Documents / FOIA release
This JPRS translation, dated 1 August 1990, is an article from the Soviet journal Kommunist by Leonid Grishchuk of the Shternberg State Astronomy Institute. In it he argues that basic science needs state support. He notes that lecture audiences ask a lot about flying saucers and space aliens. He goes on to review cosmology, including galaxy structure, cosmic expansion, relic radiation, Fridman's models and inflationary theory. He closes by saying the question of non-Earth civilizations is a topic for another author.
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# Concatenated JPRS Reports, 1990 ## Document 12 of 16 years. The dimensions of the most distinct details in the distribution of "'thread"' type galaxies and of empty areas is greater still, by a factor of 10 or several tens. However, the sizes of these parts are nonetheless smaller by a factor of 50-100 than the sizes of the entire observable part of the Universe. According to existing data, the hierarchy of structures does not continue without limit, but gradually disappears. 15. There are data about the possible existence of nonluminous matter in the Universe, the so-called hidden mass. Its average density may exceed the average density of luminous matter, concentrated in stars and galaxies, by a factor of about 10. For the time being, it is unknown in what form this matter (concealed mass), which is hard to observe, exists and whether or not its spatial distribution coincides with the distribution of galaxies. 16. It is an observed fact of great significance that the system of galaxies is not static, but expanding. Of course, individual galaxies and compact concentrations form stable gravitationally-related systems and do not expand. The law of expansion is more clearly established for the system of accumulations of galaxies. Usually, the brightest members of these accumulations, usually located at the center, and individual galaxies, which are not part of groups or accumulations, are visible. The sum total of all such galaxies forms a sort of grid, extending uniformly on all sides. From a tremendous number of observations, it follows that for any pair of such objects the speed of their separation from each other is proportional to the distance between them. We can at least apply this simple law to galaxies for which the speed, entering into this correlation, is less than the speed of light. For more remote objects, the effect of the special and general theories of relativity are important and the concepts of speed and distance require elaboration. 17. The coefficient of proportionality between the speed of dispersion of galaxies and the distance between them is called the Hubble constant. The inverse value has the dimension of time and is called the age of the Universe. This name is used because, in flying apart with a constant relative velocity, any pair of objects would in this time manage to increase the reciprocal distance from zero to the value now observed. According to contemporary data, the age of the Universe is about 10-20 billion years. Independent estimates of the age of individual astronomical systems are known: of the Solar System, the stars, stellar concentrations, and galaxies. These estimates are based on data about their relative content of different chemical elements and on the theory of stellar evolution. The estimated age of the Solar System is five billion years, and the age of the oldest spherical stellar accumulations and, indirectly, of the galaxies is 11-13 billion years.
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 12 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.