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This is a short account, based on a talk given at the 2024 Moriond Cosmology Conference, of where and why string theory matters in early universe cosmology. It is written for a cosmology audience predisposed to be at best sceptical, and at…
We report observations of stripe-like features in Enceladus' plumes captured simultaneously by Cassini's VIMS-IR and ISS NAC instruments during flyby E17, with similar patterns seen in VIMS-IR data from flyby E13 and E19. These parallel…
We investigate straight-line drawings of topological graphs that consist of a planar graph plus one edge, also called almost-planar graphs. We present a characterization of such graphs that admit a straight-line drawing. The…
Propp recently introduced regions in the hexagonal grid called benzels and stated several enumerative conjectures about the tilings of benzels using two types of prototiles called stones and bones. We resolve two of his conjectures and…
The first papers on o-minimal structures appeared in the mid 1980s, since then the subject has grown into a wide ranging generalisation of semialgebraic, subanalytic and subpfaffian geometry. In these notes we try to show that this is in…
Substructures such as rings, gaps, and cavities are commonly observed in protoplanetary discs and are thought to play a key role in dust evolution and planet formation. However, a fraction of the extended discs (68% dust radii > 30 AU) in…
Generalizing Howie and Greene's characterization of alternating knots, we give a topological characterization of almost alternating knots.
From the sun's location in the Galactic disk, one can use different arm tracers (CO, HII, thermal or ionized or relativistic electrons, masers, cold or hot dust, etc) to locate a tangent to each spiral arm in the disk of the Milky Way…
The identification of the carrier(s) of diffuse interstellar bands (DIBs) is one of the oldest mysteries in stellar spectroscopy. With the advent of 8-10m-class telescopes substantial progress has been made in measuring the properties of…
The topological index of a surface was previously introduced by the first author as the topological analogue of the index of an unstable minimal surface. Here we show that surfaces of arbitrarily high topological index exist.
In this paper we prove that a smooth embedded paper Moebius band must have aspect ratio greater than $\sqrt 3$. We also prove that any sequence of smooth embedded paper Moebius bands whose aspect ratio converges to $\sqrt 3$ must converge,…
This is a survey article on the recent development of "stringy geometry and topology of orbifolds", a new subject of mathematics motivated by orbifold string theory.
Previous symmetry-based database searches have already revealed ubiquitous band topology in nature, while the destiny of band topology under symmetry-breaking is yet to be studied comprehensively. Here we first develop a framework allowing…
To a closed braid in a solid torus we associate a trace graph in a thickened torus in such a way that closed braids are isotopic if and only if their trace graphs can be related by trihedral and tetraherdal moves. For closed braids with a…
We present the results of an ongoing survey of cool, late-type supergiants - the descendants of massive O- and B-type stars - that has systematically detected magnetic fields in these stars using spectropolarimetric observations obtained…
In these lectures I discuss the possibility that superstrings of cosmic length might exist and be observable. I first review the original idea of cosmic strings arising as gauge theory solitons, and discuss in particular their network…
We investigate the possible existence of an extended halo of early-type stars around Cygnus OB2, which is hinted at by near-infrared color-color diagrams, and its relationship to Cygnus OB2 itself, as well as to the nearby association…
The Ophiuchus stellar stream presents a puzzle due to its complicated morphology, with a substructure perpendicular to the main track (spur), a broadened tail (fanning), and a shorter than expected angular extent given its old stellar…
The study of spiral structures in protoplanetary disks is of great importance for understanding of processes in the disks, including planet formation. Bright spiral arms were detected in the disk of young star CQ Tau by Uyama et al. (2020)…
A honeycomb array is an analogue of a Costas array in the hexagonal grid; they were first studied by Golomb and Taylor in 1984. A recent result of Blackburn, Etzion, Martin and Paterson has shown that (in contrast to the situation for…