Timeline of space scientists
(1879–1955)
Germany
1879
1900
Subrahmanyan
Chandrasekhar (1910–1995)
Pakistan
1910
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin (1900–1979)
England
Albert Einstein
Bonus 2
Jocelyn Bell Burnell (born 1943)
Northern Ireland
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) England
Katherine Johnson (1918–2020)
1942 1943 3
United States
1918
CHAPTER 100 years in space
The universe began almost 14 billion years ago as the result of a huge explosion known as the “big bang”. So 100 years is no time at all when we think of space! But in the last 100 years, we’ve learnt a great deal about the galaxies that surround us. We’ve discovered that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. We’ve found out about black holes and pulsars, and that stars are made of different stuff to planets.
This book takes a closer look at some of the amazing scientists of the last 100 years, and how their exciting discoveries changed the way we see space.
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The big bang
This is the name for the giant explosion at the beginning of the universe, about 14 billion years ago. The explosion caused tiny bits of light and energy to form atoms. Those atoms clustered as stars, comets, asteroids and planets.
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Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein is probably the most famous scientist who ever lived! He was born in Germany in 1879. As a boy, he was always asking questions and trying to make sense of the world. As a young man, Einstein studied maths and science in Switzerland.
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In 1905, when he was in his twenties, Einstein came up with his first big idea, “special relativity”. In 1915, he shared his next big idea, “general relativity”.
Einstein’s ideas amazed other scientists because they were new ways of looking at the universe. Before Einstein, scientists thought that some things are just true and don’t change, like the speed that things move or the way that gravity works. Einstein disagreed! Gravity
Gravity is the force that pulls one thing to another thing. On Earth, gravity stops us from floating into the sky. It also means that if you drop a plate, it will crash to the floor!
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