Edwin Hubble Discovers the Universe
Credit: Mt. Wilson Archive, Carnegie Institution of Washington
No person in history has had greater impact in determining the extent of
our universe than
Edwin Hubble. From
proving that other galaxies existed to
proving that galaxies move apart from one another,
Hubble's work defined our place in the cosmos.
Hubble lived from 1889 to 1953 and is
shown above posing with the
48-inch telescope on
Palomar Mountain and his
famous pipe. In memory of his great work, the
Orbiting Space Telescope was
named after
him. Today a
great controversy rages on the rate of the
universe's expansion, parameterized by a quantity known as
Hubble's constant. A
real live debate on this subject will take place in Washington,
DC this April.