Related papers: Understanding Our Universe: Current Status and Ope…
A central theme in cosmology is the perplexing fact that the Universe is undergoing an accelerating expansion. The latter, one of the most important and challenging current problems in cosmology, represents a new imbalance in the governing…
In a previous paper we proposed a new approach to the beginning of inflation -- a lingering universe. The universe begins in a lingering state with a nearly vanishing Hubble parameter. This calls into question the absolute age of the…
Age consistency for the Universe today has been an important cosmological test. Even more powerful consistency tests at times as early as 10^{-32} sec lie ahead in the precision era of cosmology. I outline tests based upon cosmic microwave…
It is commonly stated that we have entered the era of precision cosmology in which a number of important observations have reached a degree of precision, and a level of agreement with theory, that is comparable with many Earth-based physics…
CMB anisotropy data could put powerful constraints on theories of the evolution of our Universe. Using the observations of the large number of CMB experiments, many studies have put constraints on cosmological parameters assuming different…
Understanding galaxy formation is one of the most pressing issues in cosmology. We review the current status of galaxy formation from both an observational and a theoretical perspective, and summarise the prospects for future advances.
The arguments surrounding the Galactic component of the cosmic rays, the energy budget, questions of composition, spectral features, anisotropy, sources etc, will be critically examined. We are moving into a new phase in the study of the…
The expansion of the Universe is the basis of modern cosmology. This chapter outlines the theory behind the expansion of the universe, including the cosmological principle, distances, velocities, and accelerations. We provide basic…
Quantum information theory and the multiverse are two of the greatest outcomes of the XX century physics. The consideration of entanglement between the quantum states of two or more universes in a multiverse scenario provides us with a…
The early cosmic inflation, when taken along with the recent observations that the universe is currently dominated by a low density vacuum energy, leads to at least two potential problems which modern cosmology must address. First, there is…
Cosmological discoveries over the past century have completely changed our picture of our place in the universe. New observations have a realistic chance of probing nature on heretofore unimaginable scales, and as a result are changing the…
The cosmological constant problem and brane universes are reviewed briefly. We discuss how the cosmological constant problem manifests itself in various scenarios for brane universes. We review attempts - and their difficulties - that aim…
This chapter aims to present an introduction to current research on the nature of the cosmological dark matter and the origin of galaxies and large scale structure within the standard theoretical framework: gravitational collapse of…
Certain results of observational cosmology cast critical doubt on the foundations of standard cosmology but leave most cosmologists untroubled. Alternative cosmological models that differ from the Big Bang have been published and defended…
Despite two decades of tremendous experimental and theoretical progress, the riddle of the accelerated expansion of the Universe remains to be solved. On the experimental side, our understanding of the possibilities and limitations of the…
The widely accepted description of the present cosmic acceleration and the neutrino oscillations in terms of a cosmological constant and neutrino masses, respectively, seems conceptually not very satisfactory. From a phenomenological…
Cosmology and particle physics have long been dominated by theoretical paradigms: Einstein's general theory of relativity in cosmology and the Standard Model of particle physics. The time may have come for paradigm shifts. Does cosmological…
The current expansion of the Universe has been observed to be accelerating, and the widely accepted spatially-flat concordance model of general relativistic cosmology attributes this phenomenon to a constant dark energy, a cosmological…
The good agreement between large-scale observations and the predictions of the now-standard $\Lambda$CDM theory gives us hope that this will become a lasting foundation for cosmology. After briefly reviewing the current status of the key…
Inflation has been the driving idea in cosmology for two decades and is a pillar of the New Cosmology. The inflationary paradigm has now passed its first round of significant tests, with two of its three basics predictions confirmed at…