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To our best knowledge, there are no problem books on cosmology yet, that would include its spectacular recent achievements. We believe there is a strong need for such now, when cosmology is swiftly becoming a strict and vast science, and…
The exploration and study of exoplanets remain at the frontier of astronomical research, challenging scientists to continuously innovate and refine methodologies to navigate the vast, complex data these celestial bodies produce. This…
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…
What is physics? What are the limits of what physics can say about the world? In seeking ever-broader theoretical `umbrellas' for physical phenomena, we are seeking unifying principles. Emergent phenomena have turned out to be some of the…
We investigate future singularities originating from the anisotropy in the Universe. We formulate a new class of singularities in the homogeneous and anisotropic universe, comparing them with the known singularities in the homogeneous and…
Recent cosmological and astrophysical observations point out that the Universe is in accelerating expansion and filled up with non-luminous matter. In order to explain the observed large scale structures and this accelerating behavior one…
Since the dawn of civilization, humanity has grappled with the big questions of existence and creation. Modern cosmology seeks to answer some of these questions using a combination of mathematics and measurement. The questions people hope…
This is the written version of an invited review talk for the 13 Feb 2004 AAAS Meeting in Seattle. The talk's goal is to present a philosophical view of extragalactic astronomy as it applies to the sub-field of galaxy evolution. The talk is…
The current status of asteroseismic studies is here reviewed and the adequate techniques of analysis available today for the study of the oscillation frequencies are presented. Comments on prospects for future investigations through the…
As the panel on Planetary Systems and Star Formation (PSF) is fully aware, the next decade will see major advances in our understanding of these areas of research. To quote from their charge, these advances will occur in studies of solar…
The expansion of our universe, when followed backward in time, implies that it emerged from a phase of huge density, the big bang. These stages are so extreme that classical general relativity combined with matter theories is not able to…
Over the past several decades, thousands of planets have been discovered outside of our Solar System. These planets exhibit enormous diversity, and their large numbers provide a statistical opportunity to place our Solar System within the…
A brief review is given of the present observational data in cosmology. A review of a new bimetric gravity theory with multiple light cones is presented. The physical consequences of this gravity theory for the early universe are analyzed.
Cosmological discoveries over the past century have completely changed our picture of our place in the universe. New observations have a realistic chance of probing nature on heretofore unimaginable scales, and as a result are changing the…
Patterns in the scientific developments of Relativistic Astrophysics are analyzed with special attention to the physics and astrophysics of Black Holes and Gamma Ray Bursts.
Cosmography represents an important branch of cosmology which aims to describe the universe without the need of postulating \emph{a priori} any particular cosmological model. All quantities of interest are expanded as a Taylor series around…
The mechanism of continuous set of different universes formation is elaborated. It provides tool to solve the problem of observed smallness of physical parameters. Solution of two puzzles - the hierarchy and the cosmological constant…
Neutrino astronomy is on the verge of discovering new sources, and this will lead to important advances in astrophysics, cosmology, particle physics, and nuclear physics. This paper is meant for non-experts, so that they might better…
One overarching objective of science is to further our understanding of the universe, from its early stages to its current state and future evolution. This depends on gaining insight on the universe's most macroscopic components, for…
An overview is given in section 1, of uncertain building blocks of present-day cosmologies. Thereafter, these edited lecture notes deal with the following four special problems: (1) They advertise Wiltshire's result -- making `dark energy'…