Category archives: Humanities & Social Sciences

The road to quantum gravity (1):  Spacetime as the network of causality

The road to quantum gravity (1): Spacetime as the network of causality

CosmologyHistoryTheoretical physics

By Daniel Fernández

Observations vs intuitions Einstein’s Theory of Relativity introduced us to the concept of Spacetime, as a unified entity. This stands in contrast with the intuition that we develop since birth, which leads to naturally separate space and time. Human intuition is a way to understand how the world works, our brain processes our daily experiences […]

The costs of going green

The costs of going green

EconomicsEnergy

By José Luis Ferreira

A tax on carbon emissions is an efficient way to make firms and consumers internalize the environmental costs due to climate change. However, there are many other aspects to consider in a transition from a fossil-fueled economy to a cleaner one. In a past article we presented the case for subsidies on research to develop […]

How Buddha became a Christian saint

How Buddha became a Christian saint

History

By Jesús Zamora Bonilla

As I mentioned in passing in my last entry , many, if not most, of the oldest stories about Christian martyrs and saints are nothing but legendary fabrications, something that scholars knew perfectly well since at least the time of the Enlightenment, when scientific criteria of historiographic research started to be employed by ecclesiastical historians […]

Gold Open Access Journals: From scientists’ “publish or perish” to publishers’ “publish to get rich”

Gold Open Access Journals: From scientists’ “publish or perish” to publishers’ “publish to get rich”

Philosophy of scienceSociology

By Invited Researcher

I’m a man slowly sliding into the old age. Being a scientist (a simple science worker), this means that for decades I’ve become familiar with the uncomfortable feeling of struggling to adapt to a constant, quick change of everything. In the very beginning of my career, still an undergrad, I joined a lab where my […]

Has theoretical physics become a sleeping beauty?

Has theoretical physics become a sleeping beauty?

Philosophy of scienceTheoretical physics

By Jesús Zamora Bonilla

The progress that physics experienced during the 20 th century was probably one of the greatest and most everlasting successes of the humankind. Discovering the hidden and minute composition of matter and energy, as well as realising that the rules they obey are as further from common sense as quantum theory has revealed, are amongst […]