Cute sections from the astronomy section of Popular science monthly in 1902 talking about the Andromeda Nebula and the Spiral Nebula of Canes Venatici because it hadn't clicked yet they were different galaxies.
#Space #Astronomy
#Space #Astronomy
This realization is in fact surprisingly recent.
The "Great Debate" of astronomy as to wither "spiral nebula" are actually local nebula or different "island universes" happened in 1920:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Deb…
The "Great Debate" of astronomy as to wither "spiral nebula" are actually local nebula or different "island universes" happened in 1920:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Deb…
A bulletin from 1921 still discussing the scale of the universe and listing the evidence for and against the extra galactic "island universes" theory:
archive.org/details/scaleo…
Also worth noting, the conclusion:
archive.org/details/scaleo…
Also worth noting, the conclusion:
Although the author was at the right side of history even they underestimated the numbers. The galaxy is 100.000 light years in diameter. And knowledge of other galaxies extented the size of the universe not to "hundred million light-years", but 10s of billions of light years.
Concidering the track record of "humans think they have figured the size of the universe out and then end up sounding silly" needless to say I have no doubt that one day the Big Bang will just be concidered a local uninteresting local event/process inside a much greater universe.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
