Category: physics
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Two Mathematicians in a Bunker and Existence of Pi
Below there is a problem that I have formulated in order to understand better what is mathematics. There are two related dicussions: http://groups.google.com/group/embryophysics/t/419d3c1fec30e3b5 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list/t/b8d7efb597b2349a I will start first with the final version of the problem (Bruno’s comments were very helpful) and after that I will present my messages that led to the problem and the…
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Entropy and Information
In the modern scientific culture, the statement that the entropy and information are the same things is ubiquitous. For example the famous paper of Edwin T. Jaynes [1] according to Google Scholar [2] has been cited more than 5000 times. The list of books from Prof Gordon [3] about the deep relationship between entropy and…
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Biology and Physics
My messages to the everything-list http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list/t/79a721c063a6c37a 28.01.2012 13:04: Let my quote Jeffery A. Gray, (Consciousness: Creeping up on the Hard Problem p. 33) on biology and physics. “In very general terms, biology makes use of two types of concept: physicochemical laws and feedback mechanisms. The latter include both the feedback operative in natural selection, in which…
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Particle Physics and Gothic Cathedrals
David Lindley, The End of Physics. The Myth of a Unified Theory, 1993. From Chapter 9, The New Heat Death Particle physicists have sometimes drawn an analogy between their machines and the Gothic cathedrals of medieval Europe – both, in their own ways, monuments to a search for truth by their respective communities. The analogy…
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Quantum mechanics and Archimedes
A couple of citations from Lucio Russo, The Forgotten Revolution, How Science Was Born in 300 BC and Why it Had to Be Reborn “The departure of physics from the ancient scientific method started at the turn of the twentieth century, when an enormous increase in the range of observed phenomena demanded the creation of…
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Matter and little ghosts
An interesting citation from Robert B. Laughlin, A Different Universe, Chapter 4, Water, Ice, and Vapor, p. 42. By the most important effect of phase organisation is to cause objects to exist. This point is subtle and easily overlooked, since we are accustomed to thinking about solidification in terms of packing of Newtonian spheres. Atoms…
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Stephen Wolfram’s Computational Irreducibility
Stephen Wolfram Some Modern Perspectives on the Quest for Ultimate Knowledge https://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/some-modern-perspectives-quest-ultimate-knowledge/ A good overview about computational irreducibility and how it could affect our quest for ultimate knowledge. Just one example from the paper. Let us imagine that the Universe is governed by just a few simple rules and they are completely determenistic. Yet, as they represent…
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Quantum Mechanics
Peter Woit, 2006, Not Even Wrong, The failure of String Theory and the Search for Unity in Physical Law After the Elegant Universe I have started Not Even Wrong by Peter Woit to see what opponents of the superstring theory say. In the Preface, there is a nice statement about quantum mechanics, p. xvi Part…