  We show that the spectrum of conical defects in three-dimensional de Sitter
space is in one-to-one correspondence with the spectrum of vertex operators in
Liouville conformal field theory. The classical conformal dimensions of vertex
operators are equal to the masses of the classical point particles in dS_3 that
cause the conical defect. The quantum dimensions instead are shown to coincide
with the mass of the Kerr-dS_3 solution computed with the Brown-York stress
tensor. Therefore classical de Sitter gravity encodes the quantum properties of
Liouville theory. The equality of the gravitational and the Liouville stress
tensor provides a further check of this correspondence. The Seiberg bound for
vertex operators translates on the bulk side into an upper mass bound for
classical point particles. Bulk solutions with cosmological event horizons
correspond to microscopic Liouville states, whereas those without horizons
correspond to macroscopic (normalizable) states. We also comment on recent
criticism by Dyson, Lindesay and Susskind, and point out that the
contradictions found by these authors may be resolved if the dual CFT is not
able to capture the thermal nature of de Sitter space. Indeed we find that on
the CFT side, de Sitter entropy is merely Liouville momentum, and thus has no
statistical interpretation in this approach.
