Does WMAPs results also rule out alternatives to inflation, more far-out physics?
Yes, they do. We ruled out a whole broad class of theories. MAP really shows that the universe underwent this early period of acceleration like you get in the inflationary model. So WMAP confirms most of inflation’s predictions? It’s a triumph for inflation. I also think it’s a real triumph for the work of people like Jim Peebles at Princeton, Rashid Sunyaev in Moscow, and Joe Silk at Berkeley. Soon after the cosmic microwave background was discovered, they basically predicted 30, 40 years in advance what we would see. That’s really quite amazing. Is there anything in the future that will match what we’ve learned about the universe in the past 30 years? Inflation may turn out to be a very simple version of a deeper theory that, let’s say, comes out of string theory. Something like that would be, I think, more profound than anything we’ve had up to now. It’s true there are areas where physics has been too successful, where the big questions have been answered. But I think when we end up
