1980 ◽  
Vol 31 (9) ◽  
pp. 317-317
Author(s):  
P J McCarthy

2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 013001 ◽  
Author(s):  
A A Coley ◽  
G F R Ellis

1986 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 27-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vera C. Rubin

Thirty years ago, observational cosmology consisted of the search for two numbers: Ho, the rate of expansion of the universe at the position of the Galaxy; and qo, the deceleration parameter. Twenty years ago, the discovery of the relic radiation from the Big Bang produced another number, 3oK. But it is the past decade which has seen the enormous development in both observational and theoretical cosmology. The universe is known to be immeasurably richer and more varied than we had thought. There is growing acceptance of a universe in which most of the matter is not luminous. Nature has played a trick on astronomers, for we thought we were studying the universe. We now know that we were studying only the small fraction of it that is luminous. I suspect that this talk this evening is the first IAU Discourse devoted to something that astronomers cannot see at any wavelength: Dark Matter in the Universe.


2009 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 587-612 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helge Kragh

ArgumentUntil the mid-nineteenth century the age-old idea of a cyclic or oscillating universe belonged to philosophical and religious discourse, with little connection to the physical and astronomical sciences. It was only with the emergence of thermodynamics, and even more so with the general theory of relativity, that it became possible to discuss the hypothesis within a scientific context. This paper follows the development of oscillating cosmological models in the twentieth century, when they were often discussed if rarely taken very seriously. How is it that this conception of the universe was seen as both fascinating and controversial? Can the persistence of such models be explained on a scientific basis alone? The idea of an oscillating universe has been in crisis several times, but recently it has experienced a spectacular revival in the form of models inspired by string theory and other theories of quantum gravity. This paper argues that the current revival of interest in cyclic models is not primarily rooted in their “aesthetic” qualities, as used to be the case. With the maturation of cosmology following the discovery of the cosmic microwave background in 1965, the hypothesis has become part of the discourse of modern theoretical cosmology, and as such it is discussed within a normal scientific context. On the other hand, extrascientific considerations continue to play a role, and they probably always will. The heritage from the past is still visible.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deep Bhattacharjee

Imagine taking grasp the larger distances in the scale of Mega-Parsec or Giga-Parsec and navigating through tunnels of time. The passageways that I would be shortly describing below are not to be misinterpreted as a wormhole although there are few similarities between the two. Theoretical physics often describes things which are beyond the scope of demonstrating experimentally. Argumently, on a theoretical standard our main weapon is to use mathematics to describe the unseenable beauties of nature. This can be easily demonstrated that a spatial cylinder of a non-trivial topology can be made or constructed across the universe passing from one corner of the observable universe to the other corner. The scale of distance if taken into account would be unimaginable and therefore, if any normal, like today’s jet engines or rocket engines are used to circumnavigate through the tunnels then the time scale that’s needed would be at least a billion years or so, million in some cases where the distances are quite small, but although being small, in theoretical cosmology small is accounted for a very arbitrarily large distances by rounding distances thereby giving them a name like ‘light years’, ‘parsecs’, etcetera. The key ingredient or the pickle used to taste up the journey by reducing the distances is by implementation of the warping of space within that tunnel, so that space gets so much twisted inside it, that the present would get unfolded into past and future and also the warping induces such a spatial shortcut, such that CTC’s or closed timelike curves tends to appear in between the cylinder shrinking the limit of ‘mega-parsecs’ to almost nothing at all. Therefore, the play with the distances, we have to manipulate the geometry of space-time, making the notion of time and space smaller and smaller until the point of departing stands a little next to post of arriving. And we have to remember that our weapon for curvature is theoretical physics and abstract mathematics. Gravity is not so important here as because it’s not like a ‘black hole’ without an event horizon or ‘Einstein-Rosen bridges’ but rather this is a simple 3-dimensional topological construction needed to make a ‘mega-parsec’ across cylinder in space and time and alter the geometry of this tunnel in such a way that there exists a ‘warp factor’ and that ‘warp factor’ would tell us precisely how much less time we can take through the tunnel to go from one point of universe to other keeping speed of light in vacuum ‘c’ as the limit paving the way for a real life time machines. Who hasn’t wondered to explore the vast cosmic distances physically rather than visually with the help of space telescopes? But, to do this, we have to construct a warped passageway that is not of higher dimensions but within the limits of our observable dimensions and thereby warping the space inside it in such a clever way so that large distances appears tiny or none at all. The main objective lies in the transformation of a linear velocity to an angular velocity provided that transformation would occur only when the linear velocity crosses the speed of the light thereby the extra or additional velocity that contributes to the existing velocity would no longer contribute in a linear way rather in an angular way creating a cylindrical domain in space-time and the warp factor related in the angular motion of the additional increment in linear velocity warps the space-time inside the cylinder with the aforesaid radius permitting the creation of CTC’s or closed timelike curves which would ultimately help in the shrinking of distances between the place of journey and destination paving the way for faster than time travel without the need for exotic matters or negative energies.


1986 ◽  
Vol 114 ◽  
pp. 189-189
Author(s):  
P. Teyssandier ◽  
Ph. Tourrenc

The relations between the local measurements achieved in the solar system for testing the metric theories of gravity and the cosmological background are far from being clear. In most cases, some heuristic assumptions are made in order to take into account cosmological boundary conditions. In particular, the light rays from distant stars or extragalactic objects are often believed on the basis of the so-called Mach principle to determine “fixed” directions defining inertial frames. However, it has been already shown in theoretical cosmology that in any anisotropic, inhomogeneous cosmological model, the apparent directions of a distant object varies with respect to locally non rotating inertial frames. Restricting in the first step our attention to some exact anisotropic models obeying to the Einstein equations, we study the order of magnitude of this effect in the context of observational devices such as the HIPPARCOS satellite, the Space Telescope and the gyroscope experiment planned at the Stanford University. Then we try to interpret the effect and more generally the various influences of cosmological terms, within the framework of the parametrized post-newtonian formalism.


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