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To: Lonesome in Massachussets
I like the story of Einstein's wife, on a visit to Mount Wilson, being told that scientists there were making measurements that could determine the size of the Universe. "Oh, my husband can do that on the back of an evelope!", she replied.

Oh Yeah? And how is he going to get the evelope to sit still while he carries out his calculations?

2 posted on 11/16/2011 3:58:18 AM PST by JohnG45
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To: JohnG45

The irony is in the fact that when Einstein first published his theory of General Relativity, the known universe contained only the Milky Way galaxy. In order to account for this “fact” he included a fudge factor, Einstein’s cosmological constant. He later called it the biggest blunder of his scientific career.

Andromeda and other Galaxies were thought at the time to be near-by star clusters or gas clouds. Using variable Cephids, Hubble was the first to demonstrate that the Andromeda nebula must be at least a million light years away, and therefore enormous, consisting of billions, if not trillions, of individual stars. He later made a systematic study of galaxies and redshifts, using the variable Cephid trick and made very accurate estimates of recession velocity and distance, far better and more reliable, than Abbot Lemaître’s. Lemaître will forever be remembered as one of the first physicists (along with Eddington) to successfully challenge Einstein’s cosmological constant.


3 posted on 11/16/2011 4:27:50 AM PST by Lonesome in Massachussets (Ceterum autem censeo, Obama delenda est.)
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