Category: Open Science

More about Thomas Gold’s Theory on Abiogenic Origins of Fossil Fuels

Thomas Gold, a maverick physicist without a PhD,  proposed many bold and contrarian ideas and theories across many disciplines throughout his life. As the great physicist Freeman Dyson wrote in the foreword to Gold’s book The Deep Hot Biosphere: The Myth of Fossil Fuels, “Gold’s theories are always original, always important, usually controversial — and usually right”. Probably, one of his most intriguing theories is about abiogenic origins of fossil fuels.

Conventional wisdom has it that oil and coal are remnants of ancient surface life that became buried and subjected to extremes of temperature and pressure. That is why we call them fossil fuels. However, Gold suggests that these deposits are not fossil fuels as widely believed, but the products of primordial hydrocarbons dating at least from the time of the Earth’s formation.

I am excited to see that Gold’s theory is in perfect agreement with my study on stellar nucleosynthesis under the new mirror matter theory (see my paper Neutron-mirror neutron oscillations in stars or a pop science essay in Chinese). In essence, the crust and core of a massive star at its late burning stage (just before it explodes as a supernova), is mainly made of oxygen and heavier elements (up to iron group), and rarely of any carbon. Carbon is actually made in the helium atmosphere (and possibly leftover helium in the thick O/Ne layer) via the so-called neutron-assisted triple alpha process (i.e., reactions of 2α+n→9Be and α+9Be→12C+n) when the crust and excessive neutrons are blasted away during a supernova explosion. The crust debris could trap some of newly made carbon along with hydrogen and helium in the atmosphere and eventually be captured by another forming star and become the solid cores of planets orbiting the star. When it cools down, hydrocarbon would be formed, even deep underneath the surface of a planet. Therefore, it is natural to see hydrocarbon in most of the planets if not all. It is also no wonder that anomalous amounts of helium and hydrogen gas have been found in association with petroleum deposits. Indeed, fossil fuels should be called cosmic or stellar fuels. They are not only providing energy in our modern society, but also probably the seeds of the first life on Earth.

Herd Behavior and Science Court

I’d like to recommend everybody to read a fantastic article written by a famous scientific maverick Tommy Gold, “New Ideas in Science” [published in Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 103-112, 1989]. Gold has discussed two very deep-penetrating ideas. One is about the herd behavior in the scientific community, which is self-multiplying or exponentially compounding, especially aggravated by the current support structure and peer-review system of science. This is a disastrous tendency as it could certainly lead to a phase transition or singularity, i.e., the dead end of a field or a stifled progress.

To preserve diversity of ideas in science and defeat the herd behavior, Gold introduced an idea, proposed by his friend Arthur Katrowitz, of “science court”. It is basically a peer-review system using non-expert scientists in other fields to judge issues of the field in question, which is similar to the proposal I have outlined in the strategy of funding high-risk, high-reward projects in my article of “OePRESS: an Open ePrint and Rigorous Evaluation System for STEM“.

Before Gold dives into his deep insights about herd instinct, he introduces the imaginative concept of an ideal scientist. It just represents a perfect judge who can fairly evaluate all scientific ideas without bias and prejudice. Unfortunately, it is not realistic at all. In practice, it could be harmful to the introduction of new ideas into a field. “Let the bullets fly for a while”, instead of rushing to judgment under the guise of imagined fairness, might be a better attitude towards new ideas. Defenders of the doctrine or paradigm often refute new ideas in the name of scientific fairness. New ideas, especially at their nascent stage (without further and richer evidence revealed later on), may not stand against milder objections from scientists with least bias and prejudice, let alone much harsher attacks from authoritative bigots. A lower bar of scientific tolerance for new ideas is much needed in today’s science. And we should even allocate a small but dedicated amount of funding (e.g., 5%) to support such efforts.

A possible solution to arbitrary evaluations

My letter to Physics Today was just published in its issue in October, 2024. Hopefully, it’ll draw attention from a wider audience to the issues and a possible solution to these issues of peer review or evaluation systems in various research activities in STEM fields, including those in job applications, tenure review, refereed publications, and grant/facility proposals. The solution proposed in two papers, “A Robust Community-Based Credit System to Enhance Peer Review in Scientific Research” and “OePress: an Open ePrint and Rigorous Evaluation System for STEM “, will hopefully start a peer-review reform in basic research. By implementing a sophisticated credit- and role-based incentive mechanism, we could establish a new self-sustaining ecosystem for the entire scientific community. Rigorous science requires rigorous evaluation, and scientific innovation won’t develop efficiently until such a system is built.

OePRESS: an Open ePrint and Rigorous Evaluation System for STEM

Based on the earlier paper “A Robust Community-Based Credit System to Enhance Peer Review in Scientific Research“, we will present more quantitative details of the full scheme of such an evaluation system — an Open ePrint and Rigorous Evaluation System for STEM (OePRESS) that is ready to be implemented.

Abstract:  In light of the failed peer review system in basic research, we propose a novel open science initiative: an Open ePrint and Rigorous Evaluation System for STEM (OePRESS). In particular, three different types of research activities — original research, indirect contributions (e.g., participation in the evaluation system), and funding/time requests — should be evaluated using quantitative and continually refined metrics. This new community-based rigorous evaluation system will provide the best incentive for all members by rewarding them with accurate recognition of their innovative achievements and accurate credit for their service and other contributions to the community. The system rewards the quality, not the quantity, of accomplishments. Community members earn credits for their research and other activities in OePRESS, and as they accumulate experience and credits they can advance in their role in the community. High-risk, high-reward research projects will have a better chance of being funded. Eventually, when funding agencies and hiring institutions rely on this rigorous evaluation system to make their decisions, we will see a self-sustaining community of researchers striving for perpetual innovation and development.

The new website MirrorUniverse.org is up and running

The website of mirroruniverse.org dedicated for the studies of the new mirror matter theory and its test is now up and running. Content-wise, I still have a lot to do and I’ll slowly get it up to date. If you’d like to participate in forum discussion there or make other comments at the site, you need to register. The best (recommended) way to register/login is through the authentication with ORCiD which provides an open ID for all scholars. Here is the link on this how-to if you need more details.

I still need lot of help on the other website: openarxiv.org. In particular, we need people who have experience in developing ePrint platforms or softwares like eprints.org, biorxiv.org, etc. Please contact me if you’d like to help.

Volunteers are needed for graphic and web design of two websites

Two websites are under construction: mirroruniverse.org and openarxiv.org. We need volunteers who are experienced in graphic and web design to join the team for building these two websites. Feel free to contact me at <wtan AT nd.edu> if you are interested or have further questions.

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New chiral electron-hole pairing mechanism for non-BCS superconductivity

Motivated by the ideas from the NJS model and the concept of staged chiral quark condensation developed in mirror matter theory, I ventured into superconductivity and fortunately developed a novel microscopic pairing mechanism for non-BCS superconductivity. It took me the entire summer and more to reacquaint myself with BCS superconductivity and associated condensed matter physics and I have to immerse myself in the extensive literature on superconductivity accumulated over the past decades.

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Random Thoughts on Diversity, Equality of Opportunity, and the Golden Mean

Introduction/Abstract

Diversity is argued to be the central or original principle based on our ponderance about the evolutionary Universe, life, and human civilization. Egalitarianism, or more precisely equality of opportunity, and many other social tenets such as democracy, freedom, justice, and fairness, are representative or derivative of this central Diversity Principle, and therefore their interpretation should always be normalized under the context of diversity. Conversely, extremism, bias, prejudice, and other social aberrations, are detrimental phenomena of anti-diversity.

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Another essay contest by FQxI.org on “How could science be different?”

This is the 2nd time I am participating in an essay competition held by FQxI.org. This time the topic is “how could science be different” and participants must be anonymous. Here is the link for all participating essays: https://qspace.fqxi.org/competitions/entries. Winning the competition is not exactly my goal, but attention gained via winning, which would hopefully lead to implementing my dream sketched in the essay into basic science fields such as physics in the real world, will be!

My first-time experience with FQxI was not great. I thought I wrote a pretty good article titled “No single unification theory of everything” about three years ago. Most of the comments under the article in the forum were very positive. Two of the participants even explicitly claimed that they gave me a full score (10 points), including one who was eventually one of the winners. But I don’t know how I could end up with a pretty despicable average score of about six. Hopefully, anonymity will help this time.

Implementation of an improved review procedure for high-risk high-reward funding programs

As far as risks are concerned, there seems to be a consensus view on general funding strategies from different funders: government funding agencies tend to fund low-risk proposals while private foundations, at least in principle, should fund more of those so-called high-risk high-reward projects. Unfortunately, these high-risk high-reward funding programs, in their actual practice, often utilize similar measures that have been applied for funding main-stream or low-risk projects. Here, an improved review procedure for such programs will be tentatively proposed, which will be easy to implement and meanwhile biased properly toward high-risk, potentially paradigm-shifting proposals.

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