#312 April Fools papers

LifeIsStrange2025-04-01, edited 2025-04-03OpenAstrophysics and Physics

https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.22800 While usually humoristic, april fools papers can sometimes talk about significant discoveries that might seem too unorthodox to consider usually. Is this new axis of evil pattern paper purely a joke or sound? (based on Gaia data) The disclaimer mentions a systematic but it is unclear how significant.

Same question for https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.22839

Comments (1)

mikehelland2025-04-03, edited 2025-04-03

Purely jokes, I think.

Keywords: Solar system (1528), Open star clusters (1160), Cosmology (343), Gaia (2360), Cosmological principal, April Fool (4.1)

Disclaimer It is important to clarify that the apparent elongation of open clusters observed in this study does not necessarily cor- respond to true physical elongation. Instead, this effect arises primarily from the inherent uncertainties in parallax measure- ments, which are generally larger than those in right ascension and declination. As a result, the calculated elongation may be exaggerated along the line of sight, giving the illusion of an elongated structure. We strongly suggest that researchers claiming to discover elongation effects along the line of sight in three-dimensional structures of open clusters carefully con- sider the impact of measurement uncertainties.

It says April Fool (4.1) right there.

The second one also has 4/1 (American date format) in the abstract:

Our findings convincingly indicate that the universe indeed favors odd numbers, with results achieving a significance level well above the 4.1 − 𝜎 threshold.

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