Related papers: Cosmology and the Standard Model
A set of scaling laws, based on the stochastic motions of the granular components of astronomical systems, is applied to a cosmological model with a positive cosmological constant. It follows that the mass of the dominant particle in the…
Cosmology is undergoing an explosive period of activity, fueled both by new, accurate astrophysical data and by innovative theoretical developments. Cosmological parameters such as the total density of the Universe and the rate of…
The linear cosmological perturbation theory of an almost homogeneous and isotropic perfect fluid universe is reconsidered and formally simplified by introducing new covariant and gauge-invariant variables with physical interpretations on…
Current evidence suggests that the cosmological constant is not zero, or that we live in an open universe. We examine the implications for the future under these assumptions, and find that they are striking. If the Universe is cosmological…
We study a fundamental issue in cosmology: Whether we can rely on a cosmological model to understand the real history of the Universe. This fundamental, still unresolved issue is often called the ``model-fitting problem (or averaging…
The observed value of the cosmological constant corresponds to a time scale that is very close to the current conformal age of the universe. Here we show that this is not a coincidence but is caused by a periodic boundary condition, which…
The idea that the cosmological term, Lambda, should be a time dependent quantity in cosmology is a most natural one. It is difficult to conceive an expanding universe with a strictly constant vacuum energy density, namely one that has…
We model the universe as a 3-brane embedded in five dimensional spacetime with N=2 supersymmetry. The presence of the scalar fields of the universal hypermultiplet in the bulk results in a positive pressure effectively reducing the value of…
We examine the possibility that a significant component of the energy density of the universe has an equation-of-state different from that of matter, radiation or cosmological constant ($\Lambda$). An example is a cosmic scalar field…
Cosmological fine-tuning has traditionally been associated with the narrowness of the intervals in which the parameters of the physical models must be located to make life possible. A more thorough approach focuses on the probability of the…
Astrophysics and cosmology can be used to test the standard model of particle physics under conditions and over distance and time scales not accessible to laboratory experiments. Most of the astrophysical observations are in good agreement…
An idea of the universe as a self-contained system of interacting fields as a closed doublon network is developed. The characteristic scale of this system is considered emergent from general principles. Self similarity of patterns in the…
The value of the cosmological constant arising from a crystalline model for vacuum cosmic space with lattice parameter of the order of the neutron radius [1] has been calculated. The model allows to solve, in an easy way, the problem of the…
The following review presents an attempt to discuss various issues of current interest in Observational Cosmology, the selection of which as well as the emphasis given, reflects my own preference and biases. After presenting some…
A wide range of large scale observations hint towards possible modifications on the standard cosmological model which is based on a homogeneous and isotropic universe with a small cosmological constant and matter. These observations, also…
In a quest to explain the small value of the today's cosmological constant, following the approach introduced in [1], we show that the theoretical value of cosmological constant is consistent with its observational value. In more detail, we…
In principle the geometry of the universe can be investigated by measuring the angular size of known objects as a function of distance. Thus the distribution of angular sizes provides a critical test of the stable and static model of the…
In the context of the averaging problem in relativistic cosmology, we provide a key to the interpretation of cosmological parameters by taking into account the actual inhomogeneous geometry of the Universe. We discuss the relation between…
The cosmological constant, i.e., the energy density stored in the true vacuum state of all existing fields in the Universe, is the simplest and the most natural possibility to describe the current cosmic acceleration. However, despite its…
Motivated by the possibility of $H_0t_0 > 1$ where $H_0$ and $t_0$ are the Hubble parameter and the age of the universe, respectively, we investigate the cosmology including x-matter. x-matter is expressed by the equation of state…