Related papers: Indigenous Astronomies and Progress in Modern Astr…
Technology has, without doubt, expanded our understanding of space. The Voyager 1 space probe is on the brink of leaving our solar system. Massive telescopes have discovered blasts of fast radio bursts from 10 billion light years away. And…
Human activities degrade the Earth environment at an unprecedented scale and pace, threatening Earth-system stability, resilience and life-support functions. We can of course deny the facts, get angry about them, or try to bargain. Or we…
Commercial endeavours have already compromised our relationship with space. The Artemis Accords are creating a framework that will commercialize the Moon and further impact that relation. To confront that impact, a number of organizations…
(Abridged) Canadian astronomy has, for decades, benefited from access to observatories and participating in international consortia on one of the best astronomical sites in the world: Maunakea. However, Maunakea is part of the unceded…
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…
This is a summary of the `Astronomy Perspective' of the 4th meeting on 'Statistical Challenges in Modern Astronomy' held at Penn State University in June 2006. We comment on trends in the Astronomy community towards Bayesian methods and…
Many see modern science as having serious defects, intellectual, social, moral. Few see this as having anything to do with the philosophy of science. I argue that many diverse ills of modern science are a consequence of the fact that the…
The present politically correct consensus is that increased exchange of scientific insight, knowledge, practitioners and skills at the global level brings significant benefits to all. The quantifiable scientometric changes during the last…
Whilst astronomy as a science is historically founded on observations at optical wavelengths, studying the Universe in other bands has yielded remarkable discoveries, from pulsars in the radio, signatures of the Big Bang at submm…
Certain results of observational cosmology cast critical doubt on the foundations of standard cosmology but leave most cosmologists untroubled. Alternative cosmological models that differ from the Big Bang have been published and defended…
Cosmology as an exact physical science is of new date, but it has long roots in the past. This essay is concerned with four important themes in the history of cosmological thought which, if taken together, offer a fairly comprehensive…
The place of an anthropic argument in the discrimination between various cosmological models is to be reconsidered following the classic criticisms of Paul C. W. Davies and Frank J. Tipler. Different versions of the anthropic argument…
It appears paradoxical that science is producing outstanding new results and theories at a rapid rate at the same time that researchers are identifying serious problems in the practice of science that cause many reports to be irreproducible…
Indigenous people have nurtured critical relationships with the stars, from keen observation and sustainable engineering to place-based ceremony, navigation, and celestial architecture for tens of thousands of years. The Indigenous…
As astronomy enters an era defined by global telescope networks, petabyte-scale surveys, and powerful computational tools, the longstanding goals of astronomy education, particularly introductory ``ASTRO101'', but equally encompassing both…
Long range observations in the field of astronomy have opened up our understanding of the Solar System, the Galaxy and the wider Universe. In this paper we discuss the idea of direct in-situ reconnaissance of nearby stellar systems, using…
This paper explores the evolution of the so called "anthropic reasoning" in a historical perspective. It takes under scrutiny the appearance of "anthropic" considerations in various stages of modern cosmology, focusing also on some very…
We discuss what hampers the rate of scientific progress in our exponentially growing world. The rapid increase in technologies leaves the growth of research result metrics far behind. The reason for this lies in the education of astronomers…
Far-infrared astronomy has advanced rapidly since its inception in the late 1950's, driven by a maturing technology base and an expanding community of researchers. This advancement has shown that observations at far-infrared wavelengths are…
Looking ahead to the next decade and imagining the landscape of astronomy in 2020, it is clear that astronomical surveys, large and small, plus extensive follow-up projects, will be a great engine of progress in our profession. Surveys have…