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Not a revelation

Sir, — The report, `Infinity is Universe's fate, NASA study says', (Feb. 10) about an announcement by the NASA on the existence of ``dark energy'', ``a cosmic force that counteracts gravity and will keep the universe expanding forever'' makes surprising reading in view of the fact that such a disclosure had been made 70 years ago by Sir Arthur Eddington in his absorbing and scintillating `The Expanding Universe'.

Sir James Jeans, a contemporary of Eddington, also examined this and other facts in his equally fascinating `The Mysterious Universe'.

Eddington had pointed out that the galaxies were drifting away from each other very fast. The report mentions that the NASA's research indicates that the earlier findings by scientists ranging from Prof. Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein that the ``universe will eventually stop expanding'' is wrong. It does not appear that Hawking took such a view.

Though he did not commit himself to the likelihood of the universe stopping to expand, he put down the very different ways in which cosmic events could be taking place.

Much of what the NASA has stated would seem to have been anticipated by Prof. Hawking in his `A Brief History of Time' published way back in 1988.

C.V. Gopalakrishnan,
Thiruvananthapuram

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