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Item Details
| Title:
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COSMOLOGY AND CONTROVERSY
HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF TWO THEORIES OF THE UNIVERSE |
| By: |
Helge Kragh |
| Format: |
Hardback |
| List price:
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£52.00 |
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We currently do not stock this item, please contact the publisher directly for
further information.
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| ISBN 10: |
0691026238 |
| ISBN 13: |
9780691026237 |
| Publisher: |
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS |
| Pub. date: |
20 October, 1996 |
| Pages: |
488 |
| Description: |
Between 1920 and 1970, cosmology transformed into a branch or physics. This text examines how the big bang theory drew inspiration from and eventually triumphed over rival views, mainly the steady-state theory and its concept of a stationary universe. |
| Synopsis: |
For over three millennia, most people could understand the universe only in terms of myth, religion, and philosophy. Between 1920 and 1970, cosmology transformed into a branch of physics. With this remarkably rapid change came a theory that would finally lend empirical support to many long-held beliefs about the origins and development of the entire universe: the theory of the big bang. In this book, Helge Kragh presents the development of scientific cosmology for the first time as a historical event, one that embroiled many famous scientists in a controversy over the very notion of an evolving universe with a beginning in time. In rich detail he examines how the big-bang theory drew inspiration from and eventually triumphed over rival views, mainly the steady-state theory and its concept of a stationary universe of infinite age. In the 1920s, Alexander Friedmann and Georges Lemaitre showed that Einstein's general relativity equations possessed solutions for a universe expanding in time.Kragh follows the story from here, showing how the big-bang theory evolved, from Edwin Hubble's observation that most galaxies are receding from us, to the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation. Sir Fred Hoyle proposed instead the steady-state theory, a model of dynamic equilibrium involving the continuous creation of matter throughout the universe. Although today it is generally accepted that the universe started some ten billion years ago in a big bang, any readers may not fully realize that this standard view owed much of its formation to the steady-state theory. By exploring the similarities and tensions between the theories , Kragh provides the reader with indispensable background for understanding much of today's commentary about our universe. |
| Illustrations: |
4 tables 23 line illus. |
| Publication: |
US |
| Imprint: |
Princeton University Press |
| Returns: |
Non-returnable |
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