The current New Yorker has a column exploring the Einstein-Gödel relationship which is both amusing biographica and exposes some little-seen cosmological work by Gödel. .
Gödel found a third solution to Einstein's equations, one in which the centrifugal virtual force of a rotating universe counteracts gravity. Rereading, it appears Gödel's solution is for a stable universe, not
expanding, so I'm not sure if it matches current observations. It might allow
for a big-bang and expansion slowing to stability, but I don't see it allowing
for *acceleration*, which the string-theory gravitational potential energy
leaking into the minute dimensions does. But it may be a component of a
fuller explanation w/o epicyclical dark matter or cosmological "constants"
(variables).
Most amateur scientists know Gödel and his (in)famous Incompleteness Theorem from Douglas R. Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid , one of the magnum opuses of popular math. A more technical introduction is From Frege to Gödel, which I got as
"assigned reading" by a client once. http://isbn.nu/0674324498 It is a "primary sourcebook" . The editor was
perhaps more competent as a mathematical logician than as a bodyguard -- he
was Trotsky's amanuensis. Van Heijenoort collected in this sadly O/P edition key
seminal papers in mathematical logic, to which he added excellent
introductions and segues.
[ Thanks to TorgoX for the New Yorker link and bringing this to my attention. ]
