Word: redshift
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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...
...miles per second. The light from these nebulae is shifted toward the red end of the spectrum and ordinarily, such a shift indicates receding velocity. But the speeds are so big that many astronomers consider the Expanding Universe may be an illusion, have sought some other cause for the redshift in the spectrum. A decrease in Planck's constant h (energy of light multiplied by its vibration period) might be such a cause. Last year Britain's potent Theorist Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac suggested that the gravitational constant and certain others were dependent...
...Astronomer Edwin Powell Hubble. Beginning in 1928, Hubble and his coworker, Milton LaSalle Humason, showed that the light from the most distant nebulae (clouds of stars) which he could photograph in Mount Wilson's giant telescope was shifted far toward the red end of the spectrum. Such a redshift is observed in the light of a star known to be retreating from Earth, so it was assumed that the distant nebulae were retreating in all directions. On these observations, and on the theoretical expanding universes formulated by de Sitter and Lemaitre before any observations were made, the case...
...Arthur has never lost his enthusiasm for this cosmic soap bubble. But the speeds indicated by the amount of redshift, some of which now equal 25,000 miles per second, have made many astronomers doubt. Other causes for the redshift were suggested, such as cosmic dust or a change in the nature of light over great stretches of space. Two years ago Dr. Hubble admitted that the expanding universe might be an illusion, but implied that this was a cautious and colorless view. Last week it was apparent that he had shifted his position even further away from a literal...