No Arabic abstract
A recent article uncovered a surprising dynamical mechanism at work within the (vacuum) Einstein `flow that strongly suggests that many closed 3-manifolds that do not admit a locally homogeneous and isotropic metric textit{at all} will nevertheless evolve, under Einsteinian evolution, in such a way as to be textit{asymptotically} compatible with the observed, approximate, spatial homogeneity and isotropy of the universe cite{Moncrief:2015}. Since this previous article, however, ignored the potential influence of textit{dark-energy} and its correspondent accelerated expansion upon the conclusions drawn, we analyze herein the modifications to the foregoing argument necessitated by the inclusion of a textit{positive} cosmological constant --- the simplest viable model for dark energy.
We construct the gravitating mass of an isolated composite system on asymptotically-flat spacetimes within conventional general relativity and investigate when this quantity is well defined. For stationary spacetimes, this quantity is known to exactly equal the physical (ADM) mass. However, it remains an open question whether these two masses are equal in the absence of a timelike Killing vector. This is especially apropos since our universe has an `origin and hence no such Killing vector. Further, if these masses failed to agree then composite systems could behave as if they had a `dark component, whose gravitating mass would not equal the physical mass-energy present. The existence of such an apparent discrepancy is indeed ubiquitous in galaxies and galaxy clusters, though currently it is attributed to the presence of dark matter. We conclude that the theoretical question of the relation between these masses for dynamical spacetimes is ripe for attention.
The presence of the ancient valley networks on Mars indicates that the climate at 3.8 Ga was warm enough to allow substantial liquid water to flow on the martian surface for extended periods of time. However, the mechanism for producing this warming continues to be debated. One hypothesis is that Mars could have been kept warm by global cirrus cloud decks in a CO2-H2O atmosphere containing at least 0.25 bar of CO2 (Urata and Toon, 2013). Initial warming from some other process, e.g., impacts, would be required to make this model work. Those results were generated using the CAM 3-D global climate model. Here, we use a single-column radiative-convective climate model to further investigate the cirrus cloud warming hypothesis. Our calculations indicate that cirrus cloud decks could have produced global mean surface temperatures above freezing, but only if cirrus cloud cover approaches ~75 - 100% and if other cloud properties (e.g., height, optical depth, particle size) are chosen favorably. However, at more realistic cirrus cloud fractions, or if cloud parameters are not optimal, cirrus clouds do not provide the necessary warming, suggesting that other greenhouse mechanisms are needed.
An oscillating, compact Friedmann universe with a massive conformally coupled scalar field is studied in the framework of quantum cosmology. The scalar field is treated as a perturbation and we look for solutions of the Wheeler-DeWitt equation describing stable stationary states of the model. We assume that the previous sources of quantum instability that have been discussed in the literature (particle production, and tunnelling to zero size) are absent. We then show, under rather general assumptions, that a further source of quantum instability prevents the existence of stationary states with localized wave function in the direction of the scalar-field modes.
We extend our analysis for scalar fields in a Robertson-Walker metric to the electromagnetic field and Dirac fields by the method of invariants. The issue of the relation between conformal properties and particle production is re-examined and it is verified that the electromagnetic and massless spinor actions are conformal invariant, while the massless conformally coupled scalar field is not. For the scalar field case it is pointed out that the violation of conformal simmetry due to surface terms, although ininfluential for the equation of motion, does lead to effects in the quantized theory.
We study the tensorial modes of the two-fluid model, where one of this fluids has an equation of state $p = - rho/3$ (variable cosmological constant, cosmic string fluid, texture) or $p = - rho$ (cosmological constant), while the other fluid is an ordinary matter (radiation, stiff matter, incoherent matter). In the first case, it is possible to have a closed Universe whose dynamics can be that of an open Universe providing alternative solutions for the age and horizon problems. This study of the gravitational waves is extended for all values of the effective curvature $k_{eff}=k-frac{8pi G}{3}rho_{0s}$, that is, positive, negative or zero, $k$ being the curvature of the spacelike section. In the second case, we restrict ourselves to a flat spatial section. The behaviour of gravitational waves have, in each case, very particular features, that can be reflected in the anisotropy spectrum of Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation. We make also some considerations of these models as candidate to dark matter models.