物理学史与哲学

Ideological considerations have always influenced science, but rarely as directly and massively as in the Soviet Union during the early Cold War period. Cosmology was among the sciences that became heavily politicized and forced to conform…

We study how the paradigm of Newton's science, based on the organization of scientific knowledge as a series of mathematical laws, was definitively accepted in science courses - in the last decades of the XVIII century, in England as well…

This is a prelude to a book which I intend to publish. This paper describes my temporary thoughts on Einstein's pathway to the special theory of relativity. See my papers on my thoughts on Einstein's pathway to his general theory of…

We present two unusual observations of Saturn recorded during the early years of the twentieth century

The Higgs mechanism gives mass to Yang-Mills gauge bosons. According to the conventional wisdom, this happens through the spontaneous breaking of gauge symmetry. Yet, gauge symmetries merely reflect a redundancy in the state description and…

John Ellard Gore FRAS, MRIA (1845-1910) was an Irish amateur astronomer and prolific author of popular astronomy books. His main observational interest was variable stars, of which he discovered several, and he served as the first Director…

In 1907 Einstein discussed with Wilhelm Wien the occurrences of superluminal velocities in dispersive and absorptive media. Einstein tried to present to Wien an expression for the group velocity in dispersive media that was based on his…

Observing the early years of the 1920's, it is possible to detect a fracture in the perception of relativity theory in Argentina, characterized by the publication of a series of strictly scientific studies on this theory, in parallel with…

The traditional metaphysical debate between static and dynamic views in the philosophy of time is examined in light of considerations concerning the nature of time in physical theory. Adapting the formalism of Rovelli (1995, 2004), I set…

A short review of the many contributions to hadron physics made by Mario Greco is presented. The review roughly covers his production between 1971 and 1974, just before the advent of QCD, when quark-model ideas, duality principles and…

Development of optometry in western countries was studied on a viewpoint of the history of science. It was revealed that optometry had been formed on the basis of optics, a branch of physics, to which biomedical study was added. Optometry…

The present study attempts to provide a consistent and coherent account of what the world could be like, given the conceptual framework and results of contemporary quantum theory. It is suggested that standard quantum mechanics can, and…

I consider the isolation of general relativity research from the rest of theoretical physics during the 1930s-1950s, and the subsequent reinvigoration of the field. I suggest that the main reason for the isolation was that relativists of…

I argue that the many worlds explanation of quantum computation is not licensed by, and in fact is conceptually inferior to, the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics from which it is derived. I argue that the many worlds…

A unique triangular shaped monolith located within the Peak District National Park at Gardom's Edge could be intentionally astronomically aligned. It is set within a landscape rich in late Neolithic and Bronze Age remains. We show that the…

This is a concise review, addressed to undergraduate students, of S. Chandrasekhar's oeuvre in astrophysics, ranging from his early studies on white dwarfs using relativistic quantum statistics to topics as diverse as dynamical friction,…

Professor Sir Karl Popper (1902-1994) was one of the most influential philosophers of science of the twentieth century. However, in his most famous work he displays misunderstandings of science and mathematics at a basic level.

Before developing his 1915 General Theory of Relativity, Einstein held the "Entwurf" theory. Tullio Levi-Civita from Padua, one of the founders of tensor calculus, objected to a major problematic element in this theory, which reflected its…

We present a formal analysis of the Cosmological Argument in its two main forms: that due to Aquinas, and the revised version of the Kalam Cosmological Argument more recently advocated by William Lane Craig. We formulate these two arguments…

I briefly present a personal view about alleged scientific results on free will.