Related papers: The limits of cosmology
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…
Existing physical theories do not predict every feature of our experience but only certain regularities of that experience. That difference between what could be observed and what can be predicted is one kind of limit on scientific…
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…
Questions such as whether we live in a spatially finite universe, and what its shape and size may be, are among the fundamental open problems that high precision modern cosmology needs to resolve. These questions go beyond the scope of…
Whether we live in a spatially finite universe, and what its shape and size may be, are among the fundamental long-standing questions in cosmology. These questions of topological nature have become particularly topical, given the wealth of…
The limitations of current technology do not allow one to foresee the expansion of the humankind beyond our planet for at least a few decades. Furthermore, the laws of physics, as for as they are known, preclude any form of traveling beyond…
It is argued that some of the recent claims for cosmology are grossly overblown. Cosmology rests on a very small database: it suffers from many fundamental difficulties as a science (if it is a science at all) whilst observations of distant…
After a survey of the present state of cosmological theory and observations, this article discusses a series of major themes underlying the relation of philosophy to cosmology. These are: A: The uniqueness of the universe; B: The large…
Despite much recent theoretical and observational progress in our knowledge of the early universe, many fundamental questions remain only partially answered. Here, we review the latest achievements and persisting problems in the…
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…
It has recently been claimed that the Hubble Sphere represents a previously unknown limit to our view of the universe, with light we detect today coming from a proper distance less than this "Cosmic Horizon" at the present time. By…
The state of our understanding of cosmology is reviewed from an astrophysical cosmologist point of view with a particular emphasis given to recent observations and their impact. Discussion is then presented on the implications for particle…
The goal of this article is to give an overview of the current limitations and epistemological barriers in Science and Scientific Philosophy from a very general point of view. We first list and define the types of knowledge nous, doxa and…
We list a few things that we do not understand about stars and that most people ignore. These are all hard problems. We can learn more cosmology by working on them to reduce the systematic errors they introduce than by trying to derive…
For a few years now, cosmology has a standard model. By this term, we mean a consistent theoretical background which is at the same time simple and broad enough to offer coherent explanations for the vast majority of cosmological phenomena.…
In this brief essay we consider the concept of beginning in cosmology. It can be applied to the Universe as a whole, as well as to various epochs in the cosmic history and major structures as we can see them today.
What are the important unanswered questions in cosmology? The choice as to which are the most important is somewhat personal. In the view of the author, the ten topics chosen here for discussion must be included among the most fundamental.…
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…
Cosmology differs in some respects significantly from other sciences, primarily because of its intimate association with issues of a conceptual and philosophical nature. Because cosmology in the broader sense relates to the world views held…
I present a non-technical and necessarily biased and incomplete overview of our present understanding of the physical universe and its constituents, emphasizing what we have learned from the explosive growth in cosmological and…