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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 Lemaitre, and eventually
Einstein himself, to a consistent understanding of the
observational results. The reader will realize the extraordinary
implications of these achievements and how deeply 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.
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 Lemaitre, and eventually
Einstein himself, to a consistent understanding of the
observational results. The reader will realize the extraordinary
implications of these achievements and how deeply 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.
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