Related papers: Cosmologists in the dark
Dark matter has been introduced to explain many independent gravitational effects at different astronomical scales, in galaxies, groups of galaxies, clusters, superclusters and even across the full horizon. This review describes the…
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…
Methods based on machine learning have recently made substantial inroads in many corners of cosmology. Through this process, new computational tools, new perspectives on data collection, model development, analysis, and discovery, as well…
Spatially homogeneous cosmological models with a positive cosmological constant are investigated, using dynamical systems methods. We focus on the future evolution of these models. In particular, we address the question whether there are…
We use the phase plane analysis technique of Madsen and Ellis to consider a universe with a true cosmological constant as well as a cosmological "constant" that is decaying. Time symmetric dynamics for the inflationary era allows eternally…
I argue that some important elements of the current cosmological model are "conventionalist" in the sense defined by Karl Popper. These elements include dark matter and dark energy; both are auxiliary hypotheses that were invoked in…
Time has always played a crucial role in cosmology. I review some of the aspects of the present cosmological model which are more directly related to time, such as: the definition of a cosmic time; the existence of typical timescales and…
Facing the advent of the next generation cosmological surveys we present a method to forecast knowledge gain on cosmological models. We propose this as a well defined and general tool to quantify the performance of different experiments in…
We review some aspects of quantum gravity in the context of cosmology. In particular, we focus on models with a phenomenology accessible to current and near-future observations, as the early Universe might be our only chance to peep through…
Cosmology is the dot com of the sciences. Boom or bust. It is about nothing less than the origin and evolution of the Universe, the all of everything. It is the boldest of enterprises and not for the fainthearted. Cosmologists are the…
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…
Weak gravitational lensing surveys measure the distortion of the image of distant sources due to the deflections of light rays by the fluctuations of the gravitational potential along the line of sight. Since they probe the non-linear…
The acceleration of the cosmic expansion is a fundamental challenge to standard models of particle physics and cosmology. The new physics of dark energy may lie in the nature of gravity, the quantum vacuum, or extra dimensions. I give a…
A basic modern picture of the universe is given here. The lectures start from the historical ideas of a static universe. Then I move on to Newtonian cosmology and derive the main cosmological equations in the framework of Newtonian…
Over the last decades, observations with increasing quality have revolutionized our understanding of the general properties of the Universe. Questions posed for millenia by mankind about the origin, evolution and structure of the cosmos…
Illuminating the nature of dark energy is one of the most important challenges in cosmology today. In this review I discuss several promising observational approaches to understanding dark energy, in the context of the recommendations by…
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…
Astrophysical observations suggest that most of the matter in the cosmos consists of a new form that has not been observed on Earth. The nature and origin of this mysterious dark matter are among the most pressing questions in fundamental…
Cosmography represents an important branch of cosmology which aims to describe the universe without the need of postulating \emph{a priori} any particular cosmological model. All quantities of interest are expanded as a Taylor series around…
Using a general classification of dark enegy models in four classes, we discuss the complementarity of cosmological observations to tackle down the physics beyond the acceleration of our universe. We discuss the tests distinguishing the…