Still Expanding

When Astronomer Edwin Hubble announced in 1929 that the universe is apparently expanding at a fantastic rate, he threw cosmology into a state of confusion from which it has not yet recovered. Some cosmologists pointed out hopefully that his startling theory was based on comparatively few observations made with Mt. Wilson's 100-in. telescope. There remained a chance that the 200-in. Hale telescope on Palomar Mountain might prove that the universe really behaves in a more seemly manner. This week, at the Berkeley meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the cosmologists got the news from Palomar: the universe still appears to be expanding.

After the death of Hubble in 1953, his partner, M. L. Humason, kept observing more distant galaxies. In all their spectra he found the "red shift,"-- which shows that they are all moving away from the earth and from one another. The most distant ones observed are apparently rushing away at 134 million miles an hour, about one-fifth of the speed of light. Unless some new theory can account for the red shift, cosmologists will have to get along with the expanding universe.

* The light of a receding body shifts toward the red (long-wave) end of the spectrum.

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