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About The Oregon statesman. (Salem, Or.) 1916-1980 | View Entire Issue (July 15, 1956)
8-(Sec. I) Statesman, Salemi Ore., Sun.'; July 15, '56 Universe May Collapse, But Not Just Yet OPEN MONDAY AND FRIDAY 1 2: IS TO f P.M. OTHER DAYS i30 A.M. TO 5:30 P.M. FREE STORE-SIDE PARKING FOR OVER 1,000 CARS ' n ' ' 0""" By ALTON L. BLAKESLEE Associated Prese Bcleace Reporter PASADENA. Calif. iff Astronom ers are finding indications our uni verse may be lowing down, like an aging human. If to, then some day it may cot lapse. Everything in the universe could come rushing back into one central ball of matter, in kind of inward explosion. But don't quit your job for . last devil-may-care fling it would n't happen for perhaps 10 to IS billion years. If the universe does collapse In to a single great atom, it could explode again to start anew. By one theory, that is how the uni verse began originally with a big bang four to six billion years ago and it has been expanding ever since. The signs of a slowdown In the 'rata of expansion are found by Drs. Milton Humaaon and Allan R. gandage of the Mt. Wilson and Mt. Palomar Laboratories. Palamar Telescope It comes from their most recent work with the peat aof-tnch tele scope at Palomar Mountain, oper ated jointly by tha California In stitute of Technology and Carnegie Institution of Washington. The big telescope can look two billion or more light years into space. A light year is six trillion miles, the distanct light travels in single year. It can see great galaxies mam moth families of stars like our ewa billion-star milky way to which our sun belongs that far away. The evidence for an expanding universe is this: All the galaxies are speeding away from us, and each other. The farther away a galaxy is, the faster it la receding. Some of the distant ones are travel ling 31,000 miles per second, about a fifth tha speed of light AO renew Kale Up until now at feast, this speed baa followed simple rule. The speed of recession is directly pro portional to the distance the ga laxy is away. All of hundreds of galaxies observed have followed this linear rule. But now Drs. Bandage and Hu maaoa find evidence that torn of the most distant visible galaxies ' were travelling faster than would be expected under this rule. The step-up in speed applies to some gslaxies which are more than a billion lights years away. They shouldn't be going so much faster than some Bearer galaxies accord ing to the rule of speed-end-dts-tance. ' Tbt blf telescope ' doesn't see - these distant galaxies aa they are today. Instead, It sees them aa they were a billion years er more ago. then, and how fast they were mov ing, has taken that long to reach the earth. The big telescope is looking really into the history of the universe. CeaM Be Hewtaf So this could mesa that more than a billion years ago, tha rste of expansion was greater than it was just a billion years or lea ago. The galaxies could be slow ing down, the universe could be slowing down In Its rata of expan sion. As yet this evidence is only in dicative, and by no means proved. There might be other explanations, or errors, in the measurements. The rate at which a galaxy is rushing away is measured by the red shift In its light. The waves of light coming from aa object moving away from us are, in effect, stretched out, and shift mors toward the long wave length or red end of the spectrum of color. The light is redder, when it Is broken into colors by spectro scopy. The degree of shifting toward the red gives a measure of the speed of recession. So (ar there is no rea son to doubt that the red shift does measure the speed of recession. Drs. Humason and Sandage hope within a year or more to establish whether the galaxies really have been slowing down. Headings DiMctlt They are re-checking observa tiona and measuring speeds of still other very faint and distant galax ies. It is difficult to get resdable , apectrums from the very faint light of these distant galaxies. Long time exposures are needed. They plan also to look at some clusters or entire groups ef great but distant galaxies when they come Into posi tion in our sky later this year. ' If the slowdown is real, and sir wificant, it could mean that in time the universe may stop expanding, Then it could either stay steady or start to contract. ' We may not live In an Infinite universe, but , in one which bounded, or on that pulses. could contract again into a central ball which exploded and expands again, then contracts again. might do this regularly, every is to billion years. We may be seeing tha first such expansion or the third, or any number. More observations and study and time could tell. 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