Related papers: Lessons from Mayan Astronomy
From an anthropological point of view, the whole concept of a "path of progress" in astronomical discovery is anathema, since it implicitly downgrades other cultural perspectives, such as the many "indigenous cosmologies" that still exist…
Astrophysics and cosmology are rich with data. The advent of wide-area digital cameras on large aperture telescopes has led to ever more ambitious surveys of the sky. Data volumes of entire surveys a decade ago can now be acquired in a…
The Gaia mission has observed over 2 billion stars repeatedly across the entire sky over 10 years, revealing the many astronomical objects that vary on human timescales from seconds to years. Its repeated astrometric, photometric,…
Astronomical and cosmological knowledge up to the dawn of modern science was profoundly embedded in myth, religion and superstition. Many of these inventions of the human mind remain today stored in different supports: medieval engravings,…
Over the past decades and even centuries, the astronomical community has accumulated a signif-icant heritage of recorded observations of a great many astronomical objects. Those records con-tain irreplaceable information about long-term…
Data volumes from multiple sky surveys have grown from gigabytes into terabytes during the past decade, and will grow from terabytes into tens (or hundreds) of petabytes in the next decade. This exponential growth of new data both enables…
The canopy of stars is a central presence in the daily and spiritual lives of Aboriginal Tasmanians. With the arrival of European colonists, Tasmanian astronomical knowledge and traditions were interrupted and dispersed. Fragments can be…
A common flaw of astronomers is to believe that they know the truth even when data is scarce. I provide ten examples where this approach led to wrong strategic decisions in research plans, causing unnecessary delays in finding the truth. In…
It takes years of effort employing the best telescopes and instruments to obtain high-quality stellar photometry, astrometry, and spectroscopy. Stellar evolution models contain the experience of lifetimes of theoretical calculations and…
The production of complex astronomical data is accelerating, especially with newer telescopes producing ever more large-scale surveys. The increased quantity, complexity, and variety of astronomical data demand a parallel increase in skill…
Astronomy is one of the most data-intensive of the sciences. Data technology is accelerating the quality and effectiveness of its research, and the rate of astronomical discovery is higher than ever. As a result, many view astronomy as…
The traditional cultures of Aboriginal Australians include a significant astronomical component, perpetuated through oral tradition, ceremony, and art. This astronomical knowledge includes a deep understanding of the motion of objects in…
Culture evolves, not just in the trivial sense that cultures change over time, but also in the strong sense that such change is governed by Darwinian principles. Both biological and cultural evolution are essentially cumulative selection…
Infrastructures are not inherently durable or fragile, yet all are fragile over the long term. Durability requires care and maintenance of individual components and the links between them. Astronomy is an ideal domain in which to study…
In this work, we identify elements of effective machine learning datasets in astronomy and present suggestions for their design and creation. Machine learning has become an increasingly important tool for analyzing and understanding the…
Cosmology has come a long way from being based on a small number of observations to being a data-driven precision science. We discuss the questions "What is observable?", "What in the Universe is knowable?" and "What are the fundamental…
The limitations of current technology do not allow one to foresee the expansion of the humankind beyond our planet for at least a few decades. Furthermore, the laws of physics, as for as they are known, preclude any form of traveling beyond…
Astrophysics = the star physics was beginning its development without a supporting of measurement data, which could not be obtained then. Still astrophysics exists without this support, although now astronomers collected a lot of valuable…
The stellar astronomy has always been considered the fundamental source of knowledge about the basic building blocks of the universe - the stars. It has proved correctness of many physical theories - like e.g. the idea of nuclear fusion in…
Cultural Astronomy sits at the intersection of our study of the universe and the human experience, exploring how we observe the stars, interpret their motions, and incorporate them into our perspectives of the nature of reality. "Astronomy…