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Geophysics and cosmology — A historical review

Schröder, W. / Treder, H.-J.

Abstract Two types of connections exist between cosmology and geophysics: any fundamental law of physics is incomplete without reference to initial and boundary conditions. That is true both for laboratory physics and for any cosmological physics a fortiori. The new ideas in cosmology, relativity and unitary field theory, show strong connections between the laws of elementary particle physics and space-time structure of the Universe. These connections give us new insight into the old ideas of Eddington and Ertel among others about cosmology and atom physics. The initial conditions which are resulting from the evolution and from the hot original state of the Universe, are also very important for the history of the Earth. On the other hand, geophysical research into the history of the Earth gives us information about “self-experienced” cosmology and about the proper history of physical laws and constants. Geophysical research is very important for these problems from the epistemogical point of view, because geophysical experiments can be made about any physical interaction — without the intervention of electromagnetic waves which have to overcome long distances.