Tag Archives: History of physics

Gravity – humor, history, and some facts

Posted on October 7, 2015 by tkflor

Hungarian stamp commemorating 100 years of general relativity. Image from philatelicdatabase.com …: “Gravity, where did it come from?” when a four-dimensional pseudo-Riemannian manifold and a Landau–Lifshitz stress-energy tensor love each other very much, they produce a geodesic in curved spacetime. … Continue reading →

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Brighter than candles

Posted on September 21, 2015 by tkflor

“You have the glittering beauty of gold and silver, and the still higher lustre of jewels, like the ruby and diamond; but none of these rival the brilliancy and beauty of flame. What diamond can shine like flame?” The man … Continue reading →

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The Perfect Theory – Physicists’ Battles for Muggles

Posted on June 28, 2015 by tkflor

After the ceremony, as the audience and speakers milled around, ready to escape into the London evening, a Polish physicist named Ludwik Silberstein ambled over to Eddington. Silberstein had already written a book about Einstein’s more restricted “special theory of … Continue reading →

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CP Violation: what is it and when does it matter?

Posted on May 17, 2015 by tkflor

“Suppose the TV-news suddenly reported one evening that visitors from outer space were planning to land on Earth; that the space travellers have radioed a demand for immediate information about the composition of the Earth. Does it consist of Matter … Continue reading →

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Famous physicists – A to Z

Posted on April 11, 2015 by tkflor

I was catching up with blog-posts accumulated on my reader during a vacation, when it occurred to me that there aren’t as many posts as one might expect during the A–to–Z challenge (it requires one to blog about a theme … Continue reading →

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Maps of Physics and Fiction

Posted on March 17, 2015 by tkflor

My two favorite subjects presented through maps: Bernard H. Porter’s 1939 map depicting Physics as a continent, with rivers corresponding to its principal branches. From dabacon.org. Fiction Island and a rough layout of the genres, from Jasper Fforde, 2011:

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Albert Einstein’s birthday

Posted on March 13, 2015 by tkflor

“Imagine for a moment what the general opinion will be fifty years from now if the name Einstein does not appear on the list of Nobel laureates.” M. Brillouin, in a letter to the Swedish Academy of Sciences, 1921. Albert … Continue reading →

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Hubble Telescope celebrates 25 years of observations

Posted on March 6, 2015 by tkflor

“With the slow fascination of fear, he lifted himself on one arm and turned his eyes toward the blood-curdling blackness of the window. Through it shone the Stars! Not Earth’s feeble thirty-six hundred Stars visible to the eye; Lagash was … Continue reading →

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A smile from space

Posted on February 21, 2015 by tkflor

“You can make out two orange eyes and a white button nose. In the case of this “happy face”, the two eyes are the galaxies SDSSCGB 8842.3 and SDSSCGB 8842.4.” From the ESA website for the Hubble space telescope. The … Continue reading →

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Emmy Noether: the mathematician who discovered the connection between Symmetry and Conservation Laws

Posted on February 1, 2015 by tkflor

“It is only slightly overstating the case to say that physics is the study of symmetry.” P.W. Anderson (Nobel Prize in Physics 1977)“More is Different“, Science, 177, 4047 (1972). By symmetry, Anderson writes, “we mean the existence of different viewpoints … Continue reading →

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