ocr: TOWARDS MODERN WORLD VIEW THE BIG BANG THEORY IS BORN In 1924 the Catholic priest, Georges Lemaitre, proposed that the universe began from a small primeval atom which exploded and started expanding in retarded velocity until the expansion would stop, only to continue later with increasing speed. Lemaitre's model lead to the idea of the big bang. In 1923 the American astronomer Edwin Hubble (1889- - 1953) noticed, while studying Andromeda, that it is a faraway galaxy, not a distant star in our Milky Way. With Hubble's discoveries the Milky Way lost its position in the universe as the unique cen ...
