In this post I talk about the unexpected finding made in the late 1990’s that the rate of expansion of the Universe is increasing due to dark energy. This was totally unexpected and won its discoverers the Nobel prize for physics. (This article is one my series on cosmology - the study of the origin… Continue reading The discovery of dark energy
Tag: Cosmology
Jim Peebles winner of the Noble Prize 2019
I was interested to hear that Jim Peebles, at the age of 84, has won a half share of the 2019 Noble Prize for physics for theoretical discoveries in physical cosmology. Jim Peebles (1935-) Image from Wikimedia commons In the early 1960s Peebles and his colleague Robert Dicke had predicted the existence of the microwave… Continue reading Jim Peebles winner of the Noble Prize 2019
The anthropic principle.
In his 1988 book 'A Brief History of Time' the British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawkins (1942-2018) stated: 'The laws of science, as we know them at present, contain many fundamental numbers, like the size of the electric charge of the electron and the ratio of the masses of the proton and the electron. ... The… Continue reading The anthropic principle.
Copernicus
In this post I'll talk about Nicolas Copernicus (1473 - 1543) and the heliocentric theory. The move away from the prevailing Earth-centred theory of the Universe to the heliocentric theory represents one of the greatest advances in astronomy ever made. Nicolas Copernicus - Image from Wikimedia Commons Background - the need for a better theory… Continue reading Copernicus
Geocentric Cosmology.
Today it is generally accepted as a scientific fact that the Earth is one of eight planets which revolve around the Sun, that the Sun is one of 400 billion or so stars in our Milky Way galaxy and that the Milky Way is one of hundreds of billions of galaxies in the observable Universe.… Continue reading Geocentric Cosmology.
