Brief History man and his universe
It is far time the poet Homer, while the land was limited to a part of the Mediterranean around Greece. In that time, the earth was motionless at the center of the universe and all the stars made a circle around it.
Moreover, Aristotle, 3 centuries AC, had decreed once and for all the stars, while also rotating around the earth, were hopelessly entrenched in their position.
All went well for 2000 years. No need to puzzle: the gods of mythology settled everything, replaced at the turn of the 1st century PC via a single God who confirmed geocentrism for man, the darling of God, had been installed, perched on his star in the center of the universe.
Copernicus in the sixteenth century, cast the first stone in the pond of certainty by placing the sun at the center of the universe, soon followed by Galileo and others.
Regardless, it was said, the solar system remains the center of the universe. But in the eighteenth century, a new stone in the pond: William Herschel discovered the Milky Way (VL) and its billions of suns. Regardless, he said it again: there is a rush locate the sun and its retinue of planets at the center of the LV.
In 1918, new tumble Harlow Shapley dethroned the solar system from the center of the LV for relocating in the suburbs. But at least, the NAV, which houses the solar system, is more than the center of the universe: it is the whole universe. It is a blob of stars in an infinite void.
Then in 1923, fatal blow to the VL: Edwin Hubble discovered other galaxies outside the LV. Worse, these galaxies, pockets full of billions of stars, are fleeing each other at high speed. Aristotle, who had frozen the star turns in his grave. Gradually, we discover billions of galaxies and their desperate flight reveals a world of excess.
Earth, fallen forever from the center of the universe, becomes an insignificant little planet orbiting a star very ordinary eking out a living on the outskirts of galaxy, itself lost in the vastness of the universe.
The man, who had proudly planted in the center of the universe is pitifully dethroned.
But the poor was not human after his surprise because he will soon learn:
- his world is born of a very small particle that exploded 13 billion years ago to seed the universe of stars and planets locked in galaxies launched in their mad rush toward the infinite-
his family tree goes back to the star have made its atoms;
-as his lodging, the earth was formed there are some four billion years;
-that life emerged there about 3.5 billion years, but we don ' have any idea why this occurred;
-that modern man has arisen since about 200,000 years, although we did not no further explanation for the emergence of consciousness;
- he is a newcomer to the universe and it can disappear just as the other species;
-that the universe he believed in able to decode it is becoming more and more secretive and mysterious because we do connassons nature only 4% of matter and energy it contains, 96% remained resolutely impenetrable
-than 4% this we know the nature, 3.5% remains invisible.
Ultimately, far from being discouraged by all these mysteries, we can marvel to see how man, with access to only a tiny window on the universe, still managed the feat of raising more and more corners of the veil on such mysteries, especially since the twentieth century.
There must be a distressing side in the discovery of a world of excess which is beyond our understanding, but there is an exciting side to see us gradually out of medieval darkness in which we have been locked up for so long .
The many commonalities and excellent science that we now offer astrophysicists as Reeves and Trinh Xuan Thuan, to mention but a few, we rediscover the joy of knowing that illuminated our youth.
And the pictures of this universe which gives us access to the Hubble Telescope, especially the images of nebulae, we can foresee all the beauties and wonders of our mysterious universe.
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