Related papers: Expecting the unexpected in the search for extrate…
The constantly increasing rate at which scientific papers are published makes it difficult for researchers to identify papers that currently impact the research field of their interest. Hence, approaches to effectively identify papers of…
The lack of evidence for the existence of extraterrestrial life, even the simplest forms of animal life, makes it is difficult to decide whether the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is more a high-risk, high-payoff endeavor…
The Astro2020 report outlines numerous recommendations that could significantly advance technosignature science. Technosignatures refer to any observable manifestations of extraterrestrial technology, and the search for technosignatures is…
Over the last few decades, the nature of scientific research has changed in response to external influences. Firstly, powerful networked computers have become a standard tool. Secondly, society presses ever harder for research to deliver…
Our Universe is a vast, tantalizing enigma - a mystery that has aroused humankind's innate curiosity for eons. Begging questions on alien lifeforms have been thus far unfruitful, even with the bounding advancements we have embarked upon in…
In this article an analysis of the fundamentals used to search for extraterrestrial artificial signals in the galaxy, which have been developing for more than five decades, is presented. It is shown that the key factor for the success of…
For this special issue, the article aims at discussing a few econophysics problems studied so far rather successfully. The following "applications" in micro-econo-physics are considered : (i) financial crashes; it is emphasized that one can…
The Kepler Mission is exploring the diversity of planets and planetary systems. Its legacy will be a catalog of discoveries sufficient for computing planet occurrence rates as a function of size, orbital period, star-type, and insolation…
Research funding systems are not isolated systems - they are embedded in a larger scientific system with an enormous influence on the system. This paper aims to analyze the allocation of competitive research funding from different…
The possibility that extraterrestrial intelligences (ETIs) could be hostile to humanity has been raised as a reason to avoid even trying to contact ETIs. However, there is a distinct shortage of analytical discussion about the risks of an…
Exoplanetary science continues to excite and surprise with its rich diversity. We discuss here some key aspects potentially influencing the range of exoplanetary terrestrial-type atmospheres which could exist in nature. We are motivated by…
Over the past decade, astronomers have been using an increasingly larger number of web-based applications and archives to conduct their research. However, despite the early success in creating links across projects and data centers, the…
Upcoming biosignature searches focus on indirect indicators to infer the presence of life on other worlds. Aside from just signaling the presence of life, however, some biosignatures can contain information about the state that a planet's…
This paper overviews the economics of scientific grants, focusing on the interplay between the inherent uncertainty in research, researchers' incentives, and grant design. Grants differ from traditional market systems and other science and…
In the United States, scientific research in space weather is funded by several Government Agencies including the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA). For commercial purposes, space weather…
The astrobiology is an interdisciplinary science, combining the methods and the means of physics, biology, chemistry and astronomy. Its main purpose is to find out if the exoplanets are habitable and if so, to confirm life on them. The…
Scientific research funding is allocated largely through a system of soliciting and ranking competitive grant proposals. In these competitions, the proposals themselves are not the deliverables that the funder seeks, but instead are used by…
A close partnership between people and partially autonomous machines has enabled decades of space exploration. But to further expand our horizons, our systems must become more capable. Increasing the nature and degree of autonomy - allowing…
Given a reference model that includes all the available variables, projection predictive inference replaces its posterior with a constrained projection including only a subset of all variables. We extend projection predictive inference to…
The last two decades have seen the number of known exoplanets increase from a small handful to nearly 2000 known exoplanets, thousands more planet candidates, and several upcoming missions that are expected to further increase the…