Related papers: The Big Bang Was Not That Bright
Recent anomalies in cosmic rays could be due to dark matter annihilation in our galaxy. In order to get the required large cross-section to explain the data while still obtaining the right relic density, we rely on a non standard thermal…
The "cosmic dawn" refers to the period of the Universe's history when stars and black holes first formed and began heating and ionizing hydrogen in the intergalactic medium (IGM). Though exceedingly difficult to detect directly, the first…
The recent proposal proposed by Paul Davies and colleagues [Phys. Rev. D \textbf{111} (2025) no.10, 103512] that regular primordial black holes (RPBHs) form stable, zero-temperature remnants and could thereby constitute dark matter is…
A key assumption of the standard cosmological model is that the temperature of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation scales with cosmological redshift $z$ as $T_{\rm CMB}(z) \propto (1+z)$ at all times after recombination at…
The first stars to form in the history of the universe may have been powered by dark matter annihilation rather than by fusion. This new phase of stellar evolution may have lasted millions to billions of years. These dark stars can grow to…
A light higgsino is strongly favored by the naturalness, while as a dark matter candidate it is usually under-abundant. We consider the higgsino production in a non-standard history of the universe, caused by a scalar field with an…
This article gives a brief qualitative description of the possible evolution of the early Universe between the end of an inflationary epoch and the end of Big Bang nucleosynthesis. After a general introduction, establishing the minimum…
Cosmological observations strongly suggest the presence of dark energy which comprises the majority of the current energy density of the universe. The equation of state relating the pressure and energy density of this dark energy, p = w…
One hundred years ago we did not know how stars generate energy, the age of the Universe was thought to be only millions of years, and our Milky Way galaxy was the only galaxy known. Today, we know that we live in an evolving and expanding…
Over the past three years we have determined the basic features of our Universe. It is spatially flat; accelerating; comprised of 1/3 a new form of matter, 2/3 a new form of energy, with some ordinary matter and a dash of massive neutrinos;…
Strange Quark Nuggets are the relics of the microsecond old universe after the big bang. The universe having experienced a mini inflation of 7-e folding has gone through supercooling leading to a first order phase transition from quark to…
In 1974, Stephen Hawking theoretically discovered that black holes emit thermal radiation and have a characteristic temperature, known as the Hawking temperature. The aim of this paper is to present a simple heuristic derivation of the…
Microlensed double-image quasars have sent a consistent message that the baryonic dark matter consists of a population of free-roaming planet mass objects, as summarized previously. These were previously predicted to have formed at the time…
The axions produced during the QCD phase transition by vacuum realignment, string decay and domain wall decay thermalize as a result of their gravitational self-interactions when the photon temperature is approximately 500 eV. They then…
We have studied the evolution of primordial black holes (PBHs) in a universe with a variable gravitational constant and bulk viscosity. We have found that the strength of gravity has changed appreciably in the early universe. The…
Is the Hawking flux "thermal"? Unfortunately, the answer to this seemingly innocent question depends on a number of often unstated, but quite crucial, technical assumptions built into modern (mis-)interpretations of the word "thermal". The…
The default assumption of early universe cosmology is that the postinflationary universe was radiation dominated until it was about 47000 years old. Direct evidence for the radiation dominated epoch extends back until nucleosynthesis, which…
We investigate the idea that the universe before the Big Bang is the $CPT$ reflection of the universe after the bang, both classically and quantum mechanically, so that the universe does {\it not} spontaneously violate $CPT$. We show how…
Based on dramatic observations of the CMB with WMAP and of Type Ia supernovae with the Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based facilities, it is now generally believed that the Universe's expansion is accelerating. Within the context of…
Departures of the energy spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) from a perfect blackbody probe a fundamental property of the universe -- its thermal history. Current upper limits, dating back some 25 years, limit such spectral…