Related papers: Different minds in the jigsaw puzzle of H-bomb sto…
Two thermodynamic "paradoxes" of black hole physics are re-examined. The first is that there is a thermal instability involving two coupled blackbody cavities containing two black holes, and second is that a classical black hole can swallow…
Most supernova explosions accompany the death of a massive star. These explosions give birth to neutron stars and black holes and eject solar masses of heavy elements. However, determining the mechanism of explosion has been a half-century…
We establish a Kobayashi-Hitchin correspondence between solutions of the extended Bogomolny equation with a Dirac type singularity and Hecke modifications of Higgs bundles. This correspondence was conjectured by Witten and plays an…
Thirty original and collected problems, puzzles, and paradoxes in mathematics and physics are explained in this paper, taught by the author to the elementary and high school teachers at the University of New Mexico - Gallup in 1997-8 and…
We argue that fragmentation at hadronisation is likely scenario in ultrarelativistic nuclear collisions. In case of crossover phase transition it is driven by a singularity of the bulk viscosity. We claim that such a scenario can explain…
Experiments with ultracold Bose gases can already produce so strong atom--atom interactions that one can observe intriguing many-body dynamics between the Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) and the normal component. The excitation picture is…
I am a second-year cognitive science major, and as a student who has completed my physical science distribution requirements, I will likely never again encounter Gauss's law. So why do I feel that the time and effort I devoted to solving…
Probably the most dramatic historical challenge to scientific realism concerns Arnold Sommerfeld's 1916 derivation of the fine structure energy levels of hydrogen. Not only were his predictions good, he derived exactly the same formula that…
This Introduction opens the collection "Physics in A Mad World" devoted to two outstanding physicists whose destinies were deeply intertwined with the tragedies and drama of the times in which they lived. Friedrich (Fritz) Houtermans was…
Quantum mechanics is a theory that is as effective as it is counterintuitive. While quantum practices operate impeccably, they compel us to embrace enigmatic phenomena like the collapse of the state vector and non-locality, thereby pushing…
During a first St. Petersburg period Leonhard Euler, in his early twenties, became interested in the Basel problem: summing the series of inverse squares (posed by Pietro Mengoli in mid 17th century). In the words of Andre Weil (1989) "as…
The search for the left-handed $W^{\pm}$ bosons, the proposed quanta of the weak interaction, and the Higgs boson, which spontaneously breaks the symmetry of unification of electromagnetic and weak interactions, has driven…
The original Wigner's friend paradox is a gedankenexperiment involving an observer described by an external agent. The paradox highlights the tension between unitary evolution and collapse in quantum theory, and is sometimes taken as…
J. Hadamard's ideas about the correct formulation of the problems of mathematical physics have been analyzed. In this connection various interpretations of the directly related Banach theorem about the inverse operator has been touched. The…
The old quantum theory of Bohr and Sommerfeld was abandonned for the wrong reason. Its contradictions were caused not by the orbit concept but by a mental barrier--the inconceivability that an electron might collide with the atomic nucleus.…
The current discrepancy in $R_{D^{(*)}}=BR(\bar{B} \to D^{(*)}\tau\bar{\nu})/BR(\bar{B}\to D^{(*)} \ell \bar{\nu})$ where $\ell=e,\,\mu$ may imply a know particle with the mass around the order of TeV. Therefore it is well motivated to test…
We show that a new GUT scenario we proposed indicates that heterotic M-theory is one of the most interesting possibility to describe our world because of the two features in the scenario. The first feature is that E_6 unified group plays an…
Recently there has been an explosion of books and articles complaining about the weirdness of Quantum Mechanics and crying out for a solution. Three problems in particular have been singled out: the double-slit experiment, the measurement…
The well known Bell experiment with two actors Alice and Bob is considered. First the simple deduction leading to the CHSH inequality under local realism is reviewed, and some arguments from the literature are recapitulated. Then I take up…
Keith Brueckner was a theoretical physicist of considerable technical power who came of age as the mysteries of the atomic nucleus were coming into focus. His fundamental contributions to the "many-body problem" had a lasting impact on our…