Related papers: Lessons from Windows on the Universe

Cosmology has come a long way from being based on a small number of observations to being a data-driven precision science. We discuss the questions "What is observable?", "What in the Universe is knowable?" and "What are the fundamental…

This contribution presents the cosmological models with extra dimensions that have been recently elaborated, which assume that ordinary matter is confined on a surface, called brane, embedded in a higher dimensional spacetime.

Cosmos has always sparked human curiosity to unveil and speculate its fascinating secrets. This curiosity has ultimately opened a window to other worlds. After years of observation, computation, and data analysis, scientists have revealed…

I examine some recent findings in cosmology and their potential implications for the emergence of life in the universe. In particular, I discuss the requirements for carbon-based life, anthropic considerations with respect to the nature of…

This paper presents a brief overview of how astronomy can help society in COVID-19 times, and the lessons that come from studying our place in the Universe and the global coordination of scientific and outreach activities. Several examples…

What can we know about the universe? I outline a few of the fundamental limitations that are posed to our understanding of the cosmos, such as the existence of horizons, the fact that we occupy a specific place in space and time, the…

We discuss some of the cosmological constraints on the evolution and persistence of life in the Universe and in hypothetical universes other than our own. We highlight the role played by the age and size of the universe, and discuss the…

Multiverse scenarios in cosmology assume that other universes exist "beyond" our own universe. They are an exciting challenge both for empirical and theoretical research as well as for philosophy of science. They could be necessary to…

I discuss some aspects of the use of computers in Relativity, Astrophysics and Cosmology. For each section I provide two examples representative of the field, including gravitational collapse, black hole imagery, supernovae explosions,…

I give a compact, pedagogical review of our present understanding of the universe as based on general relativity. This includes the uniform models, with special reference to the cosmological 'constant'; and the equations for…

Universes with multiconnected spatial sections predict multiple images of cosmic sources. A confusing terminology exists in the naming of these images as real ones vs. ghosts. Here an attempt is made to clarify the situation.

Cosmological models that invoke a multiverse - a collection of unobservable regions of space where conditions are very different from the region around us - are controversial, on the grounds that unobservable phenomena shouldn't play a…

When we want to predict the future, we compute it from what we know about the present. Specifically, we take a mathematical representation of observed reality, plug it into some dynamical equations, and then map the time-evolved result back…

This is the written version of an invited review talk for the 13 Feb 2004 AAAS Meeting in Seattle. The talk's goal is to present a philosophical view of extragalactic astronomy as it applies to the sub-field of galaxy evolution. The talk is…

Physical cosmology tries to understand the Universe at large with its origin and evolution. Observational and experimental situations in cosmology do not allow us to proceed purely based on the empirical means. We examine in which sense our…

Revolutionary advances in both theory and technology have launched cosmology into its most exciting period of discovery yet. Unanticipated components of the universe have been identified, promising ideas for understanding the basic features…

A general sketch on how the problem of space dimensionality depends on anthropic arguments is presented. Several examples of how life has been used to constraint space dimensionality (and vice-versa) are reviewed. In particular, the…

Extracting predictions from cosmological theories that describe a multiverse, for what we are likely to observe in our domain, is crucial to establishing the validity of these theories. One way to extract such predictions is from…

Searching for extraterrestrial life and supporting human life in space are traditionally regarded as separate challenges. However, there are significant benefits to an approach that treats them as different aspects of the same essential…

We develop a unified, dynamical-systems narrative of the universe that traces a continuous chain of structure formation from the Big Bang to contemporary human societies and their artificial learning systems. Rather than treating cosmology,…