Paper: astro-ph/0604264
Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2006 09:54:44 GMT (5kb)

Title: Comment on "Heavy element production in inhomogeneous big bang
nucleosynthesis"

Authors: T. Rauscher (Univ. Basel)

Comments: 2 pages, submitted to Phys. Rev. D on Feb 23, 2006
\\
The work of Matsuura et al. [Phys. Rev. D 72, 123505 (2005);
astro-ph/0507439] claims that heavy nuclei could have been produced in a
combined p- and r-process in very high baryon density regions of an
inhomogeneous big bang. However, they do not account for observational
constraints and previous studies which show that such high baryon density
regions did not significantly contribute to big bang abundances.

\\ ( http://arXiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0604264 , 5kb)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
\\
Paper: astro-ph/0604265
Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2006 10:00:45 GMT (363kb)

Title: Casimir Effect confronts Cosmological Constant

Authors: Gaurang Mahajan, Sudipta Sarkar, T. Padmanabhan

Comments: revtex4; four pages; 5 figs
\\
It has been speculated that the zero-point energy of the vacuum, regularized
due to the existence of a suitable ultraviolet cut-off scale, could be the
source of the non-vanishing cosmological constant that is driving the present
acceleration of the universe. We show that the presence of such a cut-off can
significantly alter the results for the Casimir force between parallel
conducting plates and even lead to repulsive Casimir force when the plate
separation is smaller than the cut-off scale length. Using the current
experimental data we rule out the possibility that the observed cosmological
constant arises from the zero-point energy which is made finite by a suitable
cut-off. Any such cut-off which is consistent with the observed Casimir effect
will lead to an energy density which is about 10^{12} times larger than the
observed one, if gravity couples to these modes. The implications are
discussed.

\\ ( http://arXiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0604265 , 363kb)