Related papers: Free the Globe
We speculate on the development and availability of new innovative propulsion techniques in the 2040s, that will allow us to fly a spacecraft outside the Solar System (at 150 AU and more) in a reasonable amount of time, in order to directly…
Understanding the universe is hampered by the elusiveness of its most common constituent, cold dark matter. Almost impossible to observe, dark matter can be studied effectively by means of simulation and there is probably no other research…
The students build and use an old navigational tool from the Arab world of the 9th century, the kamal. After an introduction to historic seafaring and navigation, they build this simple tool and understand how it can be used to measure…
Remote-sensing observations of Solar System objects with a space telescope offer a key method of understanding celestial bodies and contributing to planetary formation and evolution theories. The capabilities of Twinkle, a space telescope…
The problem of automated separation of stars and galaxies on photographic plates is revisited with two goals in mind : First, to separate galaxies from everything else (as opposed to most previous work, in which galaxies were lumped…
Grasping constitutes a critical challenge for visually impaired people. To address this problem, we developed a tactile bracelet that assists in grasping by guiding the user's hand to a target object using vibration commands. Here we…
The study of the Universe and all its contents, the physical phenomena and the evolution of the sky objects has always attracted the Humanity. The Astronomy begins to try to explain these things, others sciences too. Therefore, we think a…
An orbiting `photon clock' is proposed to test directly the relativity of simultaneity effect of special relativity. This is done by exchanging microwave signals between two satellites in low Earth orbit carrying clocks that have previously…
One proposed method for finding terrestrial planets around nearby stars is to use two spacecraft--a telescope and a specially shaped occulter that is specifically designed to prevent all but a tiny fraction of the starlight from diffracting…
This paper is devoted to exploring how we can discover and study nearby (< 1-2 kpc) planetary and binary systems by observing their action as gravitational lenses. Lensing can extend the realm of nearby binaries and planets that can be…
In this paper we suggest the use of light for performing useful computations. Namely, we propose a special device which uses light rays for solving the Hamiltonian path problem on a directed graph. The device has a graph-like representation…
Space-based telescopes offer unparalleled opportunities for characterising exoplanets, Solar System bodies and stellar objects. However, observatories in low Earth orbits (e.g. Hubble, CHEOPS, Twinkle and an ever increasing number of…
The aim of this paper is to show, that the 'oscillating universe' is a viable alternative to inflation. We remind that this model provides a natural solution to the flatness or entropy and to the horizon problem of standard cosmology. We…
In recent years the possibility of measuring the temporal change of radial and transverse position of sources in the sky in real time have become conceivable thanks to the thoroughly improved technique applied to new astrometric and…
Several recent observations using standard rulers and standard candles now suggest, either individually or in combination, that the Universe is close to flat, i.e. that the curvature radius is about as large as the horizon radius (\sim…
Second part of a didactic sequence of activities on some topics of Astronomy, related mainly with the real shape of the Earth, the gravitational interactions between our planet and other celestial bodies, and the resulting movement of the…
Sector models are tools that make it possible to teach the basic principles of the general theory of relativity without going beyond elementary mathematics. This contribution shows how sector models can be used to determine geodesics. We…
We show that the dipole of the luminosity distance is a useful observational tool which allows us to determine the Hubble parameter as a function of the redshift H(z). We determine the number of supernovae needed to achieve a given…
In the paper we present a low cost optical device which splits the light in the focal plane into two separate optical paths and collimates it back into a single image plane, and where a selective information processing ca be carried out.…
The use of four Lagrange points of the Sun/Earth system for fundamental physics experiments in space is presented. L1, L2, L4 and L5 rotating rigidly together with the Earth form a natural reference frame at the scale of the inner solar…