Related papers: Cosmic Natural Selection
The purpose of this paper is to propose an extension to Lee Smolin's hypothesis that our own universe belongs to a population of universes evolving by natural selection. Smolin's hypothesis explains why the parameters of physics possess the…
The rate of black hole formation can be increased by increasing the value of the cosmological constant. This falsifies Smolin's conjecture that the values of all constants of nature are adjusted to maximize black hole production.
For Lee Smolin, our universe is only one in a much larger cosmos (the Multiverse) - a member of a growing community of universes, each one being born in a bounce following the formation of a black hole. In the course of this, the values of…
Following the selection metaphor as introduced by Lee Smolin in his 1997 book with respect to a possible model of the reproduction of Universes, this model is being reconstructed utilizing the strict analogical form of the metaphor chosen.…
The problem of making predictions from theories that have landscapes of possible low energy parameters is reviewed. Conditions for such a theory to yield falsifiable predictions for doable experiments are given. It is shown that the…
Three observational tests of cosmological natural selection, a theory that follows from some hypotheses about quantum gravity, are described. If true, this theory explains the choices of the parameters of the standard model of particle…
Some speculative preliminary ideas relating matrix theory and cosmology are discussed.
One way that an anthropic selection mechanism may be manifest in a physical theory involves multiple domains in the universe with different values of the physical parameters. If this mechanism is to be relevant for understanding the small…
I motivate and discuss some recent work on theories with varying constants, and consider some possible observational consequences and tests. Particular emphasis is given to models which can (almost) exactly mimic the predictions of standard…
[Abridged] Some cosmological theories propose that the observable universe is a small part of a much larger universe in which parameters describing the low-energy laws of physics vary from region to region. How can we reasonably assess a…
We give a conceptual explanation for the somewhat mysterious origin of Suslin matrices. This enables us to generalize the construction of Suslin matrices and to give more conceptual proofs of some well-known results.
We introduce the notion of the cosmic numbers of a cosmological model, and discuss how they can be used to naturally classify models according to their ability to solve some of the problems of the standard cosmological model.
The current status of the theoretical and observational cosmology is reviewed.
In the light of the proposal of hep-th/0207195, we discuss in detail the issue of the cosmological constant, explaining how can string theory naturally predict the value which is experimentally observed, without low-energy supersymmetry.
Cosmology from the Top Down.
This is a review of the physics and cosmology of the cosmological constant. Focusing on recent developments, I present a pedagogical overview of cosmology in the presence of a cosmological constant, observational constraints on its…
We have a well-established standard model for cosmology and prospects for considerable additions from work in progress. I offer a list of elements of the standard model, comments on controversies in the interpretation of the evidence in…
Physics is facing contingency. Not only in facts but also in laws (the frontier becoming extremely narrow). Cosmic natural selection is a tantalizing idea to explain the apparently highly improbable structure of our Universe. In this brief…
The network of cosmological tests is tight enough now to show that the relativistic Big Bang cosmology is a good approximation to what happened as the universe expanded and cooled through light element production and evolved to the present.…
Taking a hint from Dirac's large number hypothesis, we note the existence of cosmic combined conservation laws that work to cosmologically long time. We thus modify or generalize Einstein's theory of general relativity with fixed…