Related papers: Our Place in a Vast Universe
The cosmological principle posits that the universe does not exhibit any specific preference for position or direction. However, it remains unclear whether the universe has a distinct preference for parity: whether certain properties are…
In the century since Einstein's anno mirabilis of 1905, our concept of the Universe has expanded from Kapteyn's flattened disk of stars only 10 kpc across to an observed horizon about 30 Gpc across that is only a tiny fraction of an…
We argue that the total number of distinguishable locally Friedmann universes generated by eternal inflation is proportional to the exponent of the entropy of inflationary perturbations and is limited by e^{e^{3 N}}, where N is the number…
We study here what it means for the Universe to be nearly flat, as opposed to exactly flat. We give three definitions of nearly flat, based on density, geometry and dynamics; all three definitions are equivalent and depend on a single…
General topology of the universe is descibed. It is concluded that topology of the present universe is greater or stronger than the topology of the universe in the past and topology of the future universe will be stronger or greater than…
Evidence for fine-tuning of physical parameters suitable for life can perhaps be explained by almost any combination of providence, coincidence or multiverse. A multiverse usually includes parts unobservable to us, but if the theory for it…
The mean power spectrum of galaxies is compared with theoretical models. Possibilities to explain the observed power spectrum are discussed. Superclusters and voids form a quasi-regular lattice of mean cell size 120 Mpc; the main axis of…
The classical view of mass is that it quantifies the amount of substance and is a kinematical parameter. All matter has an attribute of mass and is a conserved quantity in any interaction. With the advent of special relativity, mass became…
As we follow our Universe to early times, we find that matter was crushed to high densities, somewhat similar to the behavior at a black hole singularity. String theory has made progress in explaining the internal structure of black holes,…
This paper deals with the philosophical issues of the notion of nothingness and pre-inflationary stage of the universe in physical cosmology. We presuppose that, in addition to cosmological limits, there may be both anthropic and…
Quantum cosmology is the quantum theory of the entire universe. Although strange at first sight, it is appropriate because (1) our world appears to be fundamentally quantum, (2) the classical description of gravity breaks down at…
While purely philosophical in the early times, and still very speculative at the beginning of the twentieth century, Cosmology has gradually entered into the realm of experimental science over the past eighty years. It has raised some…
From an observational perspective cosmology is today in excellent shape - advances in instrumentation and data processing have enabled us to study the universe in detail back to when the first galaxies formed, map the fluctuations in the…
Estimates of the fractal dimension $D$ of the set of galaxies in the universe, based on ever improving data sets, tend to settle on $D\approx 2$. This result raised a raging debate due to its glaring contradiction with astrophysical models…
A static non-singular 10-dimensional closed Friedmann universe of Planck size, filled with a perfect fluid with an equation of state with w = -2/3, can arise spontaneously by a quantum fluctuation from nothing in 11-dimensional spacetime. A…
One of the greatest achievements of twentieth century physics is the discovery of a very close link between the microcosm and the macrocosm. This follows from the two basic principles of quantum mechanics and relativity, the uncertainty…
Astrophysical observations indicate the expansion of the universe is accelerating. Applying the holographic entropy conjecture to the cosmological horizon in an accelerating universe suggests the universe has only a finite number of degrees…
It is fair to say that the deepest mystery in our understanding of nature is the birth of our universe. Much of the dilemma over the last decades comes from the extraordinarily small probability that the universe started with the high…
We discuss cosmological solutions for a diffeomorphism invariant gauge theory of the non-compact Lorentz group $SO(1,3)$. Besides the gauge bosons our model of pregeometry contains a vector field in the vector representation of $SO(1,3)$…
The spacetime structure of the spatially uniformly expanding universe is described in terms of a kind of global space and global time instead of the space and time we usually recognize. The global space at some instant is a space in which…