Related papers: Digging down the past
From a modern perspective cosmology is a historical science in so far that it deals with the development of the universe since its origin some 14 billion years ago. The origin itself may not be subject to scientific analysis and…
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…
In recent years, by theory and observation cosmology has advanced substantially. Parameters of the concordance or $\Lambda$CDM cosmological model are given with unprecedented precision ("precision cosmology"). On the other side, 95% of the…
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…
Time has always played a crucial role in cosmology. I review some of the aspects of the present cosmological model which are more directly related to time, such as: the definition of a cosmic time; the existence of typical timescales and…
The paper discusses the problem of demarcation between the dimensions of natural and the human sciences in contemporary cosmology. In spite of a common presumption that cosmology is a natural science, the specificity of its alleged subject…
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…
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…
Cosmology is the dot com of the sciences. Boom or bust. It is about nothing less than the origin and evolution of the Universe, the all of everything. It is the boldest of enterprises and not for the fainthearted. Cosmologists are the…
The expansion of our universe, when followed backward in time, implies that it emerged from a phase of huge density, the big bang. These stages are so extreme that classical general relativity combined with matter theories is not able to…
Cosmology has come a long way from being based on a small number of observations to being a data-driven precision science. We discuss the questions "What is observable?", "What in the Universe is knowable?" and "What are the fundamental…
One of the main challenges in cosmology is to quantify how small density fluctuations at the recombination epoch z around 1000 evolved into the galaxies and the large-scale structure we observe in the universe today. This thesis discusses…
Inflationary cosmology explains the homogeneity and large-scale structure of the universe through a brief epoch of accelerated expansion following the Big Bang. Cyclic cosmologies, in contrast, describe a universe undergoing successive…
Cosmology as an exact physical science is of new date, but it has long roots in the past. This essay is concerned with four important themes in the history of cosmological thought which, if taken together, offer a fairly comprehensive…
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…
Cosmography represents an important branch of cosmology which aims to describe the universe without the need of postulating \emph{a priori} any particular cosmological model. All quantities of interest are expanded as a Taylor series around…
Revolutionary advances in both theory and technology have launched cosmology into its most exciting period of discovery yet. Unanticipated components of the universe have been identified, promising ideas for understanding the basic features…
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 note that in general there exist two basic aspects in any branch of physics, including cosmology - one dealing with the attributes of basic constituents and forces of nature, the other dealing with how structures arise from them and how…
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.…