物理学史与哲学

In 1835 Lobachevski entertained the possibility of multiple (rival) geometries. This idea has reappeared on occasion (e.g., Poincar\'{e}) but didn't become key in space-time foundations prior to Brown's \emph{Physical Relativity} (at the…

Experiments may not reveal their full import at the time that they are performed. The scientists who perform them usually are testing a specific hypothesis and quite often have specific expectations limiting the possible inferences that can…

Speech on the occasion of accepting the Dagmar and Vaclav Havel Foundation VIZE 97 Prize for 2017. Delivered at Prague Crossroads, October 5, 2017

In 1827, Colladon carried out a series of experiments in Lac Leman (Lake Geneva, Switzerland) to measure the speed of sound in water. The purpose of our contribution is to treat this measurement as an inverse problem, and show, by theory…

Contributed paper to the Conference "Francesco's Legacy: Star Formation in Space and Time", in memory of Francesco Palla (1954-2016), held in Florence, June 5-9, 2017

We describe the main scientific developments that lead LIGO project to the detection of the gravitational waves: general relativity, black holes and gravitational waves predictions; numerical relativity and the collision and coalescence…

J. Willard Gibbs' Elementary Principles in Statistical Mechanics was the definitive work of one of America's greatest physicists. Gibbs' book on statistical mechanics establishes the basic principles and fundamental results that have…

Introduction for a special issue of Physica E dedicated to the memory of Markus B\"uttiker.

In the last two decades recurrence plots (RPs) were introduced in many different scientific disciplines. It turned out how powerful this method is. After introducing approaches of quantification of RPs and by the study of relationships…

We study ancient Khmer ephemerides described in 1910 by the French engineer Faraut, in order to determine whether they rely on observations carried out in Cambodia. These ephemerides were found to be of Indian origin and have been adapted…

We address the relation between two apparently distinct problems: The quest for a deeper understanding of the nature of consciousness and the search for time and space as emergent structures in the quantum mechanical world. We also advance…

This is the first complete English translation of Oratio De Meteoris Vi Electrica Ortis - seminal work of the great Russian polymath Mikhail Lomonosov (1711-1765). It was presented at the public meeting of the St.Petersburg Academy of…

In this paper, we are discussing the effect of the use of magnetic compasses on the orientation of ancient Chinese architectonical complexes. As Czech researchers proposed in 2011, assuming these complexes ideally oriented by the ancient…

Information theory is increasingly invoked by physicists concerned with fundamental physics, including black hole physics. But to what extent is the application of information theory in those contexts legitimate? Using the case of black…

We will follow the growth of gravitational theory in Germany from 1915 to the 1990s, i.e., relativistic theories of gravitation, mainly Einstein's, as a branch of physics in the sense of social, more precisely institutional history. As…

In "On the Heavens" Aristotle criticizes the Pythagorean point of view which claims the existence of a cosmic music and a cosmic sound. According to the Pythagorean argument, there exists a cosmic music produced by stars and planets. These…

We give an introductory review of gauge/gravity duality, and associated ideas of holography, emphasising the conceptual aspects. The opening Sections gather the ingredients, viz. anti-de Sitter spacetime, conformal field theory and string…

The object of this interview is the history of the Large Hadron Collider in the LEP tunnel at CERN, from first ideas to the discovery of the Brout-Englert-Higgs boson, seen from the point of view of a member of CERN scientific committees,…

The Italian civil nuclear projects had a very early origin, with the first ideas originating as far back as 1945. The construction of the first three plants dated back to the period 1956-1964, and at that time Italy ranked third in the…

Aboriginal Australians carefully observe the properties and positions of stars, including both overt and subtle changes in their brightness, for subsistence and social application. These observations are encoded in oral tradition. I examine…