Well, you might not have noticed, but today is the anniversary of a day with considerable symbolic significance.
On January 29th 1931, Edwin Hubble took Einstein up Mount Wilson to see the famous 100 inch telescope where Hubble had done at least two revolutionary things (with the aid of Henrietta Leavitt’s remarkable work on variable stars): (1) He demonstrated that the Milky Way Galaxy, where we live, is not the entire universe, but just one of many galaxies, and (2) He confirmed (ahem, not discovered) that the universe was expanding and (with Humason…who started out as the janitor at the observatory) quantified it in what we now call “Hubble’s Law”.
This photo, which I borrowed from a Carnegie Institution site, shows: From left to right: Milton Humason, Edwin Hubble, Charles St. John, Albert Michelson, Albert Einstein, W. W. Campbell, and Walter Adams. Quite a group! This was taken during the visit, and I imagine it was back at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, in Pasadena. (Worth a visit on their next annual open day, by the way! I went last year.)
I was actually thinking of going on a hike today, after my weekly visit to the market. I considered going up Mount Wilson in view of the above. Instead, I’m still here around the house [playing with] working on various projects with the new power drill I bought yesterday.
So instead I’ll point you to a long post I did the last time my mind went to Hubble and Mount Wilson. I went up there and showed you some of the sights along the way. I bet you never read it, did you? Well, you can find it at this link, and it says more about the physics I mentioned above…. and there are pictures of telescopes.
The other pictures on this page? I took them when I did the hike up the mountain described in the post. The first, big onem is a picture of the commemorative picture that is posted on the bridge leading to the telescope. You can see Einstein, his assistant Walther Meyer (peeking over his shoulder), and the Observatory director Walter Adams (center), and astronomer (and then U of California president) William Wallace Campbell (right). (Where was Hubble, we wonder? Holding the camera? …and there is a fifth face that is not named in the picture, I wonder who that is?) The other photograph, the small one, is of the bridge itself, as it is today, with the telescope in the background. I’m standing near the commemorative picture while taking this one.
-cvj
January 29th, 2006 at 5:34 pm
Humason’s life at Mt. Wilson began earlier than the janitor period (I think it is a nice story), so if you are hiking there, you might appreciate this.
Milton Humason dropped out of school in the 8th grade and worked as a mule train driver up the trail to the Mount Wilson observatory. All supplies needed to be brought up by mules at that time in the in the early part of last century, and astronomers had to hike up the mountain for their turns at the telescope too. Humason became interested in the work of the astronomers, and after marrying the daughter of the observatory’s electrician, took a job as janitor at Mt. Wilson observatory. After a while he became night assistant, helping the astronomers run the telescope and take data. With more time and experience, he became a full astronomer. By the late 1920s he was collaborating with Hubble (photographing the spectra of faint galaxies).
January 29th, 2006 at 5:35 pm
Why didn’t Hubble discover that the universe was expanding? He didn’t discover the redshifts (that was Slipher and others), but he showed that they were proportional to distance, which means we can interpret them as an expansion of the universe. Am I missing some bit of history/interpretation?
January 29th, 2006 at 6:46 pm
I guess it is the issue of what constitutes “discovery”. It is said in several places that others (after supplementing data of Slipher and others, that you mentioned) were also making “expansion” conclusions about the meaning of the redshifts…Hubble and Humanson found the Hubble Law and so deserve a huge amount of credit, sure…… but do also recall that Hubble himself was not actually keen on the expansion of the universe interpretation….. Seems to me that he deserves full credit for the Hubble Law -which quantifies the expansion- but several astronomers actually “discovered” the phenomenon that lots of objects (except our local cluster inhabitants of course) are moving away from us…..the expansion itself.
Cheers,
-cvj
January 29th, 2006 at 6:46 pm
When I visited Mt. Wilson in May 2002, I was very lucky to arrive just at the right time to catch a tour guided by Don Nicholson, president of the Mount Wilson Observatory Association. Don, who is now in his late eighties, is the son of Seth Nicholson who was a staff member on Mt. Wilson from 1915 to 1957. Don practically grew up on Mt. Wilson and knew all the great astronomers who worked there.
During the exciting tour full of stories and memories of his, I mentioned to him that I am doing my PhD in theoretical astrophysics on core-collapse supernovae. After the public tour, Don took me aside and gave me a special tour to one of the smaller telescope domes on Mt. Wilson. Guess what… Hubble’s and Zwicky’s lockers are still around!
January 29th, 2006 at 6:46 pm
Clifford, a quick question. There are often pictures included with various posts here but they’re usually placed within the body of the text and are therefore very small. Is there any chance that you could use them as links to larger versions of the photos?
January 29th, 2006 at 6:56 pm
dampt_dweller: – I could, but did not know if people found them interesting enough to do so, and also (since it is mostly me that has tons of pictures), did not want to clutter up our space on our host with lots of my pictures ……or slow things down with people downloading larger versions that they might not want really….. so I have yet to decide what to do. If it’s just you and the occasional person, feel free just to send me an email if there is a specific picture you want to see in more detail.
Thanks for asking.
-cvj
January 29th, 2006 at 6:57 pm
Christian D. Ott : – Thanks! The locker pictures are great!
-cvj
January 30th, 2006 at 1:41 am
Another vote for links to bigger pics.
January 30th, 2006 at 10:25 am
Sean, actually, Lemaitre first argued the redshifts were proportional to distance and read this as an expansion of the universe in his paper in 1927. It was …ahem…brought to Eddington’s attention (again) in early 1930. It’s actually amazing to see how reserved Hubble was-almost timid I would say–about interpreting the redshifts as the expansion. Lemaitre also derived Hubble’s law in his 1927 paper. (Indeed, you could argue that it should be called Lemaitre’s law. )
January 30th, 2006 at 12:02 pm
Was it right for Hubble to choose to divide recession speeds by apparent (actually, receding) distances of clusters of galaxies? He could have divided the recession speeds into the times past, on the principle of Minkowski’s spacetime. Spacetime allows distance to be equated to time past via the speed of light.
The speed/time past is a constant ratio, so it is simply equal to c/(age of universe) = 6 x 10^-10 m/s^2, an aceleration which is similar to that of the Pioneer 10 anomaly. There is a lot of basic physics from an acceleration, like using F=ma to calculate outward force and Newton’s 3rd law to calculate inward force of gauge bosons, allowing a mechanistic quantum field theory…
January 30th, 2006 at 12:14 pm
Maybe Christian could explain this picture sometime “after” the five have a shot at it.
It would be interesting to see perspective independant of the five of Cosmic Variance, describe it from their own understanding. I would expect their respective fields would allow them to explain this differently?
FRom that context, I would say the complete cyclical nature of how this universe is formed, should have been more then created in the undertanding of a “geometrical framework ( I understand there is no geometry at certian levels, but it would have to been lead “into” and “out of”)” that would be most satisfying?
Then again, the exercise might be fruitless?
On the same token, outside of this what do you think Quarkstars play in this context, Christian?
January 30th, 2006 at 2:22 pm
[...] As physicist Clifford Johnson notes in a Cosmic Variance post, yesterday was the anniversary of a powerfully symbolic event. As Johnson says: “On January 29th 1931, Edwin Hubble took Einstein up Mount Wilson to see the famous 100 inch telescope where Hubble had done at least two revolutionary things (with the aid of Henrietta Leavitt’s remarkable work on variable stars): (1) He demonstrated that the Milky Way Galaxy, where we live, is not the entire universe, but just one of many galaxies, and (2) He confirmed (ahem, not discovered) that the universe was expanding and (with Humason…who started out as the janitor at the observatory) quantified it in what we now call “Hubble’s Law”. [...]
February 1st, 2006 at 11:28 pm
There’s a lot of Caltech people who hike the San Gabriel’s above Pasadena, profs & grad students:
Manny Delbruck, Bacher, Delbruck, Bethe, Feynman, Gell-Mann, Dorothy Walker ; outdoors ; San Gabriel Mountains, California
Gell-Mann, Lisa; Gell-Mann, Murray; Gell-Mann, Margaret; Delbr?ck, Manny; Bethe, Hans; Bethe, Rose. L-R, front: Bacher, Robert; Walker, Dorothy; Delbr?ck, Max; Feynman, Richard; Feynman, Carl. Outdoors; picnic in the San Gabriel Mountains, California, spring.
I heard that a Berkeley Nobel physicist (Charles Townes?) spends a week every year in the “monastery” @Mt. Wilson. I took the Mt. Wilson tour back in ‘93, I highly recommend it. I connected wtih Robert Gardner (started up Analog Computing @JPL, & contemporary/friend of Feynman) thru our interest in meteor-observation, who is involved with Table Mountain Observatory (near Mt. Wilson). There is an amateur-astronomy group (incl some Caltech & JPL people, I sometimes go), which observes from Mt. Vetter (near Mt. Wilson).
some inside info:
Robert Leighton (Caltech physicist, of “Feynman Lectures on Physics” fame) used to take his sons Alan & Ralph (Feynman’s buddy, of to the San Gabriel mtns. Like for Comet Ikeya-Seki, as related to me by Alan Leighton.
[ how it happened: I chase solar eclipses (CVJ recently made a reference to the 1919 solar-eclipse expedition which was a test for Einstein's GR), & someone named Alan Leighton emailed me about my amateur-astronomy pics from Mt. Wilson
http://www.comet-track.com/eclipse/secl02a/secl02a.html
http://www.comet-track.com/hb/hb.html
[ comet against mtn/desert foreground ]
http://www.comet-track.com/hb/hb315.html
[ comet, from Mt. Wilson road ]
http://www.comet-track.com/hb/hb325.html
[ solar towers (the ones in CVJ's post), with comet in background ]
http://www.comet-track.com/hb/hb411.html
[ I had my astrophotography rig at the Caltech Comet Chasers meeting, see here ]
..which triggered a sentimental longing of past times. Funny thing, he never mentioned Caltech, just that his dad was a physicist & wrote a text on “Modern Physics”. Only did a geologist friend of mine fill me in. ]
I was JUST checking on Paul Grayson’s (Caltech physics grad sutdent) hike up the San Gabriel’s:
http://paul.graysonfamily.org/album/?query=viewset&set=17
http://paul.graysonfamily.org/album/?query=viewset&set=1
[ his dad is a UIUC math prof, who was involved with the startup of "Wolfram Research" w/Stephen Wolfram. My dad was a prof/dept head, who was on the search commitee which lured Wolfram from Princeton with the triple appt (Math, Physics, Computer Science) to UIUC, to start the CCSR ]
I myself mountain-bike up those trails starting from the JPL parking lot in North Altadena (where many Caltech physics profs live, incl Feynman). Last year’s rains have created some some “debris flows”, so you have to use some caution for hiking/biking.
cvj:
I noticed you hiked alone (as did Paul), as I do mountain-biking. Risky. The general-rule is to go in a group, in case something happens. If one is alone & something happens (go over a cliff, etc), one could get into serious trouble.
[ A couple yrs ago, a group of Caltech profs & students went on an end-of-semester hike, & got lost in the San Gabriels. It made the local news. I thought that was embarassing. ]
However, the feeling of “getting away from everything” (alone in Nature) is therapeutic. My amateur-astronomy jaunts to Joshua Tree National Monument, Anza-Borrego desert, Mt. Pinos, etc to view/photograph comets & meteor showers have given me some memorable alone-in-Nature moments:
- a ghostly greenish 50 degree Leonid fireball
- a huge Geminid fireball which made it almost “daylight”
- the “great” Comet Hyakutake in Arizona here & here
- Comet Hale-Bopp
I’ve managed to view Solar eclipses around the world, *alone* in 3rd world countries (not advisable, in terms of safety):
- Baja ‘91, India ‘95, Curacao/Caribbean ‘98, Turkey ‘99, Zambia ‘01, S. Africa ‘02
[ I was near Montserrat in '98, where that volcano actually erupted during the eclipse ]
I notice you have some public-outreach activities with ASTI in S. Africa. I make it a point to have some cultural-interaction with the locals in my host countries for solar-eclipses. I especially had a good time in Turkey, where some Turkish teen-agers were brought in as English translators for the Harput Science Group (incl Czech & Italian solar astronomers). Zambia was great, I was in a small village near the Angolan border..the villagers saw my telescopes & thought I was an Apollo astronaut!? S. Africa was dangerous, a native told me:
“if you are alone in the city, you will be robbed [ by people ]. If you are alone in the bush, you will be eaten [ by animals ]”
“Violent crime is very common in S. Africa”
I ended up getting “nicked” (equipment theft), & a S. African eclipse-watcher went back home only to be robbed & killed (shot 6 times).
cvj:
You are living in S. California, the “capital of Amateur Astronomy”. The local deserts offer some of the highest % for clear skies in the world. I recall seeing a picture of Feynman’s refractor telescope (in one of his desert camping trips).
With your status, you can certainly find the connections to be a guest for sessions in any of the big-name observatories. I like what Alex Fillipenko (Berkeley astronomer) said from a mountain-top observatory:
“It’s like the Universe has a consciousness”
[ it's "star-stuff descendants" (humans) being able to probe/understand the Physics of the Universe ]”
Going back to the theme of your post: Einstein (theorist) meeting with Hubble (experimentalist), to see the data for himself. Don’t you think it would help your theoretical work, to have a close alliance with an observational astronomer?
February 2nd, 2006 at 2:45 am
Wow… that’s a long comment. Thanks for the links to the pictures, etc. Yes, I hike alone. I do lots of things alone. That’s fine. If I fall off a cliff, that would be a shame, but fear of random stuff happening will not stop me from doing things. I cycle in LA… so I’m clearly nuts, right?
I don’t go on totally isolated or dangerous trails alone (well, not much), so I’m probably ok.
Glad you liked the theme. Yes…. contact wiht people in touch with the observations and experiments is ultimately *vital* to the kind of work I do.
Cheers,
-cvj