The Day We Found the Universe - Marcia Bartusiak [0]
Thursday's Universe
Through a Universe Darkly
Einstein's Unfinished Symphony
Archives of the Universe
To Steve
The center of my universe, who shared
every light-year along the way
Contents
Preface / January 1, 1925
Setting Out
1. The Little Republic of Science
2. A Rather Remarkable Number of Nebulae
3. Grander Than the Truth
4. Such Is the Progress of Astronomy in the Wild and Wooly West
5. My Regards to the Squashes
6. It Is Worthy of Notice
Exploration
7. Empire Builder
8. The Solar System Is Off Center and Consequently Man Is Too
9. He Surely Looks Like the Fourth Dimension!
10. Go at Each Other “Hammer and Tongs”
11. Adonis
12. On the Brink of a Big Discovery—or Maybe a Big Paradox
Discovery
13. Countless Whole Worlds…Strewn All Over the Sky
14. Using the 100-Inch Telescope the Way It Should Be Used
15. Your Calculations Are Correct, but Your Physical Insight Is Abominable
16. Started Off with a Bang
Whatever Happened to…
Notes
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Preface
January 1, 1925
The twenties were not just roaring, they were blazing.
Moviegoers were flocking to the cinema to watch in amazement as Moses parted the Red Sea in Cecil B. DeMille's silent film epic The Ten Commandments, Greece overthrew its monarchy and proclaimed itself a republic, the first dinosaur eggs were discovered in Mongolia's Gobi Desert, and crossword puzzles became all the rage. It was the height of the Jazz Age, when Victorian ideals came tumbling down in a frenzy of flappers, Freudian analysis, and abstract art. While majestic ocean liners crossed the Atlantic in under five days, Clarence Birdseye introduced the public to the novelty of frozen food and a failed artist named Adolf Hitler published Mein Kampf. It was a world, wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald in his classic novel The Great Gatsby, “redolent of orchids and pleasant, cheerful snobbery and orchestras which set the rhythm of the year, summing up the sadness and suggestiveness of life in new tunes.”
It was also an era of immense scientific fervor. On December 30, 1924, some four thousand scientists descended upon Washington, D.C., to attend the annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Taking advantage of the three-day gathering, the American Astronomical Society held its meeting in the capital at the same time, with nearly eighty astronomers attending from across the United States. They lodged at the Powhatan, a plush eight-story hotel located on the corner of Eighteenth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, where a room with private bath cost $2.50 a night and weary travelers could relax in its rooftop garden. Two blocks away Calvin Coolidge opened the doors of the White House to the visiting AAAS members. While notorious for being a man of few words, the thirtieth president of the United States was uncharacteristically chatty the day of the reception. “It has taken endless ages to create in men the courage that will accept the truth simply because it is the truth,” Coolidge told his guests. “We have advanced so far that we do not fear the results of that process. We ask no recantations from honesty and candor… Those of us who represent social organization and political institutions look upon you with a feeling that includes much of awe and something of fear as we ask ourselves to what revolution you will next require us to adapt our scheme of human relations.” Six months later high school biology teacher John Scopes would go on trial in Tennessee for illegally teaching Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.
The astronomers, though, were scarcely aware that Washington was host to the largest number of scientists ever assembled for an AAAS meeting. Their interest was intently focused on the astronomy program, which included talks on the atmosphere of Mars, how fast celestial objects could move, the temperature of Mercury, and the latest computed orbit of the eclipsing double-star system Algol.
On Wednesday, the second day of the meeting, the astronomers