物理学史与哲学
Narayan Chandra Rana, a person with extraordinary potential from a remote village of Bengal, India, came into the limelight of the international scientific world through his exceptional talent, zeal and courage. In his very short life-span,…
The problem of defining and locating free will (FW) in physics is studied. On basis of logical paradoxes, we argue that FW has a meta-theoretic character, like the concept of truth in Tarski's undefinability theorem. Free will exists…
When the Moon is at quarter, its terminator generally does not appear to be orthogonal to a straight line connecting the Moon with the Sun. A purely geometric, intuitive interpretation of this at first sight puzzling observation is…
Ken Wilson is remembered.
When attempting to assess the strengths and weaknesses of various principles in their potential role of guiding the formulation of a theory of quantum gravity, it is crucial to distinguish between principles which are strongly supported by…
This obituary is devoted to M. I. Polikarpov (28.12.1952 - 18.07.2013), our teacher, our colleague, our friend. We recollect some facts of his biography and stages of his scientific career, and make a brief review of some of his most known…
In contemporary theoretical physics, the powerful notion of symmetry stands for a web of intricate meanings among which I identify four clusters associated with the notion of transformation, comprehension, invariance and projection. While…
I review some theoretical ideas in cosmology different from the standard "Big Bang": the quasi-steady state model, the plasma cosmology model, non-cosmological redshifts, alternatives to non-baryonic dark matter and/or dark energy, and…
The Institute for Physical Science and Technology at the University of Maryland was founded in 1976 from a merger of the Institute for Fluid Dynamics and Applied Mathematics (IFDAM) and the Institute for Molecular Physics (IMP), which were…
In this article, we analyze the third of three papers, in which Einstein presented his quantum theory of the ideal gas of 1924-1925. Although it failed to attract the attention of Einstein's contemporaries and although also today very few…
Einstein's early calculations of gravitational lensing, contained in a scratch notebook and dated to the spring of 1912, are reexamined. A hitherto unknown letter by Einstein suggests that he entertained the idea of explaining the…
A brief review is given of some recent positive developments regarding the reception of archaeoastronomy by the archaeological institutions in Italy. Discussions and problems that are currently going on in this field are also mentioned,…
During the summer of 1837 Christian Ludwig Gerling, a former student of Carl Friedrich Gauss, organized the world wide first determination of a vertical deflection in longitude. From a mobile observatory at the Frauenberg close to Marburg…
Despite the success of modern physics in formulating mathematical theories that can predict the outcome of quantum-scale experiments, the physical interpretations of these theories remain controversial. In this manuscript, we propose a new…
Major breakthrough in quantum computation has recently been achieved using quantum annealing to develop analog quantum computers instead of gate based computers. After a short introduction to quantum computation, we retrace very briefly the…
William Sadler Franks (1851-1935) was astronomer-in-charge at F.J. Hanbury's private observatory at Brockhurst, near East Grinstead, Sussex, from 1909 until his death in 1935. This paper reviews the observational projects Franks undertook…
The LUX experimental group has just announced the most stringent upper limits so far obtained on the cross section of WIMP-nucleon elastic scattering [1]. This result is a factor of two to five below the previous best upper limit [2] and…
In this little non-technical piece, I argue that some of the lessons that can be learnt from the bold action carried out in 1996 by the physicist Alan Sokal and typically known as the "Sokal affair" not only apply to some sector of the…
The paper outlines the historical development of spin in physics from about 1920 to the present day. It aims to provide the student with an accurate chronology of important developments, both scientific and technical.
Quantum mechanics describes successfully numerous quantum phenomena both microscopic and macroscopic, such as superconductivity. But the controversies about quantum mechanics, in the old days and present day, reveal fundamental obscurity in…