the physics of sundays

… not even Alabama (a kid’s joke). One of the first courses I created after landing in the Physics department in Lille, around 2006, was a class of condensed matter physics. It seemed amazing to me, but what was taught

The so-called First Principle of thermodynamics is just another way of expressing the universal conservation of energy, by stating that mechanical work and heat are equivalent forms of the energy. However, the first definite statement about this eminently physical principle

Few people in history have known such a drastic reversals of popularity as the 4th century BC Greek thinker Aristotle of Stagira. Aristotle’s influence was enormous in the ancient world, where the two aspects of his philosophy, naturalistic and speculative, alternated.

In physics we have the custom of naming equations after the person who gave birth to them. However, the naming often translates to derivative products for which that person had not actually contributed, but is somewhat linked to it. See,

Maybe most of you are not aware that we were happily living in an Einstein-Friedmann space-time until 1998. Hubble’s law had convinced us of the gentle character of a calm, quietly expanding universe, millions of galaxies running away from each

Today I want to introduce my faithful audience to a very special person. He has an h-factor of about 80, and his two most relevant papers total more than 40,000 citations together; his works made 6 times the front cover of Nature and

Josh Milliner will always remember the gloomy days of August 2017 when hurricane “Harvey” shattered Texas. As a project scientist for integration, testing and commissioning of the James Webb Telescope (JWST), he could not just hide at home. The giant

Physical resemblance to real-life characters is not always an issue for the casting of Hollywood’s movies, especially when the protagonist has a less known name to the general public. There have been over time a small number of movies featuring

It is a bleak day, December 2, 1942. The siege of Stalingrad has arrived at its 100th day. The disastrous Operation Mars, launched by the Red Army west of Moscow, resulted in about 170,000 Russian and near 40,000 dead German

Our work as scientists, as any other human activity, is often influenced and even shaped by personal taste, character attitudes, cultural background and inclinations, and in some case (unfortunately) by preconstructed ideas. The network of teachers, students, friends, collaborators, that