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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## UNCLASSIFIED ## Document 12 of 16 Page 8 depends on the movement of the observers. For different observers, the time intervals and segments of distance between one and the same pair of events, generally speaking, are different. There is no one correct set of values whatsoever: all sets of values are right, and each of the observers is correct to an equal extent. Only a certain combination, consisting of the time intervals and segments of distance, remains identical for all. Therefore, it is said that unified space-time has an independent value, but not time or space separately. The change of views of space and time has occurred, in part, because the procedure itself for measuring spatial segments and time intervals has been analyzed. 30. The general theory of relativity, i.e., the relativistic theory of gravitation, introduced even more cardinal changes in the concept of space and time. Once again, certain questions hold an important place in understanding it: What, with what and how is it measured? Observers who are resting with respect to each other, yet are located in places where the gravitational field is different, will discover by comparing their observations that the rate of flow of time for them is different. Such conclusions also occur with regard to segments of length. The conclusions of the general theory of relativity conform quite well to all existing experimental data, both under laboratory conditions, as well as in space. 31. Judgments about the geometric properties of a given surface are made on the basis of correlations between segments of length which connect points of this surface. Judgments about the geometric properties of space-time are made on the basis of how the time intervals and segments of length between events in space-time behave. Since, in the presence of a gravitational field, length and durations do not behave as they do in the absence of a gravitational field, the geometric properties of space-time change. That is why the concept of warped space-time, the idea of its curvature, arises. Giving a detailed description of a gravitational field is the same as giving a detailed description of the geometric properties of space-time. 32. In cosmology, the concept of warped space-time plays a central role. In geometric terms, one could say that the cosmological model in which the average density of matter is greater than the critical value conforms to a closed space, similar to the surface of a sphere. A model in which the average density of matter is less than the critical value conforms to the so-called open or Lobachevskiy's space. On the boundary between these two cases, i.e., in a situation where the average density of matter equals the critical density, there is a model where space has ordinary Euclidean geometry. As already mentioned, the estimates of density in the observed Universe give a value, close to the value of the critical density. For now, it is impossible to choose between these three geometries of space. In
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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.