Related papers: Overview of the Galileo Project
Project Blue is designed to deliver a small coronagraphic space telescope mission to low-Earth orbit capable of detecting an Earth-like planet in the habitable zones of the Sun-like stars Alpha Centauri A and B within the next 4 years…
Direct detection and characterization of Earth-like planets around Sun-like stars is a core task for evaluating the prevalence of habitability and life in the Universe. Here, we discuss a promising option for achieving this goal, which is…
The goal of this talk is to give an overview of the current status of the development of the Einstein Telescope and Cosmic Explorer ground based gravitational wave (GW) detectors and of their foreseen scientific goals. These detectors will…
Our Galaxy is a complex machine in which several processes operate simultaneously: metal-poor gas is accreted, is chemically enriched by dying stars, and then drifts inwards, surrendering its angular momentum to stars; new stars are formed…
Although the photon structure is most efficiently studied with the accelerator instruments, there is also a scientifically complementary potential in investigations on photons produced in the outer space. This potential is already being…
The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is the major ground-based gamma-ray observatory planned for the next decade and beyond. Consisting of two large atmospheric Cherenkov telescope arrays (one in the southern hemisphere and one in the…
The goal of the Laser Interferometric Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) is to detect and study gravitational waves of astrophysical origin. Direct detection of gravitational waves holds the promise of testing general relativity in the…
Time-domain astrophysics continues to grow rapidly, with the inception of new surveys drastically increasing data volumes. Democratised, distributed approaches to training sets for machine learning classifiers are crucial to make the most…
Humanity has wondered whether we are alone for millennia. The discovery of life elsewhere in the Universe, particularly intelligent life, would have profound effects, comparable to those of recognizing that the Earth is not the center of…
An alternative for the construction of fundamental theories is the introduction of Galileons. These are fields whose action leads to non higher than second-order equations of motion. As this is a necessary but not sufficient condition to…
The Cosmic-Ray Extremely Distributed Observatory (CREDO) is a project dedicated to global studies of extremely extended cosmic-ray phenomena, the cosmic-ray ensembles (CRE), beyond the capabilities of existing detectors and observatories.…
The ESA Gaia mission uses two telescopes to create the most ambitious survey of the Galaxy. The angle between them must be known with exquisite precision and accuracy. An interferometer: the Basic Angle Monitoring system measures its…
OTELO is an emission-line object survey carried out with the red tunable filter of the instrument OSIRIS at the GTC, whose aim is to become the deepest emission-line object survey to date. With 100% of the data of the first pointing finally…
Some 400 years after Galileo, modern telescopes have enabled humanity to "see" what the natural eye cannot. Astronomical images today contain information about incredibly large objects located across vast distances and reveal information…
The Search for Extra-terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) using radio telescopes is an area of research that is now more than 50 years old. Thus far, both targeted and wide-area surveys have yet to detect artificial signals from intelligent…
Over the past few years, astronomers have detected thousands of planets and candidate planets by observing their periodic transits in front of their host stars. Related methods might soon allow studies of the chemical imprints of life in…
We review cosmological backgrounds of gravitational waves with a particular attention to the scientific potential of the eLISA/NGO mission. After an overview of cosmological backgrounds and detectors, we consider different cosmological…
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.
Observing the first galaxies formed during the reionisation epoch, i.e. approximately within the first billion years after the Big Bang, remains one of the challenges of contemporary astrophysics. Several efforts are being undertaken to…
Most major discoveries in astronomy have come from unplanned discoveries made by surveying the Universe in a new way, rather than by testing a hypothesis or conducting an investigation with planned outcomes. Next generation radio continuum…