Perspectives in 2022

The sound community has developed many methods for listening to the Universe and not just looking at it. With their help, astronomers can increase the diversity of sonification tools, uses and users.

Writing a good scientific paper is a challenging task that benefits from training and practice. In this second Perspective in a short series, the authors share their wisdom on the process of writing a manuscript, from the most appropriate content for each section to the language to use.

Writing a good scientific paper is a challenging task that becomes easier with training and practice. Here the authors share their wisdom on useful preparations to make before starting to write, and a companion Perspective provides advice on the actual writing process.

The use of sound to represent astronomical data complements visual analysis tools and makes astronomy more accessible. This Perspective presents a growing number of projects with increasing applications in research, education and outreach across astronomy.

This Perspective summarizes the latest observational evidence for star formation feedback and the important role of external ionizing radiation for the smallest galaxies, showing how this feedback directly impacts their properties, including their dark matter distribution.

There is a growing need for data cleaning and source identification for gravitational-wave detectors in real time. A deep learning inference-as-a-service framework using off-the-shelf software and hardware can address these challenges in a scalable and reliable way.

Crowded with satellites and debris, the orbital space around the Earth should be formally recognized as an ecosystem—like the ocean and the atmosphere—to ensure sustainable development and protection from irreversible damage.

Venus is used as the paradigm of Earth-sized near tidally locked planets. The behaviour and dynamics of its atmosphere are used to gain insight into the climate of terrestrial exoplanets with similar orbital configurations.

Any detection of potential biosignature molecules like oxygen and methane needs to be put into the planetary environmental context to understand its actual importance. Such a contextual approach is also essential when considering alternative or agnostic biosignatures on planets and exoplanets.

This Perspective discusses massive black holes in dwarf galaxies and presents new insights on the demographics of nearby dwarf galaxies to help constrain the black hole occupation/active fraction as a function of mass and dwarf galaxy type.