Related papers: Scientific Discovery with the James Webb Space Tel…
In the century since Einstein's anno mirabilis of 1905, our concept of the Universe has expanded from Kapteyn's flattened disk of stars only 10 kpc across to an observed horizon about 30 Gpc across that is only a tiny fraction of an…
The most energetic astrophysical sources in the Milky Way, cosmic accelerators capable of producing high-energy cosmic rays, have resisted discovery for over a century. Up to now, astrophysicists sought these sources mainly by scouring the…
One of the primary goals for the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is to observe the first galaxies. Predictions for planned and proposed surveys have typically focused on average galaxy counts, assuming a random distribution of…
Despite the extraordinary successes the two great bastions of $20^{th}$ century science (Quantum Theory and General Relativity) are troubled with serious conceptual and mathematical difficulties. As a result, further growth of fundamental…
In the last ten years, the field of Cherenkov astronomy has become an important contributor to high energy astrophysics with the detection of eight objects at energies above 300 GeV. These observations have advanced our understanding of…
NASA's Great Observatories have opened up the electromagnetic spectrum from space, providing sustained access to wavelengths not accessible from the ground. Together, Hubble, Compton, Chandra, and Spitzer have provided the scientific…
We summarize some of the compelling new scientific opportunities for understanding stars and stellar systems that can be enabled by sub-milliarcsec (sub-mas) angular resolution, UV-Optical spectral imaging observations, which can reveal the…
Astrophysics spans an enormous range of questions on scales from individual planets to the entire cosmos. To address the richness of 21st century astrophysics requires a corresponding richness of telescopes spanning all bands and all…
The new generation of ground-based, large-aperture solar telescopes promises to significantly increase our capabilities to understand the many basic phenomena taking place in the Sun at all atmospheric layers and how they relate to each…
Our current understanding of the low surface brightness universe is quite incomplete, not only in the optical, but also in other wavelength regimes. As a demonstration of the type of science which is facilitated by a virtual observatory, we…
As our capacity to study ever-expanding domains of our science has increased (including the time domain, non-electromagnetic phenomena, magnetized plasmas, and numerous sky surveys in multiple wavebands with broad spatial coverage and…
The American Astronomical Society's WorldWide Telescope (WWT) project enables terabytes of astronomical images, data, and stories to be viewed and shared among researchers, exhibited in science museums, projected into full-dome immersive…
A tremendous amount of radiation is emitted by the Interstellar Medium in the mid- and far-infrared (3-500 {\mu}m) that represents the majority of the light emitted by a galaxy. In this article we motivate ISM studies in the infrared and…
The changing heavens have played a central role in the scientific effort of astronomers for centuries. Galileo's synoptic observations of the moons of Jupiter and the phases of Venus starting in 1610, provided strong refutation of Ptolemaic…
Neutrino telescopes are unrivaled tools to explore the Universe at its most extreme. The current generation of telescopes has shown that very high energy neutrinos are produced in the cosmos, even with hints of their possible origin, and…
Over the next two decades, gravitational-wave (GW) observations are expected to evolve from a discovery-driven endeavour into a precision tool for astrophysics, cosmology, and fundamental physics. Current second-generation ground-based…
In the distant past, astronomy was often intertwined with religion into a unified cosmos. As science became a distinct cultural enterprise, astronomy has witnessed a variety of rich interactions with other fields. Mathematical statistics…
How did the universe evolve? The fine angular scale (l>1000) temperature and polarization anisotropies in the CMB are a Rosetta stone for understanding the evolution of the universe. Through detailed measurements one may address everything…
The World Space Observatory-Ultraviolet (WSO-UV) will provide access to the UV range during the next decade. The instrumentation on board will allow to carry out high resolution imaging, high sensitivity imaging, high resolution (R~55000)…
The last two decades have brought spectacular advances in astrophysics of cosmic rays (CRs) and space- and ground-based astronomy. Launches of missions that employ forefront detector technologies enabled measurements with large effective…