Related papers: Time at the Beginning
The analysis of anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) has become an extremely valuable tool for cosmology. We even have hopes that planned CMB anisotropy experiments may revolutionize cosmology. Together with determinations…
Probing the geometry of the universe is one of the most important endevours in cosmology. Current observational data from the Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropy (CMB), galaxy surveys and type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) strongly constrain…
Spectral distortions of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) offer the possibility of probing processes which occurred during the evolution of our Universe going back up to Z$\simeq 10^7$. Unfortunately all the attempts so far carried out…
Since the discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) in 1965, characterization of the CMB anisotropy angular power spectrum has become somewhat of a holy grail for experimental cosmology. Because CMB anisotropy measurements are…
I present a pedagogical review of inflation and the cosmic microwave background. I describe how a short period of accelerated expansion can replace the special initial conditions of the standard big bang model. I also describe the…
Much recent work on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) has focussed on the angular power spectrum of temperature anisotropies and particularly on the recovery of cosmological parameters from acoustic peaks in the power spectrum. However,…
For two decades the hot big-bang model as been referred to as the standard cosmology -- and for good reason. For just as long cosmologists have known that there are fundamental questions that are not answered by the standard cosmology and…
Big-Bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) represents one of the earliest phenomena that can lead to observational constraints on the early Universe properties. It is well-known that many important mechanisms and phase transitions occurred before BBN.…
The expansion of the universe may be observed in ``realtime'' by measuring changes in the patterns of the anisotropy in the CMB. As the universe ages, the surface of decoupling--or the CMB photosphere--moves away from us and samples a…
A cosmological model with total density close to critical (and flat geometry), dominated by dark matter and dark energy of unknown nature, and consistent with the basic predictions of the inflationary scenario is a very good fit to a…
The detection of the accelerated expansion of the Universe has been one of the major breakthroughs in modern cosmology. Several cosmological probes (CMB, SNe Ia, BAO) have been studied in depth to better understand the nature of the…
Since the IAU XXIV meeting in 2000, the CMB anisotropy has matured from being one of a number of cosmological probes to forming the bedrock foundation for what is now the standard model of cosmology. The large advances over the past three…
Gaussianity of the cosmological perturbations in the universe is one of the key predictions of standard inflation, but it is violated by other models of structure formation such as topological defects. We present the first test of the…
Observational Cosmology has indeed made very rapid progress in the past decade. The ability to quantify the universe has largely improved due to observational constraints coming from structure formation Measurements of CMB anisotropy and,…
Fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) contain information which has been pivotal in establishing the current cosmological model. These data can also be used to test well-motivated additions to this model, such as cosmic…
Cosmology is entering a very exciting time in its history, when a wealth of cutting-edge experiments are all starting to collect data, or about to. These experiments aim at addressing some of the most intriguing questions in fundamental…
Most cosmological parameters are expected to change significantly only on cosmological time scales, but given the large amount of information contained within the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) sky, we can expect that changes in the CMB…
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) fluctuations effectively measure the basic properties of the universe during the recombination epoch. CMB measurements fix the distance to the surface of last scatter, the sound horizon of the…
The prevailing cosmological model with the lambda-term, in which the space is flat, is studied (section 1). The corresponding age of the Universe (t0) is calculated (assuming a Hubble constant consistent with the measurements of the Hubble…
The past, present and future of cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy research is discussed, with emphasis on the Boomerang and Maxima balloon experiments. These data are combined with large scale structure (LSS) information and high…