LT#1 Flashcards
Which theory of the universe describes God separating light from darkness, creating the sky, land, sea, moon, stars, and every living creature in six days?
Creationism from the book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible
Which theory of the universe describes it as oscillating in which a “cosmic egg” contains a single concentrated point called Bindu?
Brahmanda, from the Hindu text Rigveda
Which theory of the universe describes it as coming from a blob or some sort of primordial mixture?
Primordial universe
Who believed in a primordial universe?
Anaxagoras
Which theory of the universe describes being composed of very small, indivisible, and indestructable atoms?
Atomism
Which philosophers believed in atomism?
Leucippus and Democritus
Which theory of the universe describes it as the Earth staying motionless while everything else revolves around it?
Geocentric universe
Which philosophers proposed a geocentric universe?
Aristotle and Ptolemy
Which theory of the universe describes the sun as the center of the universe and everything else revolves around it?
Heliocentrism
Who proposed heliocentrism?
Copernicus
Who’s theory of the universe describes the solar system not being the center of the universe, but is instead another star system among an infinite number of others?
Giordano Bruno
Who’s theory of the universe describes it as a static, steady-state, and infinite universe due to gravity?
Sir Isaac Newton
Who’s theory of the universe describes it as involving a system of huge swirling whirlpools of fine matters producing what would later be called gravitational effects?
Rene Descartes
Who’s theory of the universe describes it as a static universe (like Newton’s theory), but added a cosmological constant to his general theory of relativity?
Albert Einstein
Who’s theory of the universe describes it as not static (ex. cosmic redshift)?
Edwin Hubble
What is the cosmic redshift?
The farther the galaxy, the faster it is moving away from us
- we’ll look redder!
Which theory of the universe describes it as coming from a single point of pure energy (singularity)?
Big bang theory
Who is attributed to the fundamental statement of the big bang theory?
George Lemaitre
Who discorvered cosmic microwave background?
Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson?
What is the cosmic background radiation?
It is the residual thermal radiation or the oldest light in the universe, dating back to the Big Bang
Which four fundamental forces were formed by the big bang?
- gravity (attraction bet. bodies)
- electromagnetic force (binds atoms into molecules)
- strong nuclear force (binds protons and neutrons together in the nucleus)
- weak nuclear force (breaks down an atom’s nucleus and produces radioactive decay)
What modern theory of the universe talks about it having an “expand then shrink” cycle
Oscillating universe
Haarman in 1930
What modern theory of the universe predicted a universe that expanded but did not change its density
Steady state theory
Fred Hoyle, Thomas Gold, Hermann Bondi in 1948
What modern theory of the universe talks about it having a short early period of exponential cosmic inflation in order to solve the uncertainties of the standard big bang model?
Inflationary model
Alan Guth in 1930
