Related papers: Matters of Gravity: Dark Matter and the Cosmologic…
The old cosmological constant problem is to understand why the vacuum energy is so small; the new problem is to understand why it is comparable to the present mass density. Several approaches to these problems are reviewed. Quintessence…
Two sides of cosmological constant problem are discussed: a mysterious compensation of all contributions to vacuum energy with the accuracy of 100-50 orders of magnitude and a surprising equality of a constant vacuum energy density to the…
The cosmological constant problem represents an evident tension between our present description of gravity and particle physics. Many solutions have been proposed, but experimental tests are always difficult or impossible to perform and…
The common nature of the dark sector - dark energy and dark matter - as shown in [1] follows readily from the consideration of generalized Newtonian potential as a weak-field General Relativity. That generalized potential satisfying the…
I review the problem of dark energy focusing on the cosmological constant as the candidate and discuss its implications for the nature of gravity. Part 1 briefly overviews the currently popular `concordance cosmology' and summarises the…
The cosmological constant problem is the principal obstacle in the attempt to interpret dark energy as the quantum vacuum energy. We suggest that the obstacle can be removed, i.e. that the cosmological constant problem can be resolved by…
To the astrophysicist faced with the puzzle of dark matter, this one appears under two different aspects: on the one hand in cosmology, i.e. at very large scales, where it seems to be made of a bath of particles; on the other hand at the…
Nearly seventy per cent of the energy density in the universe is unclustered and exerts negative pressure. This conclusion -- now supported by numerous observations -- poses the greatest challenge for theoretical physics today. I discuss…
Quantum theory, general relativity, the standard model of particle physics, and the $\Lambda$CDM model of cosmology have all been spectacularly successful within their respective regimes of applicability, but many central problems remain…
Some issues of the cosmological constant or dark energy are briefly reviewed. There are an increasing number of observations that constrain the equation of state of dark energy more stringently and favor the time-independent cosmological…
I briefly review the cosmological constant problem and the issue of dark energy (or quintessence). Within the framework of quantum field theory, the vacuum expectation value of the energy momentum tensor formally diverges as $k^4$. A cutoff…
Physics invites the idea that space contains energy whose gravitational effect approximates that of Einstein's cosmological constant, Lambda; nowadays the concept is termed dark energy or quintessence. Physics also suggests the dark energy…
Associated with the cosmic acceleration are the old and new cosmological constant problems, recently put into the more general context of the dark energy problem. In broad terms, the old problem is related to an unexpected order of…
The case grows ever stronger that the average density of matter, ordinary and dark, is less than the critical density required for a flat universe. However, most of determinations of the mass density have been dynamical, hence sensitive…
According to general relativity, the present analysis shows on geometrical grounds that the cosmological constant problem is an artifact due to the unfounded link of this fundamental constant to vacuum energy density of quantum…
We show that a slowly varying Newton's constant, consistent with existing bounds, can potentially explain a host of observations pertaining to gravitational effects or phenomena across distances spanning from planetary to the cosmological,…
According to general relativity, the present analysis shows on geometrical grounds that the cosmological constant problem is an artifact due to the unfounded link of this fundamental constant to vacuum energy density of quantum…
The cosmological constant problem is explained by a theory based on the discrete space-time hypothesis. The calculated cosmological constant value is of the order of 10^-52[m]^-2 or equivalent to about 0.7 of the critical mass density. It…
Observations suggest that nearly seventy per cent of the energy density in the universe is unclustered and exerts negative pressure. Theoretical understanding of this component (`dark energy'), which is driving an accelerated expansion of…
Some form of missing energy may account for the difference between the observed cosmic matter density and the critical density. Two leading candidates are a cosmological constant and quintessence (a time-varying, inhomogenous component with…