On June 13, 2016, the Pimpriraja Primary Health Center in Aurangabad district, Maharashtra State, in western India reported learning of approximately 90 persons with red eyes and blurred vision. One day earlier, the patients had attended a gathering in Zalta village to acknowledge the contributions of a local political leader. An investigation by the Field Epidemiology Training Program (FETP) a...

This article argues that there is a consistent description of gravitationally collapsed bodies, including neutron stars above the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff mass and also supermassive galactic centres, according to which collapse stops before the object reaches its gravitational radius, the density reaching a maximum close to the surface and then decreasing towards the centre. Models for such s...

Based upon the identification of 38 white dwarfs with halo kinematics, in a survey covering 10% of the sky near the south Galactic pole, Oppenheimer et al. (1) argue that at least 2% of the dark matter in the Galaxy has now been detected directly. Put into context, the Oppenheimer et al. result implies that the stellar remnant mass of the halo may be comparable to that of the entire disk of our...

I am honored to have my essay discussed at such length by two of the most eminent scholars in the field. Because of space constraints, I will not attempt to respond to all of their points, but instead will focus on the most serious criticisms. Many of the issues raised by Preston and Oppenheimer are quite technical, and I will address them in due course. Let me begin, though, by addressing a mo...

The various recent studies on the application of the Born-Oppenheimer approach in a closed gravity matter system is examined. It is pointed out that the Born-Oppenheimer approach in the absence of an a priori time is likely to yield potentially new results.

where R is the set of nuclear coordinates and r is the set of electronic coordinates. If spin-orbit effects are important, they can be added through a spin-orbit operator Ĥso. Unfortunately, the V̂eN(r,R) term prevents us from separating Ĥ into nuclear and electronic parts, which would allow us to write the molecular wavefunction as a product of nuclear and electronic terms, Ψ(r,R) = Ψ(r)χ(R). W...