Related papers: Cosmic Velocities 2000: A Review
We have compared the bulk flow of recent large-scale peculiar velocity surveys (SMAC, SC, Lauer and Postman, Willick, EFAR and Tonry's SNIa sample) to each other, allowing for the errors due to sparse sampling. We conclude that, contrary to…
Full sky surveys of peculiar velocity are arguably the best way to map the large scale structure out to distances of a few times 100 Mpc/h. Using the largest and most accurate ever catalog of galaxy peculiar velocities "Cosmicflows-2", the…
This work is related to different questions within cosmology. The principal idea herein is to develop cosmological knowledge making use of the analyses of observational data in order to find the values of the matter density Omega_m and…
The following review presents an attempt to discuss various issues of current interest in Observational Cosmology, the selection of which as well as the emphasis given, reflects my own preference and biases. After presenting some…
Recently we proposed that the acceleration of the Universe could be due to gravity leaking to extra dimensions. This scenario gives an alternative to the cosmological constant or quintessence. In [astro-ph/0106274] the authors claimed that…
The number density of field galaxies per rotation velocity, referred to as the velocity function, is an intriguing statistical measure probing the smallest scales of structure formation. In this paper we point out that the velocity function…
From an observational perspective cosmology is today in excellent shape - advances in instrumentation and data processing have enabled us to study the universe in detail back to when the first galaxies formed, map the fluctuations in the…
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…
We review observational tests for the homogeneity of the Universe on large scales. Redshift and peculiar velocity surveys, radio sources, the X-Ray Background, the Lyman-alpha forest and the Cosmic Microwave Background are used to set…
Cosmological parameters can be measured by comparing peculiar velocities with those predicted from a galaxy density field. Previous work has tested the accuracy of this approach with N-body simulations, but generally on idealised mock…
The large-scale bulk flow implied by the measurements of distances to brightest cluster members within 15,000 km/s by Lauer and Postman has the potential to put strong constraints on, or to even rule out, various models of large-scale…
For decades, the determination of the mean density of matter(Omega_M) has been tied to the distribution of light. This has led to a ``bias,'' perhaps as large as a factor of 2, in determining a key cosmological parameter. Recent…
To explain the puzzling situation in the observed bulk flows on scales $\sim 150 h^{-1}$ Mpc ($H_0 = 100 h^{-1}$ km sec$^{-1}$ Mpc$^{-1}$), we consider the observational behavior of spherically symmetric inhomogeneous cosmological models,…
Maximum Likelihood estimation of the bulk flow from radial peculiar motions of galaxies, generally assumes a constant velocity field inside the survey volume. The assumption is inconsistent with the definition of the bulk flow as the…
We derive a general formalism for bulk viscous solutions of the energy-conservation-equation for $\rho(a,\zeta)$, both for a single-component and a multicomponent fluid in the Friedmann universe. For our purposes these general solutions…
We create a combined sample of 10,904 late and early-type galaxies from the 2MTF and 6dFGSv surveys in order to accurately measure bulk flow in the local Universe. Galaxies and groups of galaxies common between the two surveys are used to…
Bulk peculiar flows are commonplace in the universe, with many surveys reporting their presence on scales spanning between few hundred and several hundred Mpc. However, the sizes and the speeds of some of these bulk flows are well in excess…
Using the nearly full sky Ks=11.75 2MASS Redshift Survey [2MRS]of ~45,000 galaxies we reconstruct the underlying peculiar velocity field and constrain the cosmological bulk flow within ~100. These results are obtained by maximizing 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 use current observations on the number statistics of gravitationally lensed optical arcs towards galaxy clusters to derive an upper limit on the cosmological mass density of the Universe. The gravitational lensing statistics due to…