Related papers: Comets in ancient India
Every society has a story rooted in its most ancient traditions, of how the earth and sky originated. Most of these stories attribute the origin of all things to a Creator - whether God, Element or Idea. We first recall that in the Western…
It is noted that effective very recently, the orbital motion of Encke's comet has become affected by a very slight nongravitational deceleration. Soon after J. F. Encke established in the early 19th century that the comet was returning to…
The mysterious lines in the desert of Nazca in southern Peru received many attempts at an explanation. We discuss the possibility that their origin is based on solar eclipses which could have evoked some kind of "reaction" by the…
Comets contain abundant amounts of organic and inorganic species. Many of the volatile molecules in comets have also been observed in the interstellar medium and some of them even with similar relative abundances, indicating formation under…
Quasars are the earliest objects known to exist. We examine their origin in the context of popular models for structure formation in the universe. We show that seeds for quasar black holes could have originated from the initial cosmological…
Dormant or near-dormant short-period comets can unexpectedly regain ability to eject dust. In many known cases, the resurrection is short-lived and lasts less than one orbit. However, it is possible that some resurrected comets can remain…
The reports from 2008: "Astrometry and optics during the past 2000 years", are available at arXiv and at my website: www.astro.ku.dk/~erik/History.pdf . Here are now further contributions to the history of astrometry related to space…
The Indus Civilization, often denoted by its major city Harappa, spanned almost two millennia from 3200 to 1300 BC. Its tradition reaches back to 7000 BC: a 5000 year long expansion of villages and towns, of trading activity, and of…
We summarize the comet science provided by surveys. This includes surveys where the detections of comets are an advantageous benefit but were not part of the survey\'s original intent, as well as some pointed surveys where comet science was…
Astrophysical compact objects, viz., white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes, are the remnants of stellar deaths at the end of their life cycles. They are ideal testbeds for various fundamental physical processes under extreme…
Around the turn of the first Millennium AD, both in Christian polities such as the Byzantine Empire as well as in Buddhist communities such as in Heian Japan, expectations of an end of times emerged. Although based on different religious…
Previously, the most prominent explanation for the Star of Bethlehem was to identify one of many astronomical events in the sky as being the inspiration for the trip of the Magi. However, all the astronomical answers have detailed…
With orbital periods longer than 200 years, most long-period comets (LPCs) remain undiscovered until they are in-bound towards perihelion. The comets that pass close to Earth's orbit are Potentially Hazardous Objects (PHOs). Those with…
We reply to criticisms by Desch et al. (2021) regarding our Scientific Reports paper, "Breakup of a long-period comet as the origin of the dinosaur extinction." The background impact rates of main-belt asteroids and long-period comets have…
With the same general purposes as Part I of this monograph, we analyze here major events in the history of the Earth, such as the formation of the Earth itself, the origin of life, the great glaciations and the mass extinctions of species,…
From al-Sufi's tenth-century observation of the Andromeda Galaxy as a "little cloud" to contemporary space missions, Islamic astronomy represents a millennium-spanning tradition of innovation and knowledge. This study traces its trajectory…
Small asteroids intersecting Earth's orbit can deliver extraterrestrial rocks to the Earth, called meteorites. This process is accompanied by a luminous phenomena in the atmosphere, called bolides or fireballs. Observations of bolides…
The Milky Way's name and role in ancient Egyptian culture remain unclear. One suggestion is that the Milky Way may have been a celestial depiction of the sky goddess Nut. In this work, I test this association using an interdisciplinary…
Most cosmic rays are thought to be accelerated by the shocks of supernova explosions of very massive stars. Here we review one quantitative proposal, which predicted the spectral slopes, bend and cutoff about the cosmic ray spectrum across…
This paper is the result of the International Cometary Workshop, held in Toulouse, France in April 2014, where the participants came together to assess our knowledge of comets prior to the ESA Rosetta Mission. In this paper, we look at the…