Related papers: Dismantling Hubble's Legacy?
Einstein wrote memorably that `The eternally incomprehensible thing about the world is its comprehensibility.' This paper argues that the universe must be comprehensible at some level for information gathering and utilizing subsystems such…
Gravitational lensing has established itself as a valuable tool in many astrophysical fields in the roughly 20 years of its existence as an observational science. In this brief review, first the basics of lensing are introduced. Then it is…
The history of science reveals that major discoveries are not predictable. Naively, one might conclude therefore that it is not possible to artificially cultivate an environment that promotes discoveries. I suggest instead that open…
We describe how cosmology has converged towards a beautiful model of the Universe: the Big Bang Universe. We praise this model, but show there is a dark side to it. This dark side is usually called ``the cosmological problems'': a set of…
Recent developments have ushered in a new era in the field of black hole astrophysics, providing our first direct view of the remarkable environment near black hole event horizons. These observations have enabled astronomers to confirm…
If our universe has appeared in a result of Big Bang or something like this, whether we have reasons to deny an existence of other universes appearing by the same or similar way? An objection that there is no anything like it, is doubtful,…
Global citizenship plays an important role in today's schools. Many subjects taught in schools have already incorporated such ideas. Science and physics have also followed suit. However, when dealing with astronomy - a topic so seemingly…
Was Einstein wrong? This paper provides a detailed technical review of Einstein's special and general relativity from an astrophysical perspective, including the historical development of the theories, experimental tests, modern…
The past fifty years have been an epoch of impressive progress in the field of astronomical technology. Practically all the technical tools, which we use today, have been developed during that time span. While the first half of this period…
The discovery of the Higgs boson is one of the greatest discoveries in this century. The standard model is finally complete. Apart from its significance in particle physics, this discovery has profound implications for gravity and cosmology…
The LIGO results are among the greatest experimental achievements of all times. Time and again scientists have compared this feat to Galileo pointing his telescope to the sky, offering instead an 'ear' to the cosmos. After the remarkable…
I critically review a methodology of using clusters of galaxies as cosmological probes. The understanding of the abundances and spatial correlations of dark matter halos has been significantly advanced especially for a last few years.…
Gravitation has posed a puzzle and a problem for many decades. Attempts to unify it with other fundamental interactions have failed. These problems and puzzles have been underscored by the likes of Witten and Weinberg. We survey this and…
Although cosmologists have been trying to determine the value of the Hubble constant for nearly 65 years, they have only succeeded in limiting the range of possibilities: most of the current observational determinations place the Hubble…
For two decades the hot big-bang model as been referred to as the standard cosmology -- and for good reason. For just as long cosmologists have known that there are fundamental questions that are not answered by the standard cosmology and…
Over the last decades, observations with increasing quality have revolutionized our understanding of the general properties of the Universe. Questions posed for millenia by mankind about the origin, evolution and structure of the cosmos…
Astronomy, of all the sciences, is possibly the one with the most public appeal across all age groups. This is also evidenced by the existence of a large number of planetaria and amateur astronomy societies, which is unique to the field.…
Leonhard Euler, the most prolific mathematician in history, contributed to advance a wide spectrum of topics in celestial mechanics. At the Saint Petersburg Observatory, Euler observed sunspots and tracked the movements of the Moon.…
Cosmology, high-energy physics and astrophysics are converging on the study of large-scale magnetic fields. While the experimental evidence for the existence of large-scale magnetization in galaxies, clusters and superclusters is rather…
The recently refurbished Hubble Space Telescope reveals a galaxy from a time when the Universe was just 500 million years old, providing insights into the first throes of galaxy formation and the reionization of the Universe.