Today’s post is a public promise. While I am still not against the general idea of having a mentor, it is becoming apparent that I’m able to finish the manuscript without their help. That is to say, my search for mentor is like swimming in treacle (a British idiom): i.e. laborious. It seems that the major problem is that there is so much incredulity that no one is excited about what I have to say. If you’re pretty much convinced that I’m wrong, but don’t exactly know how, you don’t flatly call me a crank, or anything nasty like that. But your silence has pretty much the same effect. Of course, I could try to spam every notable physicist that I know of with the manuscript, but this will more likely lead to them assuming me to be a crank and ignoring me, than to them taking the time to try to understand the theory.
It seems that if you have learned your whole life that all interactions are mediated by invisible and intangible forces that act through a void in a probabilistic manner, you’re more likely to believe that, if it’s coupled with some convincing mathematics. The concept that the universe is made of tangible solid spheres that touch each other just seems wrong. And this is so especially when the person saying this does not talk your language and does not give a direct explanation of your favorite forces.
Even though I have a sense that I’m going to shoot myself in the foot, I think I just have to submit what I have to Nature. There is a grave danger that if ChemRxiv rejected the manuscript as purely speculative, why would Nature be any different. I think there is less than 50:50 chance that the manuscript gets through the editor to be reviewed, but the chance is still high enough to try. This time I really must convince the editor with the cover letter that what I claim isn’t unsubstantiated. I’ve written already two versions of it, but I might just need to rewrite it. It’s extremely easy to be either to be aggressive or defensive in it, while (probably) the right way to do it is to be as objective and informative as possible. Then there is the issue of hyperbole. I must convey that the manuscript really is the cornerstone of the theory of everything. But I also must convey that the manuscript has not solved all of the puzzles relating to fundamental interaction and many other important facets of physics.
So, what am I doing at the moment? Polishing, polishing, polishing. I’m reworking the supplementary information to include a more detailed description of internal refraction, so that the reviewers cannot say that the theory is vague/unsubstantiated. I’m rather happy with the image above, describing the principle of internal refraction. I only worry that I won’t be clear enough.
But I have a strong feeling that if I won’t at least try, I’ll never get anywhere. Perhaps if the editor at Nature decides to not even pass the manuscript to reviewers, I’ll just have to take up the offer from Scientific Reports and submit this as a revision. At least there I know I will be reviewed.
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