Cosmology III: The Cosmological Parameters

Abstract

In Chaps. 4 and 7, we described the fundamental aspects of the standard model of cosmology. Together with the knowledge of galaxies, clusters of galaxies, and AGNs that we have gained in the other chapters, we are now ready to discuss the determination of the various cosmological parameters. In the course of this discussion, we will describe a number of methods, each of which is in itself useful for estimating cosmological parameters, and we will present the corresponding results from these methods. The most important aspect of this chapter is that we now have more than one independent estimate for each cosmological parameter, so that the determination of these parameters is highly redundant. This very aspect is considerably more important than the precise values of the parameters themselves, because it provides a test for the consistency of the cosmological model.