Related papers: Cosmology and Philosophy
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…
Without a doubt many problems in physics arise as a consequence of our philosophical conception of the world. In this contribution however we endeavor to alleviate this scenario by putting forward a philosophical approach under which some…
The recent discovery that Einstein once attempted - and quickly abandoned - a steady-state model of the expanding universe sheds new light on his philosophical journey from static to dynamic cosmologies.
The universe is viewed as a dust gas filling a sphere and floating in infinite empty space. Einstein's gravitational equations are applied to this case together with appropriate boundary values. The equations are solved for initial…
``One could imagine that as a result of enormously extended astronomical experience, the entire universe consists of countless identical copies of our Milky Way, that the infinite space can be partitioned into cubes each containing an…
Did time begin at a Big Bang? Will the present expansion of the universe last for a finite or infinite time? These questions sound philosophical but are becoming, now in the twenty-first century, central to the scientific study of…
This article is the written version of the closing talk presented at the conference `A Century of Cosmology' held at San Servolo, Italy, in August 2007. I focus on the prospects of constraining fundamental physics from cosmological…
In cosmology based on general relativity, the universe is modeled as a fluid. The transition from the Einstein field equation to its large-scale (cosmological) version is thus analogous to the transition, for a system consisting of a large…
Astrobiology is a scientific discipline that studies life in the Universe. We call it a discipline and not a science because some authors have cast doubts over its epistemological status by calling it 'a science without an object of study'.…
From antiquity the conceptual perception of space changed painfully and at a relatively slow pace. It went through mythological descriptions, religious beliefs, metaphysical worldviews and cosmological models with a mechanistic structure,…
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…
In 2007 an international conference engaged a reflection on the present conditions for sciences and scientific practice, to initiate a dialogue between science, philosophy, epistemology and sociology. Starting from many examples taken from…
These four lectures cover four topics in modern cosmology: the cosmological constant, the cosmic microwave background, inflation, and cosmology as a probe of physics at the Planck scale. The underlying theme is that cosmology gives us a…
The possibility of having an extension of the cosmological standard model with a Hubble expansion rate $H$ constrained to a finite interval is considered. Two periods of accelerated expansion arise naturally when the Hubble expansion rate…
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…
ecent observations of type Ia supernovae indicate that the Universe is in an accelerating phase of expansion. The fundamental quest in theoretical cosmology is to identify the origin of this phenomenon. In principle there are two…
The recognition that the cosmological constant may be non-zero forces us to re-evaluate standard notions about the connection between geometry and the fate of our Universe. An open Universe can recollapse, and a closed Universe can expand…
The main objective of this study is to investigate the phenomenon of the bouncing scenario of the universe. The most widely recognized cosmological framework is the standard cosmological model, sometimes referred to as the Big Bang model.…
I examine some recent findings in cosmology and their potential implications for the emergence of life in the universe. In particular, I discuss the requirements for carbon-based life, anthropic considerations with respect to the nature of…
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…