Related papers: Ten Major Challenges in Cosmology
After a survey of the present state of cosmological theory and observations, this article discusses a series of major themes underlying the relation of philosophy to cosmology. These are: A: The uniqueness of the universe; B: The large…
Last couple of decades have been the golden age for cosmology. High quality data confirmed the broad paradigm of standard cosmology but have thrusted upon us a preposterous composition for the universe which defies any simple explanation,…
Our knowledge about the universe has increased tremendously in the last three decades or so --- thanks to the progress in observations --- but our understanding has improved very little. There are several fundamental questions about our…
We discuss a number of fundamental aspects of modern cosmological concepts, from the phenomenological, observational, theoretical and epistemic points of view. We argue that the modern cosmology, despite a great advent, in particular in the…
It is argued that some of the recent claims for cosmology are grossly overblown. Cosmology rests on a very small database: it suffers from many fundamental difficulties as a science (if it is a science at all) whilst observations of distant…
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…
(Abridged) Cosmology faces three distinct challenges in the next decade. (1) The dark sector, both dark matter and dark energy, dominates the Universe. Key questions include determining the nature of both. Improved observational probes are…
The main task for cosmology today is the completion of the program of cosmological tests that commenced in the 1930s. I offer comments on the state of the program and the issues to be addressed to establish a convincing large-scale picture…
Cosmology differs in some respects significantly from other sciences, primarily because of its intimate association with issues of a conceptual and philosophical nature. Because cosmology in the broader sense relates to the world views held…
Questions such as whether we live in a spatially finite universe, and what its shape and size may be, are among the fundamental open problems that high precision modern cosmology needs to resolve. These questions go beyond the scope of…
Cosmology has come a long way from being based on a small number of observations to being a data-driven precision science. We discuss the questions "What is observable?", "What in the Universe is knowable?" and "What are the fundamental…
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…
Two fundamental laws are needed for prediction in the universe: (1) a basic dynamical law and (2) a law for the cosmological initial condition. Quantum cosmology is the area of basic research concerned with the search for a theory of the…
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…
From a modern perspective cosmology is a historical science in so far that it deals with the development of the universe since its origin some 14 billion years ago. The origin itself may not be subject to scientific analysis and…
The dramatic confrontation between new observations and theories of the early and recent universe makes cosmology one of the most rapidly advancing fields in the physical sciences. The universe is a unique laboratory in which to probe…
What do we do when cosmology raises questions it cannot answer? These include the existence of a multiverse and the universality of the laws of physics. We cannot settle any of these issues by experiment, and this is where philosophers…
We list a few things that we do not understand about stars and that most people ignore. These are all hard problems. We can learn more cosmology by working on them to reduce the systematic errors they introduce than by trying to derive…
Cosmology is operating now on a well established and tightly constraining empirical basis. The relativistic LambdaCDM hot big bang theory is consistent with all the present tests; it has become the benchmark. But the many open issues in…
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…