Related papers: Why is the Hubble flow so quiet?
We study the cosmology of a quintessence scalar field which is equivalent to a non-barotropic perfect fluid of constant pressure. The coincidence problem is alleviated by such a quintessence equation-of-state that interpolates between…
Our local environment at $r<10$ Mpc expands linearly and smoothly, as if ruled by a uniform matter distribution, while observations show the very clumpy local universe. This is a long standing enigma in cosmology. We argue that the recently…
A central aspect of the cosmological constant problem is to understand why vacuum energy does not gravitate. In order to account for this observation, while allowing for nontrivial dynamics of the quantum vacuum, we motivate a novel…
In a recent paper (Phys. Rev. D95, 103504 (2017)) it is argued that, due to the fluctuations around its mean value, vacuum energy gravitates differently from what previously assumed. As a consequence, the universe would accelerate with a…
Unlike the substantial coherent bulk motion in which our local patch of the Cosmos is participating, the amplitude of the random motions around this large scale flow seems to be surprisingly low. Attempts to invoke global explanations to…
In a previous work [1], it was speculated that the lack of homogeneity of the large-scale structure of the universe may be due to quantum fluctuations of space in the early universe. In [1], this was argued for a Friedmann-type universe for…
The standard \LambdaCDM cosmological model implies that all celestial bodies are embedded in a perfectly uniform dark energy background, represented by Einstein's cosmological constant, and experience its repulsive antigravity action. Can…
The almost perfect uniformity of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, discovered by Penzias and Wilson in 1965 appears to present clearcut evidence that the universe was uniform and in equilibrium at the decoupling transition…
Quantum theory, general relativity, the standard model of particle physics, and the $\Lambda$CDM model of cosmology have all been spectacularly successful within their respective regimes of applicability, but many central problems remain…
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…
A hypothesis of curvature pressure is used to derive a static and stable cosmology with a tired-light redshift. The idea is that the high energy particles in the inter-galactic medium do not travel along geodesics because of the strong…
Quantum liquids, in which an effective Lorentzian metric and thus some kind of gravity gradually arise in the low-energy corner, are the objects where the problems related to the quantum vacuum can be investigated in detail. In particular,…
Over the past three years we have determined the basic features of the Universe -- spatially flat; accelerating; comprised of 1/3 a new form of matter, 2/3 a new form of energy, with some ordinary matter and a dash of massive neutrinos; and…
New, large, ground and space telescopes are contributing to an exciting and rapid period of growth in observational cosmology. The subject is now far from its earlier days of being data-starved and unconstrained, and new data are fueling a…
It was recently discovered that the mean dark matter surface density within one dark halo scale length - the radius within which the volume density profile of dark matter remains approximately flat - is constant across a wide range of…
The current expansion of the Universe has been observed to be accelerating, and the widely accepted spatially-flat concordance model of general relativistic cosmology attributes this phenomenon to a constant dark energy, a cosmological…
In this colloquium-level account, I describe the cosmological constant problem: why is the energy of empty space at least 60 orders of magnitude smaller than several known contributions to it from the Standard Model of particle physics? I…
The matter content of the Universe is generally regarded as a perfect fluid on sufficiently large scales, for all epochs. But the recent cosmological matter distribution, consisting of an (ideally) random distribution of gravitationally…
The Hubble constant problem is the discrepancy between different measurements of the Hubble constant in different scales. We show that this problem can be resolved within the general relativistic framework of the perturbation theory in the…
Over the past three years we have determined the basic features of our Universe. It is spatially flat; accelerating; comprised of 1/3 a new form of matter, 2/3 a new form of energy, with some ordinary matter and a dash of massive neutrinos;…