Look Upward

(See Cover)

From the dusty lowlands of San Diego County, the road leads up Palomar Mountain in sharp, steep curves. Near the top the air turns cold; the dry, thorny brush of southern California yields to evergreen forests. Deer bounce across the roadway; squirrels peek from the incense cedars; through the primitive underbrush pads an occasional mountain lion. But the summit of Palomar Mountain is one of the high points of the 20th Century. For there stands the dazzling new 200-inch telescope that will peer a billion lightyears* into space--man's deepest look at the unknown universe he lives in.

Palomar Mountain became a scientific necessity 18 years ago. With the 100-inch telescope on Mount Wilson, near Pasadena, Astronomer Edwin Powell Hubble had made one of the most flabbergasting discoveries science has ever made. The whole visible universe, Hubble's data told him, is apparently exploding. The matter in space appears to be flying apart far faster than the white-hot gases of detonating TNT.

Hubble's discovery threw top-level science into confused arguments which are still raging. For various reasons (besides "common sense"), the idea of an exploding universe gave sober scientists goose-pimples. But every attempt to reason the theory away raised even more serious problems. Since Hubble had seen so much with the 100-inch telescope (whose range is 500 million light-years), the astronomers simply had to see still farther.

This week the greatest telescope is almost ready. It is housed in a softly revolving dome 137 feet in diameter. The telescope weighs 500 tons, but is so exquisitely mounted that an electric motor not much bigger than an orange turns it on its bearings. Its 200-inch parabolic mirror gathers four times as much nebula light as Mount Wilson's 100-inch mirror. Palomar will see twice as far, and it may tell Hubble whether the universe is really exploding--or whether even stranger things are happening.

Out Into Space. Even as an apprentice astronomer, Hubble concentrated on the nebulae--the faint patches of light scattered among the stars. Some had been proved mere wraiths, irregular clouds of dust shining by reflected starlight. Others, more interesting, were globes, ellipses, open spirals like patterns of fire from great spinning pin wheels. When the brightest of these were photographed with powerful telescopes, they dissolved into vast congregations of faint stars, whose dimness suggested that they might be very far away. But astronomers, lacking a proper measuring stick, were not agreed. Some thought that the nebulae were comparatively near and small. Hubble's first step when he started work at Mount Wilson Observatory in 1919 was to find out definitely how far away they were.

His general method (in practice, enormously difficult) was to determine the intrinsic brightness of objects in a nebula and then gauge its distance (the fainter it is, the farther away). Variable stars called Cepheids, discovered at Harvard, told him that the bright nebula called Messier 31 is 680,000 light-years away. Messier 31 was therefore no mere part of the Milky Way galaxy (the star-congregation in which our sun is a fourth-rate star), but an isolated star-system far out in space and as big as our entire galaxy. Other, longer-ranged measuring sticks carried him farther on his march into space. By this time most of the world's astronomers were looking over his broad shoulders, or helping him with their own observations, as he trudged out into the universe with astronomical seven-league boots.

There seemed to be no end to the swarming nebulae. The most distant showed as tiny, dim blobs. By a complex statistical method Hubble proved, after years of work, that these dimmest glimmers were so far away that their light, speeding at 186,000 miles per second, took 500,000,000 years to reach Mount Wilson.

His success in measuring the distance of dimmer & dimmer nebulae led to his crowning discovery--the theory of the expanding universe.

Universe in Flight. Astronomers have a speedometer to clock the motions of skittish heavenly bodies. They take spectrographs: photographs of the body's light spread out by a prism into a band of colors. If the band is "shifted toward the red" (i.e., if it is redder than normal), it shows that the body is moving away from the earth.

Working with short, amiable spectrograph expert Milton Humason, Hubble studied the light of the distant nebulae. In every case he found a "red shift."* The farther off a nebula was, the faster it appeared to be rushing away, and the enormous speeds (thousands of miles per second) were new, strange and startling to astronomers.

While Humason's spectrographs gradually improved, Hubble theorized until he came to a momentous conclusion: that the speed of recession of the nebulae is directly proportionate to their distance. This meant that each of the large units of matter in the universe (nebulae) is moving away from every other unit. The Milky Way galaxy (the earth's local nebula) is not the only center of the explosion. Every other nebula is equally an explosion center.

Casting around for a layman's analogy, Hubble compared the exploding universe to a rubber balloon with small dots (representing nebulae) spaced equally far apart on its surface. When the balloon is blown up larger, each dot becomes farther from every other dot. Place an observer on any dot, and he will see the same picture. Every other dot-nebula will be moving away from him.

Hot Genesis. When Hubble finished his "velocity-distance" law, he might have sat back (but probably did not) to marvel at his accomplishment. He had formulated the very first rule, buttressed with observation, that explained the behavior of every major unit in the visible universe. Other men (including Einstein) had theorized about the universe, using their minds as telescopes. Hubble had evolved his theory by looking at the universe itself.

The announcement of the exploding universe theory threw all grades of scientists--from semi-mystic philosophers to earthy materialists--into counterattack. Some critics could not believe that the nebulae move at such breakneck speed. Einstein's Relativity (supreme law of physics) says that nothing can move faster than light (186,000 miles per second). But Hubble and Humason have clocked a nebula about 250 million light-years away that seems to be moving at 26,000 miles per second, more than one-eighth the speed of light. They have glimpsed nebulae twice as far away. If the nebulae continue, on & on into space, they will eventually exceed the relativistic speed limit. Therefore, argue the critics, something is wrong with the speed-distance rule.

Other critics demand more time for the development of the universe. If the universe is expanding, there must have been a time when its billions of nebulae were jostling hotly in one small, close-packed mass. By the exploding universe theory, the date of this cosmological genesis would work out at about 2 billion B.C. Nonsense, say the critics. Certain rocks on the earth's surface, which could hardly have solidified under such hectic circumstances, are thought to be as old as that.

Tired Light. Other critics question the "red shift" as a measure of velocity. The usual explanation of the reddening effect is that the luminous body's motion away from the observer "pulls out" the light waves, making them longer (redder) than normal. But since red light contains less energy per unit (photon) than violet light, Bubble's critics suggest that light may lose some of its energy in traversing space, thus turning redder. It may start out from a distant nebula as young, vigorous violet and arrive at the earth after millions of weary years as old, tired red. If that is what happens, perhaps nebulae are not moving at all?

Hubble is glad to discuss such objections objectively. Even when an adversary uses that subtle, stylized rancor with which the more quarrelsome scientists conduct their controversies, he reacts with courtly tolerance.*

One reason for his balance, and the imagination that helps his work so much, may be that he has never been completely immersed in astronomy, which can easily become an obsession. In summer he goes on long fishing trips, as far away as the Colorado Rockies. He belongs to the American Legion, takes part in "civic activities" like a good Californian. He studies Chinese philosophy. He even knows movie people. Relations between the Mount Wilson astronomers and Hollywood have never been close,* but Hubble has some friends (Aldous Huxley, Michael Arlen, Anita Loos) among the movie colony's intellectual set.

Tested Call. Hubble, 6 ft. 2, strikingly handsome, and built like a heavyweight boxer (just what he was in college), was born in Marshfield, Mo. in 1889, and took his bachelor's degree in 1910 at the University of Chicago. He knew by then that he wanted to be an astronomer, but he took time out for a Rhodes scholarship and two years of law at Oxford.

The wide detour had a purpose. Astronomy, thinks Hubble, is something like the ministry. No one should go into it without a genuine "call." And the only way to test a call, he thinks, is to have another calling to be called away from.

At Oxford, Hubble was charmed by English common law, which he still considers one of the great achievements of the human mind. He returned to the U.S. with a British accent (traces still remain), and became a member of the Kentucky bar. After one year of law practice (very dull), astronomy called with unmistakable loudness, and Hubble went to the Yerkes Observatory in Wisconsin to make friends with the sky.

He had published one scientific paper and prepared for his doctorate examinations when the U.S. entered World War I. After enlisting in the Army, Hubble sat up all night, finishing his doctorate thesis, and took his examination next morning. His Ph.D. from the University of Chicago caught up with him at Fort Sheridan, Ill.

The tall young astronomer rose quickly from private to major. (Some of his friends still call him "Major.") After the war, astronomy called as loudly as ever, and Hubble took a long-promised job at Mount Wilson.

Weary Waiting. Mount Wilson's 100-inch telescope showed him the exploding universe, but it raised more questions than it answered. Bubble's theory needed the 200-inch to prove or disprove it conclusively. The Rockefeller Foundation had agreed to finance the great new instrument as long ago as 1928, but 500-ton telescopes cannot be ordered from a catalogue. The blank glass disc for the mirror was not cast until 1934. The whole project lagged.

Meanwhile Hubble, Humason and their colleagues did the best they could with the 100-inch telescope, which had passed the peak of its effectiveness for many kinds of work. When Mount Wilson Observatory was founded in 1904, Pasadena was a quiet village, attractive to rich old ladies. Los Angeles was a distant, smallish city, not yet a great industrial center. But eventually, Los Angeles' suburbs sprawled over the whole mountain-surrounded plain. A strange, white, acrid haze (locally called "smog") rose from the city. Often the smog climbed over Mount Wilson, dimming the nebulae.

The Deadly Lights. The lights, of all colors, which Los Angeles uses with a showman's abandon, flowed out like glittering lava toward Mount Wilson. The sky turned from velvety black to grey, fogging the sensitive photographic plates. The most striking feature in Humason's recent spectrographs is a strong black band (mercury light from the advertising signs of Los Angeles).

Professionally, Hubble hated the city lights, but he often took visiting astronomers out to the brink of Mount Wilson to admire them. The great plain between Mount Wilson and the ocean is covered with a Persian carpet woven of colored glitter. The nearer lights twinkle like stars. There are usually some streaks of luminous fog, as in the Milky Way. Far off, blurred by haze and distance, lies the downtown district, the dense nucleus of the Los Angeles nebula. Says Hubble: "An astronomer is like a man up here who can never go down to the valley, and who tries to find out, by observing these lights, all that goes on in Los Angeles."

Slow Grind. As the city's lights crept toward Mount Wilson, the 200-inch telescope project also made progress. An ideal site had been found for it at Palomar Mountain, a 6,000-ft. plateau 90 miles to the south. No sea of lights would overwhelm the new observatory; the nearest sizable city, San Diego, is 50 miles away.*

In 1936, the glass disc arrived at the Pasadena optical shop of the California Institute of Technology to be ground and polished. The 20-ton blank was placed face up on a turntable. As it revolved slowly, a 48-inch disc set with blocks of abrasive was stroked mechanically back & forth from its edge across its center. The whole process was maddeningly tedious.

The telescope frame progressed faster, but both it and the mirror were still unfinished when Pearl Harbor Day scattered the astronomers to those odd, essential posts that scientists fill in wartime. Hubble tried to get back his old job in the infantry, but was made Chief Ballistician at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md.

Astronomer-Ballistician Hubble came back from his second war with the Medal of Merit, and settled down. With his wife, the former Grace Burke, he lives in a charming mission-style house in San Marino, near Pasadena, on the edge of a steep geological fault which he thinks may be incubating an earthquake.

His brother astronomers straggled back too. The massive telescope frame was completed quickly. At the optical shop, work went more slowly; the incredibly delicate task of polishing the mirror could not be hurried. The mirror had to be a paraboloid (a slightly deeper curve than a hollow sphere), accurate to two-millionths of an inch. Each grinding and polishing was done with fanatical watchfulness. Visitors were asked to remove their shoes, like pious worshipers at the door of a mosque; a single grain of tracked-in sand might scratch up the glass and spoil months of work.

By August of last year, the worst was over. Dr. John A. Anderson, who had supervised the polishing, knew that he had succeeded. He set the great disc on edge for the final tests, which it passed with flying colors* (TIME, Oct. 13). Seven weeks later, it was crated and trucked up Palomar Mountain.

Hair Oil & Aluminum. The polished surface of the mirror was transparent glass, still to be covered with a reflecting film of aluminum. Before this could be done, the glass had to be cleaned perfectly. The trick was to cover the surface with a "monomolecular layer" (one molecule thick) of a fatty acid to keep dust off the glass. This process sounds formidably scientific, but in practice the glass was covered with a well-advertised brand of hair oil (essentially an emulsion of lanolin), and the excess wiped off carefully with special wool flannel.

After the hair oil was removed by an electric blast of "ions," the great disc was "silvered" with vaporized aluminum. At last, the big eye was finished.

The Pleasant Science. Long before this stage, Hubble and his colleagues had been driving up & down Palomar Mountain to admire their still blind telescope and its lovely setting. Of all the sciences, astronomy is in many respects the pleasantest. There are no dead animals (as in biology) or horrible smells (as in chemistry). Astronomers work on clear-aired mountaintops with clean and beautiful instruments. Their experimental material--light--filters down unbidden out of the cold, dark sky.

Palomar Mountain is more pleasant than most. The dormitory (called the "Monastery") is pleasant too. For day-sleeping astronomers, the bedrooms have soundproofed walls and doors and black window shades. The only intruders in this astronomical Eden are the woodpeckers that like to drill away at the Monastery's copper roof.

Energy & Neutrons. All of Hubble's colleagues have projects for Palomar Mountain. Dr. Ira Bowen, Director of the Observatory, hopes to analyze the stars with superior spectrographs and find out what nuclear reactions are supplying the energy for their outpouring light. Dr. Bowen is a cautious man, but in the back of his head is a more daring project. No present-day star, he believes, has enough pressure or temperature to form the atoms of the heavier elements. Perhaps, he speculates, they were formed during the genesis of the exploding universe, two billion years or more ago, when all the matter in all the nebulae was concentrated in a single mass inconceivably hotter and denser than anything existing now.

Astrophysicist Fritz Zwicky of CalTech (who doubles in rocket propulsion) hopes to go gunning with the 200-inch for neutron stars and gravitational lenses. Various theories of stellar evolution tell how stars may be born and decline to stellar senility. Zwicky thinks that the last stage may be a star made up chiefly of neutrons. Since neutrons are very much denser than atoms, such stars might be only ten miles in diameter. Every cubic centimeter of their volume would weigh, Zwicky figures, about one million tons.

Hubble's own program for the 200-inch is mainly along two lines. He hopes to clock the speeds of nebulae up to 500 million light-years away, to see if their speed of recession still increases with increasing distance. If it does, his exploding universe theory will be on a firmer footing.

Meanwhile, he will look for evidence that the "red shift" does not indicate speed but is due to some other effect, such as light getting "tired." Hubble does not expect such evidence, but will welcome it if he finds it. Tired light, he thinks, would be a discovery quite as sensational as the exploding universe.

Curved Space. Hubble also intends to count the nebulae that can be photographed up to the billion-light-year range of the 200-inch. Behind this humdrum-sounding chore lies the eerie, brain-staggering problem of the curvature of space. Mathematical physicists believe (from Einstein's ubiquitous Relativity) that space is curved back upon itself, in a four-dimensional way, by the gravitational effect of the matter it contains. The curvature is too slight to be detected on earth or even in the enormous sphere, 500 million light-years in radius, penetrated by the 100-inch telescope. But theory hints that doubling the radius to the billion-light-year radius of the 200-inch may show up the curvature.

Curved space is apparently understandable to Professor Howard P. Robertson, leading cosmologist who has come to Pasadena to look over Hubble's shoulder. Suppose, says Robertson, you draw two circles on a sheet of paper, one with a radius of one inch, the other with a radius of two inches. By high-school plane geometry, the second circle will have four times the area of the first one.

But if you draw one-inch and two-inch circles on the surface of a sphere, the bigger circle will have less than four times the area of the smaller one. This is because it is more curved by the sphere than the little circle, and is therefore more curled in upon itself.

Now, says Robertson, add a dimension. Take a deep breath and consider spheres instead of circles. In freshman solid geometry (which deals with ordinary "flat" space), a two-inch sphere has eight times the volume of a one-inch sphere. But if space is curved (a la Einstein), the two-inch sphere (curling in upon itself in space) will have less than eight times the volume of the one-inch sphere.

Spheres in the realm of the nebulae may behave in the same way. When Hubble looks out into a billion-light-year sphere of space with the 200-inch's doubled range of penetration, he may not find eight times as many nebulae as in the 500-million-light-year sphere of the 100-inch. Since the nebulae are apparently pretty evenly distributed, will this mean that the larger sphere has actually less than eight times the volumes of the smaller one? If so, perhaps space is really curved--and Hubble will be the first man to "see" its majestic curvature.

If space is really curved, then the universe must be "finite," of limited (though perhaps expanding) size'. One "model of the universe" (Einstein's) gives the "circumference of space" (the path which a beam of light would cover as it circles around finite space and back to its starting place) as about 300 billion lightyears.

If the nebula-dotted universe is finite, what lies beyond it? Robertson does not know. Perhaps, he admits, there may exist, far off in some medium that is thinner than space, still other universes. But each, presumably, is sealed in its own bubble of space, the light from its stars circulating endlessly, never escaping to reach our astronomers' telescopes. Scientists, briskly dusting their hands of other universes, say that if they exist, they must be penetrated by "nonphysical means."

Historic Night. Palomar's 200-inch telescope is all but complete now, with the big mirror in place. There is still much tinkering to be done. The mirror, slightly flexible, is supported by 36 complicated gadgets to keep it accurately in shape as the telescope changes its position. Each support contains 1,100 parts, and each will need expert adjustments before it works correctly. So will other mechanisms.

But its creators are sure by now that all will be well. Soon, Hubble will take his first photograph of the depths of space. It will be a historic night -- an extra-clear night with the sky velvety black and the stars, though bright, twinkling hardly at all. Hubble will go into the observatory after dusk, rise to the big round telescope chamber in a push-button elevator.

He will be carried up inside the dome on a cleverly moving platform to the observer's cage, a cylindrical chamber, six feet in diameter, right in the muzzle of the telescope tube. He will climb into the cage, sit down in a seat which moves as the telescope swings.

Below him will lie the great mirror, like a pool of still black water dimly sprinkled with stars. Around him will flow the starlight, down to the mirror and up to the "prime focus" of the telescope (see drawing), a rectangular hole in a tablelike structure in front of him.

Hubble will know how to find the tiny bit of sky he wants to photograph. He will telephone instructions to an assistant down at the control desk; the massive telescope will swing almost silently. When Hubble is satisfied that it is pointed right, he will put a plate in the holder, watch through a microscope, and make careful minor adjustments while the scattered photons of nebula light (some of which have been traveling for a billion years) make their marks on the photosensitive emulsion.

The plate, when Hubble develops it, will not look like much: only a few faint smudges of silver granules on a film of gelatin. By itself, the first photograph may prove little, but there will be many others. Added together, they may tell man things about his universe that have puzzled him since he came here to live.

*A light-year is the distance that light, traveling at 186,000 m.p.s., covers in one year--5,865,696,000,000 miles. *Dr. Vesto Slipher of Lowell Observatory measured, before Hubble, the slower speeds of nearer nebulae. *Hubble would be the first to deny that all the credit for the expanding universe theory is his. Many others, from Harvard's Harlow Shapley to Belgium's Abbe Georges Lemaitre, have contributed. *One cause for coolness: a studio, planning a movie about the stars, hired a Mount Wilson astronomer as consultant. He was happy with his easy $200 a month until he discovered that the studio had also hired an astrologer--at $1,500. *Humason alone is pessimistic. Thinking of his mercury-spoiled spectrographs, he says gloomily: "You don't know southern California." *The first thing the great eye reflected when set on edge was a row of pin-up girls on the wall of the optical shop.

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