WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.200 The man who proved the universe was expanding, 00:00:02.740 --> 00:00:06.559 he actually went to his grave refusing to believe 00:00:06.559 --> 00:00:09.080 his own discovery. Yeah, which is just wild. 00:00:09.199 --> 00:00:11.259 I mean, he is the namesake of the most famous 00:00:11.259 --> 00:00:14.099 space telescope in history. Right. He's the astronomer 00:00:14.099 --> 00:00:16.640 who literally proved there are entirely other 00:00:16.640 --> 00:00:19.719 galaxies out there. But the very data that forced 00:00:19.719 --> 00:00:22.219 Albert Einstein and really the rest of the scientific 00:00:22.219 --> 00:00:25.179 world to fundamentally change their minds. Was 00:00:25.179 --> 00:00:29.260 data Hubble himself ultimately rejected? Exactly. 00:00:29.600 --> 00:00:32.520 Welcome to the deep dive. Our mission today is 00:00:32.520 --> 00:00:34.719 to explore the, you know, the human friction 00:00:34.719 --> 00:00:37.380 behind the science. Because it is messy. It's 00:00:37.380 --> 00:00:41.000 so messy. We are pulling apart the incredibly 00:00:41.000 --> 00:00:43.380 comprehensive source material on Hubble's life 00:00:43.380 --> 00:00:46.679 to show you that scientific breakthroughs, they 00:00:46.679 --> 00:00:49.490 rarely happen in a straight... tidy line. No, 00:00:49.530 --> 00:00:51.469 definitely not. I mean, if you picture the guy 00:00:51.469 --> 00:00:53.770 who rewrote cosmology, you probably don't picture 00:00:53.770 --> 00:00:56.310 a high school basketball player or a lawyer or 00:00:56.310 --> 00:00:59.090 a high school Spanish teacher. OK, let's unpack 00:00:59.090 --> 00:01:01.149 this because his path was anything but a straight 00:01:01.149 --> 00:01:03.789 line from like a childhood telescope to a Ph 00:01:03.789 --> 00:01:06.280 .D. Right, right. He was born in Missouri in 00:01:06.280 --> 00:01:09.599 1889, raised in Illinois, and his early life 00:01:09.599 --> 00:01:12.700 is really defined by this obsessive drive to 00:01:12.700 --> 00:01:15.480 master systems. Yeah, he didn't just casually 00:01:15.480 --> 00:01:18.659 participate in things. He broke down the logic 00:01:18.659 --> 00:01:21.099 of whatever environment he was in and just dominated 00:01:21.099 --> 00:01:24.060 it. Take athletics, for example. At a single 00:01:24.060 --> 00:01:27.500 1906 high school track meet, he took home seven 00:01:27.500 --> 00:01:30.420 first place finishes. Seven. Seven. And then 00:01:30.420 --> 00:01:32.819 a few years later, he led the University of Chicago 00:01:32.819 --> 00:01:35.670 basketball team. to their first Big Ten title. 00:01:35.989 --> 00:01:38.609 And he carried that exact same systematic drive 00:01:38.609 --> 00:01:40.790 across the Atlantic. When he was a Rhodes Scholar, 00:01:40.890 --> 00:01:43.250 right? Exactly. When he attended Oxford as a 00:01:43.250 --> 00:01:46.030 Rhodes Scholar, he completely ignored astrophysics. 00:01:46.209 --> 00:01:48.349 Which is so funny to think about now. Right. 00:01:48.450 --> 00:01:51.489 He actually studied jurisprudence, so law, along 00:01:51.489 --> 00:01:53.900 with literature in Spanish. Because he made a 00:01:53.900 --> 00:01:55.939 promise to his dying father, right? Right. To 00:01:55.939 --> 00:01:59.480 pursue a respectable, practical profession. Yes. 00:01:59.980 --> 00:02:03.219 So when his father passed away in 1913, Hubble 00:02:03.219 --> 00:02:05.459 returned to the Midwest, moved to New Albany, 00:02:05.459 --> 00:02:07.620 Indiana, and just took a job teaching high school. 00:02:07.760 --> 00:02:10.180 He was teaching Spanish, physics, and mathematics. 00:02:10.509 --> 00:02:12.949 And coaching the boys' basketball team. I mean, 00:02:12.969 --> 00:02:15.810 think about the sheer willpower that takes. Seriously. 00:02:16.030 --> 00:02:19.490 You're a star college athlete and an Oxford -educated 00:02:19.490 --> 00:02:22.810 legal scholar, and you just pivot to grading 00:02:22.810 --> 00:02:26.169 high school Spanish exams in Indiana. It's quite 00:02:26.169 --> 00:02:28.830 the career change. It's like a star college quarterback 00:02:28.830 --> 00:02:30.870 suddenly quitting to become a high school Spanish 00:02:30.870 --> 00:02:33.669 teacher. It's a massive pivot. It is, but this 00:02:33.669 --> 00:02:35.969 detour is actually essential to understanding 00:02:35.969 --> 00:02:38.870 how his mind worked. How so? Well, he wasn't 00:02:38.870 --> 00:02:41.490 just a math robot crunching numbers in a vacuum. 00:02:41.710 --> 00:02:45.169 He had a deeply well -rounded foundation. Right, 00:02:45.349 --> 00:02:47.689 okay. He understood human dynamics from coaching. 00:02:48.090 --> 00:02:51.009 He understood language structure, the rigid logic 00:02:51.009 --> 00:02:54.090 of law. He basically mastered every system he 00:02:54.090 --> 00:02:56.849 was placed into. Which makes his eventual return 00:02:56.849 --> 00:02:59.430 to science an incredibly deliberate choice, doesn't 00:02:59.430 --> 00:03:01.729 it? Oh, absolutely. After a year of teaching, 00:03:01.750 --> 00:03:04.009 he actively walked away from that practical life. 00:03:04.090 --> 00:03:07.900 The pull of the stars was just too So the conceptual 00:03:07.900 --> 00:03:10.360 backdrop completely shifts. Yeah, from a basketball 00:03:10.360 --> 00:03:12.400 court to the Yerkes Observatory at the University 00:03:12.400 --> 00:03:15.000 of Chicago, he heads there to basically rush 00:03:15.000 --> 00:03:17.229 his PhD. And he had to rush it, right? Because 00:03:17.229 --> 00:03:20.849 it was 1917. Exactly. 1917, the United States 00:03:20.849 --> 00:03:24.169 was entering World War I, and he felt this massive 00:03:24.169 --> 00:03:27.830 duty to enlist. So he writes his dissertation, 00:03:28.250 --> 00:03:31.330 defends his thesis, which was titled, Photographic 00:03:31.330 --> 00:03:33.949 Investigations of Faint Nebulae. Rolls right 00:03:33.949 --> 00:03:35.990 off the tongue. Right. And then he immediately 00:03:35.990 --> 00:03:38.270 volunteers for the Army infantry, eventually 00:03:38.270 --> 00:03:40.449 rising to the rank of major. Yeah. So by the 00:03:40.449 --> 00:03:42.430 time he finally gets to a professional telescope 00:03:42.430 --> 00:03:45.969 in 1919, he's bringing this deeply disciplined, 00:03:46.610 --> 00:03:49.030 relentless mindset with him. He arrives at the 00:03:49.030 --> 00:03:51.909 Mount Wilson Observatory in California just as 00:03:51.909 --> 00:03:54.189 the 100 -inch Hooker telescope is finished. The 00:03:54.189 --> 00:03:56.389 absolute largest telescope in the world at the 00:03:56.389 --> 00:03:58.849 time. Okay, to understand what he achieves with 00:03:58.849 --> 00:04:01.539 it. You really have to realize how small the 00:04:01.539 --> 00:04:03.860 universe was to the scientific consensus back 00:04:03.860 --> 00:04:06.300 in 1919. Oh, it was tiny compared to what we 00:04:06.300 --> 00:04:08.659 know now. The Milky Way galaxy was the entire 00:04:08.659 --> 00:04:11.120 universe, period. Right. Those fuzzy patches 00:04:11.120 --> 00:04:13.379 of light in the sky, the ones astronomers called 00:04:13.379 --> 00:04:16.420 nebulae. They were assumed to be just local clouds 00:04:16.420 --> 00:04:18.959 of gas floating in our own galactic backyard. 00:04:19.300 --> 00:04:22.180 Enter Henrietta Swan Livid. Yes, a crucial figure 00:04:22.180 --> 00:04:25.850 here. A decade earlier. In 1908, she had figured 00:04:25.850 --> 00:04:28.810 out that certain pulsing stars, called Cephy 00:04:28.810 --> 00:04:32.089 variables, they blink at a rate directly tied 00:04:32.089 --> 00:04:35.089 to their true intrinsic brightness. They essentially 00:04:35.089 --> 00:04:37.790 act as a standard candle. Which means what, exactly, 00:04:37.889 --> 00:04:40.050 for the listener? Well, if you know a star's 00:04:40.050 --> 00:04:43.120 true brightness based on its pulse rate, You 00:04:43.120 --> 00:04:45.439 simply measure how dim it appears from Earth, 00:04:45.959 --> 00:04:48.800 and you can calculate the exact distance. So 00:04:48.800 --> 00:04:51.120 Hubble points the massive hooker telescope at 00:04:51.120 --> 00:04:54.220 the Andromeda nebula, locates these Cepheid variables, 00:04:54.600 --> 00:04:57.939 and runs Leavitt's math. And in 1924, the numbers 00:04:57.939 --> 00:05:00.480 come back and they completely break the current 00:05:00.480 --> 00:05:04.300 consensus. Andromeda is vastly farther away than 00:05:04.300 --> 00:05:07.079 the edge of the Milky Way. Vastly. Meaning it 00:05:07.079 --> 00:05:09.600 is not a gas cloud in our neighborhood. It is 00:05:09.600 --> 00:05:12.279 an entirely separate galaxy. So what does this 00:05:12.279 --> 00:05:14.860 all mean? Well, he effectively multiplied the 00:05:14.860 --> 00:05:17.019 size of the universe by a factor of millions 00:05:17.019 --> 00:05:19.120 overnight. It's like realizing the town you've 00:05:19.120 --> 00:05:20.639 lived in your whole life isn't the only town 00:05:20.639 --> 00:05:23.079 on Earth. Exactly. Like suddenly finding out 00:05:23.079 --> 00:05:24.699 there are entire other continents out there. 00:05:25.420 --> 00:05:29.100 this to the bigger picture. The astronomy establishment 00:05:29.100 --> 00:05:32.079 fiercely resisted this. Especially prominent 00:05:32.079 --> 00:05:34.160 figures like Harvard's Harlow Shapley, right? 00:05:34.240 --> 00:05:37.269 Oh, yeah. You cannot casually tell Harvard they 00:05:37.269 --> 00:05:40.110 are completely wrong about the fundamental boundaries 00:05:40.110 --> 00:05:42.730 of reality. But Hubble anticipates that resistance, 00:05:42.790 --> 00:05:44.230 which is why he does something so brilliant. 00:05:44.329 --> 00:05:47.350 He bypasses the whole system. Exactly. He skips 00:05:47.350 --> 00:05:49.509 the slow, traditional peer -reviewed journals 00:05:49.509 --> 00:05:52.310 and goes straight to the press. He dropped the 00:05:52.310 --> 00:05:55.029 discovery in the New York Times on November 23, 00:05:55.449 --> 00:05:58.910 1924. Just a total mic drop. Totally. And then 00:05:58.910 --> 00:06:01.069 he followed that up with a formal presentation 00:06:01.069 --> 00:06:03.430 at the American Astronomical Society meeting 00:06:03.430 --> 00:06:06.459 in 1924. Which won him the association's grand 00:06:06.459 --> 00:06:10.240 prize. Yep, and a cool $500. He basically forced 00:06:10.240 --> 00:06:12.180 the establishment to look at the data publicly 00:06:12.180 --> 00:06:14.660 before they could quietly bury it in academic 00:06:14.660 --> 00:06:17.639 review. So smart. Okay, so once you establish 00:06:17.639 --> 00:06:20.180 that the universe is actually full of other galaxies, 00:06:20.980 --> 00:06:23.399 the immediate next question is, well, what are 00:06:23.399 --> 00:06:25.439 they doing? Right, are they just sitting static? 00:06:25.819 --> 00:06:28.360 Are they moving? And Hubble sets out to answer 00:06:28.360 --> 00:06:32.610 this in 1929. He estimated the distances to 24 00:06:32.610 --> 00:06:36.009 of these newly identified galaxies. Then he pulls 00:06:36.009 --> 00:06:38.689 in data from another astronomer, Vesto Slipher, 00:06:39.329 --> 00:06:41.910 and his own assistant, Milton Humason. Right, 00:06:42.029 --> 00:06:44.069 because they had been studying the light from 00:06:44.069 --> 00:06:46.110 these exact same galaxies and they noticed it 00:06:46.110 --> 00:06:48.569 was heavily redshifted. Now, if you're listening, 00:06:48.910 --> 00:06:50.990 you're probably familiar with standard Doppler 00:06:50.990 --> 00:06:53.819 shifting. you know, how an ambulance siren drops 00:06:53.819 --> 00:06:56.300 in pitch as it speeds away from you. Right, the 00:06:56.300 --> 00:06:58.819 sound waves stretch out. Exactly. Well, the exact 00:06:58.819 --> 00:07:01.660 same principle applies to light. As these galaxies 00:07:01.660 --> 00:07:04.300 recede, their light stretches down the visual 00:07:04.300 --> 00:07:06.980 spectrum toward red. So Slipher knew they were 00:07:06.980 --> 00:07:10.120 moving away, but Hubble does the crucial synthesis 00:07:10.120 --> 00:07:12.860 here. He maps the speed of that recession against 00:07:12.860 --> 00:07:15.139 the distance he just calculated. And he finds 00:07:15.139 --> 00:07:18.569 a roughly linear relationship. The further away 00:07:18.569 --> 00:07:21.050 a galaxy is, the faster it appears to be moving 00:07:21.050 --> 00:07:23.790 away. Which becomes known as Hubble's Law. The 00:07:23.790 --> 00:07:26.490 foundational observational proof that the fabric 00:07:26.490 --> 00:07:29.670 of the universe itself is expanding. Okay, here's 00:07:29.670 --> 00:07:32.500 where it gets really interesting. We have to 00:07:32.500 --> 00:07:35.079 pause here. Because this is where the pristine 00:07:35.079 --> 00:07:38.139 myth of flawless scientific discovery completely 00:07:38.139 --> 00:07:40.639 shatters. It really does. Hubble publishes this 00:07:40.639 --> 00:07:44.779 monumental 1929 paper and his estimated distances 00:07:44.779 --> 00:07:48.060 for those 24 galaxies are wildly terribly wrong. 00:07:48.339 --> 00:07:52.240 He was off by a factor of seven. Seven. His calculation 00:07:52.240 --> 00:07:55.079 for the rate of expansion, we now call the Hubble 00:07:55.079 --> 00:07:59.000 constant, was 500 kilometers per second per megaparsec. 00:07:59.160 --> 00:08:01.560 Which is absurdly high. Right, let's translate 00:08:01.560 --> 00:08:04.100 that for a second. A megaparsec is a unit of 00:08:04.100 --> 00:08:06.899 distance equal to about 3 .2 million light years. 00:08:07.040 --> 00:08:10.339 Okay. So Hubble is stating that for every 3 .2 00:08:10.339 --> 00:08:12.000 million light years you look out into space, 00:08:12.439 --> 00:08:14.740 the universe is expanding 500 kilometers a second 00:08:14.740 --> 00:08:17.620 faster. Yeah, and modern measurements using much 00:08:17.620 --> 00:08:20.240 better methods put that expansion rate... Way 00:08:20.240 --> 00:08:23.060 lower. Somewhere around 68 to 74 kilometers per 00:08:23.060 --> 00:08:25.100 second, right? Exactly. So how on earth does 00:08:25.100 --> 00:08:28.360 a guy miscalculate that badly and still uncover 00:08:28.360 --> 00:08:30.600 a Nobel -level truth? Well, it comes down to 00:08:30.600 --> 00:08:32.740 a fundamental misunderstanding of his tools. 00:08:33.059 --> 00:08:35.340 Standard candles. Right. Think back to that standard 00:08:35.340 --> 00:08:37.460 candle concept we talked about. Imagine you're 00:08:37.460 --> 00:08:39.899 looking at a 100 -watt light bulb from a mile 00:08:39.899 --> 00:08:42.500 away. OK, I'm picturing it. You know how bright 00:08:42.500 --> 00:08:45.720 100 watts should be? So its faintness accurately 00:08:45.720 --> 00:08:48.610 tells you it is a mile out. But what if you didn't 00:08:48.610 --> 00:08:51.649 know you were actually looking at a 1 ,000 watt 00:08:51.649 --> 00:08:55.090 stadium light? Oh, I'd assume it was much, much 00:08:55.090 --> 00:08:58.309 further away to look that dim. Exactly. Or conversely, 00:08:58.570 --> 00:09:00.470 if you think a brilliant light is actually a 00:09:00.470 --> 00:09:02.730 weak one, you'll calculate that it's sitting 00:09:02.730 --> 00:09:05.100 right next door. That was Hubble's problem. That 00:09:05.100 --> 00:09:07.559 was exactly his problem. He didn't realize there 00:09:07.559 --> 00:09:11.220 are actually two entirely different classes of 00:09:11.220 --> 00:09:14.460 sephed variable stars. And one is vastly brighter 00:09:14.460 --> 00:09:17.220 than the other. Yep. Plus, he was also occasionally 00:09:17.220 --> 00:09:20.179 mistaking bright gas clouds for individual stars. 00:09:20.320 --> 00:09:22.779 So his ruler was just completely broken. Total 00:09:22.779 --> 00:09:25.980 broken. However, the sheer genius of his methodology 00:09:25.980 --> 00:09:28.259 was that his proportionality was still correct. 00:09:28.419 --> 00:09:31.120 Because a galaxy that measured twice as far away 00:09:31.120 --> 00:09:33.750 on his flawed scale was still moving. twice as 00:09:33.750 --> 00:09:37.970 fast. Yes, the ratio held up. That is wild. It 00:09:37.970 --> 00:09:40.269 perfectly encapsulates the scientific method. 00:09:40.549 --> 00:09:43.409 You can have messy, imperfect data, but still 00:09:43.409 --> 00:09:45.870 uncover a fundamental structural truth about 00:09:45.870 --> 00:09:48.850 reality. Even with the wrong absolute numbers, 00:09:49.210 --> 00:09:51.610 the linear relationship proved the expansion. 00:09:52.370 --> 00:09:56.710 But, uh, that flawed data creates a massive problem 00:09:56.710 --> 00:09:59.690 for him down the line. Oh, a huge problem. If 00:09:59.690 --> 00:10:01.110 you're listening to this and doing the mental 00:10:01.110 --> 00:10:03.850 math, you have probably spotted the exact same 00:10:03.850 --> 00:10:06.669 paradox Hubble did. The timeline issue. Right. 00:10:06.970 --> 00:10:09.250 If the universe is expanding at a staggering 00:10:09.250 --> 00:10:12.610 500 kilometers per second per megaparsec, and 00:10:12.610 --> 00:10:14.950 you rewind that tape to the beginning, to the 00:10:14.950 --> 00:10:17.529 Big Bang. The universe is expanding so fast that 00:10:17.529 --> 00:10:20.070 it must be incredibly young. Two billion years 00:10:20.070 --> 00:10:22.509 old, according to his math. Which is a huge issue 00:10:22.509 --> 00:10:25.570 because geologists in the 1930s already knew 00:10:25.570 --> 00:10:27.549 the Earth's rocks were older than two billion 00:10:27.549 --> 00:10:29.509 years. You cannot have a universe younger than 00:10:29.509 --> 00:10:31.929 the planets inside it. It breaks basic logic. 00:10:32.129 --> 00:10:34.490 Which is why Hubble actually fundamentally rejected 00:10:34.490 --> 00:10:36.710 his own expanding universe theory. Wait, really? 00:10:37.049 --> 00:10:40.070 Yes. He just could not reconcile the paradox. 00:10:40.480 --> 00:10:43.320 By 1941, he was standing in front of the American 00:10:43.320 --> 00:10:46.139 Association for the Advancement of Science, arguing 00:10:46.139 --> 00:10:48.500 that his six -year survey with the Mount Wilson 00:10:48.500 --> 00:10:51.559 Telescope did not support an explosion or expansion 00:10:51.559 --> 00:10:54.440 model. Wait, if he is actively rejecting the 00:10:54.440 --> 00:10:57.100 expanding universe, he has to explain away the 00:10:57.100 --> 00:11:00.039 redshift data he collected himself. He does. 00:11:00.120 --> 00:11:02.159 How do you look at your own math and say, nah, 00:11:02.259 --> 00:11:04.279 the galaxies aren't actually moving? He basically 00:11:04.279 --> 00:11:06.899 leaned into the idea that redshift was a, quote, 00:11:07.220 --> 00:11:09.279 hit or two unrecognized principle of nature. 00:11:09.529 --> 00:11:12.529 So he just made something up. Sort of. He favored 00:11:12.529 --> 00:11:14.990 a concept that later became known as tired light. 00:11:15.710 --> 00:11:18.309 He theorized that light simply loses energy and 00:11:18.309 --> 00:11:21.590 turns red as it travels across vast cosmic distances. 00:11:22.009 --> 00:11:24.370 Completely unrelated to physical velocity or 00:11:24.370 --> 00:11:26.649 the expansion of space. Right. The irony there 00:11:26.649 --> 00:11:30.110 is almost physically painful. Hubble is desperately 00:11:30.110 --> 00:11:32.409 inventing new physics to keep the universe static, 00:11:32.769 --> 00:11:35.049 while Albert Einstein is doing the exact opposite. 00:11:35.470 --> 00:11:38.450 Oh, the Einstein connection is amazing. In 1917, 00:11:38.929 --> 00:11:40.909 Einstein's own equations of general relativity 00:11:40.909 --> 00:11:43.470 had actually predicted an expanding or contracting 00:11:43.470 --> 00:11:46.610 universe. But Einstein hated that implication. 00:11:46.889 --> 00:11:49.649 He hated it so much that he added a fudge factor, 00:11:49.990 --> 00:11:52.789 a cosmological constant, to his math just to 00:11:52.789 --> 00:11:55.149 force the universe to remain static. But then 00:11:55.149 --> 00:11:59.240 in 1931, Einstein visits Mount Wilson. He looks 00:11:59.240 --> 00:12:02.940 at Hubble's redshift data from 1929 and he drops 00:12:02.940 --> 00:12:06.259 his fudge factor entirely. He calls his attempt 00:12:06.259 --> 00:12:08.879 to keep the universe static his biggest blunder. 00:12:09.610 --> 00:12:12.570 He completely changes his entire view of physics 00:12:12.570 --> 00:12:15.529 because of Hubble's data, while Hubble stubbornly 00:12:15.529 --> 00:12:18.610 refuses to believe the very conclusion Einstein 00:12:18.610 --> 00:12:21.210 just accepted. It's crazy, and what's fascinating 00:12:21.210 --> 00:12:23.669 here is the narrative gets even more complicated 00:12:23.669 --> 00:12:25.769 when you introduce George Lemaître. Oh, right, 00:12:25.830 --> 00:12:28.470 the controversy. Right. Lemaître was this brilliant 00:12:28.470 --> 00:12:31.149 Belgian priest and theoretical physicist who 00:12:31.149 --> 00:12:33.350 actually published the redshift distance relation, 00:12:33.429 --> 00:12:35.970 what we now call Hubble's Law, two years before 00:12:35.970 --> 00:12:39.210 Hubble did. In 1927, Wait, so Hubble wasn't even 00:12:39.210 --> 00:12:41.570 the first to publish the law? Technically, no. 00:12:41.929 --> 00:12:44.129 Lemaître predicted it using Einstein's equations 00:12:44.129 --> 00:12:46.590 and provided initial observational support, but 00:12:46.590 --> 00:12:49.250 he published his paper in French in a relatively 00:12:49.250 --> 00:12:51.610 obscure scientific journal. Okay, so it flew 00:12:51.610 --> 00:12:55.350 under the radar. Fast forward to 1931, Lemaître's 00:12:55.350 --> 00:12:58.360 paper is finally translated into English. But 00:12:58.360 --> 00:13:01.440 miraculously, the specific paragraphs formulating 00:13:01.440 --> 00:13:03.659 the expansion law and the observational data 00:13:03.659 --> 00:13:05.980 are completely redacted from the translation. 00:13:06.200 --> 00:13:08.440 Come on, that looks incredibly suspicious. Very! 00:13:08.720 --> 00:13:11.480 Hubble finally gets his glory, and the one translation 00:13:11.480 --> 00:13:14.200 that proves he was beaten to the punch mysteriously 00:13:14.200 --> 00:13:16.879 has the math blacked out. Yeah. That screams 00:13:16.879 --> 00:13:19.679 scientific cover -up. And for decades, the astronomy 00:13:19.679 --> 00:13:21.690 community thought exactly that. They thought 00:13:21.690 --> 00:13:25.149 Hubble did it? They assumed Hubble or his powerful 00:13:25.149 --> 00:13:28.409 allies maliciously censored the English translation 00:13:28.409 --> 00:13:30.789 to protect his legacy and basically steal the 00:13:30.789 --> 00:13:34.370 credit. But that wasn't true. No. In 2011, astronomer 00:13:34.370 --> 00:13:37.049 Mario Livio was digging through the LeMetre archives 00:13:37.049 --> 00:13:40.190 and found a letter that changed everything. LeMetre 00:13:40.190 --> 00:13:42.389 had redacted the translation himself. Why would 00:13:42.389 --> 00:13:44.710 he sabotage his own claim to priority? That makes 00:13:44.710 --> 00:13:47.610 no sense. Because he was a deeply pragmatic scientist. 00:13:47.850 --> 00:13:52.090 By 1931, Hubble's 1929 paper had already convinced 00:13:52.090 --> 00:13:54.889 the world using vastly superior telescope measurements. 00:13:55.350 --> 00:13:57.330 So Lemaitre felt there was absolutely no point 00:13:57.330 --> 00:14:00.250 in republishing older, less accurate observational 00:14:00.250 --> 00:14:03.289 data just to claim, I said it first. Exactly. 00:14:03.769 --> 00:14:06.169 He cared about the truth of the expanding universe 00:14:06.169 --> 00:14:08.389 being accepted. He didn't care about the turf 00:14:08.389 --> 00:14:11.269 war over who got the credit. A turf war that 00:14:11.269 --> 00:14:14.399 Hubble... ironically, was heavily invested in 00:14:14.399 --> 00:14:17.340 regarding other prizes. Oh yes, very invested. 00:14:17.600 --> 00:14:20.100 But before his final battle for recognition, 00:14:20.679 --> 00:14:23.110 World War II breaks out. And Hubble's need for 00:14:23.110 --> 00:14:25.909 objective truth didn't just upend cosmology. 00:14:26.450 --> 00:14:28.889 When the stakes became life and death, the military 00:14:28.889 --> 00:14:30.970 realized the guy who could track the velocity 00:14:30.970 --> 00:14:33.570 of distant galaxies was the exact guy they needed 00:14:33.570 --> 00:14:36.149 to track the velocity of artillery shells. Wow. 00:14:36.389 --> 00:14:38.230 So he went to the Aberdeen Proving Ground in 00:14:38.230 --> 00:14:40.850 Maryland as a civilian. Serving as chief of the 00:14:40.850 --> 00:14:43.789 external ballistics branch, he applied his absolute 00:14:43.789 --> 00:14:46.669 genius for instrumentation to warfare. He developed 00:14:46.669 --> 00:14:48.950 high speed clock cameras, right? Yeah, to study 00:14:48.950 --> 00:14:51.700 the flight characteristics of low velocity projectiles 00:14:51.700 --> 00:14:54.039 and bombs. Which makes sense. I mean, the physics 00:14:54.039 --> 00:14:56.720 of a galaxy moving through space and a bomb dropping 00:14:56.720 --> 00:14:59.279 from a plane, they rely on the same fundamental 00:14:59.279 --> 00:15:01.740 tracking principles. It's just at wildly different 00:15:01.740 --> 00:15:04.720 stales. His observational work directly improved 00:15:04.720 --> 00:15:07.419 the design and military effectiveness of allied 00:15:07.419 --> 00:15:09.940 weaponry. Earning him the Legion of Merit in 00:15:09.940 --> 00:15:13.960 1946. Yep. So he emerges from the war a decorated 00:15:13.960 --> 00:15:17.840 hero, he has redefined the cosmos, and he is 00:15:17.840 --> 00:15:20.340 without a doubt the most famous astronomer alive. 00:15:20.559 --> 00:15:23.059 By all accounts, he wants a Nobel Prize. Desperately. 00:15:23.779 --> 00:15:26.460 But he hits a massive bureaucratic wall. The 00:15:26.460 --> 00:15:28.960 Nobel Prize in physics did not recognize astronomy 00:15:28.960 --> 00:15:31.220 as a valid sub -discipline back then, did they? 00:15:31.539 --> 00:15:34.379 No, they didn't. It was viewed as purely observational. 00:15:34.799 --> 00:15:36.960 The committee felt it lacked the experimental 00:15:36.960 --> 00:15:39.850 rigor of theoretical physics. Would he do? Hubble 00:15:39.850 --> 00:15:42.509 spent his later years waging this relentless, 00:15:42.789 --> 00:15:45.230 furious campaign to force the Nobel committee 00:15:45.230 --> 00:15:47.909 to classify astronomy as physics. Largely so 00:15:47.909 --> 00:15:49.990 he would be eligible for the award himself. Pretty 00:15:49.990 --> 00:15:52.210 much, yeah. But his body gave out before the 00:15:52.210 --> 00:15:54.370 bureaucracy did. He suffered a heart attack in 00:15:54.370 --> 00:15:56.730 1949. Though he kept working, right? He did, 00:15:56.750 --> 00:15:59.169 on a modified schedule. He even became the first 00:15:59.169 --> 00:16:02.129 astronomer to use the massive new 200 -inch Hale 00:16:02.129 --> 00:16:04.690 telescope at Palomar. But he eventually died 00:16:04.690 --> 00:16:08.879 of a cerebral thrombosis in 1953 at age 63. And 00:16:08.879 --> 00:16:12.100 the tragic coda to his whole campaign is that 00:16:12.100 --> 00:16:14.580 shortly after his death, the Nobel committee 00:16:14.580 --> 00:16:18.120 finally relented. They did. They officially decided 00:16:18.120 --> 00:16:21.080 astronomical work would be eligible for the physics 00:16:21.080 --> 00:16:24.340 prize. But they did not award posthumously. Right. 00:16:24.559 --> 00:16:26.500 Historical accounts suggest the committee had 00:16:26.500 --> 00:16:28.399 actually been poised to award it to him, but 00:16:28.399 --> 00:16:31.000 yeah, no posthumous awards. He changed the rules 00:16:31.000 --> 00:16:33.299 of science's greatest prize, but didn't live 00:16:33.299 --> 00:16:36.279 to claim it. And then his wife, Grace, makes 00:16:36.279 --> 00:16:39.700 the decision that creates one of science's strangest 00:16:39.700 --> 00:16:42.860 enduring mysteries. Yeah, this part is wild. 00:16:42.960 --> 00:16:45.299 She never holds a funeral for him. She buries 00:16:45.299 --> 00:16:48.799 him in an unmarked grave. And to this day, the 00:16:48.799 --> 00:16:50.860 location has never been revealed. It remains 00:16:50.860 --> 00:16:53.789 a permanent secret. Why? Well, this raises an 00:16:53.789 --> 00:16:55.950 important question about his personal beliefs. 00:16:56.889 --> 00:16:59.429 A deeply depressed friend once asked Hubble about 00:16:59.429 --> 00:17:02.090 his belief in the transcendent or God. And what 00:17:02.090 --> 00:17:04.490 did he say? Hubble replied, the whole thing is 00:17:04.490 --> 00:17:06.450 so much bigger than I am and I can't understand 00:17:06.450 --> 00:17:08.769 it, so I just trust myself to it and forget about 00:17:08.769 --> 00:17:11.589 it. It's just so fitting. A man who spent his 00:17:11.589 --> 00:17:14.210 entire life mapping the infinite, ultimately 00:17:14.210 --> 00:17:17.369 swallowed back into the earth, entirely untraceable. 00:17:17.750 --> 00:17:20.990 It really shatters the myth of the pristine scientific 00:17:20.990 --> 00:17:24.140 genius. If you are listening to this deep dive, 00:17:24.579 --> 00:17:28.119 take a moment to really appreciate the incredible 00:17:28.119 --> 00:17:31.039 human friction that built our modern understanding 00:17:31.039 --> 00:17:34.640 of reality. It's not clean. Not at all. Science 00:17:34.640 --> 00:17:37.079 is a messy process. It is led by high school 00:17:37.079 --> 00:17:39.779 basketball coaches who make massive math errors, 00:17:40.079 --> 00:17:42.920 who launch institutional turf wars, and who actively 00:17:42.920 --> 00:17:45.079 doubt their own greatest discoveries. Yet the 00:17:45.079 --> 00:17:47.740 process still works. It does. The truth still 00:17:47.740 --> 00:17:49.980 breaks through the flawed data. It is a self 00:17:49.980 --> 00:17:53.019 -correcting system. It expands, much like the 00:17:53.019 --> 00:17:55.440 universe it seeks to describe. Which brings us 00:17:55.440 --> 00:17:58.039 to a final thought for you to mull over. We just 00:17:58.039 --> 00:18:00.480 explored how the greatest observational astronomer 00:18:00.480 --> 00:18:02.579 of the 20th century could look through the most 00:18:02.579 --> 00:18:05.119 powerful telescope on Earth, see the data with 00:18:05.119 --> 00:18:07.700 his own two eyes, and stubbornly refuse to believe 00:18:07.700 --> 00:18:10.019 the universe was expanding because it broke his 00:18:10.019 --> 00:18:12.079 preconceived notions. He just couldn't accept 00:18:12.079 --> 00:18:15.019 it. So as you look at your own world today, ask 00:18:15.019 --> 00:18:18.519 yourself, what fundamental truths are we currently 00:18:18.519 --> 00:18:21.859 refusing to see? just waiting for the next generation's 00:18:21.859 --> 00:18:22.680 telescope to shatter.