Related papers: A Lightweight Universe?
The accelerating expansion of the universe is one of the most profound discoveries in modern cosmology, pointing to a universe in which 70% of the mass-energy density has an unknown form spread uniformly across the universe. This result has…
How much dark matter is there in the universe and where is it located? These are two of the most fundamental questions in cosmology. We use in this paper optical and x-ray mass determinations of galaxies, groups, and clusters of galaxies to…
I show that three independent methods utilizing clusters of galaxies - cluster dynamics and mass-to-light ratio, baryon fraction in clusters, and cluster evolution - all indicate the same robust result: the mass-density of the universe is…
In the simplest cosmological models consistent with General Relativity, the total volume of the Universe is either finite or infinite, depending on whether or not the spatial curvature is positive. Current data suggest that the curvature is…
Clusters of galaxies, the most massive virialized systems known, provide a powerful tool for studying the structure, the mass density, and the cosmology of our universe. Clusters furnish one of the best estimates of the dynamical mass…
The recently suggested notion of total mass density for closed universes is extended to closed universes with a positive cosmological constant. Assuming that the matter fields satisfy the dominant energy condition, it is shown that the…
A short story of dark matter as an example of a scientific revolution is given. The characteristics of stellar populations are compared with those of dark halos. The mean mass-to-luminosity ratio of stellar populations is found to be 4 in…
We use current observations on the number statistics of gravitationally lensed optical arcs towards galaxy clusters to derive an upper limit on the cosmological mass density of the Universe. The gravitational lensing statistics due to…
Recent astronomical observations of distant supernovae light-curves suggest that the expansion of the universe has recently begun to accelerate. Acceleration is created by an anti-gravitational repulsive stress, like that produced by a…
The large scale structure of the present Universe is determined by the growth of dark matter density fluctuations and by the dynamical action of dark energy and dark matter. While much progress has been made in recent years in constraining…
The determination of the mean density of the Universe is a long standing problem of modern cosmology. The number density evolution of x-ray clusters at a fixed temperature is a powerful cosmological test, new in nature (Oukbir and…
Observations suggest that nearly seventy per cent of the energy density in the universe is unclustered and exerts negative pressure. Theoretical understanding of this component (`dark energy'), which is driving an accelerated expansion of…
Recent observations of high-redshift supernovae seem to suggest that the global geometry of the Universe may be affected by a `cosmological constant', which acts to accelerate the expansion rate with time. But these data by themselves still…
According to the latest evidence, the Universe is entering an era of exponential expansion, where gravitationally bound structures will get disconnected from each other, forming isolated `island universes'. In this scenario, we present a…
Most of the mass density in the Universe---and in the halo of our own galaxy---exists in the form of dark matter. Overall, the contribution of luminous matter (in stars) to the mass density of the Universe is less than 1\%; primordial…
Although big bang cosmology effectively models even the most puzzling observational data, it offers no insight into why the cosmological expansion should occur at all. In this paper it is suggested that a finite Universe poses particular…
In 1900 it was believed that almost 100% of the mass of the Universe resided in stars. Now, in the year 2000, such stars (and cold gas) are known to account for only ~1% its mass. The remaining mass of the Universe is thought to reside in…
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…
Rich clusters of galaxies are the most massive virialized systems known. Even though they contain only a small fraction of all galaxies, rich clusters provide a powerful tool for the study of galaxy formation, dark matter, large-scale…
Matter with an equation of state $p=-\rho/3$ may arise in certain scalar field theories, and the energy density of this matter decreases as $a^{-2}$ with the scale factor $a$ of the Universe. In this case, the Universe could be closed but…