Physics Colloquium, 25 March 2009
Lawrence Krauss, Arizona State University
Cosmology as Science?
abstract
The last decade or two have represented the golden age of observational cosmology, producing a revolution in our picture of the Universe on its largest scales, and perhaps also its smallest ones. I will argue that these recent developments bring to the forefront some vexing questions about whether fundamental assumptions about the universe are in fact falsifiable. I will focus on 3 issues: (1) "Proving" Inflation, (2) Dark Energy and Anthropic Arguments, and (3) Cosmology of the far future.