Related papers: Ordering the universe with naked-eye observations
Our knowledge of the Universe remains discovery-led: in the absence of adequate physics-based theory, interpretation of new results requires a scientific methodology. Commonly, scientific progress in astrophysics is motivated by the…
Four planets have recently been discovered by gravitational microlensing. The most recent of these discoveries is the lowest-mass planet known to exist around a normal star. The detection of planets in gravitational microlensing events was…
The idea of a Mutiverse is controversial, although it is a natural possible solution to particle physics and cosmological fine-tuning problems (FTPs). Here I explore the analogy between the Multiverse proposal and the proposal that there…
The quest for life in the Universe is often affected by the free use of extrapolations of our phenomenological geocentric knowledge. We point out that the existence of a living organism, and a population of organisms, requires the existence…
Modern cosmology successfully deals with the origin and the evolution of the Universe at large scales, but it is unable to completely answer the question about the nature of the fundamental objects that it is describing. As a matter of…
Our current understanding of the Universe is established through the pristine measurements of structure in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and the distribution and shapes of galaxies tracing the large scale structure (LSS) of the…
The development of science and technology has progressively demonstrated the ability of humankind to understand and manipulate the physical world, and it has also shown some fundamental limitations to predictability of physical events. This…
We derive, in order of magnitude, the observed astrophysical and cosmological scales in the Universe, from neutron stars to superclusters of galaxies, up to, asymptotically, the observed radius of the Universe. This result is obtained by…
Do We Inhabit The Best O All Possible Worlds? German mathematician Gottfried Leibniz thought so, writing in 1710 that our planet, warts and all, must be the most optimal one imaginable. Leibniz's idea was roundly scorned as unscientific…
Terrestrial exoplanets are on the verge of joining the ranks of astronomically accessible objects. Interpreting their observable characteristics, and informing decisions on instrument design and use, will hinge on the ability to model these…
Mass and radius are two of the most fundamental properties of an astronomical object. Increasingly, new planet discoveries are being announced with a measurement of one of these terms, but not both. This has led to a growing need to…
While many observations support the validity of Einstein's general relativity as the theory of gravity, there are yet many that suggest the presence of new physics. In order to explain the high-redshift supernovae Ia observations together…
The Hilbert-Einstein equations are insufficient to describe the geometry of the Universe, as they only constrain a local geometrical property: curvature. A global knowledge of the geometry of space, if possible, would require measurement of…
In this paper we address the problem of computing a preliminary orbit of a celestial body from one topocentric position vector and a very short arc (VSA) of optical observations. Using the conservation laws of the two-body dynamics, we…
A galaxy's orientation is one of its most basic observable properties. Astronomers once assumed that galaxies are randomly oriented in space, however it is now clear that some have preferred orientations with respect to their surroundings.…
The longitudes of perihelia and orbital poles of the solar system's dozen or so most remote detected objects are clustered in a manner inconsistent with that of a random sample of uniformly distributed orbits. While small number statistics…
Quantum theory, general relativity, the standard model of particle physics, and the $\Lambda$CDM model of cosmology have all been spectacularly successful within their respective regimes of applicability, but many central problems remain…
For two decades the hot big-bang model has been referred to as the standard cosmology -- and for good reason. For just as long cosmologists have known that there are fundamental questions that are not addressed by the standard cosmology and…
It was believed until very recently that a near-equatorial satellite would always keep up with the planet's equator (with oscillations in inclination, but without a secular drift). As explained in Efroimsky and Goldreich (2004), this…
Despite great advances in our understanding of the formation of the Solar System, the evolution of the Earth, and the chemical basis for life, we are not much closer than the ancient Greeks to an answer of whether life has arisen and…