Give me a way to physically shut off the microphone (like a camera shield on business laptops), then we will talk.

Strange topics had popped up in my Google feed after l spoke to someone about something I've never googled before

Documentation is different from demonstration. Text (with graph or animation interspersed to unpack unintuitive terms) wins for documentation. Video could be good for demo if presented in a no-nonsense manner.

Scale of velocity as well so we have a more complete picture in phase space

The referees who let this slip are either brilliant or lazy (or both, I guess)

Resubmitting to multiple journals is not a typical (nor the "right" one however it is interpreted) strategy though (at least not in physical sciences). You'll usually ping the handling editor, who will then contact the referee on your behalf. The referee will then either "promise a report soon", or, in the event they didn't reply, the editor will find another referee. Nowadays with arxiv and such, there is usually no rush to actual publication as far as priority is concerned.

I'd also say, don't take the combative mindset as suggested in the comic. Think of it more as having some fresh pairs of eyes to check your work as well as communication (if a referee misunderstood something in your paper, chances are many readers will as well).

One idea that captures my imagination is the concept of cyclic inflation – a framework that combines cosmic inflation with the notion of cyclic collapse and expansion, or bounces.

This captivating idea, conceived by former postdoctoral researcher Dr Tirthabir Biswas and myself, suggests that the Universe undergoes infinite cycles of collapse and expansion.

Here's a link to the good professor's paper for those interested. As others have already pointed out, cyclic universe as an idea is not new -- the paper itself cited refs 11-19 as prior art, the oldest of which dated back to 1931.

The claim the good professor is trying to make is somewhat subtle for any lay person skimming through the article: the novelty of their idea is not cyclicity itself, but rather to combine cyclicity and inflation. To be honest, as a lay person I would have thought a cycle would consist of an inflationary period and a deflationary period, so forgive me for not seeing the point! The following technical statement from the paper perhaps makes more sense:

Thus although cyclic and inflationary models are not mutually exclusive, it is natural to try to attempt to replace inflation altogether with “cyclicity”. In this paper, however, we take a slightly different approach, by exploring whether by embedding inflation in a cyclic universe setting, some of it’s problems viz. (i-iv) can be alleviated. Our main idea is to merge inflation with cyclic cosmology where the universe undergoes an infinite number of cycles before bouncing into a final power-law inflationary phase.

I think the better way to say this is that not only do you get inflation (and deflation) for free within each cycle, but the sequence of cycles is itself inflating -- a larger scale inflation modulated by a smaller scale periodic function if you will.

The question now is, of course, is there a "first cycle", and what happened before it. Why stop there and not have some meta-cycles? That would bring the whole business to a full circle.

Technically technical

Step 1: "Explains" relativity with Doppler effect

Step 2: proceeds to complain others confusing relativity with Doppler effect

Sorry you are going through this.. some departments may have a faculty member in charge of student affairs / student-faculty relations. If there is such a person, I suggest you talk to them. Since this matter is already out in the open (in a way), I don't see a downside to doing this -- if nothing else, this leaves a paper trail. Be mindful how you communicate to this person: state the facts, describe your feelings and the impact of the matter to you, but try not to pass too much value judgement on the actions of your advisor -- You are still in a position of weakness, you need to be able to stay on the program, possibly rotate out of your current lab or even transfer out of the department/school, and you never know in which way the impression of how you handled this matter will impact the prospect of these options. If you are seriously considering transferring due to hostile environment, try to attend conferences and make connections -- it's easier (compared to those fresh out of undergrad) now that you're already in grad school, have done research, and have your own funding (in fact, mention this to whoever you're interested to work with). Good luck!

Upvoted this just to see the said animation anyone?

While the phenomenon, namely bulk-boundary correspondence, is inspired by topological insulators, the fundamental physics here is rather classical, not quantum. It appears quantamagazine has since updated the title (physics -> physicists), but not the url.

What's interesting here is they were able to verify the bulk topological characters (winding number around the zero of the wave function, ie the vortex) via observational data. In physics it's usually the other way around: the edge phenomenon, that is the edge spectral flow, is easier to measure than the elusive phase winding of the bulk wave function.

Incidentally, the original theory paper from Delplace et al came out right after the physics Nobel prize was awarded to topological physics.

The offspring of a virgin birth are not exact clones of their mother but are genetically very similar, and are always female.

What's the source of the difference?

Here is a more in-depth companion article from APS. It sounds more like technical difficulties in performing a theoretical calculation than a problem with the fundamental theory

To be fair, time crystal is a real -- albeit somewhat clickbaity -- concept in physics, proposed by none other than the Nobel laureate Wilczek. In simple terms, a time crystal is something whose frequency is not a harmonic of what's driving it (e.g., its periodicity could be double that of the drive). It's a "crystal" because it's breaking the (temporal) symmetry of the governing theory, just as a conventional crystal, by forming into a lattice of atoms, breaks spatial translation symmetry.

Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.

-- that guy

You need to forget about the details in order to grasp the essence.

I think it's more nuanced though. It's more like theory helps us understand the underlying mechanisms of many phenomena, but the lack of precise measurements for initial conditions, together with the existence of chaos, makes robust long-term predictions out of reach.

I mean this idea is not new -- Poincare had similar opinions in the 19th century iirc. The only thing the author said differently is that the universe is like an animal, and only in the last paragraph offhandedly for that matter.

What other fields?

Think of this as a citation gold rush. You need to get on the band wagon early to become part of "the standard references" that everyone has to cite regardless of relevance. People will avoid making outlandish claims in order not to look stupid a year later in case things didn't work out -- no follow up work thus far has actually claimed to see superconductivity, just innuendos.

Not saying LK99 is or is not the wonder material, but right now it's more of a sociological experiment.

I mean, anyone with tinnitus will tell you you can definitely hear silence. People without tinnitus just hear a more subtle version.

This was the 2020 material science Ig Nobel winner. Personally I think their control for the annealing process is flawed but somewhat understandable given the difficulty in securing the amount of material necessary for a more refined experiment. For reference, here are all the papers citing this work: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?oi=bibs&hl=en&cites=17315240754674471683

I agree. Oxford comma is absolutely necessary to improve flow.