Publications by angelo baracca
Germoglio n. 7 del Centro di documentazione Semi sotto la neve, 2012
Quo vadis Cesio…
Il drago riuscirà a cacciare via il nucleare?
Le voci italiane in sostegno all... more Quo vadis Cesio…
Il drago riuscirà a cacciare via il nucleare?
Le voci italiane in sostegno alla Conferenza
Non dimenticate Fukushima
L’alba di una piccola rivoluzione globale: Un mondo senza il nucleare è possibile”
Dichiarazione di Yokohama per un mondo libero dall'energia nucleare
Papers by angelo baracca
We present a reconstruction of the studies on the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics (FQM) carried ... more We present a reconstruction of the studies on the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics (FQM) carried out in Italy at the turn of the 1960s. Actually, they preceded the revival of the interest of the American physicists towards the FQM around mid-1970s, recently reconstructed by David Kaiser in a book of 2011. An element common to both cases is the role played by the young generation, even though the respective motivations were quite different. In the US they reacted to research cuts after the war in Vietnam, and were inspired by the New Age mood. In Italy the dissatisfaction of the young generations was rooted in the student protests of 1968 and the subsequent labour and social fights, which challenged the role of scientists. The young generations of physicists searched for new scientific approaches and challenged their own scientific knowledge and role. The criticism to the FQM and the perspectives of submitting them to experimental tests were perceived as an innovative research field ...
Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 2014
Hugo Celso Perez Rojas was born in 1938, and works as a senior researcher at the Institute of Cyb... more Hugo Celso Perez Rojas was born in 1938, and works as a senior researcher at the Institute of Cybernetics, Mathematics and Physics, at the Ministry of Science and Technology, Cuba. Perez Rojas is emeritus member of the Academy of Sciences of Cuba, member of the Latin American Academy of Sciences and Fellow TWAS since 1994. He was one of the founders of the School of Physics in the University of Havana in 1962, and moved in 1971 to the Cuban Academy of Sciences. His national awards include the Rafael Maria Mendive and Carlos J. Finlay Medals. He was awarded in 2011 the National Prize in Physics from the Cuban Physical Society. His interests include quantum field theory and its applications to finite temperature problems in high-energy physics and condensed matter. Among these, Perez Rojas has devoted special attention to quantum electrodynamics in matter and in vacuum in the presence of external fields, phase transitions in electroweak theory, relativistic quantum Hall effect, Bose-Einstein condensation in magnetic fields, and applications of physics to social sciences. He is interviewed here by Angelo Baracca in May 2009.
Preprints since 2014 (a full list can be found at our website) Klaus Geus and Mark Geller (eds.) ... more Preprints since 2014 (a full list can be found at our website) Klaus Geus and Mark Geller (eds.) Esoteric Knowledge in Antiquity (TOPOI-Dahlem Seminar for the History of Ancient Sciences Vol. II) Carola Sachse Grundlagenforschung. Zur Historisierung eines wissenschaftspolitischen Ordnungsprinzips am Beispiel der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (1945-1970) David E. Rowe and Robert Schulmann General Relativity in the Context of Weimar Culture F. Jamil Ragep From Tūn to Turun: The Twists and Turns of the Ṭūsī-Couple Pietro Daniel Omodeo Efemeridi e critica all'astrologia tra filosofia naturale ed etica: La contesa tra Benedetti e Altavilla nel tardo Rinascimento torinese Simone Mammola Il problema della grandezza della terra e dell'acqua negli scritti di Alessandro Piccolomini, Antonio Berga e G. B. Benedetti e la progressiva dissoluzione della cosmologia delle sfere elementari nel secondo '500
Se non dovesse risultare chiaro il titolo - a dire il vero non immediatamente evidente - di quest... more Se non dovesse risultare chiaro il titolo - a dire il vero non immediatamente evidente - di questo volume, piu chiaro e il sottotitolo che si riferisce alle conseguenze immediate e striscianti di questa presenza sull'ambiente nel quale viviamo e sulla nostra salute. Parliamo della logica militare che pervade sempre piu il nostro tessuto sociale, con un sistema di valori che desta repulsione nella nostra coscienza civile. Parliamo delle conseguenze devastanti sulla salute e sull'ambiente delle popolazioni cosiddette "nemiche". Parliamo delle conseguenze altrettanto devastanti sui corpi e sulle menti dei "nostri", di chi il militare e la guerra e mandato o comandato a farli senza sapere. Parliamo di un tumore sociale quale il drenaggio delle nostre risorse e del nostro lavoro, un tumore sociale che non fa altro che generare tumori reali: non solo nei nostri corpi, ma anche nella mente nostra e delle generazioni a venire. Crediamo sia arrivato il momento di ...
The deep reasons of the birth of Big Science are still the object of a debate. The reconstruction... more The deep reasons of the birth of Big Science are still the object of a debate. The reconstruction of some aspects of the growth of nuclear physics with artificially accelerated particles in the 1930s and 1940s may help to throw light on the roots of large-scale research. On the basis of the original documents, we compare the attitudes and research styles of Ernest O. Lawrence and Merle A. Tuve, and their open clash. The first one was probably the most significant representative of the new approach, mainly interested in the construction of bigger accelerators. On the contrary, the latter — who gave fundamental contributions to nuclear physics, using a relatively small electrostatic accelerator — expressed the strongest and most explicit opposition towards largescale research trends. Our argument is completed through the analysis of the effects of the introduction of particle accelerators in Britain and Japan, where they did not generate large-scale research before the Second World War.
The history of the development of physics teaching in Cuba is dealt with, beginning early in the ... more The history of the development of physics teaching in Cuba is dealt with, beginning early in the 19 th century with the introduction in the country of the antischolastic, experimental spirit cast by the European Enlightenment. The teaching of physics in the new spirit was started about 1815 by father Felix Varela at Havana's San Carlos Seminar, but did not penetrate the University of Havana, then ruled by the Dominican friars, until its secularisation in 1842. Still, it failed to surpass an essentially descriptive level until 1923, when Professor Manuel Gran introduced a critical and rigorous approach. Professor Enrique Badell taught Theoretical Physics after its introduction in 1934 as a compulsory subject in the curriculum of the Physical and Mathematical Sciences degree course. But the introduction of original research in the training of physicists had to wait for the innovative Higher Education Reform promoted by the Revolutionary Government in the early 1960s.
In this paper the evolution of the concepts of work and energy is analysed, together with that of... more In this paper the evolution of the concepts of work and energy is analysed, together with that of Mechanics and Thermodynamics during the First Industrial Revolution. A particular attention is devoted to the deep relationships that existed in this age between technical advance, the social and productive reality, and scientific elaboration. In the first part of the paper, starting from the limits of Newton's work, in which no energetic concept was introduced, the practical and conceptual advances of the English engineer John Smeaton (1724-1792) are analysed. In 1759, in his fundamental study on hydraulic wheels, he in fact introduced and used the first modern concept of mechanical work; and in his subsequent studies he correctly applied practical considerations on the conservation of (kinetic and potential) energy. Lazare Carnot (1753-1823), in 1783, in the framework of the French reality of Enlightenment, gave the first formal statements of these concepts. In the second part of ...
arXiv: Popular Physics, 2018
It is seldom acknowledged the tremendous burden that the Nuclear Age leaves on future generations... more It is seldom acknowledged the tremendous burden that the Nuclear Age leaves on future generations, and the environment, for an extremely long time. Nuclear processes, and products, are activated at energies millions of times higher than the energies of chemical processes, and consequently they cannot be eliminated by the natural environment on Earth. So it turns out that hundreds of nuclear tests performed in the atmosphere left a huge radioactive contamination; Rosalie Bertell estimated 1,300 millions victims of the Nuclear Age; civil nuclear programs have produced enormous quantities of radioactive waste, whose final disposal has not been solved by any country; decommissioning of tens of shut down nuclear plants shall involve costs which were underestimated in the past; spent nuclear fuel accumulates in decontamination pools, or in dry cask storage, but no final storage has been carried out yet; radioactivity of spent fuel will last for tens of thousand years; military nuclear pro...
arXiv: History and Philosophy of Physics, 2018
The radical changes in the concepts and approach in Physics at the turn of the Nineteenth century... more The radical changes in the concepts and approach in Physics at the turn of the Nineteenth century were so deep, that is acknowledged as a revolution. However, in 1970 Thomas Kuhn's careful reconstruction of the researches on the black body problem, the concept itself of the revolution seemed to vanish in his diluted discussion of every details. In the present paper, after an examination of the limitations of Kuhn's response to his critics, I put forward the idea, although it is not new, that these changes in Physics cannot be reduced to a point-like event, but happened instead through multiple successive (and even contradictory) changes in the course of decades. Such as the old quantum hypothesis, wave mechanics, orthodox quantum mechanics. In fact, the innovative perspectives started in the 1980s have been considered as a third quantum revolution. My basic argument is that these changes, in order to be really understood, must be interpreted not as mere specific changes in P...
LLULL : boletin de la Sociedad Espanola de Historia de las Ciencias, 2002
The Eastern University site in the city of Santiago de Cuba (1000 Km of Havana) also has contribu... more The Eastern University site in the city of Santiago de Cuba (1000 Km of Havana) also has contribuited to the development of physics in Cuba in the last five decades. In the year 1970 in this University was created the “Escuela de Física”. In this paper a historical sketch of the academic activity and scientific research of this institution is outlined.
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Publications by angelo baracca
Il drago riuscirà a cacciare via il nucleare?
Le voci italiane in sostegno alla Conferenza
Non dimenticate Fukushima
L’alba di una piccola rivoluzione globale: Un mondo senza il nucleare è possibile”
Dichiarazione di Yokohama per un mondo libero dall'energia nucleare
Papers by angelo baracca
Il drago riuscirà a cacciare via il nucleare?
Le voci italiane in sostegno alla Conferenza
Non dimenticate Fukushima
L’alba di una piccola rivoluzione globale: Un mondo senza il nucleare è possibile”
Dichiarazione di Yokohama per un mondo libero dall'energia nucleare