Related papers: What Makes A Discovery
We present several philosophical ideas emerging from the studies of complex systems. We make a brief introduction to the basic concepts of complex systems, for then defining "abstraction levels". These are useful for representing…
New scientific ideas drive progress, yet measuring scientific novelty remains challenging. We use natural language processing to detect the origin and impact of new ideas in scientific publications. To validate our methods, we analyze Nobel…
We discuss the use of the Bayesian evidence ratio, or Bayes factor, for model selection in astronomy. We treat the evidence ratio as a statistic and investigate its distribution over an ensemble of experiments, considering both simple…
Philosophers of science have long postulated how collective scientific knowledge grows. Empirical validation has been challenging due to limitations in collecting and systematizing large historical records. Here, we capitalize on the…
I propose a normative updating rule, extended Bayesianism, for the incorporation of probabilistic information arising from the process of becoming more aware. Extended Bayesianism generalizes standard Bayesian updating to allow the…
In astronomical and cosmological studies one often wishes to infer some properties of an infinite-dimensional field indexed within a finite-dimensional metric space given only a finite collection of noisy observational data. Bayesian…
I will propose a new way of advancing white dwarf research. Open science is a method of doing research that lets everyone who has something to say about the subject take part in the problem solving process. Already now, the amount of…
Bayesian statistics is based on the subjective definition of probability as {\it ``degree of belief''} and on Bayes' theorem, the basic tool for assigning probabilities to hypotheses combining {\it a priori} judgements and experimental…
We describe a thought experiment using an isolated system of known parameters and assuming the correctness of Clausius and Boltzmann descriptions of entropy. The experiment produced an astronomical increase in the number of possible ways…
A goal in the forensic interpretation of scientific evidence is to make an inference about the source of a trace of unknown origin. The evidence is composed of the following three elements: (a) the trace of unknown origin, (b) a sample from…
The physics results of high energy gamma-ray astronomy are reported, emphasizing recent achievements with ground-based detectors. This includes some of the instrumental developments and latest projects. The fundamental contribution of the…
Continuum gamma-ray emission produced by interactions of cosmic rays with interstellar matter and radiation fields is a probe of non-thermal particle populations in galaxies. After decades of continuous improvements in experimental…
Exoplanet research is carried out at the limits of the capabilities of current telescopes and instruments. The studied signals are weak, and often embedded in complex systematics from instrumental, telluric, and astrophysical sources.…
Recent work in cognitive science has uncovered a diversity of explanatory values, or dimensions along which we judge explanations as better or worse. We propose a Bayesian account of how these values fit together to guide explanation. The…
Physical cosmology tries to understand the Universe at large with its origin and evolution. Observational and experimental situations in cosmology do not allow us to proceed purely based on the empirical means. We examine in which sense our…
The development of inventions is theorized as a process of searching and recombining existing knowledge components. Previous studies under this theory have examined myriad characteristics of recombined knowledge and their performance…
This paper is intended to offer a pedagogical treatment of cosmological modeling and inflationary cosmology. In recent years, inflation has become accepted as a standard scenario making predictions that are testable by observations of the…
Gamma rays constitute a privileged point of view for the study of the extreme Universe. Unlike charged cosmic rays, which are thought to have a common origin, gamma rays are not deflected by galactic and intergalactic magnetic fields. This…
[Abridged] Some cosmological theories propose that the observable universe is a small part of a much larger universe in which parameters describing the low-energy laws of physics vary from region to region. How can we reasonably assess a…
Whilst astronomy as a science is historically founded on observations at optical wavelengths, studying the Universe in other bands has yielded remarkable discoveries, from pulsars in the radio, signatures of the Big Bang at submm…