What is the ethical import of contemporary scientific cosmology? How does our understanding of the universe relate to our most pressing social concerns? How do the disparate fields of theology, ethics, and the sciences relate to each other? Murphy and Ellis offer a coherent construction of these relations and show how a particular moral vision-a "kenotic" ethic-is supported "from below" by the social sciences and "from above" by theology. The theological import of contemporary cosmology, they argue, points ultimately to an ethic that centers on self-sacrifice and nonviolence. In ambition, rigor, and scale, in its search for an integrated and coherent worldview at a time of unprecedented complexity and uncertainty, readers will find this volume daring and important.

Where do most stars (and the planetary systems that surround them) in the Milky Way form? What determines whether a young star cluster remains bound (such as an open or globular cluster), or disperses to join the field stars in the disc of the Galaxy? These questions not only impact understanding of the origins of stars and planetary systems like our own (and the potential for life to emerge that they represent), but also galaxy formation and evolution, and ultimately the story of star formation over cosmic time in the Universe. This volume will help readers understand our current views concerning the answers to these questions as well as frame new questions that will be answered by the European Space Agency's Gaia satellite that was launched in late 2013. The book contains the elaborated notes of lectures given at the 42nd Saas-Fee Advanced Course "Dynamics of Young Star Clusters & Associations" by Cathie Clarke (University of Cambridge) who presents the theory of star formation and dynamical evolution of stellar systems, Robert Mathieu (University of Wisconsin) who discusses the kinematics of star clusters and associations, and I. Neill Reid (S pace Telescope Science Institute) who provides an overview of the stellar populations in the Milky Way and speculates on from whence came the Sun. As part of the Saas-Fee Advanced Course Series, the book offers an in-depth introduction to the field serving as a starting point for Ph.D. research and as a reference work for professional astrophysicists.

A contemporary of Galileo and a forerunner of Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) was a pioneering German scientist and a pivotal figure in the history of astronomy. This colorful, well-researched biography brings the man and his scientific discoveries to life, showing how his contributions were every bit as important as those of Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton. It was Kepler who first advocated the completely new concept of a physical force emanating from the sun that controls the motion of the planets--today we call this gravity and take it for granted. He also established that the orbits of the planets were elliptical in shape and not circular. And his three laws of planetary motion are still used by contemporary astronomers and space scientists. The author focuses not just on these and other momentous breakthroughs but also on Kepler's arduous life, punctuated by frequent tragedy and hardships. His first wife died young, and eight of the twelve children he fathered succumbed to disease in infancy or childhood. He was frequently caught up in the religious persecutions of the day. His mother narrowly escaped death when she was accused of being a witch. Intermingling historical and personal details of Kepler's life with lucid explanations of his scientific research, this book presents a sympathetic portrait of the man and underscores the critical importance of Kepler's discoveries in the history of astronomy.

This volume is a compilation of the research presented at the International Asteroid Day workshop which was celebrated at Barcelona on June 30th, 2015. The proceedings discuss the beginning of a new era in the study and exploration of the solar system's minor bodies. International Asteroid Day commemorates the Tunguska event of June 30th, 1908. The workshop's goal was to promote the importance of dealing proactively with impact hazards from space. Multidisciplinary experts contributed to this discussion by describing the nature of comets and asteroids along with their offspring, meteoroids. New missions to return material samples of asteroids back to Earth such as Osiris-REx and Hayabusa 2, as well as projects like AIM and DART which will test impact deflection techniques for Potentially Hazardous Asteroids encounters were also covered. The proceedings include both an outreach level to popularize impact hazards and a scientific character which covers the latest knowledge on these topics, as well as offering proposals of promising new techniques that will help gain new insights of the properties of these challenging bodies by studying meteoroids and meteorites. Asteroids, comets, meteoroids and meteorites are introduced with descriptions of their nature, origin, and solar system pathways.

This is a follow-on book to the introductory textbook "Physics of the Solar Corona" previously published in 2004 by the same author, which provided a systematic introduction and covered mostly scientific results from the pre-2000 era. Using a similar structure as the previous book the second volume provides a seamless continuation of numerous novel research results in solar physics that emerged in the new millennium (after 2000) from the new solar missions of RHESSI, STEREO, Hinode, CORONAS, and the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) during the era of 2000-2018. The new solar space missions are characterized by unprecedented high-resolution imaging, time resolution, spectral capabilities, stereoscopy and tomography, which reveal the intricate dynamics of magneto-hydrodynamic processes in the solar corona down to scales of 100 km. The enormous amount of data streaming down from SDO in Terabytes per day requires advanced automated data processing methods. The book focuses exclusively on new research results after 2000, which are reviewed in a comprehensive manner, documented by over 3600 literature references, covering theory, observations, and numerical modeling of basic physical processes that are observed in high-temperature plasmas of the Sun and other astrophysical objects, such as plasma instabilities, coronal heating, magnetic reconnection processes, coronal mass ejections, plasma waves and oscillations, or particle acceleration.

The zeta Aurigae stars are the rare but illustrious sub-group of binary stars that undergo the dramatic phenomenon of "chromospheric eclipse". This book provides detailed descriptions of the ten known systems, illustrates them richly with examples of new spectra, and places them in the context of stellar structure and evolution. Comprised of a large cool giant plus a small hot dwarf, these key eclipsing binaries reveal fascinating changes in their spectra very close to total eclipse, when the hot star shines through differing heights of the "chromosphere", or outer atmosphere, of the giant star. The phenomenon provides astrophysics with the means of analyzing the outer atmosphere of a giant star and how that material is shed into space. The physics of these critical events can be explained qualitatively, but it is more challenging to extract hard facts from the observations, and tough to model the chromosphere in any detail. The book offers current thinking on mechanisms for heating a star's chromosphere and on how a star loses mass, and relates this science synergistically to studies of other stars and binaries, and to the increasing relevance of contributions from new techniques in interferometry and asteroseismology. It also includes a detailed discussion of the enigmatic star epsilon Aurigae, which had recently undergone one of its very infrequent and very baffling eclipses. Though not a zeta Aurigae system, epsilon Aurigae is a true "Giant" among eclipsing stars. The 7 chapters of this book, written by a group of experts, have been carefully edited to form a coherent volume that offers a thorough overview of the subject to both professional and student.

The Moon has been an object of fascination for religions, cultures, and societies the world over since the dawn of humanity.

The Moon is a beautifully illustrated account of our lunar neighbour in all its guises: a guiding light in the night sky, the driver of oceanic tides and natural cycles, the subject of exhaustive scientific study, and an enduring influence in literature, art, and popular culture.

Exploring theories for the Moon’s origins around 4.5 billion years ago, the book charts its influence on the calendar systems and mythologies of early societies, and its role in the invention of the telescope and the science-fiction genre. It tells the incredible story of the Cold War space race and the first Moon landings. Specially commissioned illustrations capture the Moon's phases and motions in vivid detail, while stunning photography and artefacts bring the rich history of lunar observation and exploration to life.

The last chapter of the book features extensive coverage of NASA’s Artemis mission to return astronauts to the lunar landscape in 2026, paving the way for future missions to Mars. The book also includes a guide to observing the Moon, complete with annotated maps and profiles of key physical features such as Tycho Crater and the Sea of Tranquility.

Straddling science, culture, and history across the world, The Moon is a captivating and richly informative celebration.

With the onset of massive cosmological data collection through media such as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), galaxy classification has been accomplished for the most part with the help of citizen science communities like Galaxy Zoo. Seeking the wisdom of the crowd for such Big Data processing has proved extremely beneficial. However, an analysis of one of the Galaxy Zoo morphological classification data sets has shown that a significant majority of all classified galaxies are labelled as Uncertain .

This book reports on how to use data mining, more specifically clustering, to identify galaxies that the public has shown some degree of uncertainty for as to whether they belong to one morphology type or another. The book shows the importance of transitions between different data mining techniques in an insightful workflow. It demonstrates that Clustering enables to identify discriminating features in the analysed data sets, adopting a novel feature selection algorithms called Incremental Feature Selection (IFS). The book shows the use of state-of-the-art classification techniques, Random Forests and Support Vector Machines to validate the acquired results. It is concluded that a vast majority of these galaxies are, in fact, of spiral morphology with a small subset potentially consisting of stars, elliptical galaxies or galaxies of other morphological variants."

Pulsar timing is a promising method for detecting gravitational waves in the nano-Hertz band. In his prize winning Ph.D. thesis Rutger van Haasteren deals with how one takes thousands of seemingly random timing residuals which are measured by pulsar observers, and extracts information about the presence and character of the gravitational waves in the nano-Hertz band that are washing over our Galaxy. The author presents a sophisticated mathematical algorithm that deals with this issue. His algorithm is probably the most well-developed of those that are currently in use in the Pulsar Timing Array community. In chapter 3, the gravitational-wave memory effect is described. This is one of the first descriptions of this interesting effect in relation with pulsar timing, which may become observable in future Pulsar Timing Array projects. The last part of the work is dedicated to an effort to combine the European pulsar timing data sets in order to search for gravitational waves. This study has placed the most stringent limit to date on the intensity of gravitational waves that are produced by pairs of supermassive black holes dancing around each other in distant galaxies, as well as those that may be produced by vibrating cosmic strings. Rutger van Haasteren has won the 2011 GWIC Thesis Prize of the Gravitational Wave International Community for his innovative work in various directions of the search for gravitational waves by pulsar timing. The work is presented in this Ph.D. thesis.

This book employs computer simulations of 'artificial' Universes to investigate the properties of two popular alternatives to the standard candidates for dark matter (DM) and dark energy (DE). It confronts the predictions of theoretical models with observations using a sophisticated semi-analytic model of galaxy formation. Understanding the nature of dark matter (DM) and dark energy (DE) are two of the most central problems in modern cosmology. While their important role in the evolution of the Universe has been well established-namely, that DM serves as the building blocks of galaxies, and that DE accelerates the expansion of the Universe-their true nature remains elusive. In the first half, the authors consider 'sterile neutrino' DM, motivated by recent claims that these particles may have finally been detected. Using sophisticated models of galaxy formation, the authors find that future observations of the high redshift Universe and faint dwarf galaxies in the Local Group can place strong constraints on the sterile neutrino scenario. In the second half, the authors propose and test novel numerical algorithms for simulating Universes with a 'modified' theory of gravity, as an alternative explanation to accelerated expansion. The authors' techniques improve the efficiency of these simulations by more than a factor of 20 compared to previous methods, inviting the readers into a new era for precision cosmological tests of gravity.

"Experiments in Reduced Gravity: Sediment Settling on Mars" is the first book to be published that reflects experiments conducted on Martian geomorphology in reduced gravity.

This brief yet important book on sediment experiments assesses the theoretical and empirical foundation of the models used to analyze the increasing information we have on the past geography on Mars. The book also evaluates the need to develop new methods for analyzing new information by providing a conceptual outline and a case study on how experiments can be used to test current theoretical considerations. The conceptual approach to identifying the need for and role of experiments will be of interest to planetary scientists and geoscientists not necessarily involved with Mars, but those using experiments in their research who can apply the book s concepts.
Includes figures, diagrams, illustrations, and photographs to vividly explore experiments and outcomes in reduced gravityProvides an outline of planned experiments and questions related to Martian geomorphologyFeatures results from the MarsSedEx 1 Experiment in 2012"

First Snow White encounters one of the Little People, then one of the Even Smaller People, and finally one of the Truly Infinitesimal People. And no matter how diligently she searches, the only dwarves she can find are collapsed stars! Clearly, she's not at home in her well-known Brothers Grimm fairy tale, but instead in a strange new landscape that features quantum behavior, the wavelike properties of particles, and the Uncertainty Principle. She (and we) must have entered, in short, one of the worlds created by Robert Gilmore, physicist and fabulist.

Written by one of the astronomers who 'lived the dream' of working there this book is a restrospectively expanded diary featuring the 'birth and long life' of what was a truely innovative telescope. Based on input received from people involved in its planning, building, operation, and many scientists who observed with it, the author tells this success story of The United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT). Conceived in the mid 1970's as a cheap and cheerful light-bucket for the newly emerging field of infrared astronomy it has re-invented itself once a decade to remain at the forefront of infrared astronomy for more than 30 years. Even in 2012 / 2013, when ironically it faced almost certain closure, it remained one of the most scientifically productive telescopes in the world. Everybody, including amateur and professional astronomers, interested in real astronomy projects will enjoy reading that story and meet (again) the persons who lived it.

This book offers review chapters written by invited speakers of the 3rd Session of the Sant Cugat Forum on Astrophysics - Gravitational Waves Astrophysics. All chapters have been peer reviewed. The book goes beyond normal conference proceedings in that it provides a wide panorama of the astrophysics of gravitational waves and serves as a reference work for researchers in the field.

This is the largest and most comprehensive atlas of the universe ever created for amateur astronomers. With finder charts of unprecedented detail, in both normal and mirror-image views, and an extensive list of 14,000 objects, it provides a detailed observing guide for almost any practical amateur astronomer, up to the most advanced. Spanning some 3,000 pages, this is a project that is possible only on CD-ROM. The CD-R pages are extensively indexed and referenced for quick location of objects. The accompanying book gives an introduction to the Atlas, showcases the maps, describes the CD-R content and organization, and includes various appendices.

In this thesis, ultimate sensitive measurement for weak force imposed on a suspended mirror is performed with the help of a laser and an optical cavity for the development of gravitational-wave detectors. According to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, such measurements are subject to a fundamental noise called quantum noise, which arises from the quantum nature of a probe (light) and a measured object (mirror). One of the sources of quantum noise is the quantum back-action, which arises from the vacuum fluctuation of the light. It sways the mirror via the momentum transferred to the mirror upon its reflection for the measurement. The author discusses a fundamental trade-off between sensitivity and stability in the macroscopic system, and suggests using a triangular cavity that can avoid this trade-off. The development of an optical triangular cavity is described and its characterization of the optomechanical effect in the triangular cavity is demonstrated. As a result, for the first time in the world the quantum back-action imposed on the 5-mg suspended mirror is significantly evaluated. This work contributes to overcoming the standard quantum limit in the future.

Nominated as an outstanding thesis by Professor Robert Crittenden of the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation in Portsmouth, and winner of the Michael Penston Prize for 2014 given by the Royal Astronomical Society for the best doctoral thesis in Astronomy or Astrophysics, this work aims to shed light on one of the most important probes of the early Universe: the bispectrum of the cosmic microwave background. The CMB bispectrum is a potential window on exciting new physics, as it is sensitive to the non-Gaussian features in the primordial fluctuations, the same fluctuations that evolved into today's planets, stars and galaxies. However, this invaluable information is potentially screened, as not all of the observed non-Gaussianity is of primordial origin. Indeed, a bispectrum arises even for perfectly Gaussian initial conditions due to non-linear dynamics, such as CMB photons scattering off free electrons and propagating in an inhomogeneous Universe. Dr. Pettinari introduces the reader to this intrinsic bispectrum in a pedagogic way, building up from the standard model of cosmology and from cosmological perturbation theory, the tool cosmologists use to unravel the history of the cosmos. In doing so, he introduces SONG, a new and efficient code for solving the second-order Einstein and Boltzmann equations. Next, he moves on to answer the crucial question: is the intrinsic bispectrum going to screen the primordial signal in the CMB? Using SONG, he computes the intrinsic bispectrum and shows how its contamination leads to a small bias in the estimates of primordial non-Gaussianity, a great news for the prospect of using CMB data to probe primordial non-Gaussianity.

This book presents a study of the saturation of unstable f-modes (fundamental modes) due to low-order nonlinear mode coupling. Since their theoretical prediction in 1934, neutron stars have remained among the most challenging objects in the Universe. Gravitational waves emitted by unstable neutron star oscillations can be used to obtain information about their inner structure, that is, the equation of state of dense nuclear matter. After its initial growth phase, the instability is expected to saturate due to nonlinear effects. The saturation amplitude of the unstable mode determines the detectability of the generated gravitational-wave signal, but also affects the evolution of the neutron star. The study shows that the unstable (parent) mode resonantly couples to pairs of stable (daughter) modes, which drain the parent's energy and make it saturate via a mechanism called parametric resonance instability. Further, it calculates the saturation amplitude of the most unstable f-mode multipoles throughout their so-called instability windows.

Origins of Life: A Cosmic Perspective presents an overview of the concepts, methods, and theories of astrobiology and origins of life research while presenting a summary of the latest findings. The book provides insight into the environments and processes that gave birth to life on our planet, which naturally informs our assessment of the probability that has arisen (or will arise) elsewhere. In addition, the book encourages readers to go beyond basic concepts, to explore topics in greater depth, and to engage in lively discussions. The text is intended to be suitable for mid- and upper-level undergraduates and beginning graduate students and more generally as an introduction and overview for researchers and general readers seeking to follow current developments in this interdisciplinary field. Readers are assumed to have a basic grounding in the relevant sciences, but prior specialized knowledge is not required. Each chapter concludes with a list of questions and discussion topics as well as suggestions for further reading. Some questions can be answered with reference to material in the text, but others require further reading and some have no known answers. The intention is to encourage readers to go beyond basic concepts, to explore topics in greater depth, and, in a classroom setting, to engage in lively discussions with class members.