Related papers: Limits of time in cosmology
In this manuscript we initiate a systematic examination of the physical basis for the time concept in cosmology. We discuss and defend the idea that the physical basis of the time concept is necessarily related to physical processes which…
It has been suggested that by increasing the speed of light during the early universe various cosmological problems of standard big bang cosmology can be overcome, without requiring an inflationary phase. However, we find that as the Planck…
We study cosmological solutions for the very early universe beginning at the Planck scale for a universe containing radiation, curvature and, as a simplification of a possible scalar field potential, a cosmological constant term. The…
In recent analyses of standard, single-universe, cosmology, it was pointed out that specific assumptions regarding the distribution and motion of matter must be made in order to set up the cosmological standard model with a global time…
Suppose the usual description of spacetime as a 4-dimensional manifold with a Lorentzian metric breaks down at Planck energies. Can we still construct sensible theoretical models of the universe? Are they testable? Do they lead to a…
The notion of time in cosmology is revealed through an examination of transition matrix elements of radiative processes occurring in the cosmos. To begin with, the very concept of time is delineated in classical physics in terms of…
We consider a novel model of cosmic inflation. In our model one does not need any specific matter field to drive inflation, but inflation stems from the microscopic, Planck scale structure of spacetime, thus being of quantum gravitational…
We propose a new cosmological model with a time-dependent cosmological constant ($\Lambda\propto 1/t^2$), which starting at the Planck time as $\Lambda_{Pl}\sim M^2_{Pl}$, evolves to the present-day allowed value of…
Space-based missions studying the cosmic microwave background (CMB) have progressively refined the parameter space in conventional models of inflation shortly ($\sim 10^{-37}$ seconds) after the big bang. While most inflationary scenarios…
Recent progress in quantum gravity and string theory has raised interest among scientists to whether or not nature behaves discretely at the Planck scale. There are two attitudes twoards this discretenes i.e. top-down and bottom-up…
Cosmological perturbations are generally described by quantum fields on (curved but) classical space-times. While this strategy has a large domain of validity, it can not be justified in the quantum gravity era where curvature and matter…
I discuss how modern cosmology illustrates under-determination of theoretical hypotheses by data, in ways that are different from most philosophical discussions. I emphasize cosmology's concern with what data could in principle be collected…
It is widely accepted that temporal asymmetry is largely a cosmological problem; the task of explaining temporal asymmetry reduces in the main to that of explaining an aspect of the condition of the early universe. However, cosmologists who…
Time is a parameter playing a central role in our most fundamental modelling of natural laws. Relativity theory shows that the comparison of times measured by different clocks depends on their relative motion and on the strength of the…
In most current models of inflation based on a weakly self-coupled scalar matter field minimally coupled to gravity, the period of inflation lasts so long that, at the beginning of the inflationary period, the physical wavelengths of…
Time has always played a crucial role in cosmology. I review some of the aspects of the present cosmological model which are more directly related to time, such as: the definition of a cosmic time; the existence of typical timescales and…
Independent tests aiming to constrain the value of the cosmological constant $\Lambda$ are usually difficult because of its extreme smallness $\left(\Lambda \simeq 1\times 10^{-52}~\textrm{m}^{-2},~\textrm{or}~2.89\times…
We use the quantum unimodular theory of gravity to relate the value of the cosmological constant, $\Lambda$, and the energy scale for the emergence of cosmological classicality. The fact that $\Lambda$ and unimodular time are complementary…
We critically discuss the measure of very short time intervals. By means of a Gedankenexperiment, we describe an ideal clock based on the occurrence of completely random events. Many previous thought experiments have suggested fundamental…
We argue that the discrepancy between the Planck mass scale and the observed value of the cosmological constant can be largely attenuated if those quantities are understood as a result of effective, and thus scale-dependent, couplings. We…