物理学史与哲学

The cosmological constant was proposed 100 years ago in order to make the model of static Universe, imagined then by most scientists, possible. Today it is the main candidate for the physical essence causing the observed accelerated…

Observables have a dual nature in both classical and quantum kinematics: they are at the same time \emph{quantities}, allowing to separate states by means of their numerical values, and \emph{generators of transformations}, establishing…

Almost half a century before Einstein expounded his general theory of relativity, the English mathematician William Kingdon Clifford argued that space might not be Euclidean and proposed that matter is nothing but a small distortion in that…

According to the analysis of the $^{14}$C content of two Japanese trees over a period of approximately 3000 years at high time resolution, Miyake (2012) found a rapid increase at AD 774-775 and later on at AD 992-993 (Miyake 2013). This…

The procedures of validating simulation of particle physics events at the LHC are summarized. Because of the strongly fluctuating particle content of LHC events and detector interactions, particle based Monte Carlo methods are an…

Today's science provides quite a lean picture of time as a mere geometric evolution parameter. I argue that time is much richer. In particular, I argue that besides the geometric time, there is creative time, when objective chance events…

We explore the issue of spacetime emergence in quantum gravity, by articulating several levels at which this can be intended. These levels correspond to the reconstruction moves that are needed to recover the classical and continuum notion…

The Scientific Revolution sweeping through seventeenth-century Europe led to unprecedented intellectual and scientific insights and high-profile technological developments. Combined with a significant worldwide increase in naval commerce,…

While the relation between visualization and scientific understanding has been a topic of long-standing discussion, recent developments in physics have pushed the boundaries of this debate to new and still unexplored realms. For it is…

The Dulong-Petit limiting law for the specific heats of solids, one of the first general results in thermodynamics, has provided Mendeleev with a powerful tool for devising the periodic table and gave an important support to Boltzmann's…

Neither the world nor science came to an end when the gunfire stopped on 11 November 1918 (close to 11 AM in some time zone), but neither would ever be the same again. Part I of this inquiry (Observatory 138, 46-58, April 2018) looked at…

This note is based on a relatively unknown paper of Albert Einstein published in 1941 in the Revista de la Universidad Nacional de Tucuman. That work can be regarded as the prequel of the one written in 1943 in collaboration with Wolfgang…

Quantum mechanics is not about 'quantum states': it is about values of physical variables. I give a short fresh presentation and update on the $relational$ perspective on the theory, and a comment on its philosophical implications.

There are (at least) four ways that an agent can acquire information concerning the state of the universe: via observation, control, prediction, or via retrodiction, i.e., memory. Each of these four ways of acquiring information seems to…

Our paper discusses the epistemic attitudes of particle physicists on the discovery of the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). It is based on questionnaires and interviews made shortly before and shortly after the discovery in…

Science, especially large-scale basic research, is a collaborative endeavor, often drawing on the skills of people from a wide variety of disciplines. These people include not just scientists, but also administrators, engineers, and many…

In the present work, we address the solution of a problem extracted from a historical context, in which Galileo supposedly conducted an experiment to measure the percussion force of a water jet. To this end, the conservation equations of…

The cosmological constant, usually named Lambda, was introduced by Einstein in 1917 and abandoned by him as his biggest "blunder". It currently seems to make a spectacular comeback in the framework of the new cosmological standard model.…

The dissemination of natural philosophy in the 18th-century, which was based primarily on Newton's pioneering work in mechanics, optics and astrophysics, is presented as seen through a remarkable textbook written by a little known Irish…

Approaches to quantum gravity often involve the disappearance of space and time at the fundamental level. The metaphysical consequences of this disappearance are profound, as is illustrated with David Lewis's analysis of modality. As…