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Recent decades have seen a rise in the use of physics methods to study different societal phenomena. This development has been due to physicists venturing outside of their traditional domains of interest, but also due to scientists from…
The atomic model that Niels Bohr suggested in 1913 celebrated its greatest victories in connection with one-electron atoms. Among them were the isotopic spectral effect and what became known as Rydberg atoms, insights that were fully…
Although practised as an art and science for ages, cryptography had to wait until the mid-twentieth century before Claude Shannon gave it a strong mathematical foundation. However, Shannon's approach was rooted is his own information…
Public outreach in quantum science and technologies has many goals, ranging from generating interest and dampening hype to making the fascinating and complex topic more accessible. In this work, we present a play on quantum science and…
Einstein's theoretical analysis of mass-energy equivalence, already, at the time, experimentally evident in radioactive decays, in two papers published in 1905, as well as Planck's introduction, in 1906, of the concepts of relativistic…
The first three years of the LHC experiments at CERN have ended with "the nightmare scenario": all tests, confirm the Standard Model of Particles so well that theorists must search for new physics without any experimental guidance. The…
John St. Bell was a physicist working most of his time at CERN and contributing intensively and sustainably to the development of Particle Physics and Collider Physics. As a hobby he worked on so-called "foundations of quantum theory", that…
In the initial stages of its development, atomic theory had to bypass the laws of classical electromagnetism in an ad hoc manner in order to explain the stability of atoms. In quantum mechanics, however, the classical theory may find again…
Quantum theory is incredibly successful, explaining the microscopic world with great accuracy, from the behaviour of subatomic particles to chemical reactions to solid-state electronics. There is not a single experimental finding…
An alternative to the current accepted model of expanding universe is presented. The proposal is anchored in the objective realist, stochastic formulation of quantum mechanics wherein the Planck constant plays the role of a diffusion…
One overarching objective of science is to further our understanding of the universe, from its early stages to its current state and future evolution. This depends on gaining insight on the universe's most macroscopic components, for…
In 1935, Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen (EPR) conceived a Gedankenexperiment which became a cornerstone of quantum technology and still challenges our understanding of reality and locality today. While the experiment has been realized with…
2011 marked the hundredth anniversary both of the famous Solvay conferences, and of the Geiger-Marsden experiment that launched the modern understanding of subatomic structure. I was asked to survey the status and prospects of particle…
We provide a brief commentary on recent work by Hammer and Son on the scaling behavior of nuclear reactions involving the emission of several loosely bound neutrons. In this work they discover a regime, termed unnuclear physics, in which…
Experimental tests on `time dilation' began in 1938 with Ives and Stilwell's work of the transverse Doppler effect due to atoms in inertial flight. Rossi and Hall (1941) inaugurated the era of fast moving elementary particles that dominated…
During the 1920s and 1930s, Italian physicists established strong relationships with scientists from other European countries and the United States. The career of Bruno Rossi, a leading personality in the study of cosmic rays and an Italian…
For decades, physicists have used neutrinos from nuclear reactors to advance basic science. These pursuits have inspired many ideas for application of neutrino detectors in nuclear energy and security. While developments in neutrino…
We recount the successful long career of classical physics, from Newton to Einstein, which was based on the philosophy of scientific realism. Special emphasis is given to the changing status and number of ontological entitities and…
Human activity continues to have an enormous negative impact on the ability of the planet to sustain human and other forms of life. Six out of the nine planetary boundaries have been crossed, a seventh is close to threshold. Prominent…
I reflect on some of the basic aspects of present day Beyond the Standard Model particle physics, focusing mostly on the issues of naturalness, in particular on the so-called hierarchy problem. To all of us, physics as natural science…