11 Cosmology and astrophysics

11.1 Modern Astronomy’s Development

The age of modern astronomy began in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when the telescope became not only an instrument of navigation but also a tool for mapping the cosmos. From William Herschel’s star surveys to the spectral analysis of starlight, this period transformed astronomy from positional cataloguing into astrophysics — the physics of celestial bodies.

11.1.1 William Herschel and the Mapping of the Milky Way

William Herschel (1738–1822) was originally a musician from Hanover who emigrated to England. Fascinated by optics, he constructed his own reflecting telescopes, some of the largest of his time.

On March 13, 1781, he discovered Uranus, the first planet to be found in recorded history beyond the five visible to the naked eye. This discovery expanded the boundaries of the Solar System and demonstrated that the sky still held secrets awaiting discovery.

Herschel’s ambition, however, went beyond planets. With his sister Caroline Herschel — herself the discoverer of multiple comets — he undertook systematic surveys of the night sky. Night after night, they counted and catalogued thousands of stars and nebulae. From these counts, William attempted to draw a crude “map” of the Milky Way, hypothesizing that our Solar System lay within a disk of stars.

Though limited by the extinction of starlight through interstellar dust (unknown at the time), Herschel’s work marked the beginning of statistical astronomy: the idea that large-scale surveys could reveal the structure of the universe.

11.1.2 The Rise of Spectral Analysis

Until the mid-nineteenth century, the stars were essentially mysterious lights: their distances were immeasurable, their compositions unknowable. This changed dramatically with the discovery of spectroscopy.

Joseph von Fraunhofer had observed in 1814 that the Sun’s spectrum contained hundreds of dark absorption lines. Later, in the 1850s, Gustav Kirchhoff and Robert Bunsen identified these lines with specific chemical elements. Each element leaves a characteristic “fingerprint” in light, allowing scientists to determine the chemical composition of distant objects without ever touching them.

This was revolutionary: for the first time, humanity could read the “DNA of the stars.”

From this point forward, astronomy merged with physics and chemistry, becoming astrophysics. The Sun and stars were revealed to contain hydrogen, helium, and heavier elements, overturning the ancient belief that heavenly bodies were made of some perfect, incorruptible “aether.”

11.1.3 The Energy Problem of Stars

By the late nineteenth century, a profound mystery arose: what powers the Sun and stars?

The gravitational contraction model, proposed by Hermann von Helmholtz and Lord Kelvin, suggested that the Sun shines because it is slowly contracting under its own gravity. The potential energy released would indeed produce heat, but calculations showed this would only allow the Sun to shine for about 20 million years. Yet geological and biological evidence already suggested that Earth, and life upon it, was far older — hundreds of millions, even billions of years.

This paradox foreshadowed the inadequacy of classical physics to explain stellar energy.

11.1.4 The Quantum and Relativistic Revolution

The solution came only in the twentieth century, through the convergence of nuclear physics and Einstein’s relativity. The mass–energy equivalence,

demonstrated that tiny amounts of mass could be converted into enormous amounts of energy. Nuclear fusion — the fusion of hydrogen into helium in stellar cores — was eventually recognized as the process that powers the stars. But before that breakthrough, the energy problem haunted astrophysics for decades, driving the search for new physics.

11.1.5 A Timeline of Key Developments (18th–19th Century)

11.1.6 Reflection

The nineteenth century thus transformed astronomy. It ceased to be merely “the geometry of the heavens” and became a physical science concerned with the life, composition, and dynamics of stars. The mysteries remaining — the nature of galaxies, the structure of the universe, the fate of stars — would dominate the next century of research.

This was the dawn of astrophysics.

11.2 General Relativity and the First Cosmological Models

The dawn of the twentieth century brought an upheaval in both physics and astronomy. Newtonian gravity had explained the motions of planets and comets for over two centuries, but it began to show cracks. The most famous was the anomalous precession of Mercury’s orbit, which stubbornly resisted explanation. A new theory of gravity was needed — and Albert Einstein provided it in 1915 with the General Theory of Relativity.

11.2.1 Einstein’s Curved Spacetime

Einstein’s key insight was that gravity is not a force in the Newtonian sense, but a manifestation of the curvature of spacetime itself. Matter tells spacetime how to curve, and spacetime tells matter how to move.

The fundamental equation of general relativity is the Einstein field equation:

where

• $G_{\mu\nu}$ is the Einstein tensor, describing spacetime curvature,
• $\Lambda$ is the cosmological constant,
• $T_{\mu\nu}$ is the stress–energy tensor, describing matter and energy.

This equation allowed for solutions describing entire universes, not just planets or stars.

11.2.2 The Cosmological Constant and Einstein’s “Greatest Blunder”

When Einstein first applied his theory to the universe as a whole in 1917, he assumed that the cosmos must be static and eternal. However, his equations naturally predicted either expansion or contraction. To enforce stability, he introduced an extra term, the cosmological constant $\Lambda$, which counteracted gravity on cosmic scales.

Later discoveries would reveal that the universe is expanding. Einstein reportedly called his introduction of $\Lambda$ his “greatest blunder.” Yet in modern cosmology, the cosmological constant has returned — reinterpreted as dark energy, the driver of cosmic acceleration.

11.2.3 Alexander Friedmann and Dynamic Universes

In 1922, the Russian mathematician Alexander Friedmann derived solutions to Einstein’s equations without assuming a static universe. He showed that if the universe is homogeneous and isotropic, then its scale factor $a(t)$ evolves in time according to what we now call the Friedmann equations:

where $\rho$ is the matter density, $p$ is pressure, and $k$ describes spatial curvature.

Friedmann’s work implied that the universe could be expanding or contracting — a radical departure from the static model.

11.2.4 Georges Lemaître and the “Primeval Atom”

Independently, in 1927, the Belgian priest and physicist Georges Lemaître proposed that the universe is expanding. He even suggested that it originated from a “primeval atom” — an explosive beginning that presaged the Big Bang theory. At first, his ideas were met with skepticism, especially from Einstein, who told him: “Your calculations are correct, but your physics is abominable.”

Ironically, history would vindicate Lemaître, as observations soon confirmed his vision.

11.2.5 The 1919 Eclipse and Eddington’s Expedition

General relativity would have remained a mathematical curiosity had it not been for a daring experiment. During the solar eclipse of May 29, 1919, British astronomer Arthur Eddington led expeditions to Principe (off the coast of Africa) and Sobral (Brazil) to measure the deflection of starlight by the Sun’s gravity.

Einstein had predicted a deflection of 1.75 arcseconds, twice the Newtonian expectation. Eddington’s measurements agreed with Einstein’s theory, and the results made front-page news around the world. Einstein became an international celebrity overnight, and general relativity gained empirical legitimacy.

11.2.6 Key Milestones (1915–1930)

11.2.7 Reflection

By the 1930s, the stage was set for a profound reimagining of the cosmos. The universe was no longer a static backdrop; it was a dynamic entity, potentially with a beginning. The tools of general relativity provided a new language to describe it. Soon, observational astronomers — most famously Edwin Hubble — would supply the decisive evidence.

This was the birth of cosmology as a modern scientific discipline.

11.3 Discovery of Galaxies and Hubble’s Law

With Einstein’s theory predicting dynamic universes and Friedmann–Lemaître models suggesting expansion, the crucial question became: what does the universe actually look like? In the early 20th century, astronomers did not even agree on the nature of the so-called “spiral nebulae.” Were they clouds of gas inside the Milky Way, or entire galaxies beyond our own?

11.3.1 The Shapley–Curtis Debate (1920)

In 1920, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences hosted the “Great Debate” between two prominent astronomers:

• Harlow Shapley, who argued that the Milky Way was the entirety of the universe, and the spiral nebulae were relatively nearby gas clouds. He had measured the distribution of globular clusters and concluded that the Milky Way was vastly larger than previously thought — hundreds of thousands of light-years in size.
• Heber Curtis, who insisted that spiral nebulae like Andromeda were in fact “island universes” — galaxies comparable in size to the Milky Way, lying millions of light-years away.

At the time, evidence was inconclusive. Photographs showed spiral nebulae, but their distances were unknown. The debate highlighted the uncertainty of cosmic scale.

11.3.2 Edwin Hubble and the Andromeda Breakthrough

The answer came from Edwin Hubble at the Mount Wilson Observatory in California, home to the 100-inch Hooker telescope — the largest in the world at that time. In 1923–24, Hubble identified Cepheid variable stars in the Andromeda Nebula (M31). Thanks to Henrietta Leavitt’s earlier discovery of the period–luminosity relation for Cepheids, Hubble could calculate their distances.

The result: Andromeda was more than 2 million light-years away — far beyond the boundaries of the Milky Way. This discovery settled the debate: the spiral nebulae were indeed external galaxies. The universe was suddenly much larger than anyone had imagined.

11.3.3 The Expanding Universe: Hubble’s Law (1929)

Hubble did not stop there. Using the redshifts measured by Vesto Melvin Slipher — who had noted that most spiral nebulae were receding — Hubble compared recession velocity $v$ with distance $d$ to galaxies. In 1929, he published the striking linear relation:

where $H_{0}$ is the Hubble constant.

This was the first observational evidence that the universe is expanding. It provided strong support for the dynamic cosmological models of Friedmann and Lemaître, and laid the observational foundation of modern cosmology.

11.3.4 Hubble’s Humility (or Lack Thereof)

Though often credited solely to Hubble, it is worth remembering that Slipher had measured the vast majority of the galaxy redshifts, and Lemaître had derived the linear relation from general relativity before Hubble’s publication. Nonetheless, Hubble’s synthesis of distance and velocity data made the case compelling.

Ironically, Hubble himself was reluctant to embrace the “expanding universe” interpretation; he preferred to present the data without strong cosmological claims. It was Lemaître who explicitly connected the dots: the universe itself was stretching.

11.3.5 Timeline of the Great Expansion

11.3.6 Reflection

By the early 1930s, humanity’s conception of the cosmos had exploded outward. The Milky Way was just one galaxy among billions. Space itself was expanding, carrying galaxies apart. For the first time, science suggested not only that the universe had a structure, but also that it had a history.

The next natural question arose: if the universe is expanding, what was its beginning? The seeds of the Big Bang theory had been planted.

11.4 Cosmic Microwave Background and the Big Bang Theory

The discovery of the expanding universe raised a profound question: what is its origin? Did the cosmos exist forever, or did it have a beginning in time? Competing theories emerged in the mid–20th century — most prominently the Big Bang model and the Steady-State theory. The decisive evidence would come from the faint afterglow of the early universe: the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB).

11.4.1 George Gamow and the Prediction of a Relic Radiation

In the 1940s, the Russian–American physicist George Gamow, together with his students Ralph Alpher and Robert Herman, investigated the conditions of a hot, dense early universe. Their calculations showed that if the universe began in a hot primordial fireball, it would have cooled as it expanded. Residual radiation from this epoch should still fill space today, but at a very low temperature — just a few degrees above absolute zero.

They predicted a uniform microwave radiation permeating the cosmos: a fossil echo of the Big Bang itself.

At the time, the idea attracted little attention. Many astronomers favored the Steady-State model proposed by Fred Hoyle, Hermann Bondi, and Thomas Gold, in which the universe had no beginning and continuously created matter to maintain constant density as it expanded. Hoyle even coined the term “Big Bang” as a derisive joke during a BBC radio broadcast.

11.4.2 Penzias, Wilson, and the Pigeon Incident (1965)

Two decades later, in 1965, engineers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson were testing a sensitive microwave antenna at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in New Jersey. They encountered a persistent background noise — excess radio static that would not go away. They tried everything to eliminate it, even removing pigeon nests and cleaning droppings from the antenna. Yet the noise remained.

Unbeknownst to them, a group at Princeton University led by Robert Dicke was searching for precisely such a cosmic background radiation. When the two teams compared notes, it became clear: Penzias and Wilson had stumbled upon the very glow predicted by Gamow and his collaborators.

For this discovery, Penzias and Wilson received the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics.

11.4.3 Properties of the Cosmic Microwave Background

The CMB is observed today as an almost perfectly uniform blackbody spectrum at a temperature of

Its spectrum, measured precisely by the COBE satellite in 1992 and later by WMAP and Planck, matches the theoretical prediction of relic radiation from a hot early universe. Tiny fluctuations in its temperature — on the order of $10^{-5}$ — encode information about the density variations that seeded galaxies and large-scale structure.

11.4.4 The End of the Steady-State Theory

The detection of the CMB provided decisive evidence against the Steady-State model. No static or eternal universe could produce such a pervasive blackbody radiation field. Instead, the cosmos bore the fingerprint of a fiery beginning. The Big Bang model moved from speculation to the standard paradigm.

11.4.5 Key Milestones

11.4.6 Reflection

The Cosmic Microwave Background is often called the “afterglow of creation.” It allows us to peer back almost 14 billion years, to when the universe was just 380,000 years old and matter and radiation first decoupled. Its discovery cemented the Big Bang as the prevailing model of cosmology.

From this foundation, cosmologists could ask deeper questions: How do stars and galaxies form out of primordial fluctuations? What is the geometry of the universe? What drives its ultimate fate?

11.5 The Life and Death of Stars

While cosmology grapples with the universe as a whole, astrophysics turns to its most fundamental constituents: the stars. Stars are not eternal; they are born, evolve, and die according to the inexorable laws of nuclear physics and gravitation. Understanding stellar evolution became one of the crowning achievements of twentieth-century astrophysics.

11.5.1 Star Formation: From Gas Clouds to Protostars

Stars form within giant molecular clouds — cold, dense regions of interstellar gas and dust. Small perturbations, perhaps triggered by supernova shocks or galactic collisions, cause regions to collapse under their own gravity. Conservation of angular momentum leads to the formation of rotating protostellar disks, where matter accretes onto the central core.

As density and temperature rise, the collapsing cloud transitions into a protostar. Once the core temperature reaches roughly $10^7$ K, nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium ignites, and the star takes its place on the main sequence of the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram.

11.5.2 The Hertzsprung–Russell Diagram

In the early 20th century, Ejnar Hertzsprung and Henry Norris Russell independently plotted stars according to luminosity versus surface temperature (or spectral class). The resulting diagram revealed striking patterns:

• Main Sequence: a diagonal band where most stars, including the Sun, reside.
• Giants and Supergiants: luminous, cooler stars in the upper right.
• White Dwarfs: hot but dim remnants in the lower left.

This diagram became a map of stellar evolution, showing how stars change throughout their lifetimes.

11.5.3 Nuclear Fusion and Stellar Stability

The Sun and similar stars shine because of hydrogen fusion in their cores:

releasing about 26.7 MeV of energy per helium nucleus. This process maintains hydrostatic equilibrium: the outward pressure of radiation balances the inward pull of gravity.

For more massive stars, additional fusion pathways ignite — carbon, neon, oxygen, silicon — building heavier elements up to iron. Iron represents a dead end: fusing it consumes energy rather than releasing it.

11.5.4 The Deaths of Stars

A star’s fate depends primarily on its mass:

1. Low-Mass Stars ($< 8 M_{\odot}$)

   • Exhaust hydrogen → become red giants.
   • Shed outer layers as planetary nebulae.
   • Leave behind white dwarfs, supported by electron degeneracy pressure.

2. Intermediate-Mass Stars

   • Can ignite heavier elements, but still end as white dwarfs.

3. Massive Stars ($> 8 M_{\odot}$)

   • Undergo core collapse when iron builds up.
   • Explode as Type II supernovae, dispersing heavy elements into space.
   • Remnants: neutron stars (supported by neutron degeneracy pressure) or black holes (if mass exceeds the Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff limit).

11.5.5 Stellar Remnants: White Dwarfs, Neutron Stars, Black Holes

• White Dwarfs: Compact stars about the size of Earth, mass near the Chandrasekhar limit ($\approx 1.4 M_{\odot}$). No fusion, cooling slowly over billions of years.
• Neutron Stars: Ultra-dense remnants, only about 20 km across but with solar mass. Many observed as pulsars, emitting beams of radio waves.
• Black Holes: Objects with escape velocity exceeding the speed of light, predicted by relativity and now confirmed observationally.

11.5.6 Timeline of Stellar Physics

11.5.7 Reflection

The story of stellar evolution is not just about individual stars — it is the story of cosmic recycling. Supernovae seed the interstellar medium with heavy elements, from carbon in our bodies to iron in our blood. Carl Sagan’s phrase is scientifically accurate: “We are made of star stuff.”

The life and death of stars connect the microcosm of nuclear physics to the macrocosm of galaxies and cosmology. Without stellar evolution, the universe would be sterile and dark.

11.6 Supernovae and the Origin of the Elements

The death of massive stars is among the most violent events in the universe. Yet these cosmic explosions, known as supernovae, are not mere cataclysms: they are the furnaces in which the heavy elements of the periodic table are forged. Without them, planets and life as we know it could not exist.

11.6.1 Chandrasekhar’s Limit and the Fate of White Dwarfs

In 1931, the young Indian physicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar calculated that electron degeneracy pressure could only support a white dwarf up to a maximum mass of about

Above this threshold, collapse is inevitable. At the time, this result provoked fierce debate with Sir Arthur Eddington, who resisted the idea that nature could produce such bizarre states of matter. Later observations of Type Ia supernovae would vindicate Chandrasekhar’s theory: these supernovae result when a white dwarf accretes mass from a companion star, surpasses the Chandrasekhar limit, and undergoes runaway carbon fusion, disrupting the star completely.

11.6.2 Core-Collapse Supernovae: The Death of Massive Stars

Massive stars ($> 8 M_{\odot}$) undergo successive stages of fusion, producing heavier elements in onion-like shells: hydrogen, helium, carbon, neon, oxygen, silicon, and finally iron. Since fusing iron does not release energy, once an iron core forms, the star can no longer support itself.

The core collapses in less than a second, reaching nuclear densities. Electrons and protons combine into neutrons, releasing a flood of neutrinos. The outer layers rebound and are blasted outward in a titanic explosion — a core-collapse (Type II) supernova.

These explosions can outshine entire galaxies, releasing as much energy in a few weeks as the Sun will in its entire lifetime.

11.6.3 Nucleosynthesis: Making the Elements

Supernovae are the forges of the heavy elements. During the explosion:

• Elements up to iron are produced in stellar fusion prior to collapse.
• Heavier elements (copper, silver, gold, uranium, etc.) are synthesized through rapid neutron capture — the r-process — in the extreme environment of the explosion.

This is the cosmic origin of the chemical diversity of the universe. Without supernova nucleosynthesis, the periodic table would end at iron.

11.6.4 Observational Supernovae: From Tycho to SN 1987A

Supernovae have been observed throughout history:

• Tycho’s Supernova (SN 1572): observed by Tycho Brahe, challenging the Aristotelian belief in unchanging heavens.
• Kepler’s Supernova (SN 1604): the last naked-eye supernova in our galaxy.
• SN 1987A: a spectacular event in the Large Magellanic Cloud, detected in both visible light and neutrinos, confirming the theory of core-collapse mechanisms.

Supernovae thus serve as laboratories for both nuclear and particle physics.

11.6.5 Type Ia Supernovae as Cosmic Yardsticks

Because Type Ia supernovae all result from white dwarfs approaching the Chandrasekhar mass, their explosions have nearly uniform peak luminosities. This makes them “standard candles” in cosmology: by comparing intrinsic and apparent brightness, astronomers can measure distances to faraway galaxies.

In the 1990s, observations of distant Type Ia supernovae revealed that the expansion of the universe is accelerating — leading to the discovery of dark energy.

11.6.6 Timeline of Key Developments

11.6.7 Reflection

Supernovae are both destroyers and creators. They end the lives of stars, but they scatter the elements essential for life across galaxies. Every atom of calcium in our bones and iron in our blood was forged in such explosions. As Carl Sagan famously put it: “We are made of star stuff.”

Thus, the deaths of stars illuminate not only the night sky but the origins of ourselves.

11.7 Galaxies and Large-Scale Structure

Having explored the lives and deaths of stars, we now turn to their grand assemblies: galaxies. These vast systems of billions of stars, gas, dust, and dark matter are the building blocks of the universe. Understanding their structure and distribution has revealed not only the architecture of the cosmos but also some of its deepest mysteries.

11.7.1 Hubble’s Tuning Fork: Galaxy Classification

In the 1920s and 1930s, Edwin Hubble devised a morphological classification scheme for galaxies, now famously known as the Hubble tuning fork diagram. Galaxies were sorted into:

• Elliptical galaxies (E0–E7): smooth, featureless ellipsoids, ranging from nearly spherical to elongated.
• Spiral galaxies (Sa, Sb, Sc): disks with spiral arms, bulges of varying sizes, and active star formation.
• Barred spirals (SBa, SBb, SBc): spirals with central bars of stars.
• Irregular galaxies: chaotic shapes without clear structure.

Originally thought to represent an evolutionary sequence (elliptical → spiral), the diagram is now seen more as a classification tool. Yet Hubble’s system remains foundational to galactic astronomy.

11.7.2 Vera Rubin and the Dark Matter Problem

In the 1970s, astronomer Vera Rubin, working with Kent Ford, measured the rotation curves of spiral galaxies. Classical Newtonian dynamics predicted that orbital velocities should decline with distance from the galactic center, as in the Solar System. Instead, Rubin found that velocities remained flat even at large radii.

This implied the presence of unseen mass extending well beyond the visible disk. The concept of dark matter — matter that interacts gravitationally but not electromagnetically — moved from speculation to necessity. Today, dark matter is thought to constitute about 85% of the matter in the universe.

11.7.3 Clusters of Galaxies: Zwicky’s Missing Mass

Decades earlier, in the 1930s, Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky had studied the Coma Cluster of galaxies. He noticed that the galaxies moved too fast to be gravitationally bound by the visible matter alone. He coined the term “dunkle Materie” (dark matter) to describe the missing mass. At the time, his claims were largely ignored, but Rubin’s later work confirmed his prescience.

11.7.4 The Cosmic Web: Large-Scale Structure

Galaxies are not distributed randomly but arranged in filaments, walls, and voids — a vast cosmic web spanning hundreds of millions of light-years. This structure arises from the gravitational growth of tiny fluctuations in the early universe, visible today as minute anisotropies in the Cosmic Microwave Background.

Modern redshift surveys, such as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), have mapped millions of galaxies, revealing these patterns. The universe resembles a giant sponge or foam, with galaxies strung along filaments and immense voids in between.

11.7.5 Galaxy Evolution: Interactions and Mergers

Galaxies are dynamic systems. They collide, interact, and merge, often triggering starbursts or feeding central supermassive black holes. The Milky Way itself is currently cannibalizing smaller dwarf galaxies and is on a collision course with the Andromeda Galaxy — a titanic merger that will occur in about 4 billion years, transforming both into a giant elliptical galaxy.

11.7.6 Timeline of Key Developments

11.7.7 Reflection

The study of galaxies reveals that what we see — stars and glowing gas — is only the tip of the iceberg. Most of the universe’s matter is dark and invisible, shaping the cosmic web. In this way, galaxies are both islands of light and tracers of a deeper, hidden reality.

As we peer deeper into this structure, the next frontier emerges: black holes and the violent processes at the hearts of galaxies.

11.8 Black Hole Astronomy

Of all the predictions of general relativity, none seemed more fantastical than the existence of black holes — regions of spacetime so curved that nothing, not even light, can escape. Once dismissed as mathematical oddities, black holes are now central actors in astrophysics, powering quasars, shaping galaxies, and even producing detectable ripples in spacetime.

11.8.1 Theoretical Origins

The idea of a gravitational abyss predates Einstein. In the 18th century, John Michell and Pierre-Simon Laplace speculated about “dark stars” whose escape velocity exceeded the speed of light. Their reasoning, however, was rooted in Newtonian physics.

Relativity provided the rigorous framework. In 1916, Karl Schwarzschild found the first exact solution to Einstein’s field equations, describing the spacetime geometry around a point mass:

At $r = r_{s} = \frac{2GM}{c^{2}}$, the Schwarzschild radius, lies the event horizon — the boundary of no return.

Initially, even Einstein doubted these objects were physical. They seemed pathological, not astronomical.

11.8.2 Stellar Collapse and the Reality of Black Holes

In 1939, Robert Oppenheimer and Hartland Snyder showed that sufficiently massive stars, after exhausting nuclear fuel, would undergo unstoppable collapse to form black holes. This was the theoretical birth of astrophysical black holes.

For decades, the idea remained speculative. But by the 1960s and 70s, indirect evidence mounted: compact X-ray sources in binary systems like Cygnus X-1 hinted at massive, invisible companions. These became the first strong black hole candidates.

11.8.3 Supermassive Black Holes and Quasars

In 1963, Maarten Schmidt identified the optical counterpart of a strong radio source — a quasar — and realized its spectrum was highly redshifted. Quasars were both extremely distant and unimaginably luminous. The only plausible power source was accretion of matter onto a supermassive black hole millions to billions of solar masses.

Today, we know that nearly every galaxy, including the Milky Way, hosts a central supermassive black hole. The one at the Galactic Center, Sagittarius A*, has a mass of about $4 \times 10^{6} M_{\odot}$.

11.8.4 Black Holes Seen and Heard: Modern Observations

1. X-ray Binaries
   Accreting stellar-mass black holes in binary systems reveal themselves through hot, X-ray-emitting accretion disks.

2. Gravitational Waves (2015–)
   The LIGO collaboration detected spacetime ripples from merging black holes. The first event, GW150914, involved two black holes of 36 and 29 solar masses coalescing into one. This opened a new era of gravitational-wave astronomy.

3. Event Horizon Telescope (2019)
   An Earth-sized array of radio telescopes produced the first “image” of a black hole’s shadow in the galaxy M87. In 2022, the EHT collaboration released a similar image of Sagittarius A*. These achievements confirmed general relativity in the strong-gravity regime.

11.8.5 Timeline of Key Developments

11.8.6 Reflection

Once mathematical curiosities, black holes have become central laboratories for fundamental physics. They link the quantum and the cosmic, test general relativity in its most extreme domain, and influence the evolution of galaxies.

As John Wheeler put it, black holes are “the most perfect macroscopic objects in the universe,” described completely by mass, spin, and charge. Yet paradoxes remain — from Hawking radiation to the information problem — ensuring that black hole astronomy will remain a frontier for decades to come.

11.9 Dark Matter and Dark Energy

As astronomical observations grew more precise in the late 20th century, two profound mysteries emerged. First, galaxies and clusters appeared to be held together by far more mass than could be seen in stars and gas: dark matter. Second, the expansion of the universe, far from slowing down, was found to be accelerating — propelled by an unknown component now called dark energy. Together, these invisible entities dominate the universe.

11.9.1 The Dark Matter Problem

Galaxy Rotation Curves

In the 1970s, Vera Rubin and Kent Ford measured the rotation of stars in spiral galaxies. According to Newtonian dynamics, orbital velocity should decrease with distance from the galactic center:

Instead, they found flat rotation curves: velocities remained nearly constant even in the outer regions. This implied the presence of large amounts of unseen mass extending far beyond the visible disk.

Clusters of Galaxies

Decades earlier, in 1933, Fritz Zwicky studied the Coma Cluster and noted that galaxies moved too fast to be bound by the luminous matter alone. He inferred the existence of “dunkle Materie” (dark matter). Though initially ignored, his insight foreshadowed Rubin’s later, more decisive evidence.

Candidates for Dark Matter

Possible explanations include:

• Baryonic dark matter: faint stars, brown dwarfs, or MACHOs (Massive Compact Halo Objects). Observations show these cannot account for all the mass.
• Non-baryonic dark matter: hypothetical particles such as WIMPs (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles), axions, or sterile neutrinos. These remain undetected despite intense searches.

Today, dark matter is thought to make up about 27% of the universe’s energy density.

11.9.2 The Discovery of Dark Energy

In the late 1990s, two independent teams — the Supernova Cosmology Project and the High-Z Supernova Search Team — observed distant Type Ia supernovae. Instead of decelerating, the universe’s expansion appeared to be accelerating.

This astonishing result implied the presence of a repulsive energy permeating space, consistent with Einstein’s cosmological constant $\Lambda$. The term once dismissed as a blunder had returned with a vengeance.

11.9.3 The ΛCDM Model

The current “standard model” of cosmology is known as ΛCDM (Lambda Cold Dark Matter). It posits:

• 5% ordinary (baryonic) matter
• 27% dark matter
• 68% dark energy (Λ)

This model successfully explains the Cosmic Microwave Background, galaxy clustering, and large-scale structure. Yet it raises deeper questions: what is dark matter made of? What is the nature of dark energy?

11.9.4 Observational Evidence

• Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropies: measured by COBE, WMAP, and Planck, showing the imprint of dark matter on early density fluctuations.
• Gravitational lensing: light bending around galaxies reveals more mass than visible.
• Baryon Acoustic Oscillations: galaxy distributions confirm ΛCDM predictions.
• Supernovae (1998): acceleration implies dark energy.

11.9.5 Timeline of Discoveries

11.9.6 Reflection

Dark matter and dark energy together constitute 95% of the universe — yet their nature remains unknown. Ordinary matter, the atoms of planets and people, is only a cosmic afterthought. As cosmologist Sean Carroll has quipped, “Physics has discovered the recipe of the universe, but not the ingredients.”

These mysteries point toward physics beyond the Standard Model — perhaps new particles, new fields, or even modifications of gravity itself. Whatever the resolution, the answers will reshape our understanding of the cosmos.

11.10 The Frontiers of Modern Cosmology

The 21st century has brought cosmology to a crossroads. On the one hand, the ΛCDM model describes the universe with stunning accuracy. On the other, the true nature of dark matter, dark energy, and the origin of cosmic structure remain profound mysteries. Cosmologists now probe the very earliest moments of the universe, testing general relativity under extreme conditions and exploring ideas that verge on the philosophical.

11.10.1 Cosmic Inflation: A Burst Beyond Comprehension

In 1981, Alan Guth proposed the theory of cosmic inflation: an exponential expansion of space in the first fraction of a second after the Big Bang. Inflation solves key puzzles:

• Horizon problem: Why is the CMB so uniform across the sky? Inflation allows distant regions to have once been in causal contact.
• Flatness problem: Why is the universe’s spatial curvature so close to zero? Inflation drives the geometry toward flatness.
• Monopole problem: Inflation dilutes exotic relics predicted by grand unified theories.

Mathematically, inflation is described by a scalar “inflaton” field with potential energy $V(\phi)$ dominating the dynamics:

Quantum fluctuations of the inflaton stretched to cosmic scales provide the seeds of galaxy formation, observed today as anisotropies in the CMB.

11.10.2 The Multiverse Hypothesis

Some versions of inflation — notably eternal inflation — suggest that inflation never ends everywhere, but continues in different regions, spawning “bubble universes.” Each bubble could have different physical constants, laws, or even dimensions. This radical idea is known as the multiverse.

While speculative, the multiverse is taken seriously in some theoretical circles, as it may explain the apparent fine-tuning of constants (e.g., the cosmological constant problem) via anthropic reasoning. Yet, by its nature, it raises profound questions about testability and the boundaries of science.

11.10.3 Precision Cosmology: Planck and Beyond

Cosmology has become a precision science. The Planck satellite (2013) mapped the CMB with exquisite accuracy, constraining cosmological parameters to within a few percent. Key results include:

• Age of the universe: $13.80 \pm 0.02$ billion years.
• Hubble constant: $H_{0} \approx 67.4 \, \text{km/s/Mpc}$ (Planck value).
• Matter-energy composition: 5% baryons, 27% dark matter, 68% dark energy.

Tensions remain, such as the discrepancy between local measurements of $H_{0}$ (≈ 73 km/s/Mpc) and Planck’s value. This Hubble tension may hint at new physics.

Next-generation observatories like the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), Euclid, and Vera Rubin Observatory (LSST) aim to probe dark energy, early galaxies, and the cosmic dawn.

11.10.4 The Fate of the Universe

What is the ultimate destiny of the cosmos? Several scenarios exist:

1. Heat Death (Big Freeze)
   If dark energy is constant, expansion will continue forever, galaxies drift apart, stars burn out, and the universe cools into darkness.

2. Big Crunch
   If gravity eventually overcomes expansion, the universe could collapse back into a singularity. Current evidence disfavours this.

3. Big Rip
   If dark energy grows stronger over time (phantom energy), it could tear apart galaxies, stars, planets, and even atoms.

4. Cyclic Models
   Some theories propose oscillating cycles of expansion and contraction, potentially linked to quantum gravity.

At present, the ΛCDM model predicts a heat death scenario — a cosmos expanding forever into cold emptiness.

11.10.5 Timeline of Modern Cosmology

11.10.6 Reflection

Modern cosmology stands at once triumphant and humbled. We can trace the universe back to a fraction of a second after the Big Bang, yet 95% of its contents remain mysterious. We can simulate the cosmic web on supercomputers, yet we do not know why the laws of physics take their particular form.

As Stephen Hawking remarked: “My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.”

The frontiers of cosmology remind us that science is not finished — it is an unfinished story written across the stars.