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Anatoli Tomilin Fascinating Cosmogony
About the Book
A book of essays exploring the hypotheses devised by humankind to explain the origin of the planets, stars, and galaxies. It also looks at some of the creators of these theories—from ancient philosophers and priests through to modern astronomers, physicists, and mathematicians.
The mysteries of the universe powerfully draw humanity towards them. One of these is how the Solar System and the systems of other stars originated and developed. There have been many assumptions on this matter, but all of them were speculative in nature. It is only in our time—the era of automatic interplanetary probe flights—that we have managed to measure some things directly on celestial bodies and put forward more reliable hypotheses. This book discusses the modern view on the genesis of our world and the processes of world formation.
About the Author
A. Tomilin is an Institute lecturer and a member of the Writers’ Union. Fascinating Cosmogony is not the author’s first book. Young readers have frequently encountered his name on the pages of magazines and in scientific and artistic collections. Several works published by the Detskaya Literatura publishing house belong to him, including the book The Earth’s Sky, as well as Fascinating Astronomy and Fascinating Cosmology Molodaya Gardiya.
This new book by A. Tomilin, which the publishers offer to their readers, is also dedicated to one of the fundamental sciences of the universe.
Illustrations: V. Koovyneo
Translated from the Russian & typeset in LaTeX by Damitr Mazanav
From the Translator
This is the third book I am translating the Eureka series. The author A.N. Tomilin has written several popular science books.
Since the book was written in 1975, several speculative hypotheses presented in the book have not been sup- ported by data. To indicate this, at some places I have added sidenotes with my initials “DM”. I have also added a Postface which summarises some of the major landmarks in the themes discussed since the book was written in 1975. Mistakes and omissions (and I am sure they will be there), if any, are my own.
You can get the book here and here
This electronic version released on the web by The Mir Titles Project
Released under Creative Commons by ShareAlike 4.0 License
Contents
Translator’s Note vii
1 Introduction 1
2 When Gods Built the World 5
From Myths to Natural Philosophy 6
Ptolemy, and the Problem of the Algorithm 20
3 The Philosopher’s Universe 29
The Fulcrum 30
First True Cosmogony Hypothesis 35
The Nebular Hypothesis of Immanuel Kant 43
The Magnificent Five 48
Laplace’s System of the World 54
Exposition of the System of the World 58
4 The Decline of the Nebular Hypothesis 67
The Cosmogonic Hypothesis of Faye 69
The Duel of Darwin and Lyapunov 72
The Collapse of the Nebular Hypothesis 77
5 Planetary Cosmogony 81
The Planetesimals of Moulton–Chamberlin 82
James Jeans’s “Cigar” 85
Collapse of the “Catastrophic” Concept 91
In Search of New Paths 96
The Solar System as We Know It Today 107
6 Fresh Currents of Cosmogony 117
The Hypothesis of K. Weizsäcker 118
The Hypothesis of O. Yu. Schmidt 121
The Hypotheses of G. Gamow and J. Oort 129
The Hypothesis of J. Kuiper 134
The Hypothesis of E. Öpik 136
The Hypothesis of Alfvén and Hoyle 139
The Hypothesis of S. Vsekhsvyatsky 143
A Time to Build and a Time to Destroy 147
7 Stellar Cosmogony 159
An Ordinary Star – the Sun 162
The Theory of “Thermonuclear Fusion” 169
Stars in Assortment 185
The Classical Direction of Stellar Cosmogony 193
New Wineskins for New Wine 205
“Black” and “White Holes” of the Universe 217
So How, After All, Are Stars Born? 226
8 Cosmogony of Galaxies 237
Nebulae or Galaxies 238
Normal Galaxies Ought to Be Born in This Way 245
Magnetic Fields in Galaxies 253
How Are “Abnormal” Galaxies Born? 261
The “Time Machine” of the Universe 277
So How, After All, Are Galaxies Born? 293
In Service — New Technology 299
Conclusion 304
9 Postface – Damitr Mazanav 307
Mir Books 