Related papers: Ordering the universe with naked-eye observations
Revolutionary advances in both theory and technology have launched cosmology into its most exciting period of discovery yet. Unanticipated components of the universe have been identified, promising ideas for understanding the basic features…
A planetary system consists of a host star and one or more planets, arranged into a particular configuration. Here, we consider what information belongs to the configuration, or ordering, of 4286 Kepler planets in their 3277 planetary…
This conference shows the impressive rate of advances in the observations and theoretical interpretations of large-scale structure. But to explain my feeling that we may still have a lot to learn I offer some comments on our sociology,…
The probability distribution P from which the history of our universe is sampled represents a theory of everything or TOE. We assume P is formally describable. Since most (uncountably many) distributions are not, this imposes a strong…
The actual existence of collections of universes -- multiverses -- is strongly suggested by leading approaches to quantum cosmology, and has been proposed earlier as an attractive way to explain the apparent fine-tuned character of our…
When we are fortunate enough to view an exoplanetary system nearly edge-on, the star and planet periodically eclipse each other. Observations of eclipses (transits and occultations) provide a bonanza of information that cannot be obtained…
The holy grail of exoplanet searches is an exo-Earth, an Earth mass planet in the habitable zone around a nearby star. Mass is the most important parameter of a planet and can only be measured by observing the motion of the star around the…
The early Greek and Indian cosmologies are summarized in this paper. The two traditions appear to have developed independently although after the time of Alexander they were consciously aware of each other. The focus and style of the two…
I will review some results of observational cosmology which critically cast doubt upon the foundations of the standard cosmology: 1) The redshifts of the galaxies are due to the expansion of the Universe; 2) The cosmic microwave background…
It is shown that a notion of natural place is possible within modern physics. For Aristotle, the elements$-$the primary components of the world$-$follow to their natural places in the absence of forces. On the other hand, in general…
For the last 100 years, General Relativity (GR) has taken over the gravitational theory mantle held by Newtonian Gravity for the previous 200 years. This article reviews the status of GR in terms of its self-consistency, completeness, and…
The widespread prevalence of close-in, nearly coplanar super-Earth- and sub-Neptune-sized planets in multiple-planet systems was one of the most surprising results from the Kepler mission. By studying a uniform sample of Kepler "multis"…
The evidence is that the mass of the universe is dominated by an exotic nonbaryonic form of matter largely draped around the galaxies. It approximates an initially low pressure gas of particles that interact only with gravity, but we know…
As observers of the universe we are physical systems within it. If the universe is very large in space and/or time, the probability becomes significant that the data on which we base predictions is replicated at other locations in…
There are many situations where comparison of different groups is of great interest. Considering the ordering of the efficiency of some treatments is an example. We present nonparametric predictive inference (NPI) for the ordering of…
It has long been a primary objective of cosmology to understand the apparent isotropy in our universe and to provide a mathematical formulation for its evolution. A school of thought for its explanation is quiescent cosmology, which already…
Clues as to the geometry of the universe are encoded in the cosmic background radiation. Hot and cold spots in the primordial radiation may be randomly distributed in an infinite universe while in a universe with compact topology…
It is commonly stated that we have entered the era of precision cosmology in which a number of important observations have reached a degree of precision, and a level of agreement with theory, that is comparable with many Earth-based physics…
We develop a general theory for estimating the probability that a galaxy cluster of a given shape exists. The theory is based on the observed result that the distribution of galaxies is very close to quasi-equilibrium, in both its linear…
The obscuration of a celestial body that covers another one in the background will be called a ``hierarchical eclipse''. The most obvious case is that a star or a planet will be hidden from sight by the moon during a lunar eclipse. Four…