Related papers: The Case Against Cosmology
Physical cosmology tries to understand the Universe at large with its origin and evolution. Observational and experimental situations in cosmology do not allow us to proceed purely based on the empirical means. We examine in which sense our…
Certain results of observational cosmology cast critical doubt on the foundations of standard cosmology but leave most cosmologists untroubled. Alternative cosmological models that differ from the Big Bang have been published and defended…
A comparison of the standard models in particle physics and in cosmology demonstrates that they are not compatible, though both are well established. Basics of modern cosmology are briefly reviewed. It is argued that the measurements of the…
Cosmology contributes a good deal to the investigation of variation of fundamental physical constants. High resolution data is available and allows for detailed analysis over cosmological distances and a multitude of methods were developed.…
I review the basis and limitations of plausible inference in cosmology, in particular the limitation that it can only provide fundamentally true inferences when the hypotheses under consideration form a set that is exhaustive. They never…
Cosmology differs in some respects significantly from other sciences, primarily because of its intimate association with issues of a conceptual and philosophical nature. Because cosmology in the broader sense relates to the world views held…
What are the important unanswered questions in cosmology? The choice as to which are the most important is somewhat personal. In the view of the author, the ten topics chosen here for discussion must be included among the most fundamental.…
Cosmology has come a long way from being based on a small number of observations to being a data-driven precision science. We discuss the questions "What is observable?", "What in the Universe is knowable?" and "What are the fundamental…
We discuss a number of fundamental aspects of modern cosmological concepts, from the phenomenological, observational, theoretical and epistemic points of view. We argue that the modern cosmology, despite a great advent, in particular in the…
Observational astronomy has shown significant growth over the last decade and has made important contributions to cosmology. A major paradigm shift in cosmology was brought about by observations of Type Ia supernovae. The notion that the…
During the last three decades, there has been a growing realization among physicists and cosmologists that the relation between particle physics and cosmology may constitute yet another successful example of the unity of science. However,…
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…
Cosmological models that invoke a multiverse - a collection of unobservable regions of space where conditions are very different from the region around us - are controversial, on the grounds that unobservable phenomena shouldn't play a…
We note that in general there exist two basic aspects in any branch of physics, including cosmology - one dealing with the attributes of basic constituents and forces of nature, the other dealing with how structures arise from them and how…
Cosmology is the dot com of the sciences. Boom or bust. It is about nothing less than the origin and evolution of the Universe, the all of everything. It is the boldest of enterprises and not for the fainthearted. Cosmologists are the…
What can we know about the universe? I outline a few of the fundamental limitations that are posed to our understanding of the cosmos, such as the existence of horizons, the fact that we occupy a specific place in space and time, the…
The dramatic confrontation between new observations and theories of the early and recent universe makes cosmology one of the most rapidly advancing fields in the physical sciences. The universe is a unique laboratory in which to probe…
From a modern perspective cosmology is a historical science in so far that it deals with the development of the universe since its origin some 14 billion years ago. The origin itself may not be subject to scientific analysis and…
We list a few things that we do not understand about stars and that most people ignore. These are all hard problems. We can learn more cosmology by working on them to reduce the systematic errors they introduce than by trying to derive…
The paper discusses the problem of demarcation between the dimensions of natural and the human sciences in contemporary cosmology. In spite of a common presumption that cosmology is a natural science, the specificity of its alleged subject…