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History and Philosophy of Physics papers — page 79

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Meaning = Information + Evolution
Notions like meaning, signal, intentionality, are difficult to relate to a physical word. I study a purely physical definition of "meaningful information", from which these notions can be…
Carlo RovelliNov 8, 2016
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Remembering Guido Altarelli
In memory of Guido Altarelli I present my personal recollections of the early times and his major role played in the development of QCD.
Mario GrecoOct 27, 2016
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The earliest drawings of datable auroras and a two-tail comet from the Syriac Chronicle of Zūqnīn
People have probably been watching the sky since the beginning of human history. Observers in pre-telescopic ages recorded anomalous events and these astronomical records in the historical documents…
Hisashi Hayakawa, Yasuyuki Mitsuma, Yasunori Fujiwara et al.Oct 27, 2016
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The Ancient Astronomy of Easter Island: Aldebaran and the Pleiades
There is a good cause to assert that the Easter Islanders constantly watched Aldebaran and the Pleiades in the past. The Russian scholar Irina K. Fedorova and the American scholar Georgia Lee were…
Sergei RjabchikovOct 26, 2016
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Time in the theory of relativity: inertial time, light clocks, and proper time
In a way similar to classical mechanics where we have the concept of inertial time as expressed in the motions of bodies, in the (special) theory of relativity we can regard the inertial time as the…
Mario Bacelar ValenteOct 26, 2016
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Role of Experiments in the Progress of Science: Lessons from our History
I shall discuss the history of Indian astronomy, Aurveda (life science), chemistry and metallurgy to illustrate how downgrading experiments from scientific learning lead to the decline of ancient…
D. P. RoyOct 26, 2016
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Astronomical Alignments of the Sun Temple site in Mesa Verde National Park
Summer 2015 marked the 100th anniversary of the excavation by J.W. Fewkes of the Sun Temple in Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado; an ancient ceremonial complex of unknown purpose, prominently…
Sherry TowersOct 24, 2016
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Observables, Disassembled
This paper argues that non-self-adjoint operators can be observables. There are only four ways for this to occur: non-self-adjoint observables can either be normal operators, or be symmetric, or have…
Bryan W. RobertsOct 21, 2016
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The contrivance of Neptune
Celebrating 170th anniversary of the discovery of Neptune, I review the story of the discovery that startled the world. The story is an interplay of scientific triumph and human weakness and an…
Davor KrajnovicOct 20, 2016
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New Zealand's size and isolation can stimulate new science
It is conventionally thought that New Zealand's distance from the large, northern hemisphere centres of learning, and our relatively small population and wealth, are detrimental to the…
Philip YockOct 20, 2016
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Galileo (1564-1642) and Kepler (1571-1630): the modern scientist and the mystic
The art of advertising one's scientific achievements, of which Galileo was an early master, is a trademark of successful modern science. Dedicated believers and mystics of science, such as…
Ivan TodorovOct 18, 2016
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Einstein's Equations for Spin 2 Mass 0 from Noether's Converse Hilbertian Assertion
An overlap between the general relativist and particle physicist views of Einstein gravity is uncovered. Noether's 1918 paper developed Hilbert's and Klein's reflections on the conservation laws.…
J. Brian PittsOct 17, 2016
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OV or TOV ?
The well-known equation for hydrostatic equilibrium in a static spherically symmetric spacetime supported by an isotropic perfect fluid is referred to as the Oppenheimer-Volkoff (OV) equation or the…
İbrahim SemizOct 10, 2016
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Reconstructing the Star Knowledge of Aboriginal Tasmanians
The canopy of stars is a central presence in the daily and spiritual lives of Aboriginal Tasmanians. With the arrival of European colonists, Tasmanian astronomical knowledge and traditions were…
Michelle Gantevoort, Duane W. Hamacher, Savannah LischickOct 10, 2016
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Eugene Paul Wigner's Nobel Prize
In 1963, Eugene Paul Wigner was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions to the theory of the atomic nucleus and the elementary particles, particularly through the discovery and…
Y. S. KimOct 6, 2016
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Hans Wolter - a pioneer of applied optics
Applied optics was one of the major topics Hans Walter was engaged in during his scientific life. He contributed to the understanding of optical properties of thin films, which could be used to…
Andreas SchrimpfOct 2, 2016
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Charles Sanders Peirce and the Abduction of Einstein: On the Comprehensibility of the World
Einstein was deeply puzzled by the success of natural science, and thought that we would never be able to explain it. He came to this conclusion on the ground that we cannot extract the basic laws of…
Cornelis de WaalOct 1, 2016
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The Stern-Gerlach Experiment Revisited
The Stern-Gerlach-Experiment (SGE) of 1922 is a seminal benchmark experiment of quantum physics providing evidence for several fundamental properties of quantum systems. Based on today's…
Horst Schmidt-Böcking, Lothar Schmidt, Hans Jürgen Lüdde et al.Sep 29, 2016
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Atlantis, Carli and Bailly, and a short discussion about 'demonstration' in cultural astronomy
Some European scholars in the second half of 18th century discussed the myth of Atlantis taking into account the studies of the evolution of the Earth and of the beginning and diffusion of…
Elio AntonelloSep 28, 2016
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Voigt transformations in retrospect: missed opportunities?
The teaching of modern physics often uses the history of physics as a didactic tool. However, as in this process the history of physics is not something studied but used, there is a danger that the…
Olga Chashchina, Natalya Dudisheva, Zurab SilagadzeSep 26, 2016
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A Brief History of Gravitational Waves
This review describes the discovery of gravitational waves. We recount the journey of predicting and finding those waves, since its beginning in the early twentieth century, their prediction by…
Jorge L. Cervantes-Cota, Salvador Galindo-Uribarri, George F. SmootSep 26, 2016
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Neutrini in profondità: Vita, morte e miracoli dei neutrini rivelati sotto terra, sotto i ghiacci o in fondo al mare
The neutrino is the most elusive particle that we know and for many years physicists doubted that neutrinos might never be revealed. Today we know and we reveal neutrinos produced by different…
Maurizio SpurioSep 21, 2016
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Rethinking Newton's Principia
It is widely accepted that the notion of an inertial frame is central to Newtonian mechanics and that the correct space-time structure underlying Newton's methods in Principia…
Simon SaundersSep 20, 2016
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Indistinguishability
This is a systematic review of the concept of indistinguishability in both classical and quantum mechanics, with particular attention to Gibbs' paradox. Section 1 is on the Gibbs paradox; section…
Simon SaundersSep 18, 2016
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On Dirichlet's Derivation of the Ellipsoid Potential
Newton's potential of a massive homogeneous ellipsoid is derived via Dirichlet's discontinuous factor. At first we review part of Dirichlet's work in an English translation of the…
W. DittrichSep 15, 2016
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