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The existence of supermassive black holes lurking in the centers of galaxies and of stellar binary systems containing a black hole with a few solar masses has been established beyond reasonable doubt. The idea that black holes of…
Many catalogues of isolated compact groups of galaxies (CGs) have been extracted using Hickson's criteria to identify isolated, dense systems of galaxies, with at least three or four galaxies concordant in magnitude and redshift. But is not…
Humanity is at a critical juncture, marked by rapid technological advances and the pursuit of higher civilization stages on the Kardashev scale. This study explores humanity's potential progression toward Type I and Type II civilizations,…
If galaxy clusters contain intracluster dust, the spectra of galaxies lying behind clusters should show attenuation by dust absorption. We compare the optical (3500 - 7200 \AA) spectra of 60,267 luminous, early-type galaxies selected from…
[abridged] We present constraints on the nature of the first galaxies selected at 350 microns. The sample includes galaxies discovered in the deepest blank-field survey at 350 microns (in the Bootes Deep Field) and also later serendipitous…
One of the most interesting questions that astronomy can hope to answer is: are we alone in our Milky Way galaxy? A detection of an electromagnetic (EM) signal generated by an extraterrestrial technological intelligence, or the presence in…
A small fraction of galaxies appear to reside in dense compact groups, whose inferred crossing times are much shorter than a Hubble time. These short crossing times have led to considerable disagreement about the dynamical state of these…
Applying a principle of "radical mundanity", this paper examines explanations for the lack of strong evidence for the presence of technology-using extraterrestrial civilizations (ETCs) in the Galaxy - the Fermi paradox. With this principle,…
Stellar-mass black holes ($3$ $M_\odot \lesssim M_{\rm BH} \lesssim 150$ $M_\odot$) are the natural product of the evolution of heavy stars ($M_{\rm star} \gtrsim 20$ $M_\odot$). In our Galaxy, we expect $10^8$-$10^9$ stellar-mass black…
An initial state for the observable universe consisting of a finite region with a large vacuum energy will break-up due to near horizon quantum critical fluctuations. This will lead to a Friedmann-like early universe consisting of an…
We use 350 mu angular diameter estimates from Planck to test the idea that some galaxies contain exceptionally cold (10-13 K) dust, since colder dust implies a lower surface brightness radiation field illuminating the dust, and hence a…
Galaxies at very high redshift (z~3 or greater) are now accessible to wholesale observation, making possible for the first time a robust statistical assessment of their spatial distribution at lookback times approaching ~90% of the age of…
We aim at defining homogeneous selection criteria of small galaxy systems in order to build catalogues suitable to compare main properties of pairs, triplets, and groups with four or more members. To this end we use spectroscopic and…
Theoretical models predict that the Galaxy hosts $10^8$-$10^9$ black holes formed from the complete gravitational collapse of heavy stars and that most of these black holes are isolated, without any companion. Within 15 pc of the Solar…
The observation of a massive galaxy with an extremely low dark matter content (i.e. NGC 1277) has posed questions about how such objects form and evolve in a hierarchical universe. We here report on the finding of several massive, dark…
Studies of nearby galaxies including the Milky Way have provided fundamental information on the evolution of structure in the Universe, the existence and nature of dark matter, the origin and evolution of galaxies, and the global features…
Several planets have recently been discovered around old metal-poor stars, implying that these planets are also old, formed in the early Universe. The canonical theory suggests that the conditions for their formation could not have existed…
The astrometric satellite Gaia recently released part of its third data set, which provides a good opportunity to hunt for more open clusters in the Milky Way. In this work, we conduct a blind search for open clusters in the Galactic disk…
Dust and stars in the plane of the Milky Way create a "Zone of Avoidance" in the extragalactic sky. Galaxies are distributed in gigantic labyrinth formations, filaments and great walls with occasional dense clusters. They can be traced all…
We report a promising candidate for a distant supercluster at z $\sim 1.1$ in the Dark Energy Survey Science Verification data. We examine smoothed semi-3D galaxy density maps in various photo-z slices. Among several overdense regions, in…