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Re: Cosmology( Correction)



On Wed, 14 Feb 2001, Leigh Palmer wrote:
..................
This is very much like claiming there is only one true religion.
Just because the established faith is the only well articulated
faith I don't have to embrace it. I believe that it is the case
that inflation is *not* a theory which has been validated by
predicting a significant result which was unknown before the
theory was propounded. I'll look at it again after that happens.

It _did_ predict a peak in the microwave background correlation function
near 1 degree in angle at a time when all known matter, ordinary plus
'dark', was insufficient by a factor of three to predict this.

Put otherwise, inflation said the Universe is "flat", astronomers said it
must be "open", and _then_ it was discovered there is just enough
cosmological constant to make it flat. I know you don't believe in the
'accelerating Universe' observations, but they are a yes-or-no
observational result, completely unexpected, and, in a sense, predicted by
inflation.

Guth was asked "Is there any way to patch up inflation to make it predict
an open Universe". He said, "No ... I'm just hanging on to faith that
observations will show it's flat even in the absence of enough matter to
make it so". They did.

Crawford