In quantum field theory, the Casimir effect is a physical force acting on the macroscopic boundaries of a confined space which arises from the quantum fluctuations of a field. It is named after the Dutch physicist Hendrik Casimir, who predicted the effect for electromagnetic systems in 1948.
The Big Bounce hypothesis is a cosmological model for the origin of the known universe. It was originally suggested as a phase of the cyclic model or oscillatory universe interpretation of the Big Bang, where the first cosmological event was the result of the collapse of a previous universe. It receded from serious consideration in the early 1980s after inflation theory emerged as a solution to the horizon problem, which had arisen from advances in observations revealing the large-scale structure of the universe.
Ramon Margalef López was a Spanish biologist and ecologist. He was Emeritus Professor of Ecology at the Faculty of Biology of the University of Barcelona. Margalef, one of the most prominent scientists that Spain has produced, worked at the Institute of Applied Biology (1946–1951), and at the Fisheries Research Institute, which he directed during 1966–1967. He created the Department of Ecology of the University of Barcelona, from where he trained a huge number of ecologists, limnologists and oceanographers. In 1967 he became Spain's first professor of ecology.
Alexander Vilenkin is the Leonard Jane Holmes Bernstein Professor of Evolutionary Science and Director of the Institute of Cosmology at Tufts University. A theoretical physicist who has been working in the field of cosmology for 25 years, Vilenkin has written over 260 publications.
In mathematics and theoretical physics, zeta function regularization is a type of regularization or summability method that assigns finite values to divergent sums or products, and in particular can be used to define determinants and traces of some self-adjoint operators. The technique is now commonly applied to problems in physics, but has its origins in attempts to give precise meanings to ill-conditioned sums appearing in number theory.
Helen Fay Dowker is a British physicist who is a current professor of theoretical physics at Imperial College London.
Georgi (Gia) Dvali is a Georgian theoretical physicist. He is a professor of theoretical physics at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, a director at the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Munich, and holds a Silver Professorship Chair at the New York University. His research interests include String theory, Extra dimensions, Quantum gravity, and the Early universe.
Thanu Padmanabhan was an Indian theoretical physicist and cosmologist whose research spanned a wide variety of topics in gravitation, structure formation in the universe and quantum gravity. He published nearly 300 papers and reviews in international journals and ten books in these areas. He made several contributions related to the analysis and modelling of dark energy in the universe and the interpretation of gravity as an emergent phenomenon. He was a Distinguished Professor at the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) at Pune, India.
The Boltzmann brain thought experiment suggests that it might be more likely for a brain to spontaneously form in space, complete with a memory of having existed in our universe, rather than for the entire universe to come about in the manner cosmologists think it actually did. Physicists use the Boltzmann brain thought experiment as a reductio ad absurdum argument for evaluating competing scientific theories.
In mathematics, 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + ⋯, also written , , or simply , is a divergent series. Nevertheless, it is sometimes imputed to have a value of , especially in physics. This value can be justified by certain mathematical methods for obtaining values from divergent series, including zeta function regularization.
José W. F. Valle is a Spanish physicist.
In cosmology, the cosmological constant problem or vacuum catastrophe is the substantial disagreement between the observed values of vacuum energy density and the much larger theoretical value of zero-point energy suggested by quantum field theory.
Sergei D. Odintsov is a Russian astrophysicist active in the fields of cosmology, quantum field theory and quantum gravity. Odintsov is an ICREA Research Professor at the Institut de Ciències de l'Espai (Barcelona) since 2003. He also collaborates as group leader at research projects of the Tomsk State Pedagogical University. He is editor-in-chief of Symmetry, and is a member of the editorial boards of Gravitation and Cosmology, International Journal of Geometric Methods in Modern Physics, International Journal of Modern Physics D, Journal of Gravity, Universe, and the Tomsk State Pedagogical University Bulletin. Odintsov also is an advisory panel member of Classical and Quantum Gravity.
Institut de Ciències de l'Espai is a Spanish institution dedicated to investigations in the field of space physics, astrophysics, and cosmology. It attracted several internationally renowned scientists, such as Sergei Odintsov.
Geosciences Barcelona, formerly known as Institute of Earth Sciences Jaume Almera is an earth science public research institute of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC). It was created in Barcelona (Spain) in 1965 and it is considered among the top research institutes in Earth Sciences in Spain.
Pedro Miguel Etxenike Landiribar, also known as Pedro Miguel Echenique, is a Basque theoretical solid-state physicist, Professor of Condensed Matter Physics at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), and former minister of the Basque Autonomous Community.
Emilio Santos Corchero, born 7 October 1935, is a theoretical physicist, professor at the Universities of Costa Rica (1964–68), Valladolid (1968-76) and Cantabria (Spain) (1976-). In the year 1998 he received the Medal of the Spanish Society of Physics.
Marta Estrada Miyares is a Catalan researcher, with a career in oceanography and marine biology. Her most prominent studies are based on the physiological characterization and ecological impact of algae and phytoplankton.
Mar Mezcua Pallerola is a Spanish astrophysicist known for her research on black holes, and especially the intermediate-mass black holes, of masses intermediate between the stellar black holes created in supernovas, and the supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies. She is a staff scientist at the Institut de Ciències de l'Espai, in Barcelona.
