Related papers: Henry Eyring: Statistical Mechanics, Significant S…
The main distinction between classical mechanics and quantum mechanics is the lack in the latter of a full mechanical determinism: different final states can arise from the same physical state, after the measurement. No hidden variable is…
This paper argues that the physics of condensed matter cannot be fully reduced to the supposedly fundamental quantum mechanical theory for all the atoms of which the system consists. In fact, there are many reasons to reject the idea that…
Stirling Colgate was a remarkably imaginative physicist, an independent thinker with a wide breadth of interests and contagious enthusiasm, a born leader with enduring drive to attack fundamental problems in science. Among his many…
Jerzy Neyman's life history and some of his contributions to applied statistics are reviewed. In a 1960 article he wrote: ``Currently in the period of dynamic indeterminism in science, there is hardly a serious piece of research which, if…
In the late 1960s, a young physicist was sailing along the coast of California towards Berkeley, where he got a post-doc position in astronomy. But his real goal was not astronomy, at least not immediately. First, John Clauser eagerly…
We analyze Einstein's recoiling slit experiment and point out that the inevitable entanglement between the particle and the recoiling-slit was not part of Bohr's reply. We show that if this entanglement is taken into account, one can…
The study of many body physics has provided a scientific playground of surprise and continuing revolution over the past half century. The serendipitous discovery of new states and properties of matter, phenomena such as superfluidity, the…
We propose four information-theoretic axioms for the foundations of statistical mechanics in general physical theories. The axioms---Causality, Purity Preservation, Pure Sharpness, and Purification---identify a class of theories where every…
In two respects Ludwig Boltzmann was a pioneer of quantum mechanics. First because in his statistical interpretation of the second law of thermodynamics he introduced the theory of probability into a fundamental law of physics and thus…
Statistical physics is important in understanding the physics of interacting many bodies. This has been historically developed by attempts to understand colliding gases and quantifying quantities like entropy, free energy, and other…
On January 4, 2012, the centenary of Henri Poincar\'e's death, a colloquium was held in Nancy, France the subject of which was "Vers une biographie d'Henri Poincar\'e". Scholars discussed several approaches for writing a biography of…
The scientific method relies on facts, established through repeated measurements and agreed upon universally, independently of who observed them. In quantum mechanics, the objectivity of observations is not so clear, most dramatically…
Quantum mechanics is derived as an application of the method of maximum entropy. No appeal is made to any underlying classical action principle whether deterministic or stochastic. Instead, the basic assumption is that in addition to the…
We study a quantum theory based on two assumptions: In the intrinsic frame of reference of an isolated, macroscopic system, (i) the system has no global motion and is not entangled with any other system, (ii) time evolution of statevectors…
We analyze the quantum dynamics of the non-relativistic two-dimensional isotropic harmonic oscillator in Heisenberg's picture. Such a system is taken as toy model to analyze some of the various quantum theories that can be built from the…
Ever since the appearance of the seminal work of Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen (The EPR-paradox), the phenomenon of entanglement, which features the essential difference between classical and quantum physics, has received wide theoretical…
In this paper, we discuss the role of Mathematics in articulating reality in theoretical Physics. We propose a parallel between empirical and theoretical work and investigate how scientists can also speak about reality without performing…
Some general considerations on the notion of entropy in physics are presented. An attempt is made to clarify the question of the differentiation between physical entropy (the Clausius-Boltzmann one) and quantities called entropies…
Quantum technology is seeing a remarkable explosion in interest due to a wave of successful commercial technology. As a wider array of engineers and scientists are needed, it is time we rethink quantum educational paradigms. Current…
In the past hundred years, chaos has always been a mystery to human beings, including the butterfly effect discovered in 1963 and the dissipative structure theory which won the chemistry Nobel Prize in 1977. So far, there is no quantitative…