Related papers: Pushing the limit of instrument capabilities
The cosmological constant problem represents an evident tension between our present description of gravity and particle physics. Many solutions have been proposed, but experimental tests are always difficult or impossible to perform and…
Particle colliders for high energy physics have been in the forefront of scientific discoveries for more than half a century. The accelerator technology of the collider has progressed immensely, while the beam energy, luminosity, facility…
The recently assembled laser-beam detectors of gravitational waves are approaching the planned level of sensitivity. In the coming 1 - 2 years, we may be observing the rare but powerful events of inspiral and merger of binary stellar-mass…
The detection of magnetic chemically peculiar (CP2) stars in open clusters of the Milky Way can be used to study the influence of different galactic environments on the (non-)presence of peculiarities, which has to be taken into account in…
Great advances have been made in the study of ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECR) in the past two decades. These include the discovery of the spectral cut-off near 5 x 10^19 eV and complex structure at lower energies, as well as…
We review recent progress in observations of ground-based oscillations. Excellent observations now exist for a few stars (alpha Cen A and B, mu Ara), while there is some controversy over others (Procyon, eta Boo). We have reached the stage…
During the final evolution of most stars, they shed their outer skin and expose their core of the hot ashes of nuclear burning. As these hot and very dense cores cool into white dwarf stars, they go through episodes of multiperiodic,…
Galactic Archeology is about exploring the Milky Way as a galaxy by, mainly, using its (old) stars as tracers of past events and thus figure out the formation and evolution of our Galaxy. I will briefly outline some of the key scientific…
Numerous stellar surveys have been or will provide photometric, astrometric, and spectroscopic data for a large number of stars in the Milky Way and neighbouring galaxies. Modern data processing tools and analysis methods are needed to deal…
In the course of their evolution, white-dwarf stars go through at least one phase of variability in which the global pulsations they undergo allow astronomers to peer into their interiors, this way making possible to shed light on their…
High-resolution X-ray spectroscopy has addressed not only various topics in coronal physics of stars, but has also uncovered important features relevant for our understanding of stellar evolution and the stellar environment. I summarize…
In the last ten years, the field of Cherenkov astronomy has become an important contributor to high energy astrophysics with the detection of eight objects at energies above 300 GeV. These observations have advanced our understanding of…
$CP$ violation experiments, new measurements of the parameters of the neutral \K\ system and searches for rare decays are summarized. Perspectives for the near future are presented.
I review recent observational progress on Anomalous X-ray Pulsars, with an emphasis on timing, variability, and spectra. Highlighted results include the recent timing and flux stabilization of the notoriously unstable AXP 1E 1048.1-5937,…
The stability of the spin of pulsars and the precision with which these spins can be determined, allows many unique tests of interest to physics and astrophysics. Perhaps the most challenging and revolutionary of these, is the detection of…
We live in an age where an enormous amount of astrometric, photometric, asteroseismic, and spectroscopic data of Milky Way stars are being acquired, many orders of magnitude larger than about a decade ago. Thanks to the Gaia astrometric…
Determining the demographics of the Galactic planetary nebula (PN) population is an important goal to further our understanding of this intriguing phase of stellar evolution. The Galactic population has more than doubled in number over the…
With the discovery of the first transiting extrasolar planetary system back to 1999, a great number of projects started to hunt for other similar systems. Because of the incidence rate of such systems was unknown and the length of the…
The Kepler mission has led to the serendipitous discovery of a significant number of `super flares' - white light flares with energies between 10^33 erg and 10^36 erg - on solar-type stars. It has been speculated that these could be `freak'…
High energy gamma-ray astronomy is a newly emerging and very successful branch of astronomy and astrophysics. Exciting results have been obtained by the current generation Cherenkov telescope systems such as H.E.S.S., MAGIC, VERITAS and…