Related papers: The Celestial Vault is Not a Dome: Implications fo…
Due to the recent interest shown by astronomers towards the Antarctic Plateau as a potential site for large astronomical facilities, we assisted in the last years to a strengthening of site testing activities in this region, particularly at…
In general relativity, a gravitational horizon (more commonly known as the "apparent horizon") is an imaginary surface beyond which all null geodesics recede from the observer. The Universe has an apparent (gravitational) horizon, but…
The moon, moonlight, phases of the moon and its relatively simple recurring cycle has been of interest since time immemorial to the human beings, navigators, astronomers and astrologers. The fact that its orbit is elliptical as well its…
Vision-Language Models (VLMs) are trained on vast amounts of data captured by humans emulating our understanding of the world. However, known as visual illusions, human's perception of reality isn't always faithful to the physical world.…
Doppler lensing is the apparent change in object size and magnitude due to peculiar velocities. Objects falling into an overdensity appear larger on its near side, and smaller on its far side, than typical objects at the same redshifts.…
We investigate a distortion in redshift-space which causes galaxies to appear to lie in walls concentric about the observer, forming a rough bull's-eye pattern. We simulate what an observer would see in a thin slice of redshift-space,…
A recent analysis of a Lunar Laser Ranging (LLR) data record spanning 38.7 yr revealed an anomalous increase of the eccentricity of the lunar orbit amounting to de/dt_meas = (9 +/- 3) 10^-12 yr^-1. The present-day models of the dissipative…
Prior to the invention of the telescope many astronomers worked out theories of the motion of the Moon. The purpose of such theories was to be able to predict the position of the Moon in the sky. These geometrical models implied a certain…
Cosmological domain walls can be formed as a result of symmetry breaking at any epoch during the evolution of our universe. We study their interaction with a classical macroscopic object, like Earth or a satellite in Earth's orbit. We set…
Looming, traditionally defined as the relative expansion of objects in the observer's retina, is a fundamental visual cue for perception of threat and can be used to accomplish collision free navigation. In this paper we derive novel…
The Cosmic Radio Dipole is of fundamental interest to cosmology. Recent studies revealed open questions about the nature of the observed Cosmic Radio Dipole. We use simulated source count maps to test a linear and a quadratic estimator for…
We address three major questions in astronomy, namely the detection of biosignatures on habitable exoplanets, the geophysics of exoplanets and cosmology. To achieve this goal, two requirements are needed. First a very large aperture to…
As experiment charts new territory at the electroweak scale, the enterprise to characterise all possible theories becomes all the more necessary. In the absence of new particles, this ambitious enterprise is attainable and has led to the…
We outline a concept for OWL-Moon, a 50-100m aperture telescope located on the surface of the Moon, to address three major areas in astronomy, namely the detection of biosignatures on habitable exoplanets, the geophysics of exoplanets, and…
Large language models demonstrate impressive results across diverse tasks but are still known to hallucinate, generating linguistically plausible but incorrect answers to questions. Uncertainty quantification has been proposed as a strategy…
The paper proposes an alternative to the Foucault pendulum for detecting various movements of rotation of the Earth. Calculations suggest that if the duration of a "free" fall becomes longer the eastward deflection will be amplified in…
Scale invariance is expected in empty Universe models, while the presence of matter tends to suppress it. As shown recently, scale invariance is certainly absent in cosmological models with densities equal to or above the critical value…
Telescopes mounted with polarizers can study the neutral points of the Earths atmosphere, the solar corona, the surface of planets/moons of the Solar System, distant stars, galaxies and nebulae. These examples demonstrate well that…
Cosmology contributes a good deal to the investigation of variation of fundamental physical constants. High resolution data is available and allows for detailed analysis over cosmological distances and a multitude of methods were developed.…
It is shown how repeated observations of the sunset from various points up a tall building can be used to determine the Earth's radius. The same observations can also be used, at some latitudes, to deduce an approximate value for the amount…