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History and Philosophy of Physics papers — page 116

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The Early History of String Theory and Supersymmetry
This lecture presents a brief overview of the early history of string theory and supersymmetry. It describes how the S-matrix theory program for understanding the strong nuclear force evolved into…
John H. SchwarzJan 4, 2012
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The CLAVIUS Four Centennial Meeting and XXXI ESOP
The XXXI European Symposium on Occultation Projects will be celebrated in ICRANet center of Pescara from 24 to 27 August 2012 (www.icranet.org/clavius2012). The occasion is the fourth centennial of…
Costantino SigismondiDec 29, 2011
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Comment on Japanese Detection of Air Fluorescence Light from a Cosmic Ray Shower in 1969
We examine the claim made by Hara et al. in 1969 of the observation of a 1019 eV cosmic ray extensive air shower using the air fluorescence technique. We find that it is likely that fluorescence…
Bruce R. DawsonDec 24, 2011
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Searching for Higgs : From LEP towards LHC
After a brief introduction to the theoretical basis of the Higgs mechanism for generating the masses of elementary particles, the experimental searches for Higgs particles will be summarized, from…
W. -D. Schlatter, P. M. ZerwasDec 21, 2011
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The Fine-Tuning of the Universe for Intelligent Life
The fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life has received a great deal of attention in recent years, both in the philosophical and scientific literature. The claim is that in the space of…
Luke A. BarnesDec 20, 2011
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On the 100th anniversary of the Sackur-Tetrode equation
In 1912, Otto Sackur and Hugo Tetrode independently put forward an equation for the absolute entropy of a monoatomic ideal gas and published it in "Annalen der Physik." The grand achievement…
W. GrimusDec 16, 2011
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An early explanation of the periodic table: Lars Vegard and X-ray spectroscopy
The Norwegian physicist Lars Vegard may have been the first to propose electron configurations for all the chemical elements, from hydrogen to uranium, on the basis of quantum atomic theory. This he…
Helge KraghDec 16, 2011
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Mapping the Milky Way: William Herschel's Star-Gages
In 1785 astronomer William Herschel mapped out the shape of the Milky Way star system using measurements he called "star-gages." Herschel's star-gage method is described in detail, with…
Todd TimberlakeDec 15, 2011
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Poincare and Special Relativity
Henri Poincare's work on mathematical features of the Lorentz transformations was an important precursor to the development of special relativity. In this paper I compare the approaches taken by…
Emily AdlamDec 14, 2011
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Spreading the gospel: The Bohr atom popularised
The emergence of quantum theory in the early decades of the twentieth century was accompanied by a wide range of popular science books, all of which presented in words and in images new scientific…
Helge Kragh, Kristian Hvidtfelt NielsenDec 12, 2011
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The isotope effect: Prediction, discussion, and discovery
The precise position of a spectral line emitted by an atomic system depends on the mass of the atomic nucleus and is therefore different for isotopes belonging to the same element. The possible…
Helge KraghDec 11, 2011
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Abdus Salam: A Reappraisal. Part II Salam's Part in the Pakistani Nuclear Weapon Programme
Salam's biographies claim that he was opposed to Pakistan's nuclear weapon programme. This is somewhat strange given that he was the senior Science Advisor to the Pakistan government for at…
Norman DombeyDec 10, 2011
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Regarding how Tycho Brahe noted the absurdity of the Copernican Theory regarding the Bigness of Stars, while the Copernicans appealed to God to answer that absurdity
Tycho Brahe, the most prominent and accomplished astronomer of his era, made measurements of the apparent sizes of the Sun, Moon, stars, and planets. From these he showed that within a geocentric…
Christopher M. GraneyDec 9, 2011
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Sir John Herschel and the Stability of Saturn's Ring
In a pioneering exposition of mathematical astronomy for the public, Sir John Herschel attributed the stability of the ring of Saturn to its being eccentric with respect to the planet and lopsided…
Alan B. WhitingDec 7, 2011
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On the Necessity of Entanglement for the Explanation of Quantum Speedup
In this paper I argue that entanglement is a necessary component for any explanation of quantum speedup and I address some purported counter-examples that some claim show that the contrary is true.…
Michael E. CuffaroDec 6, 2011
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Fritz Haber: The Damned Scientist
In the gallery of famous people tracing their origins to Wrocław, few are as controversial, as complex, or as tragic as Fritz Haber, ever more distant in the flux of time, yet still stirring…
Magda Dunikowska, Ludwik TurkoDec 5, 2011
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String and M-theory: answering the critics
Using as a springboard a three-way debate between theoretical physicist Lee Smolin, philosopher of science Nancy Cartwright and myself, I address in layman's terms the issues of why we need a…
M. J. DuffDec 4, 2011
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The Riddle of Gravitation
There is no doubt that both the special and general theories of relativity capture the imagination. The anti-intuitive properties of the special theory of relativity and its deep philosophical…
A. M. Sid-AhmedDec 4, 2011
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Philosophy and problems of the definition of Extraterrestrial Life
When we try to search for extraterrestrial life and intelligence, we have to follow some guidelines. The first step is to clarify what is to be meant by "Life" and "intelligence",…
Jean SchneiderDec 1, 2011
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Allan Sandage and the Cosmic Expansion
This is an account of Allan Sandage's work on (1) The character of the expansion field. For many years he has been the strongest defender of an expanding Universe. He later explained the CMB…
G. A. Tammann, B. ReindlDec 1, 2011
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W. W. Morgan and the Discovery of the Spiral Arm Structure of our Galaxy
William Wilson Morgan was one of the great astronomers of the twentieth century. He considered himself a morphologist, and was preoccupied throughout his career with matters of classification. Though…
William SheehanDec 1, 2011
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On the relativistic unification of electricity and magnetism
The unification of electricity and magnetism achieved by special relativity has remained for decades a model of unification in theoretical physics. We discuss the relationship between electric and…
Marco Mamone Capria, Maria-Grazia ManiniNov 30, 2011
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Atomic Modeling in the Early 20th Century: 1904 - 1913
The scope of this paper is to discuss the major works that appeared in the period of 1904 to 1913: atomic models proposed by Thomson and Hantaro Nagaoka (1904), Rutherford (1911), and Bohr (1913),…
Charles BailyNov 26, 2011
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Visions of Revolutions: Microphysics and Cosmophysics in the 1930s
By 1930, at a time when the new physics based on relativity and quantum theory had reached a state of consolidation, problems of a foundational kind began to abound. Physicists began to speak of a…
Helge KraghNov 26, 2011
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Allan R. Sandage, 18 June 1926 - 13 November 2010
Allan Sandage was an observational astronomer who was happiest at a telescope. On Hubble's sudden death Allan Sandage inherited the programmes using the world's largest optical telescope at…
Donald Lynden-Bell, Francois SchweizerNov 23, 2011
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