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| Paper: |
The Day We Found the Universe: The Little-Known History of How We Came to Understand the Expanding Universe |
| Volume: |
443, Earth and Space Science: Making Connections in Education and Public Outreach |
| Page: |
25 |
| Authors: |
Bartusiak, M. |
| Abstract: |
This will be an overview of the birth of modern cosmology in the 1920s, when
the true nature and startling size of the universe was at last revealed.
While today Edwin Hubble gets most of the credit, the story is far more
complex, involving battles of wills, clever insights, and wrong turns made
by a number of investigators before Hubble. The Hubble Space Telescope could
easily have had another name if certain events had turned out differently:
if Lick Observatory director James Keeler had not prematurely died in 1900
and solved the mystery of the spiral nebulae years earlier; if Lick
astronomer Heber Curtis had not taken a promotion in 1920, taking him out of
the game; or if astronomer Harlow Shapley, Hubble's nemesis, was not
mulishly wedded to a flawed vision of the cosmos. Half the work to prove
the universe was expanding was actually performed by Lowell Observatory
astronomer Vesto Slipher; Hubble used Slipher’s data in 1929 to establish
what came to be known as the Hubble Law without citation or acknowledgment,
a serious breach of scientific protocol. Even then, Hubble was never a vocal
champion of the idea that the universe was expanding. Hubble always coveted
an unblemished record: the perfect wife, the perfect scientific findings, the
perfect friends. Throughout his life, Hubble claimed that the galaxies
fleeing outward were apparent velocities. He wanted to protect his legacy in
case a new law of physics was revealed that changed that explanation. |
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