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10. CONCLUSIONS

I've given an overview of the current status of the Standard Model of Cosmology, the SMC, and stressed how important it is to maintain a healthy level of skepticism when assessing the successes of this model, and in evaluating the merits of extensions to it.

So when should one be skeptical and when not? That's the trick of course! Obviously the aim is to be right, and it's never clear how to forecast the future. There was a time when hardly anyone believed that the solution to the Solar neutrino problem lay in the properties of neutrinos – but a small number of people got it right before the rest of us. Similarly, some people saw that ΛCDM fit most of the data while many others in cosmology were working on things like “open CDM” or “mixed dark matter”. Since no practicing cosmologist believes that the current SMC will be the last word on a statistical description of the Universe, then there are surely developments that are yet to come. The goal is (somehow) to pick the 2–3 σ effects that grow to be important parts of the model – and by implication, part of this process involves ignoring most of the other claims for chinks in the SMC's armour.

There were times in the history of cosmology when it was fairly clear what directions were going to be fruitful for pursuing calculations or observations. I think it's not just that we have the benefit of hindsight – it really was the case that at one time studying hot versus cold dark matter was obviously a good idea, and at some other time developing the theory of CMB anisotropies or building experiments to probe degree-scale anisotropies were clearly worthwhile. However, right now it's not at all obvious where cosmology is going next.

This means that this is either the worst time or the best time to be a cosmologist! If you have a good idea (and it turns out to be right) you could find yourself on your own making the next major contribution to our understanding of the whole of the Cosmos.


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I acknowledge many enjoyable discussions about some of the issues contained in this contribution with members of the Planck Collaboration, including those who were at UBC, particularly Dago Contreras, Ali Narimani and Jim Zibin.

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