Related papers: New Problems for a New Century
This is a written version of a series of lectures aimed at undergraduate students in astrophysics/particle theory/particle experiment. We summarize the important progress made in recent years towards understanding high energy astrophysical…
I will highlight and discuss some of the studies of the stellar population in the Galaxy that will become possible with or will greatly advantage of the capability of a Wide Field of view X-ray Telescope (WFXT) mission. This mission…
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…
Studies of galaxy evolution at optical and near-infrared wavelengths have reached an interesting point in their historical development and the arrival of a new millenium provides an appropriate occasion to review the overall direction in…
The study of massive X-ray binaries provides important observational diagnostics for a number of fundamental astrophysical issues, such as the evolution of massive stars, the stellar winds of massive stars, the formation of compact objects…
Data volumes from multiple sky surveys have grown from gigabytes into terabytes during the past decade, and will grow from terabytes into tens (or hundreds) of petabytes in the next decade. This exponential growth of new data both enables…
Multi-messenger astronomy has experienced an explosive development in the past few years. While not being a particularly young field, it has recently attracted a lot of attention by several major discoveries and unprecedented observation…
Since their first discovery in the late 1960s, Gamma-ray bursts have attracted an exponentially growing interest from the international community due to their central role in the most highly debated open questions of the modern research of…
Recent years have seen dramatic progress in cosmology and particle astrophysics. So much so that anyone who dares to offer an overview would certainly risk him- or herself for being incomplete and biased at best, and even incorrect due to…
In spite of great progress over the last $\sim 10$ years, especially thanks to HST, a number of exciting open problem still puzzle astronomers working on globular clusters in our own and other galaxies. These problems range from determining…
Both the basic educational contents for students and study programs for science teachers include several topics in physics and astronomy, from the simplest ones to others as advanced as nuclear fusion to explain stellar evolution and…
In the last decade, neutrino astronomy has taken off with two major breakthroughs, the first observation of high-energy astrophysical neutrinos in 2013 and the first evidence for gamma-rays and neutrinos from a single object published in…
An extensive theoretical literature predicts that X-ray Polarimetry can directly determine relevant physical and geometrical parameters of astrophysical sources, and discriminate between models further than allowed by spectral and timing…
I first comment on some recent advances in computing equipment for CPU-intensive numerical simulations, and on possible developments in the near future. I then discuss some particularly important and yet unsolved problems in dynamics and…
Microlensing is a mature and established tool of research over a broad range of astrophysical issues, from dark matter searches to the detection of new extrasolar planets of very low mass, down to Earth-size. This volume collects the…
The physics potential of the next generation of Gamma Ray Telescopes in exploring the Gamma Ray Horizon is discussed. It is shown that the reduction in the Gamma Ray detection threshold might open the window to use precise determinations of…
While both society and astronomy have evolved greatly over the past fifty years, the academic institutions and incentives that shape our field have remained largely stagnant. As a result, the astronomical community is faced with several…
This article is the written version of the closing talk presented at the conference `A Century of Cosmology' held at San Servolo, Italy, in August 2007. I focus on the prospects of constraining fundamental physics from cosmological…
As the panel on Planetary Systems and Star Formation (PSF) is fully aware, the next decade will see major advances in our understanding of these areas of research. To quote from their charge, these advances will occur in studies of solar…
The field of high-energy neutrino astronomy has seen rapid progress over the last 15 years, with the development and operation of the first large-volume detectors. Here, we review the motivation for construction of these large instruments…