The Day We Found the Universe

The Day We Found the Universe

Few advances in astronomy match the importance of one publicized by Edwin Hubble on January 1, 1925. By discovering a variable star in the Andromeda Nebula, Hubble proved that such nebulae were actually galaxies located far outside our own Milky Way—enlarging the scale of the universe by a thousand trillion times. In The Day We Found the Universe, Marcia Bartusiak tells the remarkable story of this finding, those who paved the way and the consequences for science.

The book is awash with memorable characters, including James Lick, who established the California observatory where critical work was later done; Vesto Slipher, who first determined that the majority of nebulae were traveling away from us; and Henrietta Leavitt, who found that a type of variable star (the Cepheids) could be used to gauge cosmic distances with great precision.

We also meet Heber Curtis and Harlow Shapley, who feuded over the identity of the nebulae in a famous, if inconclusive, “Great Debate”: were the nebulae merely wisps of gas inside our galaxy, or something more? As Bartusiak explains, Edwin Hubble put this debate to bed with his pinpointing of a Cepheid variable in Andromeda—but he wasn’t done revising our view of the universe. As the later sections of the book explain, Hubble went on to show (with colleague Milton Humason) that the more distant galaxies were receding from us at a faster rate than nearer ones—eventually leading to the realization that the cosmos is expanding and originated in a Big Bang.

Rendered in vivid prose, The Day We Found the Universe shows how our model of the cosmos assumed its modern form.

HC. 344pp. 2009.

Hardcover: 344 pages

Publisher: Pantheon Books ( April 07, 2009 )

Item #: 97-8390

ISBN: 9780375424298

Product Dimensions: 6.125 x 9.25 x 0.0 inches

Product Weight: 23.0 ounces