Cosmology and Controversy : : The Historical Development of Two Theories of the Universe / / Helge Kragh.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Princeton University Press eBook-Package Archive 1927-1999
• VerfasserIn: Kragh, Helge,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2021]; ©1996
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (488 p.) :; 4 tables 23 line illus.
• Other title: Frontmatter --; CONTENTS --; PREFACE --; Cosmology and Controversy --; CHAPTER ONE Background: From Einstein to Hubble --; CHAPTER TWO Lemaitre's Fireworks Universe --; CHAPTER THREE Gamow's Big Bang --; CHAPTER FOUR The Steady-State Alternative --; CHAPTER FIVE Creation and Controversy --; CHAPTER SIX The Universe Observed --; CHAPTER SEVEN From Controversy to Marginalization --; CHAPTER EIGHT Epilogue: Dynamics of a Controversy --; APPENDIX I. A Cosmological Chronology, 1917-1971 --; APPENDIX II. Technical Glossary --; NOTES --; BIBLIOGRAPHY --; INDEX
• Format: Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
• ISBN: 9780691227719; 9783110442496; 9783110784237
• DOI: 10.1515/9780691227719?locatt=mode:legacy
• Access: restricted access
• Hierarchical level: Monograph
• Statement of Responsibility: Helge Kragh.

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.