The Number of the Heavens by Tom Siegfried

Author:Tom Siegfried
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harvard University Press

10

E Pluribus Universe

Whether true or false, the hypothesis of external galaxies is certainly a sublime and magnificent one. Instead of a single star-system it presents us with thousands of them.… Our conclusions in science must be based on evidence, and not on sentiment. But we may express the hope that this sublime conception may stand the test of further examination.

—A. C. D. CROMMELIN, 1917

EDWIN HUBBLE really did deserve to have a telescope named for him.

Before Hubble, astronomers operated mostly within a limited horizon. Their prime occupation was studying the stars in the Milky Way. Many astronomers believed, much like Kepler, that the space beyond our galaxy was above their pay grade, not a proper subject for science.

“Astronomers in the late 19th century and the very start of the 20th century were very little interested in what we would call the broader universe or its history,” says historian of science Robert Smith. “As far as almost all astronomers were concerned, the universe beyond our own limited system of stars was the realm of metaphysics, and working astronomers did not engage in metaphysics.”

Other scholars, though, still wondered about the grander cosmos—which was fine with the astronomers. “The infinite universe beyond our stellar system was territory that professional astronomers really were very happy to leave to mathematicians, physicists, philosophers and some popularizers,” says Smith.1

But Hubble changed all that. He broadened the scope of professional astronomy to encompass the universe as a whole. In the process he revealed a universe vast and dynamic, exceeding the visions of the cosmos imagined by the astronomers of the past. Hubble opened the way to the modern understanding of the expanding, Big Bang–initiated universe that remains essentially the accepted view even today. And the key step in paving the way to comprehending today’s cosmos was his validation of the existence of island universes. That led modern cosmologists to redefine the universe as the space containing all those islands. Like a single country comprising many states—E Pluribus Unum—the cosmos became a confederation of galaxies. E Pluribus Universe.

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