Abstract
The tremendous growth of observational efforts devoted to cosmological questions shows that cosmology is becoming a mature physical science with its own subject and methods. This is a novel situation for a field which up to recent times has been characterized by a respectable collection of theoretical ideas, but a small number of crucial observations to constrain them. Only six decades ago Hermann Bondi (1952) expressed the state of cosmology at the time so that “…the checking of a prediction, which usually forms such a vital link in the formulation of physical theories, does not occur in this field, and we have to rely on less objective and certain criteria, such as how satisfying and how simple a theory is”.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Over thirty years later, in Morgan’s system the classes (a, af, f, fg, g, gk, k) change in the sense of increasing domination of the nuclear component, together with a simultaneous change in the spectral type. Lundmark’s and Morgan’s classes are rather well correlated.
- 2.
Sandage devoted much thought to the birth and meaning of Hubble’s classification (Sandage and Bedke 1994; Sandage 1995b, 2005). He suggested that this faculty helping one to go directly to the useful, physically relevant classification system is “imagination” or “intuition”. For Aristotle, scientific knowledge was essentially demonstrations from better known premises. Then how to find the very first axioms, the starting-points of demonstration? His solution was to argue, in Posterior Analytics, that all begins from the intuition of the thinker observing and contemplating Nature. This seems to fit well with what Allan Sandage proposed to be the secret of Hubble and his classification.
- 3.
Already in 1941 a residual radiation corresponding to a black body temperature of 2.3 K was found by A. McKellar (1941) who investigated spectral lines of interstellar CN molecules. T. Shmaonov (1957) detected with the Large Pulkovo Radio Telescope at a wavelength of 3.2 cm an isotropic radiation with an effective temperature of 4±3 K. These results were published, but they did not yet attract the attention of cosmologists.
- 4.
For instance, if there were obscuring dust in the extragalactic space between us and the nearest galaxy M31, just one fifth of the density typical within the Milky Way, M31 (faintly visible by plain eye) were blocked out of the sight of even the largest optical telescopes.
- 5.
According to Webster’s dictionary “exotic” means “striking or unusual in effect or appearance; strange; exciting; glamorous”. All this applies to the new cosmological physics which differs from what is known from laboratory studies. It is even as if “introduced from abroad, but not fully naturalized or acclimatized”.
References
Amelino-Camelia, G., Lammerzahl, C., Macias, A., Muller, H.: The search for quantum gravity signals. In: Gravitation and Cosmology: 2nd Mexican Meeting on Mathematical and Experimental Physics. AIP Conf. Proc., vol. 758, p. 30 (2005)
Baertschiger, T., Joyce, M., Sylos Labini, F.: Power-law correlation and discreteness in cosmological N-body simulations. Astrophys. J. 581, L63 (2002)
Baryshev, Yu.V.: Conceptual problems of the standard cosmological model. In: Proc. of the 1-st Int. Conf. Crisis in Cosmology. AIP Conf. Proc., vol. 822, p. 23 (2006)
Baryshev, Yu., Teerikorpi, P.: Discovery of Cosmic Fractals. World Scientific, Singapore (2002), 408 pp (Polish translation: Poznawanie kosmicznego ladu Wszechswiat, WAM, Krakow, 2005; Italian translation: La scoperta dei frattali cosmici, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino, 2006)
Baryshev, Yu., Teerikorpi, P.: The fractal analysis of the large-scale galaxy distribution. Bull. Spec. Astrophys. Obs. 59, 92 (2006)
Berendzen, R., Hart, R., Seeley, D.: Man Discovers the Galaxies. Science History, New York (1976), 228 pp
Bertolami, O., Paramos, J., Turyshev, S.: General theory of relativity: Will it survive the next decade. In: Dittus, H., Laemmerzahl, C., Turyshev, S. (eds.) Lasers, Clocks, and Drag-Free: Technologies for Future Exploration in Space and Tests of Gravity, p. 27. Springer, Berlin (2006a)
Bertolami, O., de Matos, C.J., Grenouilleau, J.C., Minster, O., Volonté, S.: Perspectives in fundamental physics in space. Acta Astronaut. 59, 490 (2006b)
Bondi, H.: Cosmology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1952) (2nd edition 1968)
Caldwell, R.R., Dave, R., Steinhardt, P.J.: Cosmological imprint of an energy component with general equation of state. Phys. Rev. Lett. 80, 1582 (1998)
Chernin, A.: Cosmic vacuum. Phys. Usp. 44, 1153 (2001)
de Bernardis, P., Ade, P., Bock, J., et al.: A flat Universe from high-resolution maps of the cosmic microwave background radiation. Nature 404, 955 (2000)
de Vaucouleurs, G.: The case for a hierarchical cosmology. Science 167, 1203 (1970)
Einstein, A.: Kosmologiche Betrachtungen zur allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie. Sitzungsber. Berl. Akad. 1, 142 (1917)
Einstein, A.: Geometry and experience. Lecture before the Preussian Academy of Sciences Jan. 27, 1927 (1921). Printed in Einstein: Ideas and Opinions (1973, Souvenir Press, London)
Feng, J.L.: Dark matter candidates from particle physics and methods of detection. Annu. Rev. Astron. Astrophys. 48, 495 (2010)
Friedmann, A.: On the curvature of space. Z. Phys. 10, 377 (1922)
Gabrielli, A., Sylos Labini, F., Joyce, M., Pietronero, L.: Statistical Physics for Cosmic Structures. Springer, Berlin (2005)
Gott, J.R. III, Juric, M., Schlegel, D., et al.: A map of the universe. Astrophys. J. 624, 463 (2005)
Grene, M.: A Portrait of Aristotle. The University of Chigaco Press, Chicago (1963)
Haugan, M.P., Lämmerzahl, C.: Principles of equivalence: Their role in gravitation physics and experiments that test them. Lect. Notes Phys. 562, 195 (2001)
Hoyle, F., Burbidge, G., Narlikar, J.: A Different Approach to Cosmology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2000)
Hubble, E.: Extra-galactic nebulae. Astrophys. J. 64, 321 (1926)
Hubble, E.: A relation between distance and radial velocity among extra-galactic nebulae. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 15, 168 (1929)
Hubble, E.: The Realm of the Nebulae. Yale University Press, New Haven (1936a)
Hubble, E.: The Observational Approach to Cosmology. Clarendon, Oxford (1937) (68 pp)
Hubble, E., Humason, M.L.: The velocity–distance relation among extra-galactic nebulae. Astrophys. J. 74, 43 (1931)
Kiang, T.: On the clustering of rich clusters of galaxies. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 135, 1 (1967)
Lundmark, K.: A preliminary classification of nebulae. Ark. Mat. Astron. Fys. 19(8) (1926)
Magueijo, J., Barrow, J., Sandvik, H.B.: Is it e or is it c? Experimental tests of varying α. Phys. Lett. B 549, 284 (2002)
Mandelbrot, B.B.: Fractals: Form, Chance and Dimension. W.H. Freeman, New York (1977)
Mandelbrot, B.B.: The Fractal Geometry of Nature. W.H. Freeman, New York (1982)
Massey, R., Rhodes, J., Ellis, R., et al.: Dark matter maps reveal cosmic scaffolding. Nature 445, 286 (2007a)
Mather, J.C., Fixsen, D.J., Shafer, R.A., Mosier, C., Wilkinson, D.T.: Calibrator design for the COBE far infrared absolute spectrophotometer (FIRAS). Astrophys. J. 512, 511 (1999)
McKellar, A.: Molecular lines from the lowest states of diatomic molecules composed of atoms probably present in interstellar space. Publ. Dom. Astrophys. Obs. 7, 251 (1941)
Peacock, J.A.: Cosmological Physics. Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge (1999)
Peebles, P.J.E.: From precision cosmology to accurate cosmology (2002). astro-ph/0208037
Penzias, A., Wilson, R.: A measurement of excess antenna temperature at 4080 Mc/s. Astrophys. J. 142, 419 (1965)
Perlmutter, S., Aldering, G., Goldhaber, G., et al.: Measurements of Ω and Λ from 42 high–redshift supernovae. Astrophys. J. 517, 565 (1999)
Pietronero, L.: The fractal structure of the Universe: correlations of galaxies and clusters and the average mass density. Physica A 144, 257 (1987)
Poincaré, H.: La science et l’hypothèse (1902) (Flammarion, Paris, 1968)
Riess, A.G., Filippenko, A.V., Challis, P., et al.: Observational evidence from supernovae for an accelerating universe and a cosmological constant. Astron. J. 116, 1009 (1998)
Sandage, A.: The ability of the 200-inch telescope to discriminate between selected world models. Astrophys. J. 133, 355 (1961)
Sandage, A.: The search for the curvature of space. Phys. Scr. T43, 7 (1992)
Sandage, A.: Practical cosmology: Inventing the past. In: Binggeli, Buser, R. (eds.) The Deep Universe, pp. 1–232. Springer, Berlin (1995b)
Sandage, A.: Bias properties of extragalactic distance indicators. VIII, H 0 from distance-limited luminosity class and morphological type-specific luminosity functions for Sb, Sbc, and Sc galaxies calibrated using Cepheids. Astrophys. J. 527, 479 (1999)
Sandage, A.: The classification of galaxies: Early history and ongoing developments. Annu. Rev. Astron. Astrophys. 43, 581 (2005)
Sandage, A., Bedke, J.: The Carnegie Atlas of Galaxies, vols. I, II. Carnegie Institution, Washington (1994)
Shmaonov, T.: Prib. Teh. Eksp. 1, 83 (1957) (in Russian)
Slipher, V.M.: Spectrographic observations of nebulae. Pop. Astron. 23, 21 (1915)
Smith, R.W.: The Expanding Universe: Astronomy’s ‘Great Debate’ 1900–1931. Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge (1982), 220 pp
Spergel, D.N., Steinhardt, P.J.: Observational evidence for self-interacting cold dark matter. Phys. Rev. Lett. 84, 3760 (2000)
Spergel, D.N., Bean, R., Dore, O., et al.: Three-year Wilkinson microwave anisotropy probe (WMAP) observations: Implications for cosmology. Astrophys. J. Suppl. 170, 377 (2007)
Sylos Labini, F., Montuori, M., Pietronero, L.: Scale-invariance of galaxy clustering. Phys. Rep. 293, 61 (1998)
Teerikorpi, P.: Lundmark’s unpublished 1922 nebula classification. J. Hist. Astron. 20, 165 (1989)
Totsuji, H., Kihara, T.: The correlation function for the distribution of galaxies. Publ. Astron. Soc. Jpn. 21, 221 (1969)
Turner, M.: Making sense of the new cosmology. Int. J. Mod. Phys. A 17, 180 (2002)
Uzan, J.-P.: The fundamental constants and their variation: Observational status and theoretical motivations. Rev. Mod. Phys. 75, 403 (2003)
Wu, K., Lahav, O., Rees, M.: The large-scale smoothness of the universe. Nature 397, 225 (1999)
Zwicky, F.: Die Rotverschiebung von extragalaktischen Nebeln. Helv. Phys. Acta 6, 110 (1933)
Zwicky, F.: On the masses of nebulae and of clusters of nebulae. Astrophys. J. 86, 217 (1937)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2012 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Baryshev, Y., Teerikorpi, P. (2012). The Golden Age of Cosmological Physics. In: Fundamental Questions of Practical Cosmology. Astrophysics and Space Science Library, vol 383. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2379-5_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2379-5_1
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-2378-8
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-2379-5
eBook Packages: Physics and AstronomyPhysics and Astronomy (R0)