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The inward bound path of discovery unravelling the mysteries of matter and the forces that hold it together has culminated at the end of the twentieth century,in a theory of the Fundamental Forces of Nature based on Nonabelian Gauge Fields,…
The question of the origins of logic as a formal discipline is of special interest to the historian of physics since it represents a turning inward to examine the very nature of reasoning and the relationship between thought and reality. In…
Although the differential calculus was invented by Newton, Kepler established his famous laws 70 years earlier by using the same idea, namely to find a path in a nonuniform field of force by small steps. It is generally not known that…
This paper describes Indian ideas of the early-Purana/Mahabharata times (centuries BC) on the nature of space, time and consciousness that would be of interest to the physicist. In order to simplify references, we quote mainly from…
This paper provides an overview of the birth and early development of Indian astronomy. Taking account of significant new findings from archaeology and literary analysis, it is shown that early mathematical astronomy arose in India in the…
We discuss the work of a brilliant line of Mathematicians who lived in central Kerala and starting with its founder Madhava (1350 CE) developed what can best be described as Calculus and applied it to a class of trigonometric functions. We…
Did the Indian and Babylonian astronomy evolve in isolation, was there mutual influence, or was one dependent on the other? Scholars have debated these questions for more than two centuries, and opinion has swung one way or the other with…
Theories of fundamental physics as well as cosmology must ultimately not only account for the structure and evolution of the universe and the physics of fundamental interactions, but also lead to an understanding of why this particular…
This work explores a possible course of evolution of mathematics in ancient times in India when there was no script, no place-value system, and no zero. Reviewing examples of time-reckoning, large numbers, sacrificial altar-making, and…
Peculiar motions are commonplace in the universe. Our local group of galaxies, for example, drifts relative to the Hubble flow at about 600 km/sec. Such bulk flows are believed to fade away as we move on to progressively larger scales.…
Despite the extensive amount of scholarly work done on Indian mathematics in the last 200 years, the conditions under which it originated and evolved is still not clear. Often, one reads the ancient texts with the present concepts and…
We survey early Indian ideas on the speed of light and the size of the universe. A context is provided for Sayana's statement (14th century)that the speed is 2,202 yojanas per half nimesha (186,000 miles per second!). It is shown how this…
The problem of determining the radiation reaction force experienced by a scalar charge moving in flat spacetime is investigated. A consistent renormalization procedure is used, which exploits the Poincar\'e invariance of the theory.…
This paper examines the theory of a Babylonian origin of Aryabhata's planetary constants. It shows that Aryabhata's basic constant is closer to the Indian counterpart than to the Babylonian one. Sketching connections between Aryabhata's…
A goal of physics is to understand the greatest possible breadth of natural phenomena in terms of the most economical set of basic concepts. However, as the understanding of physics has developed historically, its pedagogy and language have…
The motion of a point like object of mass $M$ passing through the background potential of massive collisionless particles ($m << M$) suffers a steady deceleration named dynamical friction. In his classical work, Chandrasekhar assumed a…
The cyclic model of the universe has an old history in India. It has held the preeminent position regarding the origins of the universe, and it is described in astronomical texts, Puranic encyclopaedias, and philosophical literature. Within…
Starting from the revelation of the nature of inertial forces, this article discusses the subdivision of the basic physical concept of space-time and raises questions about the metric of standard cosmology. A new form of particle dynamics…
This paper establishes calculus upon two physical facts: (1) any average velocity is always between two instantaneous velocities, and (2) the motion of an object is determined once its velocity has been determined. It directly defines…
On 14 December 1900 Max Planck first formulated the idea of energy quanta related to a new universal constant now known as Planck's constant. Despite the following progress of thus initiated "quantum mechanics", the physical origin of both…