The Cosmic Numbers of Astronomy

The Cosmic Numbers of Astronomy are numbers which have played a key double role: they tell us about the nature of the Universe in which we live, and their discovery has often been a landmark event in the history of astronomy. The talk will discuss the Gravitational Constant, the Chandrasekhar Limit, the Schwartzschild Radius, the Hubble Constant, and Omega.

James Stein

I got my B.A. at Yale in 1962 and my Ph.D. at Berkeley in 1967, both in mathematics. I have taught at UCLA and am currently at California State University, Long Beach. I have had over thirty research papers in pure mathematics and have also had several books published including Cosmic Numbers: The Numbers That Define Our Universe, on which this talk is based. Two other books were selections of the Scientific American Book Club.

"What's Up?" in this month will be presented by Jim Benet