Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.

– that guy

You need to forget about the details in order to grasp the essence.

Scale of velocity as well so we have a more complete picture in phase space

The referees who let this slip are either brilliant or lazy (or both, I guess)

Hiw stable is this kind of density? Is it going to shrink over time?

Well, even the picture is in the picture…

Resubmitting to multiple journals is not a typical (nor the “right” one however it is interpreted) strategy though (at least not in physical sciences). You’ll usually ping the handling editor, who will then contact the referee on your behalf. The referee will then either “promise a report soon”, or, in the event they didn’t reply, the editor will find another referee. Nowadays with arxiv and such, there is usually no rush to actual publication as far as priority is concerned.

I’d also say, don’t take the combative mindset as suggested in the comic. Think of it more as having some fresh pairs of eyes to check your work as well as communication (if a referee misunderstood something in your paper, chances are many readers will as well).

One idea that captures my imagination is the concept of cyclic inflation – a framework that combines cosmic inflation with the notion of cyclic collapse and expansion, or bounces.

This captivating idea, conceived by former postdoctoral researcher Dr Tirthabir Biswas and myself, suggests that the Universe undergoes infinite cycles of collapse and expansion.

Here’s a link to the good professor’s paper for those interested. As others have already pointed out, cyclic universe as an idea is not new – the paper itself cited refs 11-19 as prior art, the oldest of which dated back to 1931.

The claim the good professor is trying to make is somewhat subtle for any lay person skimming through the article: the novelty of their idea is not cyclicity itself, but rather to combine cyclicity and inflation. To be honest, as a lay person I would have thought a cycle would consist of an inflationary period and a deflationary period, so forgive me for not seeing the point! The following technical statement from the paper perhaps makes more sense:

Thus although cyclic and inflationary models are not mutually exclusive, it is natural to try to attempt to replace inflation altogether with “cyclicity”. In this paper, however, we take a slightly different approach, by exploring whether by embedding inflation in a cyclic universe setting, some of it’s problems viz. (i-iv) can be alleviated. Our main idea is to merge inflation with cyclic cosmology where the universe undergoes an infinite number of cycles before bouncing into a final power-law inflationary phase.

I think the better way to say this is that not only do you get inflation (and deflation) for free within each cycle, but the sequence of cycles is itself inflating – a larger scale inflation modulated by a smaller scale periodic function if you will.

The question now is, of course, is there a “first cycle”, and what happened before it. Why stop there and not have some meta-cycles? That would bring the whole business to a full circle.

Off topic, but I must admit I clicked the thumbnail thinking it’s the right half of a split ergo keyboard 😅