Related papers: Around Kepler's "Dream"
The way Leibniz applied his philosophy to mathematics has been the subject of longstanding debates. A key piece of evidence is his letter to Masson on bodies. We offer an interpretation of this often misunderstood text, dealing with the…
We argue that taxonomical concept development is vital for planetary science as in all branches of science, but its importance has been obscured by unique historical developments. The literature shows that the concept of planet developed by…
After some more than four centuries from the formulation and publication (in Astronomia Nova) of the Kepler's Equation, which relates the eccentric (and, intermediately, the true) anomaly of the planetary trajectories to the uniformly…
The paper reassesses the largely neglected contribution of Avicenna (Ibn Sina, 980-1037) to medieval Tajik-Persian astronomy. Drawing on published primary and secondary sources, it reconstructs the main directions of his scientific activity…
The recent literature of astronomy and cosmology has included a good many suggestions for "who first recognized the expansion of the universe?" with cases having been made for Lemaitre, Lundmark, de Sitter, Slipher, Shapley, Friedmann,…
Extending the investigation of the presumed primordial comet as part of continuing work on a new model of the Kreutz sungrazer system, I confront a previously derived set of orbital elements with Aristotle's remarks in his Meteorologica to…
In the seminal essay, "On the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the physical sciences," physicist Eugene Wigner poses a fundamental philosophical question concerning the relationship between a physical system and our capacity to…
The von Neumann attitude on such a deep interpretational question as the role of a human observer in order for the quantum description of measurement to be consistent has been long misrepresented. The large majority of the subsequent…
No particle or signal carrying information can travel at a speed exceeding that of light in vacuum. Although this has for a long time been accepted as a law of nature, prior to Einstein's 1905 theory of special relativity the possibility of…
In 1953 I heard of an experiment in 1925 by Bengt Str\"omgren where he observed transit times with the meridian circle at the Copenhagen University Observatory measuring the current in a photocell behind slits when a star was crossing. In…
``In this paper we give the history of Leonhard Euler's work on the pentagonal number theorem, and his applications of the pentagonal number theorem to the divisor function, partition function and divergent series. We have attempted to give…
A test on quantum mechanics proposed long ago by Karl Popper is reconsidered with further detail and new insight. An ambiguity in the proposal, which turns out to be essential in order to make the test conclusive, is identified and taken…
The thought experiment (called the clock paradox or the twin paradox)proposed by Langevin in 1911 of two observers, one staying on Earth and the other making a trip toward a star with a velocity near the light velocity is very well known…
A brief review of Heisenberg's life and work: participating in the youth movement in the aftermath of World War I, creating quantum mechanics, conflict with "deutsche Physik", involvement in "Hitler's Uranium Project", last illusions.…
Quantum mechanics represents one of the greatest triumphs of human intellect and, undoubtedly, is the most successful physical theory we have to date. However, since its foundation about a century ago, it has been uninterruptedly the center…
The Hubble law, widely considered the first observational basis for the expansion of the universe, may in the future be known as the Hubble-Lema\^itre law. This is what the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union…
Gravitational lensing - the deflection of light rays by gravitating matter - has become a major tool in the armoury of the modern cosmologist. Proposed nearly a hundred years ago as a key feature of Einstein's theory of General Relativity,…
Einstein's blackboard is a well-known exhibit at the History of Science Museum at Oxford University. However, it is much less well known that the writing on the board provides a neat summary of a work of historic importance, Einstein's 1931…
The concept of extremely dense matter at supra-nuclear density was first speculated by L. Landau in the beginning of 1930s when neutron was just discovered. A historical review on these issues not only explains the interaction between micro…
The Sapient Paradox is the apparently unexplainable time delay of several ten thousand years following the arrival of Homo sapiens in Asia and Europe and before the introduction of impressive innovations with the agricultural revolution.…