On the Edge of the Cosmos: A Century of Revolution in Astronomy

In a world where intergalactic wars are a common topic for movies, it is hard to imagine that the discovery of galaxies was made less than a century ago. In fact, it was one of the key astrophysical milestones of the first half of the 20th century, along with the revelation of the expansion of the Universe and the understanding of the source of the stars' energy.
The second half of last century saw the unexpected discovery of fantastic objects and extreme events in the Universe including neutron stars, black holes, radio galaxies, quasars, exoplanets, or stellar explosions. Modern cosmology was simultaneously established with the Big Bang model, leading to an astonishingly precise determination of the parameters of the Universe.
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