- 10 = 6 + 4
Author: Frank Tony Smith
arXiv: hep-th/9908205 - log(M_Pl/m_3/2)
Authors: Oscar Loaiza-Brito, Johannes Martin, Hans Peter Nilles, Michael Ratz
arXiv: hep-th/0509158 - Brane Big-Bang Brought by Bulk Bubble
Authors: Uchida Gen, Akihiro Ishibashi, Takahiro Tanaka
Journal-ref: Phys.Rev. D66 (2002) 023519
arXiv: hep-th/0110286 - The axis of evil
Authors: Kate Land, Joao Magueijo
arXiv: astro-ph/0502237
Journal-ref: Phys.Rev.Lett. 95 (2005) 071301 - Local Pancake Defeats Axis of Evil
Authors: Chris Vale
arXiv: astro-ph/0509039 - Why Eppley and Hannah's Experiment Isn't
Author: James Mattingly
arXiv: gr-qc/0601127 - A Fly in the SOUP
Authors: R. Holman, L. Mersini-Houghton
arXiv: hep-th/0511112 - Waking the Colored Plasma
Authors: Jörg Ruppert, Berndt Müller
arXiv: hep-ph/0503158 - Much ado about nothing: a treatise on empty and not-so-empty spacetimes
Authors: Damien Martin
arXiv:gr-qc/0607022 - Unhiggsing the del Pezzo
Authors: Bo Feng, Sebastian Franco, Amihay Hanany, Yang-Hui He
arXiv: hep-th/0209228 - The Sybils' Advice on Charm (and tau Leptons)
Authors: I.I. Bigi
arXiv: hep-ph/0604038 - X & Y
Authors: L. Maiani, F. Piccinini, A.D. Polosa, V. Riquer
arXiv: hep-ph/0512082 - New Regions for a Chameleon to Hide
Authors: Baruch Feldman, Ann E. Nelson
arXiv: hep-ph/0603057 - Cosmological Supersymmetry Breaking and the Power of the Pentagon: A Model of Low Energy Particle Physics
Author: T. Banks
arXiv: hep-ph/0510159 - Remodeling the Pentagon After the Events of 2/23/06
Authors: T. Banks
arXiv: hep-ph/0606313 - Cosmic Strings - Dead Again?
Author: Mark Hindmarsh
arXiv: hep-ph/9806469 - Brane New World
Authors: S.W. Hawking, T. Hertog, H.S. Reall
Journal-ref: Phys.Rev. D62 (2000) 043501
arXiv: hep-th/0003052 - Cloudshine: New Light on Dark Clouds
Authors: Jonathan B. Foster, Alyssa A. Goodman
Journal-ref: Phys.Rev. D62 (2000) 043501
arXiv: astro-ph/0510624 - The Skyrmion strikes back: baryons and a new large N_c limit
Authors: Aleksey Cherman, Thomas D. Cohen
arXiv: hep-th/0607028 - How Bob Laughlin Tamed the Giant Graviton from Taub-NUT space
Authors: B.A.Bernevig, J. Brodie, L. Susskind, N. Toumbas
Journal-ref: JHEP 0102 (2001) 003
arXiv: hep-th/0010105 - The Battle of Albuera, the FC Liverpool and the Standard Model
Authors: I.I. Bigi
arXiv: hep-ph/0603087 - Nutty Bubbles
Authors: A.M. Ghezelbash, R.B. Mann
Journal-ref: JHEP 0209 (2002) 045
arXiv: hep-th/0207123 - Nuttier Bubbles
Authors: Dumitru Astefanesei, Robert B. Mann, Cristian Stelea
Journal-ref: JHEP 0601 (2006) 043
arXiv: hep-th/0508162 - Deconstructing Noncommutativity with a Giant Fuzzy Moose
Authors: Allan Adams, Michal Fabinger
Journal-ref: JHEP 0204 (2002) 006
arXiv: hep-th/0111079 - Escape From The Menace Of The Giant Wormholes
Authors: Sidney R. Coleman, Ki-Myeong Lee
Journal-ref: Phys. Lett. B 221:242,1989 - Superbanana Orbits in Stellarator Geometries
Authors: J. A. Derr, J. L. Shohet
Journal-ref: Phys. Rev. Lett. 43, 1730–1733 (1979) - The mother of all protocols: Restructuring quantum information's family tree
Authors: Anura Abeyesinghe, Igor Devetak, Patrick Hayden, Andreas Winter
arXiv: quant-ph/0606225 - Walking in the SU(N)
Authors: Dennis D. Dietrich, Francesco Sannino
arXiv: hep-ph/0611341 - Higgs Pain? Take a Preon!
Authors: J.-J. Dugne, S. Fredriksson, J. Hansson, E. Predazzi
arXiv: hep-ph/9709227 - The Matrix Reloaded - on the Dark Energy Seesaw
Authors: Kari Enqvist, Steen Hannestad, Martin S. Sloth
arXiv: hep-ph/0702236 - A New Dimension Hidden in the Shadow of a Wall
Author: Nemanja Kaloper
arXiv: hep-th/0702206 - Decapitating Tadpoles
Authors: Allan Adams, John McGreevy, Eva Silverstein
arXiv: hep-th/0209226
Please note that I have not read most of the above papers, and I am not judging on the scientific content of these works.
Will be updated from time to time. Last update: Feb 28th 2007
I once gave a seminar at Santa Cruz entitled "Some Interesting Positions in the Kama Sutra of Topological Defects." Michael Dine introduced me, but refused to say the title out loud.
ReplyDeleteWhat about hep-th/0304224 which came out roughly the same time as the movie? Or hep-th/0010105? Many people use catchy seminar titles as those are more informal.
ReplyDeleteHope you only read the titles, and not filled your Mind, with junk which then has to be sent to recycle bin.
ReplyDeleteMind you, you know what they say: "Never Judge A Book by its cover"
Great list!
ReplyDeleteSome of my favourites are titles with "phantom" in it, like:
Can dark energy evolve to the phantom?
(astro-ph/0407107)
Phantom dark energy, cosmic doomsday, and the coincidence problem.
(astro-ph/0410508)
Perhaps they are not so "stupid" because Phantom is an accepted name for the model. But try showing the titles to a non-physicist and then convincing him that physicists aren't nuts.
But the one that takes the cake (or is it the pancake?) is without a doubt:
Local pancake defeats axis of evil
(astro-ph/0509039)
How about http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0312012
ReplyDelete"String Theory, Universal Mind, and the Paranormal"
???
Dear Bee,
ReplyDeleteWhat is wrong with 10 = 6 + 4?
M-theory says 10 = 11 while QCD counts the gluon combinations as 3 x 3 = 8.
Perhaps my maths is obsolete.
Best wishes,
Anon
There are also titles which can be very misleading: for example, when scanning the arxive for information about dibaryons, I came across this paper:
ReplyDeletehep-th/0305048: Dibaryon Spectroscopy
I may have been warned that it was in hep-th, but you can imagine that it was not exactly what I was looking for...
I I Bigi will be disappointed, his titles deserve to be in the list.
ReplyDeleteHi Leuciopo, Hi Anon,
ReplyDeletethere is nothing wrong with 4+6 = 10 as far as I can see. I mean, as you say, it could have been worse, like Pi^2~10 or so. He was banned from the arXiv because of the TITLE of the paper?
Hi anonymous,
I have not included any papers from the physics arxiv, there are too many with weird titles.
To the others: thanks! I have updated the list. I especially like the pancake :-)
Best,
B.
Particle physicists are obsessed with penguins,
ReplyDeletehttp://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/bunny.htm
"Vicious mutant space alien nuclear holocaust penguin complicities," 17 references.
Either way, "mostly harmless."
I know you're all too young to remember, but "Escape from the Menace of the Giant Wormholes" (Coleman and Lee, 1989) really does deserve a spot. Those were the days.
ReplyDeleteTom Banks again - hep-th/0211160
ReplyDeleteHeretics of the false vacuum: Gravitational effects on and of vacuum decay. 2.
Presumably: Return of the Heretics! He has copied the sensible part of the title from Coleman-de Luccia.
Also, I vividly remember a sentence from an abstract of a paper:
"The Killing fields are on the horizon"
which makes perfect sense in differential geometry! But I can't find the preprint any more.
This from today's arxiv:
ReplyDeletehep-ph/0607062 [abs, ps, pdf, other] :
Title: An AdS/CFT Calculation of Screening in a Hot Wind
Authors: Hong Liu, Krishna Rajagopal, Urs Achim Wiedemann
Oh gee, another one!
ReplyDeletehep-th/0607031 [abs, ps, pdf, other] :
Title: SUSY Moose Runs and Hops: An extra dimension from a broken deformed CFT
Authors: Joshua Erlich, Jong Anly Tan (College of William and Mary)
You missed my favourite:
ReplyDeletehttp://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0111079
Deconstructing Noncommutativity with a Giant Fuzzy Moose
I submit:
ReplyDeletehttp://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0207123
Nutty Bubbles
Authors: A.M. Ghezelbash, R.B. Mann
and
http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0508162
Nuttier Bubbles
Authors: Dumitru Astefanesei, Robert B. Mann, Cristian Stelea
Here's one:
ReplyDeleteSuperbanana Orbits in Stellarator Geometries
Phys. Rev. Lett. 43, 1730–1733 (1979)
J. A. Derr and J. L. Shohet
And for 'anon' above: 3x3 = 8+1 in QCD. The octet and singlet representations.
I found a new one today at Dave Beacon's blog:
ReplyDeleteThe mother of all protocols: Restructuring quantum information's family tree
http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0606225
The article by Tom Banks listed above:
ReplyDeleteRemodeling the Pentagon After the Events of 2/23/06
is the best, because he also choses the titles of some sections appropriately :)
A Fat Higgs with a Fat Top
ReplyDeleteSpacetime and vacuum as seen from Moscow
GZK Violation - a Tempest in a (Magnetic) Teapot?
ReplyDeleteThese don't sound half as bad as some of the ones you read in biology journals. Make you cringe.
ReplyDeleteHave a stupid question though, do the journals decide the titles or are the authors left to come up with these sparkling gems themselves.
pipettemonkey,
ReplyDeleteI've not work in hep-th, but my experience in general physics is that the authors choose the titles. The editors may of course suggest revisions there as with elsewhere in the paper, of course.
I love "Deconstructing Noncommutativity with a Giant Fuzzy Moose," hep-th/0111079. Can someone say whether it's a joke or not? The authors clearly have a sense of humor (see the Acknowledgements) but I can't tell whether it's an actual impenetrable string theory paper, or just poking fun at same.
It's a Gluino! :)
ReplyDeleteTwo more submissions to this list:
ReplyDeleteNeutrinos in a Sterile Throat
The Axis of Evil revisited
http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0209226
ReplyDeletedecapitating tadpoles
Ha! I just saw this thread and it's pretty funny! Us authors choose our own titles and we have great fun doing so. My favorite from one of my papers was "Warped Phenomenology," hep-ph/9909255. The journal made us change the title to "Phenomenology of the Randall-Sundrum Gauge Hierarchy Model," which doesn't quite have the same ring to it...
ReplyDeleteLooking at today's arxiv, I notice that we had a new candidate for the stupid title list bestowed upon us:
ReplyDelete"A New Dimension Hidden in the Shadow of a Wall"
There was a whole fad of these for a while:. Off the top of my head, I remember (some more so than others)
ReplyDeletehttp://www.arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0107172
http://www.arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0011125
http://www.arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0008205
http://www.arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0107199
http://www.arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0003163
http://www.arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0107088
http://www.arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0104010
http://www.arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0502021
http://www.arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0003075
http://www.arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0506130
http://www.arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0404084
http://www.arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0108075
There are plenty of others I'm probably forgetting. (And I hope the spam catcher doesn't eat this.)
Rumsfeld Hadrons
ReplyDeleteAbstract:
"Donald Rumsfeld, in attempting to excuse the inexcusable, once (in)famously said that ``there are things that we know we know; there are things that we know we don't know; and then there are things that we don't know that we don't know". Recent discoveries about hadrons with heavy flavours fall into those categories. It is of course the third category that is the most tantalising, but lessons from the first two may help resolve the third."
How To Kill a Penguin
ReplyDeleteUlrich Haisch
(Submitted on 23 Jun 2007)
Abstract: Within constrained minimal-flavor-violation the large destructive flavor-changing Z-penguin managed to survive eradication so far. We give a incisive description of how to kill it using the precision measurements of the Z -> b anti-b pseudo observables. The derived stringent range for the non-standard contribution to the universal Inami-Lim function C leads to tight two-sided limits for the branching ratios of all Z-penguin dominated flavor-changing K- and B-decays.
You probably think this paper's about you: narcissists' perceptions of their personality and reputation.
ReplyDeleteNew particles or "Why I believe in quarks"
Every time a physicist says "I don't believe in quarks," somewhere a quark dies.
Total recoil: the maximum kick from nonspinning black-hole binary inspiral:
ReplyDeletehttp://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0610154
Turduckening black holes: an analytical and computational study:
http://arxiv.org/abs/0809.3533
Excision without excision: the relativistic turducken:
http://arxiv.org/abs/0707.3101
Check the author list on
ReplyDeletehttp://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/9306225
Wally Greenberg says that T.V. stands for "The Very".