Historical Aspects of Post-1850 Cosmology

TL;DR

This paper reviews the historical development of cosmological ideas from early curved space theories to the modern understanding of the universe, including key models like steady state and the precursors to dark energy.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive historical account of major cosmological theories and concepts leading to current models, highlighting less mainstream ideas and their evolution.

Findings

Overview of early curved space theories

Discussion of the steady state model

Prehistory of dark energy concepts

Abstract

Cosmology as an exact physical science is of new date, but it has long roots in the past. This essay is concerned with four important themes in the history of cosmological thought which, if taken together, offer a fairly comprehensive account of some of the key developments that have led to the modern understanding of the universe. Apart from the first section, dealing with early views of curved space, it focuses on mainstream cosmology from the expanding universe about 1930 to the emergence of the standard big bang model in the 1960s. This development includes theories we would not today consider "mainstream," such as the steady state model of the universe. The last section outlines what might be called the prehistory of the concept of dark energy, that is, ideas that were discussed before dark energy was actually inferred from supernovae observations in the late 1990s.