Speaker
Description
In the current era of precision cosmology, it is well-known that the present standard $\Lambda$CDM model, despite its successes, is an insufficient average of our actual Universe. Given the recorded tensions between theory and observations, it appears that a more precise representation of the local universe is mandatory. Since General Relativity (GR) is the best theory currently available to describe gravitation (verified up to some $10^{-15}$ precision in the weak and strong regimes), the new model should agree with its specifications. The Szekeres GR solution possesses all the nice properties allowing it to represent an inhomogeneous small scale universe becoming homogeneous (FLRW) at some large transition scale. Now, a number of observations leads us to conclude that the distribution of matter and its expansion are anisotropic roughly in the direction of the CMB dipole. While most of the community has been reluctant up to now to use the general Szekeres model, due to its complexity, its axially symmetric version, more simple to deal with, might be more appealing. Therefore, taking advantage of both its compatibility with observations and its relative simplicity, we show how it can be used as a new standard cosmological model.