物理学史与哲学

Donati's comet was one of the most impressive astronomical events of the nineteenth century. Its extended sword-like tail was a spectacular sight that inspired several literary and artistic representations. Traces of Donati's comet are…

In a recent paper Sule et al. (Astronomical Notes, vol. 332 (2011), 655) argued that an early 17th-century Indian mural of the constellation Sagittarius with a dragon-headed tail indicated that the bright supernova of 1604 was also sighted…

A comparative study is undertaken that brings to light the two different methods of how to treat the many-body problem in quantum field theory. The two main researchers who published the first versions of how to quantize a many-body…

We review in this article the role which the work of Pauli and Weisskopf played in formulating a quantum field theory of spinless particles. To make our computations as transparent as possible, we offer a physicist's derivation of the…

We review the history of neutron star physics in the 1930s that is related to L. Landau. According to recollections of Rosenfeld (1974, Proc. 16th Solvay Conference on Physics, p. 174), Landau improvised the concept of neutron stars in a…

The history of astrometry, the branch of astronomy dealing with the positions of celestial objects, is a lengthy and complex chronicle, having its origins in the earliest records of astronomical observations more than two thousand years…

In order to undestand how the complex concept of entropy emerged,we propose a trip towards the past reviewing the works of Clausius, Boltzmann, Gibbs and Planck. In particular, since the Gibbs's work is not very well known, we present a…

In 1761, the Russian polymath Mikhail Vasilievich Lomonosov (1711-1765) discovered the atmosphere of Venus during its transit over the Sun's disc. In this paper we report on experimental reenactments of Lomonosov's discovery with antique…

The theoretical investigations at ITEP in the years 1945-1958 are reviewed. There are exposed the most important theoretical results, obtained in the following branches of physics: 1) the theory of nuclear reactors on thermal neutrons; 2)…

We present a translation and analysis of an unpublished manuscript by Albert Einstein in which he attempted to construct a 'steady-state' model of the universe. The manuscript, which appears to have been written in early 1931, demonstrates…

We recount the history of development of units systems in electrodynamics, and fully derive how each system is constructed. Done for Electromagnetic (emu), Electrostatic (esu), Gaussian, a variant-Gaussian, Heaviside-Lorentz, and SI…

The scientific method is often presented, e.g. to children, as a linear process, starting by a question and ending by the elaboration of a theory, with a few experiments in-between. The reality of the building of science is much more…

We recently reported the discovery of an unpublished manuscript by Albert Einstein in which he attempted a 'steady-state' model of the universe, i.e., a cosmic model in which the expanding universe remains essentially unchanged due to a…

A Sleeping Beauty in Science is a publication that goes unnoticed (sleeps) for a long time and then, almost suddenly, attracts a lot of attention (is awakened by a prince). In this paper we investigate important properties of Sleeping…

The discovery of extensive air showers by Rossi, Schmeiser, Bothe, Kolh\"orster and Auger at the end of the 1930s, facilitated by the coincidence technique of Bothe and Rossi, led to fundamental contributions in the field of cosmic ray…

A review of the known different methods and results devised to study the two-electron atom problem, appeared in the early years of quantum mechanics, is given, with particular reference to the calculations of the ground state energy of…

In two papers entitled "On a new foundation [Neue Begr\"undung] of quantum mechanics," Pascual Jordan (1927b,g) presented his version of what came to be known as the Dirac-Jordan statistical transformation theory. As an alternative that…

Quantum foundations are still unsettled, with mixed effects on science and society. By now it should be possible to obtain consensus on at least one issue: Are the fundamental constituents fields or particles? As this paper shows,…

A sketch of three senses of emergence and a suggestive view on the emergence of time and the direction of time is presented. After trying to identify which issues philosophers interested in emergent phenomena in physics view as important I…

I discuss the historical roots of the landscape problem and propose criteria for its successful resolution. This provides a perspective to evaluate the possibility to solve it in several of the speculative cosmological scenarios under study…