This highly personal account of evolution of cosmology spans a period of approximately six decades 1959–2017. It begins when in 1959 the author, as an undergraduate at Cambridge, was attracted to the subject by the thought provoking lectures by Fred Hoyle as well as by his popular books The Nature of Universe and The Frontiers of Astronomy. The result was that after a successful performance at the Mathematical Tripos (Part III) examination, he enrolled as a research student of Hoyle. In this article the author describes the interesting works in cosmology that kept him busy both in Cambridge and in India. The issues pertinent to cosmological research in the 1960s and 1970s included the Mach’s principle, the Wheeler-Feynman theory relating the local electromagnetic arrow of time to the cosmological one, the observational tests of specific expanding universe models, and issues like singularity in quantum cosmology. However, post-1965, the nature of cosmological research changed dramatically with the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR). Given the assumption that the CMBR is a relic of big bang there has been a host of papers on the early universe, going as close to the big bang as the very early universe would permit: around just 10⁻³⁶ s. The author argues that despite the popularity of the standard hot big bang cosmology (SBBC) it rests on rather shaky foundations. On the theoretical side there is no well established physical framework to support the SBBC; nor is there independent observational support for its assumptions like the nonbaryonic dark matter, inflation and dark energy. While technological progress has made it possible to explore the universe in greater detail with open mind, today’s cosmologists seem caught in a range of speculations in support of the big bang dogma. Thus, in modern times cosmology appears to have lost the Camelot spirit encouraging adventurous studies of the unknown. A spirit of openness is advocated to restore cosmology to its rightful position as the flagship of astronomy.

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从六十年的个人经历中可以看出现代宇宙学的发展

这种对宇宙学演化的高度个人化的描述跨越了1959年至2017年的大约六十年。它始于1959年，当时在剑桥大学就读的作者因弗雷德·霍伊尔（Fred Hoyle）的发人深省的演讲以及他的热门著作《宇宙的本质》和《天文学的前沿》而被吸引。结果是，在数学三重奏中获得成功的表演之后（第三部分）考试，他被选为Hoyle的研究学生。在本文中，作者描述了有趣的宇宙学著作，这些著作使他在剑桥和印度都很忙。与1960年代和1970年代的宇宙学研究有关的问题包括马赫原理，惠勒-费曼理论将局部电磁时间箭头与宇宙学联系起来，对特定膨胀宇宙模型的观测测试以及诸如量子宇宙学中的奇异性等问题。但是，在1965年以后，随着宇宙微波背景辐射（CMBR）的发现，宇宙学研究的性质发生了巨大变化。假设CMBR是大爆炸的遗物，那么早有大量关于早期宇宙的论文，它在非常早期的宇宙所允许的范围内接近大爆炸：仅约10⁻³⁶ s。作者认为，尽管标准的热大爆炸宇宙学（SBBC）流行，但它还是建立在不稳定的基础上。从理论上讲，没有完善的物理框架可以支持SBBC。它的假设，如非重子流暗物质，膨胀和暗能量，也没有独立的观测支持。尽管技术的进步使我们有可能以开放的心态更详细地探索宇宙，但当今的宇宙学家似乎陷入了一系列支持大爆炸教条的猜测。因此，在现代，宇宙学似乎已经失去了卡米洛特精神，这鼓励了对未知事物的冒险研究。提倡开放精神，将宇宙学恢复为天文学的旗舰地位。