PMID: 11607403Jun 1, 1993Paper

An ancient revisits cosmology

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
J L Greenstein

Abstract

In this after-dinner speech, a somewhat light-hearted attempt is made to view the observational side of physical cosmology as a subdiscipline of astrophysics, still in an early stage of sophistication and in need of more theoretical understanding. The theoretical side of cosmology, in contrast, has its deep base in general relativity. A major result of observational cosmology is that an expansion of the Universe arose from a singularity some 15 billion years ago. This has had an enormous impact on the public's view of both astronomy and theology. It places on cosmologists an extra responsibility for clear thinking and interpretation. Recently, gravitational physics caused another crisis from an unexpected observational result that nonbaryonic matter appears to dominate. Will obtaining information about this massive nonbaryonic component require that astronomers cease to rely on measurement of photons? But 40 years ago after radio astronomical techniques uncovered the high-energy universe, we happily introduced new subfields, with techniques from physics and engineering still tied to photon detection. Another historical example shows how a subfield of cosmology, big bang nucleosynthesis, grew in complexity from its spectroscopic...Continue Reading

References

Mar 15, 1929·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·E Hubble

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