Related papers: Hubble's Nobel Prize
The threat posed to humanity by global warming has led scientists to question the nature of their activities and the need to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from research. Until now, most studies have aimed at quantifying the carbon…
Some few hundred million years after the big bang the Universe was illuminated by the first stars and galaxies thereby bringing an end to the cosmological dark ages. Since the installation of WFC3 on the Hubble Space Telescope our ability…
We aim to carry out an assessment of the scientific value of Oppenheimer's research on black holes in order to determine and weigh possible factors to explain its neglect by the scientific community, and even by Oppenheimer himself. Dealing…
Some seventy five years ago, the concept of dark matter was introduced by Zwicky to explain the anomaly of galactic rotation curves, though there is no clue to its identity or existence to date. In 1997, the author had introduced a model of…
A brief description of the work for which the first half of the Nobel prize for physics for the year 2002 is presented.
Astronomy has a distinguished tradition of using technology to accelerate the quality and effectiveness of science, and data-intensive initiatives such as the Virtual Observatory lead the way amongst other fields of science. However,…
The lunar surface has historically been considered an optimal site for a broad range of astronomical telescopes. That assumption, which has come to be somewhat reflexive, is critically examined in this paper and found to be poorly…
The past four years have seen a scientific revolution through the birth of a new field: gravitational-wave astronomy. The first detection of gravitational waves---recognised by the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics---provided unprecedented tests…
Utilisation of the material and energy resources of the Solar System will be essential for the development of a sustainable space economy and associated infrastructure. Science will be a major beneficiary of a space economy, even if its…
Arguably, black hole is perhaps the most popular scientific term among the lay person. Perhaps it is the phrasing of the term 'black hole' which appeals to the popular imagination, offering some exotic visual of a cosmic object to the…
To-date, all human economic activity has depended on the resources of a single planet, and it has long been recognized that developments in space exploration could in principle open our closed planetary economy to external resources of…
For 100 years since galaxies were found to be flying apart from each other, astronomers have been trying to determine how fast. The expansion, characterized by the Hubble constant, H0, is confused locally by peculiar velocities caused by…
With an initial requirement to make observations a minimum of 5-10 years, Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has continued to operate well for 30 years. It has relied upon five servicing missions to repair and replace essential components. Since…
While one of the IAU's missions is to "serve as the internationally recognized authority for assigning designations to celestial bodies and surface features on them", the participation of the public in the naming of celestial objects has…
Nobel Prizes are commonly seen to be among the most prestigious achievements of our times. Based on mining several million citations, we quantitatively analyze the processes driving paradigm shifts in science. We find that groundbreaking…
Stephen Hawking's recent concession that black holes do not irretrievably eradicate information after all has garnered much attention. It is refreshing to see the public focused, if just for a moment, on an important conundrum that has…
Galaxy clusters as gravitational lenses play a unique role in astrophysics and cosmology: they permit mapping the dark matter distribution on a range of scales; they reveal the properties of high and intermediate redshift background…
The impact of exoplanet science on both the scientific community and on the general public is presented through various indicators and examples. It is estimated that about 3-4% of all refereed astronomy articles focus on exoplanets, and…
Throughout history, a relatively small number of individuals have made a profound and lasting impact on science and society. Despite long-standing, multi-disciplinary interests in understanding careers of elite scientists, there have been…
Neutrino astronomy is on the verge of discovering new sources, and this will lead to important advances in astrophysics, cosmology, particle physics, and nuclear physics. This paper is meant for non-experts, so that they might better…