Related papers: Are singularities the limits of cosmology?
Quantum gravity may remove classical space-time singularities and thus reveal what a universe at and before the big bang could be like. In loop quantum cosmology, an exactly solvable model is available which allows one to address precise…
It has long been a primary objective of cosmology to understand the apparent isotropy in our universe and to provide a mathematical formulation for its evolution. A school of thought for its explanation is quiescent cosmology, which already…
We review some old and new results about strict and non strict hyperbolic formulations of the Einstein equations.
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…
Existing physical theories do not predict every feature of our experience but only certain regularities of that experience. That difference between what could be observed and what can be predicted is one kind of limit on scientific…
The existence of a singularity by definition implies a preferred scale--the affine parameter distance from/to the singularity of a causal geodesic that is used to define it. However, this variable scale is also captured by the expansion…
Recently Gambini and Pullin proposed a new consistent discrete approach to quantum gravity and applied it to cosmological models. One remarkable result of this approach is that the cosmological singularity can be avoided in a general…
This is a review of the physics and cosmology of the cosmological constant. Focusing on recent developments, I present a pedagogical overview of cosmology in the presence of a cosmological constant, observational constraints on its…
We consider the application of the consistent lattice quantum gravity approach we introduced recently to the situation of a Friedmann cosmology and also to Bianchi cosmological models. This allows us to work out in detail the computations…
In this lecture we will show some properties of a singularity-free solution to Einstein's equations and its accordance with some theorems dealing with singularities. We will also discuss the implications of the results.
We tudy flat Friedmann-Robertson-Walker cosmology in Brans-Dicke-type theories of gravitation with minimal coupling between the scalar field and the matter fields in the Einstein frame (general relativity with an extra scalar field) for…
One of the fundamental open questions in cosmology is whether we can regard the universe evolution without singularity like a Big Bang or a Big Rip. This challenging subject stimulates one to regard a nonsingular universe in the far past…
Singularity theorems demonstrate the inevitable breakdown of the concept of continuous, classical spacetime under highly general conditions. Quantum gravity is expected to intervene to avoid singularities and models so far hint towards…
The configuration space of general relativity is superspace - the space of all Riemannian 3-metrics modulo diffeomorphisms. However, it has been argued that the configuration space for gravity should be conformal superspace - the space of…
We review here some recent developments on the issue of final fate of gravitational collapse within the framework of Einstein theory of gravity. The structure of collapsed object is discussed in terms of either a black hole or a singularity…
In a universe whose elementary constituents are point particles there does not seem to be any obvious mechanism for avoiding the initial singularities in physical quantities in the standard model of cosmology. In contrast in string theory…
We discuss how entropy bounds, which are not respected in the standard cosmology, constrain the parameters of a previously suggested cosmology with a finite total mass. In that alternative cosmology the matter density was postulated to be a…
We study the consequences of the $f(R/\Box)$ gravity models for the Solar system and the large scale structure of the universe. The spherically symmetric solutions can be used to obtain bounds on the constant and the linear parts of the…
In this paper causal geodesic completeness of FLRW cosmological models is analysed in terms of generalised power expansions of the scale factor in coordinate time. The strength of the found singularities is discussed following the usual…
We show that there exist modified theories of gravity in which the metric satisfies second-order equations and in which the Big Bang singularity is replaced by a cosmic bounce without violating any energy condition. In fact, the bounce is…