Related papers: Lessons from Mayan Astronomy
This meeting is entitled "A Century of Cosmology." But most of the papers being given here are based on work done very recently and there is really no attempt being made to critically review what has taken place in the last 90 or 100 years.…
Even when completely and consistently formulated, a fundamental theory of physics and cosmological boundary conditions may not give unambiguous and unique predictions for the universe we observe; indeed inflation, string/M theory, and…
Over the past decade, sky surveys such as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey have proven the power of large data sets for answering fundamental astrophysical questions. This observational progress, based on a synergy of advances in telescope…
However, the observations encompassed by classical physics excludes the observer from the physical reality, yet the deep-down understandung of nature --{\it the quantum theory}-- can not avoid the intrusion of observer into the measurement…
The advent of deep, wide, accurate, digital photometric surveys exemplified by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) has had a profound impact on studies of the Milky Way. In the past decade, we have transitioned from a scarcity to an…
Nearly a century after the true nature of galaxies as distant "island universes" was established, their origin and evolution remain great unsolved problems of modern astrophysics. One of the most promising ways to investigate galaxy…
Astronomy and astrophysics are witnessing dramatic increases in data volume as detectors, telescopes and computers become ever more powerful. During the last decade, sky surveys across the electromagnetic spectrum have collected hundreds of…
Scientific cosmology has now reached its period of maturity with the establishment of a standard model, which is the theory of an expanding universe. The question of whether this expansion resolves itself, in the past, into a singularity…
Last couple of decades have been the golden age for cosmology. High quality data confirmed the broad paradigm of standard cosmology but have thrusted upon us a preposterous composition for the universe which defies any simple explanation,…
Galactic archaeology is the study of the history of star formation and chemical evolution in the Milky Way, based on present-day stellar populations. Studies of young stars are a key anchor point for Galactic archaeology, since quantities…
In this short review, we trace the evolution of inference in astronomy, highlighting key milestones rather than providing an exhaustive survey. We focus on the shift from classical optimization to Bayesian inference, the rise of…
The Art, Astronomy, Technology and Society (AATS) project is an artscience collaboration which dwells in the inbetweenness layer of scientific understanding of the origins of planets and the embodied, intuited ways of knowing. One of the…
Fundamental changes are taking place in the way we do astronomy. In twenty years time, it is likely that most astronomers will never go near a cutting-edge telescope, which will be much more efficiently operated in service mode. They will…
This textbook provides a systematic treatment of statistical machine learning for astronomical research through the lens of Bayesian inference, developing a unified framework that reveals connections between modern data analysis techniques…
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…
Access to microarcsecond astrometry is now routine in the radio, infrared, and optical domains. In particular the publication of the second data release from the Gaia mission made it possible for every astronomer to work with easily…
Whilst astronomy as a science is historically founded on observations at optical wavelengths, studying the Universe in other bands has yielded remarkable discoveries, from pulsars in the radio, signatures of the Big Bang at submm…
Astronomy is at a turning point in its history and in its relations with the Indigenous peoples who are the generational stewards of land where several of our main observatories are located. The controversy regarding the further development…
In this paper, using a significantly improved version of the model-independent, cosmographic approach to cosmology (John, M. V. 2004, ApJ, 614, 1), we address an important question: Was there a decelerating past for the universe? To answer…
A fundamental problem in science is how to make logical inferences from scientific data. Mere data does not suffice since additional information is necessary to select a domain of models or hypotheses and thus determine the likelihood of…