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While many observations support the validity of Einstein's general relativity as the theory of gravity, there are yet many that suggest the presence of new physics. In order to explain the high-redshift supernovae Ia observations together…
There are several shortcomings in the "standard" Shapiro delay tests of the equivalence principle on cosmological scales \cite{minazzoli:2019pr}. Although many people in the community already acknowledged this in the literature, and…
In theories with a diffeomorphism symmetry, such as general relativity and canonical quantum gravity, it is often proposed that the empirical content is encoded in relational observables. But how do relational observables actually make…
Cosmology has come a long way from being based on a small number of observations to being a data-driven precision science. We discuss the questions "What is observable?", "What in the Universe is knowable?" and "What are the fundamental…
The task of testing whether quantum theory applies to all physical systems and all scales requires considering situations where a quantum probe interacts with another system that need not obey quantum theory in full. Important examples…
The cosmological constant problem can be understood as the failure of the decoupling principle behind effective field theory, so that some quantities in the low-energy theory are extremely sensitive to the high-energy properties. While this…
We discuss the role of propositions, truth, context and observers in scientific theories. We introduce the concept of generalized proposition and use it to define an algorithm for the classification of any scientific theory. The algorithm…
The trace anomaly and the cosmological constant problem are two typical breakdowns when applying the quantum principle to a general covariant or gravitational system. A quantum theory of spacetime reference frame is proposed and reviewed.…
The current effort to test General Relativity employs multiple disparate formalisms for different observables, obscuring the relations between laboratory, astrophysical and cosmological constraints. To remedy this situation, we develop a…
Measurement uncertainty is an important topic in the undergraduate laboratory curriculum. Previous research on student thinking about experimental measurement uncertainty has focused primarily on introductory-level students' procedural…
I argue that, contrary to the standard view, one cannot understand the structure and nature of our knowledge in physics without an analysis of the way that observers (and, more generally, measuring instruments and experimental arrangements)…
Can multiverse hypotheses ever receive empirical support? Critics argue that multiverse scenarios posit unobservable entities, face severe underdetermination, or fall outside the bounds of science. This chapter challenges that view by…
Although being a crucial question for the development of machine learning algorithms, there is still no consensus on how to compare classifiers over multiple data sets with respect to several criteria. Every comparison framework is…
This article reports on an investigation of student understanding of the concept of time in special relativity. A series of research tasks are discussed that illustrate, step-by-step, how student reasoning of fundamental concepts of…
While tested to a high level of accuracy in the Solar system, general relativity is under the spotlight of both theoreticians and observers on larger scales, mainly because of the need to introduce dark matter and dark energy in the…
As physics searches for invariants in observations, this paper looks for invariants of probabilistic observation without assuming physical structure. Structure emerges from the basic assumption of science that new information shall lead to…
The usage of the anthropic principle in modern cosmology is reviewed. It is argued that its recent use to explain the observedvalues of cosmological parameters as most probable values for an ensemble of universes, is not justified. However,…
A common statistical task lies in showing asymptotic normality of certain statistics. In many of these situations, classical textbook results on weak convergence theory suffice for the problem at hand. However, there are quite some…
The issue of model selection in applied research is of vital importance. Since the true model in such research is not known, which model should be used from among various potential ones is an empirical question. There might exist several…
One of the cornerstones of general relativity is the equivalence principle. However, the validity of the equivalence principle has only been established on solar system scales for standard matter fields; this result cannot be assumed to…