Three P’s in Cosmology: Progress, Problems, and Perspectives

Abstract

Abstract. A review on the development of cosmology for a diverse audience is presented. The first historical part is devoted to the works done half a century ago with an emphasize to those performed in Russia (or more precisely, in the Soviet Union). Then the recent data on the cosmic microwave background raditation is discussed and the impact of these data on the neutrino mass and the number of neutrino species is considered. The latter is compared with the results obtained from the big bang nucleosynthesis. Next, a short description and history of the cosmological inflation is presented. The basics of the standard cosmological model and the problems of dark matter and dark energy are considered at the end of the fist section entitled "Progress". In the next short section, "Problems", one can find a list of the unsolved cosmological and astrophysical problems, which is by no means fully comprehensive. The last supershort section contains a few words about the perspectives of future development.