Topological Defects with Broken Scale Invariance

Abstract

Defect models have recently been declared dead (Watson 1997), because they predict microwave background and matter fluctuations grossly out of line with what we see. In this talk we apply the fact that many defects are automatically destroyed at the time of radiation-matter transition, thus resurrecting the defects model. Moreover, the resurrected version predicts a cosmological constant, explains the apparent excess of hot clusters and the non-Gaussianity observed in galaxy surveys. If this model is correct, then the MAP and PLANCK missions will not measure what people expect them to (oscillations); rather, they will measure a broad hump.