Related papers: CIW Cosmology Symposium: Conference Summary -- Obs…
Cosmological observations offer unique and robust avenues for probing the fundamental nature of dark matter particles-they broadly test a range of compelling theoretical scenarios, often surpassing or complementing the reach of terrestrial…
We define the cosmological parameters $H_{c,0}$, $\Omega_{m,c}$ and $\Omega_{\Lambda, c}$ within the Conformal Cosmology as obtained by the homogeneous approximation to the conformal-invariant generalization of Einstein's General Relativity…
Selection effects in cosmology are often invoked to "explain" why some of the fundamental constant of Nature, and in particular the cosmological constant, take on the value they do in our Universe. We briefly review this probabilistic…
The accelerating expansion of the universe is the most surprising cosmological discovery in many decades. In this short review, we briefly summarize theories for the origin of cosmic acceleration and the observational methods being used to…
Cosmology is very exciting for three reasons. There is a very successful standard model - the hot big bang - which describes the evolution of the Universe from 10^{-2} sec onward. There are bold ideas, foremost among them are inflation and…
Six challenges for the standard cosmological model $\Lambda$CDM are listed, which arise when comparing theoretical predictions with observational data on scales of ~1 Mpc. Different parameters of luminous and dwarf galaxies in the local…
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) provides us with our most direct observational window to the early universe. Observations of the temperature and polarization anisotropies in the CMB have played a critical role in defining the…
The general idea of determining cosmological parameters with gravitational lensing statistics is outlined, and then recent work---with an emphasis on applicability to all cosmological models, observational bias, better statistics and…
The recent observational evidence for the acceleration of the universe demonstrates that canonical theories of cosmology and particle physics are incomplete - if not incorrect - and that new physics is out there, waiting to be discovered.…
Forthcoming cosmic microwave background experiments (CMB) will provide precise new tests of structure-formation theories. The geometry of the Universe may be determined robustly, and the classical cosmological parameters, such as the…
There is a deep cosmological mystery: although dependent on very different underlying physics, the timescales of structure formation, of galaxy cooling (both radiatively and against the CMB), and of vacuum domination do not differ by many…
There has been significant recent progress in observational cosmology. This, in turn, has provided an unprecedented picture of the early universe and its evolution. In this review I will present a (biased) view of how one can use these…
Theoretical and observational challenges to standard cosmology such as the cosmological constant problem and tensions between cosmological model parameters inferred from different observations motivate the development and search of new…
We revisit anthropic arguments purporting to explain the measured value of the cosmological constant. We argue that different ways of assigning probabilities to candidate universes lead to totally different anthropic predictions. As an…
In a universe dominated by a small cosmological constant or by eternal dark energy with equation of state w < -1/3, observers are surrounded by event horizons. The horizons limit how much of the universe the observers can ever access. We…
While purely philosophical in the early times, and still very speculative at the beginning of the twentieth century, Cosmology has gradually entered into the realm of experimental science over the past eighty years. It has raised some…
Recent results regarding dark energy are mutually inconsistent under the $\Lambda$CDM cosmological model, hinting at the possibility of undiscovered physics. However, the currently accepted cosmological parameters come from a joint…
We have had the chance to live through a fascinating revolution in measuring the fundamental empirical cosmological Hubble law. The key progress is analysed : 1) improvement of observational means (ground-based radio and optical…
Whether we live in a spatially finite universe, and what its shape and size may be, are among the fundamental long-standing questions in cosmology. These questions of topological nature have become particularly topical, given the wealth of…
We use Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) observations together with the Red-sequence Cluster Survey (RCS) weak lensing results to derive constraints on a range of cosmological parameters. This particular choice of observations is motivated…