Related papers: Ten Major Challenges in Cosmology
Recent breakthroughs in cosmology pose questions that require particle physics answers. I review the problems of dark matter, baryogenesis, and dark energy and discuss how particle colliders, particularly the International Linear Collider,…
I review the challenges and problems facing the standard cosmological model, involving an $\Omega=1$ Universe dominated by non-baryonic dark matter, which arise due to: age estimates of the universe, estimates of the baryon fraction of the…
This essay is a nontechnical primer for a broader audience, in which I paint a broad-brush picture of modern cosmology. I begin by reviewing the evidence for the big bang, including the expansion of our Universe, the cosmic microwave…
Inflation is a bold and expansive extension of the Standard Cosmology. It holds the promise to extend our understanding of the Universe to within 10^{-32}sec of the big bang and answer most of the pressing questions in cosmology. Its…
The hot big-bang cosmology provides a reliable accounting of the Universe from about $10^{-2}\sec$ after the bang until the present, as well as a robust framework for speculating back to times as early as $10^{-43}\sec$. Cosmology faces a…
In this short review we study the state of the art of the great problems in cosmology and their interrelationships. The reconciliation of these problems passes undoubtedly through the idea of a quantum universe.
After briefly reviewing the good agreement between large-scale observations and the predictions of the now-standard CDM theory and problems with the MOND alternative, I summarize several of the main areas of possible disagreement between…
The accelerating expansion of the universe presents an exciting, fundamental challenge to the standard models of particle physics and cosmology. I highlight some of the outstanding challenges in both developing theoretical models and…
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…
Newtonian Cosmology is commonly used in astrophysical problems, because of its obvious simplicity when compared with general relativity. However it has inherent difficulties, the most obvious of which is the non-existence of a well-posed…
The "new standard cosmology", based on the theory of inflation, has very impressive observational support. I review some outstanding problems of the new cosmology and the global view of the universe -- the multiverse -- that it suggests. I…
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…
Modern fundamental physics poses new questions for philosophy, which, as it seems to us, have not yet received appropriate attention from philosophers of science. This paper formulates a number of such questions in order to present them to…
We review the current standard model for the evolution of the Universe from an early inflationary epoch to the complex hierarchy of structure seen today. We summarize and provide key references for the following topics: observations of the…
We review the possible mechanisms for the generation of cosmological magnetic fields, discuss their evolution in an expanding Universe filled with the cosmic plasma and provide a critical review of the literature on the subject. We put…
I present a non-technical and necessarily biased and incomplete overview of our present understanding of the physical universe and its constituents, emphasizing what we have learned from the explosive growth in cosmological and…
Quantum theory, general relativity, the standard model of particle physics, and the $\Lambda$CDM model of cosmology have all been spectacularly successful within their respective regimes of applicability, but many central problems remain…
The accelerated expansion of the universe is the most debatable cosmological scenario in the last two decades. Looking for the proper explanation of this scenario, researchers have presented a lot of proposals to discuss it. However,…
In these lectures I focus on early universe models which can explain the currently observed structure on large scales. I begin with a survey of inflationary cosmology, the current paradigm for understanding the origin of the universe as we…
We critically assess the twin prospects of describing the observed universe in string theory, and using cosmological experiments to probe string theory. For the purposes of this short review, we focus on the limitations imposed by our…