Related papers: Cosmology Solved? Quite Possibly!
Measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation provide a unique opportunity for a direct study of the primordial cosmic plasma at redshift z ~1000. The angular power spectra of temperature and polarisation fluctuations are…
Astrophysical observations provide the best evidence of physics beyond the particle physicists' standard model. Over the past decade, the case has solidified for inflation, dark energy, dark matter and massive neutrinos. In this report we…
Cosmology is operating now on a well established and tightly constraining empirical basis. The relativistic LambdaCDM hot big bang theory is consistent with all the present tests; it has become the benchmark. But the many open issues in…
Canada has thriving communities in CMB (cosmic microwave background) studies, cosmology and submillimetre (submm) astronomy, with involvement in many facilities that featured prominently in previous Astronomy Long Range Plans. The standard…
The big bang hypothesis is widely accepted despite numerous physics conflicts. It rests upon two experimental supports, galactic red shift and the cosmic microwave background. Both are produced by dark matter, shown here to be hydrogen…
After a brief introduction to the sixteenth and seventeenth century views of the Universe and the nineteenth century paradox of Olbers, we start the history of the cosmic expansion with Hubble's epochal discovery of the recession velocities…
We forecast the ability of cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature and polarization datasets to constrain theories of eternal inflation using cosmic bubble collisions. Using the Fisher matrix formalism, we determine both the overall…
An elementary survey of mathematical cosmology is presented. We cover certain key ideas and developments in a qualitative way, from the time of the Einstein static universe in 1917 until today. We divide our presentation into four main…
The accelerating expansion of the universe is the most surprising cosmological discovery in many decades. In this short review, we briefly summarize theories for the origin of cosmic acceleration and the observational methods being used to…
The cosmic inflation hypothesis, its relation to fundamental theory on the beginning of the universe, and the light that both shed on how the various elements and their relative amounts came into existence. The fundamental factors…
The standard cosmological model ($\Lambda CDM$) assumes that everything started in a singular Big Bang out of Cosmic Inflation, a mysterious form of modern Aether (the inflaton). Here we look for direct observational evidence for such…
The standard big bang cosmology has been greatly successful in explaining many observational aspects of the real universe. However, two particular diffficulties faced by it are the so-called ``horizon'' and ``flatness'' problems. By…
Fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) contain information which has been pivotal in establishing the current cosmological model. These data can also be used to test well-motivated additions to this model, such as cosmic…
The Cosmic Microwave Background provides our most ancient image of the Universe and our best tool for studying its early evolution. Theories of high energy physics predict the formation of various types of topological defects in the very…
From an observational perspective cosmology is today in excellent shape - advances in instrumentation and data processing have enabled us to study the universe in detail back to when the first galaxies formed, map the fluctuations in the…
We critically review the role of cosmological moduli in determining the post-inflationary history of the universe. Moduli are ubiquitous in string and M-theory constructions of beyond the Standard Model physics, where they parametrize the…
The presently accepted "Theory of the Universe" was pioneered 60 years ago by Gamow, Alpher and Herman. As a consequence of the, later dubbed, Hot Big-Bang, matter was neutrons, and after some decay protons, and a history of successive…
Most cosmological parameters are expected to change significantly only on cosmological time scales, but given the large amount of information contained within the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) sky, we can expect that changes in the CMB…
The standard model of cosmology assumes a homogeneous and isotropic universe that undergoes a period of exponential expansion very early on, named inflation. This stretches quantum fluctuations from the onset of inflation to cosmological…
The study of particle creation phenomena at the expense of the gravitational field is of great research interest. It might solve the cosmological puzzle single-handedly, without the need for either dark energy or the modified theory of…