2007/02/27 by Brett Bochner, Bochner, Brett
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics (astro-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.astro-ph/0702703
Poster presented at the 21st Texas Symposum on Relativistic Astrophysics, Florence, Italy, December 9-13, 2002. 16 pages, no figures. Qualitative discussion of several fundamental questions and problems in cosmology; to be superceded in the future by a detailed, quantitative model
The matter content of the Universe is generally regarded as a perfect fluid on sufficiently large scales, for all epochs. But the recent cosmological matter distribution, consisting of an (ideally) random distribution of gravitationally collapsed structures, is more accurately described as a collection of discrete grains, than as a fluid. It is well known that granular materials may have very different macroscopic properties than fluids; analogously, we investigate the possibility that pervasive small-scale inhomogeneities in the recent Universe may lead to perturbations of the cosmological expansion on intermediate and/or large scales.