IMPORTANT POINTS 04 Readings 1

The study of the universe as an ordered system is called Cosmogony.

The Greeks were struck by the general regularity of the motion of the stars and assumed the universe to be
an ordered system.

This Greek insight into the working of nature gave rise to science and its presupposition that there exist laws
in the workings of the natural world.

To return to the beginning, we must start at the present and discern for ourselves the order or lack of it.

Cosmology is the study of the universe from its origin to the present.

The Greeks were the first ones who considered what they saw in the light of more basic assumptions.

The Greeks' insight that the stars followed laws that could be comprehended by the human brain was
significant because it meant that the cosmos was orderly and human reason could reason out this order.

Since the universe can be explained by reason and science, the universe was no longer at the whim of the
gods and was no longer a capricious and ultimately scary, uncertain arena into which the human being was
thrust at birth.

The universe can be understood, in principle, even if we may not understand its workings at any one moment.

The Greek idea of the cosmos was rediscovered in Christian Europe and was well-received due to the culture's
celebration of the human Son of God.

The founders of modern science, such as Isaac Newton and Johannes Kepler, were religious and saw no
conflict between science and religion.

Newton's discovery of the force of gravity and its mathematical expression laid the foundation for modern
Cosmology.

Various instruments have been built to study the heavens, including telescopes.

Data from the stars and other heavenly bodies, including light and the electromagnetic spectrum, are used to
learn about the cosmos.

Telescopes can capture spectrum ranges beyond visible light, such as infrared and ultraviolet.

Twentieth-century developments in science produced telescopes that gathered information beyond the range
of visible light, such as radio, ultraviolet, X-ray, and gamma-ray telescopes.

These telescopes help scientists better understand the heavenly bodies that emit these rays.

Radio astronomy helped scientists unlock the current understanding of the Big Picture of the cosmos.
Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson discovered radio transmissions coming from all directions in the sky,
indicating that the sources were evenly distributed in all directions.

The theory of the Standard Cosmological Model was born from the discovery of the sources of radio
transmissions.

Edwin Hubble wanted to resolve a mystery about cloudy objects seen through telescopes.

Edwin Hubble discovered that the puffy and cloudy objects seen through telescopes were galaxies, not clouds.

Hubble discovered that almost all galaxies were moving away from the Earth.

Hubble proposed a mathematical law to explain the movement of galaxies, which became known as Hubble's
Law.

Hubble's Law that stated the farther away a galaxy is, the faster it is moving.

Hubble's Law is an important foundation of modern cosmology.

Penzias and Wilson discovered weak cosmic radiation coming from all directions on Earth.

Hubble's Law suggested that all galaxies were together in space long ago.

Astronomers used the term "Big Bang" to explain an initial moment when all galaxies or matter/energy they
are made of were together at one point in space and time.

The term "Big Bang" was coined by Sir Fred Hoyle, a British astronomer.

The Big Bang would explain the great velocities of galaxies farthest away and the energy left over from the
initial event that Penzias and Wilson detected.

The concept of "space-time" is important to understand the Big Bang model and its effects.

"Space-time" refers to the mathematical formulation of the Theory of General Relativity of Albert Einstein.

Space is modeled as a kind of mathematical fabric that is twisted and bent in accordance with the amount of
matter or energy it contains, and it is four-dimensional, including time.

The space-time manifold starts to expand with the Big Bang, carrying all material reality with it.

Hubble's Law describes the ongoing expansion of the manifold, which causes the space of the galaxies to
expand and drag the galaxies away from each other.

The concept of space-time as a fabric that has been expanding since time equals zero.

The shape of the space-time manifold depends on the amount of matter/energy contained within it.

Cosmologists have tried to determine the amount of matter in the Universe to determine the shape of the
space-time manifold.

Only three possible shapes for the space-time manifold are possible: spherical, saddle-shaped, and flat.
The true shape of the Universe awaited further study by cosmologists into the 1990s.
New technologies applied to astronomy: X-ray telescopes collected X-rays from stars, which required
placement in space due to Earth's atmosphere absorption

X-ray astronomy led to discoveries about energetic and distant sources of X-rays, and the flatness of space-
time

Boomerang Infrared device deciphered cryptic messages in Cosmic Background Radiation, confirming the
Inflation Theory and the flatness and homogeneity of the universe

Hubble and X-ray telescopes confirmed and added to the Standard Theory of Cosmology, discovering that
the universe is accelerating due to "dark energy"

"Dark matter" and "dark energy" cannot be seen, but their presence is detected through their effects on
neighboring masses and gravitational pull

The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) determined that "dark matter" and "dark energy" make
up 23.3% and 72.1% of the universe, respectively, and the age of the universe is 13.73 billion years

Discoveries about the universe continue to lead to more unknowns