Related papers: Averaging Inhomogeneous Cosmologies -- a Dialogue
For general relativistic spacetimes filled with irrotational `dust' a generalized form of Friedmann's equations for an `effective' expansion factor $a_D (t)$ of inhomogeneous cosmologies is derived. Contrary to the standard Friedmann…
It is widely accepted that temporal asymmetry is largely a cosmological problem; the task of explaining temporal asymmetry reduces in the main to that of explaining an aspect of the condition of the early universe. However, cosmologists who…
I consider some of the issues we face in trying to understand dark energy. Huge fluctuations in the unknown dark energy equation of state can be hidden in distance data, so I argue that model-independent tests which signal if the…
We address the challenge, commonly referred to as the cosmological averaging problem, of relating the large-scale evolution of an inhomogeneous universe to that predicted by a homogeneous matter distribution in theories of gravity with…
I discuss how modern cosmology illustrates under-determination of theoretical hypotheses by data, in ways that are different from most philosophical discussions. I emphasize cosmology's concern with what data could in principle be collected…
The evolution of an inhomogeneous universe composed entirely of matter is followed from an early, nearly uniform state until the time when the inhomogeneities have begun to grow large. The particular distribution of matter studied in this…
The large scale distribution of galaxies in the universe displays a complex pattern of clusters, super-clusters, filaments and voids with sizes limited only by the boundaries of the available samples. A quantitative statistical…
An important problem in precision cosmology is the determination of the effects of averaging and backreaction on observational predictions, particularly in view of the wealth of new observational data and improved statistical techniques. In…
Cosmology relies on the Cosmological Principle, i.e., the hypothesis that the Universe is homogeneous and isotropic on large scales. This implies in particular that the counts of galaxies should approach a homogeneous scaling with volume at…
The observation that accelerated cosmic expansion is dominant since the Mega-parsec cosmic structure became nonlinear seems like an extraordinary coincidence, unless the acceleration is somehow driven by the emergence of the structure. That…
The Universe is not completely homogeneous. Even if it is sufficiently so on large scales, it is very inhomogeneous at small scales, and this has an effect on light propagation, so that the distance as a function of redshift, which in many…
The Hubble diagram is one of the cornerstones of observational cosmology. It is usually analysed assuming that, on average, the underlying relation between magnitude and redshift matches the prediction of a…
The phase transitions and critical properties of two types of inhomogeneous systems are reviewed. In one case, the local critical behaviour results from the particular shape of the system. Here scale-invariant forms like wedges or cones are…
The apparent accelerating expansion of the Universe is forcing us to examine the foundational aspects of the standard model of cosmology -- in particular, the fact that dark energy is a direct consequence of the homogeneity assumption. We…
We revisit the paradigm of unified dark energy discussing in detail the averaging problem in this type of scenarios, highlighting the need for a full non-linear treatment. We also address the question of if and how models with one or…
A refined version of a recently introduced method for analysing the dynamics of an inhomogeneous irrotational dust universe is presented. A fully non-perturbative numerical computation of the time dependence of volume in this framework…
A holographic dual description of inhomogeneous systems is discussed. Notably, finite temperature results for the entanglement entropy in both the rainbow chain and the SSD model are obtained holographically by choosing appropriate…
We discuss several issues related to a recent proposal for defining classical spatial averages to be used in the so-called cosmological backreaction problem. In the large averaging-volume limit all gauge dependence disappears and different…
The properties of spatial distribution of luminous matter are investigated analysing all the available three dimensional catalogues of galaxies. In standard view, galaxies are believed to have a fractal distribution at small scale with a…
We provide a simple discussion of our results on the backreaction effects of density inhomogeneities in cosmology, without mentioning one-parameter families or weak limits. Emphasis is placed on the manner in which "averaging" is done and…