"All that matter … in one Big Bang …," & other cosmological singularities [CL]

http://arxiv.org/abs/1801.09550


The first part of this paper contains a brief description of the beginnings of modern cosmology, which, the author will argue, was most likely born in the Year 1912. Some of the pieces of evidence presented here have emerged from recent research in the history of science, and are not usually shared with the general audiences in popular science books. Then, the important issue of the formulation of the original Big Bang concept, in the exact words of Fred Hoyle, is discussed. Too often, this is very deficiently explained (when not just misleadingly) in most of the available generalist literature. Other frequent uses of the same words, Big Bang, as to name the initial singularity of the cosmos, and also whole cosmological models, are then addressed, as evolutions of its original meaning. Quantum and inflationary additions to the celebrated singularity theorems by Penrose, Geroch, Hawking and others led to subsequent results by Borde, Guth and Vilenkin. And corresponding corrections to the Einstein field equations have originated, in particular, $R^2$, $f(R)$, and scalar-tensor gravities, giving rise to a plethora of new singularities. For completeness, an updated table with a classification of the same is given.

Read this paper on arXiv…

E. Elizalde
Tue, 30 Jan 18
21/70

Comments: 22 pages, no figures