Cosmology

There is an amusing article at Science News, describing the current state of cosmology. I would like to go into some of the underlying science at some point (particularly, techniques for measuring distance, and age).

"Inflation became popular, though, because it solves several problems."

These problems being:

1. space (as measured) is flat, although it should be curved (to remove the notion of a "center")
2. space is uniform at the macro level, but non-uniform locally (space should be uniform throughout, or non-uniform throughout - uniformity implies structure or communication)
   

Of course, when data spoils your theories, you could throw out your theories.

“If you want quantum fluctuations to explain all the structure in the universe, you need something like inflation”

Or you could make up a lot of stuff that hasn't been measured (or even better, can't be measured!)

Like inflation, and then dark energy to drive the inflation.