”When men lack a sense of awe, there will be disaster” LAO-TZU. 

Mount Wilson

The universe is vast and mysterious and has been puzzling mankind since the beginning of time. There are many things that are still a mystery to us such as Black holes, Multi-dimensions, wormholes and time warps. All of our probing and searching of the heavens have amounted for us being able to look at 1% of the universe.

The universe is our home and the better that we understand it, the better our chances of survival will be. We have learned so much in 300 years. Science has explained many things about the universe, but there is so much more that the universe can teach us that can only be made possible through further observation and research in the physical sciences.

Even after Galileo first pointed the first telescope into the sky, he didn’t realize that there was more than one galaxy. A famous philosopher, Immanuel Kant proposed that the distant stars were in fact other systems of stars outside of our immediate surroundings. He wrote about it in a book, “The General History of Nature and The Theory of The Heavens,” but having no observational evidence, it was forgotten rather quickly.

The invention of the spectroscope by Bunsen and Kirchhoff made it possible for astronomers to take photographs of distant objects by gathering the spectrum of their electromagnetic radiation and projecting it onto a plate by a device called a spectrograph. After the invention of the spectroscope, astronomy and cosmology was changed forever. Spectra of distant nebulae were first observed by Sir William Huggins in 1864.

The expansion of the universe is believed to have been discovered by Edwin Hubble in 1929. V.M Slipher, along with Edwin Hubble and his assistant Milton Humason, actually started collecting photographic plates of the color spectrum of distant nebulae. M31 was the easiest galaxy to study giving that it was the largest and closest one to us.

Slipher attached a very fast and short focused camera to a spectrograph that was hooked up to the 24 inch refractor at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. He was able to record the spectrum of M31 with a very high definition and was able to show that the absorption lines were not where they were supposed to be. It showed the spectrum to be on the violet side of the spectrum, meaning that it was approaching us at about 190 miles (300 kilometers) per second.

The Lowell Observatory was a very low-key observatory that did not have a good line of communication with outside observatories. Their secretary’s replies to outside mail was to throw them in the garbage. Lowell constructed the observatory to study the canals of Mars, which were believed to have been created by an intelligent race of Martians but were proven to just be cause by natural coincidences.

Roger L. Griffith

One of Hubble’s students, Allen Sandage, described cosmology as ”a search for three numbers:” the Hubble constant, the deceleration perimeter, and the cosmological constant. The Hubble constant is used to denote the rate of which the universe is expanding. When Hubble first came up with it, he estimated it at 500 kilometers per second per mega par sec. A mega par sec is 3.26 million light years.

That number has been revised many times. The rate is at 50 kilometers per second per mega par sec, give or take 10. The deceleration parameter measures the rate at which the expansion is slowing as a result of the gravitation attraction of the

combined matter in our universe.

If astronomers knew the correct value for the deceleration parameter, they could figure out the correct value for ”the mass” of our universe, and from there they could conclude on the fate of the universe. Whether it will contract on itself or will it expand forever? It all depends on the density of the universe, which is symbolized as Omega. If it is below Omega 1, it will expand forever. If it is above it, it will contract on itself.

Just as omega can give us the fate of the universe, it can also give us the correct age of it. We are only at the beginning of our evolution and the future is still hopeful. Even though we believe we have accomplished so much, we have a long way to go before we can understand and reveal the splendors of our universe.