Related papers: Some new reflections on Mr. Palomar
We present a brief review of the impact that Albert Einstein's visit to Argentina had on the scientific community and on the general public. Among other particularities, his visit was, at a certain point, somewhat disconcerting: not only…
An analysis of contemporary Cosmology is presented, with the aim of identifying the elements present in it according to the scientific program structure created by I. Lakatos. We look at some modern controversies from this point of view and…
The aim of this short paper is to summarize my recent preprint (arXiv:1209.1112), in which I proposed a novel and probably controversial view about cognitive mapping; that is, the image of the city out of the underlying scaling of city…
We define a new class of numbers based on the first occurrence of certain patterns of zeros and ones in the expansion of irracional numbers in a given basis and call them Sagan numbers, since they were first mentioned, in a special case, by…
Karl Popper published, in 1968, a paper that allegedly found a flaw in a very influential article of Birkhoff and von Neumann, which pioneered the field of "quantum logic". Nevertheless, nobody rebutted Popper's criticism in print for…
In different passages of his dialogues, Plato showed deep mathematically-based physical insights. Regrettably most readers overlooked the respective statements, or they utterly did not understand those hints since they were full of…
The triangular lattice model with nearest-neighbor attraction and third-neighbor repulsion, introduced in [J. Pekalski, A. Ciach and N. G. Almarza, arXiv:1401.0801 [cond-mat.soft]] is studied by Monte Carlo simulation. Introduction of…
During the period identified as the Rebirth of General Relativity, John Wheeler was instrumental in retrieving the physics of gravity that had become hidden behind the mathematical formalism. For Wheeler himself the change in point of view…
The renewed interest in the foundations of quantum statistical mechanics in recent years has led us to study John von Neumann's 1929 article on the quantum ergodic theorem. We have found this almost forgotten article, which until now has…
Trying to be effective (no matter who exactly and in what field) a person face the problem which inevitably destroys all our attempts to easily get to a desired goal. The problem is the existence of some insuperable barriers for our mind,…
It has been shown by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen that in quantum mechanics either one of two different wave functions predicting specific values for quantities represented by non-commuting Hermitian operators can characterize the same…
In 1986 Alex Dalgarno published a paper entitled "Is Interstellar Chemistry Useful?" By the middle 1970s, and perhaps even earlier, Alex had hoped that astronomical molecules would prove to: possess significant diagnostic utility; control…
It is several years since national research evaluation systems around the globe started making use of quantitative indicators to measure the performance of researchers. Nevertheless, the effects on these systems on the behavior of the…
Sixty years ago Gell-Mann introduced, with a striking sense of caution, a new fundamental layer in the structure of matter. He christened the associated particles 'quarks', a name borrowed from the psychedelic flood of words of James…
This anniversary paper is an occasion to recall some of the events that shaped institutional econophysics. But in these thoughts about the evolution of econophysics in the last 15 years we also express some concerns. Our main worry concerns…
This obituary is devoted to M. I. Polikarpov (28.12.1952 - 18.07.2013), our teacher, our colleague, our friend. We recollect some facts of his biography and stages of his scientific career, and make a brief review of some of his most known…
We introduce a new model that mimics the strong and sudden effects induced by conformity in tightly interacting human societies. Such effects range from mere crowd phenomena to dramatic political turmoil. The model is a modified version of…
The observable universe is fundamentally inhomogeneous and anisotropic. Quantum description of the generation of these inhomogeneities and anisotropies is ill-understood and unsatisfactory. After providing a brief account of the standard…
This paper provides a prospectus for a new way of thinking about the wavefunction of the universe: a $\Psi$-epistemic quantum cosmology. We present a proposal that, if successfully implemented, would resolve the cosmological measurement…
The concept of antimatter is extremely important, but not always discussed as it deserves, balancing ideas and formalism. In this note, we gather some insights to present it effectively, following certain steps taken in the history of…