Extracting Cosmology from the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation

In the next few years, there will be dramatic improvements in our measurements of microwave background fluctuations and of the galaxy large-scale structure. These observations will test the emerging cosmological “standard model”: a cold dark matter universe with a cosmological constant and scale-invariant adiabatic fluctuations produced by inflation. If the observations confirm the model, then we will be able to determine most cosmological parameters to two significant figures. If the observations are not consistent with the model, then we will need to rethink our ideas about the physics of the early universe.