Related papers: Why Is There Something, Rather Than Nothing?
What do we do when cosmology raises questions it cannot answer? These include the existence of a multiverse and the universality of the laws of physics. We cannot settle any of these issues by experiment, and this is where philosophers…
Black holes are perhaps the most strange and fascinating objects known to exist in the universe. Our understanding of space and time is pushed to its limits by the extreme conditions found in these objects. They can be used as natural…
Pathria(1972) has shown, for a pressureless closed Universe, that it is inside a black (or white) hole. We show now, that the Universe with a cosmic pressure obeying Einstein's field equations, can be inside a white-hole. In the closed…
In the no-boundary univers e the universe is created from an instanton. However, there does not exist any instanton for the ``realistic'' $FRW$ universe with a scalar field. The ``instanton'' leading to its quantum creation may be modified…
If the universe is infinite now it has always been infinite. This is the opinion of many astronomers today as can be concluded from the following series of interviews, but the opinions differ much more than I had expected. Many astronomers…
Gravity is one of the most inexplicable forces of nature, controlling everything, from the expansion of the Universe to the ebb and flow of ocean tides. The search for the laws of motion and gravitation began more than two thousand years…
Does a world that contains chemistry entail the validity of both the standard model of elementary particle physics and general relativity, at least as effective theories? This article shows that the answer may very well be affirmative. It…
Infinity, in various guises, has been invoked recently in order to `explain' a number of important questions regarding observable phenomena in science, and in particular in cosmology. Such explanations are by their nature speculative. Here…
The apparent fine-tuning of several fundamental parameters that determine the properties of our Universe and make it hospitable to life is sometimes used as an argument for God from design. I review the concept of cosmic fine-tuning and…
We wonder if a cyclic universe may be dominated alternatively by matter and antimatter. Such a scenario demands a mechanism for transformation of matter to antimatter (or antimatter to matter) during the final stage of a big crunch. By…
The paper defends the thesis that it's possible to maintain some conceptual preconditions of overcoming of relativistic intentions in modern philosophy of science ("there are no any general foundations in philosophy of science"). We found…
The fact that life has evolved in our universe constrains the laws of physics. The anthropic principle proposes that these constraints are sometimes very tight and can be used to explain in a sense the corresponding laws. Recently a…
Conventional thinking says the universe is infinite. But it could be finite and relatively small, merely giving the illusion of a greater one, like a hall of mirrors. Recent astronomical measurements add support to a finite space with a…
General relativity and quantum mechanics provide a natural explanation for the existence of dark energy with its observed value and predict its dynamics. Dark energy proves to be necessary for the existence of space-time itself and…
Despite the extraordinary successes the two great bastions of $20^{th}$ century science (Quantum Theory and General Relativity) are troubled with serious conceptual and mathematical difficulties. As a result, further growth of fundamental…
Physical cosmology tries to understand the Universe at large with its origin and evolution. Observational and experimental situations in cosmology do not allow us to proceed purely based on the empirical means. We examine in which sense our…
Taking into account only luminous objects, the kinematics of clusters of galaxies, galaxies and their interior, require a much higher mass than the luminous one to explain the observations. This situation has provoked more than 30 years of…
The universe has evolved to be a filamentary web of galaxies and large inter-galactic zones of space without matter. The Euclidian nature of the universe indicates that it is not a 3D manifold within space with an extra spatial dimension.…
Despite its apparent complexity, our world seems to be governed by simple laws of physics. This volume provides a philosophical introduction to such laws. I explain how they are connected to some of the central issues in philosophy, such as…
Ever since its foundations were laid nearly a century ago, quantum theory has provoked questions about the very nature of reality. We address these questions by considering the universe, and the multiverse, fundamentally as complex…