Related papers: The Future of Cosmology
The old cosmological constant problem is to understand why the vacuum energy is so small; the new problem is to understand why it is comparable to the present mass density. Several approaches to these problems are reviewed. Quintessence…
Perhaps more than any other of the physical sciences, cosmology exemplifies the inevitable contact between science and philosophy, including the problem of the demarcation criteria that distinguish science from non-science. Although modern…
This paper provides a prospectus for a new way of thinking about the wavefunction of the universe: a $\Psi$-epistemic quantum cosmology. We present a proposal that, if successfully implemented, would resolve the cosmological measurement…
The observational evidence for the acceleration of the universe demonstrates that canonical theories of cosmology and particle physics are incomplete, if not incorrect, and that new physics is out there, waiting to be discovered.…
A convergence of ideas, observations and technology have led to the greatest period of cosmological discovery yet. Over the past three years we have determined the basic features of our Universe. We are now challenged to make sense of what…
An introduction to modern theories for the origin of structure in the Universe is given. After a brief review of the growth of cosmological perturbations in an expanding Universe and a summary of some important observational results, the…
Neutrino astrophysics offers new perspectives on the Universe investigation: high energy neutrinos, produced by the most energetic phenomena in our Galaxy and in the Universe, carry complementary (if not exclusive) information about the…
This paper summarizes a presentation for a panel discussion on "The Future of Astrostatistics" held at the Statistical Challenges in Modern Astronomy V conference at Pennsylvania State University in June 2011. I argue that the emerging…
Cosmography is a model-independent phenomenological approach to observational cosmology, relying on Taylor series expansions of physical quantities as a function of the cosmological redshift or other analogous variables. A recent work…
Recent years have seen tremendous progress in our understanding of the cosmos, which in turn points to even deeper questions to be further addressed. Concurrently the laser technology has undergone dramatic revolutions, providing exciting…
We summarize recent results presented in the astrophysics session during a conference on ``Frontiers of Contemporary Physics''. We will discuss three main fields (High-Energy Astrophysics, Relativistic Astrophysics, and Cosmology), where…
The current cosmological paradigm, $\Lambda$CDM, is characterized its expansive description of the history of the Universe, its deep connections to particle physics and the large amounts of data that support it. Nonetheless, $\Lambda$CDM's…
The physical basis of the modern cosmological inflationary models with baryosynthesis and nonbaryonic dark matter and energy implies such predictions of particle theory, that, in turn, apply to cosmology for their test. It makes physics of…
First, this paper broaches the definition of science and the epistemic yield of tenets and approaches: phenomenological (descriptive only), well-founded (solid first principles, conducive to deep understanding), provisional (falsifiable if…
At this beginning of the 21st century, the situation of physics is not without analogy with that which prevailed a hundred years ago, with the outset of the double scientific revolution of relativity and quanta. On the one hand, recent…
There are two big questions cosmologists would like to answer -- How does the Universe work, and what are its origin and destiny? A long wavelength gravitational wave detector -- with million km interferometer arms, achievable only from…
The light we observe from distant astrophysical objects including supernovae and quasars allows us to determine large distances in terms of a cosmological model. Despite the success of the standard cosmological model in fitting the data,…
The stellar astronomy has always been considered the fundamental source of knowledge about the basic building blocks of the universe - the stars. It has proved correctness of many physical theories - like e.g. the idea of nuclear fusion in…
A very brief overview is presented on some of the current most active areas of research in formal aspects of High Energy Physics and Cosmology. Including the recent breakthrough on the black hole information paradox, developments on…
The hot big-bang cosmology provides a reliable accounting of the Universe from about $10^{-2}\sec$ after the bang until the present, as well as a robust framework for speculating back to times as early as $10^{-43}\sec$. Cosmology faces a…