Related papers: 21st Century Statistical and Computational Challen…
In this manuscript I review the mathematics and physics that underpins recent work using the clustering of galaxies to derive cosmological model constraints. I start by describing the basic concepts, and gradually move on to some of the…
Astronomers are often confronted with funky populations and distributions of objects: brighter objects are more likely to be detected; targets are selected based on colour cuts; imperfect classification yields impure samples. Failing to…
The understanding and modeling of the structure and evolution of stars is based on statistical physics as well as on hydrodynamics. Today, a precise identification and proper description of the physical processes at work in stellar…
We provide a brief, and inevitably incomplete overview of the use of Machine Learning (ML) and other AI methods in astronomy, astrophysics, and cosmology. Astronomy entered the big data era with the first digital sky surveys in the early…
The recent observations of galaxy and dark matter clumpy distributions have provided new elements to the understating of the problem of cosmological structure formation. The strong clumpiness characterizing galaxy structures seems to be…
High-volume feature-rich data sets are becoming the bread-and-butter of 21st century astronomy but present significant challenges to scientific discovery. In particular, identifying scientifically significant relationships between sets of…
Bayesian Inference is a powerful approach to data analysis that is based almost entirely on probability theory. In this approach, probabilities model {\it uncertainty} rather than randomness or variability. This thesis is composed of a…
The stellar populations of galaxies contain a wealth of detailed information. From the youngest, most massive stars, to almost invisible remnants, the history of star formation is encoded in the stars that make up a galaxy. Extracting some,…
Major advancements in space science and detector technology brought about a revolution in global astrometry, the science of measuring distances and motions of stars in the Milky Way and in the local universe. From the first ESA astrometric…
Recent X-ray observations have had a major impact on topics ranging from protostars to cosmology. They have also drawn attention to important and general physical processes that currently limit our understanding of thermal and nonthermal…
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 integrated spectro-photometric properties of star clusters are subject to large cluster-to-cluster variations. They are distributed in non trivial ways around the average properties predicted by standard population synthesis models.…
Breakthroughs in physics and astrophysics are often driven by technological advances, with the recent detection of gravitational waves being one such example. This white paper focuses upon how improved astrometric and spectroscopic…
Galaxy formation simulations are an essential part of the modern toolkit of astrophysicists and cosmologists alike. Astrophysicists use the simulations to study the emergence of galaxy populations from the Big Bang, as well as problems…
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…
Exoplanet research is carried out at the limits of the capabilities of current telescopes and instruments. The studied signals are weak, and often embedded in complex systematics from instrumental, telluric, and astrophysical sources.…
Uncertainty quantification is a key part of astronomy and physics; scientific researchers attempt to model both statistical and systematic uncertainties in their data as best as possible, often using a Bayesian framework. Decisions might…
Data mining techniques, including clustering and classification tasks, for the automatic information extraction from large datasets are increasingly demanded in several scientific fields. In particular, in the astrophysical field, large…
The nature of scientific and technological data collection is evolving rapidly: data volumes and rates grow exponentially, with increasing complexity and information content, and there has been a transition from static data sets to data…
The past few years have seen several breakthroughs in particle astrophysics and cosmology. In several cases, new observations can only be explained with the introduction of new fundamental physics. In this talk I summarize some of these…