Description: The most complete
history, strikingly detailed and highly readable, about the origin of the Big
Bang theory and its triumph over the competing Steady-State theory of the origin
and structure of the universe.
From the
publisher’s blurb: “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 Lemaître 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, many 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..”
About the Author: Helge
Krage is Professor of the History of Science at the University
of Oslo, and author of books on astronomy and physics, including a biography of
P.A.M.Dirac. Kragh's areas of study are the history of physics from the
mid-19th century onward, the history of astronomy, the history of cosmology and
the history of chemistry. He is known for his work on the history of the
periodic system, early quantum atomic models, speculative cosmology and the
northern lights
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