Birth of Astrophysics



"The revolution that was unfolding at the dawn of twentieth century concerned the nature of stars. According to the positivist philosophers who greatly influenced European thinking in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, it was in the nature of things that we shall never know what the stars are. The discovery of the dark lines in the spectrum of the Sun and the stars by Joseph V. Fraunhofer IN 1817 AND their subsequent explanation by Gustav Kirchoff, Bunsen and others, proved the philosophers wrong. It was clear that at least the outer layers of the Sun was gaseous and made of the same atom that we find on the Earth. The subject of Astrophysics born. By the 1930s one had understood a great deal about what are the Stars and why are they as they are. And the new journey begins."

                 
                                                       #Ankistar

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