Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS April Meeting 2020
Volume 65, Number 2
Saturday–Tuesday, April 18–21, 2020; Washington D.C.
Session J04: History of CosmologyCancelled Invited Undergrad Friendly
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Sponsoring Units: FHP DGRAV Chair: Christopher Smeenk, University of Western Ontario Room: Washington 3 |
Sunday, April 19, 2020 1:30PM - 2:06PM |
J04.00001: Observational Cosmology in the 1960s Invited Speaker: Christopher Smeenk This talk considers the historical development of observational cosmology up to the 1960s, pursuing two main themes. Early work in relativistic cosmology characterized the effect of spacetime geometry on the appearance of distant objects -- e.g., cosmological red-shift as a function of distance. Results of this form are unsatisfying because they hold only for an exact spacetime geometry, and it is clear that the actual universe departs from any of these simple exact models. McCrea and McVittie initiated a program of deriving observational relations that hold for a broad class of solutions, not only in the highly symmetric FLRW models, culminating in the work of Kristian and Sachs. This first line of work makes it possible to describe cosmological observations in a spacetime geometry approximating that of the real universe. The second theme regards the scope of cosmological observations. Physical cosmology succeeded in establishing a standard model by utilizing alternative empirical routes, shifting away from a reliance on galaxies as tracers of large-scale spacetime geometry. LemaƮtre had considered the effect of cosmological evolution on a wide variety of physical processes, but his results were limited and speculative. In light of other developments in physics, in the 60s it was possible to use these alternative routes -- including primordial element abundances and the background radiation -- as strong evidence in favor of the big bang model. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, April 19, 2020 2:06PM - 2:42PM Not Participating |
J04.00002: Theoretical Cosmology in the 1960s Invited Speaker: Dennis Lehmkuhl This talk will focus on the development of new mathematical methods during the 1960s that allowed for new ways of understanding the solution space of the Einstein equations, and subsequently for new avenues to work on cosmology. The focus will be on the classification schemes for vacuum solutions developed by Petrov, Penrose, and Pirani, as well as the global methods developed during the work on the singularity theorems by Penrose and Hawking. Building on this, the talk will outline how both the singularity theorems themselves and the new methods developed in proving them have influenced subsequent work on cosmology. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, April 19, 2020 2:42PM - 3:18PM Not Participating |
J04.00003: The Social Construction of Physical Cosmology Invited Speaker: Jim Peebles Now the science wars have cooled it is appropriate to consider the role of society in the construction of the physical sciences. Particularly interesting is the sociologist Robert Merton's "multiples," lines of research that originated more than once. A classic example is Darwin and Wallace on natural selection. I offer examples from the history of physical cosmology that I argue illustrate the effect of our common culture of physical science. Since the standard LambdaCDM cosmology is incomplete another society with a different culture may well have hit on a better cosmology, and maybe found it in different ways from us. But of course a better cosmology would look a lot like LambdaCDM, because the universe has been observed from many sides now and found to look a lot like LambdaCDM. [Preview Abstract] |
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