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This book represents the proceedings from the NATO sponsored
Advanced Research Workshop entitled "Observational Tests of
Inflation" held at the University of Durham, England on the
10th-14th December, 1990. In recent years, the cosmological
inflation model has drawn together the worlds of particle physics,
theoretical cosmology and observational astronomy. The aim of the
workshop was to bring together experts in all of these fields to
discuss the current status of the inflation theory and its
observational predictions. The simplest inflation model makes clear
predictions which are testable by astronomical observation.
Foremost is the prediction that the cosmological density parameter,
no, should have a value negligibly different from the critical,
Einstein-de Sitter value of 00=1. The other main prediction is that
the spectrum of primordial density fluctuations should be Gaussian
and take the Harrison-Zeldovich form. The prediction that n =l, in
patticular, leads to several important consequences o for
cosmology. Firstly, there is the apparent contradiction with the
limits on baryon density from Big Bang nucleosynthesis which has
led to the common conjecture that weakly interacting particles
rather than baryons may form the dominant mass constituent of the
Universe. Secondly, with n =l, the age of the Universe is
uncomfortably short if o the Hubble constant and the ages of the
oldest star clusters lie within their currently believed limits.
Scientists in the late twentieth century are not the first to view
galaxy formation as a phenomenon worthy of explanation in terms of
the known laws of physics. Already in 1754 Kant regarded the
problem as essentially solved. In his Univerlal Natural Hutory and
Theory 0/ the H eaven$ he wrote; "If in the immesurable space in
which all the suns of the Milky Way have formed themselves, we
assume a point around which, through some cause or other, the first
formation of nature out of chaoo began, there the largest mass and
a body of extraordinary attraction will have arisen which has
thereby become capable of compelling all the systems in the process
of being formed within an enormous sphere around it, to fall
towards itself as their centre, and to build up a system around it
on the great scale . . . . Observation puts this conjecture almost
beyond doubt. " More than 200 years later, a similar note of
confidence was voiced by Zel'dovicb at an IAU symposium held in
Tallin in 1911; "Extrapolating . . . to the next symposium
somewhere in the early eighties one can be pretty sure that the
question of the formation of galaxies and clusters will be solved
in the next few years. " Perhaps few astronomers today would share
Kant's near certainty or feel that Zel'dovich's prophecy has been
fulfilled, Many, however, will sympathize with the optimistic
olltlook of these two statements.
This book represents the proceedings from the NATO sponsored
Advanced Research Workshop entitled "Observational Tests of
Inflation" held at the University of Durham, England on the
10th-14th December, 1990. In recent years, the cosmological
inflation model has drawn together the worlds of particle physics,
theoretical cosmology and observational astronomy. The aim of the
workshop was to bring together experts in all of these fields to
discuss the current status of the inflation theory and its
observational predictions. The simplest inflation model makes clear
predictions which are testable by astronomical observation.
Foremost is the prediction that the cosmological density parameter,
no, should have a value negligibly different from the critical,
Einstein-de Sitter value of 00=1. The other main prediction is that
the spectrum of primordial density fluctuations should be Gaussian
and take the Harrison-Zeldovich form. The prediction that n =l, in
patticular, leads to several important consequences o for
cosmology. Firstly, there is the apparent contradiction with the
limits on baryon density from Big Bang nucleosynthesis which has
led to the common conjecture that weakly interacting particles
rather than baryons may form the dominant mass constituent of the
Universe. Secondly, with n =l, the age of the Universe is
uncomfortably short if o the Hubble constant and the ages of the
oldest star clusters lie within their currently believed limits.
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