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Noncommutative geometry, an offshoot of string theory, replaces point-like objects by smeared objects. The resulting uncertainty may cause a black hole to be observationally indistinguishable from a traversable wormhole, while the latter, in turn, may become observationally indistinguishable from a gravastar. The same noncommutative-geometry background allows the theoretical construction of thin-shell wormholes from gravastars and may even serve as a model for dark energy., Comment: 9 pages, 1 figure; accepted by MPLA

A long-standing topic of interest in the general theory of relativity is the embedding of curved spacetimes in higher-dimensional flat spacetimes. The main purpose this paper is to show that the embedding theory can account for the accelerated expansion of the Universe and thereby serve as a model for dark energy. This result is consistent with earlier findings based on noncommutative geometry. A secondary objective is to show that the embedding theory also implies that it is possible, at least in principle, for the accelerated expansion to reverse to become a deceleration., Comment: 8 pages, i figure

When Morris and Thorne first proposed that wormholes might be actual physical structures suitable for interstellar travel, they needed to pay close attention to certain traversability conditions such as low tidal forces, which placed severe constraints on the wormhole geometry. Even more problematical was the need for "exotic matter" resulting from the unavoidable violation of the null energy condition required to hold a wormhole open. The purpose of this paper is to overcome these problems by starting with the charged wormhole model of Kim and Lee and assuming a noncommutative-geometry background: the violation of the null energy condition can be attributed to the latter, while the electric charge allows the reduction of the tidal forces to acceptable levels without invoking the trivial zero-tidal-force assumption., Comment: 8 pages, no figures

Hawking's proposal that the Universe has no temporal boundary and hence no beginning depends on the notion of imaginary time and is usually referred to as the "no-boundary proposal." This paper discusses a simple alternative approach by means of the five-dimensional Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker model., Comment: 5 pages, no figures

It was shown earlier by Rahaman et al. that a noncommutative-geometry background can account for galactic rotation curves without the need for dark matter. The smearing effect that characterizes noncommutative geometry is described by means of a Gaussian distribution intended to replace the Dirac delta function. The purpose of this paper is two-fold: (1) to account for the galactic rotation curves in a more transparent and intuitively more appealing way by replacing the Gaussian function by the simpler Lorentzian distribution proposed by Nozari and Mehdipour and (2) to show that the smearing effect is both a necessary and sufficient condition for meeting the stability criterion., Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures