Related papers: Big Bang Cosmology and Religious Thought
First, this paper broaches the definition of science and the epistemic yield of tenets and approaches: phenomenological (descriptive only), well-founded (solid first principles, conducive to deep understanding), provisional (falsifiable if…
In 1917 Einstein initiated modern cosmology by postulating, based on general relativity, a homogeneous, static, spatially curved universe. To counteract gravitational contraction he introduced the cosmological constant. In 1922 Alexander…
Cosmological discoveries over the past century have completely changed our picture of our place in the universe. New observations have a realistic chance of probing nature on heretofore unimaginable scales, and as a result are changing the…
Cosmology is operating now on a well established and tightly constraining empirical basis. The relativistic LambdaCDM hot big bang theory is consistent with all the present tests; it has become the benchmark. But the many open issues in…
We review the main scientific pictures of the universe developed from ancient times to Albert Einstein and underline that all of them treated the universe as a stationary system with unchanged physical properties. In contrast to this, 100…
We consider Einstein's attitude with regard to religion both from sociological and epistemological points of view. An attempt to put it into a wider socio-historical perspective has been made, with the emphasis on his ethnic and religious…
Over the past century, rooted in the theory of general relativity, cosmology has developed a very successful physical model of the universe: the {\em big-bang model}. Its construction followed different stages to incorporate nuclear…
This work presents a brief and non-technical description of the main results and concepts of the modern scientific cosmology, viewing it from an epistemological perspective which allows a dialog with other modes of thinking like e.g.…
Soon after he proposed three classic observational tests for the general theory of relativity, Einstein realised that a consistent description of the universe as a whole provided another important challenge for the theory. In this essay, we…
The "universality" of critical phenomena is much discussed in philosophy of scientific explanation, idealizations and philosophy of physics. Lange and Reutlinger recently opposed Batterman concerning the role of some deliberate distortions…
The Hubble expansion of galaxies, the $2.73\dK$ blackbody radiation background and the cosmic abundances of the light elements argue for a hot, dense origin of the universe --- the standard Big Bang cosmology --- and enable its evolution to…
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…
WMAP and Planck open the way to unprecedented Big Bang phenomenology, potentially allowing to test the standard Big Bang model as well as less conventional approaches including noncyclic pre-Big Bang cosmologies that would incorporate a new…
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…
This essay is a nontechnical primer for a broader audience, in which I paint a broad-brush picture of modern cosmology. I begin by reviewing the evidence for the big bang, including the expansion of our Universe, the cosmic microwave…
In this review article, we first discuss a possible regularization of the big bang curvature singularity of the standard Friedmann cosmology, where the curvature singularity is replaced by a spacetime defect. We then consider the hypothesis…
We discuss various space-time metrics which are compatible with Einstein's equations and a previously suggested cosmology with a finite total mass. In this alternative cosmology the matter density was postulated to be a spatial delta…
Ideological considerations have always influenced science, but rarely as directly and massively as in the Soviet Union during the early Cold War period. Cosmology was among the sciences that became heavily politicized and forced to conform…
It would be reasonable to recall some critical issues in physical cosmology development. GR was created by A. Einstein in 1915. In 1917 Einstein proposed the first (static) cosmological model. Soon after the A. Eddington proved that the…
It is well known that, following the emergence of the first evidence for an expanding universe, Albert Einstein banished the cosmological constant term from his cosmology. Indeed, he is reputed to have labelled the term, originally…