物理学史与哲学
In spite of successful tests, the standard cosmological model, the $\Lambda$CDM model, possesses the most problematic concept: the initial singularity, also known as the big bang. In this paper---by adopting the Kantian difference between…
The Elymaean have existed as a semi-autonomous satrap and sometimes autonomous, coinciding with the Seleucids and the Parthians in the southwest and west of Iran. This government has played an active presence in political and economic…
Indigenous people have nurtured critical relationships with the stars, from keen observation and sustainable engineering to place-based ceremony, navigation, and celestial architecture for tens of thousands of years. The Indigenous…
In this work we show the equivalence between Hamiltonian mechanics and conservation of information entropy. We will show that distributions with coordinate independent values for information entropy require that the manifold on which the…
A scientific biography of John Ward, who was responsible for the Ward Identity in quantum electrodynamics; the first detailed calculation of the quantum entanglement of two photons in electron-positron annihilation with Maurice Pryce; the…
Einstein's sink is a well-known object among physics and astronomy students at Leiden University. Stories about its origin have been passed down since it was moved to the large lecture room of the then newly built Oort Building in 1998.…
A memorial to Prof. Hidekuni Hidekoshi, Kyoto University, Japan - an accelerator pioneer in Japan, teacher, mentor, friend, unassuming but knowing his accomplishments and worth, frugal but generous, enjoying life. Japanese contributions…
An interview in 2001 with Murray Gell-mann covering his early ideas on parity violation, strangeness, charm, the eightfold way, QCD, electroweak theory and string theory.
We propose that the Jungian psychological type of an individual is naturally modelled as a quantum state: a maximally entangled two-qubit state, one of whose qubits is undergoing quantum teleportation.
In the year 2000, in a paper titled Quantum Theory Needs No 'Interpretation', Chris Fuchs and Asher Peres presented a series of instrumentalist arguments against the role played by 'interpretations' in QM. Since then --quite regardless of…
Longitude determination at sea gained increasing commercial importance in the late Middle Ages, spawned by a commensurate increase in long-distance merchant shipping activity. Prior to the successful development of an accurate marine…
The concept of indistinguishable particles in quantum theory is fundamental to questions of ontology. All ordinary matter is made of electrons, protons, neutrons, and photons and they are all indistinguishable particles. Yet the concept…
We present an elementary system of axioms for the geometry of Minkowski spacetime. It strikes a balance between a simple and streamlined set of axioms and the attempt to give a direct formalization in first-order logic of the standard…
The mid-17th century saw unprecedented scientific progress. With the Middle Ages well and truly over, the Scientific Revolution had begun. However, scientific advancement does not always proceed along well-planned trajectories. Chance…
Landauer's principle is, roughly, the principle that there is an entropic cost associated with implementation of logically irreversible operations. Though widely accepted in the literature on the thermodynamics of computation, it has been…
Donald Lynden-Bell's many contributions to astrophysics encompass general relativity, galactic dynamics, telescope design and observational astronomy. In the 1960s, his papers on stellar dynamics led to fundamental insights into the…
Georges Lemaitre was a remarkable contributor to the advancement of cosmology in the heady years following two great revolutions in theoretical physics in the last century: general relativity and quantum mechanics. In the present century,…
An important part of the influential Humean doctrine in philosophy is the supervenience principle (sometimes referred to as the principle of separability). This principle asserts that the complete state of the world supervenes on the…
For many decades scholars converse how to correctly include the Old Babylonian Empire into the absolute timeline of history. A cuneiform text from the series Enuma Anu Enlil (EAE #20) reports on the destruction of Babylon after a lunar and…
James Chadwick is known for his discovery of the neutron. Many of his earlier findings and ideas in the context of weak and strong nuclear forces are much less known. This biographical sketch attempts to highlight the achievements of a…