Edwin Hubble spent his childhood in Kentucky, USA. Later, the whole family moved to Chicago, Illinois, USA, where they went to college and studied mathematics and astronomy. Hubble is a good student and an athlete.
From 65438 to 0909, he was a member of the basketball team of the University of Chicago Championship and an excellent boxer. After graduating from college, he was strongly advised to take part in the world heavyweight boxing championship. However, he decided to continue his studies and went to Queen's College, Oxford University, England. During his three years in Oxford, Hubble studied law and was very interested in English public law.
19 13, Hubble returned to the United States and opened a law firm in Louisville, Kentucky. However, it was not long before he became a lawyer. Hubble returned to the University of Chicago to study astronomy again.
19 17, the United States fought World War I in Europe. Edwin Hubble joined the American army and served in France. Earlier, astronomer George Ellaway Hall offered Hubble a job at Mount Wilson Observatory in Southern California. After World War I, Hubble returned to the United States and accepted the job. Hubble was 30 years old.
Hubble first observed the sky on Mount Wilson with a telescope with a lens diameter of 1.52 meters ... He studied the celestial bodies in the Milky Way and made great discoveries in nebulae. Hubble said: "The light emitted by the nebula does come from the stars near the nebula. Nebulae are atomic clouds and dust clouds, which are not as hot as stars, but emit light. " Soon after, Hubble began to observe the sky with a larger and more powerful telescope on Mount Wilson, which made Hubble make a major discovery. Hubble used a telescope lens with a diameter of 2.5 meters. This large telescope has been the longest in the world for 25 years.
From 1922, Edwin Hubble began to observe more and more distant celestial bodies. When he began to know "Cepheid Variable Stars", he made a major discovery for the first time. Cepheid variables are a group of stars whose brightness changes periodically, which are located in the peripheral area of Andromeda Nebula.
Henrietta Libit, an astronomer at Harvard University, found that these periods of brightness change can be used to measure the distance between stars and the earth. Hubble made measurements and proved that Andromeda is far away from the Milky Way. Hubble's discovery ended a long-standing debate and proved that the nebula is wrong in the Milky Way. It is an independent galaxy. Now, astronomers agree that distant galaxies do exist. Later, Hubble made a more detailed observation of the galaxy and studied its shape and brightness.
By 1925, he had proved that the universe was made up of many galaxies of different shapes and sizes. Hubble said: "Because of different star groups, the shapes of galaxies are different. Some are spiral, like the Milky Way and Andromeda. Such a galaxy has a center, and the stars revolve around it like a paper windmill. Some are shaped like basketball or eggs, and the shapes of several galaxies are not specific. " Hubble designed a galaxy shape system, which has been in use ever since. He also proved that galaxies are similar to the types of light they contain. He said: "All galaxies are interrelated, just like family members are interrelated."
In the second half of the 1920s, Hubble studied the motion of galaxies in the universe. His research led to the most important astronomical discovery of the 20th century, that is, "the universe is expanding". The research on the motion of galaxies was completed by V.M. Jose, who found that galaxies are moving away from the earth at a speed of 300- 1800 km/s. Recognizing the importance of this discovery, Hubble made a plan to measure the distance and speed of as many galaxies as possible.
Hubble and his assistant Milton Humerson measured the motion of galaxies in Mount Weil. They applied Hubble's so-called "red motion", that is, "elastic effect" theory to galaxies. The "elastic effect" explains the wavelength change of light (sound) waves when they arrive at you or leave you. If you leave your object quickly, the wavelength will become longer and the light wave will be red. On the contrary, the wavelength of the light wave of the object approaching you quickly will be shorter and the light wave will be blue.
Hubble studied 46 galaxies and proved that galaxies are moving away from the earth, and the speed of moving away is directly related to the distance between galaxies and the earth. Hubble found that the farther away a galaxy is, the faster it leaves. This scientific law is called Hubble's law.
Hubble's discovery means that people's concept of the universe has changed greatly, that is, the universe has been moving and changing, that is, the universe is expanding. However, people used to think that the universe was static. Hubble said: "This means that the universe may have started with an incredible big bang, which is the Big Bang." Hubble continued to study various galaxies and gained a new understanding. Astronomers all over the world have followed suit and studied galaxies.
During World War II, Hubble left Mount Wilson Observatory and went to the United States War Department for research. After the war, he returned to Mount Wilson. Later, he spent a lot of energy to build a brand-new big telescope in Southern California. This telescope was built in 1949, with a lens diameter of 5 meters, named after the astronomer George Elawi Hall's surname "Hall".
Edwin Hubble was the first astronomer to use the Hall telescope. On the eve of his death, he planned to spend four nights observing the universe with the Hall telescope. Hubble's research led to a new study of the origin of the universe. An astronomer said, "Now, we know much more about the universe than before, but there is still a long way to go."
Edwin Hubble is one of the greatest figures in the history of astronomy and an outstanding representative of science in the 20th century. He confirmed the existence of extragalactic galaxies outside the milky way where human beings live, and proved that the universe is constantly expanding, which made Einstein modify his universe equation and eventually led to the "Big Bang" theory about the origin of the universe.
Edwin Hubble made the landmark discovery that "distant galaxies are leaving us" (which directly led to the later "Big Bang" model of the universe), but Hubble, as one of the greatest figures in the history of astronomy, did not win the Nobel Prize for it, which once became the biggest regret in the history of the Nobel Prize.
Other important contributions of Hubble's life include the classification of Hubble galaxies and Hubble's law, which is one of the three theoretical cornerstones of cosmology. Hubble won all the honors that astronomers can get except the Nobel Prize when he was alive.
Today, Hubble also enjoys a high popularity among the public, which is largely due to the Hubble Space Telescope.