The man who proved the universe was expanding,
he actually went to his grave refusing to believe
his own discovery. Yeah, which is just wild.
I mean, he is the namesake of the most famous
space telescope in history. Right. He's the astronomer
who literally proved there are entirely other
galaxies out there. But the very data that forced
Albert Einstein and really the rest of the scientific
world to fundamentally change their minds. Was
data Hubble himself ultimately rejected? Exactly.
Welcome to the deep dive. Our mission today is
to explore the, you know, the human friction
behind the science. Because it is messy. It's
so messy. We are pulling apart the incredibly
comprehensive source material on Hubble's life
to show you that scientific breakthroughs, they
rarely happen in a straight... tidy line. No,
definitely not. I mean, if you picture the guy
who rewrote cosmology, you probably don't picture
a high school basketball player or a lawyer or
a high school Spanish teacher. OK, let's unpack
this because his path was anything but a straight
line from like a childhood telescope to a Ph
.D. Right, right. He was born in Missouri in
1889, raised in Illinois, and his early life
is really defined by this obsessive drive to
master systems. Yeah, he didn't just casually
participate in things. He broke down the logic
of whatever environment he was in and just dominated
it. Take athletics, for example. At a single
1906 high school track meet, he took home seven
first place finishes. Seven. Seven. And then
a few years later, he led the University of Chicago
basketball team. to their first Big Ten title.
And he carried that exact same systematic drive
across the Atlantic. When he was a Rhodes Scholar,
right? Exactly. When he attended Oxford as a
Rhodes Scholar, he completely ignored astrophysics.
Which is so funny to think about now. Right.
He actually studied jurisprudence, so law, along
with literature in Spanish. Because he made a
promise to his dying father, right? Right. To
pursue a respectable, practical profession. Yes.
So when his father passed away in 1913, Hubble
returned to the Midwest, moved to New Albany,
Indiana, and just took a job teaching high school.
He was teaching Spanish, physics, and mathematics.
And coaching the boys' basketball team. I mean,
think about the sheer willpower that takes. Seriously.
You're a star college athlete and an Oxford -educated
legal scholar, and you just pivot to grading
high school Spanish exams in Indiana. It's quite
the career change. It's like a star college quarterback
suddenly quitting to become a high school Spanish
teacher. It's a massive pivot. It is, but this
detour is actually essential to understanding
how his mind worked. How so? Well, he wasn't
just a math robot crunching numbers in a vacuum.
He had a deeply well -rounded foundation. Right,
okay. He understood human dynamics from coaching.
He understood language structure, the rigid logic
of law. He basically mastered every system he
was placed into. Which makes his eventual return
to science an incredibly deliberate choice, doesn't
it? Oh, absolutely. After a year of teaching,
he actively walked away from that practical life.
The pull of the stars was just too So the conceptual
backdrop completely shifts. Yeah, from a basketball
court to the Yerkes Observatory at the University
of Chicago, he heads there to basically rush
his PhD. And he had to rush it, right? Because
it was 1917. Exactly. 1917, the United States
was entering World War I, and he felt this massive
duty to enlist. So he writes his dissertation,
defends his thesis, which was titled, Photographic
Investigations of Faint Nebulae. Rolls right
off the tongue. Right. And then he immediately
volunteers for the Army infantry, eventually
rising to the rank of major. Yeah. So by the
time he finally gets to a professional telescope
in 1919, he's bringing this deeply disciplined,
relentless mindset with him. He arrives at the
Mount Wilson Observatory in California just as
the 100 -inch Hooker telescope is finished. The
absolute largest telescope in the world at the
time. Okay, to understand what he achieves with
it. You really have to realize how small the
universe was to the scientific consensus back
in 1919. Oh, it was tiny compared to what we
know now. The Milky Way galaxy was the entire
universe, period. Right. Those fuzzy patches
of light in the sky, the ones astronomers called
nebulae. They were assumed to be just local clouds
of gas floating in our own galactic backyard.
Enter Henrietta Swan Livid. Yes, a crucial figure
here. A decade earlier. In 1908, she had figured
out that certain pulsing stars, called Cephy
variables, they blink at a rate directly tied
to their true intrinsic brightness. They essentially
act as a standard candle. Which means what, exactly,
for the listener? Well, if you know a star's
true brightness based on its pulse rate, You
simply measure how dim it appears from Earth,
and you can calculate the exact distance. So
Hubble points the massive hooker telescope at
the Andromeda nebula, locates these Cepheid variables,
and runs Leavitt's math. And in 1924, the numbers
come back and they completely break the current
consensus. Andromeda is vastly farther away than
the edge of the Milky Way. Vastly. Meaning it
is not a gas cloud in our neighborhood. It is
an entirely separate galaxy. So what does this
all mean? Well, he effectively multiplied the
size of the universe by a factor of millions
overnight. It's like realizing the town you've
lived in your whole life isn't the only town
on Earth. Exactly. Like suddenly finding out
there are entire other continents out there.
this to the bigger picture. The astronomy establishment
fiercely resisted this. Especially prominent
figures like Harvard's Harlow Shapley, right?
Oh, yeah. You cannot casually tell Harvard they
are completely wrong about the fundamental boundaries
of reality. But Hubble anticipates that resistance,
which is why he does something so brilliant.
He bypasses the whole system. Exactly. He skips
the slow, traditional peer -reviewed journals
and goes straight to the press. He dropped the
discovery in the New York Times on November 23,
1924. Just a total mic drop. Totally. And then
he followed that up with a formal presentation
at the American Astronomical Society meeting
in 1924. Which won him the association's grand
prize. Yep, and a cool $500. He basically forced
the establishment to look at the data publicly
before they could quietly bury it in academic
review. So smart. Okay, so once you establish
that the universe is actually full of other galaxies,
the immediate next question is, well, what are
they doing? Right, are they just sitting static?
Are they moving? And Hubble sets out to answer
this in 1929. He estimated the distances to 24
of these newly identified galaxies. Then he pulls
in data from another astronomer, Vesto Slipher,
and his own assistant, Milton Humason. Right,
because they had been studying the light from
these exact same galaxies and they noticed it
was heavily redshifted. Now, if you're listening,
you're probably familiar with standard Doppler
shifting. you know, how an ambulance siren drops
in pitch as it speeds away from you. Right, the
sound waves stretch out. Exactly. Well, the exact
same principle applies to light. As these galaxies
recede, their light stretches down the visual
spectrum toward red. So Slipher knew they were
moving away, but Hubble does the crucial synthesis
here. He maps the speed of that recession against
the distance he just calculated. And he finds
a roughly linear relationship. The further away
a galaxy is, the faster it appears to be moving
away. Which becomes known as Hubble's Law. The
foundational observational proof that the fabric
of the universe itself is expanding. Okay, here's
where it gets really interesting. We have to
pause here. Because this is where the pristine
myth of flawless scientific discovery completely
shatters. It really does. Hubble publishes this
monumental 1929 paper and his estimated distances
for those 24 galaxies are wildly terribly wrong.
He was off by a factor of seven. Seven. His calculation
for the rate of expansion, we now call the Hubble
constant, was 500 kilometers per second per megaparsec.
Which is absurdly high. Right, let's translate
that for a second. A megaparsec is a unit of
distance equal to about 3 .2 million light years.
Okay. So Hubble is stating that for every 3 .2
million light years you look out into space,
the universe is expanding 500 kilometers a second
faster. Yeah, and modern measurements using much
better methods put that expansion rate... Way
lower. Somewhere around 68 to 74 kilometers per
second, right? Exactly. So how on earth does
a guy miscalculate that badly and still uncover
a Nobel -level truth? Well, it comes down to
a fundamental misunderstanding of his tools.
Standard candles. Right. Think back to that standard
candle concept we talked about. Imagine you're
looking at a 100 -watt light bulb from a mile
away. OK, I'm picturing it. You know how bright
100 watts should be? So its faintness accurately
tells you it is a mile out. But what if you didn't
know you were actually looking at a 1 ,000 watt
stadium light? Oh, I'd assume it was much, much
further away to look that dim. Exactly. Or conversely,
if you think a brilliant light is actually a
weak one, you'll calculate that it's sitting
right next door. That was Hubble's problem. That
was exactly his problem. He didn't realize there
are actually two entirely different classes of
sephed variable stars. And one is vastly brighter
than the other. Yep. Plus, he was also occasionally
mistaking bright gas clouds for individual stars.
So his ruler was just completely broken. Total
broken. However, the sheer genius of his methodology
was that his proportionality was still correct.
Because a galaxy that measured twice as far away
on his flawed scale was still moving. twice as
fast. Yes, the ratio held up. That is wild. It
perfectly encapsulates the scientific method.
You can have messy, imperfect data, but still
uncover a fundamental structural truth about
reality. Even with the wrong absolute numbers,
the linear relationship proved the expansion.
But, uh, that flawed data creates a massive problem
for him down the line. Oh, a huge problem. If
you're listening to this and doing the mental
math, you have probably spotted the exact same
paradox Hubble did. The timeline issue. Right.
If the universe is expanding at a staggering
500 kilometers per second per megaparsec, and
you rewind that tape to the beginning, to the
Big Bang. The universe is expanding so fast that
it must be incredibly young. Two billion years
old, according to his math. Which is a huge issue
because geologists in the 1930s already knew
the Earth's rocks were older than two billion
years. You cannot have a universe younger than
the planets inside it. It breaks basic logic.
Which is why Hubble actually fundamentally rejected
his own expanding universe theory. Wait, really?
Yes. He just could not reconcile the paradox.
By 1941, he was standing in front of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, arguing
that his six -year survey with the Mount Wilson
Telescope did not support an explosion or expansion
model. Wait, if he is actively rejecting the
expanding universe, he has to explain away the
redshift data he collected himself. He does.
How do you look at your own math and say, nah,
the galaxies aren't actually moving? He basically
leaned into the idea that redshift was a, quote,
hit or two unrecognized principle of nature.
So he just made something up. Sort of. He favored
a concept that later became known as tired light.
He theorized that light simply loses energy and
turns red as it travels across vast cosmic distances.
Completely unrelated to physical velocity or
the expansion of space. Right. The irony there
is almost physically painful. Hubble is desperately
inventing new physics to keep the universe static,
while Albert Einstein is doing the exact opposite.
Oh, the Einstein connection is amazing. In 1917,
Einstein's own equations of general relativity
had actually predicted an expanding or contracting
universe. But Einstein hated that implication.
He hated it so much that he added a fudge factor,
a cosmological constant, to his math just to
force the universe to remain static. But then
in 1931, Einstein visits Mount Wilson. He looks
at Hubble's redshift data from 1929 and he drops
his fudge factor entirely. He calls his attempt
to keep the universe static his biggest blunder.
He completely changes his entire view of physics
because of Hubble's data, while Hubble stubbornly
refuses to believe the very conclusion Einstein
just accepted. It's crazy, and what's fascinating
here is the narrative gets even more complicated
when you introduce George Lemaître. Oh, right,
the controversy. Right. Lemaître was this brilliant
Belgian priest and theoretical physicist who
actually published the redshift distance relation,
what we now call Hubble's Law, two years before
Hubble did. In 1927, Wait, so Hubble wasn't even
the first to publish the law? Technically, no.
Lemaître predicted it using Einstein's equations
and provided initial observational support, but
he published his paper in French in a relatively
obscure scientific journal. Okay, so it flew
under the radar. Fast forward to 1931, Lemaître's
paper is finally translated into English. But
miraculously, the specific paragraphs formulating
the expansion law and the observational data
are completely redacted from the translation.
Come on, that looks incredibly suspicious. Very!
Hubble finally gets his glory, and the one translation
that proves he was beaten to the punch mysteriously
has the math blacked out. Yeah. That screams
scientific cover -up. And for decades, the astronomy
community thought exactly that. They thought
Hubble did it? They assumed Hubble or his powerful
allies maliciously censored the English translation
to protect his legacy and basically steal the
credit. But that wasn't true. No. In 2011, astronomer
Mario Livio was digging through the LeMetre archives
and found a letter that changed everything. LeMetre
had redacted the translation himself. Why would
he sabotage his own claim to priority? That makes
no sense. Because he was a deeply pragmatic scientist.
By 1931, Hubble's 1929 paper had already convinced
the world using vastly superior telescope measurements.
So Lemaitre felt there was absolutely no point
in republishing older, less accurate observational
data just to claim, I said it first. Exactly.
He cared about the truth of the expanding universe
being accepted. He didn't care about the turf
war over who got the credit. A turf war that
Hubble... ironically, was heavily invested in
regarding other prizes. Oh yes, very invested.
But before his final battle for recognition,
World War II breaks out. And Hubble's need for
objective truth didn't just upend cosmology.
When the stakes became life and death, the military
realized the guy who could track the velocity
of distant galaxies was the exact guy they needed
to track the velocity of artillery shells. Wow.
So he went to the Aberdeen Proving Ground in
Maryland as a civilian. Serving as chief of the
external ballistics branch, he applied his absolute
genius for instrumentation to warfare. He developed
high speed clock cameras, right? Yeah, to study
the flight characteristics of low velocity projectiles
and bombs. Which makes sense. I mean, the physics
of a galaxy moving through space and a bomb dropping
from a plane, they rely on the same fundamental
tracking principles. It's just at wildly different
stales. His observational work directly improved
the design and military effectiveness of allied
weaponry. Earning him the Legion of Merit in
1946. Yep. So he emerges from the war a decorated
hero, he has redefined the cosmos, and he is
without a doubt the most famous astronomer alive.
By all accounts, he wants a Nobel Prize. Desperately.
But he hits a massive bureaucratic wall. The
Nobel Prize in physics did not recognize astronomy
as a valid sub -discipline back then, did they?
No, they didn't. It was viewed as purely observational.
The committee felt it lacked the experimental
rigor of theoretical physics. Would he do? Hubble
spent his later years waging this relentless,
furious campaign to force the Nobel committee
to classify astronomy as physics. Largely so
he would be eligible for the award himself. Pretty
much, yeah. But his body gave out before the
bureaucracy did. He suffered a heart attack in
1949. Though he kept working, right? He did,
on a modified schedule. He even became the first
astronomer to use the massive new 200 -inch Hale
telescope at Palomar. But he eventually died
of a cerebral thrombosis in 1953 at age 63. And
the tragic coda to his whole campaign is that
shortly after his death, the Nobel committee
finally relented. They did. They officially decided
astronomical work would be eligible for the physics
prize. But they did not award posthumously. Right.
Historical accounts suggest the committee had
actually been poised to award it to him, but
yeah, no posthumous awards. He changed the rules
of science's greatest prize, but didn't live
to claim it. And then his wife, Grace, makes
the decision that creates one of science's strangest
enduring mysteries. Yeah, this part is wild.
She never holds a funeral for him. She buries
him in an unmarked grave. And to this day, the
location has never been revealed. It remains
a permanent secret. Why? Well, this raises an
important question about his personal beliefs.
A deeply depressed friend once asked Hubble about
his belief in the transcendent or God. And what
did he say? Hubble replied, the whole thing is
so much bigger than I am and I can't understand
it, so I just trust myself to it and forget about
it. It's just so fitting. A man who spent his
entire life mapping the infinite, ultimately
swallowed back into the earth, entirely untraceable.
It really shatters the myth of the pristine scientific
genius. If you are listening to this deep dive,
take a moment to really appreciate the incredible
human friction that built our modern understanding
of reality. It's not clean. Not at all. Science
is a messy process. It is led by high school
basketball coaches who make massive math errors,
who launch institutional turf wars, and who actively
doubt their own greatest discoveries. Yet the
process still works. It does. The truth still
breaks through the flawed data. It is a self
-correcting system. It expands, much like the
universe it seeks to describe. Which brings us
to a final thought for you to mull over. We just
explored how the greatest observational astronomer
of the 20th century could look through the most
powerful telescope on Earth, see the data with
his own two eyes, and stubbornly refuse to believe
the universe was expanding because it broke his
preconceived notions. He just couldn't accept
it. So as you look at your own world today, ask
yourself, what fundamental truths are we currently
refusing to see? just waiting for the next generation's
telescope to shatter.