physics pp. 921–931

Abstract. There is some consensus emerging on the values of the basic parameters of classical cosmology. The baryon number density estimated from the light element abundance or X-ray gas in galaxy clusters tends towards 5 % of closure density; the dark matter content based on a number of independent methods appears to be somewhat less than half the closure density; Hubble constant obtained from local measurements, gravitational lens or Sunyaev Zeldovich method are all probably centred around 60 km/sec/Mpc and the age of the Universe is generally agreed to be around 14 Gyr-all specified with bearable error bars. The supernova projects and CMBR anisotropy together favour a finite cosmological constant, and gravitational lens statistics support the same conclusion