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History and Philosophy of Physics papers — page 66

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Pisa and the Collider Detector at Fermilab: a History of the Establishment of Precision Physics With a Calorimetric Spectrometer at a Hadron Collider
This is a personal and admittedly US-centric attempt to summarize the foundational impact of the Pisa CDF Group on the conceptual design, construction, and early operation of the CDF Detector at…
Henry J. FrischAug 13, 2018
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Theoreticians at the Physical-Technical Institute (To the centennial of the Ioffe Institute)
Dedicated to the centenary of the Ioffe Institute, the article contains the shortest review of scientific achievements of the theorists of the institute during this time. We concentrate mainly on…
M. Ya. AmusiaAug 13, 2018
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My Years with Julian Schwinger: From Source Theory through Sonoluminescence
I recall my interactions with Julian Schwinger, first as a graduate student at Harvard, and then as a postdoc at UCLA, in the period 1968--81, and subsequently. Some aspects of his legacy to physics…
K. A. MiltonAug 6, 2018
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The Gibbs Paradox
The Gibbs Paradox is essentially a set of open questions as to how sameness of gases or fluids (or masses, more generally) are to be treated in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. They have a…
Simon SaundersAug 6, 2018
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The Many Definitions of a Black Hole
Although black holes are objects of central importance across many fields of physics, there is no agreed upon definition for them, a fact that does not seem to be widely recognized. Physicists in…
Erik CurielAug 4, 2018
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The Geometry of Spaceborne Synthetic Aperture Radar
The paper defines a new coordinate system that was developed in 1977-78 for the world's first digital synthetic aperture radar (SAR) ground processor for images from the Seasat-A satellite. The…
P. H. Robert OrthAug 1, 2018
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Julian Schwinger--Recollections from many decades
I present some reminiscences, both personal and scientific, over a lifetime of admiration of, and friendship with, one of the Grandmasters of our subject.
S. DeserJul 27, 2018
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Clifford's attempt to test his gravitation hypothesis
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…
S. Galindo, Jorge L. Cervantes-CotaJul 24, 2018
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A Theory of Inertia Based on Mach's Principle
A non-relativistic theory of inertia based on Mach's principle is presented as has been envisaged but not achieved by Ernst Mach in 1872. Central feature is a space-dependent, anisotropic, symmetric…
Volkmar PutzJul 23, 2018
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Historical observations of STEVE
Recent work by MacDonald et al. has highlighted the valuable work carried out by sky watchers and auroral enthusiasts in obtaining high-quality digital images of rare and unusual auroral structures.…
Mark Bailey, Conor Byrne, Rok Nezic et al.Jul 23, 2018
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On the Observations of the Penetrating Radiation during Seven Balloon Flights
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Austrian (later naturalized American) Victor Hess among others developed a brilliant line of research, leading to the final determination of the…
Victor HessJul 23, 2018
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Validation of the Simulation of Collision Events at the LHC
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…
Peter MättigJul 20, 2018
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Striving for Realism, not for Determinism: Historical Misconceptions on Einstein and Bohm
In this paper I show that, while Einstein and Bohm both pursued a deterministic description of quantum mechanics, their philosophical concern was in fact primarily realism and not determinism. Their…
Flavio Del SantoJul 19, 2018
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Elements of reality in quantum mechanics
The notion of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) "element of reality" is much discussed in the literature on the foundations of quantum mechanics. Recently, it has become particularly relevant due to…
Geoff BeckJul 17, 2018
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Reconstructed sunspot positions in the Maunder Minimum based on the correspondence of Gottfried Kirch
We present reconstructed sunspot positions based on observations reported in letters between Gottfried Kirch and other contemporary astronomers from AD 1680 to 1709, i.e. in the last decades of the…
R. Neuhäuser, R. Arlt, S. RichterJul 17, 2018
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Newton's Hypotheses on the Structure of Matter
Isaac Newton's book 'Opticks' from the 18th century includes several hypotheses on the structure of matter. Most of the hypotheses were confirmed during the 19th and 20th centuries at the scale of…
Philip YockJul 15, 2018
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Levels of spacetime emergence in quantum gravity
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…
Daniele OritiJul 13, 2018
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Isaac Thuret: celebrated craftsman denied intellectual credit
The Scientific Revolution sweeping through seventeenth-century Europe led to unprecedented intellectual and scientific insights and high-profile technological developments. Combined with a…
Richard de GrijsJul 10, 2018
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A Precipice Below Which Lies Absurdity? Theories without a Spacetime and Scientific Understanding
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…
Sebastian De Haro, Henk W. de RegtJul 7, 2018
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A retrospective look at Regge poles
The theoretical motivations that led Tullio Regge to investigate the analytical properties of the scattering amplitude of the collision process between two particles in terms of complex energy and…
Alessandro BottinoJul 6, 2018
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The strange case of Dr. Petit and Mr. Dulong
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…
Roberto PiazzaJul 6, 2018
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The Impact Of World War I On Relativity: Part III, The Aftermath
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…
Virginia TrimbleJul 5, 2018
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Yes, Aboriginal Australians Can and Did Discover the Variability of Betelgeuse
Recently, a widely publicized claim has been made that the Aboriginal Australians discovered the variability of the red star Betelgeuse in the modern Orion, plus the variability of two other…
Bradley E. SchaeferJun 26, 2018
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Model Choice and Crucial Tests. On the Empirical Epistemology of the Higgs Discovery
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…
Peter Mättig, Michael StöltznerJun 24, 2018
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It Takes a Village: Documenting the Contributions of Non-Scientific Staff to Scientific Research
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…
Valerie HigginsJun 19, 2018
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