The Day We Found the Universe - Marcia Bartusiak [5]
A dynamism entered into the universe's workings. Einstein's equations introduced the idea that space and time are woven into a distinct object, whose shape and movement are determined by the matter within it. His general theory of relativity anticipated the universe's expansion and turned its study into an intellectual and theoretical adventure. Early globetrotters had crossed the oceans in search of terra firma—solid land, new continents—previously unknown to them and ready for exploration. With his relativistic vision of space-time as a pliable fabric that can bend and stretch, Einstein allowed astronomers to recast the ancient search into a quest for cosmos firma. Glued together by the genius physicist, space and time became cosmic real estate to be appraised, mapped, and scrutinized, with Hubble serving as its first surveyor.
Hubble eventually summarized his cosmological findings in a work titled Realm of the Nebulae, which is part history, part college textbook, and part professional memoir. This book was labeled a “classic” by his peers at the very time it was published in 1936. And Hubble's initial take still holds up in its broad outline. “[His] picture differs from today's only in details,” Caltech astronomer James Gunn noted decades after its publication. “One looks through the pages almost in vain for things that are known to be wrong. One finds a few…[but] we still determine the distances of the nearest galaxies by methods described [by Hubble]. We still mostly use Hubble's classification scheme. We still pay a great deal of attention to the questions Hubble asks.”
However, there is one glaring exception to Gunn's statement. Although Hubble's name is now strongly attached to the discovery of the expanding universe, he was never a vocal champion of that interpretation of his data. That was because there were other hypotheses in play in the 1930s and 1940s. Hubble was reluctant to choose sides, at a time when his newly mined data and Einstein's theory were so fresh. Hubble always coveted an unblemished record: the perfect wife, the perfect scientific findings, the perfect friends, the perfect life. His observations that the galaxies were fleeing outward were to him always apparent velocities. He wanted to protect his legacy in case a new law of physics sneaked in and changed the explanation. So far, it hasn't.
Hubble was lucky in a way. The Hubble Space Telescope could easily have been given another name had certain events turned out differently: if someone had not prematurely died (Keeler), if someone else had not taken a promotion (Curtis), or if another (Shapley) was not mulishly wedded to a flawed vision of the cosmos. The discovery of the modern universe is a story filled with trials, errors, serendipitous breaks, battles of wills, missed opportunities, herculean measurements, and brilliant insights. In other words, it is science writ large.
Setting Out
The Little Republic of Science
An immense continent of rock known as the North American plate slid inexorably over an oceanic slab of Earth's crust moving eastward. At the tectonic juncture, where the two gargantuan plates smashed together, the ocean floor plunged downward, the tremendous compression forging massive blocks of shale and sandstone. In due course some of this material lifted upward from its depths, relentlessly rising toward the sky to form the Diablo Mountain Range—two hundred miles of peaks and vales stretching from the San Francisco Bay southward along California's coastline. As if readying for a performance, nature sculpted the landscape that, millions of years later, offered astronomers a unique observing platform for their studies of the cosmos. Situated on the eastern edge of the Pacific, this lofty terrain became the perfect vantage point from which to make the first great discoveries in twentieth-century astronomy.
One noticeable peak