%0 Journal Article %T Ruling out a critical density baryonic universe %A Michael Birkel %A Subir Sarkar %J Physics %D 1997 %I arXiv %R 10.1016/S0370-2693(97)00833-2 %X It has been suggested by Bartlett and Hall that our universe may have the critical density in baryons by virtue of specific interactions with a `shadow' world. We show that this possibility is severely constrained by primordial nucleosynthesis, stellar evolution and the thermalization of the cosmic microwave background. In particular, recent observations of small angular-scale anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background conclusively rule out all such baryon-dominated cosmologies. %U http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/9705331v1