ABSTRACT
Christiansen, Chris Radio astronomy was not born with a silver spoon in its mouth. Its parents were workers. One parent was the radio-telescope, the other was radar.
Gingerich, Owen But even if radio astronomy has not so much destroyed our older astronomical viewpoint, it has enormously enlarged and enriched it. It is like that magical moment in the old Cinerama, when the curtains suddenly opened still further, unveiling the grandeur of the wide screen. Optical astronomy in the 1950s, on that narrow, central screen, offered a quiescent view of a slowly burning universe, the visible radiations from thermal disorder. But then the curtains abruptly parted, adding a grand and breathtaking vista, a panorama of swift and orderly motions that revealed themselves through the synchrotron radiation they generatedthe so-called violent universe.
