Cosmic Times
Cosmic Times Home |1955 |

Teachers' Guide to the 1955 Cosmic Times Articles

This poster is the third edition of the Cosmic Times, dated to coincide with Einstein's passing. Much has happened since 1929, with the development of two competing theories about the nature of the universe, the discovery of supernovae, and a re-calibration of the Cepheids as standard candles. In addition, astronomers get their first "glimpse" of objects emitting in a region of the em spectrum other than optical light.

The language in the articles in the 1955 Cosmic Times mimicks the style of writing that would have appeared in a real 1955 newspaper. While this is getting closer to more familair language and sentence structure, it may still be a bit difficult for your students to read. As with other editions, we have also provided a differentiated newsletter version of the text written at a slightly lower reading level. We have also provided a glossary, available in both in pdf and Word document formats, which is available on the the poster download page. The poster also shows a layout that mimicks the papers of the time, however, we have taken some creative license to make it more readable in a classroom setting.

Use the following links for further background on each of the articles in the 1955 Cosmic Times:

Cosmic Times is a product of the Imagine the Universe! website. Imagine the Universe is a service of the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (HEASARC), Dr. Alan Smale (Director), within the Astrophysics Science Division (ASD) at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

The Cosmic Times Team
Cosmic Times Project Leaders: Dr. Jim Lochner and Dr. Barbara Mattson
Curator:Meredith Gibb
Responsible NASA Official:Phil Newman
All material on this site has been created and updated between 2007-2008.
Last Updated: Tuesday, 22-Apr-2008 15:39:52 EDT