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“When you see how fragile and delicate life can be, all else fades into the background.” -Jenna Morasca
Seventy years ago, we had taken fascinating steps forward in our conception of the Universe. Rather than living in a Universe governed by absolute space and absolute time, we lived in one where space and time were relative, depending on the observer. We no longer lived in a Newtonian Universe, but rather one governed by general relativity, where matter and energy cause the fabric of spacetime itself to curve.
And thanks to the observations of Hubble and others, we learned that our Universe was not static, but rather was expanding over time, with galaxies getting farther and farther apart as time went on.
But in 1945, George Gamow made perhaps the greatest leap of all: the great leap backwards. If the Universe were expanding today, with all the unbound objects receding from one another, then perhaps that meant that all those objects were closer together in the past. Perhaps the Universe we live in today evolved from a denser state long ago. Perhaps gravitation has clumped and clustered the Universe together over time, while it was more even and uniform in the distant past. And perhaps — since the energy of radiation is tied to its wavelength — that radiation was more energetic in the past, and hence the Universe was hotter long ago.
Read more here. (Medium)
Seventy years ago, we had taken fascinating steps forward in our conception of the Universe. Rather than living in a Universe governed by absolute space and absolute time, we lived in one where space and time were relative, depending on the observer. We no longer lived in a Newtonian Universe, but rather one governed by general relativity, where matter and energy cause the fabric of spacetime itself to curve.
And thanks to the observations of Hubble and others, we learned that our Universe was not static, but rather was expanding over time, with galaxies getting farther and farther apart as time went on.
But in 1945, George Gamow made perhaps the greatest leap of all: the great leap backwards. If the Universe were expanding today, with all the unbound objects receding from one another, then perhaps that meant that all those objects were closer together in the past. Perhaps the Universe we live in today evolved from a denser state long ago. Perhaps gravitation has clumped and clustered the Universe together over time, while it was more even and uniform in the distant past. And perhaps — since the energy of radiation is tied to its wavelength — that radiation was more energetic in the past, and hence the Universe was hotter long ago.
Read more here. (Medium)
