Related papers: A Vigorous Explorer Program
Upon entering a star system, light sails are subject to both gravitational forces and radiation pressure, and can use both in concert to modify their trajectory. Moreover, stars possess significant magnetic fields, and if the sail is in any…
We write in response to the call from the 2020 Decadal Survey to submit white papers illustrating the most pressing scientific questions in astrophysics for the coming decade. We propose exploration as the central question for the Decadal…
NASA's first two deep space missions, Pioneers 10 and 11, have been travelling through the outer solar system for three decades. A slight deviation from their calculated trajectories presents an as yet unsolved scientific mystery. The use…
The US astronomy/astrophysics community comes together to create a decadal report that summarizes grant funding priorities, observatory & instrumental priorities as well as community accomplishments and community goals such as increasing…
Understanding the formation and evolution of galaxies over cosmic time is one of the foremost goals of astrophysics and cosmology today. The cosmic star formation rate has undergone a dramatic evolution over the course of the last 14…
An outstanding, multi-disciplinary goal of modern science is the study of the diversity of potentially Earth-like planets and the search for life in them. This goal requires a bold new generation of space telescopes, but even the most…
Asteroseismology involves probing the interiors of stars and quantifying their global properties, such as radius and age, through observationsof normal modes of oscillation. The technical requirements for conducting asteroseismology include…
Euclid is an ESA Cosmic-Vision wide-field-space mission which is designed to explain the origin of the acceleration of Universe expansion. The mission will investigate at the same time two primary cosmological probes: Weak gravitational…
THESEUS, one of the two space mission concepts being studied by ESA as candidates for next M5 mission within its Comsic Vision programme, aims at fully exploiting Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRB) to solve key questions about the early Universe, as…
Massive stars are important metal factories in the Universe. They have short and energetic lives, and many of them inevitably explode as a supernova and become a neutron star or black hole. In turn, the formation, evolution and explosive…
The influence of new techniques on the discovery and characterization of pulsating variables has been enormous. In this paper, I will review the methods and results of a number of research programmes which have dramatically altered our…
(Abridged) We discuss the design considerations of the EXPLORE (EXtra-solar PLanet Occultation REsearch) project, a series of transiting planet searches using 4-m-class telescopes to continuously monitor a single field of stars in the…
Within this decade gravitational wave detection will open a new observational window on the Universe. Advanced ground based interferometers covering the kHz frequency range will be online by 2016, and it is foreseeable the announcement of a…
After initial claims and a long hiatus, it is now established that several binary stars emit high (0.1-100 GeV) and very high energy (>100 GeV) gamma rays. A new class has emerged called 'gamma-ray binaries', since most of their radiated…
Fast-growing scientific publications present challenges to the scientific community. In this paper, we describe their implications to researchers. As references form explicit foundations for researchers to conduct a study, we investigate…
Beginning in 2012, NASA utilized a strategic process to identify broad societal questions, or grand challenges, that are well suited to the aerospace sector and align with national priorities. This effort generated NASA's first grand…
Multi-messenger high-energy astrophysics has currently achieved the potential to unravel the origin of cosmic rays and how sources accelerate them, their relation to the diffuse radiation in the extra-galactic space, and their role to forge…
Detecting ultrahigh-energy neutrinos can take two complementary approaches with different trade-offs. 1)~Wide and shallow: aim for the largest effective volume, and to be cost-effective, go for wide field-of-view but at the cost of a…
Cosmic Explorer (CE) is a next-generation ground-based gravitational-wave observatory concept, envisioned to begin operation in the 2030s, and expected to be capable of observing binary neutron star and black hole mergers back to the time…
Research activities on laser plasma accelerators are paved by many significant breakthroughs. This review article provides an opportunity to show the incredible evolution of this field of research which has, in record time, allowed…