Timeline for When did we learn that our galaxy was merely one amongst many billions?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
14 events
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| Dec 3, 2023 at 12:07 | comment | added | Spencer | @MikhailKatz You take an undergraduate-level astronomy course or ask a question (such as this one) on Physics Stack Exchange. | |
| Dec 3, 2023 at 10:24 | comment | added | Mikhail Katz | @Spencer, how would one know that this is just the way the math works out? I am not familiar with the relevant astrophysics literature. | |
| Dec 2, 2023 at 15:16 | comment | added | Spencer | @MikhailKatz You can have a single continuity, but forget the idea that the Big Bang happened from a point. We can only model back to a certain point, when the Universe was about 10^-43 seconds old, by which time the it would have already been infinite. It's just the way the math works out. | |
| Jul 11, 2017 at 12:32 | comment | added | Mikhail Katz | @GeraldEdgar I know very little about physics but it seems to me that if the universe originated at a point and then started propagating at finite speed a finite amount of time ago then it will necessarily remain finite. Are we supposed to postulate infinitely many parallel universes to get infinitely many galaxies? | |
| Jul 11, 2017 at 12:24 | comment | added | Gerald Edgar | @MikhailKatz ... infinite universe is mathematically consistent with a "big bang" singularity | |
| Jul 11, 2017 at 11:02 | comment | added | Mikhail Katz | @GeraldEdgar, since you seem to accept the big bang theory it would follow from the theory that the universe is finite ruling out the possibility that there are infinitely many galaxies and therefore also ruling out "the other opinion". | |
| Jul 10, 2017 at 13:02 | comment | added | Gerald Edgar | The other opinion might be that there are an infinity of galaxies, but some number (100 billion?) describes from how many of them light can reach the earth, taking into account the speed of light and the time since the big bang. | |
| Jul 22, 2015 at 2:18 | history | edited | J. W. Perry | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jul 22, 2015 at 0:05 | history | edited | J. W. Perry | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jul 21, 2015 at 23:56 | comment | added | J. W. Perry | I don't know when universal consensus among all scientists hit, even today we don't really know, but it is estimated that there on the order of 100 billion galaxies from what I can read. I guess its like any new science, someone like Hubble publishes game changing paper, many catch on the wagon; some just take a while. It was not like suddenly some astronomers looked at a telescope in disbelief in 1990. Amazement surely. We expected to see new galaxies. So I can't really tell you what every scientist was thinking in say 1950, but you can be sure the idea was no longer preposterous. | |
| Jul 21, 2015 at 23:50 | comment | added | user67 | But was it merely an 'idea' (the way that say string theory today is an idea that is not universally accepted)? Or was there already a great deal of consensus, well before 1990, that our galaxy was merely one amongst billions? And if so, roughly when did that become the consensus? Shortly after 1929? Or much later than that? | |
| Jul 21, 2015 at 23:45 | history | edited | J. W. Perry | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jul 21, 2015 at 23:39 | history | edited | J. W. Perry | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jul 21, 2015 at 23:33 | history | answered | J. W. Perry | CC BY-SA 3.0 |