Abstract
The simplest Friedmann models, about which astronomers were still arguing in the late nineteen fifties and sixties are dominated by the equation
in which Sis the scale factor of the universe, a function of the time, A is a positive constant and kis a topological factor which can be 0 or ±1. No zero of Sexists for S >S 0where S 0 is the present day value of S, and this result is not affected by adding positive terms to the right hand side of (1), as for instance a term B/S 4due to relativistically-moving particles, e.g. photons or neutrinos. Thus if the simple Friedmann models were correct, a spaceti me singularity, S → 0, would inevitably occur in a time-reversed form of the models. This was the Big-Bang, which has been well-known to astronomers since Hubble and Humason had discovered the expansion of the universe in about 1930.
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© 2000 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Hoyle, F. (2000). Mathematics and Science. In: Dadhich, N., Kembhavi, A. (eds) The Universe. Astrophysics and Space Science Library, vol 244. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4050-8_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4050-8_13
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-010-5784-4
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