Cosmological Ideas Research Articles

The Main Ideas of Cosmology at School

The aim of this research study was to investigate students’ ideas and main difficulties with understanding modern cosmology science and to design based on results obtained a new cosmology course. We tried to identify factors, which might limit students’ skills and knowledge about universe. The participants were students – mostly pre-service teachers at the Science Education program in an Faculty of Education. A combination of qualitative and quantitative research approaches were used in the study. The data were primarily sourced from a standard questionnaire instrument. In addition, the interviews were conducted to determine student's views of discussed course topics.

Weird universe: exploring the most bizarre ideas in cosmology

Weird universe: exploring the most bizarre ideas in cosmology

Big Bang, an Idea Projected Beyond Cosmology: The Possible Contribution of Thematic Analysis to the Understanding of This Success

The big bang idea is not only a dominant idea in cosmology but also a very successfully idea out of cosmology. Although sometimes just in metaphorical sense, the big bang idea is present, since some decades, in a variety of domains such as natural sciences, humanities, social sciences, arts, and it also has a great acceptance by the general public. Furthermore, the term Big Bang has become increasingly popular and currently it is often used with very different purposes, including commercial purposes, in contexts that have nothing to do with science, such as music, television, cinema, circus, house decoration, food, and other unexpected domains. Proposed by Gerald Holton, thematic analysis is a useful tool for studying cases like this, because it identifies and describes elements that cross and connect all areas of knowledge and culture in general (the themata) and thus can help to understand the reception, appropriation and use of certain ideas in different but contemporary disciplinary and cultural contexts, which may be involved in intellectual fashions and in styles of thought of one particular time.

SETI in the light of cosmic convergent evolution

Theodosius Dobzhansky, one of the founding fathers of the modern evolutionary synthesis, once famously stated that “nothing makes sense in biology except in the light of evolution”. Here it will be argued that nothing in astrobiology makes sense except in the light of “Cosmic Convergent Evolution” (CCE). This view of life contends that natural selection is a universal force of nature that leads to the emergence of similarly adapted life forms in analogous planetary biospheres. Although SETI historically preceded the rise of astrobiology that we have witnessed in the recent decade, one of its main tenets from the beginning was the convergence of life on a cosmic scale toward intelligent behavior and subsequent communication via technological means. The question of cultural convergence in terms of symbolic exchange, language and scientific capabilities between advanced interstellar civilizations has been the subject of ongoing debate. However, at the core of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence lies in essence a biological problem since even post-biological extraterrestrial intelligences must have had an origin based on self-replicating biopolymers. Thus, SETI assumes a propensity of the Universe towards biogenesis in accordance with CCE, a new evolutionary concept which posits the multiple emergence of life across the Cosmos. Consequently, we have to wonder about the biophilic properties the Universe apparently exhibits, as well as to try to find an encompassing theory that is able to explain this “fine-tuning” in naturalistic terms. The aims of this paper are as follows: 1) to emphasize the importance of convergent evolution in astrobiology and ongoing SETI research; 2) to introduce novel and biology-centered cosmological ideas such as the “Selfish Biocosm Hypothesis” and the “Evo Devo Universe” as valuable arguments in theorizing about the origin and nature of extraterrestrial intelligence and 3) to synthesize these findings within an emerging post-biological paradigm on which future SETI efforts may be founded.

Rite Makes Right

This paper considers ritual phenomena in the context of a naturalistic theory of religion. Religious traditions are described as mythic traditions, where myth is understood to be a narrative integration of cosmological and moral ideas. Ritual practices emerge as part of a cluster of strategies that function collectively to revitalize the power of the myth to influence the ways people think, feel and act.

A quantum-information-theoretic complement to a general-relativistic implementation of a beyond-Turing computer

There exists a growing literature on the so-called physical Church-Turing thesis in a relativistic spacetime setting. The physical Church-Turing thesis is the conjecture that no computing device that is physically realizable (even in principle) can exceed the computational barriers of a Turing machine. By suggesting a concrete implementation of a beyond-Turing computer in a spacetime setting, Istv\'an N\'emeti and Gyula D\'avid (2006) have shown how an appreciation of the physical Church-Turing thesis necessitates the confluence of mathematical, computational, physical, and indeed cosmological ideas. In this essay, I will honour Istv\'an's seventieth birthday, as well as his longstanding interest in, and his seminal contributions to, this field going back to as early as 1987 by modestly proposing how the concrete implementation in N\'emeti and D\'avid (2006) might be complemented by a quantum-information-theoretic communication protocol between the computing device and the logician who sets the beyond-Turing computer a task such as determining the consistency of Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory. This suggests that even the foundations of quantum theory and, ultimately, quantum gravity may play an important role in determining the validity of the physical Church-Turing thesis.

Primitivist tourism and romantic individualism: On the values in exotic stereotypy about cultural others

This article examines a series of interconnected features of the idea of the primitive other that informs international tourists’ travel to visit Korowai people of West Papua, Indonesia. These include: how tourism is constituted as a reflexive inquiry into globalization itself; the cosmological idea of a Manichaean duality of the civilized and the primitive; the status of the primitive as ‘pure’; the idea of primitive closeness with nature; and the primitive’s functional role in a contemporary analog of the Romantic self-forming project of Bildung, which Dumont analyzed as a modified individualism and which I suggest is the driving foundation of the overall complex of stereotypy. My discussion emphasizes the importance of carrying out a cultural analysis of the primitivist stereotypy as a structured ideological system in its own right, by underlining the repetitions and interdependencies between the different facets of the overall ideological formation.

Проблема антиномии чистого теоретического разума в системе Канта

Critique and its comparison with the analogous structure of the second and third Critiques show that the Critique of Pure Reason lacks such an important element as the antinomy of pure theoretical reason. Of course, it is implied in the text: Kant’s reasoning is based on it and takes it into account. However, it is not explicitly expressed. Instead of this crucial structural element, which would significantly simplify the understanding of such a complicated treatise, the Critique of Pure Reason presents the system of antinomies of the cosmological idea of pure reason. However, these phenomena are not identical there is a great difference between the antinomy of pure reason and a system of particular antinomies of one of its ideas. The article addresses this complication and the reasons behind it and explicates the antinomy, which is reconstructed based on the entire body of Kant’s works. The authors considers Kant’s resolution of the antinomy.

Seeable universe and its accelerated expansion: an observational test

From the equivalence principle, one gets the strength of the gravitational effect of a mass $M$ on the metric at position r from it. It is proportional to the dimensionless parameter $\beta^2 = 2GM/rc^2$, which normally is $<< 1$. Here $G$ is the gravitational constant, $M$ the mass of the gravitating body, $r$ the position of the metric from the gravitating body and $c$ the speed of light. The seeable universe is the sphere, with center at the observer, having a size such that it shall contain all light emitted within it. For this to occur one can impose that the gravitational effect on the velocity of light at $r$ is zero for the radial component, and non zero for the tangential one. Light is then trapped. The condition is given by the equality $R_g = 2GM/c^2$, where $R_g$ represents the radius of the {\it seeable} universe. It is the gravitational radius of the mass $M$. The result has been presented elsewhere as the condition for the universe to be treated as a black hole. According to present observations, for the case of our universe taken as flat ($k = 0$), and the equation of state as $p = - \rho c^2$, we prove here from the Einstein's cosmological equations that the universe is expanding in an accelerated way as $t^2$, a constant acceleration as has been observed. This implies that the gravitational radius of the universe (at the event horizon) expands as $t^2$. Taking $c$ as constant, observing the galaxies deep in space this means deep in time as $ct$, linear. Then, far away galaxies from the observer that we see today will disappear in time as they get out of the distance ct that is $< R_g$. The accelerated expanding vacuum will drag them out of sight. This may be a valid test for the present ideas in cosmology. Previous calculations are here halved by our results.

Between "Self-Murder" and "Suicide": The Modern Etymology of Self-Killing

Suicide is a modern concept. In English, the wording did not emerge before the 1650s and in the Romance languages not before the second half of the eighteenth century (suicide in French, suicidio in Italian). The invention of the latinized term mirrored less stringent criminal prosecution of self-killing, in the wake of harsher punishments and the creation of a statutory offense that had found their semantic expression in the nominalization of self-murder since the second half of the sixteenth century. The concept of suicide—as well as Selbstentleibung (self-disembodiment) in German—reflects a historical process of pathologizing and decriminalizing the act of taking one's own life. However, regardless of new words, the social stigmatization of self-killing was not eliminated, but merely trans- formed. Criminal sanctions began to be abolished, but the a priori criticism of self-murder did not. In the eighteenth century, the traditional condemnation of self-killing, which had been based on religious and cosmological ideas, was turned into a moral one, in the specific Enlightenment sense of the term. What self- murder and suicide have in common is their denunciation of the act of killing oneself, not only in characterizing it as a crime, but also in pathologizing it as an expression of melancholic madness. In doing so, both of them have become key concepts for the emergent disciplines of moral statistics and suicidology in the nine- teenth century and for the modern understanding of self-killing within the dis- courses of social science, psychology, and psychiatry.

Doppler’s Effect, Gravity and Cosmology

We first show that Doppler’s effect implies that the time runs identically in the frames of reference of the source of light and the observer. Furthermore, we then show that the frequency shift due to the (assumed) expansion of space, if any, is “indistinguishable” from that due to the motion of the source with respect to the observer; and that the shift does not depend on the distance to the source. Observed frequency shifts of cosmological sources then need to be interpreted as being only due to their motions with respect to us. This has important implications for our ideas in cosmology.

Walther Nernst: grandfather of dark energy?

Helge Kragh examines the origin of a concept that heralds the ideas of modern cosmology.

The John Latham Archive: An Online Implementation Using Drupal

This article is an account of the online presentation of the personal papers of the late British artist John Latham. The John Latham Archive online follows the proposal of creative archiving and has been implemented using the Drupal content management system. The author begins with a summary of the ideas of creative archiving and explains how these depend on recent innovations of online software. The article continues by highlighting the potential of Drupal as an archiving tool for creative archiving. An example implementation of the John Latham Archive online is described by relating the cosmological ideas of the artist with practical software tools which have been used to model them. The author concludes with some remarks on the capacity of the recommended software tools for creative archiving.

Frömmigkeit und Herrschaft, Wonne und Weg. Landschaften in der Literatur des Mittelalters

Abstract This contribution examines the relationship between human beings and landscape in selected medieval texts. Literary concepts of landscape appear innately bound up with human experiences that lend expression to religious, political and aesthetic convictions. The religious appropriations of landscape revolve around cosmological ideas for or against life in this world in political contexts, landscape functions as a medium of power for the legitimisation of rule, or as an apocalyptic backdrop. Courtly poetry exploits certain details of landscape to symbolise the status of individuals in society or the condition of society itself. In accounts of pilgrimage, the sense of landscape is reduced to a consideration of the accessibility of holy sites and the measurable distance of the journey.

The Concept of the Centre in Islam

This article argues that any exploration of the textual representations of place, space, and landscape in the pre-modern Arabic-Islamic tradition requires grasping the cultural conception of the centre reflecting developments from a long historical and textual tradition of cosmological ideas found in the work of Yaqut’s (d. 1229) Mujam al-buldan, and al-Suyuti’s (d. 1505) al-Hayat al-saniyah fil-hayat al-sunniyah. It further explores the complex construct of the centre in Islam within the context of its relation to the origin of Islamic cities by considering it an organising principle of the mental and moral disposition for spiritual and physical orientation.

Some Trends in the Philosophy of Physics

A short review of some recent developments in the philosophy of physics is presented. I focus on themes which illustrate relations and points of common interest between philosophy of physics and three of its `neighboring' elds: Physics, metaphysics and general philosophy of science. The main examples discussed in these three `border areas' are (i) decoherence and the interpretation of quantum mechanics; (ii) time in physics and metaphysics; and (iii)methodological issues surrounding the multiverse idea in modern cosmology.

The end of space-time

Could ripping apart the fabric of space-time lead us to a theory of everything? Anil Ananthswamy investigates the hottest new idea in cosmology

Modern cosmology: Facts and ideas

A brief overview of the main observational facts and key ideas of modern cosmology is given. It is emphasized that present-day cosmology is a fundamental science about the evolution of the Universe based on verified empirical data and a reliable physical theory.

THE FATE OF PLACE IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY: CREATION, RESTORATION, AND BODY IN THE WRITING OF BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX

Surveys of medieval cosmology tend to focus on major shifts in thinking, leaving out those purveyors of a more traditional view. Thus, the cosmological thought of Bernard of Clairvaux has generally been overlooked. This article examines the cosmological ideas in Bernard's spiritual writings. In doing so, it highlights Bernard's interest in creation, fall, and restoration as experienced universally and in the human person. Using phenomenological methods, the article suggests that Bernard was deeply concerned with the body as place of experience and restoration.

Cosmic catastrophes: exploding stars, black holes, and mapping the universe

From supernovae and gamma-ray bursts to the accelerating Universe, this is an exploration of the intellectual threads that lead to some of the most exciting ideas in modern astrophysics and cosmology. This fully updated second edition incorporates new material on binary stars, black holes, gamma-ray bursts, worm-holes, quantum gravity and string theory. It covers the origins of stars and their evolution, the mechanisms responsible for supernovae, and their progeny, neutron stars and black holes. It examines the theoretical ideas behind black holes and their manifestation in observational astronomy and presents neutron stars in all their variety known today. This book also covers the physics of the twentieth century, discussing quantum theory and Einstein's gravity, how these two theories collide, and the prospects for their reconciliation in the twenty-first century. This will be essential reading for undergraduate students in astronomy and astrophysics, and an excellent, accessible introduction for a wider audience.