Related papers: The Cosmological Flatness Problem and Limits on Da…
More than sixty years ago Zwicky made the case that the great clusters of galaxies are held together by the gravitational force of unseen (dark) matter. Today, the case is stronger and more precise: Dark, nonbaryonic matter accounts for 30%…
Observational constraints guide one forcefully to examine models in which the matter density is substantially less than critical density. Particularly noteworthy are those which are consistent with inflation. For these models, microwave…
In the present article, which is the first part of a work in three parts, we build an equation of quantum gravity. This equation is tensorial, is equivalent to general relativity in vacuum, but differs completely from general relativity…
Cosmological data have provided new constraints on the number of neutrino species and the neutrino mass. However these constraints depend on assumptions related to the underlying cosmology. Since a correlation is expected between the number…
One of the most outstanding problems of the standard model of cosmology today is the problem of cosmological constant/dark energy. It corresponds to about 73 per cent of the energy content of the universe gone missing. I hereby postulate a…
We examine a cosmological model with a dark energy density of the form $\rho_{DE}(t)=\rho_X(t)+\rho_Z(t)$, where $\rho_X$ is the component that accelerates the Hubble expansion at late times and $\rho_Z(t)$ is an extra contribution…
This is a review and statistical analysis of the evidence supporting the existence of a cosmological constant in the early 1990s, before its discovery made with distant supernovae in 1998. The earlier evidence was derived from newly precise…
Faced by recent evidence for a flat universe dominated by dark energy, cosmologists grapple with deep cosmic enigmas such as the cosmological constant problem, extreme fine-tuning and the cosmic coincidence problem. The extent to which we…
Observations of distant supernovae indicate that the Universe is now in a phase of accelerated expansion the physical cause of which is a mystery. Formally, this requires the inclusion of a term acting as a negative pressure in the…
We calculate the amount of primordial matter density contrast and the size of the very early universe in the recent Quantum Big Bang theory [arXiv:0705.4549 [gr-qc](2007)] of the cosmological constant. We obtain $(\delta\rho/\rho)_M = 1.75…
After a short history of the $\Lambda$-term it is explained why the (effective) cosmological constant is expected to obtain contributions from short-distance-physics, corresponding to an energy scale of at least 100 GeV. The actual tiny…
Some issues of the cosmological constant or dark energy are briefly reviewed. There are an increasing number of observations that constrain the equation of state of dark energy more stringently and favor the time-independent cosmological…
We discuss how we remove a huge discrepancy between the theory of a cosmological constant, due to the zero-point energies of matter fields, and the observation. The technique of dimensional regularization plays a decisive role. We…
Astrophysical observations are pointing out huge amounts of dark matter and dark energy needed to explain the observed large scale structures and cosmic accelerating expansion. Up to now, no experimental evidence has been found, at…
We study a symmetry, schematically Energy -> - Energy, which suppresses matter contributions to the cosmological constant. The requisite negative energy fluctuations are identified with a "ghost" copy of the Standard Model. Gravity…
I briefly review our current understanding of dark matter and dark energy. The first part of this paper focusses on issues pertaining to dark matter including observational evidence for its existence, current constraints and the `abundance…
We use the angular power spectrum of the Cosmic Microwave Background, measured during the North American test flight of the BOOMERANG experiment, to constrain the geometry of the universe. Within the class of Cold Dark Matter models, we…
In this article the cosmological constant problems, as well as the astronomical evidence for a cosmologically significant homogeneous exotic energy density with negative pressure (quintessence), are reviewed for a broad audience of…
The present discussion contribution is some remarks concerning and review of the proposal by one of us (C. Balazs) to explain the cosmological constant by a/the principle of entropy. Used without further comment this principle of entropy…
After a discussion on several limiting cases where General Relativity turns into less sophisticated theories, we find that in the correct thermodynamical and cosmological weak field limit of Einstein's field equations the entropy of the…