Related papers: Comets in Australian Aboriginal Astronomy
Comets are pristine remnants of the Solar system, composed of dust and ice. They remain inactive and undetectable for most of their orbit due to low temperatures. However, as they approach the Sun, volatile materials sublimate, expelling…
We investigate the brightening behavior of long-period comets as a function of dynamical age, defined by the original reciprocal semimajor axis, $1/a_0$. Our goal is to test long-standing claims about comet behavior using a large number of…
Goldbach's comet is the plot of the Goldbach function g(n), in the interval [3, N], with a large positive integer N. The function g(n) counts the number of different ways in which 2n can be expressed as the sum of two odd primes. An…
Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) have historically been stigmatized and regarded as pseudoscience due to a general lack of robust evidence. Recently, however, the subject has gained interest among astronomers and the military. This…
We aim to bring a new perspective about some aspects of the current research in Cosmology. We start with a brief introduction about the main developments of the field in the last century; then we introduce an analogy that shall elucidate…
Time has always played a crucial role in cosmology. I review some of the aspects of the present cosmological model which are more directly related to time, such as: the definition of a cosmic time; the existence of typical timescales and…
The Sun's outer atmosphere is heated to temperatures of millions of degrees, and solar plasma flows out into interplanetary space at supersonic speeds. This paper reviews our current understanding of these interrelated problems: coronal…
Recently, a widely publicized claim has been made that the Aboriginal Australians discovered the variability of the red star Betelgeuse in the modern Orion, plus the variability of two other prominent red stars: Aldebaran and Antares. This…
The Canadian Automated Meteor Observatory (CAMO) detects occasional meteors with two maxima in the image intensified CCD based light curves. We report early results from an analysis of 21 of these events. Most of these events show…
Multiverse scenarios are common place in contemporary high energy physics and cosmology, although many consider them simply as bold speculations. In any case there is nothing like a single theory or a unified model of the multiverse.…
Astronomers occasionally detect an object having unexpected shape, unexplainable photometry, or unprecedented spectra that are inconsistent with our contemporary knowledge of the universe. Upon careful assessment, many of these anomalies…
Globally disruptive events include asteroid/comet impacts, large igneous provinces and glaciations, all of which have been considered as contributors to mass extinctions. Understanding the overall relationship between the timings of the…
We show that if comets (or any small icy planetesimals such as Kuiper belt objects) are composed of pebble piles, their internal radiogenic as well as geochemical heating results in considerably different evolutionary outcomes compared to…
Since the beginning of the 20th century, a continuous evolution and perfection of what we today call the standard cosmological model has been produced, although some authors like to distinguish separate periods within this evolution. A…
A series of astronomical observations obtained over the period 1986 to 2018 supports the idea that life is a cosmic rather than a purely terrestrial or planetary phenomenon. These include (1) the detection of biologically relevant molecules…
Just fourteen years ago the Solar System represented the only known planetary system in the Galaxy, and conceptions of planet formation were shaped by this sample of one. Since then, 320 planets have been discovered orbiting 276 individual…
We investigated the population of asteroids in comet-like orbits using available asteroid size and albedo catalogs of data taken with the Infrared Astronomical Satellite, AKARI, and the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer on the basis of…
The Chiral Quark--Soliton Model applied to baryons with one heavy quark predicts new exotic states belonging to three $\overline{\boldsymbol{15}}$ SU(3) multiplets. Here, we extend previous analysis of charm exotica to the case of beauty.…
I discuss how modern cosmology illustrates under-determination of theoretical hypotheses by data, in ways that are different from most philosophical discussions. I emphasize cosmology's concern with what data could in principle be collected…
Based on the study of temporal asymmetry of 631 gamma ray bursts from the BATSE 3B catalog by Link and Epstein [Ap J 466, 764 (1996)], we identify the population of bursts whose rising times are longer than their decays, thus showing…