Related papers: Gravity as the breakdown of conformal invariance
Our Universe has multiple examples of unexplained gravitational losses in black holes and neutron stars. As all of the space is squeezed out, nucleons are not easily compressible further. Gravitational loss will allow galactic black holes…
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 show that a number of problems of modern cosmology may be addressed and solved in the framework of multidimensional gravity with high-order curvature invariants, without invoking other fields. As applications of this approach, we mention…
We explore the possibility that the entire departure of galactic rotational velocities from their luminous Newtonian expectation be cosmological in origin, and show that within the framework of conformal gravity (but not Einstein gravity…
Loop Quantum Gravity (L.Q.G.) is one of the two most promising tentative theory for a quantum description of gravity. When applied to the entire universe, the so-called Loop Quantum Cosmology (L.Q.C.) framework offers microscopical models…
Production of gravitational vacuum defects and their contribution to the energy density of our Universe are discussed. These topological microstructures (defects) could be produced in the result of creation of the Universe from "nothing"…
In the past decade the phenomenology of quantum gravity has been dominated by the search of violations of Lorentz invariance. However, there are very serious arguments that led us to assume that this invariance is a symmetry in Nature. This…
It has been known for some time that the usual inference drawn from the observed near-flatness of the large-scale Universe - namely the existence of a cosmological "flatness problem", which is then taken as a partial, but key motivation for…
The equations of motion describing all physical systems, except gravity, remain invariant if a constant is added to the Lagrangian. In the conventional approach, gravitational theories break this symmetry exhibited by all other physical…
The primordial Universe can be used as a laboratory to set constraints on quantum gravity. In the framework of Loop Quantum Cosmology, we show that such a proposal for quantum gravity not only solves for the big bang singularity issue but…
After a brief review of current scenarios for the resolution and/or avoidance of the Big Bang, an alternative hypothesis is put forward implying an infinite increase in complexity towards the initial singularity. This may result in an…
From an observational perspective cosmology is today in excellent shape - advances in instrumentation and data processing have enabled us to study the universe in detail back to when the first galaxies formed, map the fluctuations in the…
Quantum gravity is expected to be necessary in order to understand situations where classical general relativity breaks down. In particular in cosmology one has to deal with initial singularities, i.e. the fact that the backward evolution…
Five-vectors theory of gravity is proposed, which admits an arbitrary choice of the energy density reference level. This theory is formulated as the constraint theory, where the Lagrange multipliers turn out to be restricted to some class…
Our universe appears to have been created not out of nothing but from a strange space-time dust. Quantum geometry (loop quantum gravity) makes it possible to avoid the ominous beginning of our universe with its physically unrealistic (i.e.…
The great emptiness is a possible beginning of the Universe in the infinite past of physical time. For the epoch of great emptiness particles are extremely rare and effectively massless. Only expectation values of fields and average…
The Planck scale is usually believed to be an unpassable wall. Putting a cutoff there and thinking of it as a quantized spacetime entity shows that. However, this is exactly the cause of many problems in quantum gravity. The cosmological…
It is believed that the recent detection of large tensor perturbations strongly favors the inflation scenario in the early universe. This common sense depends on the assumption that Einstein's general relativity is valid at the early…
Several scenarios have been proposed in which primordial perturbations could originate from quantum vacuum fluctuations in a phase corresponding to a collapse phase (in an Einstein frame) preceding the Big Bang. I briefly review three…
The gravitino may well play an important role in cosmology, not only because its interactions are Planck-suppressed and therefore long-lived, but also because it is copiously produced via various processes such as particle scatterings in…