物理学史与哲学
Hipparchus is considered the greatest astronomer of antiquity. However, his fame is due, more than to what he has done, or said, or written, to what the scientists of some generation or of a few cen-turies later have written of him: above…
Cultural astronomy reveals ways in which perception and culture have shaped the interpretation of the night sky.
An elementary survey of mathematical cosmology is presented. We cover certain key ideas and developments in a qualitative way, from the time of the Einstein static universe in 1917 until today. We divide our presentation into four main…
We briefly review some of the scientific challenges and epistemological issues related to climate science. We discuss the formulation and testing of theories and numerical models, which, given the presence of unavoidable uncertainties in…
Recollections by the author about how his interactions with John Wheeler influenced his career in physics.
Brief recollections of how the author interacted with Steve Weinberg over issues in quantum mevhanics
The life of Ernst Ising and the steps to solving the model named after him are reported in parallel. Wilhelm Lenz suggested his student Ernst Ising to explain the existence of ferromagnetism on the basis of his publication in 1920. The…
I recount my personal experience interacting with Roman Jackiw in the 1980s, when we both worked on Chern-Simons theories in three dimensions.
Discussion of some aspects of the concept of time for a general audience: nature of time, A- and B-series, time in physics, the "now", measurement of time, definition of time units, time's arrow, relativity of time, relativity of…
We have discovered unknown very valuable old photos of Prof. Hideki Yukawa at the unveiling ceremony of his bronze statue at an elementary school in Kochi in 1954. The statue was moved to a newly created garden in1982, which in the…
Brief recollections by the author of how he interacted with Feynman and was influenced by him.
This article describes the study of a Bronze Age limestone slab with cup marks, discovered during the archaeological excavations of kurgan 1 of the kurgan grave field Prolom II, located in the Belogorsk region in Crimea. According to the…
Euler considers the following problem: A boat with a perfect rudder moves at constant speed across a stream flowing in straight fillets at assigned speeds. Assuming that the downstream velocity of the boat equals that of the river, how…
The goal of this essay is twofold. First, it provides a quick look at the foundations of modern relational mechanics by tracing its development from Julian Barbour and Bruno Bertotti's original ideas until present-day's pure shape dynamics.…
We study the possible interpretation of the "universal constants" by the classification of J.~M.~L\'evy-Leblond. $\hbar$ and $c$ are the most common example of constants of this type. Using Fock's principle of the relativity w.r.t.…
The laws of nature have come a long way since the time of Newton: quantum mechanics and relativity have given us good reasons to take seriously the possibility of laws which may be non-local, atemporal, `all-at-once,' retrocausal, or in…
The highlights of the conference: The Legacy of Bruno Pontecorvo: the Scientist and the Man, held in Roma, Universit\`a La Sapienza, 11-12 September, 2013, are summarised and illustrated.
The Jesuit scientist Christopher Clavius (1538-1612) has been the most influential teacher of the renaissance. His contributions to algebra, geometry, astronomy and cartography are enormous. He paved the way, with his texts and his teaching…
The concept of Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking (SSB) represents a real breakthrough for present description of fundamental interactions by means of gauge theories. Although the underlying ideas were ancient, their formalization required a…
Editorial of a special issue on dark matter & modified gravity, distributed across the journals Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics and Studies in History and Philosophy of Science. Published version of the open access…