CONFORMAL GRAVITY AND THE FLATNESS PROBLEM

We present the radiation and matter-dominated cosmologies associated with fourth-order conformal Weyl gravity, a theory which is currently being explored as a candidate alternative to the standard second-order Einstein theory. The theory naturally yields an open though nonetheless recollapsing universe which can even oscillate indefinitely, which appears to possess no flatness problem, which has a cosmology which could potentially be created out of nothing, which is singularity free, and which does not appear to require any cosmological dark matter.