Strange-metal data back holography
ARPES power-law self-energies in cuprates support a common core theory shared by metal and black hole, the paper argues.
· “Holographic Strange Metals for Philosophers and Physicists”
physics.hist-ph
History and Philosophy of Physics
History and philosophy of all branches of physics, astrophysics, and cosmology, including appreciations of physicists.
sort pith recommended most recent
New recipe makes semiclassical gravity fully self-consistent
Quantum matter sources a classical Einstein tensor, with the metric re-glued continuously along future light cones of collapses.
Eight ways the Schwarzschild singularities were read before Penrose
A new historical taxonomy maps how physicists and philosophers interpreted two singularities from 1916 to the late 1960s.
Grue loses once direct measurements must give convex error-boxes
A complexity measure that ignores grue-like rewrites of models reproduces the choices scientists actually make.
· “A not-too-simple solution to Goodman's new riddle of induction in the age of AI”
In 1771, a mathematician designed a 32-observer global weather network
New translation shows Lambert's plan for synchronized observations and shared registers, decades before official networks.
New poll: physicists still favor Copenhagen after 25 years
A 40-person replication poll finds the same split as the 1990s, with swings driven by conference crowds.
· “Has Anything Changed? Tracking Long-Term Interpretational Preferences in Quantum Mechanics”
Logic's anti-exceptionalism need not inherit realism
Quantum mechanics shows science yields no unique theory choice, so anti-exceptionalism could rest on antirealist foundations.
· “Disentangling scientific realism from anti-exceptionalism”
Four 1949 letters show Einstein's quantum completeness dilemma
Einstein's own words: the wave-function description must be incomplete or accept action-at-a-distance.
Maxwell fields alone reproduce length contraction and time dilation
A single-frame electromagnetic calculation derives both effects from forces on a bound electron.
Believe in the multiverse? Yes
A philosopher's guide separates logical worlds, quantum branches, and cosmic bubbles—and gives each its own verdict.
Landauer's erasure bound is not a law of physics
Erasing a bit can be heat-free when the value is unknown or when a single time-varying field steers both initial states to 0.
· “Energy and information: a chronicle of hesitations on the role of the observer in physics”
Rising realism quotient should steer physics beyond the Standard Model
It frames the clash between conventional and axiomatic QFT as a ratio of realist to instrumental structures.
1950: Wu's experiment made the first entangled photons
A reanalysis credits Chien-Shiung Wu with the first controlled quantum entanglement, ahead of later Bell tests.
· “Chien-Shiung Wu as the experimental pioneer in quantum entanglement: a 2022 note”
Three instruments end Pulkovo's 300-year meridian-circle era
The MK-200, the Kislovodsk classics, and the Sukharev circle closed the tradition as space astrometry took over.
Continuity alone forces Maxwell's field equations
If local conservation of charge holds in 3D space, the field equations must take Maxwellian form, and Newtonian physics fails.
· “On the "Universality" of the Form of Maxwell's Equations”
Review: 1977 Altarelli–Parisi paper proved QCD factorization
Parisi's terse 1970s notes made the parton model a field-theoretic result, not a guess.
· “Asymptotic Freedom in Parton Language: the Birth of Perturbative QCD”
Quantum mechanics emerges from agents maximizing utility
Measurement, entanglement, and Born probabilities become Bayesian updates and utility-weighted predictions.
· “Algorithmic Idealism III: "Algorithmic State" Formulation of Quantum Mechanics”
A quantum lattice becomes Nietzsche's ocean of perspectives
Measurements are islands, meta-perspectives are continents, and the whole Hilbert lattice is a unified reality that no observer can exhaust.
History shows supergravity supplied black hole physics' key tools
The review traces how supersymmetric methods produced exact solutions and entropy counts from charges alone.
One framework turns quantum measurement into observer-state change
Algorithmic idealism also dissolves Boltzmann brains and the simulation divide.
· “Algorithmic Idealism I: Reconceptualizing Reality Through Information and Experience”
No general covariance survives realistic physical frames
Once ideal clocks and infinite boundaries are dropped, only frame-relative descriptions of spacetime remain.
One observable can expose paraparticles
A ±1 two-particle eigenvalue separates Z2xZ2 parabosons from ordinary bosons, opening a lab test route.
· “On the detectability of paraparticles beyond bosons and fermions”
Van Gogh's Moonrise embeds the 1889 lunar eclipse
Reconstructed skies tie Moonrise's red moon to the 1889 eclipse and Starry Night to 19th-century astrophysics.
· “The lunar eclipse and the dawn of astrophysics in van Gogh's masterpieces”
Historical error bars shrink the Hubble tension from 4.4 to 2.1 sigma
A 163-measurement history shows quoted error bars were too small; the claimed 4.4-sigma anomaly is a 1-in-28 fluctuation, not a crisis.
· “Underestimation of Hubble constant error bars: a historical analysis”
F=ma is a theorem, not an empirical law
A new derivation gets F=ma out of two physical principles, making it an identity between measured quantities.
Big Bangs and parabolic escapes are the same shape history
Strip away absolute size: a total collapse and an infinite dispersal end at the same critical shape.
Pilot-wave proof hinges on an assumption about information
Absolute uncertainty and the POVM theorem both depend on information tied to particle positions.
Arbitrary bijections make generalized calculus scientifically inert
Even smooth bijections like the cube function yield superluminal velocities, so an external physical rule is needed
Free-energy drive replaces reward engineering for AI agents
LLM-based world models would let agents learn from self-generated experience.
· “The Missing Reward: Active Inference in the Era of Experience”
Wave function's multi-field is a determinable
A realist reading of the wave function makes it a 3D object with genuinely unsettled values at empty points.
Matter arises where two nothings intersect
Why is there something? Two kinds of nothing meet at a boundary to make matter.
· “On something and nothing: The interface of two types of nothing”
An amateur astronomer mapped the Milky Way as a spiral galaxy in 1900
The paper also recovers his forgotten 1894 report on an apparent rotation of NGC205.
Quantum indeterminacy makes consciousness central to the universe
If quantum indeterminacy is genuinely open, phenomenal properties can act causally, making consciousness foundational.
· “Quantum panprotopsychism and a consciousness-centered universe”
Newton's First Law is no special case of the Second
The First Law supplies the inertial frame the Second Law needs; the paper also proposes a Zeroth Law for mass.
· “Newtons First Law Is Not a Special Case of the Second Law”
Superposition is ambiguity, collapse is contraction, entanglement is resonance
A new framework models quantum systems as introspective streams of qualia, embedding the observer inside the theory.
· “Beyond the Wavefunction: Qualia Abstraction Language Mechanics and the Grammar of Awareness”
A single geometric view explains physics' many dualities
From Kramers-Wannier to gauge-gravity, dual theories become one structure in different words.
Jordan's 1952 book defined the covariant derivative axiomatically
For a five-dimensional gravity theory, Jordan axiomatized differentiation without parallel transport.
Bell experiment falsifies a core causal assumption
Quantum correlations violate Balke-Pearl bounds, so joint exogeneity fails even though the true causal effect is zero.
Physics benchmark scores AI on insight and surprise
Experts rate each question's difficulty and surprise; the scores separate real reasoning from mere recall.
No algorithm can capture all of physics
Gödel, Tarski, and Chaitin imply a complete theory of everything needs non-computable understanding.
· “Consequences of Undecidability in Physics on the Theory of Everything”
High-dimensional wave function realism is antirealism in disguise
Pragmatic virtues like simplicity cannot replace the claim that the framework itself is true.
· “Antirealism in sheep's clothing: Wave function realism and scientific realism”
Properties are just internal views of a relational world
Relativity suggests positions and spins exist only relative to a frame, so the world's furniture is modal structure.
· “Relational Observables, Quiddities, and Structural Realism”
Physicalism escapes Hempel's dilemma via empirical structure
A supervenience relation on empirical structure lets physicalism avoid both horns of Hempel's dilemma.
· “Empirical structure physicalism and realism, Hempel's dilemma, and an optimistic meta-induction”
Forgotten 1935 Fermi lecture resurfaces with translation
The Italian original and a new English version bring the slow-neutron discovery back into reach.
· “Slow neutrons in Palermo: a forgotten conference by Enrico Fermi”
The paper argues entanglement correlations are preselection artifacts
If true, quantum correlations need no action at a distance—just the choice of initial state, backed by the low-entropy past.
Astronomers' 1960s protest shaped the Outer Space Treaty
The West Ford needle-belt backlash made 'harmful interference' consultation law, setting a precedent for today's satellites.
No-go proof: measurement events are observer-relative
A nested-observer version of the friend-in-the-box experiment shows that absolute facts cannot survive universal quantum mechanics.
Born-Oppenheimer step clashes with quantum uncertainty
The clamped-nuclei step fixes nuclear positions as classical parameters, blocking a clean reduction of chemistry to physics.
· “What are we talking about when we discuss the Born-Oppenheimer approximation?”
Neo-Russellians can reject the anything-begins-anywhere objection
Without microphysical causes, logical and physical constraints still explain why things begin selectively.
· “Without microphysical causation, just anything cannot begin to exist just anywhere”
Dark matter won the 1980s gravity debate on three counts
The winner solved more problems, fit established physics, and promised independent tests; dark energy shows why.
· “Why did the dark matter hypothesis supersede modified gravity in the 1980s?”
Long-term future should be philosophy's central task
The paper integrates responsibility ethics, existential risk, and posthuman ontology into one research agenda.
Tolman effect splits temperature into three rival concepts
No single successor to classical temperature survives general relativity, because time itself fragments.
· “The Toll of the Tolman Effect: On the Status of Classical Temperature in General Relativity”
Matter waves define their own space and time
Re-reading the 1924 thesis: each microscopic system carries its own units, not the lab's
Expanding universe creates particles
Upper bounds: under one proton per litre every 10^30 years; no massless photon creation.
Sequential measurements alone yield quantum mechanics' full formalism
A master bi-trajectory measure, not a quantum state, becomes the system itself — and the Heisenberg cut disappears.
· “Phenomenological quantum mechanics II: deducing the formalism from experimental observations”
Newton's first law was not redundant after all
Euclid's definition of proportion excludes zero, so the second law could not cover the no-force case.
Effective field theories explain by borrowing from deeper physics
A new account shows why Fermi theory can stand in for the Standard Model, and why new-physics searches cannot.
Ugly physics models are rational to chase right now
With no new particles and no new collider, pursuit shifts to radical novelty and cheap tests, the paper argues.
Deep-learning anomaly searches can claim real model independence
The paper defines model independence as no target model plus a well-defined background, then shows autoencoders meet the bar.
AI cannot do the core work of markets
Machines can mimic choice but never originate ends, discover means, or signal value through prices.
· “Epistemic Scarcity: The Economics of Unresolvable Unknowns”
Broken information chains force quantum mechanics
A derivation shows the projector structure and Born rule follow from propositions being unobservable.
Peer review should be public
Identity-linked, blockchain-anchored commentary could make null results and retractions count as scholarship.
16-page pamphlet rebuts Delambre's 'copied Kepler' charge
An undated pamphlet by Cassini's great-grandson documents Delambre's unfair account of lunar libration.
· “A Cassini pamphlet against Delambre on lunar libration and other issues”
Gurney, first quantum electrochemist, was also tunneling pioneer
His 1928 tunneling model launched nuclear quantum mechanics; he later pioneered electrochemistry and latent-image theory.
· “The physics, travels, and tribulations of Ronald Wilfrid Gurney”
Rare events can cut local entropy
Pareto-tail outliers in a cooling gas form low-entropy clusters; gravity-like attraction makes them persist.
Bernoulli's 1727 water-flow paper
An English text plus the Latin original shows how conservation of vis viva drove early hydrodynamics.
Energy is the world's fundamental stuff
A quantum-age revival of the old energetics view recasts fields and quanta as bookkeeping for energy.
The LHC ttbar excess is most plausibly toponium
Fifty years after the J/psi, the last quarkonium sibling may have appeared at the LHC.
A memoir ranks Petrov second only to Lobachevsky
Personal memories plus textbook and software presence make the case that the man behind the Petrov types was undervalued at home.
Before Altarelli-Parisi: the 1974 equations were already there
The paper argues his 1974 equations already contained the Altarelli-Parisi ones.
Boltzmann's H-curve paper translated
Read Boltzmann's own 1898 argument that entropy curves fluctuate, and a new formula for how bias multiplies humps.
· “A commented translation of Boltzmann's work, "Ueber die sogenannte H-Curve."”
One quantum state, four incompatible definitions
The same vector is certain in one basis and uncertain in another, so the standard notion is self-contradictory.
· “On the Physical Untenability of the Standard Notion of Quantum State”
All worlds, all times exist: eternalism meets many-worlds
If correct, quantum randomness is branching, not an open unreal future: a block multiverse with no global now.
Fox's spiritual Einstein rests on shaky quotes
Fox's portrait of Einstein as a pantheistic sage overrides his documented restraint, irony, and source record.
· “How One Quiet Man Became Everyone's Sage: The Spiritual Recasting of Einstein”
Ibn Sina's star instrument anticipated the vernier by 500 years
A Leiden manuscript shows he measured angles below one arc-minute and saw the 1032 Venus transit.
Quantum non-individuals need a physical route to ordinary objects
The Crisp axiom only works if Everettian branching or spontaneous collapse supplies the trigger.
Quantizing logic, not states, could yield a simpler quantum calculus
A counterfactual 1946 has von Neumann building quantum computing from Boolean operators and C*-algebras, not qubits.
· “A Short History of Rocks: or, How to Invent Quantum Computing”
Quantum events resist being joined into one coherent story
An essay shows that adequate descriptions of the same quantum experiment cannot be combined without positing impossible events.
Fine-tuning points to God via sheer existence
A theologian-astronomer says the real clue is not improbability but the awe that anything exists at all.
Mastabat Fara'un is a pyramid
A north entrance and east-west burial chamber place Shepseskaf's tomb in the Fourth Dynasty pyramid line.