Related papers: Anthropic Reasoning in Cosmology: A Historical Per…
Observational cosmology is on the verge of new discoveries that will change the essence of our world-view. The matter concerns origin of initial conditions and physics of dark matter.
This paper is intended to offer a pedagogical treatment of cosmological modeling and inflationary cosmology. In recent years, inflation has become accepted as a standard scenario making predictions that are testable by observations of the…
There have been recent attempts at justifying, from first principles, and within the standard framework, the emergence of classical behavior in the post-inflationary cosmological context. Accounting for this emergence is an important issue,…
Our knowledge about the universe has increased tremendously in the last three decades or so --- thanks to the progress in observations --- but our understanding has improved very little. There are several fundamental questions about our…
During the last centuries of human history, many questions was repeated in connection with the great problems of the existence and origin of human beings, and also of the Universe. The old questions of common sense and philosophy have not…
The anthropic principle is one of the possible explanations for the cosmological constant ($\Lambda$) problem. In previous studies, a dark halo mass threshold comparable with our Galaxy must be assumed in galaxy formation to get a…
For a few years now, cosmology has a standard model. By this term, we mean a consistent theoretical background which is at the same time simple and broad enough to offer coherent explanations for the vast majority of cosmological phenomena.…
We present an elementary account of mathematical cosmology through a series of important unsolved problems. We introduce the fundamental notion of `a cosmology' and focus on the issue of singularities as a theme unifying many current,…
In this essay a critical review of present conceptual problems in current cosmology is provided from a more philosophical point of view. In essence, a digression on how could philosophy help cosmologists in what is strictly their…
An introductory account is given of the inflationary cosmology, which postulates a period of accelerated expansion during the Universe's earliest stages. The historical motivation is briefly outlined, and the modelling of the inflationary…
I discuss the classical cosmological tests-- angular size-redshift, flux-redshift, and galaxy number counts-- in the light of the cosmology prescribed by the intepretation of CMB anisotropies. The discussion is somewhat of a primer for…
Observational evidence indicating that the expansion of the universe is accelerating has surprised cosmologists in recent years. Cosmological models have sought to explain this acceleration by incorporating `dark energy', of which the…
The influence of recent detections of a finite vacuum energy ("cosmological constant") on our formulation of anthropic conjectures, particularly the so-called Final Anthropic Principle is investigated. It is shown that non-zero vacuum…
We review the status of bouncing cosmologies as alternatives to cosmological inflation for providing a description of the very early universe, and a source for the cosmological perturbations which are observed today. We focus on the…
In this brief essay we consider the concept of beginning in cosmology. It can be applied to the Universe as a whole, as well as to various epochs in the cosmic history and major structures as we can see them today.
Inflationary cosmology is reviewed. Particular attention is given to processes of creation.
This paper offers a synthesis of the positions in the literature regarding controversies about the multiverse. After reviewing some simple elements of modern cosmology and its observational limitations, we will present the history of the…
We note that in general there exist two basic aspects in any branch of physics, including cosmology - one dealing with the attributes of basic constituents and forces of nature, the other dealing with how structures arise from them and how…
In this short review we study the state of the art of the great problems in cosmology and their interrelationships. The reconciliation of these problems passes undoubtedly through the idea of a quantum universe.
Last couple of decades have been the golden age for cosmology. High quality data confirmed the broad paradigm of standard cosmology but have thrusted upon us a preposterous composition for the universe which defies any simple explanation,…