Datensatz

Zusammenfassung

Everyone knows that "Einstein's greatest mistake", the cosmological constant ~, is very close to zero 111. There have been many attempts to explain why A must be exactly zero 121, but none of these efforts has succeeded. In fact it is now fashionable to believe that during the very early history of the universe the value of A was quite large 131. This so-called "inflationary" epoch would have been a long period of exponentially rapid expansion, and would elegantly explain two otherwise mysterious observational truths : the universe is uncannily f l a t , and the cosmic microwave background radiation has no right to be as isotropic as it is.