Related papers: Scientific Eschatology
The idea of possible time or space variations of the `fundamental' constants of nature, although not new, is only now beginning to be actively considered by large numbers of researchers in the particle physics, cosmology and astrophysics…
In view of new experimental results that strongly suggest a non-zero cosmological constant, it becomes interesting to revisit the Friedman-Lemaitre model of evolution of a universe with cosmological constant and radiation pressure. In this…
Quiescent cosmology and the Weyl curvature hypothesis possess a mathematical framework, namely the definition of an Isotropic Singularity, but only for the initial state of the universe. A complementary framework is necessary to also encode…
A diverse set of observations now compellingly suggest that Universe possesses a nonzero cosmological constant. In the context of quantum-field theory a cosmological constant corresponds to the energy density of the vacuum, and the wanted…
We present a cosmological landscape where the classical closed string tachyon field plays an important role in the framework of a critical bosonic compactification. Our cosmological solutions for a universe with constant curvature describes…
We propose a cosmological model in which the universe undergoes an endless sequence of cosmic epochs each beginning with a `bang' and ending in a `crunch.' The temperature and density are finite at each transition from crunch to bang.…
We study the renormalisation group running of the cosmological and the Newton constant, where the renormalisation scale is given by the inverse of the radius of the cosmological event horizon. In this framework, we discuss the future…
The evolution of the wave function in quantum mechanics is deterministic like that of classical waves. Only when we bring in observers the fundamentally different quantum reality emerges. Similarly the introduction of observers changes the…
From an observational perspective cosmology is today in excellent shape - advances in instrumentation and data processing have enabled us to study the universe in detail back to when the first galaxies formed, map the fluctuations in the…
The experimental evidence that the equation of state (EOS) of the dark energy (DE) could be evolving with time/redshift (including the possibility that it might behave phantom-like near our time) suggests that there might be dynamical DE…
The quantum nature of the Big Bang is reexamined in the framework of Loop Quantum Cosmology. The strict application of a regularization procedure to the Hamiltonian, originally developed for the Hamiltonian in loop quantum gravity, leads to…
The no-boundary proposal provides a compelling theory for the initial conditions of our universe. We study the implications of such initial conditions for ekpyrotic and cyclic cosmologies. These cosmologies allow for the existence of a new…
While purely philosophical in the early times, and still very speculative at the beginning of the twentieth century, Cosmology has gradually entered into the realm of experimental science over the past eighty years. It has raised some…
In standard cosmology, with the evolution of the universe, the matter density and thermodynamic pressure gradually decreases. Also in course of evolution, the matter in the universe obeys (or violates) some restrictions or energy…
The place of an anthropic argument in the discrimination between various cosmological models is to be reconsidered following the classic criticisms of Paul C. W. Davies and Frank J. Tipler. Different versions of the anthropic argument…
For most of its history, cosmology was a qualitatively constrained discourse on the universe, shaped by limited observational access and the absence of global dynamical laws. This situation has changed decisively in recent decades. Modern…
Within the context of standard cosmology, an accelerating universe requires the presence of a third `dark' component of energy, beyond matter and radiation. The available data, however, are still deemed insufficient to distinguish between…
The mechanism for the relaxation of the cosmological constant is studied and elaborated. In the model used for the analysis of the relaxation mechanism the universe contains two components: a cosmological constant of an arbitrary size and…
In the late 1990s, observations of type Ia supernovae led to the astounding discovery that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. The explanation of this anomalous acceleration has been one of the great problems in physics since…
Despite the success of our best models in Theoretical Physics, especially concerning Cosmology and Particle Physics, we still face persistent challenges. Among them we have the cosmological singularity problem, understanding the late-time…