Pop Goes the Big Bang III

In the late 1990s, observations of Type IA supernovae led to the astounding discovery that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. The explanation for this anomalous acceleration has been one of the great problems in physics since that discovery. In this article we propose cosmological models that can explain the cosmic acceleration without introducing a cosmological constant into the standard Einstein field equation, negating the necessity for the existence of dark energy. There are four distinguishing features of these models: 1) the speed of light and the gravitational “constant” are not constant, but vary with the evolution of the universe, 2) time has no beginning and no end, 3) the spatial section of the universe is a 3-sphere, and 4) the universe experiences phases of both acceleration and deceleration. i The speed of light and the gravitational “constant” are not constant, but vary with the evolution of the universe. i Time has no beginning and no end; i.e., there is neither a big bang nor a big crunch singularity. i The spatial section of the universe is a 3-sphere, ruling out the possibility of a flat or hyperboloid geometry. i The universe experiences phases of acceleration and deceleration. One of these models is selected and tested against current cosmological observations of Type Ia supernovae, and is found to fit the redshift-luminosity distance data quite well.