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Jean-Pierre Luminet

Jean-Pierre Luminet
Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille · GECO

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147
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3,279
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Publications

Publications (147)
Preprint
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Alexander Friedmann and Georges Lema\^itre are undoubtedly the real fathers of Big Bang cosmologies. In this article I study the influences their work underwent due to some religious as well as anti-religious ideas. During his career Lema\^itre faced criticisms coming from non-believing scientists, who reproached him (wrongly) to have developed his...
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Viktor Toth adds theoretical insights to the modified theories of gravity that aimed to solve the dark matter problem without necessitating the existence of hypothetic particles of nonbaryonic matter.
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I give a historical survey of the discussions about the existence of closed timelike curves in general relativistic models of the universe, opening the physical possibility of time travel in the past, as first recognized by K. G\"odel in his rotating universe model of 1949. I emphasize that journeying into the past is intimately linked to spacetime...
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In this pedestrian approach I give my personal point of view on the various problems posed by dark matter in the universe. After a brief historical overview I discuss the various solutions stemming from high energy particle physics, and the current status of experimental research on candidate particles (WIMPS). In the absence of direct evidence, th...
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I give a historical survey of the discussions about the existence of closed timelike curves in general relativistic models of the universe, opening the physical possibility of time travel in the past, as first recognized by K. Gödel in his rotating universe model of 1949. I emphasize that journeying into the past is intimately linked to spacetime m...
Article
Dévoiler la nature de la matière noire est l’un des plus grands défis de l’astrophysique. Jean-Pierre Luminet fait la lumière sur cette question.
Article
Unveiling the true nature of dark matter is one of the most significant challenges in modern astrophysics. In an effort to explain this enigma, three categories of theories have been developed: Cold Dark Matter, Hot Dark Matter, and Warm Dark Matter. Jean-Pierre Luminet reviews these and other attempts to confront the many unresolved questions that...
Article
Since the late 1950s a growing number of composers have engaged with scientific research and have tried to incorporate their understanding of various models and theories into their musical works. Among them, Hèctor Parra (b. 1976) has been particularly impressed by recent developments in gravitational physics and astrophysics, namely the part of as...
Preprint
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The Event Horizon Telescope Consortium is on the verge to provide the first telescopic image of massive black holes SgrA* and M87* surrounded by accretion disks, at a resolution scale comparable to the size of their event horizons. Well before this remarkable achievement made possible by VLBI radio astronomy, many researchers used the computer to r...
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Discovered in 1949 by Kurt Gödel, the homogeneous rotating universe model contains closed timelike curves and therefore allows for travel into the past, accompanied by all its paradoxes.
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Who was Ulugh Beg? A prince who governed a province in the central Asian empire built by his grandfather Tamerlane. Above all, he was a scholar who founded the Samarkand astronomical observatory, whose work predated that of the best astronomers in Europe one and a half centuries later.
Article
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Since the 1960s a growing number of composers have engaged with scientific research and have tried to incorporate their understanding of various models and theories into their musical works. Among them, H\`ector Parra (b. 1976) has been particularly impressed by the recent developments of gravitational physics and astrophysics, namely the part of a...
Article
Full-text available
Astronomical observations are about to deliver the very first telescopic image of the massive black hole lurking at the Galactic Center. The mass of data collected in one night by the Event Horizon Telescope network, exceeding everything that has ever been done in any scientific field, should provide a recomposed image during 2018. All this, forty...
Preprint
Astronomical observations are about to deliver the very first telescopic image of the massive black hole lurking at the Galactic Center. The mass of data collected in one night by the Event Horizon Telescope network, exceeding everything that has ever been done in any scientific field, should provide a recomposed image during 2018. All this, forty...
Article
Jacques Mertzeisen and Jean-Pierre Luminet shed light on Johannes Remus Quietanus, a much neglected seventeenth-century astronomer and royal physician, a friend of Kepler, and one of the very first to observe a transit of Mercury.
Article
We discuss the reception of Copernican astronomy by the Proven\c{c}al humanists of the XVIth-XVIIth centuries, beginning with Michel de Montaigne who was the first to recognize the potential scientific and philosophical revolution represented by heliocentrism. Then we describe how, after Kepler's Astronomia Nova of 1609 and the first telescopic obs...
Article
In the early 17th-century, the prospects for the Copernican revolution appeared uncertain. Jean-Pierre Luminet explores how the 17th-century Provençal humanist astronomers Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc and Pierre Gassendi, along with Jean-Dominique Cassini and Michel de Montaigne, continued the revolution and in the process helped shape the subse...
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Au début du 17ème siècle, le destin de la révolution Copernicienne n’était pas certain. Peiresc et Gassendi, humanistes provençaux, ont poursuivi la révolution, et infléchi le développement de la science occidentale.
Conference Paper
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Every society has a story rooted in its most ancient traditions, of how the earth and sky originated. Most of these stories attribute the origin of all things to a Creator - whether God, Element or Idea. We first recall that in the Western world all discussions of the origin of the world were dominated until the 18th century by the story of Genesis...
Preprint
I give a critical review of the holographic hypothesis, which posits that a universe with gravity can be described by a quantum field theory in fewer dimensions. I first recall how the idea originated from considerations on black hole thermodynamics and the so-called information paradox that arises when Hawking radiation is taken into account. Stri...
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I give a critical review of the holographic hypothesis, which posits that a universe with gravity can be described by a quantum field theory in fewer dimensions. I first recall how the idea originated from considerations on black hole thermodynamics and the so-called information paradox that arises when Hawking radiation is taken into account. Stri...
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Jean-Pierre Luminet explique le principe holographique, la conjecture de Maldacena, et la résolution du paradoxe d’information.
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In the last decade, the study of the overall shape of the universe, called Cosmic Topology, has become testable by astronomical observations, especially the data from the Cosmic Microwave Background (hereafter CMB) obtained by WMAP and Planck telescopes. Cosmic Topology involves both global topological features and more local geometrical properties...
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I give an epistemological analysis of the developments of relativistic cosmology from 1917 to 1966, based on the seminal articles by Einstein, de Sitter, Friedmann, Lemaitre, Hubble, Gamow and other historical figures of the field. It appears that most of the ingredients of the present-day standard cosmological model, including the acceleration of...
Article
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This article describes the life and work of French astrophysicist Evry Schatzman (1920-2010). He was a pioneer in the study of white dwarfs during the 1940s and was one of the proponents of the wave heating theory of the solar corona. He made important contributions to the fields of internal stellar structure, novae, mechanisms of acceleration of c...
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The science fiction film, Interstellar, tells the story of a team of astronauts searching a distant galaxy for habitable planets to colonize. Interstellar's story draws heavily from contemporary science. The film makes reference to a range of topics, from established concepts such as fast-spinning black holes, accretion disks, tidal effects, and ti...
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This article describes the life and work of Willem Janszoon Blaeu (1571-1638), who founded one of history's greatest cartographic publishing firms in 1599. Mostly renowned as a cartographer, he also made terrestrial and celestial globes, various instruments such as quadrants, a planetarium and a tellurium. He invented mechanical devices for improvi...
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The film Interstellar draws heavily from contemporary science. It makes reference to a range of topics, from established concepts such as fast-spinning black holes, accretion disks, tidal effects, and time dilation, to far more speculative ideas such as wormholes, time travel, additional space dimensions, and the theory of everything. Jean-Pierre L...
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Book
5 pages. Published in Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers, Thomas Hockey (ed.), 2014
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La physique du XX e siècle permet d’aborder scientifiquement la question du commencement de l’univers. L’idée d’un univers statique, défendue par Albert Einstein, sera rejetée par un Russe, Alexandre Friedmann, et un Belge, Georges Lemaître, au profit d’un univers dynamique, c’est-à-dire historique.
Article
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What is the shape of the Universe? Is it finite or infinite ? Is space multi-connected to create ghost images of faraway cosmic sources? After a "dark age" period, the field of cosmic topology has now become one of the major concerns in astronomy and cosmology, not only from theorists but also from observational astronomers. Here I give a personal...
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I discuss some aspects of the use of computers in Relativity, Astrophysics and Cosmology. For each section I provide two examples representative of the field, including gravitational collapse, black hole imagery, supernovae explosions, star-black hole tidal interactions, N-body cosmological simulations and detection of cosmic topology.
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This is an editorial note to accompany printing as a Golden Oldie in the Journal of General Relativity and Gravitation of the fundamental article by Georges Lema\^itre first published in French in 1927, in which the author provided the first explanation of the observations on the recession velocities of galaxies as a natural consequence of dynamica...
Chapter
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“One could imagine that as a result of enormously extended astronomical experience, the entire universe consists of countless identical copies of our Milky Way, that the infinite space can be partitioned into cubes each containing an exactly identical copy of our Milky Way. Would we really cling on to the assumption of infinitely many identical rep...
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Johann Kepler (1571-1630) is sometimes considered as a precursor of science-fiction novels with the writing of "Somnium, sive opus posthumum of astronomia lunaris". In this work published posthumously in 1634 by his son Ludwig, Kepler intends to defend the Copernican doctrine by detailing the perception of the world for an observer located on the M...
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KeywordsBeginning of the universe–Evolution of the universe–Georges Lemaître–Quantum birth of the universe–Primeval-atom model–Golden Oldie
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We tend to generally believe that art's mission is to make us touch the intangible, whereas science's mission only consists of providing a game of «questions-answers». However, there is a genuine scientific creation in which the game is inversed and is deployed as an «answers-questions». The question, which can arise as much as tne absence of a «to...
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From the geocentric, closed world model of Antiquity to the wraparound universe models of relativistic cosmology, the parallel history of space representations in science and art illustrates the fundamental role of geometric imagination in innovative findings. Through the analysis of works of various artists and scientists like Plato, Durer, Kepler...
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The twin paradox is the best known thought experiment associated with Einstein's theory of relativity. An astronaut who makes a journey into space in a high-speed rocket will return home to find he has aged less than a twin who stayed on Earth. This result appears puzzling, since the situation seems symmetrical, as the homebody twin can be consider...
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Aims: We investigate the stellar pancake mechanism during which a solar-type star is tidally flattened within its orbital plane passing close to a 10^6 solar masses black hole. We simulate the relativistic orthogonal compression process and follow the associated shock waves formation. Methods: We consider a one-dimensional hydrodynamical stellar mo...
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In 2007 an international conference engaged a reflection on the present conditions for sciences and scientific practice, to initiate a dialogue between science, philosophy, epistemology and sociology. Starting from many examples taken from the history of sciences and the present status of astrophysics, cosmology and fundamental physics, I analyze v...
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What is the shape of the Universe? Is it curved or flat, finite or infinite? Is space “wrapped around ” to create ghost images of faraway cosmic sources? We review how tessellations allow to build multiply-connected 3D Riemannian spaces useful for cosmology. We discuss more particularly the proposal of a finite, positively curved, dodecahedral spac...
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We interest in the case of a main-sequence star deeply penetrating within the tidal radius of a massive black hole. We focus on the compression phase leading to a so-called pancake configuration of the star at the instant of maximal compression. The aim is to study the tidal compression process paying particular attention to the development of shoc...
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Full-text available
We provide an epistemological analysis of the developments of relativistic cosmology from 1917 to 2006, based on the seminal articles by Einstein, de Sitter, Friedmann, Lemaitre, Hubble, Gamow and other main historical figures of the field. It appears that most of the ingredients of the present-day standard cosmological model, such as the accelatio...
Article
Full-text available
General relativity does not allow one to specify the topology of space, leaving the possibility that space is multiply rather than simply connected. We review the main mathematical properties of multiply connected spaces, and the different tools to classify them and to analyse their properties. Following their mathematical classification, we descri...
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The full three-year WMAP results (WMAP3) reinforce the absence of large-angle correlations at scales greater than 60 degrees. The Poincare dodecahedral space (PDS) model model, which may naturally explain such features, thus remains a plausible cosmological model, despite recent controversy about whether matched circle searches would or would not p...
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Cosmic topology has entered a new era of experimental tests since accurate maps of the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation (CMB) are available. Various deviations from the concordance Λ‐CDM flat infinite universe model hint at a possible non‐trivial topology for the shape of space. A finite universe with the topology of the Poincaré dodecahedra...
Article
In this talk I review recent advances in cosmic topology since it has entered a new era of experimental tests. High redshift surveys of astronomical sources and accurate maps of the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation (CMB) are beginning to hint at the shape of the universe, or at least to limit the wide range of possibilities. Among those possi...
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Multiply connected space sections of the universe on a scale smaller than the horizon size can leave an imprint on cosmic microwave background polarization maps, in such a way that the so-called ``circles-in-the-sky'' method can be used to detect or constrain the topology. We investigate some specific cases, namely toroidal and sixth-turn spaces, i...
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Conventional thinking says the universe is infinite. But it could be finite and relatively small, merely giving the illusion of a greater one, like a hall of mirrors. Recent astronomical measurements add support to a finite space with a dodecahedral topology.
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What is the shape of space is a long-standing question in cosmology. In this talk I review recent advances in cosmic topology since it has entered a new era of experimental tests. High redshift surveys of astronomical sources and accurate maps of the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation (CMB) are beginning to hint at the shape of the universe, or...
Article
Ce qui est directement connaissable est fini, pourtant dès que nous pensons surgit alors la notion d'infini. Depuis la plus haute Antiquité, les hommes ont ainsi été confrontés à la notion d'infini. En mathématiques le simple fait de vouloir diviser un nombre par zéro implique d'envisager ce concept. Par ailleurs, il existe plusieurs sortes d'infin...
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ABSTRACTA widespread myth asserts that all small universe models suppress the cosmic microwave background (CMB) quadrupole. In actual fact, some models suppress the quadrupole while others elevate it, according to whether their low-order modes are weak or strong relative to their high-order modes. Elementary geometrical reasoning shows that a model...
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This article investigates the signature of the seventeen multiconnected flat spaces in cosmic microwave background (CMB) maps. For each such space it recalls a fundamental domain and a set of generating matrices, and then goes on to find an orthonormal basis for the set of eigenmodes of the Laplace operator on that space. The basis eigenmodes are e...
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Starting from an anisotropic flat cosmological model (Bianchi type I), we show that conditions leading to isotropization fall into three classes, respectively 1, 2 and 3. We look for necessary conditions such that a Bianchi type I model reaches a stable isotropic state due to the presence of several massive scalar fields minimally coupled to the me...
Preprint
A widespread myth asserts that all small universe models suppress the CMB quadrupole. In actual fact, some models suppress the quadrupole while others elevate it, according to whether their low-order modes are weak or strong relative to their high-order modes. Elementary geometrical reasoning shows that a model's largest dimension determines the ro...
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The current 'standard model' of cosmology posits an infinite flat universe forever expanding under the pressure of dark energy. First-year data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) confirm this model to spectacular precision on all but the largest scales. Temperature correlations across the microwave sky match expectations on angula...
Preprint
Starting from an anisotropic flat cosmological model(Bianchi type $I$), we show that conditions leading to isotropisation fall into 3 classes, respectively 1, 2, 3. We look for necessary conditions such that a Bianchi type $I$ model reaches a stable isotropic state due to the presence of several massive scalar fields minimally coupled to the metric...
Article
Full-text available
The search for the topology of the universe made tremendous progress in the past years1,2 and nowadays, methods using two-dimensional data sets (such as the cosmic microwave background) and three-dimensional data sets (such as catalogs of clusters or quasars) have been developped. The former will in principle be applied to the maps to be obtained b...
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This paper investigates the computation of the eigenmodes of the Laplacian operator in multi-connected three-dimensional spherical spaces. General mathematical results and analytical solutions for lens and prism spaces are presented. Three complementary numerical methods are developed and compared with our analytic results and previous investigatio...
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If space is compact, then a traveller twin can leave Earth, travel back home without changing direction and find her sedentary twin older than herself. We show that the asymmetry between their spacetime trajectories lies in a topological invariant of their spatial geodesics, namely the homotopy class. This illustrates how the spacetime symmetry inv...
Chapter
La question de la forme de l’espace me fascine depuis que, adolescent, j’ai ouvert une encyclopédie d’astronomie à la page traitant de la théorie de la relativité générale d’Einstein. Il y était écrit que, dans la conception relativiste, l’espace-temps a la forme d’un mollusque. Cette image m’avait beaucoup intrigué, et depuis lors, je n’ai eu de c...
Preprint
This article investigates the computation of the eigenmodes of the Laplacian operator in multi-connected three-dimensional spherical spaces. General mathematical results and analytical solutions for lens and prism spaces are presented. Three complementary numerical methods are developed and compared with our analytic results and previous investigat...
Article
Full-text available
This article gives the construction and complete classification of all three-dimensional spherical manifolds, and orders them by decreasing volume, in the context of multiconnected universe models with positive spatial curvature. It discusses which spherical topologies are likely to be detectable by crystallographic methods using three-dimensional...
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Stargazers who may have missed the last total solar eclipse of the 20th century this past summer have just been given another chance to observe this "once in a lifetime" occurrence. Inside Glorious Eclipses they will find startling images and rich personal accounts that fully capture this event and other recent eclipses. The book will also insure t...
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Multi-connected Universe models with space idenfication scales smaller than the size of the observable universe produce topological images in the catalogs of cosmic sources. In this review, we present the recent developments for the search of the topology of the universe focusing on three dimensional methods. We present the crystallographic method,...
Preprint
If space is compact, then a traveller twin can leave Earth, travel back home without changing direction and find her sedentary twin older than herself. We show that the asymmetry between their spacetime trajectories lies in a topological invariant of their spatial geodesics, namely the homotopy class. This illustrates how the spacetime symmetry inv...
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Full-text available
We investigate to what extent the cosmic crystallographic methods aimed to detect the topology of the universe using catalogues of cosmic objects would be damaged by various observational uncertainties. We find that the topological signature is robust in the case of Euclidean spaces, but is very fragile in the case of compact hyperbolic spaces. Com...
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If the assumption that physical space has a trivial topology is dropped, then the Universe may be described by a multiply connected Friedmann-Lema\^{\i}tre model on a sub-horizon scale. Specific candidates for the multiply connected space manifold have already been suggested. How precisely would a significant detection of multiple topological image...
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Multi-connected universe models with space identification scales smaller than the size of the observable universe produce topological images of cosmic sources. We generalise to locally hyperbolic spaces the crystallographic method, aimed to detect the topology from three-dimensional catalogs of cosmological objects. Our new method is based on the c...
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Full-text available
``One could imagine that as a result of enormously extended astronomical experience, the entire universe consists of countless identical copies of our Milky Way, that the infinite space can be partitioned into cubes each containing an exactly identical copy of our Milky Way. Would we really cling on to the assumption of infinitely many identical re...
Article
Full-text available
Universe models with compact spatial sections smaller than the observable universe produce a topological lens effect. Given a catalog of cosmic sources, we estimate the number of topological images in locally hyperbolic and locally elliptic spaces, as a function of the cosmological parameters, of the volume of the spatial sections and of the catalo...
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In the first part I set out some unexplored historical material about the early development of cosmic topology. In the second part I briefly comment new developments in the field since the Lachieze-Rey & Luminet report (1995), both from a theoretical and an observational point of view.
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Our understanding of space and time is probed to its depths by black holes. These objects, which appear as a natural consequence of general relativity, provide a powerful analytical tool able to examine macroscopic and microscopic properties of the universe. This introductory article presents in a pictorial way the basic concepts of black hole's th...
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Im Jahre 1971 schlug Stephen Hawking die Existenz von schwarzen MiniLöchern vor. Nach Hawking waren während der ersten Momente des Universums, lange vor der Geburt von Sternen und Galaxien, der Druck und die Energie der „kosmischen Suppe“ so groß, daß kleinere Klumpen von Materie zu schwarzen Löchern unterschiedlicher Größe und Masse zusammengepreß...
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Die chemischen Bestandteile der Natur beschränken sich nicht auf Wasserstoff, Helium, Kohlenstoff und Sauerstoff. Lebende Materie, Holz, Erde oder Felsen benötigen auch Silizium, Magnesium, Phosphor, Schwefel, Eisen und einige „schwere” Atome, deren Kern mehr als vierzig Protonen und Neutronen enthält. Wer schmiedet diese Elemente, wenn die Sonne u...
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Die Maxwellsche Theorie hatte mit ihrer Vereinigung von Elektrizität und Magnetismus die Physik scheinbar sehr vereinfacht. In Wirklichkeit jedoch störte sie den Zusammenhalt in der Physik, indem sie den Apfel der Zwietracht in das Galilei-Newtonsche Weltbild des Universums hineinschmuggelte. Eine eingehendere Untersuchung — sowohl theoretisch, wie...
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Der menschliche Geist hat eine natürliche Vorliebe für Symmetrie. Seit der Antike versuchen die Physiker, die Mechanismen der Natur durch einfache Symmetrien zu zerlegen. Überraschenderweise wurde dieses Konzept oft von Erfolg gekrönt. Die theoretische Vorhersage der „Antiteilchen“, kurz darauf gefolgt von ihrer experimentellen Entdeckung, ist in d...
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Die Wissenschaft besteht aus Theorien und Experimenten (bzw. im Fall der Astronomie aus Beobachtungen), die manchmal in einem gesunden Wettstreit gegeneinander antreten, und die abwechselnd die Siege davontragen. Die Neutronensterne bilden ein besonders schönes Beispiel, wo die theoretische Vorhersage der Entdeckung durch die Beobachtung voranging.

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