Word: redshift
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Speeding Clusters. Using the "redshift" (light from a galaxy speeding away from the earth shifts in proportion to its speed toward the red end of the color spectrum), Sandage studied the speeds of six clusters of galaxies about a billion light-years away. According to Hoyle. the clusters should be moving at a speed in direct proportion to their distance from the earth. But recent calculations show that the clusters are moving about 10,000 kilometers (6,200 miles) per second faster than Hoyle's prediction...
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...
Astral Speedometer. The redshift was first discovered by Edwin P. Hubble, most famous of the Palomar astronomers, and on it he based his startling theory of "the expanding universe." The spectrum of an astronomical object (a star or nebula) shows numerous bright or dark lines, each representing light of a certain wave length. If the object is stationary in relation to the earth, the lines are in the same places as in the spectrum of the sun. But if it is moving away from the earth, the lines shift toward the red end of the spectrum, because the receding motion...
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...
Some skeptical cosmologists do not admit that the redshift necessarily means that the nebulae are moving. Perhaps, they say, their light "gets tired," losing some of its energy during its tremendous journey through space. Since loss of energy would lengthen the wave length of light, a sufficient amount of fatigue would account for the shift toward the red in the spectrum...