Related papers: Truth, Beauty and Supergravity
In this paper we show that in systems where the probability distribution of the the overlap is non trivial in the infinity volume limit, the property of ultrametricity can be proved in general starting from two very simple and natural…
The inflationary hot big bang model of cosmology explains the birth of the universe, the appearance of atoms and that of large-scale structures, altogether omitting any reference to the living world. Yet, like the physical world, the living…
This paper discusses the benefits of describing the world as information, especially in the study of the evolution of life and cognition. Traditional studies encounter problems because it is difficult to describe life and cognition in terms…
I wish to expound a novel perspective of probing universal character of gravity. To begin with, inclusion of zero mass particle in mechanics leads to special relativity while its interaction with a universal force shared by all particles…
The fundamental physical theories that interpret and explain behaviour of matter in nature are dependent on several unobservables and insensibles in their construction. While a rigorous natural philosophy cannot take them for granted, there…
We survey a variety of cosmological problems where the issue of generality has arisen. This is aimed at providing a wider context for many claims and deductions made when philosophers of science choose cosmological problems for…
It is argued that the occurrence of disproportionately ("un-natural") large (or small) numbers, as well as deep cancellations, are comparatively natural traits of the way Nature is geared to operate in most complex systems. The idea is…
Our knowledge of the Universe remains discovery-led: in the absence of adequate physics-based theory, interpretation of new results requires a scientific methodology. Commonly, scientific progress in astrophysics is motivated by the…
A defining signature of classical systems is "in principle measurability" without disturbance: a feature manifestly violated by quantum systems. We describe a multi-interferometer experimental setup that can, in principle, reveal the…
The Standard Model of Particle Physics has been verified to unprecedented precision in the last few decades. However there are still phenomena in nature which cannot be explained, and as such new theories will be required. Since terrestrial…
Simple cosmological models are used to show that gravitation can be quantized as an ordinary gauge system if the Hamilton-Jacobi equation for the model under consideration is separable. In this situation, a canonical transformation can be…
The aim of this essay is to propose a conception of mathematics that is fully consonant with naturalism. By that I mean the hypothesis that everything that exists is part of the natural world, which makes up a unitary whole.
Some thoughts are presented on the inter-relation between beauty and truth in science in general and theoretical physics in particular. Some conjectural procedures that can be used to create new ideas, concepts and results are illustrated…
The paper investigates the type of realism that best suits the framework of decoherence taken at face value without postulating a plurality of worlds, or additional hidden variables, or non-unitary dynamical mechanisms. It is argued that…
This article summarises a Web-book on "Complexity" that was developed to introduce undergraduate students to interesting complex systems in the biological, physical and social sciences, and the common tools, principles and concepts used for…
The relevance of the Planck scale to a theory of quantum gravity has become a worryingly little examined assumption that goes unchallenged in the majority of research in this area. However, in all scientific honesty, the significance of…
Each of electrically charged particles testifies in favor of the existence of a kind of the magnetically charged monoparticle. As a consequence, only the corresponding mononeutrinos answer for quantization of the electric charges of all…
To connect supergravity with the real world, a highly non-trivial requirement is complete spontaneous supersymmetry breaking in an approximately flat four-dimensional space-time. In no-scale supergravity models, this naturally happens at…
What is physics? What are the limits of what physics can say about the world? In seeking ever-broader theoretical `umbrellas' for physical phenomena, we are seeking unifying principles. Emergent phenomena have turned out to be some of the…
Information is everywhere in nature which is very uncertain and unpredictable. But information, in itself, is a very ambiguous term. In this cursory write-up, we attempt to understand the formal meaning of information by quantifying…