Isn't there something like an amount and density of horrific suffering whose discovery would make it irrational to think God exists? Use your imagination to think of worlds that are much, much, much worse than you think Earth is when it comes to horrific suffering. Isn't there some conceivable scenario which, if you were in it, would make you say ‘Okay, okay. God doesn't exist, at least in the way we thought God was. We were wrong about that’? Pursuing this question leads to what I call the Problem of Absurd Evil.

A Round Table discussion on the future of Laboratory Astrophysics and the role of IAU Commission B5 was held on the fourth day of the conference to discuss how the IAU Laboratory Astrophysics Commission (B5) can best support the astronomy community and help promote laboratory astrophysics.

Astronomy, astrophysics and cosmology have changed out of all recognition over the last 100 years. The IAU has provided an essential means of fostering international collaboration in these disciplines including times of international tension. Developments will be highlighted which have profoundly changed our understanding and insight into the workings of our Universe.

This paper describes the design and fabrication of a range of ‘gas cell’ microtargets produced by the Target Fabrication Group in the Central Laser Facility (CLF) for academic access experiments on the Orion laser facility at the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE). The experiments were carried out by an academic consortium led by Imperial College London. The underlying target methodology was an evolution of a range of targets used for experiments on radiative shocks and involved the fabrication of a precision machined cell containing a number of apertures for interaction foils or diagnostic windows. The interior of the cell was gas-filled before laser irradiation. This paper details the assembly processes, thin film requirements and micro-machining processes needed to produce the targets. Also described is the implementation of a gas-fill system to produce targets that are filled to a pressure of 0.1–1 bar. The paper discusses the challenges that are posed by such a target.

The concept of “self-organized criticality” (SOC) was originally proposed as an explanation of 1/f-noise by Bak, Tang, and Wiesenfeld (1987), but turned out to have a far broader significance for scale-free nonlinear energy dissipation processes occurring in the entire universe. Over the last 30 years, an inspiring cross-fertilization from complexity theory to solar and astrophysics took place, where the SOC concept was initially applied to solar flares, stellar flares, and magnetospheric substorms, and later extended to the radiation belt, the heliosphere, lunar craters, the asteroid belt, the Saturn ring, pulsar glitches, soft X-ray repeaters, blazars, black-hole objects, cosmic rays, and boson clouds. The application of SOC concepts has been performed by numerical cellular automaton simulations, by analytical calculations of statistical (powerlaw-like) distributions based on physical scaling laws, and by observational tests of theoretically predicted size distributions and waiting time distributions. Attempts have been undertaken to import physical models into numerical SOC toy models. The novel applications stimulated also vigorous debates about the discrimination between SOC-related and non-SOC processes, such as phase transitions, turbulence, random-walk diffusion, percolation, branching processes, network theory, chaos theory, fractality, multi-scale, and other complexity phenomena. We review SOC models applied to astrophysical observations, attempt to describe what physics can be captured by SOC models, and offer a critique of weaknesses and strengths in existing SOC models.

This article describes the fabrication of a suite of laser targets by the Target Fabrication group in the Central Laser Facility (CLF), STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory for the first academic-access experiment on the Orion laser facility (Hopps et al., Appl. Opt. 52, 3597–3601 (2013)) at Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE). This experiment, part of the POLAR project (Falize et al., Astrophys. Space Sci. 336, 81–85 (2011); Busschaert et al., New J. Phys. 15, 035020 (2013)), studied conditions relevant to the radiation-hydrodynamic processes occurring in a remarkable class of astrophysical star systems known as magnetic cataclysmic variables. A large number of complex fabrication technologies and research and development activities were required to field a total of 80 high-specification targets. Target design and fabrication procedures are described and initial alignment and characterization data are discussed.

Color centers in selected micro- and nanodiamond samples were investigated by cathodoluminescence (CL) microscopy and spectroscopy at 298 K [room temperature (RT)] and 77 K [liquid-nitrogen temperature (LNT)] to assess the value of the technique for astrophysics. Nanodiamonds from meteorites were compared with synthetic diamonds made with different processes involving distinct synthesis mechanisms (chemical vapor deposition, static high pressure high temperature, detonation). A CL emission peak centered at around 540 nm at 77 K was observed in almost all of the selected diamond samples and is assigned to the dislocation defect with nitrogen atoms. Additional peaks were identified at 387 and 452 nm, which are related to the vacancy defect. In general, peak intensity at LNT at the samples was increased in comparison to RT. The results indicate a clear temperature—dependence of the spectroscopic properties of diamond. This suggests the method is a useful tool in laboratory astrophysics.

Detecting neutrinos associated with the still enigmatic sources of cosmic rays has reached a new watershed with the completion of IceCube, the first detector with sensitivity to the anticipated fluxes. In this review, we will briefly revisit the rationale for constructing kilometer-scale neutrino detectors and summarize the status of the field.

Astronomy as a discipline has not been widely established in Uganda. However, some aspects of astronomy, especially, concerning the solar system, are integrated in geography syllabi for secondary and tertiary institutions. The technological spin-off benefits from astronomy to humanity are immense and therefore, efforts should be geared towards establishing astronomy as an autonomous discipline across the entire school system in the Uganda. So far, the urge and efforts made to popularize the discipline in Uganda have started yielding tangible results. This paper presents the achievements and future strategies of establishing astronomy in Uganda's school system.

The gravitational wave detectors that are operating now are looking for several kinds of gravitational wave signals at frequencies of tens of Hertz to kilohertz. One of these is mergers of roughly 10 M⊙ BH binaries. Sometime between now and about 8 years from now, it is likely that signals of this kind will be observed. The result will be strong tests of the dynamical predictions of general relativity in the high field regime. However, observations at frequencies below 1 Hz will have to wait until the launch of the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), hopefully only a few years later. LISA will have 3 main objectives, all involving massive BHs. The first is observations of mergers of pairs of intermediate mass (100 to 105M⊙) and higher mass BHs at redshifts out to roughly z=10. This will provide new information on the initial formation and growth of BHs such as those found in most galaxies, and the relation between BH growth and the evolution of galactic structure. The second objective is observations of roughly 10 M⊙ BHs, neutron stars, and white dwarfs spiraling into much more massive BHs in galactic nuclei. Such events will provide detailed information on the populations of such compact objects in the regions around galactic centers. And the third objective is the use of the first two types of observations for testing general relativity even more strongly than ground based detectors will. As an example, an extreme mass ratio event such as a 10 M⊙ BH spiraling into a galactic center BH can give roughly 105 observable cycles during about the last year before merger, with a mean relative velocity of 1/3 to 1/2 the speed of light, and the frequencies of periapsis precession and Lense-Thirring precession will be high. The LISA Pathfinder mission to prepare for LISA is scheduled for launch in 2011.

We present the results of the ICOMOS international symposium “Cultural Heritage of Astronomical Observatories (around 1900) – From Classical Astronomy to Modern Astrophysics” (Oct. 2008). The objective of the symposium was to discuss the relevance of modern observatories to the cultural heritage of humankind and to select partner observatories which, due to the date of their construction or to their architectural or scientific importance are comparable to Hamburg Observatory, as international cooperation partners for a serial trans-national application.

Peru and France are to conclude an agreement to provide Peru with an astronomical observatory equipped with a 60-cm diameter telescope. The principal aims of this project are to establish and develop research and teaching in astronomy. Since 2004, a team of researchers from Paris Observatory has been working with the University of Cusco (UNSAAC) on the educational, technical and financial aspects of implementing this venture. During an international astronomy conference in Cusco in July 2009, the foundation stone of the future Peruvian Observatory was laid at the top of Pachatusan Mountain. UNSAAC, represented by its Rector, together with the town of Oropesa and the Cusco regional authority, undertook to make the sum of 300,000€ available to the project. An agreement between Paris Observatory and UNSAAC now enables Peruvian students to study astronomy through online teaching.