Cosmological constant and isotropy of a low-density universe

It is shown that a value of the cosmological constant consistent with observation not only guarantees the isotropy of an ever-expanding universe for time tending to infinity, but also explains the observed isotropy of the cosmic background radiation at the present epoch for arbitrary values of the initial anisotropy. If the density of cosmological matter is one tenth of the critical density, the observed degree of isotropy is guaranteed provided the deceleration parameter is qsub(o) approximately equal to -0.8. (author)