物理和天文的大部分论文现在都会在预印本文库 http://xxx.arxiv.org 上刊出，这个文库每个工作日更新一次，阅读这些论文是了解当前研究进展的重要方法。这个文库是按领域分类的，我常阅读的是天文的astro-ph。

每年愚人节（4月1日）的时候，往往有些科学家会发点搞笑的论文。不过近年来预印本网站的管理者似乎不太欢迎这些论文，所以这样的论文也减少了，不过，也还没有完全绝迹。但是，如果不是内行，要识别这样的论文也还不太容易。

去年，我的合作者西班牙天文学家 Jordi Miralda-Escude 发表了一篇愚人节论文： http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0703774: The Stryngbohtyk Model of the Universe: a Solution to the Problem of the Cosmological Constant. 论文摘要如下： Astronomical observations have shown that the expansion of the universe is at present accelerating, in a way consistent with the presence of a positive cosmological constant. This is a major puzzle, because we do not understand: why the cosmological constant is so small; why, being so small, it is not exactly zero; and why it has precisely the value it must have to make the expansion start accelerating just at the epoch when we are observing the universe. We present a new model of cosmology, which we call the stryngbohtyk model, that solves all these problems and predicts exactly the value that the cosmological constant must have. The predicted value agrees with the observed one within the measurement error. We show that in the stryngbohtyk model, the fact the cosmological constant starts being important at the present epoch is not a coincidence at all, but a necessity implied by our origin in a planet orbiting a star that formed when the age of the universe was of the same order as the lifetime of the star.
这听上去颇象某些时髦的超弦理论论文，虽然好像口气有点大，而且对于熟悉Joidi 的人来说，也会觉得这和他的研究风格相差太远。读这篇文章的时候，某些讨论口气虽然过于随便，但不少论点好像也很有道理。当读 stryngbohtyk 这个词的来源的时候，读者才明白上当了，据作者称，这个词来自Catalan 语（我猜是瞎编的），意思是“非常可笑的”。不过，这篇论文里有些思想其实可能还是有点意思的，也许作者因为难以给出严格的论证，而故意以这种方式发表，今年Jordi 将来中国访问，到时可以跟他聊聊。

今年也有几篇有意思的愚人节论文，一篇是 Prasenjit Saha 的大作 http://arxiv.org/abs/0803.4441: Telescope Slew as a Kustaanheimo-Stiefel transformation
论文摘要如下: The Kustaanheimo-Stiefel transformation turns a Kepler problem into a harmonic oscillator, by way of a rather mysterious extra dimension. Much has been written about it, to which this paper adds a small note of interpretation: the basic transformation can be visualized as a rotation in three dimensions. For example, if we slew a telescope from zenith to a chosen star in one rotation, we can think of the rotation axis and angle as the KS transform of the star. Moreover, the non-uniqueness of said rotation axis encodes the extra dimension. The result becomes evident on writing the KS transformation in quaternion form. Further unexpected connections with gates in quantum computing are also made.
尽管这个论文题目听上去就很怪（转动望远镜这么一个问题怎么能联系到这么深奥的数学变换以至额外维度），但说实话，要不是看到作者援引了包括Jordi 去年的愚人节论文在内的一些愚人节论文，我还不敢完全肯定。里面颇有不少历史文献和数学公式，我没去仔细读，也许是装装样子，也许也有点真东西，呵呵。

还有一篇是Douglas Scott 和Ali Frolop 的http://arxiv.org/abs/0803.4378  "Down-sizing forever" （永远瘦身）。这个Ali Frolop （名字很搞）大概是 Douglas Scott 编出来的作者。他们的大作“宇宙阴谋”（cosmic conspiracies, http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0604011) 是前年的愚人节论文, “自然暗能量”（http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0703783, nature dark energy) 是去年的愚人节论文。现在暗能量有点被炒得太熟了，所以今年他们换了这几年时髦的星系瘦身问题：为什么根据流行的结构形成理论，大星系应该后形成，观测却发现大星系都相当古老？这篇论文被投递给"journal physics in regress"(倒退物理期刊），也颇有意思，因为论文的意思是根据星系瘦身现象否定现在的星系形成理论.

正象爱美的女人免不了追逐时尚一样，搞科研也很难完全不赶时髦。不过，太时髦的女人往往难免肤浅，科学家也是一样。愚人节的恶搞论文，未尝不是一瓢清水，让我们不要过于沉迷其中。

还有一篇，刚才忘了，这是Max Tegmark 的 http://arxiv.org/abs/0804.0016 Relativity Revisited, 这篇的摘要听上去很严肃： Was Einstein wrong? This paper provides a detailed technical review of Einstein's special and general relativity from an astrophysical perspective, including the historical development of the theories, experimental tests, modern applications to black holes, cosmology and parallel universes, and last but not least, novel ways of expressing their seven most important equations. 不过，这个“详细的技术性评论”是伴着吉他用“黄色潜水艇”的调唱的： http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PkLLXhONvQ

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