Related papers: A Modelers' Opacity Wish List
We look at various features of the Standard Model with the purpose of exploring some possibilities of how to seek physical laws beyond it, i.e. at even smaller distances. Only parameters and structure which are not calculable from the…
The evidence for the existence of dark matter in the universe is reviewed. A general picture emerges, where both baryonic and non-baryonic dark matter is needed to explain current observations. In particular, a wealth of observational…
Today, professional instrumentation is dominated by heavily oversubscribed telescopes which focus mainly on a limited number of "fashionable" research topics. As a result, time acquisition for massive star research, including extended…
Based on fundamental properties of light scattering by a particle we reveal the existence of the ultimate upper limit for the light absorption by any partial mode. First, we obtain this result for scattering of a plane wave by a symmetric…
In the last years it is becoming more and more evident the importance in providing to the students, and people in general, a more realistic view on the scientific research world. In this framework many initiatives are beeing carried out to…
Models of the Universe like the Concordance Model today used to interpret cosmological observations give expectation values for many cosmological observable so accurate that frequently peoples speak of Precision Cosmology. The quoted…
In these lectures we first briefly review the main observational facts which imply that most part of matter in the Universe is not visible and some recent intriguing experimental data which would point to a significant contribution to Omega…
Optics of metamaterials is shown to provide interesting table top models of many non-trivial space-time metrics. The range of possibilities is broader than the one allowed in classical general relativity. For example, extraordinary waves in…
Contemporary astronomy benefits of very large and rapidly growing amounts of data in all bands of the electromagnetic spectrum, from long-wavelength radio waves to high energy gamma-rays. Astronomers normally specialize in data taken in one…
A brief white paper is provided, discussing how the particle acceleration mechanisms taking place within astrophysical sources may mimic or mask signatures of new physics and the role that will be played by next-generation gamma-ray…
We show why and when optics needs thickness as well as width or area. Wave diffraction explains the fundamental need for area or diameter of a lens or aperture to achieve some resolution or number of pixels in microscopes and cameras. Now…
There is compelling evidence that the Universe is undergoing a late phase of accelerated expansion. One of the simplest explanations for this behaviour is the presence of dark energy. A plethora of microphysical models for dark energy have…
Black holes are among the most extreme objects that can be found in the Universe and an ideal laboratory for testing fundamental physics. This article will briefly review the basic properties of black holes as expected from general…
The Sun is the most studied of all stars, and thus constitutes a benchmark for stellar models. However, our vision of the Sun is still incomplete, as illustrated by the current debate on its chemical composition. The problem reaches far…
Motivated by considerations in the foundations of quantum mechanics and inspired by the literature on vague predicates, we introduce the concept of an opaque predicate. While in the case of vague predicates there is a kind of indeterminacy…
This is a (very) personal attempt to summarize the status of neutrino astronomy: its scientific motivations, our understanding of natural water and ice as particle detectors and, finally, the detector technology.
Over the last 20+ years, experimentalists have presented tantalizing hints of physics beyond the standard model, but nothing definitive. With the wealth of data from experiments, in particular the collider experiments, it is imperative that…
In these lectures, I describe a variety of efforts to identify or constrain the identity of dark matter by detecting the annihilation or decay products of these particles, or their effects. After reviewing the motivation for indirect…
The hypothesis that neutrinos are massive has a strong experimental support; however, the information we have is quite limited, and many possibilities are open. Theoretical considerations might help fill the gaps (or foresee regularities),…
Opaque scintillators are designed to have a short scattering length such that scintillation photons are probabilistically confined to a small region of space about their origin. The benefit of this feature is that information on the…