A battle to publish my mirror-matter papers

Over the course of half a year since the birth of my mirror-matter model (MMM or M3), it’s been quite a battle to get any of my M3 related papers to be published on major journals. Here I put together some of the comments from the editors and reviewers to get a glimpse of how “friendly” esteemed scientists are when facing new ideas proposed under a relatively unknown name.

Here is the comment it has received from one reviewer:

… I cannot recommend publication of this manuscript in view of major shortcomings of the *new* part of the analysis, namely the computation of the asymmetry (considering a mirror sector as a solution of the neutron lifetime puzzle is not new, hence only of sufficient interest in combination with the other claims) …

From another reviewer,

… I cannot, however, recommend this for publication … because the essential idea … *is not novel* … [although] the present author deals with the subject in a better and more convincing way …

Both of the above “not new” phrases were highlighted by the reviewers.

Another referee made mistakes in his own calculations and then concluded,

… This is a clever idea, but it does not work. I cannot recommend it …

The only completely positive comments from the last referee:

I have carefully looked at the above submission by Wanpeng Tan and I do like it very much … very nice feature that in the long time spent in a beam only a tiny fraction sin^2(2\theta) of the neutrons get converted to mirror neutrons – whereas in the smaller magnetic bottles the beam keeps bumping into the walls and one looses the above 1/2 sin^2{2\theta} fraction in each collision! … I also like the intuitive suggestion that the conversion on the quark level is faster than that on the nucleon – three quark level -and therefore that K(0)^L–> K'(0)^L transition of the long lived neutral kaon to its invisible mirror should occur at a detectable rate … Finally there is the most remarkable coincidence that the n<–>n’ conversion times inferred from tan’s explanation of the decay anomaly match well the times of nucleosynthesis … I do most strongly recommend the publication of this paper.

Of course, the editor listened to the first two reviewers instead of the last one and rejected ref[1].

Here is the comment from an editor,

… Although I personally find the topic of your work interesting, I believe that your results would be of rather limited interest to the astrophysics research community as a whole …

An editor’s universal rejection comment:

… we conclude that your paper does not meet the … criteria of impact, innovation, and interest…

Another editor’s comments:

This seems like nice work that should be published. However … it is incremental – a follow-on paper … We do not typically publish follow on papers … I therefore regret to inform you that your paper cannot be published

Comments from a reviewer:

While the paper contains interesting novel ideas, none of them appear to be based on actual computations. And overall, the manuscript draws some unfounded conclusions and it remains highly speculative.

 

Author: Wanpeng Tan

I share my ideas and thoughts mainly about mirror matter theory and open science on this blog. Under the new theory, we live in the universe with a mirror (hidden) sector of particles. A perfectly imperfect (minimally broken) mirror symmetry is the key to unlock the beauty and elegance of our universe. Click on the menu links for a popular introduction, a technical summary, and list of my papers on the new mirror matter theory.