Related papers: Physics to the rescue?
Nature's many varied complex systems (including galaxies, stars, planets, life, and society) are islands of order within the increasingly disordered universe. All organized systems are subject to physical, biological or cultural evolution,…
A brief account of some recent controversies about the teaching and learning of physics is presented. A shorter version of this outcome was accepted by The Physics Teacher, but publication is still pending.
The traditional university science curriculum was designed to train specialists in specific disciplines. However, in universities all over the world, science students are going into increasingly diverse careers and the current model does…
Statistical physics has proven to be a very fruitful framework to describe phenomena outside the realm of traditional physics. The last years have witnessed the attempt by physicists to study collective phenomena emerging from the…
The problem of antibiotic resistance poses challenges across many disciplines. One such challenge is to understand the fundamental science of how antibiotics work, and how resistance to them can emerge. This is an area where physicists can…
This paper investigates the reproducibility of computational science research and identifies key challenges facing the community today. It is the result of the First Summer School on Experimental Methodology in Computational Science…
The modeling of complex systems such as ecological or socio-economic systems can be very challenging. Although various modeling approaches exist, they are generally not compatible and mutually consistent, and empirical data often do not…
We investigate the structure common to causal theories that attempt to explain a (part of) the world. Causality implies conservation of identity, itself a far from simple notion. It imposes strong demands on the universalizing power of the…
In the same way as the Hilbert Program was a response to the foundational crisis of mathematics, this article tries to formulate a research program for the socio-economic sciences. The aim of this contribution is to stimulate research in…
The job of a physicist is to describe Nature. General features, hypotheses and theories help to describe physics phenomena at a more abstract, fundamental level, and are sometimes tacitly assigned some sort of real existence; doing so…
This is the first of a series of papers that we intend to publish about the epistemology of fundamental physics in its current state. One of the main objectives of these papers is to improve our understanding of fundamental physics (and…
Differentiable physics provides a new approach for modeling and understanding the physical systems by pairing the new technology of differentiable programming with classical numerical methods for physical simulation. We survey the rapidly…
The distinction between sciences is becoming increasingly more artificial -- an approach from one area can be easily applied to the other. More exciting research nowadays is happening perhaps at the interfaces of disciplines like Physics,…
New thinking needs to emerge about how to reform publishing along lines that best meet two perennial needs of scientific communication. This paper discusses a model that addresses these two needs with respect to physics. Given the…
Data Science is currently a popular field of science attracting expertise from very diverse backgrounds. Current learning practices need to acknowledge this and adapt to it. This paper summarises some experiences relating to such learning…
This article looks at philosophical aspects and questions that modern astrophysical research gives rise to. Other than cosmology, astrophysics particularly deals with understanding phenomena and processes operating at "intermediate" cosmic…
The disruption caused by the pandemic has called into question industrial norms and created an opportunity to reimagine the future of work. We discuss how this period of opportunity may be leveraged to bring about a future in which the…
More than a speculative technology, quantum computing seems to challenge our most basic intuitions about how the physical world should behave. In this thesis I show that, while some intuitions from classical computer science must be…
Scientists pursue collective knowledge, but they also seek personal recognition from their peers. When scientists decide whether or not to work on a big new problem, they weigh the potential rewards of a major discovery against the costs of…
Problem solving is central to physics instruction. Results from Physics Education Research (PER), however, demonstrate that traditional ways of teaching with problem solving are inefficient and ineffective for promoting true physics…