - and learning how to effectively use them should be an important part of the curriculum. Perhaps it is offered to graduate students only?

Simplest thing to do is to select some subject (something narrow), and ask librarians for help locating related papers. They should guide you in the right direction.

Aside from a special section of Physics 123, I haven't actually taken anything physics major-specific, yet, since I was actually going into mechanical engineering until late last semester (Funny thing: a breaking point for me was realizing that as an engineer, I'd never get to formally learn GR, and as I learn more about the field from reading, I'm looking at specializing in GR).

That seems like a pretty good idea. I like librarians. Only issue is, I wouldn't be able to carry it out for a few months since I live out-of-state and I'm not attending this semester for medical reasons.

If you want to get some idea of what's been published on some topic, try a search in Google Scholar:

http://scholar.google.com/

Then follow references in any articles that turn out to be useful.

Google scholar? That's a new one to me, heh. That's awesome. I'll try it out, thanks.

 

[ChrisVer]

I gave him the full derivation, waited for 3 weeks now, and discovered that the thread has been deleted, the other member who maintained the opposite view has been banned and all his posts in other threads removed, so I have no witness.
I wrote a couple of times to the admin asking why the thread has been deleted and if I was right after all, and he never replied. So, I thought to hurry up as I have no evidence I am its author if they publish it somewhere. Probably they already have. I did not post it here as it is against the rules and I already collected a dozen infractions.

If you know personally someone you trust who can help me, I would be grateful, else, just give me a couple of links to journals that accept papers from unknown people.

I do not intend to be a physicist, nor a mathematicians, nor I am seeking for fame and glory. You overlooked that I want, in case, publish it anonymously..

Well, since you don't want fame and glory and also want to publish it anonymously, allow someone who does care to publish it for himself... Not that he'll get any glory since it's about "disproving" Gauss. At the best he'll ridicule himself ...

 

[SpiderET]

In the academic world, no scientist "steals" credit.

Based on this article
http://www.the-scientist.com/?artic...tle/All-s-Not-Fair-in-Science-and-Publishing/

and especially based on discussion to this article, it is quite common to steal credit in science.

From the article:
During the preliminary phase of research, formal laws are usually not applied. Despite several incidents of suspect “findings,” few in the scientific community want to create a legal quagmire. Without specific and accurate documentation of exactly when a discovery was made, disputes can quickly descend into “he said, she said” territory.
Many believe that false attribution is actually increasing in frequency, likely motivated by the steady decrease in grant-funding rates. Investigators who lack initial insight, but are technically skilled, can reproduce other researchers’ findings and submit their “original” research for publication, staking a false claim to the discovery. When scientists gather for conferences, the fear of potential theft of ideas is often the unacknowledged elephant in the room.

From discussion to article:
Having been in research for over 25 years, I can honestly say that I had only one PI that was totally honest. Too many times I saw that senior and junior academics alike would steal scientific ideas, steal actual physical data, and then race to publish using a list of authors that anly vaguely represented the actual contributors to the work. They would list several senior academics who had nothing to do with the work but everything to do with helping their careers, help get them new space, ect. This killed my desire for research and I learned to never speak of any discovery I made except in a public forum, where there would be witnesses.