Related papers: John Archibald Wheeler: A Biographical Memoir
Ernst Specker considered a particular feature of quantum theory to be especially fundamental, namely that pairwise joint measurability of sharp measurements implies their global joint measurability (https://vimeo.com/52923835). To date,…
It has been 61 years since Hugh Everett III's PhD dissertation, {\it On the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics}, was submitted to the Princeton University Physics Department. After more than a decade of relative obscurity it was resurrected…
Despite the success of modern physics in formulating mathematical theories that can predict the outcome of quantum-scale experiments, the physical interpretations of these theories remain controversial. In this manuscript, we propose a new…
John Blake (1947--2016) was a leader in fluid mechanics, his two principal areas of expertise being biological fluid mechanics on microscopic scales and bubble dynamics. He produced leading research and mentored others in both Australia,…
Why is it interesting to try to understand the origin of the universe? Everything we observe today, including our existence, arose from that event. Although we still do not have a theory that allows us to describe the origin itself, the…
Wolfgang Pauli's philosophy and physics were intertwined. His philosophy was a variety of Platonism, in which Pauli's affiliation with Carl Jung formed an integral part, but Pauli's philosophical explorations in physics appeared before he…
"I have dealt with many different transformations with various periods of time, but the quickest that I have met was my own transformation in one moment from a physicist to a chemist." Ernest Rutherford (Nobel Banquet, 1908) This article is…
J. Willard Gibbs' Elementary Principles in Statistical Mechanics was the definitive work of one of America's greatest physicists. Gibbs' book on statistical mechanics establishes the basic principles and fundamental results that have…
The scientific method relies on facts, established through repeated measurements and agreed upon universally, independently of who observed them. In quantum mechanics, the objectivity of observations is not so clear, most dramatically…
The impossibility of theories with hidden variables as an alternative and replacement for quantum mechanics was discussed by J. von Neumann in 1932. His proof was criticized as being logically circular, by Grete Hermann soon after, and as…
An extremely simple and unified base for physics comes out by starting all over from a single postulate on the common nature of matter and stationary forms of radiation quanta. Basic relativistic, gravitational (G) and quantum mechanical…
One century after its formulation, Einstein's general relativity has made remarkable predictions and turned out to be compatible with all experimental tests. Most of these tests probe the theory in the weak-field regime, and there are…
In this essay I develop quantum contextuality as a potential candidate for Wheeler's universal regulating principle, arguing -- \textit{contrary} to Wheeler -- that this ultimately implies that `bit' comes from `it.' In the process I…
The search for physics beyond the Standard Model is hindered by a combinatorial explosion of possible theories. We introduce \textsc{Albert}, a neuro-symbolic artificial intelligence framework to systematically navigate this vast theory…
The notion of rigour relevant to the practice of physics is an endogenous one. Theoretical physics has its own internal norms about mathematical practice and notions of legitimate derivations or formal objects. These norms are often…
The Feynman propagator used in the conventional in-out formalism in quantum field theory is not a causal propagator as wave packets are propagated virtually instantaneously outside the causal region of the initial state. We formulate a…
Einstein was in many ways like a detective on a mystery trail, though in his case he was on the trail of nature's mysteries and not some murder mystery! And like all good detectives he had a style. It consisted of taking facts that he knew…
The application of quantum theory to cosmology raises a number of conceptual questions, such as the role of the quantum-mechanical notion of "observer" or the absence of a time variable in the Wheeler-DeWitt equation. I point out that a…
The principle of energy conservation is widely taken to be a serious difficulty for interactionist dualism (whether property or substance). Interactionists often have therefore tried to make it satisfy energy conservation. This paper…
We recall Dirac's early proposals to develop a description of quantum phenomena in terms of a non-commutative algebra in which he suggested a way to construct what he called `quantum trajectories'. Generalising these ideas, we show how they…