Related papers: The Anthropic Principle Revisited
The claim that life is an emergent phenomenon exhibiting novel properties and principles is often criticized for being in conflict with causal closure at the microscopic level. I argue that advances in cosmological theory suggesting an…
We discuss the possibility that the inflationary paradigm, undoubtfully today's best framework to understand all the present cosmological data, may still have some viable challengers. The underlying idea for such discussions is that…
In the recent article `Conflict between anthropic reasoning and observation'(gr-qc/0303070) Ken D. Olum, using some inflation-based ideas and the anthropic premise that we should be typical among all intelligent observers in the Universe,…
The observed value $\Lambda_{\rm obs}$ of the cosmological constant $\Lambda$ is extremely smaller than theoretical expectations, and the anthropic argument has been proposed as a solution to this problem because galaxies do not form when…
An anthropic explanation for evident smallness of the value of the dark energy implies the existence of a time-dependent component of the scalar field, serving, together with a negative-valued cosmological constant, as one of two components…
It is argued that classical string solutions should not be fine tuned to have a positive cosmological constant (CC) at the observed size, since even the quantum corrections from standard model effects will completely negate any classical…
Although ultimately motivated by quantum theoretical considerations, Everett's many-world idea remains valid, as an approximation, in the classical limit. However to be applicable it must in any case be applied in conjunction with an…
We give an introduction to the cosmological multiverse, aimed at an audience of artists. We discuss general relativity -- our modern theory of gravity -- and the cosmological constant, which is widely believed to be responsible for the…
In this lecture I make some educated guesses, about the landscape of string theory vacua. Based on the recent work of a number of authors, it seems plausible that the lanscape is unimaginably large and diverse. Whether we like it or not,…
In the context of models where the dark energy density $\rD$ is a random variable, anthropic selection effects may explain both the "old" cosmological constant problem and the "time coincidence". We argue that this type of solution to both…
This paper investigates anthropic bounds on the vacuum energy $\Lambda$. We first consider the possibility of cosmic observers existing at any random time (including the future) for constant $\Lambda$, and take into account the suppression…
Based on the cosmological principle only, the method of describing the evolution of the Universe, called cosmography, is in fact a kinematics of cosmological expansion. The effectiveness of cosmography lies in the fact that it allows, based…
A theory of the cosmological constant Lambda is currently out of reach. Still, one can start from a set of axioms that describe the most desirable properties a cosmological constant should have. This can be seen in certain analogy to the…
Some properties of the world are fixed by physics derived from mathematical symmetries, while others are selected from an ensemble of possibilities. Several successes and failures of ``anthropic'' reasoning in this context are reviewed in…
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,…
We note that there is an exception to the general arguments that no falsifiable predictions can be made, on the basis of of presently available data, by applying the weak anthropic principle (WAP) to the landscape of string theory. If there…
Extracting predictions from cosmological theories that describe a multiverse, for what we are likely to observe in our domain, is crucial to establishing the validity of these theories. One way to extract such predictions is from…
Much of modern cosmology relies on the Cosmological Principle, the assumption that the Universe is isotropic and homogeneous on sufficiently large scales, but it remains worthwhile to examine cosmological models that violate this principle…
The essay argues that the standard cosmological model is one sided and incomplete. Its recognition of the primacy of radiant energy has no rational justification and empirical verification and, therefore, is arbitrary and subjective. The…
In some cosmological theories with varying constants there are anthropic reasons why the expansion of the universe must not be too {\it close} to flatness or the cosmological constant too close to zero. Using exact theories which…