The classical Board±Hall model is re-examined and shown to imply that, contrary to the model's intention and widely-held interpretation, multiphase thermal detonations are not physically possible. A new key physical concept is introduced, and the results show the existence of supercritical detonations, even in lean (melt content) premixtures, in agreement with recent experimental evidence. This...

Over a hundred years ago in his paper Space and Time Hermann Minkowski demonstrated the profound meaning of the relativity postulate – the experimental fact that physical phenomena are the same in all inertial reference frames implies that the Universe is an absolute four-dimensional world in which all moments of time have equal existence due to their belonging to the fourth (time) dimension. S...

Many explanations in science make use of mathematics. But are there cases where the mathematical component of a scientific explanation is explanatory in its own right? This issue of mathematical explanations in science has been for the most part neglected. I argue that there are genuine mathematical explanations in science, and present in some detail an example of such an explanation, taken fro...

The paper provides an overview and a comparison of several tools for visualization of physical simulations. We concentrate on new visualization tools a nd architectures that have been developed during last years (VRToolBox, VRML + Java, etc.). Classification of these approaches is presented together with practical examples including authors’ subjective opinion. This overview has been prepared w...

Strain analysis has significance both for tailoring material properties and designing nanoscale devices. In particular, strain plays a vital role in engineering the growth thermodynamics and kinetics and is applicable for designing optoelectronic devices. In this paper, we present a methodology for establishing the relationship between elastic bond constants and measurable parameters, i.e., Poi...

Optical binding interactions between laser-trapped spherical microparticles are familiar in a wide range of trapping configurations. Recently it has been demonstrated that these experiments can be accurately modeled using Mie scattering or coupled dipole models. This can help confirm the physical phenomena underlying the inter-particle interactions, but does not necessarily develop a conceptual...

The concept of rogue waves arises from a mysterious and potentially calamitous phenomenon of oceanic surfaces. There is mounting evidence that they are actually commonplace in a variety of different physical settings. A set of defining criteria has been advanced; this set is of great generality and therefore applicable to a wide class of systems. The question arises naturally whether there are ...

Strange nonchaotic attractors are attractors that are geometrically strange, but have nonpositive Lyapunov exponents. We show that for dynamical systems with an invariant subspace in which there is a quasiperiodic torus, the loss of the transverse stability of the torus can lead to the birth of a strange nonchaotic attractor. A physical phenomenon accompanying this route to strange nonchaotic a...

It is common knowledge that the accuracy with which computer simulations can depict physical events depends strongly on the choice of the mathematical model of the events. Perhaps less appreciated is the notion that the error due to modeling can be defined, estimated, and used adaptively to control modeling error, provided one accepts the existence of a base model that can serve as a datum with...

In this paper we propose to consider living systems as "coherent critical structures", though extended in space and time, their unity being ensured through global causal relations between levels of organization (integration/regulation). This may be seen as a further contribution to the large amount of work already done on the theme of selforganized criticality. More precisely, our main physical...