Can the Standard Model Be Verified Experimentally?

Abstract

So far, we have considered a standard cosmological model, and have shown how the data can be accommodated within it. In this chapter we want to ask to what extent the data actually determine the features of our universe [Kristian and Sachs 1966; G. Ellis 1980, 1984; Ellis et al. 1985]. As before, we take GR as the correct theory of gravitation.

“From our home on the Earth, we look into the distances and strive to imagine the sort of world into which we are born. Today we have reached far out into space. Our immediate neighbourhood we know rather intimately. But with increasing distance our knowledge fades, and fades rapidly, until at the last dim horizon we search amongst ghostly errors of observations for landmarks that are scarcely more substantial.”

E. Hubble [Hubble 1958]