Avi Loeb, a former chair of the Harvard Astronomy Department, claims to have found fragments of an interstellar meteor, referred to as "IM1," in the Pacific Ocean. His expedition retrieved tiny metallic spheres, or spherules, which he believes are evidence of the first-known interstellar meteor.
However, the scientific community is divided on his claims. Some experts argue that the data and methodology used are not robust enough to support an interstellar origin for the meteor. Despite the criticism, Loeb is pressing forward with analyses of the spherules.
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3.00According to the preprint https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.15623 it had been submitted to a journal by 29 August.
@AviLoeb The Harvard Crimson tells a different story.
"According to Loeb, the paper has been submitted to an undisclosed, “highly prestigious journal” for peer review."
This is from September 20, 2023. So which is it?
Also, is it true that reviews take months in your field? I thought the natural sciences were rather swift.
@NicoDelon You also wrote, on August 29, that it was submitted. https://avi-loeb.medium.com/the-im1-spherules-from-the-pacific-ocean-have-extrasolar-composition-f025cb03dec6
@NicoDelon banned them for impersonation. @AviLoeb in the very small chance it actually is u please email me with proof at david@manifold.markets
@NicoDelon "I thought the natural sciences were rather swift." -- not always. It's not impossible for a paper to be accepted within 3 months of the first submission, but it's not very common either.
@ArmandodiMatteo I'm used to long slow review processes in philosophy and know of similarly long turnaround times in math and econ. I thought physics was very quick, especially after a paper had already been posted on Arxiv. Thanks for adding some nuanced to that.
@NicoDelon "especially after a paper had already been posted on Arxiv" -- that's because certain people prefer to not upload papers to the arXiv until they've been accepted by a journal. Other people upload stuff to the arXiv before even submitting it to a journal (indeed certain journals all-but require an arXiv number before submission), and doing so has basically no influence either way on the speed of journal acceptance.
I've checked the first submission and acceptance dates of the last few papers I've co-authored: 103 days, 41 days, 168 days, 35 days, 195 days, 127 days, 56 days. So, assuming as a zeroth-order approximation that this is typical, a paper first submitted today would have a ~40% chance of being accepted before the end of 2023.
@ArmandodiMatteo oh wow, that's actually much slower than I thought. Gee, the peer review process really is broken across the board.
@NicoDelon well, the peer review process does have serious issues, but (in most cases) I wouldn't say slowness is one of them -- all other things being equal pushing to make it faster (as, ehm..., certain publishers are doing) would make it worse, not better. (In order to make it faster without making it worse, you'd need something like jury duty, whereby as soon as a referee accepts to review a paper they aren't allowed to work on anything else until they are done...)
@ArmandodiMatteo I think that in the current academic job market referees sitting on a paper for months is not okay, but I understand the trade-off. In my experience, speed (or lack thereof) is not correlated with quality of review.
@NicoDelon the arXiv entry claims it was "[S]ubmitted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal". I think any journal other than completely bullshit ones would count (e.g. I think it should resolve as YES even if published on Universe by MDPI).
@ArmandodiMatteo (though of course if they had actually submitted it to Universe in August it would have already been published by now, if ever)
@BTE It could be accepted with major revisions, in which case four months wouldn't be an unusually long time for it to be accepted.
What happens if the claims in the paper are 'watered down'? For example, what if a paper on the spherules is accepted before 2024, but it also suggests that the spherules could have a terrestrial origin or might come from a 'typical' meteor? In the end, the research would still hold value even if the hypothesis of interstellar origin is not definitively proven.
@SorinTanaseNicola If Avi Loeb's paper is accepted for publication before 2024, but concludes the spherules likely have a terrestrial or typical meteoritic origin rather than interstellar, then I think the fair resolution would be NO. The original interstellar origin hypothesis that prompted this market would not have been validate.
@FranklinBaldo Sorry for my lack of clarity. I agree with your answer, but my question concerned the less straightforward situation in which the terrestrial and typical meteorite hypotheses are neither deemed likely nor conclusively refuted. This would represent a middle ground between Loeb's perspectives and those held by the broader scientific community, potentially easing the paper's acceptance.
@SorinTanaseNicola In the case Loeb's paper suggests the spherules could be interstellar in origin but it remains an open question, and if the paper is accepted for publication before 2024 - then the market should resolve as YES.