Related papers: Cosmological thinking: cultural heritage and chall…
The discovery of universe's late-time acceleration and dark energy has overseen a great deal of research into cosmological singularities and in this brief review, we discuss all the prominent developments in this field for the best part of…
The complexity of cultures in the modern world is now beyond human comprehension. Cognitive sciences cast doubts on the traditional explanations based on mental models. The core subjects in humanities may lose their importance. Humanities…
Quantum cosmology offers a unique stage to address questions of time related to its underlying (and perhaps truly quantum dynamical) meaning as well as its origin. Some of these issues can be analyzed with a general scheme of quantum…
The expansion of the observed universe appears to be accelerating. A simple explanation of this phenomenon is provided by the non-vanishing of the cosmological constant in the Einstein equations. Arguments are commonly presented to the…
Dark energy is one of the mysteries of modern science. It is unlike any known form of matter or energy and has been detected so far only by its gravitational effect of repulsion. Owing to its effects being discernible only at very very…
The existence of multiple regions of space beyond the observable Universe (within the so-called "multiverse") where the vacuum energy density takes different values, has been postulated as an explanation for the low non-zero value observed…
The Universe contains everything that exists, including life. And all that exists, including life, obeys universal physical laws. Do those laws then give adequate foundations for a complete explanation of biological phenomena? We discuss…
The inadequacy of the present cosmological picture is underlined. The central issue of energy and particles-photons number conservation is addressed. It is shown that consideration of gravitational self energy is paramount both for matter…
The discovery ten years ago that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating put in place the present cosmological model, in which the Universe is composed of 4% baryons, 20% dark matter, and 76% dark energy. Yet the underlying cause of…
Recent observations of high-redshift supernovae seem to suggest that the global geometry of the Universe may be affected by a `cosmological constant', which acts to accelerate the expansion rate with time. But these data by themselves still…
Mankind has not yet explained dark matter, the accelerating expansion of the Universe, the 'knee' and 'ankle' of the cosmic ray energy spectrum graph, the low star formation rates of low surface brightness (LSB) dwarf galaxies, the ignition…
A brief review of the present-day development of cosmology is presented for mixed physical audience. The universe history is briefly described. Unsolved problems are discussed, in particular, the mystery of the cosmological constant and…
If the parameters defining the physics of our universe departed from their present values, the observed rich structure and complexity would not be supported. This article considers whether similar fine-tuning of parameters applies to…
Cosmological observations offer unique and robust avenues for probing the fundamental nature of dark matter particles-they broadly test a range of compelling theoretical scenarios, often surpassing or complementing the reach of terrestrial…
In order to account for the observable Universe, any comprehensive theory or model of cosmology must draw from many disciplines of physics, including gauge theories of strong and weak interactions, the hydrodynamics and microphysics of…
This article is the written version of the closing talk presented at the conference `A Century of Cosmology' held at San Servolo, Italy, in August 2007. I focus on the prospects of constraining fundamental physics from cosmological…
A huge amount of good quality data converges towards the picture of a spatially flat universe undergoing the today observed phase of accelerated expansion. This new observational trend is commonly addressed as Precision Cosmology. Despite…
It goes without saying that we are stuck with the universe we have. Nevertheless, we would like to go beyond simply describing our observed universe, and try to understand why it is that way rather than some other way. Physicists and…
The discovery ten years ago that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating put in place the last major building block of the present cosmological model, in which the Universe is composed of 4% baryons, 20% dark matter, and 76% dark…
The discovery of accelerated cosmic expansion implies that, in addition to the attractive gravity of matter, there exists in our universe some other form of energy (dark energy or cosmological constant) producing a repulsive force. The…