New perspective on cosmic coincidence problems

Cosmological data suggest that we live in an interesting period in the history of the universe when rho (Lambda) - rho (M) - rho (R). The occurrence of any epoch with such a triple coincidence is puzzling, while the question of why we happen to live during this special epoch is the Why now? problem. We introduce a framework which makes the triple coincidence inevitable; furthermore, the Why now? problem is transformed and greatly ameliorated. The framework assumes that the only relevant mass scales are the electroweak scale M-EW, and the Planck scale M-P1 and requires rho (1/4)(Lambda) similar to M-EW(2)/M-Pl parametrically. Assuming that the true vacuum energy vanishes, we present a simple model, where a false vacuum energy yields a cosmological constant of this form.