Related papers: Isaac Newton's sinister heraldry
There is a myth that Einstein's discovery of general relativity was due to his following beautiful mathematics to discover new insights about nature. I argue that this is an incorrect reading of the history and that what Einstein did was to…
Einstein presented the Hole Argument against General Covariance, understood as invariance with respect to a change of coordinates, as a consequence of his initial failure to obtain covariant equations that, in the weak static limit, contain…
The two defining features of the Einsteinian gravity are that it is self interactive as well as it links universally to all particles including zero mass particles. In the process of obtaining the Schwarzshild solution for gravitational…
By the time, in 1937, the Swiss astronomer Zwicky measured the velocity dispersion of the Coma cluster of galaxies, astronomers somehow got acquainted with the idea that the universe is filled by some kind of dark matter. After almost a…
We dedicate this to the life and work of Robin Hudson -- a mathematical physicist who developed the peerless quantum stochastic calculus, but who also inspired generations of researchers with both his intellect and wit.
Incomputability as a mathematical notion arose from work of Alan Turing and Alonzo Church in the 1930s. Like Turing himself, it attracted less attention than it deserved beyond the confines of mathematics. Today our experiences in computer…
The early history of the universe might be described by a topological phase followed by a standard second phase of Einstein gravity. To study this scenario in its full generality, we consider a four-manifold of Euclidean signature in the…
Quaternions, discovered by Sir William Rowan Hamilton in the 19th century, are a significant extension of complex numbers and a profound tool for understanding three-dimensional rotations. This work explores the quaternion's history,…
A hundred years ago, two British expeditions measured the deflection of starlight by the sun's gravitational field, confirming the prediction made by Einstein's General theory of Relativity. One hundred years later many physicists around…
It has been numerically found that the setup of Newton's cradle can exhibit a rigid-body like behavior, that is, the target cluster starts to move collectively without emitting the outermost particle if the purely repulsive interaction…
Invented by Kurt Hensel at the very end of 19th century on the model of power series in one indeterminate, the $p$-adic numbers have not only become an indispensable tool of contemporary arithmetic, but a research topic per se. In this…
The possibility of asymptotic safety scenario (asymptotic freedom) for quantum gravity has been pointed out in many contexts recently. From this point of view, we discuss some applications of cutoff identification to the black hole. If we…
In 1680 Cassini proposed oval curves as alternative trajectories for the visible planets around the sun. The Cassini ovals were of course overshadow by the Kepler's first law (1609), namely the planets move around the sun describing conic…
From its very beginning, Quantum Theory developed contrary to the intentions of its creators. For Max Planck it marks the failure of a long-term research program, in which he tried to understand the 2nd law of thermodynamics…
The Einstein-Rupp experiments were proposed in 1926 by Albert Einstein to study the wave versus particle nature of light. Einstein presented a theoretical analysis of these experiments to the Berlin Academy together with results of Emil…
Our world is filled with both beautiful and brainy people, but how often does a Nobel Prize winner also wins a beauty pageant? Let us assume that someone who is both very beautiful and very smart is more rare than what we would expect from…
Recent discussions of the origins of the thermodynamical asymmetry ("the arrow of time") by Huw Price and others are critically assessed. This serves as a motivation for consideration of relationship between thermodynamical and cosmological…
The idea of atoms is old but X-rays provided the first probe into the physical atom. Photographs of X-ray scattering from crystals -Laue spots- were the first visual proof for the physical existence of atoms arranged in a perfect geometric…
This is a short metaphysical fable accentuating the conceptual difficulties involved, and succinctly criticizing the approaches pursued since the inception of quantum theory, in dealing with what is known collectively as `the measurement…
Albert Einstein postulated the equivalence of energy and mass, developed the theory of special relativity, explained the photoelectric effect, and described Brownian motion in five papers, all published in 1905, 100 years ago. With these…