One of the great scientific achievements of this century has been the correct prediction of the abundances of the elements in the Universe. Using high-energy and nuclear physics in combination with inflationary cosmology, physicists in the 1980's predicted the relative abundances of the elements. As astronomers observe these abundances more and more carefully, we find that these predictions are borne out to more and more accuracy. The high level agreement puts strong constraints on the properties of the early Universe, but also provides philosophical comfort---when nuclear physicists, particle physicists and astronomers conclude the same thing by different means, something must be going right.
Perhaps the greatest comfort of all, however, is the strong evidence provided by nuclear astrophysics that the laws of physics are the same over all the visible Universe, something that had been presumed but not proven so convincingly until this subject came of age. We may now be confident that the detailed workings of the atom and its components are the same here and now as they were at the edge of the Universe in the beginning of time. This provides a powerful context with which to consider the Early Universe, and once again resoundingly reminds us that we are nowhere special in time or space.
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