Related papers: Indigenous Astronomies and Progress in Modern Astr…
Despite the extraordinary successes the two great bastions of $20^{th}$ century science (Quantum Theory and General Relativity) are troubled with serious conceptual and mathematical difficulties. As a result, further growth of fundamental…
The traditional cultures of Aboriginal Australians include a significant astronomical component, perpetuated through oral tradition, ceremony, and art. This astronomical knowledge includes a deep understanding of the motion of objects in…
The dramatic confrontation between new observations and theories of the early and recent universe makes cosmology one of the most rapidly advancing fields in the physical sciences. The universe is a unique laboratory in which to probe…
The past few years have seen several breakthroughs in particle astrophysics and cosmology. In several cases, new observations can only be explained with the introduction of new fundamental physics. In this talk I summarize some of these…
It is often thought that the existence of other worlds cannot be scientifically verified and therefore should be treated as philosophical speculation. In this article, I describe several methods for determining if other worlds exist, even…
We draw on the predictive processing theory of perception to explain why healthy, intelligent, honest, and psychologically normal people might easily misperceive lights in the sky as threatening or extraordinary objects, especially in the…
Recent years have seen dramatic progress in cosmology and particle astrophysics. So much so that anyone who dares to offer an overview would certainly risk him- or herself for being incomplete and biased at best, and even incorrect due to…
We are at a stage in our evolution where we do not yet know if we will ever communicate with intelligent beings that have evolved on other planets, yet we are intelligent and curious enough to wonder about this. We find ourselves wondering…
Astronomy provides a laboratory for extreme physics, a window into environments at extremes of distance, temperature and density that often can't be reproduced in Earth laboratories, or at least not right away. A surprising amount of the…
An emerging theme in modern astrophysics is the connection between astronomical observations and the underlying physical phenomena that drive our cosmos. Both the mechanisms responsible for the observed astrophysical phenomena and the tools…
For the past 400 years, astronomers have sought to observe and interpret the Universe by building more powerful telescopes. These incredible instruments extend the capabilities of one of our most important senses, sight, towards new limits…
Perhaps more than other physical sciences, astronomy is frequently statistical in nature. The objects under study are inaccessible to direct manipulation in the laboratory, so the astronomer is restricted to observing a few external…
We present a model where some proportion of extraterrestrial civilizations expand uniformly over time to reach a cosmological scale. We then ask what humanity could infer if a sky survey were to find zero, one, or more such civilizations.…
While many previous studies have indicated that encouraging a growth mindset can improve student learning outcomes, this conclusion's applicability to college-level astronomy classrooms remains poorly understood owing to the variation in…
Astronomy has a distinguished tradition of using technology to accelerate the quality and effectiveness of science, and data-intensive initiatives such as the Virtual Observatory lead the way amongst other fields of science. However,…
Recent X-ray observations have had a major impact on topics ranging from protostars to cosmology. They have also drawn attention to important and general physical processes that currently limit our understanding of thermal and nonthermal…
Astronomy is entering a new era as multiple, large area, digital sky surveys are in production. The resulting datasets are truly remarkable in their own right; however, a revolutionary step arises in the aggregation of complimentary…
This is a presentation of the purpose of astronomy in the context of modern society. After exposing two misconceptions about astronomy, I detail its role in five domains, certified knowledge, incorporated abilities, innovations, collective…
Knowing the distance of an astrophysical object is key to understanding it. However, at present, comparisons of theory and observations are hampered by precision (or lack thereof) in distance measurements or estimates. Putting the many…
The Art, Astronomy, Technology and Society (AATS) project is an artscience collaboration which dwells in the inbetweenness layer of scientific understanding of the origins of planets and the embodied, intuited ways of knowing. One of the…