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Reply to “A Different Approach to Cosmology”

APR 01, 1999
Expanding surveys of galaxy redshifts and fluctuations in the microwave background continue to rein in the cosmologist’s freedom to invent.

DOI: 10.1063/1.882626

Andreas Albrecht

As physicists confront the unknown, a crucial part of the job is choosing a set of assumptions that will guide their efforts in productive directions. The only certainty is that only a small fraction of the many conceivable outcomes of the inquiry process will remain viable as the field continues to progress—assuming it does indeed progress. Along the way, choices must be made: Which results should be taken as important hints to be used as the foundations of future work, and which results should be viewed with skepticism, needing further confirmation before being allowed to influence the field significantly? Those who wind up making good choices (either through wisdom or good luck) will eventually be recognized as pioneers.

References

  1. 1. J. Peebles, D. Schramm, M. Turner, R. Kron, Nature 352, 769 (1991) clearly spells out the case for the standard Big Bang model. For a more current picture, see M. Turner, J. A Tyson, astro‐ph/9901113, to be published in the centennial volume of Rev. Mod. Phys.https://doi.org/NATUAS

  2. 2. K. A. Olive, astro‐ph99/01231, to be published in Proc. Of the Theoretical and Observational Summer School, Cargese, Corsica, 1998, M. Lachieze‐Ray, ed. NATO Science Series, Kluwer, Dordrecht, The Netherlands, G. Steigman, to appear in Proc. of the 2nd Oak Ridge Symp. on Atomic and Nuclear Astrophys., 1997, A. Mezzacappa, ed., Institute of Physics, Bristol, England.

  3. 3. M. Turner, astro‐ph/9901109, in Proc. of the Nobel Symp. on Particle Physics and the Universe, Enkoping, Sweden, August 1998, to be published in Physica Scripta.

  4. 4. See, for example, C. Kochanek, in After the Dark Ages: When Galaxies Were Young, (proc. oOf the 9th Annual Astrophysics Conference in Maryland), S. Holt, E. Smith, eds., American Institute if Physics, New York (1998).

  5. 5. M. Rees, Annu. Rev. Astron. Astrophys. 22, 471 (1984). https://doi.org/ARAAAJ
    J. Frank, A. King, D. Raine, Accretion Power in Astrophysics, Cambridge U. P., Cambridge, England (1996).

  6. 6. M. Tegmark, Astrophys. J. Lett., in press.
    U.‐L. Pen, U. Seljak, N. Turok, Phys. Rev. Lett. 79, 1611 (1997). https://doi.org/PRLTAO
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  7. 7. A. Albrecht, D. Coulson, P. Ferriera, J. Magueijo, Phys. Rev. Lett. 76, 1413 (1996). https://doi.org/PRLTAO
    M. White, W. Hu, in Proc. Of the XXXIst Moriond Meeting: Microwave Background Anisotropies, F. Bouchet et al., eds., Editions Frontiers, Singapore (1997), p. 339.

  8. 8. A. Linde, D. Linde, A. Mezhlumian, Phys. Rev. D 49, 1783 (1994).https://doi.org/PRVDAQ

  9. 9. W. Hu, N. Sugiyama, J. Silk, Nature 386, 37 (1997).https://doi.org/NATUAS

More about the Authors

Andreas Albrecht. University of California, Davis.

This Content Appeared In
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Volume 52, Number 4

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