Related papers: What Makes A Discovery
The study of the Universe and all its contents, the physical phenomena and the evolution of the sky objects has always attracted the Humanity. The Astronomy begins to try to explain these things, others sciences too. Therefore, we think a…
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,…
Cosmology is living through fascinating times, where new observations from ground and space telescopes are questioning the established paradigm, the so-called Lambda Cold Dark Matter model. The particle nature of Dark Matter is severely…
In an information-rich world, people's time and attention must be divided among rapidly changing information sources and the diverse tasks demanded of them. How people decide which of the many sources, such as scientific articles or…
The explosive growth of scientists, scientific journals, articles and findings in recent years exponentially increases the difficulty scientists face in navigating prior knowledge. This challenge is exacerbated by uncertainty about the…
In this short review, we trace the evolution of inference in astronomy, highlighting key milestones rather than providing an exhaustive survey. We focus on the shift from classical optimization to Bayesian inference, the rise of…
I provide an incomplete inventory of the astronomical variability that will be found by next-generation time-domain astronomical surveys. These phenomena span the distance range from near-Earth satellites to the farthest Gamma Ray Bursts.…
We investigate indeterminism in physical observations. For this, we introduce a distinction between genuinely indeterministic (creation-1 and discovery-1) observational processes, and fully deterministic (creation-2 and discovery-2)…
Recent work takes both philosophical and scientific progress to consist in acquiring factive epistemic states such as knowledge. However, much of this work leaves unclear what entity is the subject of these epistemic states. Furthermore, by…
In this paper we outline the framework of mathematical statistics with which one may study the properties of galaxy distance estimators. We describe, within this framework, how one may formulate the problem of distance estimation as a…
The job of a physicist is to describe Nature. General features, hypotheses and theories help to describe physics phenomena at a more abstract, fundamental level, and are sometimes tacitly assigned some sort of real existence; doing so…
Observational astronomy is plagued with selection effects that must be taken into account when interpreting data from astronomical surveys. Because of the physical limitations of observing time and instrument sensitivity, datasets are…
Consciousness is the process by which one attributes `meaning' to the world. Considering F$\phi$llesdal's definition of `meaning' as the joint product of all `evidence' that is available to those who `communicate', we conclude that science…
This perspective chapter briefly surveys: (1) past growth in the use of Bayesian methods in astrophysics; (2) current misconceptions about both frequentist and Bayesian statistical inference that hinder wider adoption of Bayesian methods by…
Despite the extraordinary successes the two great bastions of $20^{th}$ century science (Quantum Theory and General Relativity) are troubled with serious conceptual and mathematical difficulties. As a result, further growth of fundamental…
We describe a Bayesian formalism for analyzing individual gravitational-wave events in light of the rest of an observed population. This analysis reveals how the idea of a "population-informed prior" arises naturally from a suitable…
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…
Neutrino astrophysics offers new perspectives on the Universe investigation: high energy neutrinos, produced by the most energetic phenomena in our Galaxy and in the Universe, carry complementary (if not exclusive) information about the…
Galaxies represent the visible fabric of the Universe and there has been considerable progress recently in both observational and theoretical studies. The underlying goal is to understand the present-day diversity of galaxy forms, masses…
An emerging theme in modern astrophysics is the connection between astronomical observations and the underlying physical phenomena that drive our cosmos. Both the mechanisms responsible for the observed astrophysical phenomena and the tools…