Related papers: Big and Small
The study of the formation of massive stars presents complex challenges from both theoretical and observational points of view. The initial phases of evolution, for instance, remain almost hidden except at radio and IR wavelengths. In this…
Modern astronomy increasingly relies upon systematic surveys, whose dedicated telescopes continuously observe the sky across varied wavelength ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum; some surveys also observe non-electromagnetic…
Being one of the most fascinating and ancient sciences, astronomy has always played a special role in society. In 2022 ESO organised an online conference to offer the community a platform to discuss astronomical topics of sociological and…
The history of science reveals that major discoveries are not predictable. Naively, one might conclude therefore that it is not possible to artificially cultivate an environment that promotes discoveries. I suggest instead that open…
Many studies in information science have looked at the growth of science. In this study, we re-examine the question of the growth of science. To do this we (i) use current data up to publication year 2012 and (ii) analyse it across all…
The traditional realm of astronomy is the observation and study of the largest objects in the Universe, while the traditional domain of high-energy physics is the study of the smallest things in nature. But these two sciences concerned with…
We review the development of dust science from the first ground-based astronomical observations of dust in space to compositional analysis of individual dust particles and their source objects. A multitude of observational techniques is…
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…
Space Science enjoys broad public support in the US. People say they follow developments with interest, and that the programs are worth their cost. This attitude seems to arise in part because of the intrinsic accessibility and appeal of…
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…
We stand at the foot of a significant inflection in the trajectory of scientific discovery. As society continues on its fast-paced digital transformation, so does humankind's collective scientific knowledge and discourse. We now read and…
What science does, what science could do, and how to make science work? If we want to know the answers to these questions, we need to be able to uncover the mechanisms of science, going beyond metrics that are easily collectible and…
The study of galaxies has changed dramatically over the past few decades with the advent of large-scale astronomical surveys. These large collaborative efforts have made available high-quality imaging and spectroscopy of hundreds of…
How nations shape the scientific frontier matters for technological competition, but standard metrics, including publication counts, citations, and disruption indices, look backward and fail to distinguish between fundamentally different…
Modern astrophysics is undergoing a revolution. As detector technology has advanced, and astronomers have been able to study the sky with finer temporal detail, a rich diversity of sources which vary on timescales from years down to a few…
The stellar astronomy has always been considered the fundamental source of knowledge about the basic building blocks of the universe - the stars. It has proved correctness of many physical theories - like e.g. the idea of nuclear fusion in…
Scientific discovery is mediated by ideas that, after being formulated in hypotheses, can be tested, validated, and quantified before they eventually lead to accepted concepts. Computer-mediated discovery in astrophysics is no exception,…
We venture that the long evolution of science may be viewed as unfolding over three blurred epochs. The first epoch spans the slow, haphazard, error-ridden realization of scientific truths along with foundational scientific methods. The…
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the particle accelerator operating at CERN, is probably the most complex and ambitious scientific project ever accomplished by humanity. The sheer size of the enterprise, in terms of financial and human…
We present statistics on the research productivity of astronomical telescopes. These were compiled by finding papers in which new data were presented, noting which telescopes were used, and then counting the number of papers, number of…