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Failure-mode index

Search what already failed

A searchable index of real negative results, null findings, and replication failures from the published literature — so you can learn what didn't work before repeating it.

WASTE indexes published research — it does not host or republish full papers. Each entry is a metadata record (title, authors, DOI) compiled from open scholarly databases, with the abstract shown in full only where the paper is openly licensed (e.g. Creative Commons); otherwise a short excerpt is shown for reference under fair use. WASTE classifies each work by failure type; classifications are automated and approximate.

21337 results · page 511 of 712

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

On the Search for Quasar Light Echoes

Eli Visbal, Rupert A. C. Croft · 2007 · arXiv

The UV radiation from a quasar leaves a characteristic pattern in the distribution of ionized hydrogen throughout the surrounding space. This pattern or light echo propagates through the intergalactic medium at the speed of light, and can be observed by its imprint on the Ly-alpha forest spectra of background sources. As the echo persists after the quasar has switched off, it offers the possibility of searching for dead quasars, and constraining their luminosities and lifetimes. We outline a technique to search for and characterize these light echoes. To test the method, we create artificial L

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

Structural Limits of OHLCV-Based Intraday Signals in MNQ Futures: A Systematic Falsification Study

Mathias Mesfin · 2026 · arXiv

This paper tests whether intraday momentum signals derived from open-high-low-close-volume (OHLCV) data produce a statistically significant trading edge in Micro E-mini Nasdaq 100 futures (MNQ) under realistic execution constraints. Using 947 trading days of five-minute data (2021-2025), fourteen signal families are evaluated, including opening range breakouts, gap strategies, volume signals, cross-session momentum, liquidity grabs, volatility-conditioned classifiers, and news-driven strategies. All signals are assessed using strict institutional criteria: out-of-sample walk-forward validation

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

Searching for Smurfs: Testing if Money Launderers Know Alert Thresholds

Rasmus Ingemann Tuffveson Jensen, Joras Ferwerda, Christian Remi Wewer · 2023 · arXiv

Objectives: To combat money laundering, banks raise and review alerts on transactions that exceed confidential thresholds. However, the thresholds may be leaked to criminals, allowing them to break up large transactions into amounts under the thresholds. This paper introduces a data-driven approach to detect the phenomenon, popularly known as smurfing. Methods: Our approach compares an observed transaction distribution to a counterfactual distribution estimated using a high-degree polynomial. We investigate the approach with simulation experiments and real transaction data from a systemically

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Do floating orbits in extreme mass ratio binary black holes exist?

Shasvath J. Kapadia, Daniel Kennefick, Kostas Glampedakis · 2013 · arXiv

This paper examines the possibility of floating or non-decaying orbits for extreme mass ratio binary black holes. In the adiabatic approximation, valid in the extreme mass ratio case, if the orbital flux lost due to gravitational radiation reaction is compensated for by the orbital flux gained from the spins of the black holes via superradiant scattering (or, equivalently, tidal acceleration) the orbital decay would be stalled, causing the binary to "float". We show that this flux balance is not, in practice, possible for extreme mass ratio binary black holes with circular equatorial orbits; f

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Refining Gravitational Wave and Collider Physics Dialogue via Singlet Scalar Extension

Michael J. Ramsey-Musolf, Tuomas V. I. Tenkanen, Van Que Tran · 2024 · arXiv

Employing effective field theory techniques, we advance computations of thermal parameters that enter predictions for the gravitational wave spectra from first-order electroweak phase transitions. Working with the real-singlet-extended Standard Model, we utilize recent lattice simulations to confirm the existence of first-order phase transitions across the free parameter space. For the first time, we account for several important two-loop corrections in the high-temperature expansion for determining thermal parameters, including the bubble wall velocity in the local thermal equilibrium approxi

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

The Ĝ Infrared Search for Extraterrestrial Civilizations with Large Energy Supplies. II. Framework, Strategy, and First Result

J. T. Wright, R. Griffith, S. Sigurðsson et al. · 2014 · arXiv

We describe the framework and strategy of the Ĝ infrared search for extraterrestrial civilizations with large energy supplies, which will use the wide-field infrared surveys of WISE and Spitzer to search for these civilizations' waste heat. We develop a formalism for translating mid-infrared photometry into quantitative upper limits on extraterrestrial energy supplies. We discuss the likely sources of false positives, how dust can and will contaminate our search, and prospects for distinguishing dust from alien waste heat. We argue that galaxy-spanning civilizations may be easier to distinguis

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

Constraining Fifth Forces using the Local Distance Ladder: Implications for the Hubble Tension

Marcus Högås, Edvard Mörtsell, Harry Desmond et al. · 2025 · arXiv

We revisit the local distance ladder measurement of the Hubble constant in models where gravity is modified by a fifth force, an additional long-range interaction. In many such theories the force is screened; suppressed in dense environments but potentially active in galaxies used for distance calibration. We model this environmental dependence using three quantities that characterize each galaxy's large-scale gravitational environment: the external gravitational potential $Φ$, acceleration $a$, and curvature $K$. Our baseline analysis recalibrates the SH0ES-team's Cepheid-supernova distance l

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Nonexistence of hidden-charm pentaquarks in $J/ψ$ photoproduction

Samson Clymton, Sang-Ho Kim, Hyun-Chul Kim · 2026 · arXiv

We investigate $J/ψ$ photoproduction off the proton, $γp \to J/ψp$, to elucidate the nonexistence of hidden-charm pentaquark signals reported by the GlueX and CLAS12 experiments. Within a coupled-channel rescattering mechanism, we employ the transition amplitudes from a previous coupled-channel analysis that dynamically generates the $P_{c\bar{c}}$ states. The kernel amplitudes for the transition to the $J/ψN$ channel include both $t$-channel heavy-meson exchange and $u$-channel heavy-baryon exchange. We find that the rescattering contributions from the $\bar{D}^{(*)}Σ_c$ channels -- indispens

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

The NCORES Program: Precise planetary masses, null results, and insight into the planet mass distribution near the radius gap

David J. Armstrong, Ares Osborn, Remo Burn et al. · 2025 · arXiv

NCORES was a large observing program on the ESO HARPS spectrograph, dedicated to measuring the masses of Neptune-like and smaller transiting planets discovered by the TESS satellite using the radial velocity technique. This paper presents an overview of the programme, its scientific goals and published results, covering 35 planets in 18 planetary systems. We present spectrally derived stellar characterisation and mass constraints for five additional TOIs where radial velocity observations found only marginally significant signals (TOI-510.01, $M_p=1.08^{+0.58}_{-0.55}M_\oplus$), or found no si

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Coordinated Information Dissemination on Telegram and Reddit During Political Turbulence: A Case Study of Venezuela in Global News Channels

Despoina Antonakaki, Sotiris Ioannidis · 2026 · arXiv

Telegram is increasingly used for political communication and news dissemination, yet evidence of coordinated content sharing remains limited. We test whether mainstream global news channels coordinate when reporting on Venezuela during political turbulence. We analyze public Telegram posts from nine major international outlets (2017--2026; 2,038 Venezuela-related messages) and define coordination as temporal co-posting (hourly/daily windows) plus near-duplicate text similarity using character $n$-gram TF--IDF cosine similarity. Similarity scores concentrate at low values and no cross-channel

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMathematics

Calibrating the Brody exponent as a quantitative measure of short-range exclusion in 2D spatial point processes

Dawid Kucharski · 2026 · arXiv

The Brody distribution, originally a phenomenological interpolation between Poisson and Wigner level-spacing statistics in quantum chaos, is calibrated here as a quantitative measure of short-range exclusion in 2D spatial point processes. Two results form the core. First, the 2D complete-spatial-randomness baseline is recalibrated to $β=0.96\pm0.15$, correcting the inappropriate 1D Poisson reference. Second, an empirical $β$--$r_{\text{excl}}$ calibration is validated against the effective hard-core radius with Spearman $ρ=0.988$. The framework is demonstrated on 58 manufactured surfaces (10 m

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

Intra-night optical variability of AGN in the COSMOS field with the KMTNet

Joonho Kim, Marios Karouzos, Myungshin Im et al. · 2018 · arXiv

Active Galactic Nucleus (AGN) variability can be used to study the physics of the region in the vicinity of the central black hole. In this paper, we investigated intra-night optical variability of AGN in the COSMOS field in order to understand the AGN instability at the smallest scale. Observations were performed using the KMTNet on three separate nights for 2.5-5 hour at a cadence of 20-30 min. We find that the observation enables the detection of the short-term variability as small as $\sim$ 0.02 and 0.1 mag for $R \sim$ 18 and 20 mag sources, respectively. Using four selection methods (X-r

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Dark Matter Mass Constrained by the Relic Abundance, Direct Detections, and Colliders

Ho-Chin Tsai, Kwei-Chou Yang · 2013 · arXiv

We take into account a generic form of a Dirac fermionic dark matter (DM), which communicates with the Standard Model quarks via a scalar mediator, in a model-independent way. Four special interaction scenarios are investigated, where one is parity conserving and the other three are parity violating. Three of them result in the $v$ suppressed DM-nucleon cross sections, where $v \sim 10^{-3} c$ is the velocity of the DM in the laboratory frame. We constrain the masses of the dark matter and mediator as well as the couplings from the thermal relic abundance, and the recent results of the XENON10

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Global fits of the dark matter-nucleon effective interactions

Riccardo Catena, Paolo Gondolo · 2014 · arXiv

The effective theory of isoscalar dark matter-nucleon interactions mediated by heavy spin-one or spin-zero particles depends on 10 coupling constants besides the dark matter particle mass. Here we compare this 11-dimensional effective theory to current observations in a comprehensive statistical analysis of several direct detection experiments, including the recent LUX, SuperCDMS and CDMSlite results. From a multidimensional scan with about 3 million likelihood evaluations, we extract the marginalized posterior probability density functions (a Bayesian approach) and the profile likelihoods (a

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

An Observational Determination of the Proton to Electron Mass Ratio in the Early Universe

Rodger I. Thompson, Jill Bechtold, John H. Black et al. · 2009 · arXiv

In an effort to resolve the discrepancy between two measurements of the fundamental constant mu, the proton to electron mass ratio, at early times in the universe we reanalyze the same data used in the earlier studies. Our analysis of the molecular hydrogen absorption lines in archival VLT/UVES spectra of the damped Lyman alpha systems in the QSOs Q0347-383 and Q0405-443 yields a combined measurement of a (Delta mu)/mu value of (-7 +/- 8) x 10^{-6}, consistent with no change in the value of mu over a time span of 11.5 gigayears. Here we define (Delta mu) as (mu_z - mu_0) where mu_z is the valu

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

Revisiting $^{129}$Xe electric dipole moment measurements applying a new global phase fitting approach

T. Liu, K. Rolfs, I. Fan et al. · 2020 · arXiv

By measuring the nuclear magnetic spin precession frequencies of polarized $^{129}$Xe and $^{3}$He, a new upper limit on the $^{129}$Xe atomic electric dipole moment (EDM) $ d_\mathrm{A} (^{129}\mathrm{Xe})$ was reported in Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 143003 (2019). Here, we propose a new evaluation method based on global phase fitting (GPF) for analyzing the continuous phase development of the $^{3}$He-$^{129}$Xe comagnetometer signal. The Cramer-Rao Lower Bound on the $^{129}$Xe EDM for the GPF method is theoretically derived and shows the potential benefit of our new approach. The robustness of t

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

Orphan GRB afterglow searches with the Pan-STARRS1 COSMOS survey

Yun-Jing Huang, Yuji Urata, Kuiyun Huang et al. · 2020 · arXiv

We present the result of a search for orphan Gamma-Ray Burst (GRB) afterglows in the Pan-STARRS1 (PS1) COSMOS survey. There is extensive theoretical and observational evidence suggesting that GRBs are collimated jets; the direct observation of orphan GRB afterglows would further support this model. An optimal survey strategy is designed by coupling the PS1 survey with the Subaru/Hyper-Suprime-Cam (HSC) survey. The PS1 COSMOS survey, one of the survey fields in the PS1 Medium Deep Survey (PS1/MDS), searches a field of 7 deg$^2$ from December 2011 to January 2014, reaching a limiting magnitude R

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

Testing Lorentz symmetry of special relativity by means of the Virgo or Ligo set-up, through the differential measure of the two orthogonal beams time-of-flight

G. Sardin · 2004 · arXiv

A novel experiment to test special relativity via Lorentz symmetry has become factible thanks to three recent technological achievements: huge Michelson-like set-up with arms 3 km long (Virgo) and 4 km (Ligo) with beam paths respectively reaching 120 km and 200 km through multiple reflections, ultrashort laser pulses of 10-15 s and ultrafast detectors of 10-12 s resolution. The alliance of these three elements would allow checking the equality of the time-of-flight of the two orthogonal beams with a resolution high enough to allow prospecting in a novel way the equivalency of inertial system p

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

ARCS, The Arcminute Radio Cluster-lens Search - I. Selection Criteria and Initial Results

P. M. Phillips, I. W. A. Browne, P. N. Wilkinson · 2000 · arXiv

We present the results of an unbiased radio search for gravitational lensing events with image separations between 15 and 60 arcsec, which would be associated with clusters of galaxies with masses >10^{13-14}M_{\sun}. A parent population of 1023 extended radio sources stronger than 35 mJy with stellar optical identifications was selected using the FIRST radio catalogue at 1.4 GHz and the APM optical catalogue. The FIRST catalogue was then searched for companions to the parent sources stronger than 7 mJy and with separation in the range 15 to 60 arcsec. Higher resolution observations of the res

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

An Improved Search for the Neutron Electric Dipole Moment

M. Burghoff, A. Schnabel, G. Ban et al. · 2011 · arXiv

A permanent electric dipole moment of fundamental spin-1/2 particles violates both parity (P) and time re- versal (T) symmetry, and hence, also charge-parity (CP) symmetry since there is no sign of CPT-violation. The search for a neutron electric dipole moment (nEDM) probes CP violation within and beyond the Stan- dard Model. The experiment, set up at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI), an improved, upgraded version of the apparatus which provided the current best experimental limit, dn < 2.9E-26 ecm (90% C.L.), by the RAL/Sussex/ILL collaboration: Baker et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 131801 (200

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

A New Analysis of the Exoplanet Hosting System HD 6434

Natalie R. Hinkel, Stephen R. Kane, Genady Pilyavsky et al. · 2015 · arXiv

The current goal of exoplanetary science is not only focused on detecting but characterizing planetary systems in hopes of understanding how they formed, evolved, and relate to the Solar System. The Transit Ephemeris Refinement and Monitoring Survey (TERMS) combines both radial velocity (RV) and photometric data in order to achieve unprecedented ground-based precision in the fundamental properties of nearby, bright, exoplanet-hosting systems. Here we discuss HD 6434 and its planet, HD 6434b, which has a M_p*sin(i) = 0.44 M_J mass and orbits every 22.0170 days with an eccentricity of 0.146. We

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

New Constraints on ALP Electron and Photon Couplings from ArgoNeuT and the MiniBooNE Beam Dump

Francesco Capozzi, Bhaskar Dutta, Gajendra Gurung et al. · 2023 · arXiv

Beam dumps and fixed-target experiments have been very sensitive probes of such particles and other physics beyond the Standard Model (BSM) by considering the production of new states from the primary interaction in the beam dump. In a proton beam dump, there are many secondary interactions taking place in electromagnetic showers which may be additional production channels for pseudoscalar bosons or axion-like particles (ALPs). The target-less configuration of the MiniBooNE experiment, which collected data from $1.86 \times 10^{20}$ protons impinging directly on the steel beam dump, is an exce

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

Ultra-soft sources as supernova type Ia progenitors

Kelly Lepo, Marten van Kerkwijk · 2011 · arXiv

Missing from the usual considerations of nuclear burning white dwarfs as Type Ia supernova progenitors are systems with very higher mass transfer rates, where more material than is needed for steady burning accretes on the white dwarf. This will move out the photosphere of the white dwarf, causing it to emit at longer wavelengths. Thus, we propose the name ultra-soft source (USS) for these objects. We present a VLT/FLAMES survey looking for USS in the SMC, selected to be bright in the far UV and with blue far UV-V colors. While we find some unusual objects, and recover known planetary nebula a

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

Search for Coincident Gravitational Wave and Long Gamma-Ray Bursts from 4-OGC and the Fermi-GBM/Swift-BAT Catalog

Yi-Fan Wang, Alexander H. Nitz, Collin D. Capano et al. · 2022 · arXiv

The recent discovery of a kilonova associated with an apparent long-duration gamma-ray burst has challenged the typical classification that long gamma-ray bursts originate from the core collapse of massive stars and short gamma-ray bursts are from compact binary coalescence. The kilonova indicates a neutron star merger origin and suggests the viability of gravitational-wave and long gamma-ray burst multimessenger astronomy. Gravitational waves play a crucial role by providing independent information for the source properties. This work revisits the archival 2015-2020 LIGO/Virgo gravitational-w

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Explanation of the ATLAS Z-peaked excess in the NMSSM

Junjie Cao, Liangliang Shang, Jin Min Yang et al. · 2015 · arXiv

Recently the ATLAS collaboration reported a $3σ$ excess in the leptonic-$Z+jets+E_{T}^{miss}$ channel. This may be interpreted in the Next-to-Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (NMSSM) by gluino pair production with the decay chain $\tilde{g} \to q \bar{q} \tildeχ_2^0 \to q \bar{q} Z \tildeχ_1^0$, where $\tildeχ_1^0$ and $\tildeχ_2^0$ denote the lightest and the next-to-lightest neutralinos with singlino and bino as their dominant components respectively. After exploring the relevant parameter space of the NMSSM by considering the constraints from the ATLAS searches for $jets + E_{T}^{miss}

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Swimming in spacetime: the view from a Fermi observer

Raissa F. P. Mendes, Eric Poisson · 2017 · arXiv

An extended test body moving in a curved spacetime does not typically follow a geodesic, because of forces that arise from couplings between its multipole moments and the ambient curvature. An illustration of this fact was provided by Wisdom, who showed that the motion of a quasi-rigid body undergoing cyclic changes of shape in a curved spacetime deviates, in general, from a geodesic. Wisdom's analysis, however, was recently challenged on the grounds that the body's motion should be described by the Mathisson-Papapetrou-Dixon equations, and that these predict geodesic motion for the kind of bo

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

The Space Density of Post-Period Minimum Cataclysmic Variables

J. V. Hernandez Santisteban, C. Knigge, M. L. Pretorius et al. · 2017 · arXiv

Binary evolution theory predicts that accreting white dwarfs with sub-stellar companions dominate the Galactic population of cataclysmic variables (CVs). In order to test these predictions, it is necessary to identify these systems, which may be difficult if the signatures of accretion become too weak to be detected. The only chance to identify such "dead" CVs is by exploiting their close binary nature. We have therefore searched the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Stripe 82 area for apparently isolated white dwarfs that undergo eclipses by a dark companion. We found no such eclipses in either

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

The 320 EeV Fly's Eye event: a key messenger or a statistical oddity ?

Thomas Fitoussi, Gustavo Medina-Tanco, Juan-Carlos D'Olivo · 2019 · arXiv

Almost three decades ago, the Fly's Eye experiment recorded the most energetic cosmic-ray ever observed. With an energy of 320 EeV, this event is well beyond the suppression region of the ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECR) spectrum. Modern and larger observatories, with an exposure up to 60 times larger, have never observed an event with even remotely comparable energy. Thus, if the energy of the Fly's Eye event was indeed well measured, as strongly suggested by the data, then it remains a great mystery or an unbelievable stroke of luck. At such high energies, the Universe is very opaque to

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Search for excited tau leptons in the $ττγ$ final state in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV

CMS Collaboration · 2024 · arXiv

Results are presented for a test of the compositeness of the heaviest charged lepton, $τ$, using data collected by the CMS experiment in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV at the CERN LHC. The data were collected in 2016-2018 and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 138 fb$^{-1}$. This analysis searches for tau lepton pair production in which one of the tau leptons is produced in an excited state and decays to a ground state tau lepton and a photon. The event selection consists of two isolated tau lepton decay candidates and a high-energy photon. The mass of the

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

A conclusive non-detection of magnetic field in the Am star o Peg with high-precision near-infrared spectroscopy

O. Kochukhov, A. M. Amarsi, A. Lavail et al. · 2024 · arXiv

The A-type metallic-line (Am) stars are typically considered to be non-magnetic or possessing very weak sub-G magnetic fields. This view has been repeatedly challenged in the literature, most commonly for the bright hot Am star o Peg. Several studies claimed to detect 1-2 kG field of unknown topology in this object, possibly indicating a new process of magnetic field generation in intermediate-mass stars. In this study, we revisit the evidence of a strong magnetic field in o Peg using new high-resolution spectropolarimetric observations and advanced spectral fitting techniques. The mean magnet