Related papers: Method to measure Earth missed by ancient Greeks?
All but a few digital computers used for scientific computations have supported floating-point and digital arithmetic of rather limited numerical precision. The underlying assumptions were that the systems being studied were basically…
Measuring the cosmic ray flux over timescales comparable to the age of the solar system, $\sim 4.5\,$Gyr, could provide a new window on the history of the Earth, the solar system, and even our galaxy. We present a technique to indirectly…
We propose the use of the Earth as a transducer for ultralight dark-matter detection. In particular we point out a novel signal of kinetically mixed dark-photon dark matter: a monochromatic oscillating magnetic field generated at the…
In this work we study in details the influence of pure astronomical refraction on solar metrologic measurements made from ground-based full disk imagery and provide the tools for correcting the measurements and estimating the associated…
It is often thought that the existence of other worlds cannot be scientifically verified and therefore should be treated as philosophical speculation. In this article, I describe several methods for determining if other worlds exist, even…
For the time being, Earth remains the best and only example of a habitable (and inhabited) world. Therefore, it is important to explore and understand the full range of spectral signatures and variability of Earth in order to inform the…
Currently, over forty transiting planets have been discovered by ground-based photometric surveys, and space-based missions like Kepler and CoRoT are expected to detect hundreds more. Follow-up photometric observations from the ground will…
Earthshine is sunlight that has been reflected from the dayside Earth onto the dark side of the Moon and back again to Earth. In recent times, there has been renewed interest in ground-based visible and near-infrared measurements of…
Accurate astrometry is crucial for determining orbits of near-Earth-asteroids (NEAs) and therefore better tracking them. This paper reports on a demonstration of 10 milliarcsecond-level astrometric precision on a dozen NEAs using the Pomona…
Astronaut photography, spanning six decades of human spaceflight, presents a unique Earth observations dataset with immense value for both scientific research and disaster response. Despite its significance, accurately localizing the…
A simple computer-based algorithm has been developed to identify pre-modern coins minted from the same dies, intending mainly coins minted by hand-made dies designed to be applicable to images taken from auction websites or catalogs. Though…
To make physics experiments more directly relevant to everyday life and help students realize how their smart phones or tablets can be used as sensors for scientific measurements, we designed two introductory physics experiments to measure…
Abridged: The golden age of astrophysics is upon us with both grand discoveries (extra-solar planets, dark matter, dark energy) and precision cosmology. Fundamental understanding of the working of stars and galaxies is within reach, thanks…
Accurate measurement of relative distance and orientation of two nearby quantum particles is discussed. We are in particular interested in a realistic description requiring as little prior knowledge about the system as possible. Thus,…
Are we smarter now than Socrates was in his time? Society as a whole certainly enjoys a higher degree of education, but humans as a species probably don't get intrinsically smarter with time. Our knowledge base, however, continues to grow…
Because of the recent technological advances, the key technologies needed for precision space optical astrometry are now in hand. The Microarcsecond Astrometry Probe (MAP) mission concept is designed to find 1 Earth mass planets at 1AU…
I compare an aggressive ground-based gravitational microlensing survey for terrestrial planets to a space-based survey. The Ground-based survey assumes a global network of very wide field-of-view ~2m telescopes that monitor fields in the…
The detection of lower mass planets now being reported via radial velocity and microlensing surveys suggests that they may be ubiquitous. If missions such as Kepler are able to confirm this, the detection and study of rocky planets via…
In this paper, a new technique for camera calibration using only GPS data is presented. A new way of tracking objects that move on a plane in a video is achieved by using the location and size of the bounding box to estimate the distance,…
In his famous work, "Measurement of a Circle," Archimedes described a procedure for measuring both the circumference of a circle and the area it bounds. Implicit in his work is the idea that his procedure defines these quantities. Modern…