Related papers: Insufficiencies of the 20-TH Century Theories and …
For several decades there has been no breakthrough in fundamental physics as revolutionary as relativity and quantum physics despite the amazing advancement of applied physics and technology. By discussing several examples of what physics…
In this contribution to the conference "Beyond Einstein: Historical Perspectives on Geometry, Gravitation and Cosmology in the Twentieth Century", we give a critical status report of attempts to explain the late accelerated expansion of the…
The 20th century has revealed two important limitations of scientific knowledge. On the one hand, the combination of Poincar\'e's nonlinear dynamics and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle leads to a world picture where physical reality is,…
Contrary to claims about the irrelevance of philosophy for science, I argue that philosophy has had, and still has, far more influence on physics than is commonly assumed. I maintain that the current anti-philosophical ideology has had…
The major advances in physics have been through counterintuitive breakthroughs-- ideas that seemed to go against prevailing convictions. In the twentieth century the Special and General Theory of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics have…
Bohr's interpretation of quantum mechanics has been criticized as incoherent and opportunistic, and based on doubtful philosophical premises. If so Bohr's influence, in the pre-war period of 1927-1939, is the harder to explain, and the…
Already in the 1970s there where attempts to present a set of ground rules, sometimes referred to as a theory of gravitation theories, which theories of gravity should satisfy in order to be considered viable in principle and, therefore,…
After a very brief review of twentieth century elementary particle physics, prospects for the next century are discussed. First and most important are technological limits of opportunities; next, the future experimental program, and finally…
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…
Astrophysics and cosmology can be used to test the standard model of particle physics under conditions and over distance and time scales not accessible to laboratory experiments. Most of the astrophysical observations are in good agreement…
We submit the viewpoint that, perhaps, some of the controversies in gravitation occurred during this century are not due to insufficiencies of Einstein's field equations, but rather to insufficiencies in the mathematics used for their…
Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity was proposed a little over a hundred years back. It remained a bedrock of twentieth century physics right up to Quantum Field Theory. However, the failure over several decades to provide a unified…
In the framework of special relativity, all particles are point-like or string-like. This nature of particles has caused the divergence difficulties in quantum field, string and superstring theories. In the framework of special relativity,…
An overview of the experimental and observational status in gravitational physics is given, both for the known tests of general relativity and Newtonian gravity, but also for the increasing number of results where these theories run into…
One of the most difficult questions in present-day physics concerns a fundamental theory of space, time, and matter that incorporates a consistent quantum description of gravity. There are various theoretical approaches to such a…
It has been shown that the criticism of Pauli as well as of Susskind and Glogover may be avoided if the standard quantum-mechanical mathematical model has been suitably extended. There is not more any reason for Einstein's citicism, either,…
There are countless examples in the history of science that not only were the laws of physics often incomplete and more limited in their domain of validity than was realized, but at times they missed the mark completely. Despite this, our…
The accelerating expansion of the universe presents an exciting, fundamental challenge to the standard models of particle physics and cosmology. I highlight some of the outstanding challenges in both developing theoretical models and…
The tension, if not outright inconsistency, between quantum physics and general relativity is one of the great problems facing physics at the turn of the millennium. Most often, the problems arising in merging Einstein gravity and quantum…
Laymen and sometimes even physicists think of natural sciences, in particular of theoretical and mathematical physics often as subjects, which unfold according to an intrinsic logical pattern, with the limitations being set only by the…