🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <Aug.4.18.52.26.1992.8471@ruhets.rutgers.edu>,
bweiner@ruhets.rutgers.edu (Benjamin Weiner) writes: 
> Primordial nucleosynthesis limits \Omega_baryons to ~0.2 or less,
> so to have inflation weird particles (and weird particle physicists)
> are necessary.  A baryonic universe with \Omega ~ 0.2 is a faint
> possibility, but the pros seem to dislike it because the large scale
> structure comes out wrong, plus you still have the horizon and
> flatness problems that inflation is supposed to solve.

Good summary.  If you are willing to accept a non-zero cosmological
constant, though, you can have a flat universe with \Omega =
\Omega_baryon = 0.2 and old enough to solve the horizon problem, the
structure problem, and the "oldest stars" problem.  I like this model
because it doesn't require any exotic kind of dark matter, though of
course there are unseen baryons.  Unfortunately, this model is
apparently inconsistent with COBE results, but I don't really
understand why.  (I think the conflict has to do with the size scale
of the microwave background fluctuations rather than their
amplitude.)
-- 
Steve Willner            Phone 617-495-7123         Bitnet:   willner@cfa
Cambridge, MA 02138 USA                 Internet: willner@cfa.harvard.edu
  member, League for Programming Freedom; contact league@prep.ai.mit.edu