Short History of Modern Cosmology

We are living in a modern age of science in which we have answers of almost any scientific phenomenon. In our daily life we dont care about many events like Eclipses, Twisters and Earthquake because we know the reason behind all these. But did you ever think what happen if we dont have clarifications of these phenomenons. Ancient people have faced same situation and find some imaginary solutions. In this Essay we shall see that how we reached at this level and how our Modern Cosmology developed.

# Ancient World-View :In ancient time people were unaware of various scientific phenomenons like shape of Earth, position of it in our universe etc. They didn't have any precise answer of many questions like reason of Eclipses, cycle of day-night and origin of their own life. They think that behind all these there is only one reason that is presence of God. They think that behind every phenomenon like Eclipse, Lighting, Wind and Rain etc there is one God who is responsible for this. According to them our Earth is laying on the back of four Elephants and these Elephants are resting on a turtle. We can see such explanations in many ancient religious literatures. But according to change in time thinking of people were also changed.

# Building Blocks :According to ancient cultures our planet Earth has shape of disk or it is plane in shape but today we know that it is a wrong definition, thanks to Aristotle for explaining it. He might be the first person who said (in 330 BC) that Earth's shape is Spherical not Disk and he also gave his theory (Similar to Ptolemy's model known as "Geocentric model" or "Ptolemy system") about position of Earth, Sun and Stars that is known as "Earth Centered Cosmology" because in it Earth is the centre of our universe. It was the initial footstep of Astronomy. But it takes whole millenia for next big footstep. For a long time people thinks that our Earth is the centre of the universe and Sun and other planet is orbiting it (Earth Centered Cosmology) but in 16th century Nicolaus Copernicus gave his famous idea that Earth is not the centre of universe so he replaced Earth with Sun. So according to him Sun is the centre of the universe and other planets are orbiting it and several stars are fixed in outer region. It is known as "The Copernican Model or Heliocentric Model".

Fig.1: Earth Centered Cosmology or Geocentric model or Ptolemy system

Fig. 2: The Copernican Model or Heliocentric Model After this many ground breaking discoveries and innovations were taken place like improvement of Telescope by Johannes Kepler and his contemporary Galileo Galilei in 17th century and in same century Isaac Newton gave his "Universal Gravitation" and the "Three laws of motion". After discovery of telescope Observational Cosmology (Galileo is known as father of Observational Cosmology) was get accelerated and many mysteries were solved like position of Sun and Earth, planets of Sun and their moons, reason behind Eclipses etc. In 18th century Immanuel Kant said that: "For a Universe in which the Milky Way was just one of the many similar Galaxies floating in a vast universe like islands in a vast ocean." This is known as "Island Universe Hypothesis", mathematician Johann Heinrich Lambert was also a supporter of this hypothesis. In 1835, Auguste Comte, a prominent French philosopher, stated that "Humans Would never be able to understand the chemical composition of stars." For a short period of time it seems right but after some years scientists proved this wrong. Middle of the 19th century a new technique discovered by which astronomer can find out chemical composition of stars by observing the light emitted by them and this technique is known as "Spectroscopy". It played very important role in cosmology as in past, discovery of Telescope played. All these theories and discoveries play an important role for developing Modern Cosmology.

# Rise of Modern Cosmology :It is believed that initial decades of 20th century is the birth time of Modern Cosmology, because in this time span Albert Einstein gave his famous theory "Theory of Relativity" (Special Theory of Relativity and after that General Theory of Relativity). In which he said about speed of light and effect of

Gravity on the space and speed of light, he also gives the relation between Energy and Mass (Known as "Mass Energy Relation"). Einstein's equations plays very important role for developing Modern Cosmology Approach. Till that time scientists believed in a "Steady State Model" of Universe, which says that our Universe is neither expanding nor contracting means it is fix in shape and size. In 1912 Vesto Slipher practically measured the first Doppler shift of some Spiral Nebulae and find that almost all such nebulae were receding from Earth. After some time in 1922 Alexander Friedmann, a Russian cosmologist gave his equation known as "Friedmann equations" by solving Einstein's General Theory of Relativity's equations After solving this he came to the point that Universe might be Expanding in contrast to the static Universe model. In 1929 Edwin Hubble gave his famous Hubble's law that says that all objects in deep universe are moving away from each other and also from Earth and their velocity is proportional to their distance from the Earth and all other interstellar objects. Alexander Friedmann and Georges Lematre said very similar thing in 1922. In other words we can say that our universe is not stationary but it is expanding. But Georges Lematre not stop here he went one step further and sated about the creation of our universe, according to him all matter is came from a big explosion in a cosmic egg this theory is known as "Hypothesis of the Primeval Atom". In 1949 Fred Hoyle coined a term "Big Bang" for Lematre's theory but he was not supporter of Lematre's theory.

Fig. 3: Big Bang and Expansion of Universe In 1965 an uncertain thing happened, two radio astronomers, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson accidentally discovered "Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation" (CMBR). This is thermal radiation filling the observable universe almost uniformly. This is another very important discovery because it provide the evidence of Edwin Hubble's (and also Lematre's theory) theory of "Expanding Universe" and "Big Bang Theory". After combining CMBR into Big Bang it says that our universe is came from the explosion in a very hot and dense volume. Scientists already calculated the age of our universe that is 13.7 Billion years. Means 13.7 Billion years ago a big explosion happened and all matter came into existence. Big Bang model is accepted as a standard model of cosmology. In 20th century many questions that tortured human mind more than two millennium had been solved. But it is the bad habit of science that as you solve one problem it tosses a new one for you.

# Mysteries that are waiting for new revolution in Cosmology :In the previous century Astronomers solved many problems but some solutions came with another problems like steady state model of universe is replaced by expanding model but it raises a new problem that "what is the ultimate fate of the universe? There are many more like, why big Bang happened? Etc. Today many Astronomers and Physicists like, Stephen Hawking, Leonard Susskind etc and many space agencies like NASA, ISRO etc are doing their work for solving some biggest problems of cosmology for this purpose engineers designed some really big and useful machines and utilized every region of Earth like Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is situated under the surface of Earth, some observatories are observing the space from the top points of the Earth (from mountains), and human's Third Eye Hubble Space Telescope is watching the universe from the outside of our atmosphere. Some mysteries like Dark Matter, Dark Energy, Multiverse, Time Travel, Worm Hole, presence of Higher Dimensions, Super-massive black holes, Future of the universe, Shape of the Universe and Cosmic inflation etc. These are some big problems of 21st century Cosmology that are waiting to be solved.

Credit for Image 2: http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/retrograde/copernican.html Credit for Image 3: http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/media/060915/index.html

Surendra Dangi 01/05/2012 surendra_dangi@ymail.com