Abstract
The steps followed by Einstein when he first wrote on cosmology from the point of view of the general theory of relativity are revised. It is argued that his insightful line of thought leading to the introduction of the cosmological constant in the equations of motion has only one weakness: the constancy of the cosmological term, or what is the same, its independence of the matter content of the universe. Eliminating this feature, a simple and reasonable modification of the cosmological equations of motion is proposed. The solutions of the new cosmological equations give rise to a cosmological model that tries to approach the Einstein static solution. This model exhibits very appealing features in terms of fitting current observations.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
A. Einstein, Sitzungsber. K. Preuss. Akad. Wiss. 1, 142 (1917) [in The Principle of Relativity (Dover, New York, 1952)].
A. S. Eddington, Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 90, 668 (1930).
G. Lemaître, Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 91, 490 (1931).
W. B. Bonnor, Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 115, 310 (1954).
E. R. Harrison, Rev. Mod. Phys. 39, 862 (1967).
G. W. Gibbons, Nucl. Phys. B 292, 784 (1987).
J. D. Barrow, G. F. R. Ellis, R. Maartens, and C. G. Tsagas, Class. Quantum Grav. 20, L155 (2003), gr-qc/0302094.
W. Nerst, Verh. Dtsch. Phys. Ges. 18, 83 (1916).
Ya. B. Zel’dovich, Pis’ma Zh. Éksp. Teor. Fiz. 6, 883 (1967) [JETP Lett. 6, 316 (1967)].
G. E. Volovik, The Universe in a Helium Droplet (Clarendon, Oxford, UK, 2003).
G. E. Volovik, gr-qc/0604062; Ann. Phys. (Leipzig) 14, 165 (2005), gr-qc/0405012.
M. Bronstein, Phys. Z. Sowjetunion 3, 73 (1933).
P. J. E. Peebles and B. Ratra, Rev. Mod. Phys. 75, 559 (2003), astro-ph/0207347.
T. Padmanabhan, Phys. Rep. 380, 235 (2003), hep-th/0212290.
R. R. Caldwell, R. Davé, and P. J. Steinhardt, Phys. Rev. Lett. 80, 1582 (1998).
M. S. Turner, in The Galactic Halo, Ed. by B. K. Gibson, T. S. Axelrod, and M. E. Putnam (Astronomical Society of the Pacific, San Francisco, 1999), ASP Conf. Ser., Vol. 165.
A. D. Dolgov, Int. J. Mod. Phys. A 20, 2403 (2005).
Handbook of Mathematical Functions, Ed. by M. Abramowitz and I. A. Stegun, 2nd ed. (Dover, New York, 1972; Nauka, Moscow, 1979).
C. Barceló and G. Volovik, Pis’ma Zh. Éksp. Teor. Fiz. 80, 239 (2004) [JETP Lett. 80, 209 (2004)], gr-qc/0405105.
J. M. Overduin and F. I. Cooperstock, Phys. Rev. D 58, 043506 (1998), astro-ph/9805260.
D. N. Spergel et al. (WMAP Collab.), Astrophys. J. Suppl. 148, 175 (2003), astro-ph/0302209.
A. G. Riess et al. (Supernova Search Team Collab.), Astrophys. J. 607, 665 (2004), astro-ph/0402512.
O. Bertolami, A. A. Sen, S. Sen, and P. T. Silva, Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 353, 329 (2004), astro-ph/0402387.
A. R. Liddle, P. Mukherjee, D. Parkinson, and Y. Wang, astro-ph/0610126.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
The text was submitted by the author in English.