Related papers: Comets in Australian Aboriginal Astronomy
Comet disintegration proceeds both through sublimation and discrete splitting events. The cross-sectional area of material ejected by a comet may, within days, become many times greater than that of the Earth, making encounters with such…
The strong 14C increase in the year AD 774/5 detected in one German and two Japanese trees was recently suggested to have been caused by an impact of a comet onto Earth and a deposition of large amounts of 14C into the atmosphere (Liu et…
Aboriginal Australians carefully observe the properties and positions of stars, including both overt and subtle changes in their brightness, for subsistence and social application. These observations are encoded in oral tradition. I examine…
Cultures around the world organise stars into constellations, or asterisms, and these groupings are often considered to be arbitrary and culture-specific. Yet there are striking similarities in asterisms across cultures, and groupings such…
Two sets of investigators -- Murray (1999) and Matese, Whitman & Whitmire (1999) -- have recently claimed evidence for an undiscovered Solar System planet from possible great circle alignments in the aphelia directions of the long period…
We describe how cosmology has converged towards a beautiful model of the Universe: the Big Bang Universe. We praise this model, but show there is a dark side to it. This dark side is usually called ``the cosmological problems'': a set of…
In studies of the oldest solar system bodies - comets and asteroids - it is their fragments - meteoroids - that provide the most accessible planetary material for detailed laboratory analysis in the form of dust particles or meteorites.…
This article relates two topics of central importance in modern astronomy - the discovery some fifteen years ago of the first planets around other stars (exoplanets), and the centuries-old problem of understanding the origin of our own…
Mathematics curriculums at most universities tend to perpetuate a belief that higher mathematics is historically and culturally European. First Nations and minority students may not see their identities and cultures reflected in the…
Until the second half of the 19th century, two or more brief appearances of bright comets, such as the ones in 1668 and 1702, alike in aspect and motion, seen with a tail near the Sun, were almost universally believed to be periodic returns…
I find evidence for clustering in age of well-dated impact craters over the last 500 Myr. At least nine impact episodes are identified, with durations whose upper limits are set by the dating accuracy of the craters. Their amplitudes and…
For much of February 2023, the world was in panic as repeated balloon-like unidentified flying objects (UFOs) were reported over numerous countries by governments that often responded with military action. As a result, most of these craft…
Australian Indigenous astronomical traditions hint at a relationship between animals in the skyworld and the behaviour patterns of their terrestrial counterparts. In our continued study of Aboriginal astronomical traditions from the Great…
Cultural astronomy reveals ways in which perception and culture have shaped the interpretation of the night sky.
Our understanding of planetary systems different to our own has grown dramatically in the past 30 years. However, our efforts to ascertain the degree to which the Solar system is abnormal or unique have been hindered by the observational…
We analyse the population of near-Earth Long-Period Comets (LPCs) (perihelion distances q < 1.3 AU and orbital periods P > 10^3 yr). We have considered the sample of LPCs discovered during the period 1900-2009 and their estimated absolute…
Since very recently, we acquired knowledge on the existence of comets in extrasolar planetary systems. The formation of comets together with planets around host stars now seems evident. As stars are often born in clusters of interstellar…
The old lie of mathematical inadequacy of Indigenous communities has been curiously persistent despite increasing evidence shows that many Indigenous communities practiced mathematics. Attempts to study and teach Indigenous mathematical…
Periodic comets of different dynamical groups with orbits at 2 - 5 AU still occasionally active. The observed dust activity of such objects can be connected with processes of water ice sublimation (MBCs) or crystallization of amorphous…
Past and future dynamical evolution of all 64 long period comets having 1/aori< 1\times10-4 au-1 and qosc > 3.0 au and discovered after 1970 is studied. For all of them we obtained a new, homogeneous set of osculating orbits, including 15…