Today on the arXiv: Prospector-alpha opens the way to high-accuracy photometry-based estimation of galactic properties
There is a terrific paper on today’s arXiv: The Prospector-alpha code is an impressive new approach to estimating a large number of important physical parameters of galaxies, including indicators for the galaxy’s star formation history, its metallicity, its mass and dust content. The code contains a large number of free physical parameters (describing star formation […]
Today on the arXiv: from light bulbs to 2 trillion dark matter particles simulations in 75 years
Today, Martin White suggests using a density-dependent correlation function as a tool to help distinguish General Relativity from modified gravity theories. The N-body simulation Zurich group shows impressive results from a cosmological simulation involving 2 trillion (2 x 10^12) particles, which they run on the Swiss Supercomputer in Manno using GPU-accelerated nodes, and benchmarked with […]
Bad news for LISA and Dark Matter line emission from the Galactic Centre
Today on the arXiv (arXiv:1609.08093) Camille Bonvin and collaborators (whom I know well from my days in Geneva) rule out the possibility to use the distortion in the gravitational waves chirp signal to measure the acceleration of the universe. They find that the peculiar acceleration is much greater and therefore would (1) wash out the […]
Why Society Needs Astronomy and Cosmology: a Gresham College Guest Lecture
This is the text accompanying a Gresham College Guest Lecture I gave on March 15th 2016. Audio recording of the lecture: Video of the lecture available here “One day, Sir, you may tax it!” In 1850 the Chancellor of the Exchequer, William Gladstone, reportedly visited Michael Faraday’s laboratory at the Royal Institution of Great Britain. […]
Papers of interest on the arXiv today – Sept 26th 2016
Two interesting papers on the methodology side today: A ML source detection method that detects ultra-faint streaks below the pixel level noise (arXiv:1609.07158). They call it “ML” but in reality it uses MCMC to look at the Bayesian posterior (which is arguably a good thing!) and even Bayesian model comparison (in the BIC variety) to determine […]
Butchery or beauty? Explaining complex science using only the most common 1,000 words in English
A version of this post appeared on the British Council’s VOICES blog on Nov 12th 2014 Would you try and cross the South Pole wearing only flip-flops? Or row across the Atlantic on an inflatable swimming pool? Or describe the beauty and mystery of the Universe using only the most common 1,000 words in English? As a […]
g-ASTRONOMY: The cosmos at the tip of your tongue
Astrophysics provides us with an exciting, engaging way to talk about the science of the cosmos and its importance for society. Posted on the IOP blog on Sept 20th 2016 Interest for astronomy and astrophysics is also one of the most-often cited reasons by students taking up physics at undergraduate level. But by its nature […]
