Donald Goldsmith, The Runaway Universe. Perseus Publishing, Cambridge, Massachusetts 2001. 232 pp., Index, Illustrations, Photos, and Graphs.
..., Donald Goldsmith emphasizes the historical development of astronomy and examines evidence submitted by the leading groups of scientists in order to demonstrate the advances of astronomy and to illustrate how the present ideas of cosmology have been derived. There are many comparisons offered of what was once known about a particular phenomenon and what people know about it now. For instance, Goldsmith reemphasizes the geniality of Albert Einstein, first reminding to the reader his greatest contributions to physic, his special and general theories of relativity, and later the author represents Einstein’s cosmological constant, “greatest blunder,” which could be critical to determine the sought after constants. The author reconstructs the great debate of the famous astronomers Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis about the controversy over the size of the Milky Way and the nature of the spiral nebulae. Goldsmith represents several other scientists such as Edwin Hubble, who determined that the universe is still expanding, and Mark Phillips, who made a key discovery about one of the types of supernovae. Every scientist has to respond to disputes or questions that arise from making a discovery. Goldsmith illustrates how scientists frequently criticize and mistrust one another, sometimes even on a personal level, but far more often because of doubt that the observation was made as accurately as claimed, or that the proper conclusion was reached. The author forces the reader to be skeptical of believing that all scientific discoveries happen without impediments. Although, Donald Goldsmith talks about the universe in a broad sense, including descriptions of what universe consists of, of what stars are like, etc., he manages to focus the book and represent a vast body of knowledge collected during the last several decades. Goldsmith offers details of new discoveries of the galaxy that reveal to astronomers the cosmological model. The author raises several issues such as Kerrigan’s problem, supernovae phenomenon, describes rules of dark matter, and provides several systematic errors to open a brighter view of the universe to the reader. Through the stories of famous scientists and their discoveries, Donald Goldsmith discusses one of the main questions that concerns modern astronomy: will the universe expand forever? Edwin Hubble made the starting discovery that distant galaxies are rushing away from Milky Way. The reason, according to Einstein’s theory of galaxy, is that the space between galaxies is stretching. Several decades ago, astronomers had not detected enough matter in the universe to reverse the expansion, and they concluded that the universe would expend forever. Since then, astronomers have detected much more matter in various forms, through still just short of the amount needed to reverse the expansion. The author provides information about other new theories and new interpretations of this evidence, suggesting that the universe is on the dividing line between two possibilities, one of which is the Big Crush. According to the author, there is enough matter in the universe to make gravitational forces stop the expansion. Gravity would cause the universe to reverse it direction and begin to collapse under its own weight. Eventually, all the matter in the Universe will collapse into dense state and possibly even into an unimaginably massive black hole. Goldsmith comments that the universe could collapse into the same singular state that it began from, and then blow up in another Big Bang. Analyzing his evidences, it is easy to predict that the universe would last forever, but continually go through these p...