Related papers: Testing the Copernican Principle via Cosmological …
We present a new programme for placing constraints on radial inhomogeneity in a dark-energy dominated universe. We introduce a new measure to quantify violations of the Copernican principle. Any violation of this principle would interfere…
Inhomogeneous universe models have been proposed as an alternative explanation for the apparent acceleration of the cosmic expansion that does not require dark energy. In the simplest class of inhomogeneous models, we live within a large,…
A fundamental presupposition of modern cosmology is the Copernican Principle; that we are not in a central, or otherwise special region of the Universe. Studies of Type Ia supernovae, together with the Copernican Principle, have led to the…
We pursue a program to confront observations with inhomogeneous extensions of the FLRW metric. The main idea is to test the Copernican principle rather than assuming it a priori. We consider the $\Lambda$CDM model endowed with a spherical…
Assuming the universe is spatially homogeneous on the largest scales lays the foundation for almost all cosmology. This idea is based on the Copernican principle, that we are not at a particularly special place in the universe.…
It has been proposed that the observed dark energy can be explained away by the effect of large-scale nonlinear inhomogeneities. In the present paper we discuss how observations constrain cosmological models featuring large voids. We start…
We provide preliminary quantitative evidence that a new solution to averaging the observed inhomogeneous structure of matter in the universe [gr-qc/0702082, arxiv:0709.0732], may lead to an observationally viable cosmology without exotic…
Recent observational analyses have suggested possible evidence of hemisphere asymmetry in cosmological datasets. Parameterizations of this kind place observers in a privileged position-specifically on the plane that divides the two…
We challenge the widely held belief that the cosmological principle is an obvious consequence of the observed isotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation, combined with the Copernican principle. We perform a detailed analysis of a…
Over the past decade, supernovae have emerged as some of the most powerful tools for measuring extragalactic distances. A well developed physical understanding of type II supernovae allow them to be used to measure distances independent of…
An alternative to the postulate of dark energy required to explain the accelerated expansion of the universe is to adopt an inhomogeneous cosmological model to explain the supernovae data without dark energy. We adopt a void cosmology…
The suggestion that we occupy a privileged position near the centre of a large, nonlinear, and nearly spherical void has recently attracted much attention as an alternative to dark energy. Putting aside the philosophical problems with this…
Recently, spatially inhomogeneous cosmological models have been proposed as an alternative to the LCDM model, with the aim of reproducing the late time dynamics of the Universe without introducing a cosmological constant or dark energy.…
The recent discovery of apparent cosmic acceleration has highlighted the depth of our ignorance of the fundamental properties of nature. It is commonly assumed that the explanation for acceleration must come from a new form of energy…
A wide range of large scale observations hint towards possible modifications on the standard cosmological model which is based on a homogeneous and isotropic universe with a small cosmological constant and matter. These observations, also…
We perform a cosmographic analysis using several cosmological observables such as the luminosity distance moduli, the volume distance, the angular diameter distance and the Hubble parameter. These quantities are determined using different…
We discuss inhomogeneous cosmological models which satisfy the Copernican principle. We construct some inhomogeneous cosmological models starting from the ansatz that the all the observers in the models view an isotropic cosmic microwave…
The apparent accelerating expansion of the Universe is forcing us to examine the foundational aspects of the standard model of cosmology -- in particular, the fact that dark energy is a direct consequence of the homogeneity assumption. We…
The recent robust and homogeneous analysis of the world's supernova distance-redshift data, together with cosmic microwave background and baryon acoustic oscillation data, provides a powerful tool for constraining cosmological models. Here…
A suggested solution to the dark energy problem is the void model, where accelerated expansion is replaced by Hubble-scale inhomogeneity. In these models, density perturbations grow on a radially inhomogeneous background. This large scale…