"TRIUMPHS OF 20TH CENTURY ASTRONOMY"
Any science can be divided along three themes: What
do we know about the
world? How do we know it? And, why are things
the way they are, rather than
some other way? Many of the major achievements
of the past century of
astronomical research belong to the middle category:
How do we know the stars
run on nuclear energy? How do we know that the
universe is expanding and
went through a hot, dense phase? How do we know
there are black holes in
the centers of galaxies? How do we know what everything
is made of?
The talk will explore some of these themes and where
our knowledge has come
to be in the year 2001.