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It is now clear that a binary formation pathway is responsible for a significant fraction of planetary nebulae, and this increased sample of known binaries means that we are now in a position to begin to constrain their influence on the…
The increase in discovered close binary central stars of planetary nebulae is leading to a sufficiently large sample to begin to make broader conclusions about the effect of close binary stars on common envelope evolution and planetary…
This review concentrates almost entirely on globular star clusters. It emphasises the increasing realisation that few of the traditional problems of star cluster astronomy can be studied in isolation: the influence of the Galaxy affects…
Massive stars are among the most important objects in the Universe and many (most?) of them are formed in binaries. A selection of observational and theoretical facts that illustrate the importance of binaries and the evolution of massive…
We study the behavior of a general gravitational action, including quadratic terms in the curvature, supplemented by a compact scalar field in 4+1 dimensions. The generalized Einstein equation for this system admits solutions which are…
In the standard picture of cosmological structure formation, the Universe we see today is evolved under the gravitational instability from tiny random fluctuations. In this talk I discuss the onset of non-linearity in the large scale…
The distribution of visible matter in the universe, such as galaxies and galaxy clusters, has its origin in the week fluctuations of density that existed at the epoch of recombination. The hierarchical distribution of the universe, with its…
The changes of main paradigms on the structure and evolution of the Universe are reviewed. Two puzzles of the modern cosmology, the mean density of matter and the regularity of the Universe on large scales, as well as the possibility to…
We review the evolution of our understanding of the planetary nebulae phenomenon and their place in the scheme of stellar evolution. The historical steps leading to our current understanding of central star evolution and nebular formation…
We review the general relativistic theory of the motion, and of the timing, of binary systems containing compact objects (neutron stars or black holes). Then we indicate the various ways one can use binary pulsar data to test the…
Uniform fields are one of the simplest and most pedagogically useful examples in introductory courses on electrostatics or Newtonian gravity. In general relativity there have been several proposals as to what constitutes a uniform field. In…
Galaxies represent the visible fabric of the Universe and there has been considerable progress recently in both observational and theoretical studies. The underlying goal is to understand the present-day diversity of galaxy forms, masses…
Throughout the Universe many powerful events are driven by strong gravitational effects that require general relativity to fully describe them. These include compact binary mergers, black hole accretion and stellar collapse, where…
The 2nd law of thermodynamics is used to shed light on present-day puzzles in cosmology. The universal law, given as an equation of motion, describes diverse systems when consuming free energy via various mechanisms to attain stationary…
Close-binary central stars of planetary nebulae offer a unique tool with which to study the critical and yet poorly understood common-envelope phase of binary stellar evolution. Furthermore, as the nebula itself is thought to comprise the…
This paper reviews selected aspects of the growth of cosmological structure, covering the following general areas: (1) expected characteristics of linear density perturbations according to various candidate theories for the origin of…
Binary stars are as common as single stars. Binary stars are of immense importance to astrophysicists because that they allow us to determine the masses of the stars independent of their distances. They are the cornerstone of the…
Their ubiquity and extreme densities make star clusters probes of prime importance of galaxy evolution. Old globular clusters keep imprints of the physical conditions of their assembly in the early Universe, and younger stellar objects,…
Internal dynamical evolution can drive stellar systems into states of high central density. For many star clusters and galactic nuclei, the time scale on which this occurs is significantly less than the age of the universe. As a result,…
After a recall of fundamental concepts used in galactic dynamics, we review observational facts as well as results of orbit theory and numerical simulations which suggest long-term evolution of galaxies. Dynamical interactions between…