Cosmology and the Quantum Vacuum—2nd Edition

Dear Colleagues,

It requires little effort to become convinced that we, human beings, have seriously undertaken a discovery trip across the Universe. News about this topic makes big headlines each day in the press, in all mass media, on the Internet, of course, and even on social networks. And this is no more restricted to the scientific community of specialists, in part because this trip might prove to be decisive for the survival of our own species (Freeman Dyson, Stephen Hawking, etc.). Thus, it is no longer for the pure pleasure of obtaining more knowledge or for the thrill of the discovery. Contributions to this Special Issue, devoted to such important thematic topics, are expected from talks at the sixth edition of the workshop “Cosmology and the Quantum Vacuum”, but also from direct submissions. They should focus both on what we already know at the cosmological scale, which includes (in this trip) the extremely tiny ones pertaining to the birth of the cosmos; the facts we know for sure from laboratory experiments corresponding to this primordial epoch; and also the theories that are being proposed to reach the very origin of the Universe and to model its possible future. In order to advance towards such goals, we must start by addressing several urgent problems which standard and other seemingly well-stablished models have to face right now. Some of these problems are mainly related to the pending quantization of classical gravity, and others to the astronomical, observational side; in particular, this includes the eternal problem of accurately measuring the distances and speeds of celestial objects, both the intrinsic ones and the ones associated with the Universe’s accelerated expansion. These are so simple to formulate, and so difficult to measure. Contributions around any of these topics are welcome.

Prof. Dr. Emilio Elizalde
Prof. Dr. Martiros Khurshudyan
Prof. Dr. Iver H. Brevik
Guest Editors

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• cosmology
• general relativity
• dark energy