Related papers: Senenmut: An Ancient Egyptian Astronomer
The heartland of the Khmer empire is literally crowded by magnificent monuments built in the course of many centuries. These monuments include the world-famous state-temples, such as Angkor Wat, but also many other temples and huge water…
Since the dawn of civilization, humanity has grappled with the big questions of existence and creation. Modern cosmology seeks to answer some of these questions using a combination of mathematics and measurement. The questions people hope…
Telescopes -- far seeing -- have since centuries revealed insights to objects at cosmic distances. Adopted for gamma-ray-astronomy, ground based Cherenkov-telescopes image the faint Cherenkov-light of air-showers induced by cosmic…
The nature of gravity is fundamental to understand the scaffolding of the Universe and its evolution. Einstein's general theory of relativity has been scrutinized for over ninety five years and shown to describe accurately all phenomena…
We show that the arrow of time is intimately related to the geometry and topology of the whole universe, and is therefore best understood as a cosmological phenomenon.
The first modern planetarium was presented in 1923 in Jena, Germany. Very soon in the subsequent years, planetariums were installed in other parts of Europe as well as in America. France, however, got its first planetarium only in 1937, for…
The presentations in the 2nd Hellenic Cosmology Workshop covered a broad range of cosmological subjects. Following the analogy with the architectural masters of Ancient Greece, the contributions are presented in ``architectural'' sessions.…
A re-examination of a well-known iconographic source, the "Allegory of Sight" by Jan Brueghel the Elder and Peter Paul Rubens, reveals that one of the two telescopes depicted in the painting has a highly unusual,and until now unknown to the…
Every society has a story rooted in its most ancient traditions, of how the earth and sky originated. Most of these stories attribute the origin of all things to a Creator - whether God, Element or Idea. We first recall that in the Western…
A hundred years ago, two British expeditions measured the deflection of starlight by the sun's gravitational field, confirming the prediction made by Einstein's General theory of Relativity. One hundred years later many physicists around…
Space observatories are having major impacts on our knowledge of the Universe, from the Solar neighborhood to the cosmological background, opening many new windows out of reach to ground-based observatories. Celestial objects emit all over…
As proposed in a previous paper, the decorations of ancient objects can provide some information on the approximate evaluations of constant {\pi}, the ratio of circumference to diameter. Here we discuss some disks found in the tomb of…
The scientific discoveries made by H.E.S.S. during its first year of operation encourage a reexamination of the open problems in high energy astrophysics and of the capabilities of the atmospheric Cherenkov technique, which could be…
Astronomy is a precise and relatively simple science because objects accelerate in a gravitational field at the same rate, irrespective of their composition. Galileo knew this, and Einstein took it as the basis for general relativity.…
Indigenous Australian practices, developed and honed over thousands of years, weave science with storytelling. In this Indigenous science series, we'll look at different aspects of First Australians' traditional life and uncover the…
We report on the results of a survey we conducted on the Japanese public's attitudes toward astronomy. This survey was conducted via an online questionnaire, with 2,000 responses received. Based on this data, we present what kind of…
This essay demonstrates the key role of Astronomy in Botticelli's "Venus and Mars-NG915" painting, to date only very partially understood. Worthwhile coincidences among the principles of the Ficinian philosophy, the historical characters…
What is the shape of the Universe? Is it finite or infinite ? Is space multi-connected to create ghost images of faraway cosmic sources? After a "dark age" period, the field of cosmic topology has now become one of the major concerns in…
The advanced interferometer network will herald a new era in observational astronomy. There is a very strong science case to go beyond the advanced detector network and build detectors that operate in a frequency range from 1 Hz-10 kHz,…
One of the most complex architectural feats ever conceived is the magnificent temple of Jupiter at Baalbek, Lebanon. Several issues remain unsolved about this site, and in particular the chronology and dating of the two podia and the true…