Microcosm of astrophysics

Microcosm Study

Abbott (1966) described microcosms as miniaturized ecosystems. Among the oldest and most specialized examples of the microcosm technique were bioassay systems, such as that found in the standard BOD determination. Abbott also noted that, due to the unpredictability and complexity of natural systems, in situ experiment results were often vague and inconclusive, and many researchers had successfu...

“Giants in a Microcosm”

On examination of a breast mass surgically excised in a 69-years-old woman, a pure invasive micropapillary carcinoma (MPC) was diagnosed (Figure 1). At close examination, intensely eosinophilic syncytial-multinucleated giant cells (CD68+) percolating the stromal bands were identified (Figure 1). The breast carcinoma illustrated here shows therefore a combination of 2 rarities, namely, an invasi...

Man Is a Microcosm

Astrophysics.

Using the oscillation frequencies of α Cen A recently discovered by Bouchy & Carrier (2001, 2002), the available astrometric, photometric and spectroscopic data, we tried to improve the calibration of the visual binary system α Cen. With the revisited masses of Pour-baix et al. (2002) we do not succeed to obtain a solution satisfying all the seismic observational constraints. Relaxing the const...

Astrophysics.