Related papers: Serendipity in Astronomy
If quantum mechanics is taken for granted the randomness derived from it may be vacuous or even delusional, yet sufficient for many practical purposes. "Random" quantum events are intimately related to the emergence of both space-time as…
Observatories, Institutes and Centers that support major astronomical facilities have, for decades, played a key role in maximizing the scientific return from their facilities and telescopes. It is crucial to realize that an "observatory"…
This article is the written version of the closing talk presented at the conference `A Century of Cosmology' held at San Servolo, Italy, in August 2007. I focus on the prospects of constraining fundamental physics from cosmological…
Fundamental changes are taking place in the way we do astronomy. In twenty years time, it is likely that most astronomers will never go near a cutting-edge telescope, which will be much more efficiently operated in service mode. They will…
A distinction is sometimes made between "statistical" and "subjective" probabilities. This is based on a distinction between "unique" events and "repeatable" events. We argue that this distinction is untenable, since all events are "unique"…
The history and current status of the cross-disciplinary fields of astrostatistics and astroinformatics are reviewed. Astronomers need a wide range of statistical methods for both data reduction and science analysis. With the proliferation…
I try to clarify several confusions in the popular literature concerning chaos, determinism, the arrow of time, entropy and the role of probability in physics. Classical ideas going back to Laplace and Boltzmann are explained and defended…
Astronomy is not in the list of natural sciences aimed at by the Nobel awards. In spite of that, there were, throughout the 1930s until the early 1950s, effective moves by important scientists to distinguish Hubble with the Prize. A short…
A well-known topic within the philosophy of physics is the problem of fine-tuning: the fact that the universal constants seem to take non-arbitrary values in order for live to thrive in our Universe. In this paper we will talk about this…
The number of small satellites has grown dramatically in the past decade from tens of satellites per year in the mid-2010s to a projection of tens of thousands in orbit by the mid-2020s. This presents both problems and opportunities for…
An overview of the 2001 astronomy job market is presented, highlighting the recent hiring trends which prospective PhD students and postdocs might like to be aware of. Cosmology and extragalactic astronomy continue to dominate the market,…
The tremendous popular success of Chaos Theory shares some common points with the not less fortunate Relativity: they both rely on a misunderstanding. Indeed, ironically , the scientific meaning of these terms for mathematicians and…
In recent years, by theory and observation cosmology has advanced substantially. Parameters of the concordance or $\Lambda$CDM cosmological model are given with unprecedented precision ("precision cosmology"). On the other side, 95% of the…
Reasoning about unpredicted change consists in explaining observations by events; we propose here an approach for explaining time-stamped observations by surprises, which are simple events consisting in the change of the truth value of a…
Astronomers have played many roles in their engagement with the larger astronomy education ecosystem. Their activities have served both the formal and informal education communities worldwide, with levels of involvement from the occasional…
We show that many ancient Indian mythological legends are really allegorical depictions of astronomical and other physical phenomena of which the composers had a good idea. This detail enables us to also use techniques of astronomical…
The cosmological principle posits that the universe does not exhibit any specific preference for position or direction. However, it remains unclear whether the universe has a distinct preference for parity: whether certain properties are…
In many applications of the probabilistic method, one looks to study phenomena that occur ``with high probability''. More recently however, in an attempt to understand some of the most fundamental problems in combinatorics, researchers have…
Cultural Astronomy sits at the intersection of our study of the universe and the human experience, exploring how we observe the stars, interpret their motions, and incorporate them into our perspectives of the nature of reality. "Astronomy…
In recent decades, the relevance of polarimetry in planetary sciences and astronomy has increased rapidly. Polarization is a fundamental property of light and can be modified by any scattering event. As such, polarization yields additional…