title: Eddington's theory of gravity and its progeny.
abstract: We resurrect Eddington's proposal for the gravitational action in the presence of a cosmological constant and extend it to include matter fields. We show that the Newton-Poisson equation is modified in the presence of sources and that charged black holes show great similarities with those arising in Born-Infeld electrodynamics coupled to gravity. When we consider homogeneous and isotropic space-times, we find that there is a minimum length (and maximum density) at early times, clearly pointing to an alternative theory of the big bang. We thus argue that the modern formulation of Eddington's theory, Born-Infeld gravity, presents us with a novel, nonsingular description of the Universe.
authors.affiliation: P. Universidad Católica de Chile, Avenida Vicuna Mackenna 4860, Santiago, Chile and Astrophysics, University of Oxford, DWB, Keble Road, Oxford, OX1 3RH, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Máximo
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bañados
authors.forename: Pedro G
authors.initials: PG
authors.lastname: Ferreira