T.C. May writes:
Anyone here who has not already done so should immediately type "xxx.lanl.gov" into their browser. (No, the "xxx" is not a typo, nor is it a porn site.)
This is where physics papers are getting published. The print journals are surviving, barely, but I think the handwriting is already on the wall. As libraries balk at paying $6000 per year for "Journal of Advanced Aptical Foddering" and as the referee system goes online as well (*), the print journals will financially fail. Maybe no one will notice.
As John Baez has pointed out, most of the grad students he deals with never visit the campus library. All papers of interest in cosmology, quantum physics, solid state, etc. are being published on the arXhive sites. In the last few months, I've been using this system extensively, and have downloaded about 2500 pages of PDF files. I know how many pages because I've printed out most of the papers. Five reams of paper later....
Brilliant suggestion as usual. This completely un-edited, un-reviewed archive site accepts submissions from anyone in the world. One might as well learn physics from Jim Choate. I wonder if Tim May's extensive archive of printed papers includes such gems as these from xxx.lanl.gov: http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/physics/0205055 This one explains that general relativity is all wrong to attribute gravity to curved spacetime, and cosmological red-shift to expansion. It shows how to get these effects from a flat spacetime geometry. http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/quant-ph/0204008 "We found a fundamental principle, the law of statistical balance in nature, that specifies quantum statistical theory among all other statistical theories of measurements. This principle plays in quantum theory the role that is similar to the role of Einstein's relativity principle." http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/hep-th/0201115 This astonishing paper tells what happens before the Big Bang. During the pre-universe the vacuum evolves through four stages before producing the universe we see. "The periodic table of elementary particles is constructed to account for all elementary particles and their masses in a good agreement with the observed values." This is the holy grail of modern physics - a theory that explains the subatomic particle zoo! Definitely a must-have for Tim May's collection. Clearly every one of these results would be shattering to the modern physics paradigm, if true. Tim May's advice puts readers at risk of accepting the most absurd theories without any way of evaluating their accuracy. There is a reason why the peer review process and the academic journals are still needed. Online preprint archives are useless for the layman. Only experts can use these archives with safety; they are able to sift the wheat from the chaff. As usual, readers are cautioned to take Tim May's "brilliant insights" with a very generous grain of salt.