Related papers: Still flat after all these years
It is necessary to make assumptions in order to derive models to be used for cosmological predictions and comparison with observational data. In particular, in standard cosmology the spatial curvature is assumed to be constant and zero (or…
Observations conducted over the last few decades show that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating. In the standard model of cosmology, this accelerated expansion is attributed to a dark energy in the form of a cosmological constant.…
Cosmology with non-perturbative quantum corrections resulting from torsion is considered. It is shown that the evolution of closed, open and flat Universes is changed because of the presence of a non-zero dispersion of quantum torsion. The…
What is the shape of the Universe? Is it finite or infinite ? Is space multi-connected to create ghost images of faraway cosmic sources? After a "dark age" period, the field of cosmic topology has now become one of the major concerns in…
We investigate how the nature of dark energy affects the determination of the curvature of the universe from recent observations. For this purpose, we consider the constraints on the matter and dark energy density using observations of type…
It has been shown that if one solves self-consistently the semiclassical Einstein equations in the presence of a quantum scalar field, with a cutoff on the number of modes, spacetime become flatter when the cutoff increases. Here we extend…
We demonstrate how one can distinguish a curved 4-dimensional spacetime from a flat one, when it is possible, relying only on the causality relations between events. It is known that it is possible only for spacetimes that are not…
Recent measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation by the Boomerang experiment indicate that the universe is spatially flat. Here some simple back-of-the-envelope calculations are used to explain their result. The main result…
It goes without saying that we are stuck with the universe we have. Nevertheless, we would like to go beyond simply describing our observed universe, and try to understand why it is that way rather than some other way. Physicists and…
We discuss the effect of curvature and matter inhomogeneities on the averaged scalar curvature of the present-day Universe. Motivated by studies of averaged inhomogeneous cosmologies, we contemplate on the question whether it is sensible to…
A fascinating and deep question about nature is what one would see if one could probe space and time at smaller and smaller distances. Already the 19th-century founders of modern geometry contemplated the possibility that a piece of empty…
Recent analysis of the Planck measurements opened a possibility that we live in a non-flat universe. Given the renewed interest in non-zero spatial curvature, here we re-visit the light propagation in a non-flat universe and provide the…
Pathria(1972) has shown, for a pressureless closed Universe, that it is inside a black (or white) hole. We show now, that the Universe with a cosmic pressure obeying Einstein's field equations, can be inside a white-hole. In the closed…
Is the universe finite or infinite, and what shape does it have? These fundamental questions, of which relatively little is known, are typically studied within the context of the standard model of cosmology where the universe is assumed to…
We present an explicit exact solution of Einstein's equations for an inhomogeneous dust universe with cylindrical symmetry. The spacetime is extremely simple but nonetheless it has new surprising features. The universe is ``closed'' in the…
Reasonable parametrizations of the current Hubble data set of the expansion rate of our homogeneous and isotropic universe, after suitable smoothing of these data, strongly suggests that the area of the apparent horizon increases…
How much can we know about our Universe? All of our observations are restricted to a finite volume, and therefore our estimates of presumably global cosmological parameters are necessarily based on incomplete information. Even assuming that…
Over the last decade, cosmological observations have attained a level of precision which allows for detailed comparison with theoretical predictions. In this paper, we briefly review some studies of the current and prospected constraints…
If the topology of the universe is compact we show how it significantly changes our assessment of the naturalness of the observed structure of the universe and the likelihood of its present state of high isotropy and near flatness arising…
We propose that our world is a brane folded many times inside the sub-millimeter extra dimensions. The folding produces many connected parallel branes or folds with identical microphysics - a Manyfold. Nearby matter on other folds can be…