When you start off studying just about anything, Wikipedia tends to pop up alot in Internet search results. However, I subscribe to the school of thought that Wikipedia is not a credible reference. While I’ve heard the argument that Wikipedia can be useful if you scroll down to a page’s references, I’ve found the reference sections to often be lacking, as well. At best, maybe it can give you ideas and point you in the right direction, but you still have to take your search elsewhere.

As I progressed forward from being a complete noob, I began to see more of StackOverflow and other specialty forums in my search results. This was probably due to switching from high-level concepts to practical application. While GitHub, strangely, does not usually pop up, I have found it to be an occasional source of answers, as well. However, I’ve found that online code, no matter where I find it, frequently doesn’t work; it either doesn’t work at all or it requires some editing, so that is a recurring source of frustration.

For targeted inquiries, Reddit can sometimes pull through. While I haven’t seen thorough answers the likes of which you might find on StackOverflow, I have been pointed in the right direction on multiple occasions. Still, Redditers are anonymous, and many answers are questionable, to put it nicely. There are also types of questions that no one seems to have answers for.

Interestingly, as I began searching the Internet for quantum-related anything, I began to see arXiv appear more and more. arXiv is a Cornell-sponsored repository of scientific papers. While other sources of scientific papers have popped up, arXiv has stood out among them, which is why it is the only one I am referencing by name. It seems to be the StackOverflow of scientific research.

I find it interesting that I have reached a point where the Internet has run relatively dry. My searches don’t bring up Wikipedia, blog posts, and YouTube videos with everyone discussing the same few points over and over again. Instead, I’m dredging up the types of documents that you have to read carefully to actually understand them. More importantly, the fact that Cornell even accepted these papers speaks volumes about their credibility.

So, step one had been to come up with a research idea for a scientific paper. Step two, which I have already started, is to search arXiv for:

Am I too late? Has someone already done this?

Is the basis for my idea — the information that I currently have — accurate?

What theoretical and/or exerimental work has already been done to answer this question?

Much like how I upload my code to GitHub, arXiv is where I will try to submit my scientific paper. The standard is high, but that will only serve to make the outcome more rewarding if I am successful.

This is important, because I have found YouTubers promoting their “research papers.” There is no peer review, no official publication, or anything else like that. It just sounds good to claim that you’ve “authored papers.” However, I downloaded one recently and it was utter nonsense; it simply stated, “this is interesting and should be explored further.” I wrote better conclusions in high school.

Therefore, this project is a bit of a personal goal. One of my mottos is “I’m not that smart, I just try to be not that stupid.” My modest goal is to write a scientific paper that industry peers respond to by stating, “this guy is not an idiot.”