http://arxiv.org/abs/1907.12297
One of the leading astronomers and theorists of his generation, Arthur Stanley Eddington was an important early proponent of the general theory of relativity in both theory and experiment. Yet when his former student Georges Lemaitre suggested in 1927 that the well-known redshifts of the spiral nebulae could be explained in terms of a relativistic expansion of space, Eddington paid no attention for three years. In this paper, we consider the reasons Lemaitre’s hypothesis attracted little attention when it was first articulated. We review several factors that have previously been discussed in the literature, from Lemaitre’s status as an early-career researcher to his decision to publish in a lesser-known journal, from the language of the article to conceptual difficulties associated with time-varying cosmologies. We discuss two new factors that have not been previously been considered, namely the technical challenge presented by Lematre’s analysis to contemporaneous readers and the preliminary nature of the observational data he used to support his model.
C. O’Raifeartaigh
Tue, 30 Jul 19
36/79
Comments: Conference paper presented at the 2019 Eddington Conference in Paris