Learning About the Smallest By Studying the Largest, How Large Scale Studies Reveal the Nature of the Universe

All sky surveys like the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), are allowing for unprecedented analysis of the formation of large scale structure formation (LSS). From these surveys of the largest structures in the universe, we can pinpoint some of the fundamental parameters that determine the nature of the universe.  This talk will discuss how the use of the SDSS galaxy data and the SDSS Lyman-Alpha forest data can be used uncover both the nature of the large scale structure which can in turn, determine the fundamental parameters. Specifically it will be shown that the galaxy data reveals matter power spectrum to be in concordance with the standard CDM model of cosmology. In addition, we show that Sloan Digital Sky Survey of galaxies do map out the baryon acoustic oscillations that occur very early in the universe with a significance of over 5-sigma. The cosmological implications of the location of the oscillation peaks will be discussed.