Foundations of physics Definition and 12 Threads

I have some doubts regarding my personal interpretation that i was contemplating about in the context of Wigner's friend experiment (also tested in the laboratory recently). Could it be that a system is always in a superposition, and when we perform a measurement, we obtain a definite value due...

Greg Bernhardt submitted a new PF Insights post Interview with Mathematician and Physicist Arnold Neumaier Continue reading the Original PF Insights Post. Arnold will welcome science questions and comments only.

It is hard to imagine that classical mechanics could develop in an essentially different way - Newton, derivatives, Coulomb etc. This seems a very natural evolution of understanding and intuitions. However, the early XX century physics: axioms of QM (and GRT) seems strongly dependent on a...

I'll answer this in this thread, later today.

In the following, I want to consider both photons in a sharply focussed, monochromatic beam of light (''type P'') and electrons in an electron beam (''type E'') on the same footing. In the following, X is either P or E. If we only concentrate on the internal degrees of freedom, both kinds of...

I studied lots of points of view, and lots of how physicists actually use quantum mechanics in the applications. I came to the conclusion that there is an objective and a subjective side to quantum mechanics. The collapse belongs to the subjective side, since it is associated with ''knowledge''...

Does quantum mechanics have to be weird? It sells much better to the general public if it is presented that way, and there is a long history of proceeding that way. But in fact it is an obstacle for everyone who wants to truly understand quantum mechanics, and to physics students who have to...

I wans't sure on where I should post this question. So, if this place is inappropriate, please move it to a proper section. The question is as its posed in the title of this topic. What we mean by foundations of physics? when someone talks of the foundations of physics, what is he/she talking...

"Foundations of physics" Special Issue: Forty Years of String Theory http://www.springer.com/physics/history+&+philosophical+foundations+of+physics/journal/10701 If this has already been mentioned feel free to delete this post. Articles free through march, A Critical Look at Strings (Carlo...

I took the first term of a Foundations of Physics sequence (251) last year, and understood most of the material fairly well. It was calculus based Newtonian mechanics; units and vectors; one-dimensional motion; Newton’s laws; work and energy; momentum and collisions. Since it's been a year...

Since January 2007 with Nobel prize laureate Gerardus ‘t Hooft appointed as editor-in-chief. His first editorial is here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/867288v5118851k7/fulltext.pdf The magazine is here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/1572-9516/ The January and February...

Dear Sirs, I am posting here for one reason and one reason only. There are apparently a great number of powerful people on the main forum who would like me to go away. If they were the only people on the forum, I would certainly do so; however, I think leaving would do a great disservice to...