The Shortest Physics Paper Ever?
I thought I’d share this for the benefit of those who haven’t seen it already:
Published in the Physical Review in 1951 this paper is just 27 words long, contains one number (+ error bounds), one equation, and one reference. Is this the shortest physics paper ever?
P.S. Current measurements of the electron and proton masses give a ratio inconsistent with the number derived from the measurements in [1].
In the Dark 
October 1, 2024 at 1:56 pm
It still looks like a waste of ink.
Huh, numerology.
October 1, 2024 at 4:15 pm
I think it should have been rejected on the grounds that it doesn’t have an abstract.
October 1, 2024 at 5:13 pm
Yes. An abstract something like “Numerological nonsense” would have been useful.
October 1, 2024 at 3:51 pm
Might have been shorter in German, in which (for example) the electron velocity distribution function is one word, “elektronengeschwindigskeitverteilungsfunktion”.
I also liked the laconic “It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material” in Crick and Watson’s double helix paper.
You might get a shorter paper in which the title is a binary question and the content of the paper is one word (Yes or No), with a weblink to the data.
October 1, 2024 at 10:37 pm
6pi^5 = 1836.11811…
m_p/m_e = 1836.1527…, alas.
October 2, 2024 at 9:07 am
Nowadays they would be charged several thousand dollars for ‘article processing’…..
October 2, 2024 at 11:39 am
Unfair to dismiss as “numerological nonsense”. A certain paper by Balmer (1885) was also numerological but turned out later to be rather significant…