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History and Philosophy of Physics papers — page 32

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The Pseudoscience of Time Travel
Because closed timelike curves are consistent with general relativity, many have asserted that time travel into the past is physically possible if not technologically infeasible. However, the…
Andrew KnightOct 8, 2022
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German to Spanish translation of Einstein's work on the formation of meanders in rivers
In 1926 Albert Einstein gave a clear explanation of the physical processes involved in the meander formation and evolution in open channels (Einstein, 1926). Although this work is far from being…
Enrique M. Padilla, Birgit L. Emberger, Manuel Diez-MinguitoOct 2, 2022
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La orientaci\'on de las iglesias coloniales de Fuerteventura
We use standard tools of Archaeoastronomy to approach the study of orientations, possibly astronomical, of a group of colonial Christian churches. We present preliminary results of the analysis of…
Maria Florencia Muratore, Alejandro GanguiSep 29, 2022
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Einstein's Happiest Moment: The Equivalence Principle
Einstein's happiest thought was his leap from the observation that a falling person feels no gravity to the realization that gravity might be equivalent to acceleration. It affects all bodies in the…
Paul Worden, James OverduinSep 28, 2022
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Quantum Fluid Dynamics on the Hypersphere
It is known from quantum mechanics that particles are associated with wave functions, and that the probability of observing a particle at some future location is proportional to the squared modulus…
Stuart HeinrichSep 20, 2022
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The Mosquito incident and the need-(not-)to-know
I am reporting here how professor Cristian Sorin Calude, henceforth called Cris, became involved in the "Mosquito incident". More generally, the relationship between the single individual vis-a-vis…
Karl SvozilSep 18, 2022
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Realistic From Far But Far From Realism: Withering Scientific Realism in the Quantum Case
Much has been discussed in the philosophy of science about how we should understand the scientific enterprise. On the one hand, scientific realists believe that empirically adequate theories can be…
Raoni Arroyo, Christian de RondeSep 12, 2022
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The Medieval Climate Anomaly, the Oort Minimum and Socio-Political Dynamics in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Byzantine Empire, 10th to 12th Century
The study examines the palaeoclimatic background and the regional manifestations of the Medieval Climate Anomaly in the Eastern Mediterranean, with a focus on the Byzantine Empire, but also including…
Johannes Preiser-KapellerSep 8, 2022
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The beginning of celestial navigation
The use of the observed positions of celestial bodies to determine the location of a navigator and to direct vessels, was an aspiration of ancient seafarers. Various peoples, in the Mediterranean as…
Gabriele VaninSep 6, 2022
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A Proposal for a Metaphysics of Self-Subsisting Structures. I. Classical Physics
We present a new metaphysical framework for physics that is conceptually clear, ontologically parsimonious, and empirically adequate. This framework relies on the notion of self-subsisting structure,…
Antonio Vassallo, Pedro Naranjo, Tim KoslowskiSep 3, 2022
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Evolution of timekeeping from water clock to quartz clock -- the curious case of the Bulova ACCUTRON 214 the first transistorized wristwatch
The technological discoveries and developments since dawn of civilization that resulted in the modern wristwatch are linked to the evolution of Science itself. A history of over 6000 years filled…
Edval J. P. SantosSep 1, 2022
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Maxwell's demon and impossibility statements: Einstein on perpetuum mobile of the second kind
This paper discusses Maxwell's demon thought experiment. In recent years, there has been extensive research on Maxwell's demon. I first provide a detailed overview of important historical milestones…
Galina WeinsteinSep 1, 2022
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Before Bethe: Early Ideas of the Sun's Generation of Energy
Solar energy remained an enigma for nearly a century. For a while astronomers and physicists believed that the source of the Sun's energy was gravitational contraction, but the theory turned out to…
Helge KraghAug 31, 2022
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Pieter Johannes van Rhijn, Kapteyn's Astronomical Laboratory and the Plan of Selected Areas
In this contribution I discuss the Kapteyn Astronomical Laboratory during the period of Pieter Johannes van Rhijn's directorate, which lasted from 1921 to 1957. It had developed under the founder…
P. C. van der KruitAug 29, 2022
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Richardson's Forecast: the Dream and the Fantasy
A remarkable book on weather forecasting was published just one hundred years ago. Written by the brilliant and prescient applied mathematician, Lewis Fry Richardson, Weather Prediction by Numerical…
Peter LynchAug 27, 2022
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The c-equivalence principle and its implications for physics
The c-equivalence principle, commonly accepted as true by most physicists, is the unstated assumption that 1/εo μo equals the kinematic speed of light. Should someone prove the…
Max TranAug 27, 2022
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MOND and Methodology
In Logik der Forschung and later works, Karl Popper proposed a set of methodological rules for scientists. Among these were requirements that theories evolve in the direction of increasing content,…
David MerrittAug 26, 2022
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Towards a scientifically tenable description of objective idealism
The tremendous advances of research into artificial intelligence as well as neuroscience made over the last two to three decades have given further support to a renewed interest into philosophical…
Martin KorthAug 24, 2022
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On the influence of gravity on the propagation of light, with some comments on the A. Einstein`s 1911 Paper (1911-2022), Light Interaction With Gravity (The Mistake Made In 1911)
This is a review with some comments on the A. Einstein`s 1911 paper, which he published as one of his many attempts of the general theory of relativity. The main point of the idea is to propose a new…
Rigoberto MartinezAug 23, 2022
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The Many Inconsistencies of the Purity-Mixture Distinction in Standard Quantum Mechanics
The distinction between pure states and mixed states is a kernel ingredient of what is considered to be the standard formulation of quantum mechanics and plays today a kernel role in foundational…
Christian de Ronde, César MassriAug 22, 2022
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Bogdan Mielnik, geometry and quanta
We review selected achievements of the late Bogdan Mielnik in the field of theoretical physics, with an emphasis on his attempts to go beyond quantum mechanics. Some of his original views on the…
Ingemar Bengtsson, Karol ZyczkowskiAug 22, 2022
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Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and particle trajectories
In this paper we critically analyse W. Heisenberg's arguments against the ontology of point particles following trajectories in quantum theory, presented in his famous 1927 paper and in his Chicago…
Serj AristarhovAug 20, 2022
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Russell on Weyl's unified field theory
In 1918, H. Weyl proposed a unified theory of gravity and electromagnetism based on a generalization of Riemannian geometry. With hindsight we now could say that the theory carried with it some of…
C. RomeroAug 17, 2022
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On the map-territory fallacy fallacy
This paper presents a meta-theory of the usage of the free energy principle (FEP) and examines its scope in the modelling of physical systems. We consider the so-called `map-territory fallacy' and…
Maxwell J D Ramstead, Dalton A R Sakthivadivel, Karl J FristonAug 14, 2022
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A Concise History of the Black-body Radiation Problem
The way the topic of black-body radiation is presented in standard textbooks (i.e. from Rayleigh-Jeans to Max Planck) does not follow the actual historical timeline of the understanding of the…
Himanshu Mavani, Navinder SinghAug 12, 2022
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