Beginning Of The Universe

1962 Words8 Pages
BEGINNING OF THE UNIVERSE Down the ages, the universe and the celestial bodies have always challenged the great minds. Ancient philosophers believed the earth to be at the centre of the universe, around which everything else in the universe revolved. They even thought the earth to be flat. And all ancient civilizations attributed the beginning of the universe to an act of God. To understand the creation of the universe, man had to first learn a lot about the earth and the solar system, the idea of galaxies, and so on. In the 5th century, the great Indian mathematician and astronomer Aryabhatta established that the earth rotates about its own axis and also that it revolves around the sun. The Western world remained ignorant about his work and continued to believe that the earth is at the centre of the universe. However, the brilliant work of Nicholas Copernicus in the 15th century, followed by the works of Galileo, Johannes Kepler, Tycho Brahe and others established how the planets orbit the sun. Thus, the sun now occupied the pride of place at the centre of what was known as the universe at that time. With the development of better telescopes and other tools, our knowledge about the universe increased. By the beginning of twentieth century, the picture of our galaxy became quite clear. Today we know that the sun is just a star among billions of other stars in the Milky Way Galaxy, which itself is just one among billions of other galaxies. Moreover, we know that the sun is not even at the centre of the galaxy, let alone at the centre of the universe. There are several modern theories about the beginning of the universe and its future. Of them, scientists currently think that the big bang theory offers the best explanation. This theory was proposed when scientists concluded that the universe is expanding. Before we go into further details about the big bang

More about Beginning Of The Universe

Open Document