Related papers: Astronomical arguments in Newton's Chronology

Isaac Newton is usually associated with the idea of absolute space and time, and with ballistic light-corpuscle arguments. However, Newton was also a proponent of wave/particle duality, and published a "new" variable-density aether model in…

Each time diffusion of elements is invoked in explaining abundance anomalies in a star, this supposes implicitly that a stratification process is in progress somewhere in that star. This means also, that the element abundances can still be…

A recent criticism of cosmological methodology and achievements by Disney (2000) is assessed. Some historical and epistemological fallacies in the said article have been highlighted. It is shown that---both empirically and…

Is more novel research always desirable? We develop a model in which knowledge shapes society's policies and guides the search for discoveries. Researchers select a question and how intensely to study it. The novelty of a question…

Evidence for an accelerated expansion of the universe as it has been revealed ten years ago by the Hubble diagram of distant type Ia supernovae represents one of the major modern revolutions for fundamental physics and cosmology. It is yet…

We illustrate the concept of mathematical proof.

Lorentz time is replaced by three parameters: a global time, a local rate of aging, and a new spatial coordinate. This enables successful reconstruction of relativity's observables in a four dimensional Euclidean hyperspace. The new…

Uncertainty may be taken to characterize inferences, their conclusions, their premises or all three. Under some treatments of uncertainty, the inferences itself is never characterized by uncertainty. We explore both the significance of…

For more than a half century cosmologists have been guided by the assumption that matter is distributed homogeneously on sufficiently large scales. On the other hand, observations have consistently yielded evidence for inhomogeneity in the…

Well protected human and laboratory animal populations with abundant resources are evolutionary unprecedented. Physical approach, which takes advantage of their extensively quantified mortality, establishes that its dominant fraction yields…

Stellar astronomy, fueled by massive capital investments, advances in numerical modeling and theory, is resurgent and arguably is on the verge of a magnificent renaissance. Powerful time domain optical surveys, both on ground and in space,…

The nature of gravity is fundamental to our understanding of our own solar system, the galaxy and the structure and evolution of the Universe. Einstein's general theory of relativity is the standard model that is used for almost ninety…

Anthropic models can give testable predictions, which can be confirmed or falsified at a specified confidence level. This is illustrated using the successful prediction of the cosmological constant as an example. The history and the nature…

A brief outline of the history of the discrepancies within Newtonian mechanics at the end of the nineteenth century is given. The framework of general relativity is described briefly and the famous 'tests' of general relativity are…

Newtonian mechanics indicates that galaxies and galaxy clusters are much more massive than we would have guessed from their luminosities, with the discrepancy being generally attributed to dark matter halos. An alternative hypothesis is…

We review the prospects for probing new physics with neutrino astrophysics. High energy neutrinos provide an important means of accessing physics beyond the electroweak scale. Neutrinos have a number of advantages over conventional…

We investigate an approach to reasoning about causes through argumentation. We consider a causal model for a physical system, and look for arguments about facts. Some arguments are meant to provide explanations of facts whereas some…

The scientific method is often presented, e.g. to children, as a linear process, starting by a question and ending by the elaboration of a theory, with a few experiments in-between. The reality of the building of science is much more…

This contribution analyses the classical laws of motion by means of an approach relating time and entropy. We argue that adopting the notion of change of states as opposed to the usual derivation of Newton's laws in terms of fields a…

When addressing the notion of proper time in the theory of relativity, it is usually taken for granted that the time read by an accelerated clock is given by the Minkowski proper time. However, there are authors like Harvey Brown that…