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3. VIRIALIZED OBJECTS: GALAXIES AND CLUSTERS

These methods measure the mass associated with galaxies and clusters on scales of order one to a few h-1Mpc. The structure is assumed to have grown from small initial fluctuations via GI, and the methods involve nonlinear dynamics of virialized systems. The cosmological constant is irrelevant; the structure at low redshift is insensitive to OmegaLambda.

Several additional physical quantities are now involved, such as the baryonic contribution to the universal mass density, Omegab. The complex relation between galaxies and mass, termed ``biasing'', enters as a crucial unknown on these galactic scales, and issues of gas dynamics are important. These complications introduce severe uncertainties into the estimates of Omegam.