Related papers: Dismantling Hubble's Legacy?
We describe the Discovery of Kepler-16b, the first widely accepted detection of a circumbinary planet.
Astronomy is an observationally-led subject where chance discoveries play an important role. A whole range of such discoveries is continually made, from the trivial to the highly significant. What is generally needed is for luck to strike…
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…
The possible existence of black holes has fascinated scientists at least since Michell and Laplace's proposal that a gravitating object could exist from which light could not escape. In the 20th century, in light of the general theory of…
As our successful Mons campaign to observe WR140 has shown, there is a strong interest among both amateur and professional astronomers to collaborate on specific scientific questions. I highlight here some recent examples of successful…
The Hubble space telescope observations of the northern Hubble deep field, and more recently its counterpart in the south, provide detections and photometry for stars and field galaxies to the faintest levels currently achievable, reaching…
Star forming galaxies represent a valuable tracer of cosmic history. Recent observational progress with Hubble Space Telescope has led to the discovery and study of the earliest-known galaxies corresponding to a period when the Universe was…
Gravity plays an important part in the experiments and discoveries of the modern world. But how was it discovered? Surely Newton and Einstein were not the only people to observe it and account for it. It had been a long path before the full…
Anomalies drive scientific discovery -- they are associated with the cutting edge of the research frontier, and thus typically exploit data in the low signal-to-noise regime. In astronomy, the prevalence of systematics --- both "known…
Astrobiology has been gaining increasing scientific prominence and public attention as the search for life beyond Earth continues to make significant headway on multiple fronts. In view of these recent developments, the fascinating and…
Astrobiology is usually defined as the study of the origin, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe. As such it is inherently interdisciplinary and cannot help but engender a worldview infused by cosmic and evolutionary…
Over the past decade, the disparity between the value of the cosmic expansion rate directly determined from measurements of distance and redshift or instead from the standard $\Lambda$CDM cosmological model calibrated by measurements from…
Galaxy clusters as gravitational lenses play a unique role in astrophysics and cosmology: they permit mapping the dark matter distribution on a range of scales; they reveal the properties of high and intermediate redshift background…
Stephen Hawkings most important scientific contribution was his theoretical discovery that black holes aint so black, since they emit thermal radiation as if they were hot bodies with an absolute temperature known as the Hawking…
Experiments may not reveal their full import at the time that they are performed. The scientists who perform them usually are testing a specific hypothesis and quite often have specific expectations limiting the possible inferences that can…
Recent observations suggest that Hubble's constant is large, and hence that the Universe appears to be younger than some of its constituents. The traditional escape route, which assumes that the expansion is accelerating, appears to be…
Space observatories are having major impacts on our knowledge of the Universe, from the Solar neighborhood to the cosmological background, opening many new windows out of reach to ground-based observatories. Celestial objects emit all over…
Since the expansion of the universe was first established by Edwin Hubble and Georges Lemaitre about a century ago, the Hubble constant H0 which measures its rate has been of great interest to astronomers. Besides being interesting in its…
The successful construction and operation of highly sensitive gravitational-wave detectors is an achievement to be proud of, but the detection of actual signals is still around the corner. Even so, null results from recent searches have…
Einstein's blackboard is a well-known exhibit at the History of Science Museum at Oxford University. However, it is much less well known that the writing on the board provides a neat summary of a work of historic importance, Einstein's 1931…