127 papers
This collection explores the fascinating intersection of physics and history, where scientists and scholars investigate how our understanding of the universe has evolved over centuries. These papers often examine the development of key theories, the social contexts of major discoveries, or the historical accuracy of scientific narratives, offering a unique perspective on how past ideas shape modern research.
Gist.Science curates every new preprint in this specific area directly from arXiv, ensuring you stay ahead of the curve. For each paper, our team generates both a clear, plain-language overview for general readers and a detailed technical summary for experts, making complex historical analyses of physics accessible to everyone.
Below are the latest contributions in the history of physics, ranging from archival studies of early experiments to modern reinterpretations of classic theories.
This paper argues that Newtonian mechanics can be derived directly from energy conservation without defining work, demonstrating that both special relativity and quantum theory are intrinsically Hamiltonian and suggesting that the historical progression of mechanical formulations should be reversed to prioritize the Hamiltonian approach over Newtonian and Lagrangian methods.
This paper examines cases of permanent underdetermination in dark energy and inflationary cosmology through the lens of effective field theory and a taxonomy of responses, arguing that while certain viable strategies can mitigate concerns, the epistemic threat of underdetermination remains a significant challenge.
This paper presents a purely pedagogical, elementary method for calculating the critical mass of a fissile sphere by separating nuclear reaction and transport processes through statistical arguments on neutron path lengths, yielding results within a few percent of known values and the diffusion equation approach without requiring complex differential equations.
This article commemorates the life and career of Evgeny P. Velikhov, highlighting his formulation of the magnetorotational instability theory, his influential role as a scientific advisor to Russian leaders, his collaboration with the PROMISE team to experimentally validate his theory, and his proposal to utilize transportable Russian nuclear power plants as an interim energy solution.
This paper challenges the identification of a 17th-century Trinity College portrait as Isaac Barrow by highlighting historical and visual inconsistencies, proposing instead that the sitter is likely Francis Willughby or Isaac Newton, with the latter identification offering new insights into Newton's rapid academic ascent.
This paper argues that the perceived arrow of time in computing is a semantic design choice rooted in the Forward-In-Time-Only (FITO) assumption rather than a fundamental thermodynamic law, a category mistake inherited from Newtonian physics that obscures the time-symmetric nature of fundamental reality and constrains distributed systems theory.
This paper proposes a macroscopic "law of increasing organized complexity" for non-equilibrium systems to redefine the arrow of time and offer a novel explanation for the fine-tuning of physical constants as a condition necessary for this complexity to emerge, contrasting it with the second law of thermodynamics which governs isolated systems through increasing entropy.
This paper clarifies the conceptual distinction between "trajectories of probabilities" and "probabilities on trajectories" to resolve ambiguities in stochastic-quantum correspondence, establishing a rigorous framework that characterizes the non-unique relationship between probability dynamics and their implementing processes while disentangling concepts like linearity, Markovianity, and divisibility.
This paper demonstrates that the intrinsic hierarchy of quantum complementarity is not absolute, as the relative incompatibility of observable sets can reverse depending on whether quantum probes are arranged as identical copies or parallel-antiparallel pairs, thereby revealing that measurement limitations are fundamentally dependent on the global configuration of resources rather than the observables alone.
Contrary to the belief that Josiah Willard Gibbs's 1902 work *Elementary Principles in Statistical Mechanics* circulated slowly, evidence from library records and archives reveals its unexpectedly rapid diffusion across European university libraries beginning in March 1902, driven by presentation copies from Yale, personal mailings by Gibbs, and publisher distributions to scientific journals.