The True Story of Modern Cosmology: Origins, Main Actors and Breakthroughs

Emilio Elizalde

Springer Nature, 19 ago 2021 - 280 páginas

This book tells the story of how, over the past century, dedicated observers and pioneering scientists achieved our current understanding of the universe. It was in antiquity that humankind first attempted to explain the universe often with the help of myths and legends. This book, however, focuses on the time when cosmology finally became a true science. As the reader will learn, this was a slow process, extending over a large part of the 20th century and involving many astronomers, cosmologists and theoretical physicists. The book explains how empirical astronomical data (e.g., Leavitt, Slipher and Hubble) were reconciled with Einstein's general relativity; a challenge which finally led Friedmann, De Sitter and Lemaître, and eventually Einstein himself, to a consistent understanding of the observational results.

The reader will realize the extraordinary implications of these achievements and howdeeply they changed our vision of the cosmos: From being small, static, immutable and eternal, it became vast and dynamical - originating from (almost) nothing, and yet now, nearly 14 billion years later, undergoing accelerated expansion. But, as always happens, as well as precious knowledge, new mysteries have also been created where previously absolute certainty had reigned.

Índice

• The Awakening of Cosmic Consciousness: 1
• 2 What Is a Scientific Theory?: 20
• 3 The First Cosmological Revolution of the Twentieth Century: 35
• 4 The Theory of General Relativity and Its Main Solutions: 81
• 5 The HubbleLemaître Law and the Expansion of the Universe: 137
• 6 The Big Bang Theory: 167
• 7 Towards the Very Instant of Creation of the Universe: 207
• 8 The Second Cosmological Revolution of the Twentieth Century: 228
• 9 Conclusion: 251
• Bibliography: 257
• Index: 271

Sobre el autor

Emilio Elizalde has been a professor at Barcelona University and visiting scholar at several world prestigious institutions. He is a recipient of two honorary professorships, and he is presently an emeritus research professor of the Spanish Higher Council for Scientific Research, having got four distinctions of merit in his years of service. Being a renowned specialist on zeta functions and their applications to quantum physics, he also works on theoretical cosmology and gravity theories.

Información bibliográfica

• Título: The True Story of Modern Cosmology: Origins, Main Actors and Breakthroughs; Physics and Astronomy; Physics and Astronomy (R0)
• Autor: Emilio Elizalde
• Editor: Springer Nature, 2021
• ISBN: 3030806545, 9783030806545
• N.º de páginas: 280 páginas