Related papers: Kenneth Geddes Wilson (1936-2013)
We study how the paradigm of Newton's science, based on the organization of scientific knowledge as a series of mathematical laws, was definitively accepted in science courses - in the last decades of the XVIII century, in England as well…
The many experimental puzzles of solid hydrogen, that seem to defy the generally accepted view of condensed matter, are shown to be a rather straightforward consequence of a new approach to condensed matter physics, that takes into account…
Sir Arthur Eddington is considered one of the greatest astrophysicist of the twentieth century and yet he gained a stigma when, in the 1930s, he embarked on a quest to develop a unified theory of gravity and quantum mechanics. His attempts…
The main purpose of this article is to guide the reader to theorems on global properties of solutions to the Einstein-Vlasov system. This system couples Einstein's equations to a kinetic matter model. Kinetic theory has been an important…
Starting with Einstein's famous papers of 1905, we review some of the ensuing developments and their impact on present-day physics. We attempt to cover topics that are of interest to historians and philosophers of science as well as to…
Our friend and colleague, Prof. Shoucheng Zhang, passed away in 2018, which was a great loss for the entire physics community. For all of us who knew Shoucheng, it is difficult to overcome the sadness and shock of his early departure.…
Are we smarter now than Socrates was in his time? Society as a whole certainly enjoys a higher degree of education, but humans as a species probably don't get intrinsically smarter with time. Our knowledge base, however, continues to grow…
W. N. ('Chris') Christiansen was an innovative and influential radio astronomy pioneer. The hallmarks of his long and distinguished career in science and engineering, spanning almost five decades, were his inventiveness and his commitment…
It is a widespread belief that results like G\"odel's incompleteness theorems or the intrinsic randomness of quantum mechanics represent fundamental limitations to humanity's strive for scientific knowledge. As the argument goes, there are…
The universe is found to have undergone several phases in which the gravitational constant had different behaviors. During some epochs the energy density of the universe remained constant and the universe remained static. In the radiation…
We describe the properties of evanescent gravitational waves (EGWs)---wave solutions of Einstein equations which decay exponentially in some direction while propagating in another. Evanescent waves are well-known in acoustics and optics and…
In the functional renormalisation group approach to gauge theory, the Ward-Takahashi identity is modified due to the presence of an infrared cutoff term. It take the most accessible form for the Wilsonian effective action. In the present…
Throughout John Wheeler's career, he wrestled with big issues like the fundamental length, the black hole and the unification of quantum mechanics and relativity. In this essay, I argue that solid state physics -- historically the study of…
Benoit Mandelbrot's scientific legacy spans an extraordinary range of disciplines, from linguistics and fluid turbulence to cosmology and finance, suggesting the intellectual temperament of a "fox" in Isaiah Berlin's famous dichotomy of…
K. G\"odel [G1] discovered his celebrated solution to Einstein equations in 1949. Additional contributions were made by Kundt [K] and Hawking-Ellis ([H-E],5.7). On the other hand, a general Lorentz invariant operator, associated to the…
This paper describes my personal appreciation of some of Tini Veltman's great research achievements and how my own research career has followed the pathways he opened. Among the topics where he has been the most influential have been the…
We present preliminary results for heavy to light transitions of pseudoscalar mesons, induced by the vector and tensor operators. This lattice study is performed in quenched approximation, by using the nonperturbatively improved Wilson…
Newton's mechanical revolution unifies the motion of planets in the sky and falling of apple on earth. Maxwell's electromagnetic revolution unifies electricity, magnetism, and light. Einstein's relativity revolution unifies space with time,…
Many Texo's have been corrected and a reference added.
Historically, the discovery of symmetries has played an important role in the progress of our fundamental understanding of nature. This paper will demonstrate that there exists in Newtonian theory in a spherical gravitational field a formal…