Related papers: Testing the Copernican principle by constraining s…
Assuming the universe is spatially homogeneous on the largest scales lays the foundation for almost all cosmology. This idea is based on the Copernican principle, that we are not at a particularly special place in the universe.…
We pursue a program to confront observations with inhomogeneous extensions of the FLRW metric. The main idea is to test the Copernican principle rather than assuming it a priori. We consider the $\Lambda$CDM model endowed with a spherical…
The recent discovery of apparent cosmic acceleration has highlighted the depth of our ignorance of the fundamental properties of nature. It is commonly assumed that the explanation for acceleration must come from a new form of energy…
The current cosmological dark sector (dark matter plus dark energy) is challenging our comprehension about the physical processes taking place in the Universe. Recently, some authors tried to falsify the basic underlying assumptions of such…
Observations of distances to Type-Ia supernovae can be explained by cosmological models that include either a gigaparsec-scale void, or a cosmic flow, without the need for Dark Energy. Instead of invoking dark energy, these inhomogeneous…
The apparent accelerating expansion of the Universe is forcing us to examine the foundational aspects of the standard model of cosmology -- in particular, the fact that dark energy is a direct consequence of the homogeneity assumption. We…
We challenge the widely held belief that the cosmological principle is an obvious consequence of the observed isotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation, combined with the Copernican principle. We perform a detailed analysis of a…
We present the time drift of the cosmological redshift in a general spherically symmetric spacetime. We demonstrate that its observation would allow us to test the Copernican principle and so determine if our universe is radially…
It has been proposed that the observed dark energy can be explained away by the effect of large-scale nonlinear inhomogeneities. In the present paper we discuss how observations constrain cosmological models featuring large voids. We start…
The Copernican principle, stating that we do not occupy any special place in our universe, is usually taken for granted in modern cosmology. However recent observational data of supernova indicate that we may live in the under-dense center…
This article looks at how inhomogeneous spacetime models may be significant for cosmology. First it looks at how the averaging process may affect large scale dynamics, with backreaction effects leading to effective contributions to the…
Usually the effects of isotropic inhomogeneities are not seriously taken into account in the determination of the cosmological parameters because of Copernican principle whose statement is that we do not live in the privileged domain in the…
The blackbody nature of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation spectrum is used in a modern test of the Copernican Principle. The reionized universe serves as a mirror to reflect CMB photons, thereby permitting a view of ourselves…
I consider some of the issues we face in trying to understand dark energy. Huge fluctuations in the unknown dark energy equation of state can be hidden in distance data, so I argue that model-independent tests which signal if the…
Recently, spatially inhomogeneous cosmological models have been proposed as an alternative to the LCDM model, with the aim of reproducing the late time dynamics of the Universe without introducing a cosmological constant or dark energy.…
Several cosmological measurements have attained significant levels of maturity and accuracy over the last decade. Continuing this trend, future observations promise measurements of the statistics of the cosmic mass distribution at an…
The Copernican principle, a cornerstone of modern cosmology, remains largely unproven at Gpc radial scale and above. Here we will show that, violations of this type will inevitably cause a first order anisotropic kinetic Sunyaev Zel'dovich…
Cosmological density fields are assumed to be translational and rotational invariant, avoiding any special point or direction, thus satisfying the Copernican Principle. A spatially inhomogeneous matter distribution can be compatible with…
Homogeneity is a crucial, but poorly tested, assumption in cosmology. We introduce a new approach which allows us to place limits on the presence of localized structures within essentially our entire observable volume, using cosmic…
We discuss inhomogeneous cosmological models which satisfy the Copernican principle. We construct some inhomogeneous cosmological models starting from the ansatz that the all the observers in the models view an isotropic cosmic microwave…