Page 16 - The Miracle in the Atom

THE MIRACLE IN THE ATOM

from the big bang and this could be traced. Lemaître was
confident that his explanations were true although they
initially did not find much support in the scientific com-
munity. Meanwhile, further evidence that the universe
was expanding began to pile up. At that time, observing
a number of stars through his huge telescope, the Ameri-
can astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered that the stars
emitted a red shifted light depending on their distances.
Georges Lemaître
With this discovery, which he made at the California Mo-
unt Wilson Observatory, Hubble challenged all scientists who put forward
and defended the steady state theory, and shook the very basis of the model
of the universe held until then.
Hubble's findings depended on the physical rule that the spectra of
light beams travelling towards the point of observation tend towards violet
while the spectra of light beams moving away from the point of observation
tend towards red. This showed that the celestial bodies observed from the
Californian Mount Wilson Observatory were moving away from the earth.
Further observation revealed that the stars and galaxies weren't just racing
away from us; they were racing away from each other as well. This move-
ment of celestial bodies proved once more that the universe is expanding. In
Stephen Hawking's Universe, David Filkin relates an interesting point about
these developments:
…Within two years, Lemaître heard the news

Edwin Hubble
The analysis of the light of
the two stars of Alpha Cen-
tauri over a period of time
showed a series of
changes in their spectra.
The way the red and blue
shifts vary revealed a pic-
ture of two stars complet-
ing orbits around each
other once every 80 years.

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