Related papers: Santa and the moon
The changing heavens have played a central role in the scientific effort of astronomers for centuries. Galileo's synoptic observations of the moons of Jupiter and the phases of Venus starting in 1610, provided strong refutation of Ptolemaic…
The review is a brief description of the state of problems in percolation theory and their numerous applications, which are analyzed on base of interesting papers published in the last 15-20 years. At the submitted papers are studied both…
Venus has regained attention on the international stage with the approval of three new missions by ESA and NASA. As the twin sister of Earth, Venus exhibits a distinct atmosphere, which casts a veil of mystery over the planetary evolution…
One significant simplification in most previous work on robot learning is the closed-world assumption where the robot is assumed to know ahead of time a complete set of predicates describing the state of the physical world. However, robots…
As shown in a number of our works, the form of histograms - distributions of amplitude fluctuations - varies regularly in time, with these variations being similar for processes of any nature, from biochemical reactions to noise in the…
Cosmology contributes a good deal to the investigation of variation of fundamental physical constants. High resolution data is available and allows for detailed analysis over cosmological distances and a multitude of methods were developed.…
The search of a rational explanation of eclipses pervades the beginnings of philosophical and scientific thought. Within this intellectual frame, the knowledge of the "saros cycle" (a cycle of 18 years, 10 or 11 days and 1/3 of a day that…
The role of clouds is manifold in understanding the various events in the atmosphere, and also in studying the radiative balance of the earth. The conventional manner of such cloud analysis is performed mainly via satellite images. However,…
By the age of two, children tend to assume that new word categories are based on objects' shape, rather than their color or texture; this assumption is called the shape bias. They are thought to learn this bias by observing that their…
The introduction to this review summarizes chromosphere observation in two figures. The first part showcases the historical emphasis on the eclipse chromosphere in the development of NLTE line formation theory and criticizes 1D modeling.…
Various theories have been proposed to explain the Moon's current inclined orbit. We test the viability of these theories by reconstructing the thermal-orbital history of the Moon. We build on past thermal-orbital models and incorporate the…
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…
The first three quarters of this paper consists of a pedagogical review of neutrino oscillations, including vacuum oscillations, constant density matter oscillations and variable density matter oscillations. We then address the question of…
In the Italian education system, secondary students (ages 14-19) face the foundations of quantum physics during the final term of scientific high school (pre-university year). The Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research…
A perplexing problem in understanding physical reality is why the universe seems comprehensible, and correspondingly why there should exist physical systems capable of comprehending it. In this essay I explore the possibility that rather…
Due to the shift of civilization from the Industrial Age to the Information Age, mathematical literacy has become a necessity in the twenty-first century. However, in order to learn and contribute to the mathematical community, one has to…
This white paper recognizes gaps in observations that will, when addressed, much improve solar radiation hazard and geomagnetic storm forecasting. Radiation forecasting depends on observations of the entire "Solar Radiation Hemisphere" that…
While purely philosophical in the early times, and still very speculative at the beginning of the twentieth century, Cosmology has gradually entered into the realm of experimental science over the past eighty years. It has raised some…
The lunar cycle has long been suspected to influence biological phenomena. Folklore alludes to such a relationship, but previous scientific analyses have failed to find significant associations. It has been shown that lunar cycles indeed…
Election poll reporting often focuses on mean values and only subordinately discusses the underlying uncertainty. Subsequent interpretations are too often phrased as certain. Moreover, media coverage rarely adequately takes into account the…