Related papers: Ordering the universe with naked-eye observations
In Dantean cosmography the Universe is described as a series of concentric spheres with all the known planets embedded in their rotation motion, the Earth located at the centre and Lucifer at the centre of the Earth. Beyond these "celestial…
The Cosmological Principle in it's various versions states that: (i) the Galaxy does not occupy a particular position, (ii) the Universe is homogeneous and isotropic. This statement does not agree with the recent astronomical observations…
The Copernican Principle (which says the Earth and sun are not unique) should have observational consequences and thus be testable. Galileo Galilei thought he could measure the true angular diameters of stars with his telescope; according…
Arising out of an attempt at a new foundations of mathematics, in which relations are more primitive than sets, and out of the theoretical physicists' concept of underlying causes of empirical phenomena, the idea of a purely mathematical…
Evidence for fine-tuning of physical parameters suitable for life can perhaps be explained by almost any combination of providence, coincidence or multiverse. A multiverse usually includes parts unobservable to us, but if the theory for it…
The observable universe is necessarily hospitable for life. There are indications, however, that the laws of physics and cosmological parameters need not take the form and values observed, and if they were slightly different life could not…
The Jupiter-Saturn 2:5 near-commensurability is analyzed in a fully analytic Hamiltonian planetary theory. Computations for the Sun-Jupiter-Saturn system, extending to the third order of the masses and to the 8th degree in the…
Among all the theories proposed to explain the 'anomalous' perihelion precession of Mercury's orbit announced in 1859 by Le Verrier, the general theory of relativity proposed by Einstein in November 1915, alone could calculate Mercury's…
In this essay we discuss the difference in views of the Universe as seen by two different observers. While one of the observers follows a geodesic congruence defined by the geometry of the cosmological model, the other observer follows the…
Neural networks have provided powerful approaches to solve various scientific problems. Many of them are even difficult for human experts who are good at accessing the physical laws from experimental data. We investigate whether neural…
Many have have taken in hand to write a treatise on the Star of Bethlehem, particularly on Kepler's explanation as a stellar birth, triggered by Mars joining a great conjunction (a meeting of Jupiter and Saturn), as he observed it in…
Cosmology has come a long way from being based on a small number of observations to being a data-driven precision science. We discuss the questions "What is observable?", "What in the Universe is knowable?" and "What are the fundamental…
The topology of the universe is discussed in relation to the singularity problem. We explore the possibility that the initial state of the universe might have had a structure with 3-Klein bottle topology, which would lead to a model of a…
Georges Lemaitre introduced the term "phoenix universe" to describe an oscillatory cosmology with alternating periods of gravitational collapse and expansion. This model is ruled out observationally because it requires a supercritical mass…
The Solar System includes two planets --- Mercury and Mars --- significantly less massive than Earth, and all evidence indicates that planets of similar size orbit many stars. In fact, one of the first exoplanets to be discovered is a…
All inhabitants of this universe, from galaxies to people, are finite. Yet the universe itself is often assumed to be infinite. If instead the universe is topologically finite, then light and matter can take chaotic paths around the compact…
Jacobus Cornelius Kapteyn (1851-1922) presented a model for the distribution of stars in space together with a dynamical interpretation in terms of an equilibrium between the gravitational field of the stars and their random motion and…
The flat matter dominated Universe that dominated cosmological model building for much of the past 20 years does not correspond to the Universe in which we live. This has profound implications both for our understanding of dark matter, and…
Triangle centers are usually studied individually or through special geometric relationships, but little attention has been given to global structure among them. In this paper we introduce several natural ways to order triangle centers,…
X-ray observations of clusters at different redshifts are presented and compared. For the nearest cluster -- the Virgo cluster -- we show a comparison of the galaxy distribution and the distribution of the intra-cluster gas. Although the…