Related papers: Reflections on Gibbs: From Statistical Physics to …
During the past two decades, cosmologists turned to particle physics in order to explore the physics of the very early Universe. The main link between the physics of the smallest and largest structures in the Universe is the idea of…
We consider Hilbert's problem of the axioms of Physics at a qualitative or conceptual level. This issue is more pressing than ever as we seek to understand how both General Relativity and quantum theory could emerge from some deeper theory…
A general-covariant statistical framework capable of describing classical fluctuations of the gravitational field is a thorny open problem in theoretical physics, yet ultimately necessary to understand the nature of the gravitational…
This paper starts with a personal memoir of how some significant ideas arose and events took place during the period from 1972, when I first encountered Ted Bastin, to 1979, when I proposed the foundation of ANPA. I then discuss program…
A better grasp of the physical foundations of life is necessary before we can understand the processes occurring inside a living cell. In his physical theory of the cell, American physiologist Gilbert Ling introduced an important notion of…
With the discovery of the Higgs, we have access to a plethora of new physical processes that allow us to further test the SM and beyond. We show a convenient way to parametrize these physics using an effective theory for Higgs couplings,…
Within the continuous endeavour of improving the efficiency and resilience of air transport, the trend of using concepts and metrics from statistical physics has recently gained momentum. This scientific discipline, which integrates…
The mathematical achievements of Harry Kesten since the mid-1950s have revolutionized probability theory as a subject in its own right and in its associations with aspects of algebra, analysis, geometry, and statistical physics. Through his…
We show in this note that Gibbs paradox arises not due to application of thermodynamic principles, whether classical or statistical or even quantum mechanical, but due to incorrect application of mathematics to the process of mixing of…
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,…
Statistical equilibrium configurations are important in the physics of macroscopic systems with a large number of constituent degrees of freedom. They are expected to be crucial also in discrete quantum gravity, where dynamical spacetime…
Aristotle was the first to declare himself in the class of natural philosophers ({\em physiologoi}) and he was the first physicist because he spelled out the first definitions of some basic physical concepts. Moreover, he was the first…
The long standing contrast between Boltzmann's and Gibbs' approach to statistical thermodynamics has been recently rekindled by Dunkel and Hilbert [1], who criticize the notion of negative absolute temperature (NAT), as a misleading…
In a recent article we have introduced Friedmann thermodynamics, where certain geometric parameters in Friedmann models are treated like their thermodynamic counterparts (temperature, entropy, Gibbs potential etc.). This model has the…
Philosophers now seem to agree that frequentism is an untenable strategy to explain the meaning of probabilities. Nevertheless, I want to revive frequentism, and I will do so by grounding probabilities on typicality in the same way as the…
We summarise the physics of first-order phase transitions in the early universe, and the possible ways in which they might come about. We then focus on gravitational waves, emphasising general qualitative features of stochastic backgrounds…
In 1963-71, a group of people, myself included, formulated and perfected a new approach to physics problems, which eventually came to be known under the names of scaling, universality, and renormalization. This work formed the basis of a…
One milestone in quantum physics is Berry's seminal work [Proc.~R.~Soc.~Lond.~A \textbf{392}, 45 (1984)], in which a quantal phase factor known as geometric phase was discovered to solely depend on the evolution path in state space. Here,…
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…
We examine the fundamental aspects of statistical mechanics, dividing the problem into a discussion purely about probability, which we analyse from a Bayesian standpoint. We argue that the existence of a unique maximising probability…