Related papers: Averaging Inhomogeneous Cosmologies -- a Dialogue
We examine the effects of spatial inhomogeneities on irrotational anisotropic cosmologies by looking at the average properties of anisotropic pressure-free models. Adopting the Buchert scheme, we recast the averaged scalar equations in…
I critically discuss in a pedagogical and phenomenological way a few crucial tests challenging the claims by Pietronero and collaborators that there is no evidence from available galaxy catalogues that the Universe is actually homogeneous…
Inflation is considered one of the cornerstones of modern cosmology. However, the account of the origin of cosmic structure, as provided by the standard inflationary paradigm, is not fully satisfactory. The fundamental issue is the…
Bouncing cosmologies, suggested by String/M-theory, may provide an alternative to standard inflation to account for the origin of inhomogeneities in our universe. The fundamental question regards the correct way to evolve the scalar…
We describe a case of indeterminacy in general relativity for homogeneous and isotropic cosmologies for a class of dark energy fluids. The cosmologies are parametrized by an equation of state variable, with one instance giving the same…
Supernovae observations strongly support the presence of a cosmological constant, but its value, which we will call apparent, is normally determined assuming that the universe can be accurately described by a homogeneous model. Even in the…
A wide range of large scale observations hint towards possible modifications on the standard cosmological model which is based on a homogeneous and isotropic universe with a small cosmological constant and matter. These observations, also…
We review recent results on the cosmological models based on the holographic principle which were proposed to explain the most of the problems occurring in the Standard Cosmological Model. It is shown that these models naturally solve the…
Many cosmologists (myself included) have advocated volume weighting for the cosmological measure problem, weighting spatial hypersurfaces by their volume. However, this often leads to the Boltzmann brain problem, that almost all…
In an undulant universe, cosmic expansion is characterized by alternating periods of acceleration and deceleration. We examine cosmologies in which the dark-energy equation of state varies periodically with the number of e-foldings of the…
The aim of this paper is to re-examine the question of the average magnification in a universe with some inhomogeneously distributed matter. We present an analytic proof, valid under rather general conditions, including clumps of any shape…
The backreaction of inhomogeneities on the global expansion history of the Universe suggests a possible link of the formation of structures to the recent accelerated expansion. In this paper, the origin of this conjecture is illustrated and…
Proceeding from a homogeneous and isotropic Friedmann universe a conceptional problem concerning light propagation in an expanding universe is brought up. As a possible solution of this problem it is suggested that light waves do not scale…
This paper presents a general averaging procedure for a set of observers which are tilted with respect to the cosmological matter fluid. After giving the full set of equations describing the local dynamics, we define the averaging procedure…
Kolmogorov nonlinear averaging is complemented by a natural axiom. For this averaging, we prove a theorem on large deviations as well as establish the relationship to the tunnel canonical operator.
The present matter density of the Universe, while highly inhomogeneous on small scales, displays approximate homogeneity on large scales. We propose that whereas it is justified to use the Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) line…
Supernovae observations strongly support the presence of a cosmological constant, but its value, which we will call apparent, is normally determined assuming that the Universe can be accurately described by a homogeneous model. Even in the…
The homogeneity of matter distribution at large scales, known as the cosmological principle, is a central assumption in the standard cosmological model. The case is testable though, thus no longer needs to be a principle. Here we perform a…
Based upon the intrinsic symmetries approach to inhomogeneous cosmologies, we propose an exact solution to Einstein's field equations where the spatial sections are flat and the source is a non-perfect fluid such that the dissipative terms…
Source confusion has been a long-standing problem in the astronomical history. In the previous formulation, sources are assumed to be distributed homogeneously on the sky. This fundamental assumption is not realistic in many applications.…