History of astronomy
This cosmology was accepted provisionally by Isaac Newton, Christiaan Huygens and later scientists, but it had several paradoxes which were resolved only with general relativity. The first paradox was that it assumed that space and time were infinite, and that the stars in the universe had been burning forever; however, since stars are constantly radiating energy, a finite star seems inconsistent with the radiation of infinite energy. Secondly, Edmund Halley (1720) noted that an infinite space filled uniformly with stars would lead to the prediction that the nighttime sky would be as bright as the sun itself; this became known as Olbers' paradox in the 19th century. Third, Newton himself showed that an infinite space uniformly filled with matter would cause infinite forces and instabilities crushing matter inwards inwards under gravity. This instability was later clarified in 1902.