Related papers: The Emperor's Last Clothes?
We start by surveying the history of the idea of a fundamental conservation law and briefly examine the role conservation laws play in different classical contexts. In such contexts we find conservation laws to be useful, but often not…
We argue that the light particles in string theory obey an effective quantum mechanics modified by the inclusion of a quantum-gravitational friction term, induced by unavoidable couplings to unobserved massive string states in the…
All the laws of physics are time-reversible. Time arrow emerges only when ensembles of classical particles are treated probabilistically, outside of physics laws, and the entropy and the second law of thermodynamics are introduced. In…
In these lectures I describe some of the open questions in the standard model relating to the nature and origin of mass, forces and matter and discuss some of the speculative theoretical ideas put forth in this regard. Some of the topics…
Pythagoras' theorem lies at the heart of physics as well as mathematics, yet its historical origins are obscure. We highlight a purely pictorial, gestalt-like proof that may have originated during the Zhou Dynasty. Generalizations of the…
This article concerns a phenomenon of elementary quantum mechanics that is quite counter-intuitive, very non-classical, and apparently not widely known: a quantum particle can get reflected at a downward potential step. In contrast,…
The Standard Model of elementary particles is a theory unifying three of the four basic forces of the Nature: electromagnetic, weak, and strong interactions. In this paper we consider the Standard Model in the presence of a classical…
Until recently, wave-particle duality has been thought of as quantum principle without a counterpart in classical physics. This belief was challenged after (i) finding that average dynamics of a classical particle in strong inhomogeneous…
Amidst all candidates of physics beyond the Standard Model, string theory provides a unique proposal for incorporating gauge and gravitational interactions. In string theory, a four-dimensional theory that unifies quantum mechanics and…
This is the first of a series of papers that we intend to publish about the epistemology of fundamental physics in its current state. One of the main objectives of these papers is to improve our understanding of fundamental physics (and…
Observationally and experimentally, physical laws express how particles interact. Conversely, physical laws should be invariant under any re-arrangement of those particles, e.g., the laws of gravity do not change if one re-arranges the…
Based on general considerations, the Standard Model of particle physics with its extensions (SM) can be ruled out as a valid theory of fundamental forces: it requires far too many parameters, which are not determined from first principles.…
Contrary to claims about the irrelevance of philosophy for science, I argue that philosophy has had, and still has, far more influence on physics than is commonly assumed. I maintain that the current anti-philosophical ideology has had…
The Standard Model is in good shape, apart possibly from g_\mu - 2 and some niggling doubts about the electroweak data. Something like a Higgs boson is required to provide particle masses, but theorists are actively considering…
The symmetrization postulates of quantum mechanics (symmetry for bosons, antisymmetry for fermions) are usually taken to entail that \emph{quantum particles} of the same kind (e.g., electrons) are all in exactly the same state and therefore…
I argue that the limits on this quantity obtained using model-independent parameterizations contain an tacit assumption that could be invalidated under a variety of situations. As a specific example, existing limits on $\Lambda $ would be…
In this paper, we study implications of the geometrical nature of space- time for some of the basic tenets of quantum mechanics. That is, we study two different implications of the principle of general covariance; first we quantize a…
This communication is devoted to a brief historical framework and to a comprehensive critical discussion concerning foundational issues of Electrodynamics. Attention is especially focused on the events which, about the end of XIX century,…
Despite the extraordinary successes the two great bastions of $20^{th}$ century science (Quantum Theory and General Relativity) are troubled with serious conceptual and mathematical difficulties. As a result, further growth of fundamental…
The phenomenologically observed flatness - or near flatness - of spacetime cannot be understood as emerging from continuum Planck (or sub-Planck) scales using known physics. Using dimensional arguments it is demonstrated that any…