物理学史与哲学

In a remarkable paper from 1852, Gotthilf Heinrich Ludwig Hagen measured and explained two fundamental aspects of granular matter: The first effect is the saturation of pressure with depth in a static granular system confined by silo walls…

Dealing with Eugene Wigner's ideas on the measurement procedure in quantum physics and unearthing the controversy that pitted him against supporters of the interpretation of complementarity, I will show how Wigner and his followers…

In his late work (De venatione sapientiae), Cusanus unfolded basic ideas of his brilliant theology. After a long period, this ingenious teaching became clearly recognizable especially in our time. Forward with his face to the back, modern…

We discuss the problems of consensus and unity in science. The natural sciences seem to contrast with many other areas of endeavor in that a high level of consensus seems to exist in them. However, a careful analysis of the structure of…

The name of George Augustus Linhart is in fact "widely unknown". In effect, he was a Viennese-born USA-American physicist-chemist, partially associated with the Gilbert Newton Lewis' school of thermodynamics at the University of California…

Rossi's career paralleled the evolution of cosmic-ray physics. Starting from the early 1930s his pioneering work on the nature and behavior of cosmic rays led to fundamental contributions in the field of experimental cosmic-ray physics and…

Late in October 1911, eighteen leading scientists from all over Europe met to the first of a famous sequence of Solvay conferences in Brussels. This historical meeting was mainly devoted to "The Theory of Radiation and the Quanta", at a…

Since 1945 Canada has had a nuclear power industry based on reactor design which uses natural uranium and heavy water. The tortuous and improbable sequence of events which led to this situation is examined.

Observational cosmology of the first decades of the Twentieth Century was dominated by two giants: Edwin Hubble and Harlow Shapley. Hubble's major contributions were to the study and classification of individual galaxies with large…

I summarize the development of the ideas of Spontaneous symmetry breaking in the 1960s with an outline of the Guralnik, Hagen, Kibble (GHK) paper and include comments on the relationship of this paper to those of Brout, Englert and Higgs. I…

String theory has been the dominating research field in theoretical physics during the last decades. Despite the considerable time elapse, no new testable predictions have been derived by string theorists and it is understandable that…

On the occasion of centenary of superconductivity discovery I remind some facts from the first period and attempts to understand the phenomenon. It turns out that most famous physicists of the first half of XX century have tried to solve…

This paper examines the roles of vision and leadership in creating and directing Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory from the late 1960s through the 1980s. The story divides into two administrations having different problems and…

A theoretical model describing neutron-proton scattering developed by Majorana as early as in 1932, is discussed in detail with the experiments that motivated it. Majorana using collisions' theory, obtained the explicit expression of…

Starting from Bunge's (1977) scientific ontology, we expose a materialistic relational theory of space-time, that carries out the program initiated by Leibniz, and provides a protophysical basis consistent with any rigorous formulation of…

Polar historians and enthusiasts are aware that toward the end of March 1912, Captain Robert F. Scott reported in his journal a meteorological event, which was extraordinary as far as its length and strength was concerned. This event was…

Modern physics, via the standard model with Higgs mechanism and string theory for example, has supplied ether-like models and emergent general relativity scenarios that substantially weaken the usual defense of orthodox relativity and…

In the present work it is evaluated the evolutionary state of the Orion Belt stars, an asterism very important for the ancient Egyptians, finding that, when the pyramids were built, the brightness of the three stars of the Belt was…

An analysis of the work of Mira Fernandes on unitary theories is presented. First it is briefly mentioned the Portuguese scientific context of the 1920s. A short analysis of the extension of Riemann geometries to new generalized geometries…

This is an editorial note to accompany reprinting as a Golden Oldie in the Journal of General Relativity and Gravitation of the famous note by Georges Lemaitre on the quantum birth of the universe, published in Nature in 1931. We explain…