Related papers: What is the Standard Cosmological Model?
Certain results of observational cosmology cast critical doubt on the foundations of standard cosmology but leave most cosmologists untroubled. Alternative cosmological models that differ from the Big Bang have been published and defended…
For two decades the hot big-bang model as been referred to as the standard cosmology -- and for good reason. For just as long cosmologists have known that there are fundamental questions that are not answered by the standard cosmology and…
In this thesis, the implications of a new cosmological model are studied, which has features similar to that of decaying vacuum cosmologies. Decaying vacuum (or cosmological constant \Lambda) models are the results of attempts to resolve…
I motivate and discuss some recent work on theories with varying constants, and consider some possible observational consequences and tests. Particular emphasis is given to models which can (almost) exactly mimic the predictions of standard…
Structure occurs over a vast range of scales in the universe. Our large-scale cosmological models are coarse-grained representations of what exists, which have much less structure than there really is. An important problem for cosmology is…
Over the last decades, observations with increasing quality have revolutionized our understanding of the general properties of the Universe. Questions posed for millenia by mankind about the origin, evolution and structure of the cosmos…
Modern scientific cosmology pushes the boundaries of knowledge and the knowable. This is prompting questions on the nature of scientific knowledge. A central issue is what defines a 'good' model. When addressing global properties of the…
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…
The Standard Model of cosmology of the 1980's was based on a remarkable interplay of ideas from particle theory, experiment and astrophysical observations. That model is now dead, and has been replaced by something far more bizarre.…
Inflation is a bold and expansive extension of the Standard Cosmology. It holds the promise to extend our understanding of the Universe to within 10^{-32}sec of the big bang and answer most of the pressing questions in cosmology. Its…
Cosmology is very exciting for three reasons. There is a very successful standard model - the hot big bang - which describes the evolution of the Universe from 10^{-2} sec onward. There are bold ideas, foremost among them are inflation and…
Facing the advent of the next generation cosmological surveys we present a method to forecast knowledge gain on cosmological models. We propose this as a well defined and general tool to quantify the performance of different experiments in…
A comparison of the standard models in particle physics and in cosmology demonstrates that they are not compatible, though both are well established. Basics of modern cosmology are briefly reviewed. It is argued that the measurements of the…
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…
The standard model of cosmology is based on the hot Big Bang theory and the inflationary paradigm. Recent precise observations of the temperature and polarization anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background and the matter distribution…
There have been recent attempts at justifying, from first principles, and within the standard framework, the emergence of classical behavior in the post-inflationary cosmological context. Accounting for this emergence is an important issue,…
For two decades the hot big-bang model as been referred to as the standard cosmology -- and for good reason. For just as long cosmologists have known that there are fundamental questions that are not answered by the standard cosmology and…
The constraints on the models for the structure formation arising from various cosmological observations at different length scales are reviewed. The status of different models for structure formation is examined critically in the light of…
Cosmological observations are beginning to reach a level of precision that allow us to test some of the most fundamental assumptions in our working model of the Universe. One such an assumption is that gravity is governed by the General…
Observational astronomy has shown significant growth over the last decade and has made important contributions to cosmology. A major paradigm shift in cosmology was brought about by observations of Type Ia supernovae. The notion that the…