Cosmology Solved? Quite Possibly!

The discovery of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) in 1964 by Penzias andWilson led to the establishment of the hot big-bang cosmological model some tenyears later. Discoveries made in 1998 may ultimately have as profound an effecton our understanding of the origin and evolution of the Universe. Taken at facevalue, they confirm the basic tenets of Inflation + Cold Dark Matter, a boldand expansive theory that addresses all the fundamental questions leftunanswered by the hot big-bang model and holds that the Universe is flat,slowly moving elementary particles provide the cosmic infrastructure, andquantum fluctuations seeded all the structure seen in the Universe today. Justas it took a decade to establish the hot big-bang model after the discovery ofthe CMB, it will likely take another ten years to establish the latest additionto the standard cosmology and make the answer to ``Cosmology Solved?'',``YES!'' Whether or not 1998 proves to be a cosmic milestone, the comingavalanche of high-quality cosmological data promises to make the next twentyyears an extremely exciting period for cosmology.Comment: 19 pages LaTeX including 5 eps figures. Presented at Great Debate: Cosmology Solved?, October 4, 1998, Baird Auditorium, Smithsonian Natural History Museum, Washington, DC. To be published in Proc. Astron. Soc. Pacific, February 199