György Paál (
Budapest
Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...
, 1934 – Budapest, 1992)
was a
Hungarian astronomer
An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses their studies on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. They observe astronomical objects such as stars, planets, moons, comets and galaxies – in either ...
and
cosmologist
Cosmology () is a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe. The term ''cosmology'' was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount's ''Glossographia'', and in 1731 taken up in Latin by German philosopher ...
.
Work
In the late 1950s Paál studied the
quasar and
galaxy cluster
A galaxy cluster, or a cluster of galaxies, is a structure that consists of anywhere from hundreds to thousands of galaxies that are bound together by gravity, with typical masses ranging from 1014 to 1015 solar masses. They are the second-lar ...
distributions. In 1970 from
redshift quantization
Redshift quantization, also referred to as redshift periodicity, redshift discretization, preferred redshifts and redshift-magnitude bands, is the hypothesis that the redshifts of cosmologically distant objects (in particular galaxies and quasars) ...
he came up with the idea that the
Universe
The universe is all of space and time and their contents, including planets, stars, galaxies, and all other forms of matter and energy. The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological description of the development of the universe. ...
might have nontrivial
topological
In mathematics, topology (from the Greek words , and ) is concerned with the properties of a geometric object that are preserved under continuous deformations, such as stretching, twisting, crumpling, and bending; that is, without closing ...
structure.
[
]
These are the oldest papers that associate real observations with the possibility that our universe could have nontrivial topology.
Membership
Cosmological Committee of
IAU
The International Astronomical Union (IAU; french: link=yes, Union astronomique internationale, UAI) is a nongovernmental organisation with the objective of advancing astronomy in all aspects, including promoting astronomical research, outreach ...
Awards
László Detre award.
See also
*
Accelerating universe
Observations show that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, such that the velocity at which a distant galaxy recedes from the observer is continuously increasing with time. The accelerated expansion of the universe was discovered duri ...
*
Cosmological constant
In cosmology, the cosmological constant (usually denoted by the Greek capital letter lambda: ), alternatively called Einstein's cosmological constant,
is the constant coefficient of a term that Albert Einstein temporarily added to his field eq ...
*
Dark energy
In physical cosmology and astronomy, dark energy is an unknown form of energy that affects the universe on the largest scales. The first observational evidence for its existence came from measurements of supernovas, which showed that the univ ...
*
Redshift quantization
Redshift quantization, also referred to as redshift periodicity, redshift discretization, preferred redshifts and redshift-magnitude bands, is the hypothesis that the redshifts of cosmologically distant objects (in particular galaxies and quasars) ...
*
Universe
The universe is all of space and time and their contents, including planets, stars, galaxies, and all other forms of matter and energy. The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological description of the development of the universe. ...
*
Shape of the universe
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Paal, Gyorgy
20th-century Hungarian astronomers
Cosmologists
1934 births
1992 deaths