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A century after its formulation by Einstein, it is time to incorporate special relativity early in the physics curriculum. The approach advocated here employs a simple algebraic extension of vector formalism that generates Minkowski…
Large values for the mass-to-light ratio (") in self-gravitating systems is one of the most important evidences of dark matter. We propose a expression for the mass-to-light ratio in spherical systems using MOND. Results for the COMA…
Every cosmology lecturer these days is confronted with teaching the modern cosmological standard model $\Lambda$CDM, and there are many approaches to do this. However, the danger is imminent that it is presented to students as something set…
We prove a gravitational lensing theorem: the magnification of a source of uniform brightness by a foreground spherical lens is mu =1+pi(2R_E^2-R_L^2)/A, where A is the area of the source and R_E and R_L are the Einstein radius and size of…
Modern astronomy increasingly depends on computational thinking. Although some astronomy courses for undergraduates use computing, high school astronomy courses often have little computing. Created as a part of a research experience for…
The initial conditions of our Universe can be summarized on a single sheet of paper. Yet the Universe is full of complex structures today, such as stars, galaxies and groups of galaxies. In this review I describe the standard theoretical…
General relativistic kinematics and the cosmological principle alone imply a monotonicity constraint in the Hubble diagram, which we confront to present-day supernova data. We use the running gradient method of statistical inference by Hall…
We suggest an optical method which tests a nonclassical feature with a coherent state input. The test is designed with a multiplexer of on/off detectors and post-selection, adopting sub-binomiality as a nonclassical feature, replacing…
We determine cosmological and evolutionary parameters from the 3CR K-band Hubble diagram and K-band number counts, assuming that the galaxies in question undergo pure luminosity evolution. Separately the two data sets are highly degenerate…
The non-linear relation between X-ray and UV luminosity in quasars can be used to estimate their distance. Recently, we have shown that despite the large dispersion of the relation, a Hubble Diagram made of large samples of quasars can…
This review summarizes popular unsupervised learning methods, and gives an overview of their past, current, and future uses in astronomy. Unsupervised learning aims to organise the information content of a dataset, in such a way that…
Anomalies drive scientific discovery -- they are associated with the cutting edge of the research frontier, and thus typically exploit data in the low signal-to-noise regime. In astronomy, the prevalence of systematics --- both "known…
21 cm intensity mapping has arisen as a powerful probe of the high-redshift universe, but its potential is limited by extremely bright foregrounds and high source confusion. In this Letter, we propose a new analysis which can help solve…
Astronomy can never be a hard core physics discipline, because the Universe offers no control experiment, i.e. with no independent checks it is bound to be highly ambiguous and degenerate. Thus e.g. while superluminal motion can be…
Observational constraints guide one forcefully to examine models in which the matter density is substantially less than critical density. Particularly noteworthy are those which are consistent with inflation. For these models, microwave…
We discuss a new formalism for light propagation which can be used within the regime of validity of geometric optics, but with no limitation on the scales of interest: from inside the Galaxy to the ultra-large scales of cosmology. One of…
Throughout the processing and analysis of survey data, a ubiquitous issue nowadays is that we are spoilt for choice when we need to select a methodology for some of its steps. The alternative methods usually fail and excel in different data…
We are at a specific period of modern cosmology, during which the large increase of the amount of data leads to the idea that the determination of cosmological parameters has been achieved with a rather good precision. There is a large…
The concept of illumination bodies studied in convex geometry is used to amend the halfspace depth for multivariate data. The proposed notion of illumination enables finer resolution of the sample points, naturally breaks ties in the…
These notes offer a unified introduction to spectral methods for the study of complex systems. They are intended as an operative manual rather than a theorem-proof textbook: the emphasis is on tools, identities, and perspectives that can be…