Dark Cosmology and Its Origins
This article reviews the standard model of cosmology: an expanding universe whose expansion is now accelerating, driven by dark energy (equivalent in practice to endowing the vacuum with a constant uniform energy density). Structure in the universe is generated by the matter that can clump, where gr...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
2026
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| In: |
Zygon
Year: 2026, Volume: 60, Issue: 4, Pages: 1051-1073 |
| Further subjects: | B
Cosmology
B Dark Energy B Dark Matter |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (kostenfrei) Volltext (kostenfrei) |
| Summary: | This article reviews the standard model of cosmology: an expanding universe whose expansion is now accelerating, driven by dark energy (equivalent in practice to endowing the vacuum with a constant uniform energy density). Structure in the universe is generated by the matter that can clump, where gravity causes density enhancements to collapse and generate galaxies and their large-scale clustering patterns. This matter is about 15% normal gas, but the remainder is collisionless, interacting only through gravity and not supporting sound waves, nor scattering electromagnetic radiation. The nature of these dark constituents, as well as the origin of the fluctuations that seeded cosmological structure, is most probably connected to physical processes at early times. Thus, observations of dark cosmological structure give us a window into the origin of the universe. The aim here is to give an overview of the development and successes of this model, together with the outstanding fundamental puzzles in our understanding of cosmology. |
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| ISSN: | 1467-9744 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Zygon
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.16995/zygon.20035 |
