Related papers: Star tracks in the ghost condensate
Unexpected astrophysical observations can be explained by gravitationally captured massive particles, which are produced inside the Sun or other Stars and are accumulated over cosmic times. Their radiative decay in solar outer space would…
Under the assumption that General Relativity (GR) correctly describes the phenomenology of our Universe, astronomical observations provide compelling evidence that (1) the dynamics of cosmic structure is dominated by dark matter (DM), an…
We review the evidence for recently accelerating cosmological expansion or "dark energy", either a negative pressure constituent in General Relativity (Dark Energy) or modified gravity (Dark Gravity), without any Dark Energy constituent. If…
We investigate induced oscillations by the gravitational field of a fast stellar object, such as a neutron star or a black-hole in a near miss collision with another star. Non-adiabatic collision conditions may lead to large amplitude…
Gravitational theories differing from General Relativity may explain the accelerated expansion of the Universe without a cosmological constant. However, to pass local gravitational tests, a "screening mechanism" is needed to suppress, on…
Recent measurements, of the velocities of stars near the center of the Milky Way have provided the strongest evidence for the presence of a supermassive black hole in a galaxy, but the observational uncertainties poorly constrain many of…
We show that a class of nonlocal gravity models, proposed to explain current cosmic acceleration without dark energy, passes two major tests: First, they can be defined so as not to alter the, observationally correct, general relativity…
The homogeneous expansion history H(z) of our universe measures only kinematic variables, but cannot fix the underlying dynamics driving the recent acceleration: cosmographic measurements of the homogeneous universe, are consistent with…
Theoretical approaches to explaining the observed acceleration of the universe are reviewed. We briefly discuss the evidence for cosmic acceleration, and the implications for standard General Relativity coupled to conventional sources of…
In string gas cosmology, the extra dimensions of the underlying theory are kept at a microscopic scale by a gas of strings. In the matter-dominated era, however, dust pressure can lead to oscillations of the extra dimensions and to…
The discovery that the cosmic expansion is accelerating has been followed by an intense theoretical and experimental response in physics and astronomy. The discovery implies that our most basic notions about how gravity work are violated on…
Taking into account only luminous objects, the kinematics of clusters of galaxies, galaxies and their interior, require a much higher mass than the luminous one to explain the observations. This situation has provoked more than 30 years of…
Peculiar velocities are the motions of galaxies due to the gravitational influence of large-scale structure, and thus are an important cosmological probe of the underlying matter density field. In recent years the number of surveys designed…
It has been suggested recently that the change in cosmological redshift (the Sandage test of expansion) could be observed in the next generation of large telescopes and ultra-stable spectrographs. In a recent paper we estimated the change…
We consider the fate of the observable universe in the light of the discovery of a dark energy component to the cosmic energy budget. We extend results for a cosmological constant to a general dark energy component and examine the…
A web of interlocking observations has established that the expansion of the Universe is speeding up and not slowing, revealing the presence of some form of repulsive gravity. Within the context of general relativity the cause of cosmic…
In this article we try to find out the conditions when a ghost field in conjunction with a barotropic fluid produces a stable accelerating expansion phase of the universe. It is seen that in many cases the ghost field produces a condensate…
Testing the constancy of the gravitational constant G has been a longstanding fundamental question in natural science. As first suggested by Jofr\'{e}, Reisenegger and Fern\'{a}ndez [1], Dirac's hypothesis of a decreasing gravitational…
We describe how a certain simple modification of general relativity, in which the local cosmological constant is allowed to depend on the space-time curvature, predicts the existence of halos of modified gravity surrounding…
Gravitational vacuum condensate stars, also known as gravastars, have been proposed as an alternative to black holes. Their interior contains a perfect fluid with an equation of state akin to that of a cosmological constant. For this…