The Gravity Research Foundation's essay contest is one of the most well-known and prestigious essay contests in physics, in which authors are encouraged to synt

The Gravity Research Foundation's essay contest is one of the most well-known and prestigious essay contests in physics, in which authors are encouraged to synthesize and simplify their technical work into a short, approachable-for-physicists-but-nonexperts work with few equations. A quick perusing of the previous winners http://www.gravityresearchfoundation.org/winners_year.html http://www.gravityresearchfoundation.org/winners_year.html shows 't Hooft, Krauss, Smoot, Steinhardt, Wald, Bekenstein, Brout, Englert, Penrose, Hawking, DeWitt. It's taken very seriously. So the chain was really (a bunch of real papers) --> (those authors summarizing what they did, and putting it on the arXiv) --> HN. Calling it derivative crap is totally wrong, and suggesting that the arXiv somehow makes the papers less "real" is wrong too. Full disclosure: I wrote http://arxiv.org/abs/1603.03055 http://arxiv.org/abs/1603.03055 for the contest [honarable mention].