  For two decades the hot big-bang model as been referred to as the standard
cosmology -- and for good reason. For just as long cosmologists have known that
there are fundamental questions that are not answered by the standard cosmology
and point to a grander theory. The best candidate for that grander theory is
inflation + cold dark matter; it can extend our understanding of the Universe
back to 10^-32 sec. There is now prima facie evidence for the two basic tenets
of this new paradigm: flat Universe and scale-invariant spectrum of Gaussian
density perturbations, and an avalanche of telling cosmological observations is
coming. If inflation + cold dark matter is correct, then there are new,
fundamental questions to be answered, most notably the nature of the dark
energy that seems to account for 60% of the critical density and how inflation
fits into a unified theory of the forces and particles. These are exciting
times in cosmology!
