Related papers: Is cosmology just a plausibility argument?
Scientific cosmology has now reached its period of maturity with the establishment of a standard model, which is the theory of an expanding universe. The question of whether this expansion resolves itself, in the past, into a singularity…
Modern observations based on general relativity indicate that the spatial geometry of the expanding, large-scale Universe is very nearly Euclidean. This basic empirical fact is at the core of the so-called "flatness problem", which is…
The idea of a multiverse -- an ensemble of universes or universe domains -- has received increasing attention in cosmology, both as the outcome of the originating process that generated our own universe, and as an explanation for why our…
We discuss scientific realism from the perspective of modern cosmology, especially primordial cosmology: i.e. the cosmological investigation of the very early universe. We first (Section 2) state our allegiance to scientific realism, and…
We investigate structure formation in a one dimensional model of a matter-dominated universe using a quasi-newtonian formulation. In addition to dark matter, luminous matter is introduced to examine the potential bias in the distributions.…
Even when completely and consistently formulated, a fundamental theory of physics and cosmological boundary conditions may not give unambiguous and unique predictions for the universe we observe; indeed inflation, string/M theory, and…
The actual existence of collections of universes -- multiverses -- is strongly suggested by leading approaches to quantum cosmology, and has been proposed earlier as an attractive way to explain the apparent fine-tuned character of our…
In this paper, we present a new cosmological model using fractal manifold. We prove that a space defined by this kind of manifold is an expanding space. This model provides us with consistent arguments pertaining to the relationship between…
All the relativistic cosmological models of the universe, except Einstein's static model, imply that the 3-space of the spacetime of the universe is also expanding apart from the matter and the radiation in it. However, there is no…
Our knowledge about the universe has increased tremendously in the last three decades or so --- thanks to the progress in observations --- but our understanding has improved very little. There are several fundamental questions about our…
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…
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…
The aim of this review article is to give a comprehensive description of the scaling properties detected for the distribution of cosmic structures. Due to the great variety of statistical methods to describe the large-scale structure of the…
Valid ideas that physical reality is vastly larger than human perception of it, and that the perceived part may not be representative of the whole, exist on many levels and have a long history. After a brief general inventory of those ideas…
The dramatic confrontation between new observations and theories of the early and recent universe makes cosmology one of the most rapidly advancing fields in the physical sciences. The universe is a unique laboratory in which to probe…
Cosmology is undergoing an explosive period of activity, fueled both by new, accurate astrophysical data and by innovative theoretical developments. Cosmological parameters such as the total density of the Universe and the rate of…
We examine the cosmology of the two recently proposed scenarios for a five dimensional universe with localized gravity. We find that the scenario with a non-compact fifth dimension is potentially viable, while the scenario which might solve…
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…
Inflationary Cosmology makes the universe ``eternal" and provides for recurrent universe creation, ad infinitum -- making it also plausible to assume that ``our" Big Bang was also preceeded by others, etc.. However, GR tells us that in the…
Cosmological observations are beginning to reach a level of precision that allow us to test some of the most fundamental assumptions in our working model of the Universe. One such an assumption is that gravity is governed by the General…