Related papers: Cosmology and Life
Revolutionary advances in both theory and technology have launched cosmology into its most exciting period of discovery yet. Unanticipated components of the universe have been identified, promising ideas for understanding the basic features…
The discovery of universe's late-time acceleration and dark energy has overseen a great deal of research into cosmological singularities and in this brief review, we discuss all the prominent developments in this field for the best part of…
Cosmology seems extremely remote from everyday human practice and experience. It is usually taken for granted that cosmological data cannot rationally influence our beliefs about the fate of humanity -- and possible other intelligent…
An introduction to modern theories for the origin of structure in the Universe is given. After a brief review of the growth of cosmological perturbations in an expanding Universe and a summary of some important observational results, the…
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…
The consideration of dark energy's quanta, required also by thermodynamics, introduces its chemical potential into the cosmological equations. Isolating its main contribution, we obtain solutions with dark energy decaying to matter or…
Time has always played a crucial role in cosmology. I review some of the aspects of the present cosmological model which are more directly related to time, such as: the definition of a cosmic time; the existence of typical timescales and…
From an observational perspective cosmology is today in excellent shape - advances in instrumentation and data processing have enabled us to study the universe in detail back to when the first galaxies formed, map the fluctuations in the…
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…
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…
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.
In this work we review briefly the origin and history of the cosmological constant and its recent reincarnation in the form of the dark energy component of the universe. We also comment on the fundamental problems associated to its…
Recent cosmological observations suggest that nearly seventy per cent of the energy density in the universe is unclustered and has negative pressure. Several conceptual issues related to the modeling of this component (`dark energy'), which…
We aim to bring a new perspective about some aspects of the current research in Cosmology. We start with a brief introduction about the main developments of the field in the last century; then we introduce an analogy that shall elucidate…
The limitations of current technology do not allow one to foresee the expansion of the humankind beyond our planet for at least a few decades. Furthermore, the laws of physics, as for as they are known, preclude any form of traveling beyond…
The introduction of an interaction for dark energy to the standard cosmology offers a potential solution to the cosmic coincidence problem. We examine the conditions on the dark energy density that must be satisfied for this scenario to be…
We explore the dynamics and evolution of the Universe at early and late times, focusing on both dark energy and extended gravity models and their astrophysical and cosmological consequences. Modified theories of gravity not only provide an…
Recent years have seen dramatic progress in cosmology and particle astrophysics. So much so that anyone who dares to offer an overview would certainly risk him- or herself for being incomplete and biased at best, and even incorrect due to…
As humanity embarks on an age of exploration, the question of whether we are alone in the universe remains unanswered. This comprehensive review reflects on the paradoxical nature of our existence in a seemingly lifeless cosmos, delving…
We re-examine claims that anthropic arguments provide an explanation for the observed smallness of the cosmological constant, and argue that correlations between the cosmological constant value and the existence of life can be demonstrated…