Two Bianchi type VIII spatially homogeneous cosmologies

We study two Bianchi type VIII analogues of Taub space and maximal analytic extensions of them. The first one has SL(2,R) as an isometry group, which acts transitively on spacelike hypersurfaces. The maximal extension has all of the pathological features of Taub-NUT space. The second one has the universal covering group of SL(2,R) as an isometry group. The maximal extension of the latter does not have these pathological properties and is geodesically complete.Work supported in part by NSF Grant MPS 74-16311 AO1