Related papers: Topology and the Cosmic Microwave Background
Over the last decade, cosmological observations have attained a level of precision which allows for detailed comparison with theoretical predictions. In this paper, we briefly review some studies of the current and prospected constraints…
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…
Black holes are more than just odd-looking curiosities in gravity theory. They uniquely intertwine the basic principles of General Relativity with those of Quantum Theory. Just by demanding that they nevertheless obey acceptable laws of…
Cosmology now provides unambiguous, quantitative evidence for new particle physics. I discuss the implications of cosmology for supersymmetry and vice versa. Topics include: motivations for supersymmetry; supersymmetry breaking; dark…
Given the wealth of increasingly accurate cosmological observations, especially the recent results from the WMAP, and the development of methods and strategies in the search for cosmic topology, it is reasonable to expect that we should be…
We study the effect of a finite topology on the temperature correlations of the cosmic microwave background in a flat universe. Analytic expressions for the angular power spectrum are given for all possible finite flat models. We examine…
Black holes are a common feature of the Universe. They are observed as stellar mass black holes spread throughout galaxies and as supermassive objects in their centres. Observations of stars orbiting close to the centre of our Galaxy…
Modern cosmology has sharpened questions posed for millennia about the origin of our cosmic habitat. The age-old questions have been transformed into two pressing issues primed for attack in the coming decade: How did the Universe begin?…
We investigate the cosmological behavior in a universe governed by time asymmetric extensions of general relativity, which is a novel modified gravity based on the addition of new, time-asymmetric, terms on the Hamiltonian framework, in a…
If the topology of the universe is compact we show how it significantly changes our assessment of the naturalness of the observed structure of the universe and the likelihood of its present state of high isotropy and near flatness arising…
General relativity predicts a singularity in the beginning of the universe being called big bang. Recent developments in loop quantum cosmology avoid the singularity and the big bang is replaced by a big bounce. A classical theory of…
In this talk, I review some recent work on cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies in an open universe. I emphasize that the observed CMB anisotropies are still consistent with a low value of $\Omega$, and I address the question of…
The Universe is the grandest conceivable scale on which the human mind can strive to understand nature. The amazing aspect of cosmology, the branch of science that attempts to understand the origin and evolution of the Universe, is that it…
Cosmology has come a long way from being based on a small number of observations to being a data-driven precision science. We discuss the questions "What is observable?", "What in the Universe is knowable?" and "What are the fundamental…
Objects that are on the verge of being extremal black holes but actually are distinct in many ways are called quasi-black holes. Quasi-black holes are defined here and treated in a unified way through the displaying of their properties. The…
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…
It is shown that space curvature can be disposed of by properly taking into account gravitational self energies. This leads to a parameter free modification of Newton's law, violating Gauss theorem, which accounts for the crucial tests of…
The standard cosmological model does not determine the spatial topology of the universe. This article revisits the signature of a non-trivial topology on the properties of the cosmic microwave background anisotropies. We show that the…
This article gives a review of a recent construction, the ambient cosmological metric, and its implications for the global geometry of the universe. According to this proposal, the universe is a bounding hypersurface carrying a conformal…
Black holes are among the most extreme objects that can be found in the Universe and an ideal laboratory for testing fundamental physics. This article will briefly review the basic properties of black holes as expected from general…