ethrane
commented
3 months ago I like the idea of this key question. Cosmology provides focus, but still covers a lot of important science that has synergy with other groups: standard candles/sirens, FRBs as probes of baryonic matter, etc. I'm discussing with @kauchettl and we are trying out different wordings to see if we can come up with something slightly punchier; "large-scale structure" is kind of a technical term. What do you think about something like this: How can multi-messenger observations of transients inform us about the history of the Universe?
anaismoller
GavinRowell
This is my attempt to pose a question that more cleanly separates "Transients as tools" from "Transients in and of themselves". I think that most of the spirit of the latter is covered by the proposed key question "How does the night sky (the universe) vary on human timescales?", while the other proposed key question "How do transients inform us about the Universe" contained some elements of studying transients to understand the processes powering them, while also (perhaps mostly) containing elements of using transients as tools. With the proposed wording of this one, I'm trying to balance specificity against broad interest. I think that by hoovering up all the "transients as tools" under a heading like this, and then having a separate key question that covers "how can we monitor as much transient phase space as possible and learn from what we see", it is possible to cover the majority of the ground without falling victim to being too vague.