Word: humason
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Your Science article [TIME, June 25] on the work of Humason and the redshift of the nebular spectra is excellent and is interestingly written. However, the story tends to give an inaccurate idea by saying that this effect was "first discovered by Hubble . . . and that on it he based his startling theory of the expanding universe." In reality, I believe you will find that the redshift was first observed by V. M. Slipher of Lowell Observatory. Hubble, however, was the one to notice the law connecting the amount of the shift and the distance of the nebulae...
After 20 months of operation, the great 200-inch Hale telescope on Palomar Mountain yielded its most significant discovery. Palomar's Dr. Milton La Salle Humason, a diffident, self-effacing expert whose own colleagues know almost nothing about him except his birthplace (Dodge Center, Minn.), last week announced that he had photographed the spectra of nebulae 360 million lightyears* away. He found that their light showed the mysterious "red-shift," indicating that they are moving away from the earth at 38,000 m.p.s.-one-fifth of the speed of light...
Hubble found that all distant nebulae are moving away from the earth at spectacular speeds, and that the more distant they are, the faster they move. Using more delicate techniques, his colleague Humason continued his work. With the 100-inch Mt. Wilson telescope, Humason photographed nebulae whose red-shifts indicate that they are receding at 25,000 m.p.s...
Tired Light. The spectroscopic limit of the Palomar telescope has not yet been reached. Humason believes that in time he can measure the redshift of nebulae 500 million light-years away. But without other parallel advances, even that study will not clear up the mystery of the expanding universe. No one yet is sure why it is expanding, how long it has done so, or how long it will continue...
...Hubble and Humason leave such explanations to cosmologists. "We are observers," they say proudly. "We report what...