Related papers: The Universe, the Cold War, and Dialectical Materi…
The standard big bang cosmological model and the history of the early universe according to the grand unified theories of strong, weak and electromagnetic interactions are summarized. The shortcomings of big bang are discussed together with…
How did it all begin? Although this question has undoubtedly lingered for as long as humans have walked the Earth, the answer still eludes us. Yet since my grandparents were born, scientists have been able to refine this question to a…
The established cosmological theory which describes the history of the Universe since shortly after the "Big Bang" until today is remarkably successful. Thanks to the increasing precision of available observational data, we are now able to…
We consider a cosmological setup with the inflaton field in the presence of a redshift dependent Lorentz-violating time-like background to address the inflationary regime and other phases of the Universe. We also show that the regime of…
A popular science article designed to introduce people familiar with basic cosmological nomenclature with models alternative to cosmological inflation. The paper briefly discusses the modern view of the Big Bang model, inflation (both its…
The early Greek and Indian cosmologies are summarized in this paper. The two traditions appear to have developed independently although after the time of Alexander they were consciously aware of each other. The focus and style of the two…
Since its decovery during the late 90's, the dimming of distant SN Ia apparent luminosity has been mostly ascribed to the influence of a mysterious dark energy component. Formulated in a Friedmannian cosmological modelling framework based…
The standard cosmological model, based on Cold Dark Matter and Dark Energy ({\Lambda}CDM), faces several challenges. Among these is the need to adjust the scenario to account for he presence of vast voids in the large-scale structure of the…
Model-independent methods in cosmology has become an essential tool in order to deal with an increasing number of theoretical alternatives for explaining the late-time acceleration of the Universe. In principle, this provides a way of…
Despite the success of our best models in Theoretical Physics, especially concerning Cosmology and Particle Physics, we still face persistent challenges. Among them we have the cosmological singularity problem, understanding the late-time…
The discovery of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) in 1964 by Penzias and Wilson led to the establishment of the hot big-bang cosmological model some ten years later. Discoveries made in 1998 may ultimately have as profound an effect on…
In an undulant universe, cosmic expansion is characterized by alternating periods of acceleration and deceleration. We examine cosmologies in which the dark-energy equation of state varies periodically with the number of e-foldings of the…
This review describes the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation in 1965 and its impact on cosmology in the 50 years that followed. This discovery has established the Big Bang model of the Universe and the analysis of its…
Some remarkable examples of alternative cosmological theories are reviewed here, ranging from a compilation of variations on the Standard Model through the more distant quasi-steady-state cosmology, plasma cosmology, or universe models as a…
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…
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 consensus of opinion in cosmology is that the Universe is currently undergoing a period of accelerated expansion. With current and proposed high precision experiments it offers the hope of being able to discriminate between the two…
One of the next decade's most exciting prospects is to explore the cosmic "dark ages," during which the first stars in the Universe formed, with the 21 cm line of neutral hydrogen. At z>6, this light redshifts into the low-frequency radio…
Observational evidence indicating that the expansion of the universe is accelerating has surprised cosmologists in recent years. Cosmological models have sought to explain this acceleration by incorporating `dark energy', of which the…
We study the cosmology of K-mouflage theories at the background level. We show that the effects of the scalar field are suppressed at high matter density in the early Universe and only play a role in the late time Universe where the…