Related papers: Complex and Unpredictable Cardano
In 1919 A. Einstein suspected first that gravitational fields could play an essential role in the structure of elementary particles. In 1937, P.A.M. Dirac found a miraculous link between the properties of the visible Universe and elementary…
We review the introduction in physics of the concepts of an elementary space length and of a fundamental time scale, analyzing some related unknown contributions by Ettore Majorana. In particular, we discuss the quasi-Coulombian scattering…
The rather unintuitive nature of quantum theory has led numerous people to develop sets of (physically motivated) principles that can be used to derive quantum mechanics from the ground up, in order to better understand where the structure…
I review the paper of Majorana about relativistic particles with arbitrary spin written in 1932. The main motivation for this papers was the dissatisfaction about the negative energy solutions of the Dirac equation. As such, the paper…
A physically real wave associated with any moving particle and travelling in a surrounding material medium was introduced by Louis de Broglie in a series of short notes in 1923 and in a more complete form in his thesis defended in Paris on…
One might think that, once we know something is computable, how efficiently it can be computed is a practical question with little further philosophical importance. In this essay, I offer a detailed case that one would be wrong. In…
From the late 1920s to the early 1950s, cosmic rays were the main instrument to investigate what we now call "high-energy physics". In approximately 25 years, an intense experimental and theoretical work brought particle physics from its…
This review is based on lectures given by M. J. Duff summarising the far reaching contributions of Ettore Majorana to fundamental physics, with special focus on Majorana fermions in all their guises. The theoretical discovery of the…
Kazuo Kondo (1911-2001) was Chair of the Department of Mathematical Engineering at the University of Tokyo, Japan. Over a period of 50 years, he and a few colleagues wrote and published a voluminous series of papers and monographs on the…
The relational interpretation of quantum mechanics (RQM), introduced in its present form by Carlo Rovelli in 1996, involves a number of significant departures from other QM interpretations widely discussed in the literature. We begin here…
Contextuality is a fundamental property of quantum theory and a critical resource for quantum computation. Here, we experimentally observe the arguably cleanest form of contextuality in quantum theory [A. Cabello \emph{et al.}, Phys. Rev.…
We pursue the possible connections between classical games and quantum computation. The Parrondo game is one in which a random combination of two losing games produces a winning game. We introduce novel realizations of this Parrondo effect…
The term complexity derives etymologically from the Latin plexus, which means interwoven. Intuitively, this implies that something complex is composed by elements that are difficult to separate. This difficulty arises from the relevant…
After World War II, a hyper-pragmatic paradigm was established in physics in most of the western countries, within which foundations of quantum mechanics were vastly dismissed as pointless speculations. In this paper, we show that in Italy,…
The rapidly increasing interest in the quantum properties of living matter stimulates a discussion of the fundamental properties of life as well as quantum mechanics. In this discussion often concepts are used that originate in philosophy…
Quantum probability theory and complex analysis for children.
We give, for the first time, the critical complete text of a manuscript by Ettore Majorana, conserved in the same file of the lecture notes for his course on Theoretical Physics at the University of Naples. He probably refers to a seminar…
Recent developments in the mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics have brought the theory closer to that of classical probability and statistics. On the other hand, the unique character of quantum physics sets many of the questions…
Quantum theory makes the most accurate empirical predictions and yet it lacks simple, comprehensible physical principles from which the theory can be uniquely derived. A broad class of probabilistic theories exist which all share some…
Ettore Majorana (1906-1938) disappeared while traveling by ship from Palermo to Naples in 1938. His fate has never been fully resolved and several articles have been written that explore the mystery itself. His demise intrigues us still…