In other words, it is not a black hole, it is the black hole.
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It is dwarfed by supermassive black holes. It may even be smaller than some collapsars. If Iām reading the article correctly, the physics of supernovae predict a gap in Stellar black hole masses, and this falls within that gap.
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Just checked the citations for that paper.
Itās been cited twice. Twice., Maybe all the paleontology journals have huge backlogs, and the papers buiding on this research are all in press. But it feels like this paper went off like a damp squib.
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I wouldnāt take it as much of anything. A submission to publication time of 6 months is considered great. Upwards of a year is fine. Iām on mobile and havenāt looked at the google scholar, but Iād bet that the papers that do cite him at this point are papers that were accepted and added a citation in as further evidence of some trend thatās already well-documented.
For reference, I had a paper in January that has been cited 7 times. It was a big deal paper.
Iād be happy to discuss why peer review is so slow, if people are interested. Iām an associate editor at my fieldās journal.
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Yeah. Reading Mickey Mortimerās blog, the long-awaited Lori/Hesperornithoides paper wasnāt published until July 2019. Submitted April 2018. But the work started in ā¦ 2001.
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No one asked for it, but I canāt sleep, and Iāve been drinking. Here is why peer-review takes so long:
- Click submit on your article.
- Various automated checks that the article rendered OK in the system, etc.
- It gets sent to the intake editorial board at the journal, who decide if it a) is within scope, b) looks OK, and c) maybe fits other criteria. For example, the journal where DePalma et al. was published rates highly on broad interest and novelty. Depending on the journal, this step can be an afternoon (for journals that have actual staff to do this) or 1-2 weeks (my society journal, staffed by volunteers).
- Goes to the Associate Editor. This is the position I have. I read the paper, decide that step (3) went OK, and proceed. Or I decide that step (3) was wrong, and this is out-of-scope, and I reject. When I get one of these, I try to put it on my calendar to handle by the end of the week or the middle of next.
- Sending to reviewers. Often the hardest step. You need 2-4 reviewers, typically. They need to be experts in some facet of the science. Many studies are interdisciplinary: you might need someone to evaluate math formulas, and someone who can understand the other science. For me, I handle a lot of math/stats/CS heavy biology papers. I invite three reviewers in the first round, maximizing diversity in all facets. We need more women and POC to be invited to review. Grad students often review thoroughly because they have time. Sometimes, it can take ten+ invites to get a reviewer if the discipline is specialized. Each reviewer gets about 5 days (in our system) to decide whether or not to review.
- Reviewing. At the journal I AE at, the reviewers get two weeks. Many will request an extension. I grant one week unless more is requested. Sometimes shit just comes up. A recent paper I handled had two reviewers each need to be two weeks late for a total reviewing time of a month.
- AE decision. Weāre given two weeks to do this. I synthesize the reviews and decide if we should accept as-is, accept with minor revision (the reviewers wonāt see it again, usually), reject with resubmission encouraged (the reviewers will see it again; typically more analyses are needed) or reject.
- Editor decision. They take my decision + the reviewers and make a choice. Typically 2 week turnaround.
Any of these steps can expand to fill time. But all this works out to a 2 month review period if you hit every green light. Because academic publishing is almost entirely volunteer, that means submitting on a week where the editor has nothing going on, I have nothing going on, two weeks where the reviewers have nothing going on, another week where Iām bored and a final one where the editor is bored.
Guess what never happens. I work for a journal that takes work-life balance seriously, and so I typically only handle an MS at a time. I can put all the steps on my calendar. Never have I actually worked the calendar I thought I would. Most articles will go through multiple rounds. Each revision can take several months, if more analyses are requested.
After all this, the article goes to the journal. Publishing schedules differ. The journal I AE at gets them online in early view six months before they appear in print. Glam journals like PNAS do not do this. Because they publish a lot of major breakthroughs, they have press embargoes. Your article goes in the tube, typically for an issue two months in the future, and you get press instructions and limits while you wait for its actual debut.
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Hmmm. I know you didnāt intend this as the outcome of this post, but writing about science topics could be a cool gig for my daughter. Sheās science and an amazing writer.
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I believe some schools offer majors specifically for scientific journalism.
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@chgoliz is right that there are science writing programs. But the digital media landscape has really changed who does science communication and how they do it. Itās getting pretty common for people who are scientists to start a twitter and instagram documenting what they do, then use that experinece to apply for science communication fellowships with a professional society or Nat Geo or something to build a blog or platform. AAAS also offers a fellowship for people who want to communicate science to policy makers. Usually for PhD level folks, not always.
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Thanks to you both for the info.
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Metre-long centipedes here we comeā¦
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Ars Technica breaks its comments into multiple pages
@nimelennarās proof is on Page 2, and at the bottom right here
mg224 wrote:
Fancy Internet Person wrote:
lewax00 wrote:
Quote:
Multiple mathematical proofs have shown that when 1 is subtracted from the square of any prime number over 3, the result is divisible by 24. The same thing is true of any odd number that isnāt a multiple of 3. (Go ahead, get out your calculator and check.)
Oh, thatās cool. I hadnāt seen that one before. (And the proof looks pretty simple too.)
Yeah, very simple proof by induction. If you can prove that the difference between each successive square number is a successive odd number, then youāre basically there.
Not sure where youāre goingās with that but the standard proof is that 1,2 square to 1 mod 3, and 1,3,5,7 square to 1 mod 8, so anything odd (thus 1,3,5,7 mod 8) and not divisible by 3 (thus 1,2 mod 3) squares to 1 mod 3 and 8, hence 1 mod 24.
Another easy proof is that (n^2-1) = (n-1)(n+1).
For any value of n thatās not a multiple of 2 or 3, both (n-1) and (n+1) will be even numbers, one of which will be a multiple of 4, and one of which will be a multiple of 3.
4x2x3 =24.
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O_o
Itās really fucking sad when the freakinā Waffle House is better prepared and more organized than our entire current White House administrationā¦
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Well if youāve been to a Waffle House and talked to the people there, itās really no surprise. I know where Iām going for hash browns when the zombie apocalypse breaks out.
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The last time I ate at a Waffle House was more than 15 years ago.
They donāt really have them in my area.
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