
Georges Lemaître, the Belgian priest who discovered the universe is expanding - okket
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/georges-lemaitre-priest-universe-expanding-big-bang-hubble-space-cosmic-egg-astronomer-physics-a8449926.html
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jvkersch
Lemaitre was also a first-rate geometer. He wrote a paper on quaternions and
elliptic geometry (geodesics on a sphere) that was published with a Latin
abstract in a journal of the Pontifical Society of the Vatican. My library
didn't have a copy, and so that was probably the only time in my life that I
had to correspond with the Vatican to get a copy :-)

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pure-awesome
At first, I read this title as

> Georges Lemaître, the Belgian priest who discovered the universe, is
> expanding

A subtle, but important, distinction.

~~~
jacobush
But given he is part of the Universe, isn't he also expanding?

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pure-awesome
As I understand it, the galaxies themselves are not really expanding in-and-of
themselves, but moving away from each other.

I suppose, though, that we are all releasing heat and carbon dioxide etc. all
the time, and the more space there is for waste and heat to radiate into, the
more the source could be said to be "expanding".

Of course, whilst you are alive, you are replenishing these particles, but
after you die, you cease to replenish them, and so perhaps it then makes sense
to talk about your constituent particles as being as much "you" as that which
is still part of the main body mass. And so, as your body is eaten away by
bacteria and worms, you are steadily carried across to far flung parts of the
earth and beyond.

Thus, as the universe heads towards being an entropic soup, the components
will be spread ever further and wider.

So, in conclusion, yes, I suppose Lemaître might be said to be expanding.

I still doubt that he should be credited as discoverer of the universe,
though.

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denzil_correa
2011 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for "for the discovery of the
accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant
supernovae".

[https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/20...](https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2011/press.html)

~~~
samatman
You may well know this, but there is a difference between (mere) expansion and
acceleration of the rate of expansion. Lemaître discovered the former,
confirmed by Hubble IIRC.

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rubenbe
Interestingly the discovery was "abused" for political purposes:

In 1951, Pope Pius XII claimed that Lemaître's theory provided a scientific
validation for Catholicism – a claim that Lemaître resented, as he stated his
theory was neutral.

~~~
jkingsbery
It was also disputed on the other side for the same reasons, see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hoyle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hoyle)
:

> He found the idea that the universe had a beginning to be pseudoscience,
> resembling arguments for a creator, "for it's an irrational process, and
> can't be described in scientific terms"

Pope Pius XII at least had the excuse of trying to speak about a field in
which he wasn't an expert.

~~~
danielam
Einstein's initial reaction was the same before he changed his mind.

However, there are two points worth making. First, that something supports or
can be used to support religious claims does not undermine that something
(evidence, argument, whatever). It would be tendentious to do so. Second,
creation as understood in Catholicism is not the same as creation in time. The
notion that the universe was created in time was given serious consideration
IIRC in the 12th century, but theologians like Aquinas held that it was not
metaphysically provable whether the universe was in fact created in time or
not. Creation as understood by theologians is creation from nothing, the
continuous creation or sustaining of things in existence. I.e., we cannot
explain the existence of things at any moment by appealing to anything about
these things themselves or to their efficient causes, and so we need to appeal
to a cause distinct from them and one which transcends the order of things.
While creation in time may appeal to certain sensibilities, it is not itself
demanded by Catholic theology.

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toolslive
note that the 'civil' in 'civil engineering' uses the 'not military' meaning
of the word. It has nothing to do with
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_engineering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_engineering)

~~~
staz
From your page

> It is considered the second-oldest engineering discipline after military
> engineering,[3] and it is defined to distinguish non-military engineering
> from military engineering.

So not sure what you intended to mean?

~~~
peatmoss
I’d guess to differentiate the civil / uncivil dichotomy from the civil(ian) /
military dichotomy.

That said, I feel that civil engineering is fairly widely understood to be a
subdicipline of engineering.

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okket
Technically it was Friedmann who first theorised that the universe could be
expanding, but Lemaître came to the same conclusion independently later.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Friedmann#Professors...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Friedmann#Professorship)

~~~
BlackFly
For the full story:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedmann%E2%80%93Lema%C3%AEtr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedmann%E2%80%93Lema%C3%AEtre%E2%80%93Robertson%E2%80%93Walker_metric#Name_and_history)

~~~
SiempreViernes
A different part of the full story:

[http://home.fnal.gov/~skent/blunder.html](http://home.fnal.gov/~skent/blunder.html)

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naveen99
Can someone explain how the universe could be expanding if space is
intertwined with time. Is spacetime expanding in meta time ?

