Related papers: Lessons from Windows on the Universe
Cosmology from the Top Down.
These lectures give an introduction to Gravitational Lensing. We discuss lensing by point masses, lensing by galaxies, and lensing by clusters and larger-scale structures in the Universe. The relevant theory is developed and applications to…
This essay considers a model quantum universe consisting of a very large box containing a screen with two slits and an observer (us) that can pass though the slits. We apply the modern quantum mechanics of closed systems to calculate the…
The current debate about a possible change of paradigm from a single universe to a multiverse scenario could have deep implications on our view of cosmology and of science in general. These implications therefore deserve to be analyzed from…
In this article I chronicle a series of landmark events, with which I was personally involved, that relate to the development of the theory of cosmic life. The interpretation of events offered here might invite a sense of incredulity on the…
The off-site continuums are proposed for the cosmological models of the galaxies and the Universe. It is shown that many visual properties of galaxies and the Universe may be described on frames of the off-site continuums methodology. In…
A critical discussion of our knowledge about extragalactic cosmic rays and magnetic fields is attempted. What do we know for sure? What are our prejudices? How do we confront our models with the observations? How can we assess the…
These notes are intended as an introductory course for experimental particle physicists interested in the recent developments in astrophysics and cosmology. I will describe the standard Big Bang theory of the evolution of the universe, with…
In this White Paper, we present recommendations for the scientific community and funding agencies to foster the infrastructure for a collaborative multi-messenger and time-domain astronomy (MMA/TDA) ecosystem. MMA/TDA is poised for…
When a physicist says that a theory is fine-tuned, they mean that it must make a suspiciously precise assumption in order to explain a certain observation. This is evidence that the theory is deficient or incomplete. One particular case of…
I give a brief and elementary introduction to braneworld models with large extra dimensions. Three conceptually distinct scenarios are outlined: (i) Large compact extra dimensions; (ii) Warped extra dimensions; (iii) Infinite-volume extra…
The large scale structure of the universe is a complex web of clusters, filaments, and voids. Its properties are informed by galaxy redshift surveys and measurements of peculiar velocities. Wiener Filter reconstructions recover…
I review the basis and limitations of plausible inference in cosmology, in particular the limitation that it can only provide fundamentally true inferences when the hypotheses under consideration form a set that is exhaustive. They never…
The local universe is the best known part of our universe. Within the CLUES project (http://clues-project.org - Constrained Local UniversE Simulations) we perform numerical simulations of the evolution of the local universe. For these…
The search for life on planets outside our solar system has largely been the province of the astrophysics community until recently. A major development since the NASA Astrobiology Strategy 2015 document (AS15) has been the integration of…
We consider a universe with an arbitrary number of extra dimensions, $N$. We present a new method for constructing the cosmological equations of motion and find analytic solutions with an explicit dependence on $N$. When we take the…
This is a programmatic paper, marking out two directions in which the study of social media can contribute to broader problems of social science: understanding cultural evolution and understanding collective cognition. Under the first…
Surveys of the local and distant Universe are the means to test and improve our models of galaxy formation. Substantial successes in the models are evident, while there is also considerable recent progress in identifying what remains to be…
This is a written version of a talk given at the Fifth Friedmann Seminar on recent work in Observational Cosmic Topology done in partial collaboration with Armando Bernui. We address three relevant questions related to the search for the…
Some of the assumptions of cosmology, as based on the simplest version of General Relativity, are discussed. It is argued that by slight modifications of standard gravitation theory, our notion of the sources of gravity {the right hand side…