Comparative CMBology: Putting Things Together

Abstract

I present a series of diagrams which illustrate why the cosmic microwave background (CMB) data favor certain values for the cosmological parameters. Various methods to extract these parameters from CMB and non-CMB observations are forming an ever-tightening network of interlocking constraints. I review the increasingly precise constraints in the Omega_m - Omega_Lambda plane and show why more cosmologists now prefer Lambda-CDM cosmologies to any other leading model.

10 pages, 11 figures, Manchester IAU proceedings, "New Cosmological Data and the Values of Fundamental Parameters", edt A. Lasenby, A. Wilkinson