Apr 6, 2023 04:07 PM
(This post was last modified: Apr 6, 2023 04:14 PM by C C.)
https://bigthink.com/13-8/lemaitre-pries...ein-wrong/
KEY POINTS: As soon as cosmologists understood that the Universe is expanding, they were left with a difficult question: What happened at the beginning of time? The surprising first answer, the precursor of the Big Bang model, was the "primeval atom." It was proposed by the Catholic priest and cosmologist Georges Lemaître. From the start, it was very hard to disentangle the scientific and biblical stories of creation.
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EXCERPT: . . . In September 1923, Georges Lemaître was ordained a priest. In October, he joined Arthur Eddington and his prestigious research group at Cambridge as a graduate student. After a year in England, Lemaître left for Harvard. He developed a solid foundation in theoretical physics and astronomy, a combination that would anchor his constant efforts to link the theoretical and observational aspects of cosmology.
Creative and independent, in 1927 Lemaître wrote a paper in which he basically rediscovered Alexander Friedmann’s cosmological solutions predicting an expanding Universe. In the same paper, he showed that these solutions, as well as Willem de Sitter’s, also led to a linear velocity-distance relation for receding galaxies.
Lemaître’s paper was published in an obscure journal and remained largely unnoticed. He did try to talk to Einstein about his results, but Einstein showed no interest. “Vos calculs sont corrects, mais votre physique est abominable,” Einstein told him — “Your calculations are correct, but your physics is abominable.” But Lemaître’s fate was about to change dramatically, and within a few years, Einstein himself would be applauding his ideas.
When Edwin Hubble made his observations public, many cosmologists, including de Sitter and Eddington, scrambled to find a semi-realistic model of the Universe that could accommodate both matter and the expansion. When Lemaître heard of their efforts, he reminded his former adviser that he had solved the problem in 1927. Eddington finally read Lemaître’s paper and managed to get a translation published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
His prescient ideas finally vindicated, Lemaître pressed on with a more ambitious plan: to develop a complete, even if qualitative, history of the Universe, including its mysterious origin. “The purpose of any cosmogonic theory is to seek out ideally simple conditions which could have initiated the world and from which, by play of recognized physical forces, that world, in all its complexity, may have resulted,” he wrote.
In 1931, Lemaître published a paper in Nature. In it, he proposed the primeval atom and described the initial evolution of the Universe in terms of the decay of an unstable radioactive nucleus. He thus combined the new science of nuclear physics with the second law of thermodynamics, which says that over time, order tends to give way to disorder. He made no effort to explain where this original nucleus came from. This is how Lemaître unleashed his vision of cosmic birth.. (MORE - missing details)
KEY POINTS: As soon as cosmologists understood that the Universe is expanding, they were left with a difficult question: What happened at the beginning of time? The surprising first answer, the precursor of the Big Bang model, was the "primeval atom." It was proposed by the Catholic priest and cosmologist Georges Lemaître. From the start, it was very hard to disentangle the scientific and biblical stories of creation.
- - - - - - -
EXCERPT: . . . In September 1923, Georges Lemaître was ordained a priest. In October, he joined Arthur Eddington and his prestigious research group at Cambridge as a graduate student. After a year in England, Lemaître left for Harvard. He developed a solid foundation in theoretical physics and astronomy, a combination that would anchor his constant efforts to link the theoretical and observational aspects of cosmology.
Creative and independent, in 1927 Lemaître wrote a paper in which he basically rediscovered Alexander Friedmann’s cosmological solutions predicting an expanding Universe. In the same paper, he showed that these solutions, as well as Willem de Sitter’s, also led to a linear velocity-distance relation for receding galaxies.
Lemaître’s paper was published in an obscure journal and remained largely unnoticed. He did try to talk to Einstein about his results, but Einstein showed no interest. “Vos calculs sont corrects, mais votre physique est abominable,” Einstein told him — “Your calculations are correct, but your physics is abominable.” But Lemaître’s fate was about to change dramatically, and within a few years, Einstein himself would be applauding his ideas.
When Edwin Hubble made his observations public, many cosmologists, including de Sitter and Eddington, scrambled to find a semi-realistic model of the Universe that could accommodate both matter and the expansion. When Lemaître heard of their efforts, he reminded his former adviser that he had solved the problem in 1927. Eddington finally read Lemaître’s paper and managed to get a translation published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
His prescient ideas finally vindicated, Lemaître pressed on with a more ambitious plan: to develop a complete, even if qualitative, history of the Universe, including its mysterious origin. “The purpose of any cosmogonic theory is to seek out ideally simple conditions which could have initiated the world and from which, by play of recognized physical forces, that world, in all its complexity, may have resulted,” he wrote.
In 1931, Lemaître published a paper in Nature. In it, he proposed the primeval atom and described the initial evolution of the Universe in terms of the decay of an unstable radioactive nucleus. He thus combined the new science of nuclear physics with the second law of thermodynamics, which says that over time, order tends to give way to disorder. He made no effort to explain where this original nucleus came from. This is how Lemaître unleashed his vision of cosmic birth.. (MORE - missing details)