Related papers: On Under-determination in cosmology
The standard model of modern cosmology provides a description of a wide range of astrophysical and astronomical data. However, despite this impressive success, several discrepancies have have persisted. Most strikingly, the emerging tension…
We are at a specific period of modern cosmology, during which the large increase of the amount of data leads to the idea that the determination of cosmological parameters has been achieved with a rather good precision. There is a large…
Cosmology seems extremely remote from everyday human practice and experience. It is usually taken for granted that cosmological data cannot rationally influence our beliefs about the fate of humanity -- and possible other intelligent…
A new idea of deriving a cosmological term from an underlying theory has been proposed in order to explain the expansion history of the universe. We obtain the scale factor with this derived cosmological term and demonstrate that it…
Cosmology is nowadays going through a true revolution in the quantity and quality of observations that are capable of providing crucial information about the origin and evolution of the universe. In the first years of the next millenium we…
The discovery of the Standard Model Higgs boson opens up a range of speculative cosmological scenarios, from the formation of structure in the early universe immediately after the big bang, to relics from the electroweak phase transition…
We have a well-established standard model for cosmology and prospects for considerable additions from work in progress. I offer a list of elements of the standard model, comments on controversies in the interpretation of the evidence in…
The light we observe from distant astrophysical objects including supernovae and quasars allows us to determine large distances in terms of a cosmological model. Despite the success of the standard cosmological model in fitting the data,…
The concordance model of cosmology predicts a universe which finishes in a finite amount of conformal time at a future conformal boundary. We show that for particular cases we study, the background variables and perturbations may be…
The current cosmological model, known as the $\Lambda$-Cold Dark Matter model (or $\Lambda$CDM for short) is one of the most astonishing accomplishments of contemporary theoretical physics. It is a well-defined mathematical model which…
Recent and forthcoming advances in instrumentation, and giant new surveys, are creating astronomical data sets that are not amenable to the methods of analysis familiar to astronomers. Traditional methods are often inadequate not merely…
This review aims to cover the central aspects of current research in cosmic topology from a topological and observational perspective. Beginning with an overview of the basic concepts of cosmology, it is observed that though a determinant…
This paper continues the building of the cosmological theory that was introduced in two earlier papers under the title A Dust Universe Solution to the Dark Energy Problem. The model introduced in this theory has existence before time zero…
Soon after he proposed three classic observational tests for the general theory of relativity, Einstein realised that a consistent description of the universe as a whole provided another important challenge for the theory. In this essay, we…
It is only human nature to be reluctant to accept something new and different. This feeling is exacerbated given the success of the Big Bang model. However, there are cogent reasons for considering this new model. Some of the advantages of…
The present standard model of cosmology, $\Lambda$CDM, contains some intriguing coincidences. Not only are the dominant contributions to the energy density approximately of the same order at the present epoch, but we note that contrary to…
This is a review article for The Review of Particle Physics 2006 (aka the Particle Data Book). It forms a compact review of knowledge of the cosmological parameters as at May 2006. Topics included are Parametrizing the Universe; Extensions…
In the past decade, observational cosmology has had one of the most exciting periods in the past century. The precision with which we have been able to measure cosmological parameters has increased tremendously, while at the same time, we…
A brief historical account of modern cosmology shows that the standard big bang (BB) model, believed by so many, does not have the strong observational foundations that are frequently claimed for it. The theory of the Quasi-Steady State…
Current evidence suggests that the cosmological constant is not zero, or that we live in an open universe. We examine the implications for the future under these assumptions, and find that they are striking. If the Universe is cosmological…