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By Root 503 0

was actually twice as far out, which also meant it was bigger than anyone had perceived and so made it more like the Milky Way's twin. Andromeda wasn't smaller or fainter at all, just more distant than previously thought—and that meant the Milky Way was no longer the special kid on the block. Those who desired nature to be uniform breathed a huge sigh of relief. This adjustment had to be made to all the galaxies then measured, essentially doubling the size and age of the universe. This modification at last took the Big Bang model out from under its cloud. With Hubble's rate of expansion determined more accurately as well, as more and more galaxies were measured, the estimated age of the universe was further increased, which at last allowed enough time for all the stars and planets to form after an explosive birth of space and time.

“Never in all the history of science,” said Willem de Sitter in 1931 at a Boston lecture, “has there been a period when new theories and hypotheses arose, flourished, and were abandoned in so quick succession as in the last fifteen or twenty years.” And perhaps never again will astronomy face such a dramatic shift in its conception of the universe. It took only three short decades—from 1900 to 1930, virtual seconds into our past when weighed against humanity's life span—to make this mind-altering transition. The Milky Way, once the universe's lone inhabitant floating in an ocean of darkness, was suddenly joined by billions of other star-filled islands, arranged outward as far as telescopes could peer. Earth turned out to be less than a speck, the cosmic equivalent of a subatomic particle hovering within an immensity still difficult to grasp. It didn't stop there. Astronomers barely had time to adjust to this astounding celestial vastness when they were faced with the knowledge that space-time, the universe's very fabric, was expanding in all directions, carrying the galaxies with it. It was a rapid one-two punch from which astronomy is still reeling, as observers and theorists alike try to make sense of all its details: how the Big Bang was ignited, how the myriad galaxies were born and evolve, how (and if) the expansion will end.

James Keeler could not possibly have imagined where his pioneering explorations were going to lead when in 1898 he first walked over to the Crossley reflector, a pip-squeak of a telescope compared to Lick Observatory's grand refractor, and made the simple decision to focus his research on the spiral nebulae. But his observations from Ptolemy Ridge had broad repercussions. He at last made the professional astronomical community sit up and take notice of celestial objects other than planets and stars. Reigniting up the cause after Keeler's death, Heber Curtis generated even more momentum. The arsenal of data he gathered throughout the 1910s with the Crossley supported a very strong case that the spirals were no less than separate galaxies. Though it was all circumstantial evidence, Curtis's observations laid down a substantial foundation that made it far easier for Hubble to place the final capstone, his distance measurements to the closest spirals, that at last persuaded his fellow astronomers. Both Keeler and Curtis were vital pathfinders, carving out a route that led to Hubble's ultimate triumph.

In a similar fashion, Vesto Slipher spent many lonely hours at his Lowell Observatory telescope, year after year, building up the reservoir of galaxy velocities that Hubble then used to establish his historic link between a galaxy's redshift and its distance, a systematic pattern that served as powerful proof for the expanding universe predicted by Georges Lemaître. Yet Hubble remained remarkably silent about the meaning of what he and Humason had found. Neither in his personal conversations nor in his writings did Hubble discuss the implications of his finding on ideas concerning either the evolution of the universe from a primitive state or the necessity of a creation event. That would come from others. Hubble was not comfortable with imaginative speculation, beyond what