Related papers: Cosmic inflation and big bang interpreted as explo…
If our observable Universe is only a tiny region of a vastly larger and conformally older spacetime, then the usual formulations of the classical flatness and horizon problems of the Hot Big Bang can be reinterpreted as artifacts…
In this paper, we consider a nonminimal coupling model between gravity and nonlinear electrodynamics with cosmological constant. This cosmological model is designed to account for both the inflationary epoch of the early universe and the…
Observations of the cosmic microwave sky are revealing the primordial non-uniformities from which all structure in the Universe grew. The only known physical mechanism for generating the inhomogeneities we see involves the amplification of…
We consider the fate of the observable universe in the light of the discovery of a dark energy component to the cosmic energy budget. We extend results for a cosmological constant to a general dark energy component and examine the…
Teaching cosmology at the undergraduate or high school level requires simplifications and analogies, and inevitably brings the teacher into contact with at least one of the pedagogical interpretations of the expanding universe. The by far…
Recent observations of the luminosity-redshift in Type Ia supernovae suggest an accelerated inflation of the Universe (open Universe) as well as the observed matter density showed to be less than the critical one, suggesting that a large…
An epoch of accelerated expansion, or inflation, in the early universe solves several cosmological problems. While there are many models of inflation only recently has it become possible to discriminate between some of the models using…
The early stages of the universe evolution are discussed according to the hot big bang model and the grand unified theories. The shortcomings of big bang are summarized and their resolution by inflationary cosmology is sketched.…
It is widely accepted that the primordial universe experienced a brief period of accelerated expansion called inflation. This scenario provides a plausible solution to the horizon and flatness problems. However, the particle physics…
The first and most compelling evidence of the universe's expansion was, and continues to be, the observed redshift of spectra from distant objects. This paper plays "devil's advocate" by providing an alternative explanation with elementary…
The standard interpretation of the observed redshifted spectra and luminosities towards distant astrophysical objects is that the universe is expanding, an inference which is found to be consistent with other cosmological probes as well.…
In simple inflationary cosmological scenarios the near-exponential growth can be followed by a long period in which the Universe is dominated by the oscillating inflaton condensate. The condensate is initially almost homogeneous, but…
The standard model of cosmology posits that some time in the remote past, labelled as t=0, a Big-Bang occurred. However, it does not tell what caused the Big-Bang and subsequently the Inflation. In the present work the cause of the Big-Bang…
While stellar expansion after core-hydrogen exhaustion related to thermal imbalance has been documented for decades, the physical phenomenon of stellar inflation that occurs close to the Eddington limit has only come to the fore in recent…
The big bang model and the history of the early universe according to the grand unified theories are introduced. The shortcomings of big bang are discussed together with their resolution by inflationary cosmology. Inflation, the subsequent…
I present a brief review of astro-ph/0406099, which argues that there is a limit on the number of efolds of inflation which are observable in a universe which undergoes an eternally accelerated expansion in the future. Such an acceleration…
Inflation has been the leading early universe scenario for two decades, and has become an accepted element of the successful `cosmic concordance' model. However, there are many puzzling features of the resulting theory. It requires both…
We show that a moduli space of the form predicted by string theory, lifted by supersymmetry breaking, gives rise to successful inflation for large regions of parameter space without any modification or fine tuning. This natural realization…
The meaning of the expansion of the universe, or the `expansion of space,' is explored using two phenomena: the motion of a test particle against a homogeneous background and the cosmological redshift. Contrary to some expectations, a…
We argue that the presence of an inflationary epoch is a natural, almost unavoidable, consequence of the existence of a sensible effective action involving an infinite tower of higher-curvature corrections to the Einstein-Hilbert action. No…