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Inflation: From Theory To Observation and Back
Author(s) -
TURNER MICHAEL S.
Publication year - 1995
Publication title -
annals of the new york academy of sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.712
H-Index - 248
eISSN - 1749-6632
pISSN - 0077-8923
DOI - 10.1111/j.1749-6632.1995.tb17521.x
Subject(s) - physics , fermi gamma ray space telescope , citation , library science , astrophysics , computer science
Alan Guth introduced cosmologists to inflation at the 1980 Texas Symposium.Since, inflation has had almost as much impact on cosmology as the big-bangmodel itself. However, unlike the big-bang model, it has little observationalsupport. Hopefully, that situation is about to change as a variety andabundance of data begin to test inflation in a significant way. Theobservations that are putting inflation to test involve the formation ofstructure in the Universe, especially measurements of the anisotropy of thecosmic background radiation. The cold dark matter models of structure formationmotivated by inflation are holding up well as the observational tests becomesharper. In the next decade inflation will be tested even more significantly,with more precise measurements of CBR anisotropy, the mean density of theUniverse, the Hubble constant, and the distribution of matter, as well assensitive searches for the nonbaryonic dark matter predicted to exist byinflation. As an optimist I believe that we may be well on our way to astandard cosmology that includes inflation and extends back to around 10^{-32}sec, providing an important window on the earliest moments and fundamentalphysics.Comment: 17 pages LaTeX with 2 eps figure