Precision Cosmology Soars to New Heights

摘要

Half of the papers in the Physics Top Ten, #1, #2, #3, #4, and #7, capture one of the greatest events in the entire history of cosmology. In the past ten years, attempts to understand the nature of the universe have progressed from a handful of numbers, some with significant error bars, to a truly precision science that now places strong boundary conditions on cosmologi-cal models: parameter space for modelling freely is getting much smaller, and the misfits are being thrown out. How has this been achieved? Two keys have unlocked a vast vault of cosmic secrets.