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A Very Brief History of Cosmology and Galaxy Formation

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Galaxy Formation

Part of the book series: Astronomy and Astrophysics Library ((AAL))

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Summary

This book begins with a brief overview of the historical development of key observations and theoretical developments in cosmology and galaxy formation from the time of the Galilean revolution to the present day. The realisation that we live in one of billions of galaxies which populate the Universe was established in the 1920s, followed by Hubble’s discovery of the recession of the spiral nebulae and Hubble’s law. The theory to account for these observations was pioneered by Friedman, Lemaître and Robertson and led to the standard Big Bang models of the Universe, which was strongly supported by the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) in 1965. Within this framework, the theory of galaxy formation was worked out and led to the standard ΛCDM model of the Universe. The detailed observation of the power spectrum of the CMB resulted in precise values of cosmological parameters, in agreement with observations in other wavebands. These understandings lead to problems which may be resolved by studies of the very early Universe. These topics are discussed in detail in the succeeding chapters.

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    Malcolm S. Longair

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Longair, M.S. (2023). A Very Brief History of Cosmology and Galaxy Formation. In: Galaxy Formation. Astronomy and Astrophysics Library. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-65891-8_1

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