Mike D. Schneider

History of Relativistic Cosmology

Relativistic, expanding universe cosmology developed very quickly in the early 1930s, and with some slight notable caveats, we have never since found reason to abandon its core. Some of my work concerns the early history of cosmologists’ thinking within this tradition, to better understand how fundamental physicists grew accustomed over the past century to embracing the standard ΛCDM model of cosmology today as a detailed empirical narrative of our large-scale cosmic circumstance.

 

History of Relativistic Cosmology

 

Relativistic, expanding universe cosmology developed very quickly in the early 1930s, and with some slight notable caveats, we have never since found reason to abandon its core. Some of my work concerns the early history of cosmologists’ thinking within this tradition, to better understand how fundamental physicists grew accustomed over the past century to embracing the standard ΛCDM model of cosmology today as a detailed empirical narrative of our large-scale cosmic circumstance.

 
 

Revisiting Milne's dissent when the ‘expanding universe' was new

[Work in progress, with co-author Siska De Baerdemaeker]

Stay tuned for an abstract!

Better appreciating the scale of it (Lemaître and de Sitter at the BAAS Centenary)

[HOPOS, with co-author Siska De Baerdemaeker, preprint available here: http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/19250/]

In September 1931, a panel discussion was convened at Central Hall Westminster on the subject of the `Evolution of the Universe', at the centenary meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Center stage was what to do about the evolving universe being younger than the stars, evidently a paradox in the relativistic study of the evolving universe, at the time. Here, we discuss two diametrically opposed reactions to the paradox, which were each broadcast at the meeting by Lemaître and de Sitter, respectively. As we argue, that both could be projected to the public as viable reflects an unsettled question at the foundations of the then-nascent discipline: what is the role for considerations of scale in relativistic cosmology?