Related papers: Windows on the Universe: Establishing the Infrastr…
This white paper presents an analysis of Astro2020 science priorities and NASA's future astrophysics mission architecture, advocating for a coordinated fleet of \$1--2B missions, smaller than typical Flagship observatories, but…
LISA will open the mHz band of gravitational waves (GWs) to the astronomy community. The strong gravity which powers the variety of GW sources in this band is also crucial in a number of important astrophysical processes at the current…
This special issue is dedicated to starshades: science, engineering, technology and programmatics. Our reasons for organizing this special issue are several fold. First as a new technology and with research accomplished in many…
This invited white paper, submitted to the National Science Foundation in January of 2020, discusses the current challenges faced by the United States astronomical instrumentation community in the era of extremely large telescopes. Some…
The gravitational wave window onto the universe will open in roughly five years, when Advanced LIGO and Virgo achieve the first detections of high frequency gravitational waves, most likely coming from compact binary mergers.…
Human habitation across multiple planets requires communication and social connection between planets. When the infrastructure of a deep space network becomes mature, immersive cyberspace, known as the Metaverse, can exchange diversified…
I review the status of science with wide field surveys. For many decades surveys have been the backbone of astronomy, and the main engine of discovery, as we have mapped the sky at every possible wavelength. Surveys are an efficient use of…
The era of data-intensive astronomy is being ushered in with the increasing size and complexity of observational data across wavelength and time domains, the development of algorithms to extract information from this complexity, and the…
Advances in machine learning over the past decade have resulted in a proliferation of algorithmic applications for encoding, characterizing, and acting on complex data that may contain many high dimensional features. Recently, the emergence…
The interstellar medium is the engine room for galactic evolution. While much is known about the conditions within the ISM, many important areas regarding the formation and evolution of the various phases of the ISM leading to star…
Over the past several decades, unexpected astronomical discoveries have been fueling a new wave of particle model building and are inspiring the next generation of ever-more-sophisticated simulations to reveal the nature of Dark Matter…
All sciences, including astronomy, are now entering the era of information abundance. The exponentially increasing volume and complexity of modern data sets promises to transform the scientific practice, but also poses a number of common…
Time-domain astronomy (TDA) is facing a paradigm shift caused by the exponential growth of the sample size, data complexity and data generation rates of new astronomical sky surveys. For example, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST),…
This is a community white paper submitted to the Decadal Survey in Planetary Science and Astrobiology, reflecting the views of the NASA Astrobiology Program's Research Coordination Network for Ocean Worlds (NOW). We recommend the…
Most major discoveries in astronomy have come from unplanned discoveries made by surveying the Universe in a new way, rather than by testing a hypothesis or conducting an investigation with planned outcomes. Next generation radio continuum…
The hope is that in the near future neutrino astronomy, born with the identification of thermonuclear fusion in the sun and the particle processes controlling the fate of a nearby supernova, will reach throughout and beyond our Galaxy and…
Powerful new observational facilities will come online over the next decade, enabling a number of discovery opportunities in the "Cosmic Frontier", which targets understanding of the physics of the early universe, dark matter and dark…
The field of astronomy has arrived at a turning point in terms of size and complexity of both datasets and scientific collaboration. Commensurately, algorithms and statistical models have begun to adapt --- e.g., via the onset of artificial…
The numerous recent breakthroughs in machine learning (ML) make imperative to carefully ponder how the scientific community can benefit from a technology that, although not necessarily new, is today living its golden age. This Grand…
The investigation of the emergence of life is a major endeavour of science. Astronomy is contributing to it in three fundamental manners: (1) by measuring the chemical enrichment of the Universe, (2) by investigating planet formation and…