A Brief History of Curvature
  The trace of the stress-energy tensor of the cosmological fluid, proportional
to the Ricci scalar curvature in general relativity, is determined on cosmic
scales for times ranging from the inflationary epoch to the present day in the
expanding Universe. The post-inflationary epoch and the thermal history of the
relativistic fluid, in particular the QCD transition from asymptotic freedom to
confinement and the electroweak phase transition, leave significant imprints on
the scalar curvature. These imprints can be of either sign and are orders of
magnitude larger than the values that would be obtained by naively
extrapolating the pressureless matter of the present epoch back into the
radiation-dominated epoch.
