2 S TA N D A R D C O S M O L O G I C A L MODEL 2.1 Cosmic Perspective In 1915 Einstein came up with the general theory of relativity. He was inspired by the fact that all objects follow the same trajectories under the influence of gravity (the so- called equivalence principle, which by now has been tested to better than one part in a trillion), and realized that this would be a natural result if space-time is curved under the influence of matter. He wrote down an equation describing how the distribution of matter (on one side of his equation) determines the curvature of space-time (on the other side of his equation). He then applied his equation to describe the global dynamics of the Universe. Back in 1915 there were no computers available, and Einstein's equations for the Universe were particularly difficult to solve in the most general case. It was there- fore necessary for Einstein to alleviate this difficulty by considering the simplest possible Universe, one that is