Constraints on cold dark matter-dominated universes from cosmic background radiation anisotropies

The temperature fluctuations in the cosmic background radiation are numerically investigated for universes dominated by cold dark matter. It is shown that the limit on temperature fluctuations measured by Readhead et al. (1989) at 7.15 arcmin yields the strongest constraint on such universes. It is concluded that a low-density universe with Omega(0) less than about 0.3 is viable only when the Hubble constant takes a value of 80-100 km/s/Mpc. It is a matter of great significance whether such a value of the Hubble constant is consistent with the age inferred from globular clusters and nucleochronology, which is greater than about 12 Gyr. 38 refs