Related papers: Physicists in times of war
The scientific method drives improvements in public health, but a strategy of obstructionism has impeded scientists from gathering even a minimal amount of information to address America's gun violence epidemic. We argue that in spite of a…
Despite the extraordinary successes the two great bastions of $20^{th}$ century science (Quantum Theory and General Relativity) are troubled with serious conceptual and mathematical difficulties. As a result, further growth of fundamental…
Since I first became enthralled with physics as a teenager, I've been intrigued by the philosophical aspects of the discipline. As I approached the end of my career as an experimental physicist and observational astronomer (I'm now…
Doing quantum ethics properly will require detailed socio-political analysis of the technologies and the organizations trying to build them. In this paper, I contribute to this task by analysing the public rhetoric of American military…
From an astronomical and relativistic point of view, the Great War began with the August, 1914 capture and imprisonment of the members of a German eclipse expedition that had gone to the Crimea to look, at the request of Einstein, for…
There are two broad opposing classes of attitudes to reality (realist vs idealist, material vs mental) with corresponding attitudes to knowledge (objective vs subjective, scientific vs romantic). I argue that these attitudes can be…
In recent years, nuclear physics has benefited greatly from the development of powerful ab initio many-body methods and their combination with interactions from chiral effective field theory. With increasing computational power and…
In recent centuries the world has become increasingly dominated by empirical evidence and theoretic science in developing worldviews. Advances in science have dictated Roman Catholic doctrine such as the acceptance of Darwinian evolution…
Crucial experiments have a long history of contributions to progress in physics. Similarly, we claim that in the period roughly from 1955 to 1985 crucial calculations played a significant role in setting the agenda for elementary particle…
Despite numerous achievements and recent progress, nuclear physics is often (wrongly) considered an old field of research nowadays. However, developments in theoretical frameworks and reliable experimental techniques have made the field…
It would seem that the present dry economic times impose a very precise focus for science in general and physics in particular: research, possibly of applied type. However in doing so two basic pillars of a healthy future for science are…
Historians recently rehabilitated Einstein's "physical strategy" for General Relativity (GR). Independently, particle physicists similarly re-derived Einstein's equations for a massless spin 2 field. But why not a light \emph{massive} spin…
We discuss scientific realism from the perspective of modern cosmology, especially primordial cosmology: i.e. the cosmological investigation of the very early universe. We first (Section 2) state our allegiance to scientific realism, and…
The discussion on time-reversal in quantum mechanics exists at least since Wigner's ``Uber die Operation der Zeitumkehr in der Quantenmechanik'' paper in 1932. If and how the dynamics of the quantum world is time-reversible has been the…
Nuclear astrophysics is that branch of astrophysics which helps understanding some of the many facets of the Universe through the knowledge of the microcosm of the atomic nucleus. In the last decades much advance has been made in nuclear…
The concept of "reality" is often raised in the context of philosophical foundations of physics or interpretations of quantum mechanics. When this term is so raised, it is a warning to me that I am about to be led down a rabbit hole. Such…
In the first part of the talk, I give a low-resolution overview of the current state of particle physics - the triumph of the Standard Model and its discontents. I review and re-endorse the remarkably direct and (to me) compelling argument…
National studies conducted over many years show that, while most Americans are interested in science and support federal funding of scientific research, the scientific literacy of the public is very low. Why this situation exists and who is…
Physics is considered as one of the most prevailing and problematic subjects by the students in the realm of science. Students perceived physics as a difficult subject during high school days and become more evasive when they reach college.…
Even if Einstein brought major contributions as a founder of quantum mechanics, he remained deeply unsatisfied with the bases of this structure he knew to be so efficient for physics. His critics are often known through his numerous…