Related papers: Astronomical arguments in Newton's Chronology
Time is a parameter playing a central role in our most fundamental modeling of natural laws. Relativity theory shows that the comparison of times measured by different clocks depends on their relative motions and on the strength of the…
According to Aristotle "time is the number of change with respect to the before and after". That's certainly a vague concept, but at the same time it's both simple and satisfying from a philosophical point of view: things do not change…
Novae and supernovae are rare astronomical events that would have had an influence on the sky-watching peoples who witnessed them. Although several bright novae/supernovae have been visible during recorded human history, there are many…
Argumentation is a non-monotonic process. This reflects the fact that argumentation involves uncertain information, and so new information can cause a change in the conclusions drawn. However, the base logic does not need to be…
In recent centuries the world has become increasingly dominated by empirical evidence and theoretic science in developing worldviews. Advances in science have dictated Roman Catholic doctrine such as the acceptance of Darwinian evolution…
The idea of an accelerating universe comes almost simultaneously with the determination of Hubble's constant by one of the Hubble Space Telescope Key Projects. The age of the universe dilemma is probably the link between these two issues.…
Time can be defined as the duration between events. It is irreversible. When used as a variable in quantifying the changing properties of matter, this irreversibility of time is incompatible with Newton's deterministic mechanics and with…
Experimental evidence and theoretical argument in favor the claim of neutrino being likely a superluminal particle, a tachyon, are discussed from six aspects with details.
A number of positive and null results on the time variation of fundamental constants have been reported. It is difficult to judge whether or not these claims are mutually consistent, since the observable quantities depend on several…
Astronomy is one of the most data-intensive of the sciences. Data technology is accelerating the quality and effectiveness of its research, and the rate of astronomical discovery is higher than ever. As a result, many view astronomy as…
In a recent paper (astro-ph/0311364) Alam et al argued that the SNe data of Tonry et al 2003 and Barris et al 2003 appear to favour DE which evolves in time, provided no other priors are invoked. (The effect of invoking priors such as the…
We describe in detail an advanced project devised for outstanding High School (or undergraduate) students with appropriate abilities in physical reasoning (rather than with a good standard preparation), centered around the well-known…
Scientific principles can undergo various developments. While philosophers of science have acknowledged that such changes occur, there is no systematic account of the development of scientific principles. Here we propose a template for…
The observation that the shadows of objects change during the course of the day and also for a fixed time during a year led curious minds to realize that the Sun could be used as a timekeeper. However, the daily motion of the Sun has some…
Two people may claim both to be naturalists, but have divergent conceptions of basic elements of the natural world which lead them to mean different things when they talk about laws of nature, or states, or the role of mathematics in…
Cosmological observations are a powerful probe of neutrino properties, and in particular of their mass. In this review, we first discuss the role of neutrinos in shaping the cosmological evolution at both the background and perturbation…
A panoramic view, preceded by a short background of Newtonian mechanics and Maxwellian electrodynamics, is offered on the extent of how Einstein's space-time geometry, believed to be central to an understanding of the structure of the…
We present a review of data types and statistical methods often encountered in astronomy. The aim is to provide an introduction to statistical applications in astronomy for statisticians and computer scientists. We highlight the complex,…
The aim of this short note is to realize that the main reason for non-mechanistic explanation of Newton's gravitational attraction, is explicitly encapsulated in his famous General Scholium of the second Edition of Principia Mathematica…
In the last decade a new generation of telescopes and sensors has allowed the production of a very large amount of data and astronomy has become, a data-rich science; this transition is often labeled as: "data revolution" and "data…