Abstract
Modern scientific man has largely lost his sense of awe of the universe. He is confident that, given sufficient intelligence, perseverance, time, and money, he can understand all there is beyond the stars. He believes that he sees here on earth and in its vicinity a fair exhibition of nature’s laws and objects, and that nothing new looms “up there” that cannot be explained, predicted, or extrapolated from knowledge gained “down here.” He believes he is now surveying a fair sample of the universe, if not in proportion to its size—which may be infinite—yet in proportion to its large-scale features. Little progress could be made in cosmology without this presumptuous attitude. And nature herself seems to encourage it, as we shall see, with certain numerical coincidences that could hardly be accidental.
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References
This, of course, is not quite true. Given absolute space, a finite universe could avoid collapse by rotation. Ironically, it is the infinite universe that is not consistent with Newton’s theory of gravitation, as we shall see in Section 9.2.
For details see, for example, D. W. Sciama, Modern Cosmology, Cambridge University Press, 1971
or A. Unsöld, The New Cosmos, Springer-Verlag, 1977, 2nd ed.
For its interesting historical antecedents, see S. L. Jaki, “Olbers’, Halley’s, or Whose Paradox?” Am. J. Phys. 35, 200 (1967).
Further details can be found in W. Rindler, Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 116, 662 (1956).
For a thought-provoking review, see the article “Cosmology” by E. L. Schücking, p. 218 of Lectures in Applied Mathematics, Vol. 8 (Relativity Theory and Astrophysics, I), J. Ehlers, editor, Am. Math. Soc., 1967.
Loe. cit. (Mathematical Theory), page 154.
To get an idea of the manifold arguments that have recently been used to narrow down the model, and of the “instability” of these arguments, see, for example, J. R. Gott III, J. E. Gunn, D. N. Schramm, and B. M. Tinsley, Astrophys. J. 194, 543 (1974)
J. R. Gott III, J. E. Gunn, D. N. Schramm, and B. M. Tinsley, and also Sci. Am. 234, 62, March 1976
and J. E. Gunn and B. M. Tinsley, Nature 257, 454 (1975).
See, for example, C. W. Misner, p. 160 of Lectures in Applied Mathematics, Vol. 8 (Relativity Theory and Astrophysics, I), J. Ehlers, editor, Am. Math. Soc, 1967.
I. Ozsváth and E. Schiicking, in Recent Developments in General Relativity, p. 339, New York, Pergamon Press, 1962.
K. Gödel, Rev. Mod. Phys. 21, 447 (1949).
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© 1977 Wolfgang Rindler
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Rindler, W. (1977). Cosmology. In: Essential Relativity. Text and Monographs in Physics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-86650-0_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-86650-0_9
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