Speakin' of astronomy:
We have all heard about the Big Bang, how the universe expanded very rapidly from a single point to something much much larger. However, there were sort of a second expansion we rarely think about.
Up until early in the previous century, the faint fuzzies in the night sky were consider more or less that. Distant fuzzies. The general consensus was that the Milky Way was the whole Universe, containing mysterious phenomena like nebulae and star clusters. The Astronomer Edwin Hubble was quite well connected, so he managed to get time at the newly build observatory at Mount Wilson. There he studied the Andromeda "nebula". Hubble and others had a hypothesis that the Andromeda Nebula was actually a galaxy just like the Milky Way, and by carefully measuring the light from a particular star he could see on a photograph of Andromeda, he was able to tell the distance to it. That turned out to be much further away than the size of our galaxy. The moment he realized that, the Universe went through a second Big Bang inside Edwin's head. He had just proved that many of the fuzzies believed to be part of the Milky Way was in fact actual distant galaxies, and that the Universe was much larger than people had thought. Kaboom!
Another funny anecdote about the discovery was that the mirror for the telescope had to be produced in New York, where the mirror polishing and coating expertise was. Then it had to be transported across the US to Mount Wilson. Back then people knew that looking far into the Universe equals looking back in time, due to the speed of light. This caused concern, that looking far enough, or back in time enough, would show "God working in his laboratory" while creating Earth. Therefore there were concerns that the mirror would be sabotaged by religious fanatics on it's way towards the telescope. As a result a special bullet proof box was constructed around the mirror, so that when the train carrying it passed, nobody could shoot a rifle bullet at it
Getting the mirror up to the top of Mount Wilson was also quite a task:
We have all heard about the Big Bang, how the universe expanded very rapidly from a single point to something much much larger. However, there were sort of a second expansion we rarely think about.
Up until early in the previous century, the faint fuzzies in the night sky were consider more or less that. Distant fuzzies. The general consensus was that the Milky Way was the whole Universe, containing mysterious phenomena like nebulae and star clusters. The Astronomer Edwin Hubble was quite well connected, so he managed to get time at the newly build observatory at Mount Wilson. There he studied the Andromeda "nebula". Hubble and others had a hypothesis that the Andromeda Nebula was actually a galaxy just like the Milky Way, and by carefully measuring the light from a particular star he could see on a photograph of Andromeda, he was able to tell the distance to it. That turned out to be much further away than the size of our galaxy. The moment he realized that, the Universe went through a second Big Bang inside Edwin's head. He had just proved that many of the fuzzies believed to be part of the Milky Way was in fact actual distant galaxies, and that the Universe was much larger than people had thought. Kaboom!
Another funny anecdote about the discovery was that the mirror for the telescope had to be produced in New York, where the mirror polishing and coating expertise was. Then it had to be transported across the US to Mount Wilson. Back then people knew that looking far into the Universe equals looking back in time, due to the speed of light. This caused concern, that looking far enough, or back in time enough, would show "God working in his laboratory" while creating Earth. Therefore there were concerns that the mirror would be sabotaged by religious fanatics on it's way towards the telescope. As a result a special bullet proof box was constructed around the mirror, so that when the train carrying it passed, nobody could shoot a rifle bullet at it
Getting the mirror up to the top of Mount Wilson was also quite a task:
