Related papers: Colloquium: The Cosmic Dipole Anomaly
Although the new era of high precision cosmology of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation improves our knowledge to understand the infant as well as the presentday Universe, it also leads us to question the main assumption of the…
Recent observational analyses have suggested possible evidence of hemisphere asymmetry in cosmological datasets. Parameterizations of this kind place observers in a privileged position-specifically on the plane that divides the two…
Cosmology relies on the Cosmological Principle, i.e., the hypothesis that the Universe is homogeneous and isotropic on large scales. This implies in particular that the counts of galaxies should approach a homogeneous scaling with volume at…
With the recent measurements of temperature and polarization anisotropies in the microwave background by WMAP, we have entered a new era of precision cosmology, with the cosmological parameters of a Standard Cosmological Model determined to…
Observations reveal a `bulk flow' in the local Universe which is faster and extends to much larger scales than is expected around a typical observer in the standard $\Lambda$CDM cosmology. This is expected to result in a scale-dependent…
Over the last nine years of cosmic microwave background observations, the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe ($WMAP$) results were consistent with a $\Lambda$CDM cosmological model in which the age of the Universe is one Hubble time, and…
Extremely well! In the $\Lambda$CDM model, the spacetime metric, $g_{ab}$, of our universe is approximated by an FLRW metric, $g_{ab}^{(0)}$, to about 1 part in $10^4$ or better on both large and small scales, except in the immediate…
With the era of precision cosmology upon us, and upcoming surveys expected to further improve the precision of our observations below the percent level, ensuring the accuracy of our theoretical cosmological model is of the utmost…
Observational Cosmology has indeed made very rapid progress in the past decade. The ability to quantify the universe has largely improved due to observational constraints coming from structure formation Measurements of CMB anisotropy and,…
The standard inflationary model presents a simple scenario within which the homogeneity, isotropy and flatness of the universe appear as natural outcomes and, in addition, fluctuations in the energy density are originated during the…
The backbone of standard cosmology is the Friedmann-Robertson-Walker solution to Einstein's equations of general relativity (GR). In recent years, observations have largely confirmed many of the properties of this model, which is based on a…
In the standard model of cosmology, the universe is described by a Robertson-Walker spacetime, while its matter/energy content is modeled by a perfect fluid with three components corresponding to matter/dust, radiation and a cosmological…
The isotropy and homogeneity of our Universe are the cardinal principles of modern cosmology built on the definition of metric through the prescription by Friedmann-Lema$\hat{i}$tre-Robertson-Walker (FLRW). From the aspects of geometry, the…
Observational tests for the homogeneity of the Universe on large scales are reviewed. Assuming the Cosmological Principle we then estimate cosmological parameters by joint analysis of the Cosmic Microwave Background, Supernovae Ia, peculiar…
We discuss selected large-scale anomalies in the maps of temperature anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background. Specfically, these include alignments of the largest modes of CMB anisotropy with one another and with the geometry and…
Cosmic microwave background measurements show an agreement with the concordance cosmology model except for a few notable anomalies: Power Suppression, the lack of large scale power in the temperature data compared to what is expected in the…
In a recent paper (Vigoureux et al. Int. J. Theor. Phys. 47:928, 2007) it has been suggested that the velocity of light and the expansion of the universe are two aspects of one single concept connecting space and time in the expanding…
The Cosmological Principle states that the universe is statistically isotropic and homogeneous on large length scales, typically $\gtrsim 70$Mpc. A detection of significant deviation would help us falsify the simplest models of inflation.…
In this work, I present a generalized linear Hubble law for a barotropic spherically symmetric inhomogeneous spacetime, which is in principle compatible with the acceleration of the cosmic expansion obtained as a result of high redshift…
We are in motion against the cosmic backdrop. This motion is evidenced by the systematic temperature shift - or dipole anisotropy - observed in the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation (CMB). Because of the Doppler effect, the temperature…