I want to know the names of some foreign observatories and astronomers.

What are the famous observatories in the world?

A: Greenwich Observatory in Britain, Upper Provence Observatory in France, pulkovo observatory Observatory in Russia, Russian Astrophysics Observatory, Tokyo Observatory in Japan, Monaque Asia Observatory in Hawaii, Haier Observatory in the United States (Paloma Mountain Observatory and Mount Wilson Observatory), Kate Peak National Electric Power Observatory in the United States, Yekeshi Observatory in the United States, MacDonald Observatory in the United States, Intercontinental Observatory in the United States, Arecibo Observatory in the United States, Windestam Solar Observatory in Germany, Taudenberg Schwarzschild Observatory in Germany.

Famous foreign astronomers

PTolemaic

Copernicus

"Galileo"

[Name] Albert Einstein (Jewish theoretical physicist)

Tycho

Halley

newton

Kepler

Hawking

Laplace (Marquis)

Lagrange

Lematre

Messier (also translated as messier)

aristarchus

Lomonosov

William Herschel

Eddington

Edwin Hubble (Edwin Hubble)

Karl Gutt Jansky

Gerald Gerard Kuiper.

Subrahmanyan chandrasekhar ().

Explore the story of astronomers:

Royal astronomer Reese: Why is space so fascinating?

Astronomers can see the past of a certain moment.

On September 25th, Professor martin rees welcomed reporters at the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge. From the beginning, he said sincerely and enthusiastically, "Do you know? What fascinates children most in the world are dinosaurs and space. "

He obviously knows the fascinating power of astronomy.

However, after graduating from pure mathematics, he did not think about astronomy.

Later, he met the astronomer Dennis Siam of Cambridge University and became his doctoral student-Siam is famous for cultivating many famous modern cosmologists, including Stephen Hawking.

"At that time, I didn't know what to do in the future. I thought of statistics, economics and astronomy. As a result, I decided that I don't like abstract things, and I prefer to know the ins and outs of things ... "

He said that he caught up with a good opportunity, because in the 1960 s, a number of historic and important discoveries appeared in physics, Newton's traditional theory was attacked, Einstein's modern theory was proved, and the academic predecessors' leading edge over the younger generation was weakened, and the younger generation was able to launch academic competitions in a more equal environment.

So, what effect does luck have on the path of scientists?

"My luck lies in choosing a field where new discoveries have just appeared," he said. "Because new discoveries mean new problems, and may inspire new skills and methods, which are new to both predecessors and future generations. Everyone is on the same starting line. As long as they take the lead in solving problems, they can lay a professional reputation. "

The Institute of Astronomy of Cambridge University has been one of the research centers of astronomy in the world since the great Newton worked here (it is said that the descendants of the apple tree that led Newton to discover gravity still stand in the original position).

In the past 300 years, the development of astronomy has been ups and downs, and now it has entered a new exciting period, because we have more powerful telescopes and higher-speed computers. For example, the most powerful telescopes can see galaxies 65.438+0.2 billion light-years away from the Earth.

But according to the definition of light years, what we see is the scene after 654.38+0.2 billion years. Who knows if that galaxy still exists at this moment?

"That's right," Professor Rees smiled. "What we saw was really a long time ago. Our job is to infer what is happening from these scenes, because we believe that the evolution of the universe should be similar.

What we have to do now is to try to explain what we have seen.

The evolution of the earth is only 3 billion years, which is still very short compared with the universe. We try to put this process in a broader and longer background of the evolution of the universe, hoping to finally calculate the time of BIGBANG.

There is a difference between astronomers and geologists. Geologists can only identify the specific age by fossils that are not necessarily complete, but astronomers can indeed see the scene at a certain moment in the past, which is also the charm of astronomy. "

He went on to say that another charm of astronomy is that it can test the laws of nature that we are already familiar with in extreme environments. After all, these laws were discovered and summarized on the earth.

"Post-human" and Our Last Century

He said that with the gradual deepening of our understanding of the universe, our views on many basic concepts have changed accordingly.

Take time as an example. It is generally believed that the life span of the sun is 9.6 billion years. Now that we have just entered the prime of life, our life span is still half, and the life span of the universe may be infinite. If so, we will have a new understanding of the position of human beings in the whole biological evolution chain. Maybe we are not the end of evolution, but an intermediate product, so we should consider "post-human".

According to Professor Reese's thinking, the first question is whether human beings will self-destruct for various reasons, such as the misuse of science, and this thinking has become his new book "Our Last Century" launched this spring.

This book is a sensation.

From the title alone, it does smack of doomsday prophecy.

"There was a question mark behind the original title, but the bookseller removed it." Professor Reese is a little helpless.

In fact, what the book says is mainly the disasters that human beings may cause to themselves, such as nuclear weapons.

"This is a very crucial century, because for the first time in history, human beings have mastered the power to destroy their own civilization, and at the same time have the ability to develop this civilization. Whether this civilization can survive is in our own hands. "

However, where is the boundary between the wrong use of science and the correct use of science?

"To tell you the truth, I don't know!" Professor Rees said, "I hope my book can help people think about this problem."

"As you said, the existing equipment can already see galaxies far away. Why do you want a manned flight plan? This is both costly and risky. What is its ultimate goal? Immigrants? "

"I don't think we can immigrate on a large scale," he said, "because the environment of the planet we already know is not very comfortable, either like the poles of the earth or like the depths of the ocean. This is not a good place! But I am sure and hope that in 50 to 100 years, there will be a group of people living on other planets as explorers.

It is hoped that the number of these people will not be too small. It is better for more and more countries to master this technology, so that explorers have the opportunity to form a community to discuss various issues of alien life. "

"Therefore, manned flight is an adventure."

"Yes," he said, "but I prefer to look at this problem from two aspects: in the short term, it is true that many things can be done by robots, but in the very long term, if the technology developed by the United States and Russia dies, it will be too sad.

It is a good thing that other countries, including China, plan to send their astronauts into space. "

"As you said, astronomy has always been very attractive, but topics such as BIGBANG, white dwarfs and asteroid impacts will also make people worry. Can you give us some guarantees? "

Professor Reese smiled. "You shouldn't worry.

Because we already know that the probability of this event happening today is not higher than at any time in the past, and the probability of catching an asteroid hitting the earth in our lifetime is only about one in 20,000.

What worries me more is the risks generated by human beings themselves, such as nuclear war, biological disaster or ecological crisis caused by overheating of the earth.

We now have better technology for asteroids hitting the earth, which will help to discover its possibility and even destroy it.

Relatively speaking, we should pay more attention to people's behavior, which is a more real risk. "

Scientists have the responsibility to explain to the public what they are doing.

For many years, Professor martin rees has been actively participating in popular science work and writing articles for newspapers and periodicals. Five of his seven monographs belong to popular science and won the american physical society Prize for Scientific Writing.

Before our last century, his latest work was Our Cosmic Habitat, for which a colleague warmly praised him as "perhaps not the only galaxy guide, but he must be the only one living in our galaxy".

However, popular science work is only his sideline, and he also works in many famous academic research institutions: in fact, he has not given up his research on high-energy astrophysics, the formation of the structure of the universe and the philosophy of the universe, and remains one of the most respected astronomers in the world.

"I think it is very important for scientists to communicate their findings with the public," he said. "In some fields, participation in popular science work may have a positive or negative impact on academic reputation, but in the field of astronomy, as a subject involving public interests, many studies are funded by the public. Scientists have the responsibility to explain to the public what they are doing and let the public know the progress of their work. It is necessary for scientists to spend some time in this area, rather than just discussing it with their peers.

In my opinion, discussing with people from different industries is a very interesting experience. If my work can only be shared with a few colleagues, it will be a bit boring. "

"In addition, the public's strong interest in this topic is also good for scientists, because the public will ask some profound questions, such as what was it in the first place? Is the universe infinite? And we can't answer.

This reminds us that until now, we have not been able to answer some of the most important questions, and we are just moving towards the answers to these questions step by step. "

So, what does he think of the new upsurge of searching for evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence?

"So far, we haven't found any evidence," he said. "My personal opinion is that we don't even know how simple life came into being and how many possibilities there are. Even if there is a simple life, will it certainly become an intelligent life that we can recognize (with existing knowledge)?

So, keep an open mind. Intelligent life may be like this or like that, and there are many possibilities.

If we can't find evidence of intelligent life, it will be disappointing to some extent, but maybe we can get compensation from the following conclusion: the earth may really be the most important place in the universe, the only place where life evolved and the starting point of life in the universe. Then, 5 billion years later, life on earth may spread to distant depths of space!

Therefore, what we have done in this century is not limited to ourselves, but involves whether life on earth can spread out. "And this is also a topic we discussed in the last century.