Speaker
Mr
J. de Swart
(University of Amsterdam)
Description
This contribution is a historical reflection on the rise of the dark matter hypothesis. Specifically, it focusses on understanding how the problem of dark matter came to matter in the early 1970s, decades after it had been famously introduced by Fritz Zwicky (1933). What were the conditions that brought about new conclusions on the existence of dark matter in this period? I will argue that the wide-spread belief in a closed Universe (Ω ≥ 1) played a significant role in this. The talk concludes in probing the origins of the a priori belief that the Universe should indeed be closed.
Author
Mr
J. de Swart
(University of Amsterdam)
