The Impact of COBE on Inflation, Dark Matter, and Structure Formation: a Brief Review

Abstract

The COBE results, to be followed in the near future by other Cosmic Microwave Background measurements, are providing us with a new fundamental tool to probe the formation of large scale structure in the Universe, and in so doing to constrain our models of the early universe and the nature of dark matter. I describe briefly here how to interpret the COBE results data with these in mind, and conclude with a discussion of implications for the future.